Collected Essays

by Aldous Huxley Back Cover: All over the English-speaking world critics have greeted these essays with such comments as "brilliant. . . provocative. . . magnificent." Many find that Huxley is the finest essayist since Montaigne. t has been said that "Mr. Huxley is not only a literary giant! but one of the greatest thinkers of our time." Mr. Huxley"s topic is man! the total compass of his faculties in science! literature! music! religion! art! love! sex! speculative thinking and simple being. Here! displayed to the full! is the astonishing virtuosity of Huxley"s genius. #he range of Aldous Huxley"s thinking was astonishing. His opinions on art were as original and well-founded as his discussions of biology or architecture! poetry! music! or history. As a virtuoso of letters! he was une$ualled. %orn into a famous family with a long intellectual tradition! Huxley attended Eton and &xford. His reputation as a writer was well-established before he was thirty. Mr. Huxley was not only a master essayist' in ()*) he received the American Academy of Arts and +etters Award of Merit for "having done the best work of our time in what threatens to be a neglected field! the novel of ideas." His novels include Crome Yellow and The Genius and the Goddess.

Preface
" am a man and alive!" wrote ,. H. +awrence. "-or this reason am a novelist. And! being a novelist! consider myself superior to the saint! the scientist! the philosopher! and the poet! who are all great masters of different bits of man alive! but never get the whole hog. . . &nly in the novel are all things given full play." .hat is true of the novel is only a little less true of the essay. -or! like the novel! the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. %y tradition! almost by definition! the essay is a short piece! and it is therefore impossible to give all things full play within the limits of a single essay. %ut a collection of essays can cover almost as much ground! and cover it almost as thoroughly as can a long novel. Montaigne"s #hird %ook is the e$uivalent! very nearly! of a good slice of the Comdie Humaine. Essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference. #here is the pole of the personal and the autobiographical' there is the pole of the ob/ective! the factual! the concreteparticular' and there is the pole of the abstract-universal. Most essayists are at home and

at their best in the neighborhood of only one of the essay"s three poles! or at the most only in the neighborhood of two of them. #here are the predominantly personal essayists! who write fragments of reflective autobiography and who look at the world through the keyhole of anecdote and description. #here are the predominantly ob/ective essayists who do not speak directly of themselves! but turn their attention outward to some literary or scientific or political theme. #heir art consists in setting forth! passing /udgment upon! and drawing general conclusions from! the relevant data. n a third group we find those essayists who do their work in the world of high abstractions! who never condescend to be personal and who hardly deign to take notice of the particular facts! from which their generali0ations were originally drawn. Each kind of essay has its special merits and defects. #he personal essayists may be as good as 1harles +amb at his best! or as bad as Mr. 2 at his cutest and most self-consciously whimsical. #he ob/ective essay may be as lively! as brassily contentious as a piece by Macaulay' but it may also! with fatal ease! degenerate into something merely informative or! if it be critical! into something merely learned and academic. And how splendid! how truly oracular are the utterances of the great generali0es3 "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune' for they are impediments to great enterprises! either of virtue or mischief." And from %acon we pass to Emerson. "All men plume themselves on the improvement of society! and no man improves. 4ociety never advances. t recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. -or everything that is given! something is taken." Even a %altasar 5racian! that briefest of essayists who writes as though he were cabling his wisdom! at two dollars a word! to the Antipodes! sometimes achieves a certain magnificence. "#hings have their period' even excellences are sub/ect to fashion. #he sage has one advantage6 he is immortal. f this is not his century! many others will be." %ut the medal of solemn and lapidary generali0ation has its reverse. #he constantly abstract! constantly impersonal essayist is apt to give us not oracles but algebra. As an example of such algebraic writing! let me $uote a short passage from the English translation of 7aul 8al9ry"s Dialogues. t is worth remarking that -rench literature has a tradition of high and sustained abstraction' English literature has not. .orks that in -rench are not at all out of the common seem! when translated! strange almost to the point of absurdity. %ut even when made acceptable by tradition and a great talent! the algebraic style strikes us as being very remote from the living reality of our immediate experience. Here! in the words of an imaginary 4ocrates! is 8alery"s description of the kind of language in which :as think! unfortunately; he liked to write. ".hat is more mysterious than clarity< what more capricious than the way in which light and shade are distributed over the hours and over men< 1ertain peoples lose themselves in their thoughts! but for the 5reeks all things are forms. .e retain only their relations and! enclosed! as it were! in the limpid day! &rpheus like we build! by means of the word! temples of wisdom and science that may suffice for all reasonable creatures. #his great art re$uires of us an admirably exact language. #he very word that signifies language is also the name! with us! for reason and calculation' the same word says these three things." n the stratosphere of abstract notions this elegant algebra is all very well' but a completely bodiless language can never do /ustice to the data of immediate experience! nor can it contribute anything to our understanding of the "capricious lights and shades" in the midst of which! whether we like it or not! we must perforce live out our lives. #he most richly satisfying essays are those which make the best not of one! not of

two! but of all the three worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist. -reely! effortlessly! thought and feeling move in these consummate works of art! hither and thither between the essay"s three poles = from the personal to the universal! from the abstract back to the concrete! from the ob/ective datum to the inner experience. #he perfection of any artistic form is rarely achieved by its first inventor. #o this rule Montaigne is the great and marvelous exception. %y the time he had written his way into the #hird %ook! he had reached the limits of his newly discovered art. ".hat are these essays!" he had asked at the beginning of his career! "but grotes$ue bodies pieced together of different members! without any definite shape! without any order! coherence! or proportion! except they be accidental." %ut a few years later the patchwork grotes$ues had turned into living organisms! into multiform hybrids like those beautiful monsters of the old mythologies! the mermaids! the man-headed bulls with wings! the centaurs! the Anubises! the seraphim = impossibilities compounded of incompatibles! but compounded from within! by a process akin to growth! so that the human trunk seems to spring $uite naturally from between the horse"s shoulders! the fish modulates into the fullbreasted 4iren as easily and inevitably as a musical theme modulates from one key to another. -ree association artistically controlled = this is the paradoxical secret of Montaigne"s best essays. &ne damned thing after another = but in a se$uence that in some almost miraculous way develops a central theme and relates it to the rest of human experience. And how beautifully Montaigne combines the generali0ation with the anecdote! the homily with the autobiographical reminiscence3 How skilfully he makes use of the concrete particular! the chose vue, to express some universal truth! and to express it more powerfully and penetratingly than it can be expressed by even the most oracular of the dealers in generalities3 Here! for example! is what a great oracle! ,r. >ohnson! has to say about the human situation and the uses of adversity. "Affliction is inseparable from our present state' it adheres to all the inhabitants of this world! in different proportions indeed! but with an allotment which seems very little regulated by our own conduct. t has been the boast of some swelling moralists that every man"s fortune was in his own power! that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities! and that happiness is the unfailing conse$uence of virtue. %ut! surely! the $uiver of &mnipotence is stored with arrows! against which the shield of human virtue! however adamantine it has been boasted! is held up in vain' we do not always suffer by our crimes! we are not always protected by our innocence. . . ?othing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that perpetually surround us! as an habitual consideration of the shortness of life! and the uncertainty of those pleasures that solicit our pursuit' and this consideration can be inculcated only by affliction." #his is altogether admirable' but there are other and! would say! better ways of approaching the sub/ect. "J'ay veu en mon tem s cent artisans, cent la!oureurs, lus sages et lus heureu" #ue des $ecteurs de l'%niversite." : have seen in my time hundreds of artisans and laborers! wiser and happier than university presidents.; Again! "+ook at poor working people sitting on the ground with drooping heads after their day"s toil. #hey know neither Aristotle nor 1ato! neither example nor precept' and yet from them ?ature draws effects of constancy and patience purer and more uncon$uerable than any of those we study so curiously in the schools." Add to one touch of nature one touch of irony! and you have a comment on life more profound! in spite of its casualness! its seeming levity! than the most elo$uent rumblings of the oracles. " t is not our follies that make me laugh!" says Montaigne! "it is

our sapiences." And why should our sapiences provoke a wise man to laughter< Among other reasons! because the professional sages tend to express themselves in a language of highest abstraction and widest generality = a language that! for all its gnomic solemnity is apt! in a tight corner! to reveal itself as ludicrously inappropriate to the facts of life as it is really and tragically lived. n the course of the last forty years have written essays of every si0e and shape and color. Essays almost as short as 5racian"s and! on occasion! longer even than Macaulay"s. Essays autobiographical. Essays about things seen and places visited. Essays in criticism of all kinds of works of art! literary! plastic! musical. Essays about philosophy and religion! some of them couched in abstract terms! others in the form of an anthology with comments! others again in which general ideas are approached through the concrete facts of history and biography. Essays! finally! in which! following Montaigne! have tried to make the best of all the essay"s three worlds! have tried to say everything at once in as near an approach to contrapuntal simultaneity as the nature of literary art will allow of. 4ometimes! it seems to me! have succeeded fairly well in doing what! in one field or another! had set out to do. 4ometimes! alas! know that have not succeeded. %ut "please do not shoot the pianist' he is doing his best." ,oing his best! selon ses #uel#ues doigts erclus, to make his cottage upright say as much as the great orchestra of the novel! doing his best to "give all things full play." -or the writer at least! and perhaps also for the reader! it is better to have tried and failed to achieve perfection than never to have tried at all. A+,&@4 H@2+EA

Contents
7reface SECTION 1 &ature .ordsworth in the #ropics #he &live #ree #he ,esert Travel #he 7alio at 4iena 4abbioneta %etween 7eshawar and +ahore >aipur Atitlan 4ololB 1opan n a #unisian &asis

Miracle in +ebanon 'ove, (e", and )hysical *eauty %eauty in ()CD -ashions in +ove 4ermons in 1ats Appendix SECTION II 'iterature 4ub/ect-Matter of 7oetry #ragedy and the .hole #ruth 8ulgarity in +iterature ,. H. +awrence -amagusta or 7aphos )ainting %reughel Meditation on El 5reco -orm and 4pirit in Art 8ariations on 5oya +andscape 7ainting as a 8ision- nducing Art +usic 7opular Music Music at ?ight 5esualdo6 8ariations on a Musical #heme +atters o, Taste and (tyle 8ariations on a %aro$ue #omb -aith! #aste! and History SECTION III History Maine de %iran6 #he 7hilosopher in History @sually ,estroyed )olitics .ords and %ehavior ,ecentrali0ation and 4elf-5overnment 7olitics and Eeligion #he 4cientist"s Eole #omorrow and #omorrow and #omorrow

SECTION IV )sychology Madness! %adness! 4adness A 1ase of 8oluntary gnorance #he &ddest 4cience $" ,or (ense and )syche #he ,oors of 7erception ,rugs #hat 4hape Men"s Minds -ay o, 'i,e Holy -ace 7ascal %eliefs Fnowledge and @nderstanding

SECTION I

NATURE

Words ort! "n t!e Tro#"cs n the neighborhood of latitude fifty north! and for the last hundred years or thereabouts! it has been an axiom that ?ature is divine and morally uplifting. -or good .ordsworthians = and most serious-minded people are now .ordsworthians! either by direct inspiration or at second hand = a walk in the country is the e$uivalent of going to church! a tour through .estmorland is as good as a pilgrimage to >erusalem. #o commune with the fields and waters! the woodlands and the hills! is to commune! according to our modern and northern ideas! with the visible manifestations of the ".isdom and 4pirit of the @niverse." #he .ordsworthian who exports this pantheistic worship of ?ature to the tropics is liable to have his religious convictions somewhat rudely disturbed. ?ature! under a vertical sun! and nourished by the e$uatorial rains! is not at all like that chaste! mild deity who presides over the Gem.thlich/eit, the prettiness! the co0y sublimities of the +ake ,istrict. #he worst that .ordsworth"s goddess ever did to him was to make him hear
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds Of undistinguishable motion, steps Almost as silent as the turf they trod;

was to make him reali0e! in the shape of "a huge peak! black and huge!" the existence of "unknown modes of being." He seems to have imagined that this was the worst ?ature could do. A few weeks in Malaya or %orneo would have undeceived him. .andering in the hothouse darkness of the /ungle! he would not have felt so serenely certain of those "7resences of ?ature!" those "4ouls of +onely 7laces!" which he was in the habit of worshipping on the shores of .indermere and Eydal. #he sparse inhabitants of the e$uatorial forest are all believers in devils. .hen one has visited! in even the most superficial manner! the places where they live! it is difficult not to share their faith. #he /ungle is marvelous! fantastic! beautiful' but it is also terrifying! it is also profoundly sinister. #here is something in what! for lack of a better word! we must call the character of great forests = even in those of temperate lands = which is foreign! appalling! fundamentally and utterly inimical to intruding man. #he life of those vast masses of swarming vegetation is alien to the human spirit and hostile to it. Meredith! in his ".oods of .estermaine!" has tried reassuringly to persuade us that our terrors are unnecessary! that the hostility of these vegetable forces is more apparent than real! and that if we will but trust ?ature we shall find our fears transformed into serenity! /oy! and rapture. #his may be sound philosophy in the neighborhood of ,orking' but it begins to be dubious even in the forests of 5ermany = there is too much of them for a human being to feel himself at ease within their enormous glooms' and when the woods of %orneo are substituted for those of .estermaine! Meredith"s comforting doctrine becomes frankly ridiculous. t is not the sense of solitude that distresses the wanderer in e$uatorial /ungles. +oneliness is bearable enough = for a time! at any rate. #here is something actually rather stimulating and exciting about being in an empty place where there is no life but one"s own. #aken in reasonably small doses! the 4ahara exhilarates! like alcohol. #oo much of it! however : speak! at any rate! for myself;! has the depressing effect of the second bottle of %urgundy. %ut in any case it is not loneliness that oppresses the e$uatorial traveller6 it is too much company' it is the uneasy feeling that he is an alien in the midst of an innumerable throng of hostile beings. #o us who live beneath a temperate sky and in the age of Henry -ord! the worship of ?ature comes almost naturally. t is easy to love a feeble and already con$uered enemy. %ut an enemy with whom one is still at war! an uncon$uered! uncon$uerable! ceaselessly active enemy = no' one does not! one should not! love him. &ne respects him! perhaps' one has a salutary fear of him' and one goes on fighting. n our latitudes the hosts of ?ature have mostly been van$uished and enslaved. 4ome few detachments! it is true! still hold the field against us. #here are wild woods and mountains! marshes and heaths! even in England. %ut they are there only on sufferance! because we have chosen! out of our good pleasure! to leave them their freedom. t has not been worth our while to reduce them to slavery. .e love them because we are the masters! because we know that at any moment we can overcome them as we overcame their fellows. #he inhabitants of the tropics have no such comforting reasons for adoring the sinister forces which hem them in on every side. -or us! the notion "river" implies :how obviously3; the notion "bridge." .hen we think of a plain! we think of agriculture! towns! and good roads. #he corollary of mountain is tunnel' of swamp! an embankment' of distance! a railway. At latitude 0ero! however! the obvious is not the same as with us. Eivers imply wading! swimming! alligators. 7lains mean

swamps! forests! fevers. Mountains are either dangerous or impassable. #o travel is to hack one"s way laboriously through a tangled! prickly! and venomous darkness. "5od made the country!" said 1owper! in his rather too blank verse. n ?ew 5uinea he would have had his doubts' he would have longed for the man-made town. #he .ordsworthian adoration of ?ature has two principal defects. #he first! as we have seen! is that it is only possible in a country where ?ature has been nearly or $uite enslaved to man. #he second is that it is only possible for those who are prepared to falsify their immediate intuitions of ?ature. -or ?ature! even in the temperate 0one! is always alien and inhuman! and occasionally diabolic. Meredith explicitly invites us to explain any unpleasant experiences away. .e are to interpret them! 7angloss fashion! in terms of a preconceived philosophy' after which! all will surely be for the best in the best of all possible .estermaines. +ess openly! .ordsworth asks us to make the same falsification of immediate experience. t is only very occasionally that he admits the existence in the world around him of those "unknown modes of being" of which our immediate intuitions of things make us so dis$uietingly aware. ?ormally what he does is to pump the dangerous @nknown out of ?ature and refill the emptied forms of hills and woods! flowers and waters! with something more reassuringly familiar = with humanity! with Anglicanism. He will not admit that a yellow primrose is simply a yellow primrose = beautiful! but essentially strange! having its own alien life apart. He wants it to possess some sort of soul! to exist humanly! not simply flowerily. He wants the earth to be more than earthy! to be a divine person. %ut the life of vegetation is radically unlike the life of man6 the earth has a mode of being that is certainly not the mode of being of a person. "+et ?ature be your teacher!" says .ordsworth. #he advice is excellent. %ut how strangely he himself puts it into practice3 nstead of listening humbly to what the teacher says! he shuts his ears and himself dictates the lesson he desires to hear. #he pupil knows better than his master' the worshipper substitutes his own oracles for those of the god. nstead of accepting the lesson as it is given to his immediate intuitions! he distorts it rationalistically into the likeness of a parson"s sermon or a professorial lecture. &ur direct intuitions of ?ature tell us that the world is bottomlessly strange6 alien! even when it is kind and beautiful' having innumerable modes of being that are not our modes' always mysteriously not personal! not conscious! not moral' often hostile and sinister' sometimes even unimaginably! because inhumanly! evil. n his youth! it would seem! .ordsworth left his direct intuitions of the world unwarped.
The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, y thought supplied, nor any interest !nborrowed from the eye"

As the years passed! however! he began to interpret them in terms of a preconceived philosophy. 7rocrustes-like! he tortured his feelings and perceptions until they fitted his system. %y the time he was thirty!
The immeasurable height

Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls # The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, lack dri$$ling crags that spake by the wayside As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and regions of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light # %ere all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, &haracters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end"

"4omething far more deeply interfused" had made its appearance on the .ordsworthian scene. #he god of Anglicanism had crept under the skin of things! and all the stimulatingly inhuman strangeness of ?ature had become as flatly familiar as a page from a textbook of metaphysics or theology. As familiar and as safely simple. 7antheistically interpreted! our intuitions of ?ature"s endless varieties of impersonal mysteriousness lose all their exciting and disturbing $uality. t makes the world seem delightfully co0y! if you can pretend that all the many alien things about you are really only manifestations of one person. t is fear of the labyrinthine flux and complexity of phenomena that has driven men to philosophy! to science! to theology = fear of the complex reality driving them to invent a simpler! more manageable! and! therefore! consoling fiction. -or simple! in comparison with the external reality of which we have direct intuitions! childishly simple is even the most elaborate and subtle system devised by the human mind. Most of the philosophical systems hitherto popular have not been subtle and elaborate even by human standards. Even by human standards they have been crude! bald! preposterously straightforward. Hence their popularity. #heir simplicity has rendered them instantly comprehensible. .eary with much wandering in the ma0e of phenomena! frightened by the inhospitable strangeness of the world! men have rushed into the systems prepared for them by philosophers and founders of religions! as they would rush from a dark /ungle into the haven of a well-lit! commodious house. .ith a sigh of relief and a thankful feeling that here at last is their true home! they settle down in their snug metaphysical villa and go to sleep. And how furious they are when any one comes rudely knocking at the door to tell them that their villa is /erry-built! dilapidated! unfit for human habitation! even non-existent3 Men have been burnt at the stake for even venturing to critici0e the color of the front door or the shape of the third-floor windows. #hat man must build himself some sort of metphysical shelter in the midst of the /ungle of immediately apprehended reality is obvious. ?o practical activity! no scientific research! no speculation is possible without some preliminary hypothesis about the nature and the purpose of things. #he human mind cannot deal with the universe directly! nor even with its own immediate intuitions of the universe. .henever it is a $uestion of thinking about the world or of practically modifying it! men can only work on a symbolic plan of the universe! only a simplified! two-dimensional map of things abstracted by the mind out of the complex and multifarious reality of immediate intuition. History shows that these hypotheses about the nature of things are valuable even when! as later experience reveals! they are false. Man approaches the unattainable truth through a

succession of errors. 1onfronted by the strange complexity of things! he invents! $uite arbitrarily! a simple hypothesis to explain and /ustify the world. Having invented! he proceeds to act and think in terms of this hypothesis! as though it were correct. Experience gradually shows him where his hypothesis is unsatisfactory and how it should be modified. #hus! great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to verify $uite erroneous theories about the nature of things. #he discoveries have necessitated a modification of the original hypotheses! and further discoveries have been made in the effort to verify the modifications = discoveries which! in their turn! have led to yet further modifications. And so on! indefinitely. 7hilosophical and religious hypotheses! being less susceptible of experimental verification than the hypotheses of science! have undergone far less modification. -or example! the pantheistic hypothesis of .ordsworth is an ancient doctrine! which human experience has hardly modified throughout history. And rightly! no doubt. -or it is obvious that there must be some sort of unity underlying the diversity of phenomena' for if there were not! the world would be $uite unknowable. ndeed! it is precisely in the knowableness of things! in the very fact that they are known! that their fundamental unity consists. #he world which we know! and which our minds have fabricated out of goodness knows what mysterious things in themselves! possesses the unity which our minds have imposed upon it. t is part of our thought! hence fundamentally homogeneous. Aes! the world is obviously one. %ut at the same time it is no less obviously diverse. -or if the world were absolutely one! it would no longer be knowable! it would cease to exist. #hought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself. Absolute oneness is absolute nothingness6 homogeneous perfection! as the Hindus perceived and courageously recogni0ed! is e$uivalent to nonexistence! is nirvana. #he 1hristian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms. #he world in which we live may be fundamentally one! but it is a unity divided up into a great many diverse fragments. A tree! a table! a newspaper! a piece of artificial silk are all made of wood. %ut they are! none the less! distinct and separate ob/ects. t is the same with the world at large. &ur immediate intuitions are of diversity. .e have only to open our eyes to recogni0e a multitude of different phenomena. #hese intuitions of diversity are as correct! as well /ustified! as is our intellectual conviction of the fundamental homogeneity of the various parts of the world with one another and with ourselves. 1ircumstances have led humanity to set an ever-increasing premium on the conscious and intellectual comprehension of things. Modern man"s besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections' to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions. "+"homme est visiblement fait pour penser!" says 7ascal' "c"est toute sa dignit9 et tout son m9rite' et tout son devoir est de penser comme il faut." ?oble words' but do they happen to be true< 7ascal seems to forget that man has something else to do besides think6 he must live. +iving may not be so dignified or meritorious as thinking :particularly when you happen to be! like 7ascal! a chronic invalid;' but it is! perhaps unfortunately! a necessary process. f one would live well! one must live completely! with the whole being = with the body and the instincts! as well as with the conscious mind. A life lived! as far as may be! exclusively from the consciousness and in accordance with the considered /udgments of the intellect! is a stunted life! a half-dead life. #his is a fact that can be confirmed by daily observation. %ut consciousness! the intellect! the spirit! have ac$uired an inordinate prestige' and such is

men"s snobbish respect for authority! such is their pedantic desire to be consistent! that they go on doing their best to lead the exclusively conscious! spiritual! and intellectual life! in spite of its manifest disadvantages. #o know is pleasant' it is exciting to be conscious' the intellect is a valuable instrument! and for certain purposes the hypotheses which it fabricates are of great practical value. Guite true. %ut! therefore! say the moralists and men of science! drawing conclusions only /ustified by their desire for consistency! therefore all life should be lived from the head! consciously! all phenomena should at all times be interpreted in terms of the intellect"s hypotheses. #he religious teachers are of a slightly different opinion. All life! according to them! should be lived spiritually! not intellectually. .hy< &n the grounds! as we discover when we push our analysis far enough! that certain occasional psychological states! currently called spiritual! are extremely agreeable and have valuable conse$uences in the realm of social behavior. #he unpre/udiced observer finds it hard to understand why these people should set such store by consistency of thought and action. %ecause oysters are occasionally pleasant! it does not follow that one should make of oysters one"s exclusive diet. ?or should one take castor-oil every day because castor-oil is occasionally good for one. #oo much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. 1onsistency is contrary to nature! contrary to life. #he only completely consistent people are the dead. 1onsistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable! up to a point' but they make! gradually! for individual death. And individual death! when the slow murder has been consummated! is finally social death. 4o that the social utility of pure intellectualism and pure spirituality is only apparent and temporary. .hat is needed is! as ever! a compromise. +ife must be lived in different ways at different moments. #he only satisfactory way of existing in the modern! highly speciali0ed world is to live with two personalities. A ,r. >ekyll that does the metaphysical and scientific thinking! that transacts business in the city! adds up figures! designs machines! and so forth. And a natural! spontaneous Mr. Hyde to do the physical! instinctive living in the intervals of work. #he two personalities should lead their unconnected lives apart! without poaching on one another"s preserves or in$uiring too closely into one another"s activities. &nly by living discreetly and inconsistently can we preserve both the man and the citi0en! both the intellectual and the spontaneous animal being! alive within us. #he solution may not be very satisfactory! but it is! believe now :though once thought differently;! the best that! in the modern circumstances! can be devised. #he poet"s place! it seems to me! is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature. He should be! as %lake remarked of Milton! "of the devil"s party without knowing it" = or preferably with the full consciousness of being of the devil"s party. #here are so many intellectual and moral angels battling for rationalism! good citi0enship! and pure spirituality' so many and such eminent ones! so very vocal and authoritative3 #he poor devil in man needs all the support and advocacy he can get. #he artist is his natural champion. .hen an artist deserts to the side of the angels! it is the most odious of treasons. How unforgivable! for example! is #olstoy3 #olstoy! the perfect Mr. Hyde! the complete embodiment! if ever there was one! of non-intellectual! non-moral! instinctive life = #olstoy! who betrayed his own nature! betrayed his art! betrayed life itself! in order to fight against the devil"s party of his earlier allegiances! under the standard of ,r. >esus->ekyll. .ordsworth"s betrayal was not so spectacular6 he was never so wholly of the devil"s party as #olstoy. 4till! it was bad enough. t is difficult to forgive him for so

utterly repenting his youthful passions and enthusiasms! and becoming! personally as well as politically! the anglican tory. &ne remembers %. E. Haydon"s account of the poet"s reactions to that charming classical sculpture of 1upid and 7syche. "#he devils3" he said malignantly! after a long-drawn contemplation of their marble embrace. "#he devils3" And he was not using the word in the complimentary sense in which have employed it here6 he was expressing his hatred of passion and life! he was damning the young man he had himself been = the young man who had hailed the -rench Eevolution with delight and begotten an illegitimate child. -rom being an ardent lover of the nymphs! he had become one of those all too numerous
woodmen who e'pel Love(s gentle dryads from the haunts of life, And ve' the nightingales in every dell"

Aes! even the nightingales he vexed. Even the nightingales! though the poor birds can never! like those all too human dryads! have led him into sexual temptation. Even the innocuous nightingales were morali0ed! spirituali0ed! turned into citi0ens and anglicans = and along with the nightingales! the whole of animate and inanimate ?ature. #he change in .ordsworth"s attitude toward ?ature is symptomatic of his general apostasy. %eginning as what may call a natural aesthete! he transformed himself! in the course of years! into a moralist! a thinker. He used his intellect to distort his ex$uisitely acute and subtle intuitions of the world! to explain away their often dis$uieting strangeness! to simplify them into a comfortable metaphysical unreality. ?ature had endowed him with the poet"s gift of seeing more than ordinarily far into the brick walls of external reality! of intuitively comprehending the character of the bricks! of feeling the $uality of their being! and establishing the appropriate relationship with them. %ut he preferred to think his gifts away. He preferred! in the interests of a preconceived religious theory! to ignore the dis$uieting strangeness of things! to interpret the impersonal diversity of ?ature in terms of a divine! anglican unity. He chose! in a word! to be a philosopher! comfortably at home with a man-made and! therefore! thoroughly comprehensible system! rather than a poet adventuring for adventure"s sake through the mysterious world revealed by his direct and undistorted intuitions. t is a pity that he never traveled beyond the boundaries of Europe. A voyage through the tropics would have cured him of his too easy and comfortable pantheism. A few months in the /ungle would have convinced him that the diversity and utter strangeness of ?ature are at least as real and significant as its intellectually discovered unity. ?or would he have felt so certain! in the damp and stifling darkness! among the leeches and the malevolently tangled rattans! of the divinely anglican character of that fundamental unity. He would have learned once more to treat ?ature naturally! as he treated it in his youth' to react to it spontaneously! loving where love was the appropriate emotion! fearing! hating! fighting whenever ?ature presented itself to his intuition as being! not merely strange! but hostile! inhumanly evil. A voyage would have taught him this. %ut .ordsworth never left his native continent. Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art! a scientific theory! a neat metaphysical system. Man has recreated Europe in his own image. ts tamed and temperate ?ature confirmed .ordsworth in his philosophi0ings. #he poet! the devil"s partisan were doomed' the angels triumphed. Alas3

:-rom Do -hat You -ill0

T!e Ol"ve Tree #he #ree of +ife' the %odhi #ree' Aggdrasil and the %urning %ush6
)opulus Alcidae gratissima, vitis *accho, formosae myrtus +eneri, sua laurea )hoebo" " "

Everywhere and! before the world was finally laici0ed! at all times! trees have been worshiped. t is not to be wondered at. #he tree is an intrinsically "numinous" being. 4olidified! a great fountain of life rises in the trunk! spreads in the branches! scatters in a spray of leaves and flowers and fruits. .ith a slow! silent ferocity the roots go burrowing down into the earth. #ender! yet irresistible! life battles with the unliving stones and has the mastery. Half hidden in the darkness! half displayed in the air of heaven! the tree stands there! magnificent! a manifest god. Even today we feel its ma/esty and beauty = feel in certain circumstances its rather fearful $uality of otherness! strangeness! hostility. #rees in the mass can be almost terrible. #here are devils in the great pine-woods of the ?orth! in the swarming e$uatorial /ungle. Alone in a forest one sometimes becomes aware of the silence = the thick! clotted! living silence of the trees' one reali0es one"s isolation in the midst of a vast concourse of alien presences. Herne the Hunter was something more than the ghost of a .indsor gamekeeper. He was probably a survival of >upiter 1ernunnus' a lineal descendant of the 1retan Heus' a wood god who in some of his aspects was frightening and even malignant.
He blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And makes milch,kine yield blood, and shakes a chain *n a most hideous and dreadful manner"

Even in a royal forest and only twenty miles from +ondon! the serried trees can inspire terror. Alone or in small groups! trees are benignly numinous. #he alienness of the forest is so much attenuated in the park or the orchard that it changes its emotional sign and from oppressively sinister becomes delightful. #amed and isolated! those leaping fountains of non-human life bring only refreshment to spirits parched by the dusty commerce of the world. 7oetry is full of groves and shrubberies. &ne thinks of Milton! landscape-gardening in Eden! of 7ope! at #wickenham. &ne remembers 1oleridge"s sycamore and Marvell"s green thought in a green shade. 1haucer"s love of trees was so great that he had to compile a whole catalogue in order to express it.
ut, Lorde, so * was glad and wel begoon.or over al, where * myn eyen caste, %eren trees, claad with levys that ay shal laste, /che in his kynde, with colors fressh and grene As emerawde, that 0oy was for to sene" The bylder oke, and eke the hardy asshe, The peler 1pillar 2elme, the cofre unto careyne, The bo' pipe tree, holme to whippes lasshe,

The saylynge firre, the cipresse deth to pleyne, The sheter 1shooter2 ewe, the aspe for shaftes pleyne, The olyve of pes, and eke the drunken vyne The victor palme, the laurere, to, devyne"

like them all! but especially the olive. -or what it symboli0es! first of all = peace with its leaves and /oy with its golden oil. #rue! the crown of olive was originally worn by Eoman con$uerors at ovation' the peace it proclaimed was the peace of victory! the peace which is too often only the tran$uillity of exhaustion or complete annihilation. Eome and its customs have passed! and we remember of the olive only the fact that it stood for peace! not the circumstances in which it did so.
*ncertainties now crown themselves assur(d, And peace proclaims olives of endless age"

.e are a long way from the imperator riding in triumph through the streets of Eome. #he association of olive leaves with peace is like the association of the number seven with good luck! or the color green with hope. t is an arbitrary and! so to say! metaphysical association. #hat is why it has survived in the popular imagination down to the present day. Even in countries where the olive tree does not grow! men understand what is meant by "the olive branch" and can recogni0e! in a political cartoon! its pointed leaves. #he association of olive oil with /oy has a pragmatic reason. Applied externally! oil was supposed to have medicinal properties. n the ancient world those who could afford it were in the habit of oiling themselves at every opportunity. A shiny and well lubricated face was thought to be beautiful' it was also a sign of prosperity. #o the ancient Mediterranean peoples the association of oil with /oy seemed inevitable and obvious. &ur habits are not those of the Eomans! 5reeks and Hebrews. .hat to them was "natural" is today hardly even imaginable. 7atterns of behavior change! and ideas which are associated in virtue of the pattern existing at a given moment of history will cease to be associated when that pattern exists no more. %ut ideas which are associated arbitrarily! in virtue of some principle! or some absence of principle! unconnected with current behavior patterns! will remain associated through changing circumstances. &ne must be something of an archeologist to remember the old and once thoroughly reasonable association between olive oil and /oy' the e$ually old! but $uite unreasonable and arbitrary association between olive leaves and peace has survived intact into the machine age. t is surprising! often think! that our 7rotestant bibliolaters should have paid so little attention to the oil which played such an important part in the daily lives of the ancient Hebrews. All that was greasy possessed for the >ews a profound religious! social and sensuous significance. &il was used for anointing kings! priests and sacred edifices. &n festal days men"s cheeks and noses fairly shone with it' a matt-surfaced face was a sign of mourning. #hen there were the animal fats. -at meat was always a particularly welcome sacrifice. @nlike the modern child! >ehovah reveled in mutton fat. His worshipers shared this taste. "Eat ye that which is good!" advises saiah! "and let your soul delight itself in fatness." As for the prosperously wicked! "they have more than their heart can wish" and the proof of it is that "their eyes stand out with fatness." #he world of the &ld #estament! it is evident! was one where fats were scarce and correspondingly

esteemed. &ne of our chief sources of edible fat! the pig! was taboo to the sraelites. %utter and lard depend on a supply of grass long enough for cows to get their tongues round. %ut the pastures of 7alestine are thin! short and precarious. 1ows there had no milk to spare! and oxen were too valuable as draught animals to be used for suet. &nly the sheep and the olive remained as sources of that physiologically necessary and therefore delicious fatness in which the Hebrew soul took such delight. How intense that delight was is proved by the way in which the 7salmist describes his religious experiences. "%ecause thy loving kindness is better than life! my lips shall praise thee. . . My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness' and my mouth shall praise thee with /oyful lips." n this age of ,anish bacon and unlimited margarine it would never occur to a religious writer to liken the mystical ecstasy to a good gu00le at the 4avoy. f he wanted to describe it in terms of a sensuous experience! he would probably choose a sexual metaphor. 4$uare meals are now too common to be ranked as epoch-making treats. #he "olyve of pes" is! then! a symbol and love it for what it stands for. love it also for what it is in itself! aesthetically' for what it is in relation to the Mediterranean landscape in which it beautifully plays its part. #he English are 5ermans who have partially "gone +atin." %ut for .illiam the 1on$ueror and the Angevins we should be /ust another nation of #eutons! speaking some uninteresting dialect of ,utch or ,anish. #he ?ormans gave us the English language! that beautifully compounded mixture of -rench and 4axon' and the English language molded the English mind. %y +atin out of 5erman6 such is our pedigree. .e are essentially mongrels6 that is the whole point of us. #o be mongrels is our mission. f we would fulfill this mission ade$uately we must take pains to cultivate our mongrelism. &ur 4axon and 1eltic flesh re$uires to be constantly rewedded to the +atin spirit. -or the most part the English have always reali0ed this truth and acted upon it. -rom the time of 1haucer onwards almost all our writers have turned! by a kind of infallible instinct! like swallows! toward the 4outh = toward the phantoms of 5reece and Eome! toward the living realities of -rance and taly. &n the rare occasions when! losing their orientation! they have turned eastward and northward! the results have been deplorable. #he works of 1arlyle are there! an awful warning! to remind us of what happens when the English forget that their duty is to be mongrels and go whoring! within the bounds of consanguinity! after 5erman gods. #he olive tree is an emblem of the +atinity toward which our migrant"s instinct commands us perpetually to turn. As well as for peace and for /oy! it stands for all that makes us specifically English rather than #eutonic' for those Mediterranean influences without which 1haucer and 4hakespeare could never have become what they learned from -rance and taly! from Eome and 5reece! to be = the most essentially native of our poets. #he olive tree is! so to speak! the complement of the oak' and the bright hardedged landscapes in which it figures are the necessary correctives of those gau0y and indeterminate lovelinesses of the English scene. @nder a polished sky the olives state their aesthetic case without the $ualifications of mist! of shifting lights! of atmospheric perspective! which give to English landscapes their subtle and melancholy beauty. A perfect beauty in its way' but! as of all good things! one can have too much of it. #he %ritish 1onstitution is a most admirable invention' but it is good to come back occasionally to fixed first principles and the firm outline of syllogistic argument. .ith clarity and definition is associated a certain physical spareness. Most of the

great deciduous trees of England give one the impression! at any rate in summer! of being rather obese. n 4candinavian mythology Embla! the elm! was the first woman. #hose who have lived much with old elm trees = and spent a good part of my boyhood under their ponderous shade = will agree that the 4candinavians were men of insight. #here is in effect something blowsily female about those vast trees that brood with all their bulging masses of foliage above the meadows of the home counties. n winter they are giant skeletons' and for a moment in the early spring a cloud of transparent emerald vapor floats in the air' but by >une they have settled down to an enormous middle age. %y comparison the olive tree seems an athlete in training. t sits lightly on the earth and its foliage is never completely opa$ue. #here is always air between the thin grey and silver leaves of the olive! always the flash of light within its shadows. %y the end of summer the foliage of our northern trees is a great clot of dark unmitigated green. n the olive the lump is always leavened. #he landscape of the e$uator is! as the traveler discovers to his no small surprise! singularly like the landscape of the more luxuriant parts of southern England. He finds the same thick woods and! where man has cleared them! the same park-like expanses of luscious greenery. #he whole is illumined by the same cloudy sky! alternately bright and dark! and wetted by precisely those showers of hot water which render yet more oppressive the sultriness of >uly days in the #hames valley or in ,evonshire. #he e$uator is England in summer! but raised! so to speak! to a higher power. -almouth cubed e$uals 4ingapore. %etween the e$uatorial and the temperate 0one lies a belt of drought' even 7rovence is half a desert. #he e$uator is dank! the tropics and the sub-tropics are predominantly dry. #he 4ahara and Arabia! the wastes of ndia and 1entral Asia and ?orth America are a girdle round the earth of sand and naked rock. #he Mediterranean lies on the fringes of this desert belt and the olive is its tree = the tree of a region of sunlit clarity separating the damps of the e$uator from the damps of the ?orth. t is the symbol of a classicism enclosed between two romanticisms. "And where!" 4ir 5eorge %eaumont in$uired of 1onstable! "where do you put your brown tree<" #he reply was dis$uieting6 the eccentric fellow didn"t put it anywhere. #here are no brown trees in 1onstable"s landscapes. %reaking the tradition of more than a century! he boldly insisted on painting his trees bright green. 4ir 5eorge! who had been brought up to think of English landscape in terms of raw 4ienna and ochre! was bewildered. 4o was 1hantrey. His criticism of 1onstable"s style took a practical form. .hen "Hadleigh 1astle" was sent to the Academy he took a pot of bitumen and gla0ed the whole foreground with a coat of rich brown. 1onstable had to spend several hours patiently scratching it off again. #o paint a bright green tree and make a successful picture of it re$uires genius of no uncommon order. ?ature is embarrassingly brilliant and variegated' only the greatest colorists know how to deal with such a shining profusion. ,oubtful of their powers! the more cautious prefer to transpose reality into another and simpler key. #he key of brown! for example. #he England of the eighteenthcentury painters is chronically autumnal. At all seasons of the year the olive achieves that sober neutrality of tone which the deciduous trees of the ?orth put on only in autumn and winter. ".here do you put your gray tree<" f you are painting in 7rovence! or #uscany! you put it everywhere. At every season of the year the landscape is full of gray trees. #he olive is essentially a painter"s tree. t does not need to be transposed into another key! and it can be rendered completely

in terms of pigment that are as old as the art of painting. +arge expanses of the Mediterranean scene are by ?ature herself conceived and executed in the earth colors. Aour gray tree and its background of bare bone-like hills! red-brown earth and the all but black cypresses and pines are within the range of the most ascetic palette. ,erain can render 7rovence with half a do0en tubes of color. How instructive to compare his olives with those of Eenoir3 .hite! black! terra verde = ,erain"s rendering of the gray tree is complete. %ut it is not the only complete rendering. Eenoir was a man with a passion for bright gay colors. #o this passion he added an extraordinary virtuosity in combining them. t was not in his nature to be content with a black! white and earth-green olive. His gray trees have shadows of cadmium green! and where they look toward the sun! are suffused with a glow of pink. ?ow! no olive has ever shown a trace of any color warmer than the faint ochre of withering leaves and summer dusts. ?evertheless these pink trees! which in Eenoir"s paintings of 1agnes recall the exuberant girls of his latest! rosiest manner! are somehow $uite startlingly like the cold gray olives which they apparently misrepresent. #he rendering! so different from ,erain"s! is e$ually complete and satisfying. f could paint and had the necessary time! should devote myself for a few years to making pictures only of olive trees. .hat a wealth of variations upon a single theme3 Above 7ietrasanta! for example! the first slopes of the Apuan Alps rise steeply from the plain in a series of terraces built up! step after step! by generations of patient cultivators. #he risers of this great staircase are retaining walls of unmortared limestone' the treads! of grass. And on every terrace grow the olives. #hey are ancient trees' their boles are gnarled! their branches strangely elbowed. %etween the sharp narrow leaves one sees the sky' and beneath them in the thin softly tempered light there are sheep gra0ing. -ar off! on a level with the eye! lies the sea. #here is one picture! one series of pictures. %ut olives will grow on the plain as well as on the hillside. %etween 4eville and 1ordoba the rolling country is covered with what is almost a forest of olive trees. t is a woodland scene. Elsewhere they are planted more sparsely. think! for example! of that plain at the foot of the Maures in 7rovence. n spring! beside the road from #oulon to -r9/us! the ploughed earth is a rich 7o00uoli red. Above it hang the olives! gray! with soft black shadows and their highest leaves flashing white against the sky' and! between the olives! peach trees in blossom = burning bushes of shell-pink flame in violent and irreconcilable conflict with the red earth. A problem! there! for the most accomplished painter. n sunlight Eenoir saw a flash of madder breaking out of the gray foliage. @nder a clouded sky! with rain impending! the olives glitter with an e$ual but very different intensity. #here is no warmth in them now' the leaves shine white! as though illumined from within by a kind of lunar radiance. #he soft black of the shadows is deepened to the extreme of night. n every tree there is simultaneously moonlight and darkness. @nder the approaching storm the olives take on another kind of being' they become more conspicuous in the landscape! more significant. &f what< 4ignificant of what< %ut to that $uestion! when we ask it! nature always stubbornly refuses to return a clear reply. At the sight of those mysterious lunar trees! at once so dark and so brilliant beneath the clouds! we ask! as Hechariah asked of the angel6 ".hat are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof< .hat be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves< And he

answered me and said! Fnowest thou not what these be< And said! ?o! my lord. #hen said he! #hese are the two anointed ones! that stand by the +ord of the whole earth." And that! imagine! is about as explicit and comprehensible an answer as our .ordsworthian $uestionings are ever likely to receive. 7rovence is a painter"s paradise! and its tree! the olive! the painter"s own tree. %ut there are dis$uieting signs of change. ,uring the last few years there has been a steady destruction of olive orchards. Magnificent old trees are being cut! their wood sold for firing and the land they occupied planted with vines. -ifty years from now! it may be! the olive tree will almost have disappeared from southern -rance! and 7rovence will wear another aspect. t may be! repeat' it is not certain. ?othing is certain nowadays except change. Even the ma/estic stability of agriculture has been shaken by the progress of technology. #hirty years ago! for example! the farmers of the EhIne valley grew rich on silkworms. #hen came the invention of viscose. #he caterpillars tried to compete with the machines and failed. #he female form is now swathed in wood-pulp! and between +yons and Avignon the mulberry tree and its attendant worm are all but extinct. 8ines were next planted. %ut ?orth Africa was also planting vines. n a year of plenty vin ordinaire fetches about a penny a $uart. #he vines have been rooted up again! and today the prosperity of the EhIne valley depends on peach trees. A few years from now! no doubt! the 5ermans will be making synthetic peaches out of sawdust or coal tar. And then = what< #he enemy of the olive tree is the peanut. 1rachis hy ogaea grows like a weed all over the tropics and its seeds are fifty per cent pure oil. #he olive is slow-growing! capricious in its yield! re$uires much pruning! and the fruit must be hand picked. 7eanut oil is half the price of olive oil. #he talians! who wish to keep their olive trees! have almost forbidden the use of peanut oil. #he -rench! on the other hand! are the greatest importers of peanuts in Europe. Most of the oil they make is re-exported' but enough remains in -rance to imperil the olives of 7rovence. .ill they go the way of the mulberry trees< &r will some new invention come rushing up in the nick of time with a reprieve< t seems that! suitably treated! olive oil makes an excellent lubricant! capable of standing up to high temperatures. #hirty years from now! mineral lubricants will be growing scarce. Along with the castor-oil plant! the olive tree may come again triumphantly into its own. 7erhaps. &r perhaps not. #he future of 7rovenJal landscape is in the hands of the chemists. t is in their power to preserve it as it is! or to alter it out of all recognition. t would not be the first time in the course of its history that the landscape of 7rovence has changed its face. #he 7rovence that we know = terraced vineyard and olive orchard alternating with pine-woods and those deserts of limestone and prickly bushes which are locally called garrigues = is profoundly unlike the 7rovence of Eoman and medieval times. t was a land! then! of great forests. #he hills were covered with a splendid growth of ilex trees and Aleppo pines. #he surviving -orKt du ,om allows us to guess what these woods = the last outposts toward the south of the forests of the temperate 0one = were like. #oday the garrigues! those end products of a long degeneration! have taken their place. #he story of 7rovenJal vegetation is a decline and fall! that begins with the ilex wood and ends with the garrigue. #he process of destruction is a familiar one. #he trees were cut for firewood and shipbuilding. :#he naval arsenal at #oulon devoured the forest for miles around.; #he glass industry ate its way from the plain into the mountains! carrying with it irreparable

destruction. Meanwhile! the farmers and the shepherds were busy! cutting into the woods in search of more land for the plough! burning them in order to have more pasture for their beasts. #he young trees sprouted again = only to be eaten by the sheep and goats. n the end they gave up the struggle and what had been forest turned at last to a blasted heath. #he long process of degradation ends in the garrigue. And even this blasted heath is not $uite the end. %eyond the true garrigue! with its cistus! its broom! its prickly dwarf oak! there lie a series of false garrigues! vegetably speaking worse than the true. &n purpose or by accident! somebody sets fire to the scrub. n the following spring the new shoots are eaten down to the ground. A coarse grass = baouco in 7rovenJal = is all that manages to spring up. #he shepherd is happy' his beasts can feed! as they could not do on the garrigue. %ut sheep and goats are ravenous. #he new pasture is soon overgra0ed. #he baouco is torn up by the roots and disappears! giving place to ferocious blue thistles and the poisonous asphodel. .ith the asphodel the process is complete. ,egradation can go no further. #he asphodel is sheep-proof and even! thanks to its deeply planted tubers! fireproof. And it allows very little else to grow in its neighborhood. f protected long enough from fire and animals! the garrigue will gradually build itself up again into a forest. %ut a desert of asphodels obstinately remains itself. Efforts are now being made to reafforest the blasted heaths of 7rovence. n an age of cigarette-smoking tourists the task is difficult and the interruptions by fire fre$uent and disheartening. &ne can hardly doubt! however! of the ultimate success of the undertaking. #he chemists may spare the olive trees' and yet the face of 7rovence may still be changed. -or the proper background to the olive trees is the thinly fledged limestone of the hills = pinkish and white and pale blue in the distance! like 190anne"s Mont 4ainte 8ictoire. Eeforested! these hills will be almost black with ilex and pine. Half the painter"s paradise will have gone! if the desert is brought back to life. .ith the cutting of the olive trees the other half will follow. :-rom The 2live Tree0

T!e $esert %oundlessness and emptiness = these are the two most expressive symbols of that attributeless 5odhead! of whom all that can be said is 4t. %ernard"s &escio nescio or the 8edantist"s "not this! not this." #he 5odhead! says Meister Eckhart! must be loved "as not-5od! not-4pirit! not-person! not-image! must be loved as He is! a sheer pure absolute &ne! sundered from all twoness! and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness." n the scriptures of ?orthern and -ar Eastern %uddhism the spatial metaphors recur again and again. At the moment of death! writes the author of *ardo Thodol, "all things are like the cloudless sky' and the naked immaculate ntellect is like unto a translucent void without circumference or center." "#he great .ay!" in 4osan"s words! "is perfect! like unto vast space! with nothing wanting! nothing superfluous." "Mind!" says Hui-neng :and he is speaking of that universal ground of consciousness! from which all beings! the unenlightened no less than the enlightened! take their source;! "mind is like emptiness of space. . . 4pace contains sun! moon! stars! the great earth! with its mountains and rivers. . . 5ood men and bad men! good things and bad things! heaven

and hell = they are all in empty space. #he emptiness of 4elf-nature is in all people /ust like this." #he theologians argue! the dogmatists declaim their credos' but their propositions "stand in no intrinsic relation to my inner light. #his nner +ight" : $uote from Aoka ,ashi"s "4ong of Enlightenment"; "can be likened to space' it knows no boundaries' yet it is always here! is always with us! always retains its serenity and fullness. . . Aou cannot take hold of it! and you cannot get rid of it' it goes on its own way. Aou speak and it is silent' you remain silent! and it speaks." 4ilence is the cloudless heaven perceived by another sense. +ike space and emptiness! it is a natural symbol of the divine. n the Mithraic mysteries! the candidate for initiation was told to lay a finger to his lips and whisper6 "4ilence3 4ilence3 4ilence = symbol of the living imperishable 5od3" And long before the coming of 1hristianity to the #hebaid! there had been Egyptian mystery religions! for whose followers 5od was a well of life! "closed to him who speaks! but open to the silent." #he Hebrew scriptures are elo$uent almost to excess' but even here! among the splendid rumblings of prophetic praise and impetration and anathema! there are occasional references to the spiritual meaning and the therapeutic virtues of silence. "%e still! and know that am 5od." "#he +ord is in his holy temple' let all the world keep silence before him." "Feep thou silence at the presence of the +ord 5od." #he desert! after all! began within a few miles of the gates of >erusalem. #he facts of silence and emptiness are traditionally the symbols of divine immanence = but not! of course! for everyone! and not in all circumstances. "@ntil one has crossed a barren desert! without food or water! under a burning tropical sun! at three miles an hour! one can form no conception of what misery is." #hese are the words of a gold-seeker! who took the southern route to 1alifornia in (LM). Even when one is crossing it at seventy miles an hour on a four-lane highway! the desert can seem formidable enough. #o the forty-niners it was unmitigated hell. Men and women who are at her mercy find it hard to see in ?ature and her works any symbols but those of brute power at the best and! at the worst! of an obscure and mindless malice. #he desert"s emptiness and the desert"s silence reveal what we may call their spiritual meanings only to those who en/oy some measure of physiological security. #he security may amount to no more than 4t. Anthony"s hut and daily ration of bread and vegetables! no more than Milarepa"s cave and barley meal and boiled nettles = less than what any sane economist would regard as the indispensable minimum! but still security! still a guarantee of organic life and! along with life! of the possibility of spiritual liberty and transcendental happiness. %ut even for those who en/oy security against the assaults of the environment! the desert does not always or inevitably reveal its spiritual meanings. #he early 1hristian hermits retired to the #hebaid because its air was purer! because there were fewer distractions! because 5od seemed nearer there than in the world of men. %ut! alas! dry places are notoriously the abode of unclean spirits! seeking rest and finding it not. f the immanence of 5od was sometimes more easily discoverable in the desert! so also! and all too fre$uently! was the immanence of the devil. 4t. Anthony"s temptations have become a legend! and 1assian speaks of "the tempests of imagination" through which every newcomer to the eremitic life had to pass. 4olitude! he writes! makes men feel "the manywinged folly of their souls. . .' they find the perpetual silence intolerable! and those whom no labor on the land could weary! are van$uished by doing nothing and worn out by the

long duration of their peace." *e still, and /now that 3 am God4 be still! and know that you are the delin$uent imbecile who snarls and gibbers in the basement of every human mind. #he desert can drive men mad! but it can also help them to become supremely sane. #he enormous drafts of emptiness and silence prescribed by the eremites are safe medicine only for a few exceptional souls. %y the ma/ority the desert should be taken either dilute or! if at full strength! in small doses. @sed in this way! it acts as a spiritual restorative! as an anti-hallucinant! as a de-tensioner and alterative. n his book! The &e"t +illion Years, 4ir 1harles ,arwin looks forward to thirty thousand generations of ever more humans pressing ever more heavily on ever dwindling resources and being killed off in ever increasing numbers by famine! pestilence and war. He may be right. Alternatively! human ingenuity may somehow falsify his predictions. %ut even human ingenuity will find it hard to circumvent arithmetic. &n a planet of limited area! the more people there are! the less vacant space there is bound to be. &ver and above the material and sociological problems of increasing population! there is a serious psychological problem. n a completely home-made environment! such as is provided by any great metropolis! it is as hard to remain sane as it is in a completely natural environment such as the desert or the forest. & 4olitude! where are thy charms< %ut! & Multitude! where are thine5 #he most wonderful thing about America is that! even in these middle years of the twentieth century! there are so few Americans. %y taking a certain amount of trouble you might still be able to get yourself eaten by a bear in the state of ?ew Aork. And without any trouble at all you can get bitten by a rattler in the Hollywood hills! or die of thirst! while wandering through an uninhabited desert! within a hundred and fifty miles of +os Angeles. A short generation ago you might have wandered and died within only a hundred miles of +os Angeles. #oday the mounting tide of humanity has oo0ed through the intervening canyons and spilled out into the wide Mo/ave. 4olitude is receding at the rate of four and a half kilometers per annum. And yet! in spite of it all! the silence persists. -or this silence of the desert is such that casual sounds! and even the systematic noise of civili0ation! cannot abolish it. #hey coexist with it = as small irrelevances at right angles to an enormous meaning! as veins of something analogous to darkness within an enduring transparency. -rom the irrigated land come the dark gross sounds of lowing cattle! and above them the plovers trail their vanishing threads of shrillness. 4uddenly! startlingly! out of the sleeping sagebrush there bursts the shrieking of coyotes = #rio for 5houl and #wo ,amned 4ouls. &n the trunks of cottonwood trees! on the wooden walls of barns and houses! the woodpeckers rattle away like pneumatic drills. 7icking one"s way between the cactuses and the creosote bushes one hears! like some tiny whirring clockwork! the solilo$uies of invisible wrens! the calling! at dusk! of the night/ays and even occasionally the voice of Homo sapiens = six of the species in a parked 1hevrolet! listening to the broadcast of a pri0e fight! or else in pairs necking to the delicious accompaniment of 1rosby. %ut the light forgives! the distances forget! and this great crystal of silence! whose base is as large as Europe and whose height! for all practical purposes! is infinite! can coexist with things of a far higher order of discrepancy than canned sentiment or vicarious sport. >et planes! for example = the stillness is so massive that it can absorb even /et planes. #he screaming crash mounts to its intolerable climax and fades again! mounts as another of the monsters rips through the air! and once more diminishes and is gone. %ut even at the height of the outrage the

mind can still remain aware of that which surrounds it! that which preceded and will outlast it. 7rogress! however! is on the march. >et planes are already as characteristic of the desert as are >oshua trees or burrowing owls' they will soon be almost as numerous. #he wilderness has entered the armament race! and will be in it to the end. n its multimillion-acred emptiness there is room enough to explode atomic bombs and experiment with guided missiles. #he weather! so far as flying is concerned! is uniformly excellent! and in the plains lie the flat beds of many lakes! dry since the last ce Age! and manifestly intended by 7rovidence for hot-rod racing and /ets. Huge airfields have already been constructed. -actories are going up. &ases are turning into industrial towns. n brand-new Eeservations! surrounded by barbed wire and the -% ! not ndians but tribes of physicists! chemists! metallurgists! communication engineers and mechanics are working with the co-ordinated fren0y of termites. -rom their air-conditioned laboratories and machine shops there flows a steady stream of marvels! each one more expensive and each more fiendish than the last. #he desert silence is still there' but so! ever more noisily! are the scientific irrelevancies. 5ive the boys in the reservations a few more years and another hundred billion dollars! and they will succeed :for with technology all things are possible; in abolishing the silence! in transforming what are now irrelevancies into the desert"s fundamental meaning. Meanwhile! and luckily for us! it is noise which is exceptional' the rule is still this crystalline symbol of universal Mind. #he bulldo0ers roar! the concrete is mixed and poured! the /et planes go crashing through the air! the rockets soar aloft with their cargoes of white mice and electronic instruments. And yet for all this! "nature is never spent' there lives the dearest freshness deep down things." And not merely the dearest! but the strangest! the most wonderfully unlikely. remember! for example! a recent visit to one of the new Eeservations. t was in the spring of ()*C and! after seven years of drought! the rains of the preceding winter had been copious. -rom end to end the Mo/ave was carpeted with flowers = sunflowers! and the dwarf phlox! chicory and coreopsis! wild hollyhock and all the tribe of garlics and lilies. And then! as we neared the Eeservation! the flower carpet began to move. .e stopped the car! we walked into the desert to take a closer look. &n the bare ground! on every plant and bush innumerable caterpillars were crawling. #hey were of two kinds = one smooth! with green and white markings! and a horn! like that of a miniature rhinoceros! growing out of its hinder end. #he caterpillar! evidently! of one of the hawk moths. Mingled with these! in millions no less uncountable! were the brown hairy offspring of : think; the 7ainted +ady butterfly. #hey were everywhere = over hundreds of s$uare miles of the desert. And yet! a year before! when the eggs from which these larvae had emerged were laid! 1alifornia had been as dry as a bone. &n what! then! had the parent insects lived< And what had been the food of their innumerable offspring< n the days when collected butterflies and kept their young in glass /ars on the window sill of my cubicle at school! no self-respecting caterpillar would feed on anything but the leaves to which its species had been predestined. 7uss moths laid their eggs on poplars! spurge hawks on spurges' mulleins were fre$uented by the gaily piebald caterpillars of one rather rare and rigidly fastidious moth. &ffered an alternative diet! my caterpillars would turn away in horror. #hey were like orthodox >ews confronted by pork or lobsters' they were like %rahmins at a feast of beef prepared by @ntouchables. Eat< ?ever. #hey would rather die. And if the

right food were not forthcoming! die they did. %ut these caterpillars of the desert were apparently different. 1rawling into irrigated regions! they had devoured the young leaves of entire vineyards and vegetable gardens. #hey had broken with tradition! they had flouted the immemorial taboos. Here! near the Eeservation! there was no cultivated land. #hese hawk moth and 7ainted +ady caterpillars! which were all full grown! must have fed on indigenous growths = but which! could never discover' for when saw them the creatures were all crawling at random! in search either of something /uicier to eat or else of some place to spin their cocoons. Entering the Eeservation! we found them all over the parking lot and even on the steps of the enormous building which housed the laboratories and the administrative offices. #he men on guard only laughed or swore. %ut could they be a!solutely sure< %iology has always been the Eussians" strongest point. #hese innumerable crawlers = perhaps they were 4oviet agents< 7arachuted from the stratosphere! impenetrably disguised! and so thoroughly indoctrinated! so completely conditioned by means of post-hypnotic suggestions that even under torture it would be impossible for them to confess! even under ,,#. . . &ur party showed its pass and entered. #he strangeness was no longer ?ature"s' it was strictly human. ?ine and a half acres of floor space! nine and a half acres of the most extravagant improbability. 4agebrush and wild flowers beyond the windows' but here! within! machine tools capable of turning out anything from a tank to an electron microscope' million-volt 2-ray cameras' electric furnaces' wind tunnels' refrigerated vacuum tanks' and on either side of endless passages closed doors bearing inscriptions which had obviously been taken from last year"s science fiction maga0ines. :#his year"s space ships! of course! have harnessed gravitation and magnetism.; E&1FE# ,E7AE#ME?#! we read on door after door. E&1FE# A?, E27+&4 8E4 ,E7AE#ME?#! E&1FE# 7EE4&??E+ ,E7AE#ME?#. And what lay behind the unmarked doors< Eockets and 1anned #ularemia< Eockets and ?uclear -ission< Eockets and 4pace 1adets< Eockets and Elementary 1ourses in Martian +anguage and +iterature< t was a relief to get back to the caterpillars. ?inety-nine point nine recurring per cent of the poor things were going to die = but not for an ideology! not while doing their best to bring death to other caterpillars! not to the accompaniment of Te Deums, of Dulce et decorums, of ".e shall not sheathe the sword! which we have not lightly drawn! until. . ." @ntil what< #he only completely unconditional surrender will come when everybody = but every!ody = is a corpse. -or modern man! the really blessed thing about ?ature is its otherness. n their anxiety to find a cosmic basis for human values! our ancestors invented an emblematic botany! a natural history composed of allegories and fables! an astronomy that told fortunes and illustrated the dogmas of revealed religion. " n the Middle Ages!" writes Nmile MOle! "the idea of a thing which a man formed for himself! was always more real than the thing itself. . . #he study of things for their own sake held no meaning for the thoughtful man. . . #he task for the student of nature was to discover the eternal truth which 5od would have each thing express." #hese eternal truths expressed by things were not the laws of physical and organic being = laws discoverable only by patient observation and the sacrifice of preconceived ideas and autistic urges' they were the notions and fantasies engendered in the minds of logicians! whose ma/or premises! for the most part! were other fantasies and notions be$ueathed to them by earlier writers. Against the belief that such purely verbal constructions were eternal truths! only the mystics

protested' and the mystics were concerned only with that "obscure knowledge!" as it was called! which comes when a man "sees all in all." %ut between the real but obscure knowledge of the mystic and the clear but unreal knowledge of the verbalist! lies the clearish and realish knowledge of the naturalist and the man of science. t was knowledge of a kind which most of our ancestors found completely uninteresting. Eeading the older descriptions of 5od"s creatures! the older speculations about the ways and workings of ?ature! we start by being amused. %ut the amusement soon turns to the most intense boredom and a kind of mental suffocation. .e find ourselves gasping for breath in a world where all the windows are shut and everything "wears man"s smudge and shares man"s smell." .ords are the greatest! the most momentous of all our inventions! and the specifically human realm is the realm of language. n the stifling universe of medieval thought! the given facts of ?ature were treated as the symbols of familiar notions. .ords did not stand for things' things stood for pre-existent words. #his is a pitfall which! in the natural sciences! we have learned to avoid. %ut in other contexts than the scientific = in the context! for example! of politics = we continue to take our verbal symbols with the same disastrous seriousness as was displayed by our crusading and persecuting ancestors. -or both parties! the people on the other side of the ron 1urtain are not human beings! but merely the embodiments of the pe/orative phrases coined by propagandists. ?ature is blessedly non-human' and insofar as we belong to the natural order! we too are blessedly non-human. #he otherness of caterpillars! as of our own bodies! is an otherness underlain by a principal identity. #he non-humanity of wild flowers! as of the deepest levels of our own minds! exists within a system which includes and transcends the human. n the given realm of the inner and outer not-self! we are all one. n the homemade realm of symbols we are separate and mutually hostile partisans. #hanks to words! we have been able to rise above the brutes' and thanks to words! we have often sunk to the level of the demons. &ur statesmen have tried to come to an international agreement on the use of atomic power. #hey have not been successful. And even if they had! what then< ?o agreement on atomic power can do any lasting good! unless it be preceded by an agreement on language. f we make a wrong use of nuclear fission! it will be because we have made a wrong use of the symbols! in terms of which we think about ourselves and other people. ndividually and collectively! men have always been the victims of their own words' but! except in the emotionally neutral field of science! they have never been willing to admit their linguistic ineptitude! and correct their mistakes. #aken too seriously! symbols have motivated and /ustified all the horrors of recorded history. &n every level from the personal to the international! the letter kills. #heoretically we know this very well. n practice! nevertheless! we continue to commit the suicidal blunders to which we have become accustomed. #he caterpillars were still on the march when we left the Eeservation! and it was half an hour or more! at a mile a minute! before we were clear of them. Among the phloxes and the sunflowers! millions in the midst of hundreds of millions! they proclaimed :along with the dangers of over-population; the strength! the fecundity! the endless resourcefulness of life. .e were in the desert! and the desert was blossoming! the desert was crawling. had not seen anything like it since that spring day! in ()ML! when we had been walking at the other end of the Mo/ave! near the great earth$uake fault! down which the highway descends to 4an %ernardino and the orange groves. #he

elevation here is around four thousand feet and the desert is dotted with dark clumps of /uniper. 4uddenly! as we moved through the enormous emptiness! we became aware of an entirely unfamiliar interruption to the silence. %efore! behind! to right and to left! the sound seemed to come from all directions. t was a small sharp crackling! like the ubi$uitous frying of bacon! like the first flames in the kindling of innumerable bonfires. #here seemed to be no explanation. And then! as we looked more closely! the riddle gave up its answer. Anchored to a stem of sagebrush! we saw the horny pupa of cicada. t had begun to split and the full-grown insect was in process of pushing its way out. Each time it struggled! its case of amber-colored chitin opened a little more widely. #he continuous crackling that we heard was caused by the simultaneous emergence of thousands upon thousands of individuals. How long they had spent underground could never discover. ,r. Edmund >aeger! who knows as much about the fauna and flora of the .estern deserts as anyone now living! tells me that the habits of this particular cicada have never been closely studied. He himself had never witnessed the mass resurrection upon which we had had the good fortune to stumble. All one can be sure of is that these creatures had spent anything from two to seventeen years in the soil! and that they had all chosen this particular May morning to climb out of the grave! burst their coffins! dry their moist wings and embark upon their life of sex and song. #hree weeks later we heard and saw another detachment of the buried army coming out into the sun among the pines and the flowering fremontias of the 4an 5abriel Mountains. #he chill of two thousand additional feet of elevation had postponed the resurrection' but when it came! it conformed exactly to the pattern set by the insects of the desert6 the risen pupa! the crackle of splitting horn! the helpless imago waiting for the sun to bake it into perfection! and then the flight! the tireless singing! so unremitting that it becomes a part of the silence. #he boys in the Eeservations are doing their best' and perhaps! if they are given the necessary time and money! they may really succeed in making the planet uninhabitable. Applied 4cience is a con/uror! whose bottomless hat yields impartially the softest of Angora rabbits and the most petrifying of Medusas. %ut am still optimist enough to credit life with invincibility! am still ready to bet that the non-human otherness at the root of man"s being will ultimately triumph over the all too human selves who frame the ideologies and engineer the collective suicides. -or our survival! if we do survive! we shall be less beholden to our common sense :the name we give to what happens when we try to think of the world in terms of the unanaly0ed symbols supplied by language and the local customs; than to our caterpillar- and cicadasense! to intelligence! in other words! as it operates on the organic level. #hat intelligence is at once a will to persistence and an inherited knowledge of the physiological and psychological means by which! despite all the follies of the lo$uacious self! persistence can be achieved. And beyond survival is transfiguration' beyond and including animal grace is the grace of that other not-self! of which the desert silence and the desert emptiness are the most expressive symbols. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

TRAVE%

T!e Pal"o at S"ena &ur rooms were in a tower. -rom the windows one looked across the brown tiled roofs to where! on its hill! stood the cathedral. A hundred feet below was the street! a narrow canyon between high walls! perennially sunless' the voices of the passers-by came up! reverberating! as out of a chasm. ,own there they walked always in shadow' but in our tower we were the last to lose the sunlight. &n the hot days it was cooler! no doubt! down in the street' but we at least had the winds. #he waves of the air broke against our tower and flowed past it on either side. And at evening! when only the belfries and the domes and the highest roofs were still flushed by the declining sun! our windows were level with the flight of the swifts and swallows. 4unset after sunset all through the long summer! they wheeled and darted round our tower. #here was always a swarm of them intricately maneuvering /ust outside the window. #hey swerved this way and that! they dipped and rose! they checked their headlong flight with a flutter of their long pointed wings and turned about within their own length. 1ompact! smooth and tapering! they seemed the incarnation of airy speed. And their thin! sharp! arrowy cry was speed made audible. have sat at my window watching them tracing their intricate arabes$ues until grew di00y' till their shrill crying sounded as though from within my ears and their flying seemed a motion! incessant! swift and bewilderingly multitudinous! behind my eyes. And all the while the sun declined! the shadows climbed higher up the houses and towers! and the light with which they were tipped became more rosy. And at last the shadow had climbed to the very top and the city lay in a grey and violet twilight beneath the pale sky. &ne evening! toward the end of >une! as was sitting at the window looking at the wheeling birds! heard through the crying of the swifts the sound of a drum. looked down into the shadowy street! but could see nothing. Eub-a-dub! dub! dub! dub = the sound grew louder and louder! and suddenly there appeared round the corner where our street bent out of sight! three personages out of a 7inturicchio fresco. #hey were dressed in liveries of green and yellow = yellow doublets slashed and tagged with green! particolored hose and shoes! with feathered caps of the same colors. #heir leader played the drum. #he two who followed carried green and yellow banners. mmediately below our tower the street opens out a little into a tiny pia00a. n this clear space the three 7inturicchio figures came to a halt and the crowd of little boys and loafers who followed at their heels grouped themselves round to watch. #he drummer $uickened his beat and the two banner-bearers stepped forward into the middle of the little s$uare. #hey stood there for a moment $uite still! the right foot a little in advance of the other! the left fist on the hip and the lowered banners drooping from the right. #hen! together! they lifted the banners and began to wave them round their heads. n the wind of their motion the flags opened out. #hey were the same si0e and both of them green and yellow! but the colors were arranged in a different pattern on each. And what patterns3 ?othing more "modern" was ever seen. #hey might have been designed by 7icasso for the Eussian %allet. Had they been by 7icasso! the graver critics would have called them futuristic! the sprightlier : must apologi0e for both these expressions; /a00. %ut the flags were not 7icasso"s' they were designed some four hundred years ago by the nameless genius who dressed the

4ienese for their yearly pageant. #his being the case! the critics can only take off their hats. #he flags are classical! they are High Art' there is nothing more to be said. #he drum beat on. #he bannermen waved their flags! so artfully that the whole expanse of patterned stuff was always unfurled and tremulously stretched along the air. #hey passed the flags from one hand to the other! behind their backs! under a lifted leg. #hen! at last! drawing themselves together to make a supreme effort! they tossed their banners into the air. High they rose! turning slowly! over and over! hung for an instant at the height of their tra/ectory! then dropped back! the weighted stave foremost! toward their throwers! who caught them as they fell. A final wave! then the drum returned to its march rhythm! the bannermen shouldered their flags! and followed by the anachronistic children and idlers from the twentieth century! 7inturicchio"s three young bravos swaggered off up the dark street out of sight and at length! the drum taps coming faintlier and ever faintlier! out of hearing. Every evening after that! while the swallows were in full cry and flight about the tower! we heard the beating of the drum. Every evening! in the little pia00a below us! a fragment of 7inturicchio came to life. 4ometimes it was our friends in green and yellow who returned to wave their flags beneath our windows. 4ometimes it was men from the other contrade or districts of the town! in blue and white! red and white! black! white and orange! white! green and red! yellow and scarlet. #heir bright pied doublets and particolored hose shone out from among the drabs and funereal blacks of the twentiethcentury crowd that surrounded them. #heir spread flags waved in the street below! like the painted wings of enormous butterflies. #he drummer $uickened his beat! and to the accompaniment of a long-drawn rattle! the banners leapt up! furled and fluttering! into the air. #o the stranger who has never seen a 7alio these little dress rehearsals are richly promising and exciting. 1harmed by these present hints! he looks forward eagerly to what the day itself holds in store. Even the 4ienese are excited. #he pageant! however familiar! does not pall on them. And all the gambler in them! all the local patriot looks forward to the result of the race. #hose last days of >une before the first 7alio! that middle week of August before the second! are days of growing excitement and tension in 4iena. &ne en/oys the 7alio the more for having lived through them. Even the mayor and corporation are infected by the pervading excitement. #hey are so far carried away that! in the last days of >une! they send a small army of men down in the great s$uare before the 7ala00o 1omunale to eradicate every blade of grass or tuft of moss that can be found growing in the crannies between the flagstones. t amounts almost to a national characteristic! this hatred of growing things among the works of men. have often! in old talian towns! seen workmen laboriously weeding the less fre$uented streets and s$uares. #he 1olosseum! mantled till thirty or forty years ago with a romantic! 7iranesian growth of shrubs! grasses and flowers! was officially weeded with such extraordinary energy that its ruinousness was sensibly increased. More stones were brought down in those few months of weeding than had fallen of their own accord in the previous thousand years. %ut the talians were pleased' which is! after all! the chief thing that matters. #heir hatred of weeds is fostered by their national pride' a great country! and one which specially pi$ues itself on being modern! cannot allow weeds to grow even among its ruins. entirely understand and sympathi0e with the talian point of view. f Mr. Euskin and his disciples had talked about my house and me as they talked about taly

and the talians! too should pi$ue myself on being up-to-date' should put in bathrooms! central heating and a lift! should have all the moss scratched off the walls! should lay cork lino on the marble floors. ndeed! think that should probably! in my irritation! pull down the whole house and build a new one. 1onsidering the provocation they have received! it seems to me that the talians have been remarkably moderate in the matter of weeding! destroying and rebuilding. #heir moderation is due in part! no doubt! to their comparative poverty. #heir ancestors built with such prodigious solidity that it would cost as much to pull down one of their old houses as to build a new one. magine! for example! demolishing the 7ala00o 4tro00i in -lorence. t would be about as easy to demolish the Matterhorn. n Eome! which is predominantly a baro$ue! seventeenthcentury city! the houses are made of flimsier stuff. 1onse$uently! moderni0ation progresses there much more rapidly than in most other talian towns. n wealthier England very little anti$uity has been permitted to stand. #hus! most of the great country houses of England were rebuilt during the eighteenth century. f taly had preserved her independence and her prosperity during the seventeenth! eighteenth and nineteenth centuries! there would probably be very much less medieval or renaissance work now surviving than is actually the case. Money! then! is lacking to moderni0e completely. .eeding has the merit of being cheap and! at the same time! richly symbolic. .hen you say of a town that the grass grows in its streets! you mean that it is utterly dead. 1onversely! if there is no grass in its streets! it must be alive. ?o doubt the mayor and corporation of 4iena did not put the argument $uite so explicitly. %ut that the argument was put! somehow! obscurely and below the surface of the mind! do not doubt. #he weeding was symbolic of modernity. .ith the weeders came other workmen who built up round the curving flanks of the great pia00a a series of wooden stands! six tiers high! for the spectators. #he pia00a which is shaped! whether by accident or design do not know! like an ancient theater! became for the time being indeed a theater. %etween the seats and the central area of the place! a track was railed off and the slippery flags covered parsimoniously with sand. Expectation rose higher than ever. And at last the day came. #he swallows and swifts wove their arabes$ues as usual in the bright golden light above the town. %ut their shrill crying was utterly inaudible! through the deep! continuous! formless murmur of the crowd that thronged the streets and the great pia00a. @nder its canopy of stone the great bell of the Mangia tower swung incessantly backwards and forwards' it too seemed dumb. #he talking! the laughter! the shouting of forty thousand people rose up from the pia00a! in a column of solid sound! impenetrable to any ordinary noise. t was after six. .e took our places in one of the stands opposite the 7ala00o 1omunale. &ur side of the pia00a was already in the shade' but the sun still shone on the palace and its tall slender tower! making their rosy brickwork glow as though by inward fire. An immense concourse of people filled the s$uare and all the tiers of seats round it. #here were people in every window! even on the roofs. At the ,erby! on boat-race days! at .embley have seen larger crowds' but never! think! so many people confined within so small a space. #he sound of a gunshot broke through the noise of voices' and at the signal a company of mounted carabiniers rode into the pia00a! driving the loungers who still thronged the track before them. #hey were in full dress uniform! black and red! with

silver trimmings' cocked hats on their heads and swords in their hands. &n their handsome little horses! they looked like a s$uadron of smart ?apoleonic cavalry. #he idlers retreated before them! s$uee0ing their way through every convenient opening in the rails into the central area! which was soon densely packed. #he track was cleared at a walk and! cleared! was rounded again at the trot! dashingly! in the best 1arle 8ernet style. #he carabiniers got their applause and retired. #he crowd waited expectantly. -or a moment there was almost a silence. #he bell on the tower ceased to be dumb. 4ome one in the crowd let loose a couple of balloons. #hey mounted perpendicularly into the still air! a red sphere and a purple. #hey passed out of the shadow into the sunlight' and the red became a ruby! the purple a glowing amethyst. .hen they had risen above the level of the roofs! a little bree0e caught them and carried them away! still mounting all the time! over our heads! out of sight. #here was another gunshot and 8ernet was exchanged for 7inturicchio. #he noise of the crowd grew louder as they appeared! the bell swung! but gave no sound! and across the s$uare the trumpets of the procession were all but inaudible. 4lowly they marched round! the representatives of all the seventeen comrade of the city. %esides its drummer and its two bannermen! each contrada had a man-at-arms on horseback! three or four halbardiers and young pages and! if it happened to be one of the ten competing in the race! a /ockey! all of them wearing the 7inturicchian livery in its own particular colors. #heir progress was slow' for at every fifty paces they stopped! to allow the bannermen to give an exhibition of their skill with the flags. #hey must have taken the best part of an hour to get round. %ut the time seemed only too short. #he 7alio is a spectacle of which one does not grow tired. have seen it three times now and was as much delighted on the last occasion as on the first. English tourists are often skeptical about the 7alio. #hey remember those terrible "pageants" which were all the rage some fifteen years ago in their own country! and they imagine that the 7alio will turn out to be something of the same sort. %ut let me reassure them' it is not. #here is no poetry by +ouis ?apoleon 7arker at 4iena. #here are no choruses of young ladies voicing high moral sentiments in low voices. #here are no flabby actor-managers imperfectly disguised as Hengist and Horsa! no crowd of gesticulating supernumeraries dressed in the worst of taste and the cheapest of bunting. ?or finally does one often meet at 4iena with that almost invariable accompaniment of the English pageant = rain. ?o! the 7alio is /ust a show' having no "meaning" in particular! but by the mere fact of being traditional and still alive! signifying infinitely more than the dead-born English affairs for all their 7arkerian blank verse and their dramatic re-evocations. -or these pages and men-at-arms and bannermen come straight out of the 7inturicchian past. #heir clothes are those designed for their ancestors! copied faithfully! once in a generation! in the same colors and the same rich materials. #hey walk! not in cotton or flannelette! but in silks and furs and velvets. And the colors were matched! the clothes originally cut by men whose taste was the faultless taste of the early renaissance. #o be sure there are costumiers with as good a taste in these days. %ut it was not 7a$uin! not +anvin or 7oiret who dressed the actors of the English pageants' it was professional wig-makers and lady amateurs. have already spoken of the beauty of the flags = the bold! fantastic! "modern" design of them. Everything else at the 7alio is in keeping with the flags! daring! brilliant and yet always right! always irreproachably refined. #he one false note is always the )alio itself = the painted banner which is given

to the contrada whose horse wins the race. #his banner is specially painted every year for the occasion. +ook at it! where it comes along! proudly exposed on the great medieval war chariot which closes the procession = look at it! or preferably don"t look at it. t is a typical property from the wardrobe of an English pageant committee. t is a lady amateur"s masterpiece. 4huddering! one averts the eyes. 7receded by a line of #uattrocento pages carrying festoons and laurel leaves and escorted by a company of mounted knights! the war chariot rolled slowly and ponderously past! bearing aloft the unworthy trophy. And by now the trumpets at the head of the procession sounded! almost inaudibly for us! from the further side of the pia00a. And at last the whole procession had made its round and was lined up in close order in front of the 7ala00o 1omunale. &ver the heads of the spectators standing in the central area! we could see all the thirty-four banners waving and waving in a last concerted display and at last! together! all leaping high into the air! hesitating at the top of their leap! falling back! out of sight. #here was a burst of applause. #he pageant was over. Another gunshot. And in the midst of more applause! the racehorses were ridden to the starting place. #he course is three times round the pia00a! whose shape! as have said! is something like that of an ancient theater. 1onse$uently! there are two sharp turns! where the ends of the semicircle meet the straight diameter. &ne of these! owing to the irregularity of the plan! is sharper than the other. #he outside wall of the track is padded with mattresses at this point! to prevent impetuous /ockeys who take the corner too fast from dashing themselves to pieces. #he /ockeys ride bareback' the horses run on a thin layer of sand spread over the flagstones of the pia00a. #he 7alio is probably the most dangerous flat-race in the world. And it is made the more dangerous by the excessive patriotism of the rival contrade. -or the winner of the race as he reins in his horse after passing the post! is set upon by the supporters of the other contrade :who all think that their horse should have won;! with so real and earnest a fury that the carabiniers must always intervene to protect man and beast from lynching. &ur places were at a point some two or three hundred yards beyond the post! so that we had an excellent view of the battle waged round the winning horse! as he slackened speed. 4carcely was the post passed when the crowd broke its ranks and rushed out into the course. 4till cantering! the horse came up the track. A gang of young men ran in pursuit! waving sticks and shouting. And with them! their ?apoleonic coat tails streaming in the wind of their own speed! their cocked hats bobbing! and brandishing swords in their white-gloved hands! ran the rescuing carabiniers. #here was a brief struggle round the now stationary horse! the young men were repulsed! and surrounded by cocked hats! followed by a crowd of supporters from its native contrada, the beast was led off in triumph. .e climbed down from our places. #he pia00a was now entirely shaded. t was only on the upper part of the tower and the battlements of the great 7ala00o that the sun still shone. Eosily against the pale blue sky! they glowed. #he swifts still turned and turned overhead in the light. t is said that at evening and at dawn these light-loving birds mount on their strong wings into the sky to bid a last farewell or earliest good-morrow to the sinking or the rising sun. .hile we lie sleeping or have resigned ourselves to darkness the swifts are looking down from their watch-tower in the height of heaven over the edge of the turning planet toward the light. .as it a fable! wondered! looking up at the wheeling birds< &r was it true< Meanwhile! some one was swearing at me for not looking where was going. postponed

the speculation. :-rom 1long the $oad0

Sa&&"oneta "#hey call it the 7ala00o del #e!" said the maid at the little inn in the back street where we had lunch! "because the 5on0aga used to go and take tea there." And that was all that she! and probably most of the other inhabitants of Mantua! knew about the 5on0aga or their palaces. t was surprising! perhaps! that she should have known so much. 5on0aga = the name! at least! still faintly reverberated. After two hundred years! how many names are still remembered< -ew indeed. #he 5on0aga! it seemed to me! en/oy a degree of immortality that might be envied them. #hey have vanished! they are as wholly extinct as the dinosaur' but in the cities they once ruled their name still vaguely echoes! and for those who care to listen they have left behind some of the most elo$uent sermons on the vanity of human wishes and the mutability of fortune that stones have ever mutely preached. have seen many ruins and of every period. 4tonehenge and Ansedonia! &stia and medieval ?infa :which the duke of 4ermoneta is busily turning into the likeness of a neat suburban park;! %olsover and the gruesome modern ruins in ?orthern -rance. have seen great cities dead or in decay6 7isa! %ruges and the newly murdered 8ienna. %ut over none! it seemed to me! did there brood so profound a melancholy as over Mantua' none seemed so dead or so utterly bereft of glory' nowhere was desolation more pregnant with the memory of splendor! the silence nowhere so richly musical with echoes. #here are a thousand rooms in the labyrinthine Eeggia at Mantua = 5othic rooms! rooms of the renaissance! baro$ue rooms! rooms rich with the absurd pretentious decorations of the first empire! huge presence chambers and closets and the horribly ex$uisite apartments of the dwarfs = a thousand rooms! and their walls enclose an emptiness that is the mournful ghost of departed plenitude. t is through Mallarm9"s creu" nant musicien that one walks in Mantua. And not in Mantua alone. -or wherever the 5on0aga lived! they left behind them the same pathetic emptiness! the same pregnant desolation! the same echoes! the same ghosts of splendor. #he 7ala00o del #e is made sad and beautiful with the same melancholy as broods in the Eeggia. #rue! the stupid vulgarity of 5iulio Eomano was permitted to sprawl over its wall in a series of deplorable frescoes :it is curious! by the way! that 5iulio Eomano should have been the only talian artist of whom 4hakespeare had ever heard! or at least the only one he ever mentioned;' but the absurdities and grossnesses seem actually to make the place more touching. #he departed tenants of the palace become in a mannner more real to one! when one discovers that their taste ran to trom e l'oeil pictures of fighting giants and mildly pornographic scenes out of pagan mythology. And seeming more human! they seem also more dead' and the void left by their disappearance is more than ever musical with sadness. Even the cadets of the 5on0aga house en/oyed a power of leaving behind them a more than 7ompeian desolation. #wenty miles from Mantua! on the way to 1remona! is a

village called 4abbioneta. t lies near the 7o! though not on its banks' posseses! for a village! a tolerably large population! mostly engaged in husbandry' is rather dirty and has an appearance = probably $uite deceptive = of poverty. n fact it is /ust like all other villages of the +ombard plain! but with this difference6 a 5on0aga once lived here. #he s$ualor of 4abbioneta is no common s$ualor' it is a s$ualor that was once magnificence. ts farmers and horse-copers live! dirtily and destructively! in treasures of late renaissance architecture. #he town hall is a ducal palace' in the municipal school! children are taught under carved and painted ceilings! and when the master is out of the room they write their names on the marble bellies of the patient! battered caryatids who uphold the scutcheoned mantel. #he weekly cinema show is given in an &lympic theater! built a few years after the famous theater at 8icen0a! by 7alladio"s pupil! 4camo00i. #he people worship in sumptuous churches! and if ever soldiers happen to pass through the town! they are billeted in the deserted summer palace. #he creator of all these splendors was 8espasiano! son of that +uigi 5on0aga! the boon companion of kings! whom! for his valor and his fabulous strength! his contemporaries nicknamed Eodomonte. +uigi died young! killed in battle' and his son 8espasiano was brought up by his aunt! 5iulia 5on0aga! one of the most perfectly courtly ladies of her age. 4he had him taught +atin! 5reek! the mathematics! good manners and the art of war. #his last he practiced with distinction! serving at one time or another under many princes! but chiefly under 7hilip of 4pain! who honored him with singular favors. 8espasiano seems to have been the typical talian tyrant of his period = cultured! intelligent and only /ust so much of an ungovernably ferocious ruffian as one would expect a man to be who has been brought up in the possession of absolute power. t was in the intimacy of private life that he displayed his least amiable characteristics. He poisoned his first wife on a suspicion! probably unfounded! of her infidelity! murdered her supposed lover and exiled his relations. His second wife left him mysteriously after three years of married life and died of pure misery in a convent! carrying with her into the grave nobody knew what frightful secret. His third wife! it is true! lived to a ripe old age' but then 8espasiano himself died after only a few years of marriage. His only son! whom he loved with the anxious passion of the ambitious parvenu who desires to found a dynasty! one day annoyed him by not taking off his cap when he met him in the street. 8espasiano rebuked him for this lack of respect. #he boy answered back impertinently. .hereupon 8espasiano gave him such a frightful kick in the groin that the boy died. .hich shows that! even when chastising one"s own children! it is advisable to observe the Gueensberry rules. t was in (*PD that 8espasiano decided to convert the miserable village from which he took his title into a capital worthy of its ruler. He set to work with energy. n a few years the village of s$ualid cottages clustering round a feudal castle had given place to a walled town! with broad streets! two fine s$uares! a couple of palaces and a noble 5allery of Anti$ues. #hese last 8espasiano had inherited from his father! Eodomonte! who had been at the sack of Eome in (*CQ and had shown himself an industrious and discriminating looter. 4abbioneta was in its turn looted by the Austrians! who carried off Eodomonte"s spoils to Mantua. #he museum remains' but there is nothing in it but the creu" nant musicien which the 5on0aga alone! of all the princes in taly! had the special art of creating by their departure. .e had come to 4abbioneta from 7arma. n the vast -arnese palace there is no

musically echoing void = merely an ordinary! undisturbing emptiness. &nly in the colossal Estensian theater does one recapture anything like the Mantuan melancholy. .e drove through 1olorno! where the last of the Este built a summer palace about as large as Hampton 1ourt. &ver the 7o! by a bridge of boats! through 1asalmaggiore and on! tortuously! by little by-roads across the plain. A line of walls presented themselves! a handsome gate. .e drove in! and immediately faint ghostly oboes began to play around us' we were in 4abbioneta among the 5on0aga ghosts. #he central pia00a of the town is oblong' 8espasiano"s palace stands at one of the shorter ends! presenting to the world a modest faJade! five windows wide! once rich with decorations! but now bare. t serves at present as town hall. n the waiting-room on the first floor! stand four life-si0ed e$uestrian figures! carved in wood and painted! representing four of 8espasiano"s ancestors. &nce there was a s$uadron of twelve' but the rest have been broken up and burned. #his crime! together with all the other ravages committed by time or vandals in the course of three centuries! was attributed by the mayor! who personally did us the honors of his municipality! to the socialists who had preceded him in office. t is unnecessary to add that he himself was a fascista. .e walked round in the emptiness under the superbly carved and gilded ceilings. #he porter sat among decayed frescoes in the 1abinet of ,iana. #he town council held its meetings in the ,ucal 4aloon. #he 5allery of the Ancestors housed a clerk and the municipal archives. #he deputy mayor had his office in the Hall of the Elephants. #he 4ala d"&ro had been turned into an infants" class-room. .e walked out again into the sunlight fairly heart-broken. #he &lympic #heater is a few yards down the street. Accompanied by the obliging young porter from the 1abinet of ,iana! we entered. t is a tiny theater! but complete and marvelously elegant. -rom the pit! five semicircular steps rise to a pillared loggia! behind which = having the width of the whole auditorium = is the ducal box. #he loggia consists of twelve 1orinthian pillars! topped by a cornice. &n the cornice! above each pillar! stand a do0en stucco gods and goddesses. ?oses and fingers! paps and ears have gone the way of all art' but the general form of them survives. #heir white silhouettes gesticulate elegantly against the twilight of the hall. #he stage was once adorned with a fixed scene in perspective! like that which 7alladio built at 8icen0a. #he mayor wanted us to believe that it was his %olshevik predecessors who had destroyed it' but as a matter of fact it was taken down about a century ago. 5one! too! are the frescoes with which the walls were once covered. &ne year of epidemic the theater was used as a fever hospital. .hen the plague had passed! it was thought that the frescoes needed disinfecting' they were thickly white-washed. #here is no money to scrape the white-wash off again. .e followed the young porter out of the theater. Another two or three hundred yards and we were in the 7ia00a d"Armi. t is an oblong! grassy space. &n the long axis of the rectangle! near one end there stands! handsomely pedestaled! a fluted marble column! topped by a statue of Athena! the tutelary goddess of 8espasiano"s metropolis. #he pedestal! the capital and the statue are of the late renaissance. %ut the column is anti$ue! and formed a part of Eodomonte"s Eoman booty. Eodomonte was evidently no petty thief. f a thing is worth doing it is worth doing thoroughly' that! evidently! was his motto. &ne of the long sides of the rectangle is occupied by the 5allery of Anti$ues. t is

a superb building! architecturally by far the finest thing in the town. #he lower story consists of an open arcade and the walls of the gallery above are ornamented with blind arches! having well-proportioned windows at the center of each and separated from one another by #uscan pilasters. A very bold pro/ecting cornice! topped by a low roof! finishes the design! which for sober and massive elegance is one of the most remarkable of its kind with which am ac$uainted. #he opposite side of the pia00a is open! a hedge separating it from the back gardens of the neighboring houses. t was here! fancy! that the feudal castle originally stood. t was pulled down! however! during the eighteenth century :busy %olsheviks3; and its bricks employed! more usefully but less aesthetically! to strengthen the dykes which defend the surrounding plain! none too impregnably! from the waters of the 7o. ts destruction has left 8espasiano"s summer palace! or 7alace of the 5arden! isolated :save where it /oins the 5allery of the Anti$ues;! and rather forlorn at the end of the long pia00a. t is a long! low building of only two stories! rather insignificant from outside. t is evident that 8espasiano built it as economically as he could. -or him the place was only a week-end cottage! a holiday resort! whither he could escape from the metropolitan splendor and bustle of the palace in the market-place! a $uarter of a mile away. +ike all other rulers of small states! 8espasiano must have found it extremely difficult to take an effective holiday. He could not go ten miles in any direction without coming to a frontier. .ithin his dominions it was impossible to have a change of air. .isely! therefore! he decided to concentrate his magnificences. He built his %almoral within five minutes" walk of his %uckingham 7alace. .e knocked at the door. #he caretaker who opened to us was an old woman who might have gone on to any stage and acted >uliet"s ?urse without a moment"s rehearsal. .ithin the first two minutes of our ac$uaintance with her she confided to us that she had /ust got married = for the third time! at the age of seventy. Her comments on the connubial state were so very >uliet"s ?urse! so positively .ife-of-%ath! that we were made to feel $uite early-8ictorian in comparison with this robustious old gammer from the #uattrocento. After having told us all that can be told :and much that cannot be told! at any rate in polite society; about the married state! she proceeded to do us the honors of the house. 4he led the way! opening the shutters of each room in the long suite! as we entered it. And as the light came in through the ungla0ed windows! what 5on0ages$ue ravishments were revealed to us. #here was a 1abinet of 8enus! with the remains of voluptuous nudes! a Hall of the .inds with puffing cherubs and a mantel in red marble' a 1abinet of the 1aesars! floored with marble and adorned with medallions of all the ruffians of anti$uity' a Hall of the Myths on whose ceiling! vaulted into the likeness of a truncated pyramid seen from within! were five delightful scenes from +empriRre = an carus! an Apollo and Marsyas! a 7haeton! an Arachne and! in the midst! a to me somewhat mysterious scene6 a naked beauty sitting on the back! not of a bull :that would have been simple enough;! but of a reclining horse! which turns its head amorously toward her! while she caresses its neck. .ho was the lady and who the travestied god do not rightly know. 8ague memories of an escapade of 4aturn"s float through my mind. %ut perhaps am slandering a respectable deity. %ut in any case! whatever its sub/ect! the picture is charming. 8espasiano"s principal artist was %ernardino 1ampi of 1remona. He was not a good painter! of course' but at least he was gracefully and charmingly! instead of vulgarly mediocre! like 5iulio

Eomano. About the 7ala00o del #e there hangs a certain faded frightfulness' but the 5iardino is all sweetness = mannered! no doubt! and rather feeble = but none the less authentic in its ruinous decay. #he old caretaker expounded the pictures to us as we went round = not out of any knowledge of what they represented! but purely out of her imagination! which was a good deal more interesting. n the Hall of the 5races! where the walls are adorned with what remains of a series of very pretty little grotteschi in the 7ompeian manner! her fancy surpassed itself. #hese! she said! were the records of the ,uke"s dreams. Each time he dreamed a dream he sent for his painter and had it drawn on the walls of this room. #hese = she pointed to a pair of 1himeras = he saw in a nightmare' these dancing satyrs visited his sleep after a merry evening' these four urns were dreamt of after too much wine. As for the three naked 5races! from whom the room takes its name! as for those = over the 5races she once more became too .ife-of-%ath to be recorded. Her old cracked laughter went echoing down the empty rooms' and it seemed to precipitate and crystalli0e all the melancholy suspended! as it were! in solution within those bleared and peeling walls. #he sense of desolation! vaguely felt before! became poignant. And when the old woman ushered us into another room! dark and smelling of mold like the rest! and threw open the shutters and called what the light revealed the "Hall of the Mirrors!" could almost have wept. -or in the Hall of the Mirrors there are no more mirrors! only the elaborate framing of them on walls and ceiling. .here the glasses of Murano once shone are spaces of bare plaster that stare out like blind eyes! blankly and! it seems after a little! reproachfully. "#hey used to dance in this room!" said the old woman. :-rom 1long the $oad0

Bet een Pes!a ar and %a!ore At 7eshawar we were sei0ed with one of our periodical financial panics. Money! in this country! slips rapidly between the fingers! particularly between the fingers of the tourist. 5reat wads of it have to be handed out every time one gets into the train' for fares are high and distances enormous. ?o place in ndia seems to be less than three hundred miles from any other place' the longer /ourneys have to be measured in thousands. -inancial panics are /ustifiable. .e decided to travel second-class as far as +ahore. -or the first hour or so we were alone in our compartment. .e congratulated ourselves on having secured all the comfort and privacy of first-class traveling at exactly half the price. n future! we decided! we would always travel second. %ut nature abhors a vacuum! and our compartment was evidently the ob/ect of her special abhorrence. .hen the train stopped at 1ampbellpur! we were invaded. n the twinkling of an eye our luxurious emptiness was filled to overflowing with luggage and humanity. And what $ueer specimens of humanity3 #he leader of the party which now entered the compartment was a middle-aged man wearing a yellow robe and! on his head! a kind of $uilted bonnet with hanging ear-flaps. He was profusely garlanded with yellow chrysanthemums! and had been followed on to the platform by a large crowd of flowerbearing admirers and devotees. &ur ignorance of the language did not permit us to

discover who this exalted person might be. %ut he was evidently some kind of high priest! some Hindu pope of considerable holiness! to /udge by the respect which was paid him by his numerous retinue and his admirers. His passage along the line must have been well advertised' for at every station our compartment was invaded by a swarm of devotees who came to kiss the great man"s feet and to crave a blessing! which in most cases he seemed too la0y to give. Even the guards and ticket-collectors and stationmasters came in to pay their respects. #he enthusiasm of one ticket-collector was so great that he traveled about thirty miles in our already packed compartment! simply in order to be near the holy man. He! meanwhile! passed the time by counting his money! which was contained in a large brass-bound box! by loudly eating and! later! do0ing. Even at the stations he did not take the trouble to rouse himself! but reclined with closed eyes along his seat! and passively permitted the faithful to kiss his feet. .hen one is as holy as he evidently was! it is unnecessary to keep up appearances! behave decently! or do anything for one"s followers. &ffice and hereditary honor claim the respect of a believing people $uite as much as personal merit. >udging by appearances! which are often deceptive! should say that this particular holy man had no personal merit! but a very great office. His face! which had the elements of a fine and powerful face! seemed to have disintegrated and run to fat under the influence of a hoggish self-indulgence. #o look at! he was certainly one of the most repulsive human specimens have ever seen. %ut of course he may in reality have been a saint and an ascetic! a preacher and a practicer of the moral doctrines formulated in the 5ita! or even one of those pure-souled oriental mystics who! we are told! are to leaven the materialism of our .estern civili0ation. He may have been! but doubt it. All that we could be certain of was that he looked unpleasant! and was undoubtedly dirty' also that he and his admirers exhaled the sour stink of garments long unwashed. #olstoy ob/ected to too much cleanliness on the ground that to be too clean is a badge of class. t is only the rich who can afford the time and money to wash their bodies and shift their linen fre$uently. #he laborer who sweats for his living! and whose house contains no bathroom! whose wardrobes no superfluous shirts! must stink. t is inevitable! and it is also right and proper! that he should. .ork is prayer. .ork is also stink. #herefore stink is prayer. 4o! more or less! argues #olstoy! who goes on to condemn the rich for not stinking! and for bringing up their children to have a pre/udice against all stinks however natural and even creditable. #he non-stinker"s pre/udice against stink is largely a class pre/udice! and therefore to be condemned. #olstoy is $uite right! of course. .e! who were brought up on open windows! clean shirts! hot baths! and sanitary plumbing! find it hard to tolerate twice-breathed air and all the odors which crowded humanity naturally exhales. &ur physical education has been such that the ma/ority of our fellow-beings! particularly those less fortunately circumstanced than ourselves! seem to us slightly or even extremely disgusting. A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles' but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking! shirt-changing lover of fresh air! he will have to overcome certain physical repugnances before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice to the extent! at any rate! of associating freely with men and women whose habits are different from his own. t is a deplorable fact' but there it is. #olstoy"s remedy is that we should all stink together. &ther reformers desire to make it economically possible for every man to have as many hot baths and to change his shirt as often as do the privileged

non-stinkers at the present day. 7ersonally! prefer the second alternative. Meanwhile! the crowd in our compartment increased. #he day! as it advanced! grew hotter. And suddenly the holy man woke up and began to hawk and spit all over the compartment. %y the time we reached Eawal 7indi we had decided that the twenty-two rupees we should economi0e by remaining seven hours longer among our second-class brothers were not enough. .e had our luggage transferred into a first-class carriage and paid the difference. #he only other occupant of the compartment was an English official of the Fashmir 4tate! bound for his winter head$uarters at >ammu. He was a dim little man' but at any rate his linen was clean! and he was not in the least holy. ?obody came in to kiss his feet. -or the rest of the /ourney ruminated my anti-clericalism. ndian friends have assured me that the power of the priests is less than it was! and goes on rapidly waning. hope they are right and that the process may be further accelerated. And not in ndia alone. #here is still! for my taste! too much kissing of amethyst rings as well as of slippered feet. #here are still too many black coats in the .est! too many orange ones in the East. 6crase7 3'in,8me. My traveling companion had made me! for the moment! a thorough-going 8oltairian. t is a simple creed! 8oltairianism. n its simplicity lies its charm! lies the secret of its success = and also of its fallaciousness. -or! in our muddled human universe! nothing so simple can possibly be true! can conceivably "work." f the in,8me were s$uashed! if insecticide were scattered on all the clerical beetles! whether black or yellow! if pure rationalism became the universal faith! all would automatically be well. 4o runs the simple creed of the anti-clericals. t is too simple! and the assumptions on which it is based are too sweeping. -or! to begin with! is the in,8me always infamous! and are the beetles invariably harmful< &bviously not. ?or can it be said that the behavior-value of pure rationalism :whatever the truth-value of its underlying assumptions; is necessarily superior to the behavior-value of irrational beliefs which may be and! in general! almost certainly are untrue. And further! the vast ma/ority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches. ?or is reason itself the most satisfactory instrument for the understanding of life. 4uch are a few of the complications which render so simple a formula as the anti-clerical"s inapplicable to our real and chaotic existence. Man"s progress has been contingent on his capacity to organi0e societies. t is only when protected by surrounding society from aggression! when freed by the organi0ed labor of society from the necessity of hunting or digging for his food! it is only! that is to say! when society has tempered and to a great extent abolished the struggle for personal existence! that the man of talent can exercise his capacities to the full. And it is only by a well-organi0ed society that the results of his labors can be preserved for the enrichment of succeeding generations. Any force that tends to the strengthening of society is! therefore! of the highest biological importance. Eeligion is obviously such a force. All religions have been unanimous in encouraging within limits that have tended to grow wider and ever wider! the social! altruistic! humanitarian proclivities of man and in condemning his anti-social! self-assertive tendencies. #hose who like to speak anthropomorphically would be /ustified in saying that religion is a device employed by the +ife -orce for the promotion of its evolutionary designs. %ut they would be /ustified in adding that religion is also a device employed by the ,evil for the dissemination of

idiocy! intolerance! and servile ab/ection. My fellow passenger from 1ampbellpur did something! no doubt! to encourage brotherly love! forbearance! and mutual helpfulness among his flock. %ut he also did his best to deepen their congenital stupidity and prevent it from being tempered by the ac$uirement of correct and useful knowledge! he did his best to terrify them with imaginary fears into servility and to flatter them with groundless hopes into passive contentment with a life unworthy of human beings. .hat he did in the name of the evolutionary +ife -orce! he undid in the name of the ,evil. cherish a pious hope that he did /ust a trifle more than he undid! and that the ,evil remained! as the result of his ministry! by ever so little the loser.

'a"#(r At >aipur we were fortunate in having an introduction to one of the great tha/urs of the 4tate. He was a mighty land holder! the owner of twenty villages with populations ranging from five hundred to as many thousands! a feudal lord who paid for his fief :until! a year or two ago! a somewhat simpler and more modern system of tenure was introduced; by contributing to the 4tate army one hundred and fifty armed and mounted men. #his nobleman was kind enough to place his elephant at our disposal. t was a superb and particularly lofty specimen! with gold-mounted tusks' ate two hundredweights of food a day and must have cost at least six hundred a year to keep. An expensive pet. %ut for a man in the tha/ur"s position! we gathered! indispensable! a necessity. 7achyderms in Ea/putana are what glass coaches were in Europe a century and a half ago = essential luxuries. #he tha/ur was a charming and cultured man! hospitably kind as only ndians can be. %ut at the risk of seeming ungrateful! must confess! that! of all the animals have ever ridden! the elephant is the most uncomfortable mount. &n the level! it is true! the motion is not too bad. &ne seems to be riding on a small chronic earth$uake' that is all. #he earth$uake becomes more dis$uieting when the beast begins to climb. %ut when it goes downhill! it is like the end of the world. #he animal descends very slowly and with an infinite caution! planting one huge foot deliberately before the other! and giving you time between each calculated step to anticipate the next convulsive spasm of movement = a spasm that seems to loosen from its place every organ in the rider"s body! that twists the spine! that wrenches all the separate muscles of the loins and thorax. #he hills round >aipur are not very high. -ortunately' for by the end of the three or four hundred feet of our climbing and descending! we had almost reached the limits of our endurance. returned full of admiration for Hannibal. He crossed the Alps on an elephant. .e made two expeditions with the pachyderm' a rocky pass entailing! there and back! two climbs and two sickening descents = to the tanks and ruined temples of 5alta! and one to the deserted palaces of Amber. Emerging from the palace precincts = record the trivial and all too homely incident! because it set me mournfully reflecting about the cosmos = our monster halted and! with its usual deliberation! relieved nature! portentously. Hardly! the operation over! had it resumed its march when an old woman who had been standing at the door of a hovel among the ruins! expectantly waiting = we had wondered for what = darted forward and fairly threw

herself on the mound of steaming excrement. #here was fuel here! suppose! for a week"s cooking. "4alaam! Mahara/!" she called up to us! bestowing in her gratitude the most opulent title she could lay her tongue to. &ur passage had been to her like a sudden and unexpected fall of manna. 4he thanked us! she blessed the great and charitable >umbo for his 5argantuan bounty. &ur earth$uake lurched on. thought of the scores of millions of human beings to whom the passage of an unconstipated elephant seems a godsend! a stroke of enormous good luck. #he thought depressed me. .hy are we here! men and women! eighteen hundred millions of us! on this remarkable and perhaps uni$ue planet< #o what end< s it to go about looking for dung = cow dung! horse dung! the enormous and princely excrement of elephants< Evidently it is = for a good many of us at any rate. t seemed an inade$uate reason! thought! for our being here = immortal souls! first cousins of the angels! own brothers of %uddha and Mo0art and 4ir saac ?ewton. %ut a little while later saw that was wrong to let the consideration depress me. f it depressed me! that was only because looked at the whole matter from the wrong end! so to speak. n painting my mental picture of the dung-searchers had filled my foreground with the figures of 4ir saac ?ewton and the rest of them. #hese! perceived! should have been relegated to the remote background and the foreground should have been filled with cows and elephants. #he picture so arranged! should have been able to form a more philosophical and proportionable estimate of the dung-searchers. -or should have seen at a glance how vastly superior were their activities to those of the animal producers of dung in the foreground. #he philosophical Martian would admire the dung-searchers for having discovered a use for dung' no other animal! he would point out! has had the wit to do more than manufacture it. .e are not Martians and our training makes us reluctant to think of ourselves as animals. ?obody in$uires why cows and elephants inhabit the world. #here is as little reason why we should be here! eating! drinking! sleeping! and in the intervals reading metaphysics! saying prayers! or collecting dung. .e are here! that is all' and like other animals we do what our native capacities and our environment permit of our doing. &ur achievement! when we compare it with that of cows and elephants! is remarkable. #hey automatically make dung' we collect it and turn it into fuel. t is not something to be depressed about' it is something to be proud of. 4till! in spite of the consolations of philosophy! remained pensive. :-rom Jesting )ilate0

At"tlan #he story of the 4panish con$uest is true but incredible. #hat #enochtitlan was taken! that 1ortes marched from Mexico to Honduras! that Alvarado broke the power of the Guich9s and 1akchi$uels = these are facts! but facts so immoderately unlikely that have never been able to believe them except on authority' reason and imagination withheld their assent. At 7ana/achel! made an ac$uaintance who convinced me! for the first time! that everything in 7rescott and %ernal ,ia0 had really happened. He was an old 4paniard who lived with an ndian wife and their family in a large rambling house by the

lake! making his living as a taxidermist and dresser of skins. He was wonderfully expert at his /ob and had a firsthand knowledge of the birds! mammals and reptiles of the country. %ut it was not what he did or said that interested me most' it was what he was. As watched him moving about the terrace of his house! a gaunt! bony figure! but active and powerful! his black beard aggressive in the wind! his nose like an eagle"s! his eyes glittering! restless and fierce! suddenly understood the how and the why of the 4panish con$uest. #he strength of the ndians is a strength of resistance! of passivity. Matched against these eager! violently active creatures from across the sea! they had no chance = no more chance than a rock against a sledge hammer. #rue! the ndian rock was a very large one! but the hammer! though small! was wielded with terrific force. @nder its $uick reiterated blows! the strangely sculptured monolith of American civili0ation broke into fragments. #he bits are still there! indestructible! and perhaps some day they may be fused together again into a shapely whole' meanwhile they merely testify! in their scattered nullity! to the ama0ing force behind the 4panish hammer. #he old taxidermist went into the house and returned a moment later with a large bucket full of a glutinous and stinking li$uid. "+ook here!" he said' and he drew out of this disgusting soup yards and yards of an enormous snakeskin. "9u !onito5" he kept repeating! as he smoothed it out. "+ike silk. ?obody here knows how to tan a snakeskin as well as ." nodded and made the appropriate noises. %ut it was not at the skin that was looking' it was at the old man"s hands. #hey were big hands! with fingers long! but s$uare-tipped' hands that moved with a deft power! that reached out and closed with a $uick! unhesitating rapacity' the hands of a con#uistador. He asked too much for the skin he finally sold us' but did not grudge the money' for! along with two yards of beautiful serpent"s leather! had bought the key to 4panishAmerican history! and to me that was worth several times the extra dollar had paid for my python.

Solol) #he market at 4ololB was a walking museum of fancy dress. @nlike the ndians of Mexico! who have mostly gone into white cotton pa/amas! with a blanket slung over the shoulder in lieu of great-coat! the 5uatemaltecos of the highlands have kept their old costumes. #his conservatism has been to some extent affected by the slump and the persuasive salesmanship of shopkeepers and commercial travelers. ?obody starves in this self-supporting agricultural community' but money is a great deal scarcer than it was a few years ago! when the coffee ,incas were in full production and called! during the picking season! for whole armies of workers from the hills. #hose were the glorious times when a man could earn as much as twenty-five or thirty cents a day. #he Guich9 villages were rich6 their ,iestas were grand events and the more elaborate of their old dances were staged on a lavish scale' aguardiente flowed like water! and when a man needed a new suit of the traditional clothes he could afford to buy the hand-woven cloth! the richly patterned sashes and kerchiefs! the hat bands and tassels. #oday he has to think twice and three times before he renews his wardrobe. A new outfit will cost him the e$uivalent of

four or five pounds! and at the present moment this is! for a Guich9 ndian! an enormous sum. At the local store the price of a suit of blue dungarees is only a few shillings! and when it is worn out! which it will be very soon! he will be able to afford to buy another. t looks! am afraid! as though the traditional dress of the ndians were doomed. All the forces of industrialism are arrayed against it. 1onservative pre/udice cannot long resist the assaults of economics. Meanwhile a ma/ority of highlanders still wear the old costumes = a different one in every village. #he most curious feature! for example! of the 4ololB costume is the black varnished hat! which is a strangely flattened version of >ohn %ull"s topper. -rom another village : never discovered which' but it cannot have been far from 4ololB! for saw several of its representatives at the market; came men in large mushroom-shaped hats! exactly like those worn by very distinguished old English ladies when they go gardening. had a slight shock each time saw one of them. t was as though Miss >ekyll had suddenly gone mad and taken to staining her face with walnut /uice and wearing! with her old hat! a gray monkey-/acket and white cotton pants. #he most remarkable thing about these ndian costumes is that they are not ndian at all! but old European. +ittle scraps of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century 4pain have been caught here and miraculously preserved! like flies in the hard amber of primitive conservatism. #he 1hichicastenango ndians! for example! wear a short-waisted embroidered /acket and knee-breeches of brown cloth! a gay woven sash and an embroidered kerchief tied round the head. t is! almost without modification! the costume of 4ancho 7an0a. Elsewhere one finds a number of small variations on the 4panish theme. #hus! long kilts will sometimes be worn below a neatly tailored bullfighter"s /acket = a reminiscence! perhaps! of the loin-cloths of an earlier dispensation. #he women"s dress has been much less profoundly affected by 4panish fashion than the men"s. #here is no sign here of the long trailing skirts and +ancashire-lassie shawls of the Mexicans. #he -ilipino lady"s low-cut corsage and puffed sleeves! her white petticoat and co$uettishly looped-up skirt are unheard of. #rue! the Guich9 women"s embroidered bodices may have borrowed something from European peasant costume' but their short skirts! reaching in many cases only to the knee = these are un$uestionably ndian. 7erhaps their color has changed since the con$uest' for they are now dyed with indigo which was introduced by the 4paniards. %ut the cut is surely the same as it was when Alvarado passed this way.

Co#an .e climbed into the plane and started off. #he mist had all melted away and! in a little while! there below us! clear as a map! was the valley of 1opan! narrow between hills! with its village! its fields of dust-colored stubble! its winding river! its tree-grown Maya acropolis rising sheer in a great wall from the water"s edge. .e came spiraling down. A small bald patch not far from the ruins was evidently the landing field. A herd of cows scattered in hysterical agitation as we descended. Avoiding these animals as best he could! and steering clear of the larger of the numerous rocks with which the airport was strewn! our pilot! who was fortunately a most skillful flyer! brought us safely to land. .e

stepped out and! accompanied by some small boys who offered to be our guides! walked off to see the ruins. &ur pilot took the road to the village' the local authorities would be anxious! he knew! to prove their importance by lengthily examining his paper. f he did not indulge them! they might turn savage. #ime and its allies in destruction! vegetation and weather! play curious tricks on the works of man. A city left to their tender mercies is generally destroyed as an architectural and engineering whole! but spared in its decorative details. #he great masses of masonry are buried and disrupted' tend! if the vegetation is strong! to vanish altogether! dissolved into their component parts' the statues! the reliefs! the fragile pots and /ewels survive! very often! almost intact. At 1opan! for example! a few mounds covered with trees! a wall here and there! some rubbish heaps of tumbled stones! are all that remain of the great complex of pyramids! of platforms! of walls and terraces! of sunken courtyards! which once occupied the site. %uried and! under the mold! disintegrated by the thrusting roots of the tropical vegetation! a sacred city of pure geometrical forms once stood here. ts sharp-edged planes of hewn stone! of white or painted stucco! shone smooth! like the surfaces of a crystal! in the perpendicular sunlight. %ut toiling up and down through the scrub! among the fallen stones! found it all but impossible to reconstruct in my imagination the Mayas" huge embodiment of a mathematician"s dream. had read the writings of the archeologists and knew what sort of monument had been raised at 1opan. %ut these almost shapeless barrows supplied my fancy with no visible foundations on which to rebuild the Mayas" prodigious works. &nly the plastic decorations with which their mountains of solid geometry had been incidentally trimmed were still there! in une$uivocal existence! before my eyes. #he whole had gone' but a few of the ornamental parts remained. n a mai0e field at the foot of the wooded mounds = the mounds were the acropolis and principal pyramid! the mai0e field had been a great forum = stood a group of magnificent stelae! floridly carved in such deep relief that the stone was sometimes pierced from side to side. @sing neolithic tools! the Maya sculptors had displayed an almost contemptuous mastery of their material' they had treated their twenty-foot monoliths as a 1hinese craftsman might treat a piece of ivory. &ne is left bewildered by the spectacle of so much technical accomplishment displayed by people having such inade$uate technical resources. #he stelae are not 1opan"s only monuments. 4crambling among the ruins! we found an astonishing wealth of carved stones. Here was a great cubic skull-symbol! its eye sockets glaring! its teeth deep in the grass and weeds' here! at the base of a broken wall! a dado of small death"s heads in low relief' here the famous altar with its frie0e of fantastically adorned astronomer-priests in scientific conference' here! carved in the round! a giant"s head! grotes$uely open-mouthed' here a pair of statues! broken! but still violently alive. #he finest specimens of sculpture in the round are no longer at 1opan. saw nothing to compare in grace! in plastic subtlety! in emotional expressiveness! with the torso of the mai0e god at the %ritish Museum! or with the lovely head of the same god now at %oston. #hese two pieces and certain others in American museums! are stylistically so close to one another that one is tempted to think of them as the works of a single sculptor of outstanding ability. &f the other carvings in the round still at 1opan! none exhibited the kind of approach to reality exemplified in these extraordinary statues. #he beauty of most Mayan sculpture is felt by us to be profoundly! incommensurably alien. %ut with this particular group of carvings from 1opan one feels suddenly at home!

on familiar emotional ground. #he mind of the man! or men! who made them seems to have been gifted with the same kind of sensibilities as ours. ?ow that these works have been taken away! the European visitor at 1opan en/oys no such comforting conviction. He looks at the astonishing works around him! but looks at them from across a gulf' they exist in a universe of sentiment and discourse that is not his universe. #hose colossal skulls! for example = they have nothing to do with the macabre of our later middle ages! or the florid horrors of baro$ue sepulchral art.
The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee Timor mortis conturbat me.

4o wailed our ancestors. %ut doubt if the Mayas were saying anything of the kind. n these great cubic monoliths! adorned :with what an unerring sense of the significantly decorative effect3; with eye sockets! nose hole! teeth! one finds no trace of our European lament for transience! our personal terror of extinction and decay. &ne finds = what< 1onfronted by the extraordinary ob/ects themselves one can only ask the $uestion! not hope to answer it. t is impossible to know by personal experience what the people who made such things felt and thought. Each life has its own private logic! and the logics of all the lives of people living at a given time! under a given cultural dispensation! have! at some point! a certain resemblance among themselves. #he Mayas" life-logic was not the same as ours. #he admiration with which we look at their works of art is tinged with a speculative incomprehension. .hat were they really up to< 9uien sa!e: :-rom *eyond the +e"i#ue *ay0

In a T(n"s"an Oas"s .aking at dawn! looked out of the window. .e were in the desert. &n either side of the railway an immense plain! flat as Holland! but tawny instead of green! stretched out interminably. &n the hori0on! instead of windmills! a row of camels was silhouetted against the gray sky. Mile after mile! the train rolled slowly southward. At #o0eur! when at last we arrived! it had /ust finished raining = for the first time in two and a half years = and now the wind had sprung up' there was a sandstorm. A thick brown fog! whirled into eddies by the wind! gritty to the skin! abolished the landscape from before our smarting eyes. .e snee0ed' there was sand in our ears! in our hair! between our teeth. t was horrible. felt depressed! but not surprised. #he weather is always horrible when travel. &nce! in a -rench hotel! was accused of having brought with me the flat black bugs! of whose presence among my bedclothes complained to a self-righteous proprietress. defended myself with energy against the impeachment. %ugs = no' am innocent of bugs. %ut when it comes to bad weather! have to plead guilty. Eain! frost! wind! snow! hail! fog = bring them with me wherever go. bring them to places where they have never been heard of! at seasons when it is impossible that they should occur. .hat delightful skating there will be in the 4pice slands when arrive3 &n this particular /ourney had brought with me to every place on my itinerary the most appalling meteorological calamities. At ?aples! for example! it was the snow. 1oming

out of the theater on the night of our arrival! we found it lying an inch deep under the palm trees in the public gardens. And 8esuvius! next morning! glittered white! like -u/iyama! against the pale spring sky. At 7alermo there was a cloud-burst. "%etween the 4yrtes and soft 4icily" we passed through a tempest of hail! lightning and wind. At #unis it very nearly fro0e. At 4ousse the wind was so violent that the stiff board-like leaves of the cactuses swayed and trembled in the air like aspens. And now! on the day of our arrival at #o0eur! it had rained for the first time in thirty months! and there was a sandstorm. ?o! was not in the least surprised' but could not help feeling a little gloomy. #oward evening the wind somewhat abated' the sand began to drop out of the air. At midday the brown curtain had been unpenetrable at fifty yards. t thinned! grew gau0ier' one could see ob/ects at a hundred! two hundred yards. -rom the windows of the hotel bedroom in which we had sat all day! trying = but in vain! for it came through even invisible crannies = to escape from the wind-blown sand! we could see the fringes of a dense forest of palm trees! the dome of a little mos$ue! houses of sun-dried brick and thin brown men in flapping nightshirts walking! with muffled faces and bent heads! against the wind! or riding! sometimes astride! sometimes sideways! on the bony rumps of patient little asses. #wo very professional tourists in sun helmets = there was no sun = emerged round the corner of a street. A malicious gust of wind caught them unawares' simultaneously the two helmets shot into the air! thudded! rolled in the dust. #he too professional tourists scuttled in pursuit. #he spectacle cheered us a little' we descended! we ventured out of doors. A melancholy Arab offered to show us round the town. Fnowing how hard it is to find one"s way in these smelly labyrinths! we accepted his offer. His knowledge of -rench was limited' so too! in conse$uence! was the information he gave us. He employed what may call the %erlit0 method. #hus! when a column of whirling sand rose up and /umped at us round the corner of a street! our guide turned to us and said! pointing6 ")oussi;re." .e might have guessed it ourselves. He led us interminably through narrow! many-cornered streets! between eyeless walls! half crumbled and tottering. "<illage," he explained. "Tr;s laisant." .e did not altogether agree with him. A walk through an Arab village is reminiscent of walks through &stia or 7ompeii. Eoman remains are generally in a better state of preservation! and cleaner' that is all. &ne is astonished to see! among these dusty ruins! white-robed families crouching over their repasts. &ur guide patted a brown mud wall. "*ri#ues," he said! and repeated the word several times! so that we might be certain what he meant. #hese bricks! which are of sun-dried mud! are sometimes! on the faJades of the more considerable houses! arranged in a series of simple and pleasing patterns = diamonds! $uincunxes! hexagons. A local art which nobody now takes the trouble to practice = nobody! that is! except the Europeans! who! with characteristic energy! have used and wildly abused the traditional ornamentation on the walls of the station and the principal hotel. t is a curious and characteristic fact that! whenever in #unisia one sees a particularly &riental piece of architecture! it is sure to have been built by the -rench! since (LL(. #he cathedral of 1arthage! the law courts and schools of #unis = these are

more Moorish than the Alhambra! Moorish as only &riental tea-rooms in 7aris or +ondon can be Moorish. n thirty years the -rench have produced buildings more typically and intensely Arabian than the Arabs themselves contrived to do in the course of thirteen centuries. .e passed into the market-place. "<iande," said our guide! fingering as he passed a well-thumbed collop of mutton! lying among the dust and flies on a little booth. .e nodded. "Tr;s =oli," commented our guide. "Tr;s laisant." ?oisily he spat on the ground. #he proprietor of the booth spat too. .e hurried away' it needs time to grow inured to #unisian habits. #hese frightful hoickings in the throat! these sibilant explosions and semi-li$uid impacts are almost the national music of the country. #here are in the desert of southern #unisia three great oases. #hese are all of much the same si0e! each consisting of some six or seven thousand acres of cultivated ground! and are all three remarkable for their numerous and copious springs. n the middle of the desert! suddenly! a hundred fountains come welling out of the sand' rivers run! a network of little canals is dug. An innumerable forest of date palms springs up = a forest whose undergrowth is corn and roses! vines and apricot trees! olives and pomegranates! pepper trees! castor-oil trees! banana trees! every precious plant of the temperate and the sub-tropical 0ones. ?o rain falls on these little Edens = except on the days of my arrival = but the springs! fed from who knows what distant source! flow inexhaustibly and have flowed at least since Eoman times. slanded among the sands! their green luxuriance is a standing miracle. #hat it should have been in a desert! with here and there such islands of palm trees! that >udaism and Mohammedanism took their rise is a thing which! since have seen an oasis! astonishes me. #he religion which! in such a country! would naturally suggest itself to me would be no abstract monotheism! but the adoration of life! of the forces of green and growing nature. n an oasis! it seems to me! the worship of 7an and of the 5reat Mother should be celebrated with an almost desperate earnestness. #he nymphs of water and of trees ought surely! here! to receive a passionate gratitude. n the desert! should infallibly have invented the 5reek mythology. #he >ews and the Arabs discovered >ahweh and Allah. find it strange. &f the three great #unisian oases! my favorite is ?efta. 5abes runs it close for beauty! while the proximity of the sea gives it a charm which ?efta lacks. %ut! on the other hand! 5abes is less fertile than ?efta and! socially! more sophisticated. #here must be the best part of two hundred Europeans living at 5abes. #here is dancing once a week at the hotel. 5abes is $uite the little 7aris. #he same ob/ection applies to #o0eur! which has a railway station and positively teems with -rench officials. ?efta! with fourteen thousand Arabs! has a white population of a do0en or thereabouts. A hundred -renchmen can always make a 7aris' twelve! am happy to say! cannot. #he only non-Arabian feature of ?efta is its hotel! which is clean! comfortable! -rench and efficient. At ?efta one may live among barbarians! in the Middle Ages! and at the same tune! for thirty francs a day! en/oy the advantages of contemporary .estern civili0ation. .hat could be more delightful< .e set off next morning by car! across the desert. Every now and then we passed a camel! a string of camels. #heir owners walked or rode on asses beside them. #he womenfolk were perched among the baggage on the hump = a testimony! most elo$uent

in this Mohammedan country! to the great discomfort of camel riding. &nce we met a small 1itroSn lorry! crammed to overflowing with white-robed Arabs. n the 4ahara! the automobile has begun to challenge the supremacy of the camel. Motor buses now ply across the desert. A line! we were told! was shortly to be inaugurated between ?efta and #ouggourt! across two hundred kilometers of sand. n a few years! no doubt! we shall all have visited +ake #chad and #imbuctoo. 4hould one be glad or sorry< find it difficult to decide. #he hotel at ?efta is a long low building! occupying one whole side of the market-s$uare. -rom your bedroom window you watch the Arabs living' they do it unhurriedly and with a dignified inefficiency. Endlessly haggling! they buy and sell. #he vendor offers a mutton chop! slightly soiled' the buyer professes himself outraged by a price which would be exorbitant if the goods were spotlessly first-hand. t takes them half an hour to come to a compromise. &n the ground white bundles do0e in the sun' when the sun grows too hot! they roll a few yards and do0e again in the shade. #he notables of the town! the rich proprietors of palm trees! stroll past with the dignity of Eoman senators. #heir garments are of the finest wool' they carry walking sticks' they wear European shoes and socks! and on their bare brown calves = a little touch entirely characteristic of the real as opposed to the literary East = pale mauve or shell-pink sock suspenders. .ild men ride in from the desert. 4ome of them! trusting to common sense as well as Allah to preserve them from ophthalmia! wear smoked motor goggles. .ith much shouting! much reverberant thumping of dusty! moth-eaten hides! a string of camels is driven in. #hey kneel! they are unloaded. 4upercilious and haughty! they turn this way and that! like the dowagers of very aristocratic families at a plebeian evening party. #hen! all at once! one of them stretches out its long neck limply along the ground and shuts its eyes. #he movement is one of hopeless weariness' the grotes$ue animal is suddenly pathetic. And what groanings! what gurglings in the throat! what enormous sighs when their masters begin to reload them3 Every additional package evokes a bubbling protest! and when at last they have to rise from their knees! they moan as though their hearts were broken. %lind beggars sit patiently awaiting the alms they never receive. #heir raw eyelids black with flies! small children play contentedly in the dust. f Allah wills it! they too will be blind one day6 blessed be the name of Allah. 4itting at our window! we watch the spectacle. And at night! after a pink and yellow sunset with silhouetted palm trees and domes against the sky :for my taste! am afraid! altogether too like the colored plates in the illustrated %ible;! at night huge stars come out in the indigo sky! the caf9s are little caves of yellow light! draped figures move in the narrow streets with lanterns in their hands! and on the flat roofs of the houses one sees the prowling shadows of enormous watchdogs. #here is silence! the silence of the desert6 from time to time there comes to us! very distinctly! the distant sound of spitting. .alking among the crowds of the market-place or along the narrow labyrinthine streets! was always agreeably surprised by the apathetically courteous aloofness of Arab manners. #here are beggars in plenty! of course! hawkers! guides! cab drivers' and when you pass! they faintly stir! it is true! from their impassive calm. #hey stretch out hands! they offer Arab anti$uities of the most genuine 5erman manufacture! they propose to take you the round of the sights! they invite you into their fly-blown vehicles. %ut they do all these things politely and $uite uninsistently. A single refusal suffices to check their nascent importunity. Aou shake your head' they relapse once more into the apathy from

which your appearance momentarily roused them = resignedly6 nay! almost! you feel! with a sense of relief that it had not! after all! been necessary to disturb themselves. 1oming from ?aples! we had been particularly struck by this lethargic politeness. -or in ?aples the beggars claim an alms noisily and as though by right. f you refuse to ride! the cabmen of 7o00uoli follow you up the road! alternately cursing and whining! and at every hundred yards reducing their price by yet another ten per cent. #he guides at 7ompeii fairly insist on being taken' they cry aloud! they show their certificates! they enumerate their wives and starving children. As for the hawkers! they simply will not let you go. .hat! you don"t want colored photographs of 8esuvius< #hen look at these corals. ?o corals< %ut here is the last word in cigarette holders. Aou do not smoke< %ut in any case! you shave' these ra0or blades! now. . . Aou shake your head. #hen toothpicks! magnifying glasses! celluloid combs. 4tubbornly! you continue to refuse. #he hawker plays his last card = an ace! it must be admitted! and of trumps. He comes very close to you! he blows garlic and alcohol confidentially into your face. -rom an inner pocket he produces an envelope' he opens it! he presses the contents into your hand. Aou may not want corals or ra0or blades! views of 8esuvius or celluloid combs' he admits it. %ut can you honestly say = honestly! with your hand on your heart = that you have no use for pornographic engravings< And for nothing! sir! positively for nothing. #en francs apiece' the set of twelve for a hundred. . . #he touts! the pimps! the mendicants of taly are the energetic members of a con$uering! progressive race. #he ?eapolitan cabman is a disciple of 4amuel 4miles' the vendors of pornographic post cards and the sturdy beggars live their lives with a strenuousness that would have earned the commendation of a Eoosevelt. 4elf-help and the strenuous life do not flourish on the other shore of the Mediterranean. n #unisia the tourist walks abroad unpestered. #he Arabs have no future. #hat they might still have a future if they changed their philosophy of life must be obvious to anyone who has watched the behavior of Arab children! who have not yet had time to be influenced by the prevailing fatalism of slam. Arab children are as lively! as in$uisitive! as tiresome and as charming as the children of the most progressively .estern people. At ?efta the adult beggars and donkey drivers might leave us! resignedly! in peace' but the children were unescapable. .e could never stir abroad without finding a little troop of them frisking around us. t was in vain that we tried to drive them away' they accompanied us! whether we liked it or no! on every walk! and! when the walk was over! claimed wages for their importunate fidelity. #o provide tourists with guidance they did not need = this! we found! was the staple profession of the little boys of ?efta. %ut they had other and more ingenious ways of making money. 1lose and acute observers of tourists! they had made an important psychological discovery about this curious race of beings. -oreigners! they found out! especially elderly female foreigners! have a preposterous tenderness for animals. #he little boys of ?efta have systematically exploited this discovery. #heir methods! which we had fre$uent opportunities of observing! are simple and effective. n front of the hotel a gang of little ruffians is perpetually on the watch. A tourist shows himself! or herself! on one of the balconies6 immediately the general of the troop = or perhaps it would be better to call him the director of the company! for it is obvious that the whole affair is organi0ed on a strictly business footing = runs forward to within easy coin-tossing distance. -rom somewhere about his person he produces a captive bird = generally some

brightly colored little creature not unlike a goldfinch. 4miling up at the tourist! he shows his pri0e. "2iseau," he explains in his pidgin -rench. .hen the tourist has been made to understand that the bird is alive! the little boy proceeds! with the elaborate gestures of a con/urer! to pretend to wring its neck! to pull off its legs and wings! to pluck out its feathers. -or a tender-hearted tourist the menacing pantomime is unbearable. "'8che la !>te. Je te donne di" sous." Eeleased! the bird flaps ineffectually away! as well as its clipped wings will permit. n actual fact! we observed! they never did their victims any harm. A bird! it was obvious! was far too valuable to be lightly killed' goldfinches during the tourist season laid golden eggs. %esides! they were really very nice little boys and fond of their pets. .hen they saw that we had seen through their trick and could not be induced to pay ransom! they grinned up at us without malice and knowingly! as though we were their accomplices! and carefully put the birds away. #he importunity of the little boys was tiresome when one wanted to be alone. %ut if one happened to be in the mood for it! their company was exceedingly entertaining. #he exploitation of the tourists was a monopoly which the most active of the children had arrogated! by force and cunning! to themselves. #here was a little gang of them who shared the loot and kept competitors at a distance. %y the time we left! we had got to know them very well. .hen we walked abroad! small strangers tried to /oin our party' but they were savagely driven away with shouts and blows. .e were private property' no trespassing was tolerated. t was only by threatening to stop their wages that we could persuade the captains of the ?efta tourist industry to desist from persecuting their rivals. #here was one particularly charming little boy = mythically beautiful! as only Arab children can be beautiful = who was the ob/ect of their special fury. #he captains of the tourist industry were ugly6 they dreaded the rivalry of this lovely child. And they were right' he was irresistible. .e insisted on his being permitted to accompany us. "%ut why do you send him away<" we asked. "'ui mchant," the captains of industry replied in their rudimentary -rench. "'ui casser un touriste." "He smashed a tourist<" we repeated in some astonishment. #hey nodded. %lushing! even the child himself seemed reluctantly to admit the truth of their accusations. .e could get no further explanations' none of them knew enough -rench to give them. "'ui mchant. 'ui casser un touriste." #hat was all we could discover. #he lovely child looked at us appealingly. .e decided to run the risk of being smashed and let him come with us. may add that we came back from all our walks $uite intact. @nder the palm trees! through that labyrinth of paths and running streams! we wandered interminably with our rabble of little guides. Most often it was to that part of the oasis called the Cor!eille that we went. At the bottom of a rounded valley! theatershaped and with smooth steep sides of sand! a score of springs suddenly gush out. #here are little lakes! /ade green like those pools beneath the cypresses of the 8illa d"Este at #ivoli. Eound their borders the palm trees go /etting up! like fountains fixed in their upward aspiring gesture! their drooping crown of leaves a green spray arrested on the point of falling. -ountains of life = and five yards away the smooth unbroken slopes of sand glare in the sun. A little river flows out from the lakes! at first between high banks! then into an open sheet of water where the children paddle and bathe! the beasts come

down to drink! the women do their washing. #he river is the main road in this part of the oasis. #he Arabs! when they want to get from place to place! tuck up their nightshirts and wade. 4hoes and stockings! not to mention the necessity for keeping up their dignified prestige! do not permit Europeans to follow their example. t is only on mule-back that Europeans use the river road. A fertile oasis possesses a characteristic color scheme of its own! which is entirely unlike that of any landscape in taly or the north. #he fundamental note is struck by the palms. #heir foliage! except where the stiff shiny leaves metallically reflect the light! is a rich blue-green. %eneath them! one walks in a luminous a$uarium shadow! broken by innumerable vivid shafts of sunlight that scatter gold over the ground or! touching the trunks of the palm trees! make them shine a pale ashy pink through the suba$ueous shadow. #here is pink! too! in the glaring whiteness of the sand beyond the fringes of the oasis. @nder the palms! beside the brown or /ade-colored water! glows the bright emerald green of corn or the deciduous trees of the north! with here and there the huge yellowish leaves of a banana tree! the smoky gray of olives! or the bare bone-white and writhing form of a fig tree. As the sun gradually sinks! the a$uarium shadow beneath the palm trees grows bluer! denser' you imagine yourself descending through layer after darkening layer of water. &nly the pale skeletons of the fig trees stand out distinctly' the waters gleam like eyes in the dark ground' the ghost of a little marabout or chapel shows its domed silhouette! white and strangely definite in the growing darkness! through a gap in the trees. %ut looking up from the depths of this submarine twilight! one sees the bright pale sky of evening! and against it! still touched by the level! rosily-golden light! gleaming as though transmuted into sheets of precious metal! the highest leaves of the palm trees. A little wind springs up' the palm leaves rattle together' it is suddenly cold. "?n avant," we call. &ur little guides $uicken their pace. .e follow them through the darkening ma0es of the palm forest! out into the open. #he village lies high on the desert plateau above the oasis! desert-colored! like an arid outcrop of the tawny rock. .e mount to its nearest gate. #hrough passage-ways between blank walls! under long dark tunnels the children lead us = an obscure and tortuous way which we never succeeded in thoroughly mastering = back to the s$uare market-place at the center of the town. #he windows of the inn glimmer invitingly. At the door we pay off the captains of industry and the little tourist-smasher' we enter. .ithin the hotel it is provincial -rance. :-rom " n a #unisian &asis!" The 2live Tree0

*"racle "n %e&anon n one of the northern suburbs of %eirut there stands an ugly little Armenian church! to which! in the ordinary course of events! no tourist would ever dream of going. %ut in this month of May! ()*M! the course of events had not been ordinary. #he sight we had come to see was a miracle. t had happened two or three days before. n the niche where! between services! the communion chalice was kept! a patch of light had appeared on the stone. #here was no sunbeam to account for it! no indication! so we were assured! that the stone contained

any phosphorescent or fluorescent substance. And yet the fact remained that! for the last few days! a soft glow had appeared every morning! persisted all day and faded out at night. -or the Armenians! suppose! the miracle clearly demonstrated how right their fathers had been to re/ect the competing orthodoxies of Eome and %y0antium in favor of the doctrine that! after his baptism :but not before;! 1hrist"s flesh consisted of ethereal fire and "was not sub/ect to the ordinary phenomena of digestion! secretions and evacuations." -or the rest of us! it was either a hoax! or an ordinary event in an unusual context! or else one of those delightful anomalies which distress the right-thinking scientist by actually turning up! every now and then! in all their mysterious pointlessness! and refusing to be explained away. #he church! when we arrived! was thronged! was going to say! with pilgrims = but the word :at least in this present age of unfaith and! therefore! religious earnestness; calls up ideas of devotion' and of devotion! or even of decorum! there were no signs. %ut if these people were no pilgrims! in our non-1haucerian sense of the term! neither were they mere sightseers. 1uriosity was certainly one of their motives! but not! it was clear! the only or strongest one. .hat had brought most of them to the church was a form of self-interest. #hey had come there! as the forty-niners came to 1alifornia! in search of sudden profit = a horde of spiritual prospectors looking for nuggets of mana, veins of twenty-two-carat good luck! something! in a word! for nothing. 4omething for nothing = but! concretely! what< .hen crowds close in on a movie star! they can beg autographs! steal handkerchiefs and fountain pens! tear off pieces of his or her garments as relics. 4imilarly! in the Middle Ages persons dying in the odor of sanctity ran the risk! when their bodies lay in state! of being stripped naked or even dismembered by the faithful. 1lothing would be cut to ribbons! ears cropped! hair pulled out! toes and fingers amputated! nipples snipped off and carried home as amulets. %ut here! unfortunately! there was no corpse' there was only light! and light is intangible. Aou cannot slice off an inch of the spectrum and put it in your pocket. #he people who had come to exploit this 1omstock +ode of the miraculous found themselves painfully frustrated' there was nothing here that they could take away with them. -or all practical purposes! the glow in the niche was immaterial. #hen! happily for all concerned! a young woman noticed that! for some reason or other! one of the chandeliers! suspended from the ceiling of the church! was wet. ,rops of rather dirty water were slowly forming and! at lengthening intervals! falling. ?obody supposed that there was anything supernatural about the phenomenon' but at least it was taking place in a supernatural context. Moreover the water on the chandelier possessed one immense advantage over the light in the niche6 it was tangible as well as merely visible. A boy was hoisted onto the shoulders of a tall man. Handkerchiefs were passed up to him! moistened in the oo0ings of the lamp and then returned to their owners! made happy now by the possession of a charged fetish! capable! no doubt! of curing minor ailments! restoring lost potency and mediating prayers for success in love or business. %ut "the search for the miraculous" :to use &uspensky"s phrase; is not invariably motived by self-interest. #here are people who love truth for its own sake and are ready! like the founders of the 4ociety for 7sychical Eesearch! to seek it at the bottom of even the muddiest! smelliest wells. Much more widespread than the love of truth is the appetite for marvels! the love of the 7hony an sich, in itself and for its own sweet sake. #here is also a curious psychological derangement! a kind of neurosis! sometimes mild! sometimes

severe! which might be called "#he 1ryptogram-4ecret 4ociety 4yndrome." .hat fun to be an initiate3 How delicious to feel the paranoid glow which accompanies the consciousness of belonging to the innermost circle! of being one of the superior and privileged few who know! for example! that all history! past! present and future! is written into the stones of the 5reat 7yramid' that >esus! like Madame %lavatsky! spent seven years in #ibet' that %acon wrote all the works of 4hakespeare and never died! merely vanished! to reappear a century later as the 1omte de 4aint-5ermain! who is still living either :as Mrs. Annie %esant was convinced; in a 1entral European castle! or else! more probably! in a cave! with a large party of +emurians! near the top of Mount 4hasta' alternatively! that %acon did die and was buried! not :needless to say; in what the vulgar regard as his tomb! but at .illiamsburg! 8irginia! or! better still! on an island off the coast of 1alifornia! near 4anta %arbara. #o be privy to such secrets is a high! rare privilege! a distinction e$uivalent to that of being Mr. Eockefeller or a Fnight of the 5arter. Esoteric phantasies about -ourth ,ynasty monuments! sixteenth-century lawyers and eighteenth-century adventurers are harmless. %ut when practical politicians and power seekers go in for esotericism! the results are apt to be dangerous. .hether -ascist or revolutionary! every conspiratorial group has its $uota of men and women afflicted by the 1ryptogram-4ecret 4ociety 4yndrome. ?or is this all. #he intelligence services of every government are largely staffed by persons who :in happier circumstances or if their temperament were a little different;! would be inoffensively engaged in hunting for #ibetan Masters! proving that the English are the +ost #en #ribes! celebrating %lack Masses or :the favorite occupation of 1harles .illiams"s more eccentric characters; intoning the #etragrammaton backwards. f these neurotics could be content to play the cloak-and-dagger game according to the rules of patriotism! all would be! relatively speaking! well. %ut the history of espionage demonstrates very clearly that many compulsive esotericists are not content to belong to only one 4ecret 4ociety. #o intensify their strange fun! they surreptitiously work for the enemy as well as their own gang! and end! in a delirium of duplicity! by doublecrossing everyone. #he born secret agent! the man who positively en/oys spying! can never! because he is a neurotic! be relied upon. t may well be that a nation"s actual security is in inverse ratio to the si0e of its security forces. #he greater the number of its secret agents and hush-hush men! the more chances there are of betrayal. %ut let us get back to our miracle. ".hat do you think of it<" asked our +ebanese companion. He stroked his black beard! he smiled! he shrugged his shoulders in expressive silence. %eing himself a professional thaumaturge = trained by the dervishes to lie on beds of nails! to go into catalepsy! to perform feats of telepathy! to send people into hypnotic trance by simply touching a point on the neck or back = he knew how hard a man must work if he would ac$uire even the most trifling of paranormal powers. His skepticism in regard to amateur wonder-workers and spontaneous miracles was complete and unshakable. A $ueue had formed at the foot of the altar steps. .e got into line and shuffled slowly forward to get our peep! in due course! into the niche. #hat personally saw nothing was the fault! not of the chalice! but of my own poor eyesight. #o my companions and everyone else the glow was manifest. t was an Armenian miracle' but even Maronites! even @niats! even Moslems and ,ruses had to admit that something had

happened. .e made our way toward the door. 7erched on the tall man"s shoulders! the boy was still busy at his task of turning handkerchiefs into relics. n the sacristy picture postcards of the chalice and the illuminated niche were already on sale. n Edward 1on0e"s admirable account of %uddhismT there is a striking passage on the historical! and perhaps psychologically inevitable relationship between spirituality and superstition! between the highest form of religion and the lowest. "Historically!" 1on0e notes! "the display of supernatural powers and the working of miracles were among the most potent causes of the conversion of tribes and individuals to %uddhism." Even the most "refined and intellectual" of %uddhists "would be inclined to think that a belief in miracles is indispensable to the survival of any spiritual life. n Europe! from the eighteenth century onwards! the conviction that spiritual forces can act on material events has given way to a belief in the inexorable rule of natural law. #he result is that the experience of the spiritual has become more and more inaccessible to modern society. ?o known religion has become mature without embracing both the spiritual and the magical. f it re/ects the spiritual! religion becomes a mere weapon to dominate the world. . . 4uch was the case in ?a0ism and in modern >apan. f! however! religion re/ects the magical side of life! it cuts itself off from the living forces of the world to such an extent that it cannot bring even the spiritual side of man to maturity." %uddhism :like 1hristianity in its heyday; has combined "lofty metaphysics with adherence to the most commonly accepted superstitions of mankind. #he 7ra/naparamita text tells us that "perfect wisdom can be attained only by the complete and total extinction of self-interest." And yet! in the same texts! this supreme spiritual wisdom is "recommended as a sort of magical talisman or lucky amulet.". . . Among all the paradoxes with which the history of %uddhism presents us this combination of spiritual negation of self-interest with magical subservience to self-interest is perhaps one of the most striking."
3 4ee pp" 56 ff" of Buddhism, Its Essence and Development by /dward &on$e, )reface by Arthur %aley" 7ew 8ork, )hilosophical Library, 9:;9"

#he same paradox is to be found in 1hristianity. #he mystical spirituality of the fourteenth century had as its background and context the system of ideas which called into existence such men as 1haucer"s 7ardoner and the preacher who! in the ,ecameron! tours the country exhibiting a tail feather of the Holy 5host. &r consider the flowering! three centuries later! of -rench spirituality in 1harles de 1ondren and &lier! in +allemant and 4urin and Mme. de 1hantal. #hese worshipers in spirit of a 5od who is 4pirit were contemporary with and! in 4urin"s case! deeply involved in the most hideous manifestations of devil-centered superstition. .hite sand is clean! but sterile. f you want a herbaceous border! you must mulch your soil with dead leaves and! if possible! dig in a load of dung. 4hall we ever see! in religion! the e$uivalent of hydroponics = spiritual flowers growing! without benefit of excrement or decay! in a solution of pure love and understanding< devoutly hope so! but! alas! have my doubts. +ike dirtless farming! dirtless spirituality is likely to remain! for a long time! an exception. #he rule will be dirt and plenty of it. &ccult dirt! bringing forth! as usual! a few mystical flowers and a whole crop of magicians! priests and fanatics. Anti-occult dirt = the dirt of ideological and technological superstition = in which personal frustrations grow like toadstools in the dark thickets of political tyranny. &r else :and this will be the ultimate horror; a mixture

of both kinds of dirt! fertile in such monstrosities as mediumistic commissars! clairvoyant engineers! ?F8,"s and -% "s e$uipped with E47 as well as walky-talkies and concealed microphones. :-rom "Miracle in +ebanon!" Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

%OVE+ SE,+ AN$ P-.SICA% BEAUT.

Bea(ty "n 1/01 #o those who know how to read the signs of the times it will have become apparent! in the course of these last days and weeks! that the 4illy 4eason is close upon us. Already = and this in >uly with the menace of three or four new wars grumbling on the thunderous hori0on = already a monster of the deep has appeared at a popular seaside resort. Already Mr. +ouis McGuilland has launched in the Daily ?" ress a fierce onslaught on the younger poets of the Asylum. Already the picture-papers are more than half-filled with photographs of bathing nymphs = photographs that make one understand the ease with which 4t. Anthony rebuffed his temptations. #he newspapermen! ramping up and down like wolves! seek their prey wherever they may find it' and it was with a unanimous howl of delight that the whole 7ress went pelting after the hare started by Mrs. As$uith in a recent installment of her autobiography. -eebly and belatedly! let me follow the pack. Mrs. As$uith"s denial of beauty to the daughters of the twentieth century has proved a god-sent giant gooseberry. t has necessitated the calling in of a whole host of skin-food specialists! portrait-painters and photographers to deny this far from soft impeachment. A great deal of space has been agreeably and inexpensively filled. Every one is satisfied! public! editors! skin-food specialists and all. %ut by far the most interesting contribution to the debate was a pictorial one! which appeared! if remember rightly! in the Daily &ews. 4ide by side! on the same page! we were shown the photographs of three beauties of the eighteen-eighties and three of the nineteen-twenties. #he comparison was most instructive. -or a great gulf separates the two types of beauty represented by these two sets of photographs. remember in 3,! one of those charming conspiracies of E. 8. +ucas and 5eorge Morrow! a series of parodied fashion-plates entitled " f -aces get any -latter. +ast year"s standard! this year"s Evening 4tandard." #he faces of our living specimens of beauty have grown flatter with those of their fashion-plate sisters. 1ompare the types of (LLD and ()CD. #he first is steep-faced! almost Eoman in profile' in the contemporary beauties the face has broadened and shortened! the profile is less noble! less imposing! more appealingly! more alluringly pretty. -orty years ago it was the aristocratic type that was appreciated' today the popular taste has shifted from the countess to the soubrette. 7hotography confirms the fact that the ladies of the "eighties looked like ,u Maurier drawings. %ut among the present young generation one looks in vain for the type' the ,u

Maurier damsel is as extinct as the meso0oic reptile' the -ish girl and other kindred flatfaced species have taken her place. %etween the "thirties and "fifties another type! the egg-faced girl! reigned supreme in the affections of the world. -rom the early portraits of Gueen 8ictoria to the fashionplates in the 'adies' @ee sa/e this invariable type prevails = the egg-shaped face! the sleek hair! the swan-like neck! the round! champagne-bottle shoulders. 1ompared with the decorous impassivity of the oviform girl our flat-faced fashion-plates are terribly abandoned and provocative. And because one expects so much in the way of respectability from these egg-faces of an earlier age! one is apt to be shocked when one sees them conducting themselves in ways that seem unbefitting. &ne thinks of that enchanting picture of Etty"s! "Aouth on the 7row and 7leasure at the Helm." #he naiads are of the purest egg-faced type. #heir hair is sleek! their shoulders slope and their faces are impassive as blanks. And yet they have no clothes on. t is almost indecent' one imagined that the egg-faced type came into the world complete with flowing draperies. t is not only the face of beauty that alters with the changes of popular taste. #he champagne-bottle shoulders of the oviform girl have vanished from the modern fashionplate and from modern life. #he contemporary hand! with its two middle fingers held together and the forefinger and little finger splayed apart! is another recent product. Above all! the feet have changed. n the days of the egg-faces no fashion-plate had more than one foot. #his rule will! think! be found invariable. #hat solitary foot pro/ects! generally in a strangely hapha0ard way as though it had nothing to do with a leg! from under the edge of the skirt. And what a foot3 t has no relation to those provocative feet in 4uckling"s ballad6
Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out"

t is an austere foot. t is a small! black! oblong ob/ect like a tea-leaf. ?o living human being has ever seen a foot like it! for it is utterly unlike the feet of nineteen-twenty. #oday the fashion-plate is always a biped. #he tea-leaf has been replaced by two feet of rich baro$ue design! curved and florid! with insteps like the necks of Arab horses. -aces may have changed shape! but feet have altered far more radically. &n the text! "the feet of the young women!" it would be possible to write a profound philosophical sermon. And while am on the sub/ect of feet would like to mention another curious phenomenon of the same kind! but affecting! this time! the standards of male beauty. Examine the pictorial art of the eighteenth century! and you will find that the shape of the male leg is not what it was. n those days the calf of the leg was not a muscle that bulged to its greatest dimensions a little below the back of the knee! to subside! decrescendo, toward the ankle. ?o! in the eighteenth century the calf was an even crescent! with its greatest pro/ection opposite the middle of the shin' the ankle! as we know it! hardly existed. #his curious calf is forced upon one"s attention by almost every minor picturemaker of the eighteenth century! and even by some of the great masters! as! for instance! %lake. How it came into existence do not know. 7resumably the crescent calf was considered! in the art schools! to approach more nearly to the 7latonic dea of the human leg than did the poor distorted Appearance of real life. 7ersonally! prefer my calves with the bulge at the top and a proper ankle at the bottom. %ut then don"t hold much with the !eau idal.

#he process by which one type of beauty becomes popular! imposes its tyranny for a period and then is displaced by a dissimilar type is a mysterious one. t may be that patient historical scholars will end by discovering some law to explain the transformation of the ,u Maurier type into the flat-face type! the tea-leaf foot into the baro$ue foot! the crescent calf into the normal calf. As far as one can see at present! these changes seem to be the result of mere ha0ard and arbitrary choice. %ut a time will doubtless come when it will be found that these changes of taste are as ineluctably predetermined as any chemical change. 5iven the 4outh African .ar! the accession of Edward 8 and the +iberal triumph of ()DP! it was! no doubt! as inevitable that ,u Maurier should have given place to -ish as that 0inc sub/ected to sulphuric acid should break up into Hn4&MUHC. %ut we leave it to others to formulate the precise workings of the law. :-rom 2n the +argin0

2as!"ons "n %ove Human nature does not change! or! at any rate! history is too short for any changes to be perceptible. #he earliest known specimens of art and literature are still comprehensible. #he fact that we can understand them all and can recogni0e in some of them an unsurpassed artistic excellence is proof enough that not only men"s feelings and instincts! but also their intellectual and imaginative powers! were in the remotest times precisely what they are now. n the fine arts it is only the convention! the form! the incidentals that change6 the fundamentals of passion! of intellect and imagination remain unaltered. t is the same with the arts of life as with the fine arts. 1onventions and traditions! pre/udices and ideals and religious beliefs! moral systems and codes of good manners! varying according to the geographical and historical circumstances! mold into different forms the unchanging material of human instinct! passion! and desire. t is a stiff! intractable material = Egyptian granite! rather than Hindu bron0e. #he artists who carved the colossal statues of Eameses may have wished to represent the 7haraoh standing on one leg and waving two or three pairs of arms over his head! as the ndians still represent the dancing Frishna. %ut with the best will in the world they could not have imposed such a form upon the granite. 4imilarly! those artists in social life whom we call statesmen! moralists! founders of religions! have often wished to mold human nature into forms of superhuman elegance' but the material has proved too stubborn for them! and they have had to be content with only a relatively small alteration in the form which their predecessors had given it. At any given historical moment human behavior is a compromise :enforced from without by law and custom! from within by belief in religious or philosophical myths; between the raw instinct on the one hand and the unattainable ideal on the other = a compromise! in our sculptural metaphor! between the unshaped block of stone and the many-armed dancing Frishna. +ike all the other great human activities! love is the product of unchanging passions! instincts! and desires :unchanging! that is to say! in the mass of humanity' for! of course! they vary greatly in $uantity and $uality from individual to individual;! and of laws and conventions! beliefs and ideals! which the circumstances of time and place! or

the arbitrary fiats of great personalities! have imposed on a more or less willing society. #he history of love! if it were ever written :and doubtless some learned 5erman! unread! alas! by me! has written it! and in several volumes;! would be like the current histories of art = a record of succeeding "styles" and "schools!" of "influences!" "revolutions!" "technical discoveries." +ove"s psychological and physiological material remains the same' but every epoch treats it in a different manner! /ust as every epoch cuts its unvarying cloth and silk and linen into garments of the most diverse fashion. %y way of illustration! may mention that vogue of homosexuality which seems! from all accounts! to have been universal in the Hellenic world. 7lutarch attributes the inception of this mode to the custom :novel in the fifth century! according to #hucydides; of exercising naked in the palestra.T %ut whatever may have been its origin! there can be no doubt that this particular fashion in love spread widely among people who were not in the least congenitally disposed to homosexuality. 1onvention and public opinion molded the material of love into forms which a later age has chosen to call "unnatural." A recrudescence of this amorous mode was very noticeable in Europe during the years immediately following the .ar. Among the determining causes of this recrudescence a future 7lutarch will undoubtedly number the writings of 7roust and Andr9 5ide.
3 )lutarch, who wrote some five hundred years after the event, is by no means an un<uestionable authority" The habit of which he and Thucydides speak may have facilitated the spread of the homose'ual fashion" ut that the fashion e'isted before the fifth century is made sufficiently clear by Homer, not to mention 4appho" Like many modern oriental peoples, the ancient =reeks were evidently, in 4ir >ichard urton(s e'pressive phrase, ?omnifutuent"?

#he present fashions in love are not so definite and universal as those in clothes. t is as though our age were dubiously hesitating between crinolines and hobble skirts! trunk hose and &xford trousers. #wo distinct and hostile conceptions of love coexist in the minds of men and women! two sets of ideals! of conventions! of public opinions! struggle for the right to mold the psychological and physiological material of love. &ne is the conception evolved by the nineteenth century out of the ideals of 1hristianity on the one hand and romanticism on the other. #he other is that still rather inchoate and negative conception which contemporary youth is in process of forming out of the materials provided by modern psychology. #he public opinion! the conventions! ideals! and pre/udices which gave active force to the first convention and enabled it! to some extent at least! to modify the actual practice of love! had already lost much of their strength when they were rudely shattered! at any rate in the minds of the young! by the shock of the .ar. As usually happens! practice preceded theory! and the new conception of love was called in to /ustify existing post-.ar manners. Having gained a footing! the new conception is now a cause of new behavior among the youngest adolescent generation! instead of being! as it was for the generation of the .ar! an explanation of war-time behavior made after the fact. +et us try to analy0e these two coexisting and conflicting conceptions of love. #he older conception was! as have said! the product of 1hristianity and romanticism = a curious mixture of contradictions! of the ascetic dread of passion and the romantic worship of passion. ts ideal was a strict monogamy! such as 4t. 7aul grudgingly conceded to amorous humanity! sanctified and made eternal by one of those terrific exclusive passions which are the favorite theme of poetry and drama. t is an ideal which

finds its most characteristic expression in the poetry of that infinitely respectable rebel! that profoundly anglican worshiper of passion! Eobert %rowning. t was Eousseau who first started the cult of passion for passion"s sake. %efore his time the great passions! such as that of 7aris for Helen! of ,ido for Vneas! of 7aolo and -rancesca for one another! had been regarded rather as disastrous maladies than as enviable states of soul. Eousseau! followed by all the romantic poets of -rance and England! transformed the grand passion from what it had been in the Middle Ages = a demoniac possession = into a divine ecstasy! and promoted it from the rank of a disease to that of the only true and natural form of love. #he nineteenth-century conception of love was thus doubly mystical! with the mysticism of 1hristian asceticism and sacramentalism! and with the romantic mysticism of ?ature. t claimed an absolute rightness on the grounds of its divinity and of its naturalness. ?ow! if there is one thing that the study of history and psychology makes abundantly clear! it is that there are no such things as either "divine" or "natural" forms of love. nnumerable gods have sanctioned and forbidden innumerable kinds of sexual behavior! and innumerable philosophers and poets have advocated the return to the most diverse kinds of "nature." Every form of amorous behavior! from chastity and monogamy to promiscuity and the most fantastic "perversions!" is found both among animals and men. n any given human society! at any given moment! love! as we have seen! is the result of the interaction of the unchanging instinctive and physiological material of sex with the local conventions of morality and religion! the local laws! pre/udices! and ideals. #he degree of permanence of these conventions! religious myths! and ideals is proportional to their social utility in the given circumstances of time and place. #he new twentieth-century conception of love is realistic. t recogni0es the diversity of love! not merely in the social mass from age to age! but from individual to contemporary individual! according to the dosage of the different instincts with which each is born! and the upbringing he has received. #he new generation knows that there is no such thing as +ove with a large +! and that what the 1hristian romantics of the last century regarded as the uni$uely natural form of love is! in fact! only one of the indefinite number of possible amorous fashions! produced by specific circumstances at that particular time. 7sychoanalysis has taught it that all the forms of sexual behavior previously regarded as wicked! perverse! unnatural! are statistically normal :and normality is solely a $uestion of statistics;! and that what is commonly called amorous normality is far from being a spontaneous! instinctive form of behavior! but must be ac$uired by a process of education. Having contracted the habit of talking freely and more or less scientifically about sexual matters! the young no longer regard love with that feeling of rather guilty excitement and thrilling shame which was for an earlier generation the normal reaction to the sub/ect. Moreover! the practice of birth-control has robbed amorous indulgence of most of the sinfulness traditionally supposed to be inherent in it by robbing it of its socially disastrous effects. #he tree shall be known by its fruits6 where there are no fruits! there is obviously no tree. +ove has ceased to be the rather fearful! mysterious thing it was! and become a perfectly normal! almost commonplace! activity = an activity! for many young people! especially in America! of the same nature as dancing or tennis! a sport! a recreation! a pastime. -or those who hold this conception of love! liberty and toleration are prime necessities. A strenuous offensive against the old taboos and repressions is everywhere in progress.

4uch! then! are the two conceptions of love which oppose one another today. .hich is the better< .ithout presuming to pass /udgment! will content myself with pointing out the defects of each. #he older conception was bad! in so far as it inflicted unnecessary and undeserved sufferings on the many human beings whose congenital and ac$uired modes of love-making did not conform to the fashionable 1hristian-romantic pattern which was regarded as being uni$uely entitled to call itself +ove. #he new conception is bad! it seems to me! in so far as it takes love too easily and lightly. &n love regarded as an amusement the last word is surely this of Eobert %urns6
* waive the <uantum of the sin, The ha$ard of concealing; ut oh- it hardens all within And petrifies the feeling"

?othing is more dreadful than a cold! unimpassioned indulgence and love infallibly becomes cold and unimpassioned when it is too lightly made. t is not good! as 7ascal remarked! to have too much liberty. +ove is the product of two opposed forces = of an instinctive impulsion and a social resistance acting on the individual by means of ethical imperatives /ustified by philosophical or religious myths. .hen! with the destruction of the myths! resistance is removed! the impulse wastes itself on emptiness' and love! which is only the product of conflicting forces! is not born. #he twentieth century is reproducing in a new form the error of the early nineteenth-century romantics. -ollowing Eousseau! the romantics imagined that exclusive passion was the "natural" mode of love! /ust as virtue and reasonableness were the "natural" forms of men"s social behavior. 5et rid of priests and kings! and men will be for ever good and happy' poor 4helley"s faith in this palpable nonsense remained unshaken to the end. He believed also in the complementary paralogism that you had only to get rid of social restraints and erroneous mythology to make the 5rand 7assion universally chronic. +ike the Mussets and 4ands! he failed to see that the 5rand 7assion was produced by the restraints that opposed themselves to the sexual impulse! /ust as the deep lake is produced by the dam that bars the passage of the stream! and the flight of the aeroplane by the air which resists the impulsion given to it by the motor. #here would be no air-resistance in a vacuum' but precisely for that reason the machine would not leave the ground! or even move at all. .here there are no psychological or external restrains! the 5rand 7assion does not come into existence and must be artificially cultivated! as 5eorge 4ands and Musset cultivated it = with what painful and grotes$ue results the episode of 8enice made only too ludicrously manifest. ">"aime et /e veux pOlir' /"aime et /e veux souffrir!" says Musset! with his usual hysterically masochistic emphasis. &ur young contemporaries do not wish to suffer or grow pale' on the contrary! they have a most determined desire to grow pink and en/oy themselves. %ut too much en/oyment "blunts the fine point of seldom pleasure." @nrestrained indulgence kills not merely passion! but! in the end! even amusement. #oo much liberty is as life-destroying as too much restraint. #he present fashion in lovemaking is likely to be short! because love that is psychologically too easy is not interesting. 4uch! at any rate! was evidently the opinion of the -rench! who! bored by the sexual license produced by the ?apoleonic upheavals! reverted :so far! at any rate! as the upper and middle classes were concerned; to an almost anglican strictness under +ouis7hilippe. .e may anticipate an analogous reaction in the not distant future. .hat new or

what revived mythology will serve to create those internal restraints without which sexual impulse cannot be transformed into love< 1hristian morality and ascetic ideals will doubtless continue to play their part! but there will no less certainly be other moralities and ideals. -or example! Mr. ,. H. +awrence"s new mythology of nature :new in its expression! but reassuringly old in substance; is a doctrine that seems to me fruitful in possibilities. #he "natural love" which he sets up as a norm is a passion less selfconscious and high-falutin! less obviously and precariously artificial! than that "natural love" of the romantics! in which 7latonic and 1hristian notions were essential ingredients. #he restraints which Mr. +awrence would impose on sexual impulse! so as to transform it into love! are not the restraints of religious spirituality. #hey are restraints of a more fundamental! less artificial nature = emotional! not intellectual. #he impulse is to be restrained from promiscuous manifestlations because! if it were not! promiscuity would "harden all within and petrify the feeling." #he restraint is of the same personal nature as the impulse. #he conflict is between a part of the personality and the personality as an organi0ed whole. t does not pretend! as the romantic and 1hristian conflict pretends! to be a battle belween a diabolical +ower 4elf and certain transcendental Absolutes! of which the only thing that philosophy can tell us is that they are absolutely unknowable! and therefore! for our purposes! nonexistent. t only claims to be! what in fact it is! a psychological conflict laking place in the more or less known and finite world of human interests. #his doctrine has several great advantages over previous systems of inward restraint. t does not postulate the existence of any transcendental! non-human entity. #his is a merit which will be increasingly appreciated as the significance of Fant"s and ?iet0sche"s destructive criticism is more widely reali0ed. 7eople will cease to be interested in unknowable absolutes' but they will never lose interest in their own personalities. #rue! that "personality as a whole!" in whose interests the sexual impulse is to be restrained and turned into love! is! strictly speaking! a mythological figure. 1onsisting! as we do! of a vast colony of souls = souls of individual cells! of organs! of groups of organs! hunger-souls! sex-souls! power-souls! herd-souls! of whose multifarious activities our consciousness :the 4oul with a large 4; is only very imperfectly and indirectly aware = we are not in a position to know the real nature of our personality as a whole. #he only thing we can do is to ha0ard a hypothesis! to create a mythological figure! call it Human 7ersonality! and hope that circumstances will not! by destroying us! prove our imaginative guesswork too hopelessly wrong. %ut myth for myth! Human 7ersonality is preferable to 5od. .e do at least know something of Human 7ersonality! whereas of 5od we know nothing and! knowing nothing! are at liberty to invent as freely as we like. f men had always tried to deal with the problem of love in terms of known human rather than of grotes$uely imagined divine interests! there would have been less "making of eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven"s sake!" less persecution of "sinners!" less burning and imprisoning of the heretics of "unnatural" love! less 5rundyism! less 1omstockery! and! at the same time! less dirty ,on->uanism! less of that curiously malignant and vengeful love-making so characteristic of the debauchee under a 1hristian dispensation. Eeacting against the absurdities of the old mythology! the young have run into absurdities no less inordinate at the other end of the scale. A sordid and ignoble realism offers no resistance to the sexual impulse! which now spends itself purposelessly! without producing love! or even! in the long-run! amusement! without enhancing vitality or $uickening and deepening the rhythms of living. &nly a new mythology of nature!

such as! in modern times! %lake! Eobert %urns! and +awrence have defined it! an untranscendental and :relatively speaking; realistic mythology of Energy! +ife! and Human 7ersonality! will provide! it seems to me! the inward resistances necessary to turn sexual impulse into love! and provide them in a form which the critical intelligence of 7ost-?iet0schean youth can respect. %y means of such a conception a new fashion in love may be created! a mode more beautiful and convenient! more healthful and elegant! than any seen among men since the days of remote and pagan anti$uity. :-rom Do -hat You -ill0

Ser3ons "n Cats met! not long ago! a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Fnowing that was in the profession! he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to reali0e his ambition. did my best to explain. "#he first thing!" said! "is to buy $uite a lot of paper! a bottle of ink! and a pen. After that you merely have to write." %ut this was not enough for my young friend. He seemed to have a notion that there was some sort of esoteric cookery book! full of literary recipes! which you had only to follow attentively to become a ,ickens! a Henry >ames! a -laubert = "according to taste!" as the authors of recipes say! when they come to the $uestion of seasoning and sweetening. .ouldn"t let him have a glimpse of this cookery book< said that was sorry! but that :unhappily = for what an endless amount of time and trouble it would save3; had never even seen such a work. He seemed sadly disappointed' so! to console the poor lad! advised him to apply to the professors of dramaturgy and short-story writing at some reputable university' if any one possessed a trustworthy cookery book of literature! it should surely be they. %ut even this was not enough to satisfy the young man. ,isappointed in his hope that would give him the fictional e$uivalent of "&ne Hundred .ays of 1ooking Eggs" or the "1arnet de la M9nagRre!" he began to cross-examine me about my methods of "collecting material." ,id keep a notebook or a daily /ournal< ,id /ot down thoughts and phrases in a card-index< ,id systematically fre$uent the drawing-rooms of the rich and fashionable< &r did ! on the contrary! inhabit the 4ussex downs< or spend my evenings looking for "copy" in East End gin-palaces< ,id think it was wise to fre$uent the company of intellectuals< .as it a good thing for a writer of novels to try to be well educated! or should he confine his reading exclusively to other novels< And so on. did my best to reply to these $uestions = as non-committally! of course! as could. And as the young man still looked rather disappointed! volunteered a final piece of advice! gratuitously. "My young friend!" said! "if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings! the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats." And with that left him. hope! for his own sake! that he took my advice. -or it was good advice = the fruit of much experience and many meditations. %ut am afraid that! being a rather foolish young man! he merely laughed at what he must have supposed was only a silly /oke6 laughed! as myself foolishly laughed when! years ago! that charming and talented and extraordinary man! Eonald -irbank! once told me that he wanted to write a novel about life in Mayfair and so was /ust off to the .est ndies to look for copy among the

?egroes. laughed at the time' but see now that he was $uite right. 7rimitive people! like children and animals! are simply civili0ed people with the lid off! so to speak = the heavy elaborate lid of manners! conventions! traditions of thought and feeling beneath which each one of us passes his or her existence. #his lid can be very conveniently studied in Mayfair! shall we say! or 7assy! or 7ark Avenue. %ut what goes on underneath the lid in these polished and elegant districts< ,irect observation :unless we happen to be endowed with a very penetrating intuition; tells us but little' and! if we cannot infer what is going on under other lids from what we see! introspectively! by peeping under our own! then the best thing we can do is to take the next boat for the .est ndies! or else! less expensively! pass a few mornings in the nursery! or alternatively! as suggested to my literary young friend! buy a pair of cats. Aes! a pair of cats. 4iamese by preference' for they are certainly the most "human" of all the race of cats. Also the strangest! and! if not the most beautiful! certainly the most striking and fantastic. -or what dis$uieting pale blue eyes stare out from the black velvet mask of their faces3 4now-white at birth! their bodies gradually darken to a rich mulatto color. #heir forepaws are gloved almost to the shoulder like the long black kid arms of Avette 5uilbert' over their hind legs are tightly drawn the black silk stockings with which -9licien Eops so perversely and indecently clothed his pearly nudes. #heir tails! when they have tails = and would always recommend the budding novelist to buy the tailed variety' for the tail! in cats! is the principal organ of emotional expression and a Manx cat is the e$uivalent of a dumb man = their tails are tapering black serpents endowed! even when the body lies in 4phinx-like repose! with a spasmodic and uneasy life of their own. And what strange voices they have3 4ometimes like the complaining of small children' sometimes like the noise of lambs' sometimes like the agoni0ed and furious howling of lost souls. 1ompared with these fantastic creatures! other cats! however beautiful and engaging! are apt to seem a little insipid. .ell! having bought his cats! nothing remains for the would-be novelist but to watch them living from day to day' to mark! learn! and inwardly digest the lessons about human nature which they teach' and finally = for! alas! this arduous and unpleasant necessity always arises = finally write his book about Mayfair! 7assy! or 7ark Avenue! whichever the case may be. +et us consider some of these instructive sermons in cats! from which the student of human psychology can learn so much. .e will begin = as every good novel should begin! instead of absurdly ending = with marriage. #he marriage of 4iamese cats! at any rate as have observed it! is an extraordinarily dramatic event. #o begin with! the introduction of the bridegroom to his bride : am assuming that! as usually happens in the world of cats! they have not met before their wedding day; is the signal for a battle of unparalleled ferocity. #he young wife"s first reaction to the advances of her would-be husband is to fly at his throat. &ne is thankful! as one watches the fur flying and listens to the piercing yells of rage and hatred! that a kindly providence has not allowed these devils to grow any larger. .aged between creatures as big as men! such battles would bring death and destruction to everything within a radius of hundreds of yards. As things are! one is able! at the risk of a few scratches! to grab the combatants by the scruffs of their necks and drag them! still writhing and spitting! apart. .hat would happen if the newly-wedded pair were allowed to go on fighting to the bitter end do not know! and have never had the scientific curiosity or the strength of mind to try to find out. suspect

that! contrary to what happened in Hamlet"s family! the wedding baked meats would soon be serving for a funeral. have always prevented this tragical consummation by simply shutting up the bride in a room by herself and leaving the bridegroom for a few hours to languish outside the door. He does not languish dumbly' but for a long time there is no answer! save an occasional hiss or growl! to his melancholy cries of love. .hen! finally! the bride begins replying in tones as soft and yearning as his own! the door may be opened. #he bridegroom darts in and is received! not with tooth and claw as on the former occasion! but with every demonstration of affection. At first sight there would seem! in this specimen of feline behavior! no special "message" for humanity. %ut appearances are deceptive' the lids under which civili0ed people live are so thick and so profusely sculptured with mythological ornaments! that it is difficult to recogni0e the fact! so much insisted upon by ,. H. +awrence in his novels and stories! that there is almost always a mingling of hate with the passion of love and that young girls very often feel :in spite of their sentiments and even their desires; a real abhorrence of the fact of physical love. @nlidded! the cats make manifest this ordinarily obscure mystery of human nature. After witnessing a cats" wedding no young novelist can rest content with the falsehood and banalities which pass! in current fiction! for descriptions of love. #ime passes and! their honeymoon over! the cats begin to tell us things about humanity which even the lid of civili0ation cannot conceal in the world of men. #hey tell us = what! alas! we already know = that husbands soon tire of their wives! particularly when they are expecting or nursing families' that the essence of maleness is the love of adventure and infidelity' that guilty consciences and good resolutions are the psychological symptoms of that disease which spasmodically affects practically every male between the ages of eighteen and sixty = the disease called "the morning after"' and that with the disappearance of the disease the psychological symptoms also disappear! so that when temptation comes again! conscience is dumb and good resolutions count for nothing. All these unhappily too familiar truths are illustrated by the cats with a most comical absence of disguise. ?o man has ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a 4iamese tomcat! when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife. ?o man has ever dared to proclaim his illicit amours so frankly as this same tom caterwauling on the tiles. And how slinkingly = no man was ever so ab/ect = he returns next day to the con/ugal basket by the fire3 Aou can measure the guiltiness of his conscience by the angle of his back-pressed ears! the droop of his tail. And when! having sniffed him and so discovered his infidelity! his wife! as she always does on these occasions! begins to scratch his face :already scarred! like a 5erman student"s! with the traces of a hundred duels;! he makes no attempt to resist' for! selfconvicted of sin! he knows that he deserves all he is getting. t is impossible for me in the space at my disposal to enumerate all the human truths which a pair of cats can reveal or confirm. will cite only one more of the innumerable sermons in cats which my memory holds = an acted sermon which! by its ludicrous pantomime! vividly brought home to me the most saddening peculiarity of our human nature! its irreducible solitariness. #he circumstances were these. My she-cat! by now a wife of long standing and several times a mother! was passing through one of her occasional phases of amorousness. Her husband! now in the prime of life and parading that sleepy arrogance which is the characteristic of the mature and con$uering male :he

was now the feline e$uivalent of some herculean young Alcibiades of the 5uards;! refused to have anything to do with her. t was in vain that she uttered her love-sick mewing! in vain that she walked up and down in front of him rubbing herself voluptuously against doors and chairlegs as she passed! it was in vain that she came and licked his face. He shut his eyes! he yawned! he averted his head! or! if she became too importunate! got up and slowly! with an insulting air of dignity and detachment! stalked away. .hen the opportunity presented itself! he escaped and spent the next twenty-four hours upon the tiles. +eft to herself! the wife went wandering disconsolately about the house! as though in search of a vanished happiness! faintly and plaintively mewing to herself in a voice and with a manner that reminded one irresistibly of M9lisande in ,ebussy"s opera. "Je ne suis as heureuse ici," she seemed to be saying. And! poor little beast! she wasn"t. %ut! like her big sisters and brothers of the human world! she had to bear her unhappiness in solitude! uncomprehended! unconsoled. -or in spite of language! in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy! one can never really communicate anything to anybody. #he essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable! locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. &ur life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. #his mournful truth was overwhelmingly borne in on me as watched the abandoned and love-sick cat as she walked unhappily round my room. "Je ne suis as heureuse ici," she kept mewing! "=e ne suis as heureuse ici." And her expressive black tail would lash the air in a tragical gesture of despair. %ut each time it twitched! hop-la3 from under the armchair! from behind the book-case! wherever he happened to be hiding at the moment! out /umped her only son :the only one! that is! we had not given away;! /umped like a ludicrous toy tiger! all claws out! on to the moving tail. 4ometimes he would miss! sometimes he caught it! and getting the tip between his teeth would pretend to worry it! absurdly ferocious. His mother would have to /erk it violently to get it out of his mouth. #hen! he would go back under his armchair again and! crouching down! his hind$uarters trembling! would prepare once more to spring. #he tail! the tragical! despairingly gesticulating tail! was for him the most irresistible of playthings. #he patience of the mother was angelical. #here was never a rebuke or a punitive reprisal' when the child became too intolerable! she /ust moved away' that was all. And meanwhile! all the time! she went on mewing! plaintively! despairingly. "Je ne suis as heureuse ici, =e ne suis as heureuse ici." t was heartbreaking. #he more so as the antics of the kitten were so extraordinarily ludicrous. t was as though a slap-stick comedian had broken in on the lamentations of M9lisande = not mischievously! not wittingly! for there was not the smallest intention to hurt in the little cat"s performance! but simply from lack of comprehension. Each was alone serving his life-sentence of solitary confinement. #here was no communication from cell to cell. Absolutely no communication. #hese sermons in cats can be exceedingly depressing. :-rom +usic at &ight;

A##end"4 Every civili0ation is! among other things! an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work. #he domestication of sex presents a problem

whose solution must be attempted on two distinct levels of human experience! the psycho-physiological and the social. &n the social level the relations of the sexes have everywhere been regulated by law! by uncodified custom! by taboo and religious ritual. Hundreds of volumes have been filled with accounts of these regulations! and it is unnecessary to do more than mention them in passing. &ur present concern is with the problem of domesticating sex at the source! of civili0ing its manifestations in the individual lover. #his is a sub/ect to which! in our .estern tradition! we have paid much too little attention. ndeed! it is only in very recent years that! thanks to the declining influence of the >udaeo-1hristian ethic! we have been able to discuss it realistically. n the past the problem used to be dealt with in one or other of three e$ually unsatisfactory ways. Either it was not mentioned at all! with the result that adolescents coming to maturity were left to work out their sexual salvation! unassisted! within the framework of the prevailing! and generally barbarous socio-legal system. &r else it was mentioned = but men ioned on the one hand with obscene delight or obscene disapproval :the tone of the pornographers and the 7uritan moralists;! or with a vague and all too "spiritual" sentimentality :the tone of the troubadours! 7etrarchians and romantic lyrists;. #oday we are condemned neither to silence! nor obscenity! nor sentimentality' we are at liberty! at last! to look at the facts and to ask ourselves what! if anything! can be done about them. &ne of the best ways of discovering what can be done is to look at what has been done. .hat experiments have been made in this field! and how successful have they been< shall begin not at the faraway beginning of everything! among the #robrianders! for example! or the #ahitians! but rather at the beginning of our own current phase of civili0ation = in the middle years! that is to say! of the nineteenth century. 8ictoria had been on the throne for seven years when! in (LMM! >ohn Humphrey ?oyes published his book! *i!le Communism. : t is worth remarking that! for the American public of a hundred years ago! 1ommunism was essentially biblical. t was preached and practiced by men and women who wanted to emulate the earliest 1hristians. #he appeal was not to Marx"s +ani,esto = still unpublished when ?oyes wrote his book = but to the Acts of the Apostles.; n the fourth chapter of *i!le Communism and again! at greater length! in his +ale Continence, written more than twenty years later! ?oyes set forth his theories of sex and described the methods employed by himself and his followers for transforming a wild! 5od-eclipsing passion into a civili0ed act of worship! a prime cause of crime and misery into a source of individual happiness! social solidarity and good behavior. " t is held in the world!" ?oyes writes in *i!le Communism, "that the sexual organs have two distinct functions = vi06 the urinary and the propagative. .e affirm that they have three = the urinary! the propagative and the amative.! i.e. they are conductors first of the urine! secondly of the semen and thirdly of the social magnetism. . ." After Mrs. ?oyes had come dangerously near to death as the result of repeated miscarriages! ?oyes and his wife decided that! henceforth! their sexual relationships should be exclusively amative! not propagative. %ut how were the specifically human aspects of sex to be detached from the merely biological< 1onfronted by this $uestion! Eobert ,ale &wen had advocated coitus interru tus4 but ?oyes had read his %ible and had no wish to emulate &nan. ?or did he approve of contraceptives = "those tricks!" as he called them! "of the -rench voluptuaries." nstead he advocated Male 1ontinence and what ,r. 4tockham was later to call @are77a. .ith the most exemplary scientific detachment he

began by "analy0ing the act of sexual intercourse. t has a beginning! a middle and an end. ts beginning and most elementary form is the simple presence of the male organ in the female." 7resence is followed by motion! motion by crisis. %ut now "suppose the man chooses to en/oy not only the simple presence! but also the reciprocal motion! and yet to stop short of the crisis. . . f you say that this is impossible! answer that /now it is possible = nay! that it is easy." He knew because he himself had done it. "%eginning in (LMM! experimented on the idea" :the idea that the amative function of the sexual organs could be separated from the propagative; "and found that the self-control it re$uired is not difficult' also that my en/oyment was increased' also that my wife"s experience was very satisfactory! which it had never been before' also that we had escaped the horrors and the fear of involuntary propagation." ?oyes was a born prophet! a missionary in the bone. Having made a great discovery! he felt impelled to bring the good news to others = and to bring it! what was more! in the same package with what he believed to be true 1hristianity. He preached! he made disciples! he brought them together in a community! first in 8ermont and later at &neida! in upstate ?ew Aork. "Eeligion!" he declared! "is the first interest! and sexual morality the second in the great enterprise of establishing the Fingdom of 5od on earth." At &neida the religion was 7erfectionist 1hristianity and the sexual morality was based upon the psycho-physiological practices of Male 1ontinence and the social law of 1omplex Marriage. +ike all earlier founders of religious communities! ?oyes disapproved of exclusive attachments between the members of his group. All were to love all! unpossessively! with a kind of impersonal charity which! at &neida! included sexual relationships. Hence the establishment! within the community! of 1omplex Marriage. ?oyes did not condemn monogamy' he merely believed that group love was better than exclusive love. " would not!" he wrote! "set up a distinction of right and wrong between general and special love! except that special love! when false! makes more mischief. insist that all love! whether general or special! must have its authority in the sanction and the inspiration of the ascending fellowship. All love that is at work in a private corner! away from the general circulation! where there are no series of links connecting it with 5od! is false love' it rends and devours! instead of making unity! peace and harmony." At &neida there was to be no love in a private corner! no idolatrous and 5od-eclipsing attachment of one for one! outside the general circulation. Each was married to all' and when any given pair decided :with the advice and permission of the Elders; to consummate their latent nuptials! Male 1ontinence guaranteed that their union should be fruitful only of "social magnetism." +ove was for love"s sake and for 5od"s! not for offspring. #he &neida 1ommunity endured for thirty years and its members! from all accounts! were excellent citi0ens! singularly happy and measurably less neurotic than most of their 8ictorian contemporaries. #he women of &neida had been spared what one of ?oyes"s lady correspondents described as "the miseries of Married +ife as it is in the .orld." #he men found their self-denial rewarded by an experience! at once physical and spiritual! that was deeper and richer than that of unrestrained sexuality. Here is the comment of a young man who had lived in the community and learned the new Art of +ove. "#his Aankee nation!" he wrote to ?oyes! "claims to be a nation of inventors! but this discovery of Male 1ontinence puts you! in my mind! at the head of all inventors." And here are ?oyes"s own reflections on the psychological! social and religious significance of his discovery. "#he practice which we propose will advance civili0ation

and refinement at railroad speed. #he self-control! retention of life and advance out of sensualism! which must result from making freedom of love a bounty on the chastening of sensual indulgence! will at once raise the race to new vigor and beauty! moral and physical. And the refining effects of sexual love :which are recogni0ed more or less in the world; will be increased a hundredfold when sexual intercourse becomes a method of ordinary conversation and each becomes married to all." -urthermore! "in a society trained in these principles! amative intercourse will have its place among the "fine arts." ndeed! it will take rank above music! painting! sculpture! etc.' for it combines the charms and benefits of them all. #here is as much room for cultivation of taste and skill in this department as in any." And this is not all. 4exual love is a cognitive act. .e speak = or at least we used to speak = of carnal knowledge. #his knowledge is of a kind that can be deepened indefinitely. "#o a true heart! one that appreciates 5od! the same woman is an endless mystery. And this necessarily flows from the first admission that 5od is unfathomable in depths of knowledge and wisdom." Male 1ontinence transforms the sexual act into a prolonged exchange of "social magnetism"' and this prolonged exchange makes possible an ever deepening knowledge of the mystery of human nature = that mystery which merges ultimately! and becomes one with the mystery of +ife itself. ?oyes"s conception of the sexual act :when properly performed; as at once a religious sacrament! a mode of mystical knowledge and a civili0ing social discipline has its counterpart in #antra. n the twenty-seventh chapter of 4ir >ohn .oodroffe"s (ha/ti and (ha/ta the interested reader will find a brief account of the #antrik"s sexual ritual! together with a discussion of the philosophy which underlies the practice. "?othing in natural function is low or impure to the mind which recogni0es it as 4hakti and the working of 4hakti. t is the ignorant and! in a true sense! vulgar mind which regards any natural function as low or coarse. #he action in this case is seen in the light of the inner vulgarity of mind. . . &nce the reality of the world as grounded in the Absolute is established! the body seems to be less an obstacle to freedom' for it is a form of that selfsame Absolute." n #antra the sexual sacrament borrows the method of Aoga! "not to frustrate! but to regulate en/oyment. 1onversely en/oyment produces Aoga by the union of body and spirit. . . Here are made one Aoga which liberates and %hoga which enchains." n Hindu philosophy :which is not philosophy in the modern .estern sense of the word! but rather the description and tentative explanation of a praxis aimed at the transformation of human consciousness;! the relations between body! psyche! spirit and ,ivine 5round are described in terms of a kind of occult physiology! whose language comes nearer to expressing the unbroken continuity of experience! from the "lowest" to the "highest!" than any hitherto devised in the .est. "1oition!" in terms of this occult physiology! "is the union of the 4hakti Fundalini! the " nner .oman" in the lowest centre of the 4adhaka"s body with the 4upreme 4hiva in the highest centre in the upper %rain. #his! the Aogini #antra says! is the best of all unions for those who are Aati! that is! who have controlled their passions."T
3 @ale &ontinence, se' as a sacrament and coitus as a long,drawn cognitive e'change of ?social magnetism? have been discussed in contemporary medical terms by Ar" >udolf von !rban whose book Sexual Perfection and Marital Happiness is one of the most significant modern contributions to the solution of an age,old problem"

n the .est the theory and practice of #antra were never orthodox! except perhaps

during the first centuries of 1hristianity. At this time it was common for ecclesiastics and pious laymen to have "spiritual wives!" who were called Agapetae! 4yneisaktoi or 8irgines 4ubintroductae. &f the precise relationships between these spiritual wives and husbands we know very little' but it seems that! in some cases at least! a kind of Fare00a! or bodily union without orgasm! was practiced as a religious exercise! leading to valuable spiritual experiences. -or the most part! ?oyes"s predecessors and the 1hristian e$uivalents of #antra must be sought among the heretics = the 5nostics in the first centuries of our era! the 1athars in the early Middle Ages and the Adamites or %rethren and 4isters of the -ree 4pirit from the later thirteenth century onwards. n his monograph on The +illennium o, Hieronymus *osch .ilhelm -ranger has brought together much interesting material on the Adamites. #hey practiced! we learn! a modum s ecialem coeundi, a special form of intercourse! which was identical with ?oyes"s Male 1ontinence or the coitus reservatus permitted by Eoman 1atholic casuists. #his kind of sexual intercourse! they declared! was known to Adam before the -all and was one of the constituents of 7aradise. t was a sacramental act of charity and! at the same time! of mystical cognition! and! as such! was called by the %rethren acclivitas= the upward path. According to Aegidius 1antor! the leader of the -lemish Adamites in the first years of the fifteenth century! "the natural sexual act can take place in such a manner that it is e$ual in value to a prayer in the sight of 5od." A 4panish follower of the Adamite heresy declared! at his trial that "after had first had intercourse with her Wthe prophetess! -rancisca Hernande0X for some twenty days! could say that had learned more wisdom in 8alladolid than if had studied for twenty years in 7aris. -or not 7aris! but only 7aradise could teach such wisdom." +ike ?oyes and his followers! the Adamites practiced a form of sexual communism! and practiced it not! as their enemies declared! out of a low taste for orgiastic promiscuity! but because 1omplex Marriage was a method by which every member of the group could love all the rest with an impartial and almost impersonal charity' could see and nuptially know in each beloved partner the embodiment of the original! unfallen Adam = a godlike son or daughter of 5od. Among literary testimonials to Male 1ontinence! perhaps the most elegant is a little poem by 7etronius. +ong and inevitably disgusting experience had taught this arbiter of the elegancies that there must be something better than debauchery. He found it in physical tenderness and the peace of soul which such tenderness begets.
.oeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas, et taedet +eneris statim peractae" 7on ergo ut pecudes libidinosae caeci protinus irruamus illuc; nam languescit amor perit<ue flamma; sed sic sic sine fine feriati et tecum 0aceamus osculantes" Hic nullus labor est rubor<ue nullus; hoc 0uvit, 0uvat et diu 0uvabit; hoc non deficit, incipit<ue semper"

.hich was Englished by %en >onson! as follows6

And done, we straight repent us of the sport; Let us not then rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts that only know to do it; .or lust will languish, and that heat decay" ut thus, thus, keeping endless holiday, Let us together closely lie and kiss; There is no labor, nor no shame in this; This hath pleased, doth please and long will please; never &an this decay, but is beginning ever"

And here! from a novelist and poet of a very different kind is a passage that hints at what is revealed by physical tenderness! when it is prolonged by Male 1ontinence into a $uasi-mystical experience. "4he had sunk to a final rest!" +awrence writes! near the end of The )lumed (er ent,A "within a great opened-out cosmos. #he universe had opened out to her! new and vast! and she had sunk to the deep bed of pure rest. . . 4he reali0ed! almost with wonder! the death in her of the Aphrodite of the foam6 the seething! frictional! ecstatic Aphrodite. %y a swift dark instinct! 1ipriano drew away from this in her. .hen! in their love! it came back on her! the seething electric female ecstasy! which knows such spasms of delirium! he recoiled from her. t was what she used to call her "satisfaction." 4he had loved >oachim for this! that again! and again! and again he could give her this orgiastic "satisfaction!" in spasms that made her cry aloud.
3 y A" H" Lawrence" 7ew 8ork, Bnopf, 9:CD"

"%ut 1ipriano would not. %y a dark and powerful instinct he drew away from her as soon as this desire rose again in her! for the white ecstasy of frictional satisfaction! the throes of Aphrodite of the foam. 4he could see that! to him! it was repulsive. He /ust removed himself! dark and unchangeable! away from her. "And she! as she lay! would reali0e the worthlessness of this foam-effervescence! its strange externality to her. t seemed to come from without! not from within. And succeeding the first moment of disappointment! when this sort of "satisfaction" was denied her! came the knowledge that she did not really want it! that it was really nauseous to her. "And he in his dark! hot silence would bring her back to the new! soft! heavy! hot flow! when she was like a fountain gushing noiseless and with urgent softness from the deeps. #here she was open to him soft and hot! yet gushing with a noiseless soft power. And there was no such thing as conscious "satisfaction." .hat happened was dark and untellable. 4o different from the beak-like friction of Aphrodite of the foam! the friction which flares out in circles of phosphorescent ecstasy! to the last wild spasm which utters the involuntary cry! like a death-cry! the final love-cry." Male 1ontinence is not merely a device for domesticating sexuality and heightening its psychological significance' it is also! as the history of the &neida 1ommunity abundantly proves! a remarkably effective method of birth control. ndeed! under the name of coitus reservatus, it is one of the two methods of birth control approved by the authorities of the Eoman 1hurch = the other and more widely publici0ed method being the restriction of intercourse to the so-called safe periods. @nfortunately large-scale field experiments in ndia have shown that! in the kind of society which has the most urgent need of birth control! the safe period method is almost useless. And whereas ?oyes! the practical Aankee! devoted much time and thought to the

problem of training his followers in Male 1ontinence! the Eoman 1hurch has done little or nothing to instruct its youth in the art of coitus reservatus. :How odd it is that while primitive peoples! like the #robrianders! are careful to teach their children the best ways of domesticating sex! we! the 1ivili0ed! stupidly leave ours at the mercy of their wild and dangerous passions3; Meanwhile! over most of the earth! population is rising faster than available resources. #here are more people with less to eat. %ut when the standard of living goes down! social unrest goes up! and the revolutionary agitator! who has no scruples about making promises which he knows very well he cannot keep! finds golden opportunities. 1onfronted by the appalling dangers inherent in population increase at present rates! most governments have permitted and one or two have actually encouraged their sub/ects to make use of contraceptives. %ut they have done so in the teeth of protests from the Eoman 1hurch. %y outlawing contraceptives and by advocating instead two methods of birth control! one of which doesn"t work! while the other! effective method is never systematically taught! the prelates of that 1hurch seem to be doing their best to ensure! first! a massive increase in the sum of human misery and! second! the triumph! within a generation or two! of .orld 1ommunism. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

SECTION II

%ITERATURE

S(&5ect6*atter of Poetry t should theoretically be possible to make poetry out of anything whatsoever of which the spirit of man can take cogni0ance. .e find! however! as a matter of historical fact! that most of the world"s best poetry has been content with a curiously narrow range of sub/ect-matter. #he poets have claimed as their domain only a small province of our universe. &ne of them now and then! more daring or better e$uipped than the rest! sets out to extend the boundaries of the kingdom. %ut for the most part the poets do not concern themselves with fresh con$uests' they prefer to consolidate their power at home! en/oying $uietly their hereditary possessions. All the world is potentially theirs! but they do not take it. .hat is the reason for this! and why is it that poetical practice does not conform to critical theory< #he problem has a peculiar relevance and importance in these days! when young poetry claims absolute liberty to speak how it likes of whatsoever it pleases. .ordsworth! whose literary criticism! dry and forbidding though its aspects may be! is always illumined by a penetrating intelligence! .ordsworth touched upon this problem in his preface to 'yrical *allads = touched on it and! as usual! had something of

value to say about it. He is speaking here of the most important and the most interesting of the sub/ects which may! theoretically! be made into poetry! but which have! as a matter of fact! rarely or never undergone the transmutation6 he is speaking of the relations between poetry and that vast world of abstractions and ideas = science and philosophy = into which so few poets have ever penetrated. "#he remotest discoveries of the chemist! the botanist! or mineralogist! will be as proper ob/ects of the poet"s art as any upon which he is now employed! if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us! and the relations under which they are contemplated shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as en/oying and suffering beings." t is a formidable sentence' but read it well! read the rest of the passage from which it is taken! and you will find it to be full of critical truth. #he gist of .ordsworth"s argument is this. All sub/ects = "the remotest discoveries of the chemist" are but one example of an unlikely poetic theme = can serve the poet with material for his art! on one condition6 that he! and to a lesser degree his audience! shall be able to apprehend the sub/ect with a certain emotion. #he sub/ect must somehow be involved in the poet"s intimate being before he can turn it into poetry. t is not enough! for example! that he should apprehend it merely through his senses. :#he poetry of pure sensation! of sounds and bright colors! is common enough nowadays' but amusing as we may find it for the moment! it cannot hold the interest for long.; t is not enough! at the other end of the scale! if he apprehends his sub/ect in a purely intellectual manner. An abstract idea must be felt with a kind of passion! it must mean something emotionally significant! it must be as immediate and important to the poet as a personal relationship before he can make poetry of it. 7oetry! in a word! must be written by "en/oying and suffering beings!" not by beings exclusively dowered with sensations or! as exclusively! with intellect. .ordsworth"s criticism helps us to understand why so few sub/ects have ever been made into poetry when everything under the sun! and beyond it! is theoretically suitable for transmutation into a work of art. ,eath! love! religion! nature' the primary emotions and the ultimate personal mysteries = these form the sub/ect-matter of most of the greatest poetry. And for obvious reasons. #hese things are "manifestly and palpably material to us as en/oying and suffering beings." %ut to most men! including the generality of poets! abstractions and ideas are not immediately and passionately moving. #hey are not en/oying or suffering when they apprehend these things = only thinking. #he men who do feel passionately about abstractions! the men to whom ideas are as persons = moving and dis$uietingly alive = are very seldom poets. #hey are men of science and philosophers! preoccupied with the search for truth and not! like the poet! with the expression and creation of beauty. t is very rarely that we find a poet who combines the power and the desire to express himself with that passionate apprehension of ideas and that passionate curiosity about strange remote facts which characteri0e the man of science and the philosopher. f he possessed the re$uisite sense of language and the impelling desire to express himself in terms of beauty! Einstein could write the most intoxicating lyrics about relativity and the pleasures of pure mathematics. And if! say! Mr. Aeats understood the Einstein theory = which! in company with most other living poets! he presumably does not! any more than the rest of us = if he apprehended it exultingly as something bold and profound! something vitally important and marvelously true! he too could give us! out of the 1eltic twilight! his lyrics of relativity. t is those

distressing little "ifs" that stand in the way of this happy consummation. #he conditions upon which any but the most immediately and obviously moving sub/ects can be made into poetry are so rarely fulfilled! the combination of poet and man of science! poet and philosopher! is so uncommon! that the theoretical universality of the art has only very occasionally been reali0ed in practice. 1ontemporary poetry in the whole of the western world is insisting! loudly and emphatically through the mouths of its propagandists! on an absolute liberty to speak of what it likes how it likes. ?othing could be better' all that we can now ask is that the poets should put the theory into practice! and that they should make use of the liberty which they claim by enlarging the bounds of poetry. #he propagandists would have us believe that the sub/ect-matter of contemporary poetry is new and startling! that modern poets are doing something which has not been done before. "Most of the poets represented in these pages!" writes Mr. +ouis @ntermeyer in his 1nthology o, +odern 1merican )oetry, "have found a fresh and vigorous material in a world of honest and often harsh reality. #hey respond to the spirit of their times' not only have their views changed! their vision has been widened to include things unknown to the poets of yesterday. #hey have learned to distinguish real beauty from mere prettiness! to wring loveliness out of s$ualor! to find wonder in neglected places! to search for hidden truths even in the dark caves of the unconscious." #ranslated into practice this means that contemporary poets can now write! in the words of Mr. 4andburg! of the "harr and boom of the blast fires!" of "wops and bohunks." t means! in fact! that they are at liberty to do what Homer did = to write freely about the immediately moving facts of everyday life. .here Homer wrote of horses and the tamers of horses! our contemporaries write of trains! automobiles! and the various species of wops and bohunks who control the horsepower. #hat is all. Much too much stress has been laid on the newness of the new poetry' its newness is simply a return from the /eweled ex$uisiteness of the eighteen-nineties to the facts and feelings of ordinary life. #here is nothing intrinsically novel or surprising in the introduction into poetry of machinery and industrialism! of labor unrest and modern psychology6 these things belong to us! they affect us daily as en/oying and suffering beings' they are a part of our lives! /ust as the kings! the warriors! the horses and chariots! the pictures$ue mythology were part of Homer"s life. #he sub/ect-matter of the new poetry remains the same as that of the old. #he old boundaries have not been extended. #here would be real novelty in the new poetry if it had! for example! taken to itself any of the new ideas and astonishing facts with which the new science has endowed the modern world. #here would be real novelty in it if it had worked out a satisfactory artistic method for dealing with abstractions. t has not. .hich simply means that that rare phenomenon! the poet in whose mind ideas are a passion and a personal moving force! does not happen to have appeared. And how rarely in all the long past he has appeared3 #here was +ucretius! the greatest of all the philosophic and scientific poets. n him the passionate apprehension of ideas! and the desire and ability to give them expression! combined to produce that strange and beautiful epic of thought which is without parallel in the whole history of literature. #here was ,ante! in whose soul the medieval 1hristian philosophy was a force that shaped and directed every feeling! thought and action. #here was 5oethe! who focused into beautiful expression an enormous diffusion of knowledge and ideas. And there the list of the great poets of thought comes to an end. n their task of extending the

boundaries of poetry into the remote and abstract world of ideas! they have had a few lesser assistants = ,onne! for example! a poet only /ust less than the greatest' -ulke 5reville! that strange! dark-spirited Eli0abethan' >ohn ,avidson! who made a kind of poetry out of ,arwinism' and! most interesting poetical interpreter of nineteenth-century science! >ules +aforgue. .hich of our contemporaries can claim to have extended the bounds of poetry to any material extent< t is not enough to have written about locomotives and telephones! "wops and bohunks!" and all the rest of it. #hat is not extending the range of poetry' it is merely asserting its right to deal with the immediate facts of contemporary life! as Homer and as 1haucer did. #he critics who would have us believe that there is something essentially unpoetical about a bohunk :whatever a bohunk may be;! and something essentially poetical about 4ir +ancelot of the +ake! are! of course! simply negligible' they may be dismissed as contemptuously as we have dismissed the pseudo-classical critics who opposed the freedoms of the Eomantic Eevival. And the critics who think it very new and splendid to bring bohunks into poetry are e$ually old-fashioned in their ideas. t will not be unprofitable to compare the literary situation in this early twentieth century of ours with the literary situation of the early seventeenth century. n both epochs we see a reaction against a rich and somewhat formali0ed poetical tradition expressing itself in a determination to extend the range of sub/ect-matter! to get back to real life! and to use more natural forms of expression. #he difference between the two epochs lies in the fact that the twentieth-century revolution has been the product of a number of minor poets! none of them $uite powerful enough to achieve what he theoretically meant to do! while the seventeenth-century revolution was the work of a single poet of genius! >ohn ,onne. ,onne substituted for the rich formalism of non-dramatic Eli0abethan poetry a completely reali0ed new style! the style of the so-called metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was a poet-philosopher-man-of-action whose passionate curiosity about facts enabled him to make poetry out of the most unlikely aspects of material life! and whose passionate apprehension of ideas enabled him to extend the bounds of poetry beyond the frontiers of common life and its emotions into the void of intellectual abstraction. He put the whole life and the whole mind of his age into poetry. .e today are metaphysicals without our ,onne. #heoretically we are free to make poetry of everything in the universe' in practice we are kept within the old limits! for the simple reason that no great man has appeared to show us how we can use our freedom. A certain amount of the life of the twentieth century is to be found in our poetry! but precious little of its mind. .e have no poet today like that strange old ,ean of 4t. 7aul"s three hundred years ago = no poet who can skip from the heights of scholastic philosophy to the heights of carnal passion! from the contemplation of divinity to the contemplation of a flea! from the rapt examination of self to an enumeration of the most remote external facts of science! and make all! by his strangely passionate apprehension! into an intensely lyrical poetry. #he few poets who do try to make of contemporary ideas the substance of their poetry! do it in a manner which brings little conviction or satisfaction to the reader. #here is Mr. ?oyes! who is writing four volumes of verse about the human side of science = in his case! alas! all too human. #hen there is Mr. 1onrad Aiken. He perhaps is the most successful exponent in poetry of contemporary ideas. n his case! it is clear! "the remotest discoveries of the chemist" are apprehended with a certain passion' all his emotions are

tinged by his ideas. #he trouble with Mr. Aiken is that his emotions are apt to degenerate into a kind of intellectual sentimentality! which expresses itself only too easily in his prodigiously fluent! highly colored verse. &ne could lengthen the list of more or less interesting poets who have tried in recent times to extend the boundaries of their art. %ut one would not find among them a single poet of real importance! not one great or outstanding personality. #he twentieth century still awaits its +ucretius! awaits its own philosophical ,ante! its new 5oethe! its ,onne! even its up-to-date +aforgue. .ill they appear< &r are we to go on producing a poetry in which there is no more than the dimmest reflection of that busy and incessant intellectual life which is the characteristic and distinguishing mark of this age< :-rom 2n the +argin0

Tra7edy and t!e W!ole Tr(t! #here were six of them! the best and bravest of the hero"s companions. #urning back from his post in the bows! &dysseus was in time to see them lifted! struggling! into the air! to hear their screams! the desperate repetition of his own name. #he survivors could only look on! helplessly! while 4cylla "at the mouth of her cave devoured them! still screaming! still stretching out their hands to me in the frightful struggle." And &dysseus adds that it was the most dreadful and lamentable sight he ever saw in all his "explorings of the passes of the sea." .e can believe it' Homer"s brief description :the too poetical simile is a later interpolation; convinces us. +ater! the danger passed! &dysseus and his men went ashore for the night! and! on the 4icilian beach! prepared their supper = prepared it! says Homer! "expertly." #he #welfth %ook of the 2dyssey concludes with these words6 ".hen they had satisfied their thirst and hunger! they thought of their dear companions and wept! and in the midst of their tears sleep came gently upon them." #he truth! the whole truth and nothing but the truth = how rarely the older literatures ever told it3 %its of the truth! yes' every good book gives us bits of the truth! would not be a good book if it did not. %ut the whole truth! no. &f the great writers of the past incredibly few have given us that. Homer = the Homer of the 2dyssey = is one of those few. "#ruth<" you $uestion. "-or example! CUCYM< &r Gueen 8ictoria came to the throne in (LZQ< &r light travels at the rate of (LQ!DDD miles a second<" ?o! obviously! you won"t find much of that sort of thing in literature. #he "truth" of which was speaking /ust now is in fact no more than an acceptable verisimilitude. .hen the experiences recorded in a piece of literature correspond fairly closely with our own actual experiences! or with what may call our potential experiences = experiences! that is to say! which we feel :as the result of a more or less explicit process of inference from known facts; that we might have had = we say! inaccurately no doubt6 "#his piece of writing is true." %ut this! of course! is not the whole story. #he record of a case in a textbook of psychology is scientifically true! in so far as it is an accurate account of particular events. %ut it might also strike the reader as being "true" with regard to himself = that is to say! acceptable! probable! having a correspondence with his own actual or potential

experiences. %ut a text-book of psychology is not a work of art = or only secondarily and incidentally a work of art. Mere verisimilitude! mere correspondence of experience recorded by the writer with experience remembered or imaginable by the reader! is not enough to make a work of art seem "true." 5ood art possesses a kind of super-truth = is more probable! more acceptable! more convincing than fact itself. ?aturally' for the artist is endowed with a sensibility and a power of communication! a capacity to "put things across!" which events and the ma/ority of people to whom events happen! do not possess. Experience teaches only the teachable! who are by no means as numerous as Mrs. Micawber"s papa"s favorite proverb would lead us to suppose. Artists are eminently teachable and also eminently teachers. #hey receive from events much more than most men receive and they can transmit what they have received with a peculiar penetrative force! which drives their communication deep into the reader"s mind. &ne of our most ordinary reactions to a good piece of literary art is expressed in the formula6 "#his is what have always felt and thought! but have never been able to put clearly into words! even for myself." .e are now in a position to explain what we mean! when we say that Homer is a writer who tells the .hole #ruth. .e mean that the experiences he records correspond fairly closely with our own actual or potential experiences = and correspond with our experiences not on a single limited sector! but all along the line of our physical and spiritual being. And we also mean that Homer records these experiences with a penetrative artistic force that makes them seem peculiarly acceptable and convincing. 4o much! then! for truth in literature. Homer"s! repeat! is the .hole #ruth. 1onsider how almost any other of the great poets would have concluded the story of 4cylla"s attack on the passing ship. 4ix men! remember! have been taken and devoured before the eyes of their friends. n any other poem but the 2dyssey, what would the survivors have done< #hey would! of course! have wept! even as Homer made them weep. %ut would they previously have cooked their supper! and cooked it! what"s more! in a masterly fashion< .ould they previously have drunken and eaten to satiety< And after weeping! or actually while weeping! would they have dropped $uietly off to sleep< ?o! they most certainly would not have done any of these things. #hey would simply have wept! lamenting their own misfortune and the horrible fate of their companions! and the 1anto would have ended tragically on their tears. Homer! however! preferred to tell the .hole #ruth. He knew that even the most cruelly bereaved must eat' that hunger is stronger than sorrow and that its satisfaction takes precedence even of tears. He knew that experts continue to act expertly and to find satisfaction in their accomplishment! even when friends have /ust been eaten! even when the accomplishment is only cooking the supper. He knew that! when the belly is full :and only when the belly is full;! men can afford to grieve! and that sorrow after supper is almost a luxury. And finally he knew that! even as hunger takes precedence of grief! so fatigue! supervening! cuts short its career and drowns it in a sleep all the sweeter for bringing forgetfulness of bereavement. n a word! Homer refused to treat the theme tragically. He preferred to tell the .hole #ruth. Another author who preferred to tell the .hole #ruth was -ielding. Tom Jones is one of the very &dyssean books written in Europe between the time of Aeschylus and the present age' &dyssean! because never tragical' never = even when painful and disastrous! even when pathetic and beautiful things are happening. -or they do happen'

-ielding! like Homer! admits all the facts! shirks nothing. ndeed! it is precisely because these authors shirk nothing that their books are not tragical. -or among the things they don"t shirk are the irrelevancies which! in actual life! always temper the situations and characters that writers of tragedy insist on keeping chemically pure. 1onsider! for example! the case of 4ophy .estern! that most charming! most nearly perfect of young women. -ielding! it is obvious! adored her :she is said to have been created in the image of his first! much-loved wife;. %ut in spite of his adoration! he refused to turn her into one of those chemically pure and! as it were! focused beings who do not suffer in the world of tragedy. #hat innkeeper who lifted the weary 4ophia from her horse = what need had he to fall< n no tragedy would he :nay! could he; have collapsed beneath her weight. -or! to begin with! in the tragical context weight is an irrelevance' heroines should be above the law of gravitation. %ut that is not all' let the reader now remember what were the results of his fall. #umbling flat on his back! he pulled 4ophia down on top of him = his belly was a cushion! so that happily she came to no bodily harm = pulled her down head first. %ut head first is necessarily legs last' there was a momentary display of the most ravishing charms' the bumpkins at the inn door grinned and guffawed' poor 4ophia! when they picked her up! was blushing in an agony of embarrassment and wounded modesty. #here is nothing intrinsically improbable about this incident! which is stamped! indeed! with all the marks of literary truth. %ut however true! it is an incident which could never! never have happened to a heroine of tragedy. t would never have been allowed to happen. %ut -ielding refused to impose the tragedian"s veto' he shirked nothing = neither the intrusion of irrelevant absurdities into the midst of romance or disaster! nor any of life"s no less irrelevantly painful interruptions of the course of happiness. He did not want to be a tragedian. And! sure enough! that brief and pearly gleam of 4ophia"s charming posterior was sufficient to scare the Muse of #ragedy out of Tom Jones /ust as! more than five and twenty centuries before! the sight of stricken men first eating! then remembering to weep! then forgetting their tears in slumber had scared her out of the 2dyssey. n his )rinci les o, 'iterary Criticism Mr. . A. Eichards affirms that good tragedy is proof against irony and irrelevance = that it can absorb anything into itself and still remain tragedy. ndeed! he seems to make of this capacity to absorb the untragical and the anti-tragical a touchstone of tragic merit. #hus tried! practically all 5reek! all -rench and most Eli0abethan tragedies are found wanting. &nly the best of 4hakespeare can stand the test. 4o! at least! says Mr. Eichards. s he right< have often had my doubts. #he tragedies of 4hakespeare are veined! it is true! with irony and an often terrifying cynicism' but the cynicism is always heroic idealism turned neatly inside out! the irony is a kind of photographic negative of heroic romance. #urn #roilus"s white into black and all his blacks into white and you have #hersites. Eeversed! &thello and ,esdemona become ago. .hite &phelia"s negative is the irony of Hamlet! is the ingenuous bawdry of her own mad songs' /ust as the cynicism of mad Fing +ear is the black shadow-replica of 1ordelia. ?ow! the shadow! the photographic negative of a thing is in no sense irrelevant to it. 4hakespeare"s ironies and cynicisms serve to deepen his tragic world! but not to widen it. f they had widened it! as the Homeric irrelevancies widened out the universe of the 2dyssey = why! then! the world of 4hakespearean tragedy would automatically have ceased to exist. -or example! a scene showing the bereaved Macduff eating his supper! growing melancholy! over the whisky! with thoughts

of his murdered wife and children! and then! with lashes still wet! dropping off to sleep! would be true enough to life' but it would not be true to tragic art. #he introduction of such a scene would change the whole $uality of the play' treated in this &dyssean style! +ac!eth would cease to be a tragedy. &r take the case of ,esdemona. ago"s bestially cynical remarks about her character are in no sense! as we have seen! irrelevant to the tragedy. #hey present us with negative images of her real nature and of the feelings she has for &thello. #hese negative images are always hers, are always recogni0ably the property of the heroine-victim of a tragedy. .hereas! if! springing ashore at 1yprus! she had tumbled! as the no less ex$uisite 4ophia was to tumble! and revealed the inade$uacies of sixteenth-century underclothing! the play would no longer be the 2thello we know. ago might breed a family of little cynics and the existing dose of bitterness and savage negation be doubled and trebled' 2thello would still remain fundamentally 2thello. %ut a few -ieldinges$ue irrelevancies would destroy it = destroy it! that is to say! as a tragedy' for there would be nothing to prevent it from becoming a magnificent drama of some other kind. -or the fact is that tragedy and what have called the .hole #ruth are not compatible' where one is! the other is not. #here are certain things which even the best! even 4hakespearean tragedy! cannot absorb into itself. #o make a tragedy the artist must isolate a single element out of the totality of human experience and use that exclusively as his material. #ragedy is something that is separated from the .hole #ruth! distilled from it! so to speak! as an essence is distilled from the living flower. #ragedy is chemically pure. Hence its power to act $uickly and intensely on our feelings. All chemically pure art has this power to act upon us $uickly and intensely. #hus! chemically pure pornography :on the rare occasions when it happens to be written convincingly! by some one who has the gift of "putting things across"; is a $uick-acting emotional drug of incomparably greater power than the .hole #ruth about sensuality! or even :for many people; than the tangible and carnal reality itself. t is because of its chemical purity that tragedy so effectively performs its function of catharsis. t refines and corrects and gives a style to our emotional life! and does so swiftly! with power. %rought into contact with tragedy! the elements of our being fall! for the moment at any rate! into an ordered and beautiful pattern! as the iron filings arrange themselves under the influence of the magnet. #hrough all its individual variations! this pattern is always fundamentally of the same kind. -rom the reading or the hearing of a tragedy we rise with the feeling that
ur friends are exultations, a!onies, "nd love, and man#s uncon$uerable mind%

with the heroic conviction that we too would be uncon$uerable if sub/ected to the agonies! that in the midst of the agonies we too should continue to love! might even learn to exult. t is because it does these things to us that tragedy is felt to be so valuable. .hat are the values of .holly-#ruthful art< .hat does it do to us that seems worth doing< +et us try to discover. .holly-#ruthful art overflows the limits of tragedy and shows us! if only by hints and implications! what happened before the tragic story began! what will happen after it is over! what is happening simultaneously elsewhere :and "elsewhere" includes all those parts of the minds and bodies of the protagonists not immediately engaged in the tragic struggle;. #ragedy is an arbitrarily isolated eddy on the surface of a vast river that flows

on ma/estically! irresistibly! around! beneath! and to either side of it. .holly-#ruthful art contrives to imply the existence of the entire river as well as of the eddy. t is $uite different from tragedy! even though it may contain! among other constituents! all the elements from which tragedy is made. :#he "same thing" placed in different contexts! loses its identity and becomes! for the perceiving mind! a succession of different things.; n .holly-#ruthful art the agonies may be /ust as real! love and the uncon$uerable mind /ust as admirable! /ust as important! as in tragedy. #hus! 4cylla"s victims suffer as painfully as the monster-devoured Hippolytus in )h;dre4 the mental anguish of #om >ones when he thinks he has lost his 4ophia! and lost her by his own fault! is hardly less than that of &thello after ,esdemona"s murder. :#he fact that -ielding"s power of "putting things across" is by no means e$ual to 4hakespeare"s! is! of course! merely an accident.; %ut the agonies and indomitabilities are placed by the .holly-#ruthful writer in another! wider context! with the result that they cease to be the same as the intrinsically identical agonies and indomitabilities of tragedy. 1onse$uently! .holly-#ruthful art produces in us an effect $uite different from that produced by tragedy. &ur mood! when we have read a .holly-#ruthful book! is never one of heroic exultation' it is one of resignation! of acceptance. :Acceptance can also be heroic.; %eing chemically impure! .holly-#ruthful literature cannot move us as $uickly and intensely as tragedy or any other kind of chemically pure art. %ut believe that its effects are more lasting. #he exultations that follow the reading or hearing of a tragedy are in the nature of temporary inebriations. &ur being cannot long hold the pattern imposed by tragedy. Eemove the magnet and the filings tend to fall back into confusion. %ut the pattern of acceptance and resignation imposed upon us by .holly-#ruthful literature! though perhaps less unexpectedly beautiful in design! is :for that very reason perhaps; more stable. #he catharsis of tragedy is violent and apocalyptic' but the milder catharsis of .holly-#ruthful literature is lasting. n recent times literature has become more and more acutely conscious of the .hole #ruth = of the great oceans of irrelevant things! events and thoughts stretching endlessly away in every direction from whatever island point :a character! a story; the author may choose to contemplate. #o impose the kind of arbitrary limitations! which must be imposed by any one who wants to write a tragedy! has become more and more difficult = is now indeed! for those who are at all sensitive to contemporaneity! almost impossible. #his does not mean! of course! that the modern writer must confine himself to a merely naturalistic manner. &ne can imply the existence of the .hole #ruth without laboriously cataloguing every ob/ect within sight. A book can be written in terms of pure phantasy and yet! by implication! tell the .hole #ruth. &f all the important works of contemporary literature not one is a pure tragedy. #here is no contemporary writer of significance who does not prefer to state or imply the .hole #ruth. However different one from another in style! in ethical! philosophical and artistic intention! in the scales of values accepted! contemporary writers have this in common! that they are interested in the .hole #ruth. 7roust! ,. H. +awrence! Andr9 5ide! Fafka! Hemingway = here are five obviously significant and important contemporary writers. -ive authors as remarkably unlike one another as they could well be. #hey are at one only in this6 that none of them has written a pure tragedy! that all are concerned with the .hole #ruth. have sometimes wondered whether tragedy! as a form of art! may not be doomed. %ut the fact that we are still profoundly moved by the tragic masterpieces of the past = that we

can be moved! against our better /udgment! even by the bad tragedies of the contemporary stage and film = makes me think that the day of chemically pure art is not over. #ragedy happens to be passing through a period of eclipse! because all the significant writers of our age are too busy exploring the newly discovered! or rediscovered! world of the .hole #ruth to be able to pay any attention to it. %ut there is no good reason to believe that this state of things will last for ever. #ragedy is too valuable to be allowed to die. #here is no reason! after all! why the two kinds of literature = the 1hemically mpure and the 1hemically 7ure! the literature of the .hole #ruth and the literature of 7artial #ruth = should not exist simultaneously! each in its separate sphere. #he human spirit has need of both. :-rom +usic at &ight0

V(l7ar"ty "n %"terat(re 8ulgarity in literature must be distinguished from the vulgarity inherent in the profession of letters. Every man is born with his share of &riginal 4in! to which every writer adds a pinch of &riginal 8ulgarity. ?ecessarily and $uite inevitably. -or exhibitionism is always vulgar! even if what you exhibit is the most ex$uisitely refined of souls. 4ome writers are more s$ueamishly conscious than others of the essential vulgarity of their trade = so much so! that! like -laubert! they have found it hard to commit that initial offense against good breeding6 the putting of pen to paper. t is /ust possible! of course! that the greatest writers have never written' that the world is full of Monsieur #estes and mute inglorious Miltons! too delicate to come before the public. should like to believe it' but find it hard. Aour great writer is possessed by a devil! over which he has very little control. f the devil wants to come out :and! in practice! devils always do want to come out;! it will do so! however loud the protests of the aristocratic consciousness! with which it uneasily cohabits. #he profession of literature may be "fatally marred by a secret absurdity"' the devil simply doesn"t care. (cri!o #uia a!surdum. #o be pale! to have no appetite! to swoon at the slightest provocation = these! not so long ago! were the signs of maidenly good breeding. n other words! when a girl was marked with the stigmata of anemia and chronic constipation! you knew she was a lady. 8irtues are generally fashioned :more or less elegantly! according to the skill of the moral couturier; out of necessities. Eich girls had no need to work' the aristocratic tradition discouraged them from voluntarily working' and the 1hristian tradition discouraged them from compromising their maiden modesty by taking anything like violent exercise. 5ood carriage-roads and! finally! railways spared them the healthy fatigues of riding. #he virtues of -resh Air had not yet been discovered and the ,raft was still the commonest! as it was almost the most dangerous! manifestation of the ,iabolic 7rinciple. More perverse than 1hinese foot-s$uee0ers! the topiarists of European fashion had decreed that

the elegant should have all her viscera constricted and displaced by tight lacing. n a word! the rich girl lived a life scientifically calculated to make her unhealthy. A virtue was made of humiliating necessity! and the pale ethereal swooner of romantic literature remained for years the type and mirror of refined young womanhood. 4omething of the same kind happens from time to time in the realm of literature. Moments come when too conspicuous a show of vigor! too frank an interest in common things are signs of literary vulgarity. #o be really lady-like! the Muses! like their mortal sisters! must be anemic and constipated. &n the more sensitive writers of certain epochs circumstances impose an artistic wasting away! a literary consumption. #his distressing fatality is at once transformed into a virtue! which it becomes a duty for all to cultivate. "<ivre: &os valets le ,eront our nous." -or! oh! the vulgarity of it3 #he vulgarity of this having to walk and talk' to open and close the eyes' to think and drink and every day! yes! every day! to eat! eat and excrete. And then this having to pursue the female of one"s species! or the male! whichever the case may be' this having to cerebrate! to calculate! to copulate! to propagate. . . ?o! no = too gross! too stupidly low. 4uch things! as 8illiers de l" sle-Adam says! are all very well for footmen. %ut for a descendant of how many generations of #emplars! of Fnights of Ehodes and of Malta! Fnights of the 5arter and the Holy 5host and all the variously colored Eagles = obviously! it was out of the $uestion' it simply wasn"t done. <ivre: &os valets le ,eront our nous. At the same point! but on another plane! of the great spiral of history! 7rince 5otama! more than two thousand years before! had also discovered the vulgarity of living. #he sight of a corpse rotting by the roadside had set him thinking. t was his first introduction to death. ?ow! a corpse! poor thing! is an untouchable and the process of decay is! of all pieces of bad manners! the vulgarest imaginable. -or a corpse is! by definition! a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre. Even your sweeper knows better. %ut in every greatest king! in every loveliest flowery princess! in every poet most refined! every best dressed dandy! every holiest and most spiritual teacher! there lurks! waiting! waiting for the moment to emerge! an outcaste of the outcastes! a dung carrier! a dog! lower than the lowest! bottomlessly vulgar. .hat with making their way and en/oying what they have won! heroes have no time to think. %ut the sons of heroes = ah! they have all the necessary leisure. #he future %uddha belonged to the generation which has time. He saw the corpse! he smelt it vulgarly stinking! he thought. #he echoes of his meditations still reverberate! rich with an accumulated wealth of harmonics! like the memory of the organ"s final chord pulsing back and forth under the vaulting of a cathedral. ?o less than that of war or statecraft! the history of economics has its heroic ages. Economically! the nineteenth century was the e$uivalent of those brave times about which we read in %eowulf and the liad. ts heroes struggled! con$uered or were con$uered! and had no time to think. ts bards! the Eomantics! sang rapturously! not of the heroes! but of higher things :for they were Homers who detested Achilles;! sang with all the vehemence which one of the contemporary heroes would have put into grinding the faces of the poor. t was only in the second and third generation that men began to have leisure and the necessary detachment to find the whole business = economic heroism and romantic bardism = rather vulgar. 8illiers! like 5otama! was one who had time. #hat he was the descendant of all those #emplars and Fnights of this and that was! to a great extent! irrelevant. #he significant fact was this6 he was! or at any rate

chronologically might have been! the son and grandson of economic heroes and romantic bards = a man of the decadence. 4ons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers' and! wish or no wish! it was difficult for a sensitive man to see and smell the already putrefying corpse of industrial civili0ation and not be shocked by it into distressful thought. 8illiers was duly shocked' and he expressed his shockedness in terms of an aristocratic disdain that was almost %rahminical in its intensity. %ut his feudal terminology was hardly more than an accident. %orn without any of 8illiers" perhaps legendary advantages of breeding! other sensitives of the same postheroic generation were /ust as profoundly shocked. #he scion of #emplars had a more striking vocabulary than the others = that was all. -or the most self-conscious and intelligent artists of the last decades of the nineteenth century! too frank an acceptance of the obvious actualities of life! too hearty a manner and :to put it grossly; too many "guts" were rather vulgar. <ivre: &os valets le ,eront our nous. : ncidentally! the suicide rate took a sharp upward turn during the "sixties. n some countries it is nearly five times what it was seventy years ago.; Hola was the master footman of the age. #hat vulgar interest in actual life3 And all those guts of his = was the man preparing to set up as a tripe-dresser< A few aging ninetyites survive' a few young neo-ninetyites! who /udge of art and all other human activities in terms of the Amusing and the #iresome! play kittenishly around with their wax flowers and stuffed owls and Early 8ictorian bead-work. %ut! old and young! they are insignificant. 5uts and an acceptance of the actual are no longer vulgar. .hy not< .hat has happened< #hree things6 the usual reaction of sons against fathers! another industrial revolution and a rediscovery of mystery. .e have entered :indeed! we have perhaps already passed through; a second heroic age of economics. ts Homers! it is true! are almost without exception skeptical! ironic! denunciatory. %ut this skepticism! this irony! this denunciation are as lively and vehement as that which is doubted and denounced. %abbitt infects even his detractors with some of his bouncing vitality. #he Eomantics! in the same way! possessed an energy proportionate to that of their enemies! the economic heroes who were creating modern industrialism. +ife begets life! even in opposition to itself. <ivre: &os valets le ,eront our nous. %ut the physicists and psychologists have revealed the universe as a place! in spite of everything! so fantastically $ueer! that to hand it over to be en/oyed by footmen would be a piece of gratuitous humanitarianism. 4ervants must not be spoiled. #he most refined spirits need not be ashamed in taking a hearty interest in the rediscovered mystery of the actual world. #rue! it is a sinister as well as a fascinating and mysterious world. And what a mess! with all our good intentions! we have made and are busily making of our particular corner of it3 #he same old industrial corpse = to some extent disinfected and galvanically stimulated at the moment into a twitching semblance of healthy life = still rots by the wayside! as it rotted in 8illiers" time. And as for 5otama"s carrion = that of course is always with us. #here are! as ever! excellent reasons for personal despair' while the reasons for despairing about society are actually a good deal more cogent than at most times. A Mallarm9an shrinking away into pure poetry! a delicate Henry->amesian avoidance of all the painful issues would seem to be /ustified. %ut the spirit of the time = the industrially heroic time in which we live = is opposed to these retirements! these handings over of life to footmen. t demands that we should "press with strenuous tongue against our palate" not only /oy"s grape! but every ,ead 4ea fruit. Even dust and ashes must be relished with gusto. #hus!

modern American fiction! like the modern American fact which it so accurately renders! is ample and lively. And yet! ",ust and ashes! dust and ashes" is the fundamental theme and final moral of practically every modern American novel of any distinction. High spirits and a heroic vitality are put into the expression of despair. #he hopelessness is almost Eabelaisian. t was vulgar at the beginning of the nineteenth century to mention the word "handkerchief" on the -rench tragic stage. An arbitrary convention had decreed that tragic personages must inhabit a world! in which noses exist only to distinguish the noble Eomans from the 5reeks and Hebrews! never to be blown. Arbitrary conventions of one sort or another are essential to art. %ut as the sort of convention constantly varies! so does the corresponding vulgarity. .e are back among the relativities. n the case of the handkerchief we have a particular and rather absurd application of a very widely accepted artistic convention. #his convention is /ustified by the ancient metaphysical doctrine! which distinguishes in the universe two principles! mind and matter! and which attributes to mind an immeasurable superiority. n the name of this principle many religions have demanded the sacrifice of the body' their devotees have responded by mortifying the flesh and! in extreme cases! by committing self-castration and even suicide. +iterature has its Manichaeans as well as religion6 men who on principle would exile the body and its functions from the world of their art! who condemn as vulgar all too particular and detailed accounts of physical actuality! as vulgar any attempt to relate mental or spiritual events to happenings in the body. #he inhabitants of their universe are not human beings! but the tragical heroes and heroines who never blow their noses. Artistically! the abolition of handkerchiefs and all that handkerchiefs directly or indirectly stand for has certain advantages. #he handkerchiefless world of pure mind and spirit is! for an adult! the nearest approach to that infinitely comfortable -reudian womb! toward which! as toward a lost paradise! we are always nostalgically yearning. n the handkerchiefless mental world we are at liberty to work things out to their logical conclusions! we can guarantee the triumph of /ustice! we can control the weather and :in the words of those yearning popular songs which are the national anthems of .ombland; make our ,reams come #rue by living under 4kies of %lue with Aou. ?ature in the mental world is not that collection of tiresomely opa$ue and recalcitrant ob/ects! so bewildering to the man of science! so malignantly hostile to the man of action' it is the luminously rational substance of a Hegelian nature-philosophy! a symbolic manifestation of the principles of dialectic. Artistically! such a ?ature is much more satisfactory :because so much more easy to deal with; than the $ueer! rather sinister and finally $uite incomprehensible monster! by which! when we venture out of our ivory towers! we are instantly swallowed. And man! than whom! as 4ophocles long since remarked! nothing is more monstrous! more marvelous! more terrifyingly strange :it is hard to find a single word to render his deinoteron0 = man! too! is a very unsatisfactory sub/ect for literature. -or this creature of inconsistencies can live on too many planes of existence. He is the inhabitant of a kind of psychological .oolworth %uilding' you never know = he never knows himself = which floor he"ll step out at tomorrow! nor even whether! a minute from now! he won"t take it into his head to /ump into the elevator and shoot up a do0en or

down perhaps twenty stories into some totally different mode of being. #he effect of the Manichaean condemnation of the body is at once to reduce this impossible skyscraper to less than half its original height. 1onfined henceforward to the mental floors of his being! man becomes an almost easily manageable sub/ect for the writer. n the -rench tragedies :the most completely Manichaean works of art ever created; lust itself has ceased to be corporeal and takes its place among the other abstract symbols! with which the authors write their strange algebraical e$uations of passion and conflict. #he beauty of algebraical symbols lies in their universality' they stand not for one particular case! but for all cases. Manichaeans! the classical writers confined themselves exclusively to the study of man as a creature of pure reason and discarnate passions. ?ow the body particulari0es and separates! the mind unites. %y the very act of imposing limitations the classicists were enabled to achieve a certain universality of statement impossible to those who attempt to reproduce the particularities and incompletenesses of actual corporeal life. %ut what they gained in universality! they lost in vivacity and immediate truth. Aou cannot get something for nothing. 4ome people think that universality can be paid for too highly. #o enforce their ascetic code the classicists had to devise a system of critical sanctions. 1hief among these was the stigma of vulgarity attached to all those who insisted too minutely on the physical side of man"s existence. 4peak of handkerchiefs in a tragedy< #he solecism was as monstrous as picking teeth with a fork. At a dinner party in 7aris not long ago found myself sitting next to a -rench 7rofessor of English! who assured me in the course of an otherwise very agreeable conversation that was a leading member of the ?eo-1lassic school and that it was as a leading member of the ?eo-1lassic school that was lectured about to the advanced students of contemporary English literature under his tutelage. #he news depressed me. 1lassified! like a museum specimen! and lectured about! felt most dismally posthumous. %ut that was not all. #he thought that was a ?eo-1lassic preyed upon my mind = a ?eo-1lassic without knowing it! a ?eo-1lassic against all my desires and intentions. -or have never had the smallest ambition to be a 1lassic of any kind! whether ?eo! 7alaeo! 7roto or Eo. ?ot at any price. -or! to begin with! have a taste for the lively! the mixed and the incomplete in art! preferring it to the universal and the chemically pure. n the second place! regard the classical discipline! with its insistence on elimination! concentration! simplification! as being! for all the formal difficulties it imposes on the writer! essentially an escape from! a getting out of! the greatest difficulty = which is to render ade$uately! in terms of literature! that infinitely complex and mysterious thing! actual reality. #he world of mind is a comfortable .ombland! a place to which we flee from the bewildering $ueerness and multiplicity of the actual world. Matter is incomparably subtler and more intricate than mind. &r! to put it a little more philosophically! the consciousness of events which we have immediately! through our senses and intuitions and feelings! is incomparably subtler than any idea we can subse$uently form of that immediate consciousness. &ur most refined theories! our most elaborate descriptions are but crude and barbarous simplifications of a reality that is! in every smallest sample! infinitely complex. ?ow! simplifications must! of course! be made' if they were not! it would be $uite impossible to deal artistically :or! for that matter! scientifically; with reality at all. .hat is the smallest amount of simplification compatible with comprehensibility! compatible with the expression of a humanly

significant meaning< t is the business of the non-classical naturalistic writer to discover. His ambition is to render! in literary terms! the $uality of immediate experience = in other words! to express the finally inexpressible. #o come anywhere near achieving this impossibility is much more difficult! it seems to me! than! by eliminating and simplifying! to achieve the perfectly reali0able classical ideal. #he cutting out of all the complex particularities of a situation :which means! as we have seen! the cutting out of all that is corporeal in it; strikes me as mere artistic shirking. %ut disapprove of the shirking of artistic difficulties. #herefore find myself disapproving of classicism. +iterature is also philosophy! is also science. n terms of beauty it enunciates truths. #he beauty-truths of the best classical works possess! as we have seen! a certain algebraic universality of significance. ?aturalistic works contain the more detailed beauty-truths of particular observation. #hese beauty-truths of art are truly scientific. All that modern psychologists! for example! have done is to systemati0e and de-beautify the vast treasures of knowledge about the human soul contained in novel! play! poem and essay. .riters like %lake and 4hakespeare! like 4tendhal and ,ostoevsky! still have plenty to teach the modern scientific professional. #here is a rich scientific harvest to be reaped in the works even of minor writers. %y nature a natural historian! am ambitious to add my $uota to the sum of particulari0ed beauty-truths about man and his relations with the world about him. : ncidentally! this world of relationships! this borderland between "sub/ective" and "ob/ective" is one which literature is peculiarly! perhaps uni$uely! well fitted to explore.; do not want to be a 1lassical! or even a ?eo-1lassical! eliminator and generali0er. #his means! among other things! that cannot accept the 1lassicists" excommunication of the body. think it not only permissible! but necessary! that literature should take cogni0ance of physiology and should investigate the still obscure relations between the mind and its body. #rue! many people find the reports of such investigations! when not concealed in scientific textbooks and couched in the decent obscurity of a 5raeco-+atin /argon! extremely and inexcusably vulgar' and many more find them downright wicked. myself have fre$uently been accused! by reviewers in public and by unprofessional readers in private correspondence! both of vulgarity and of wickedness = on the grounds! so far as have ever been able to discover! that reported my investigations into certain phenomena in plain English and in a novel. #he fact that many people should be shocked by what he writes practically imposes it as a duty upon the writer to go on shocking them. -or those who are shocked by truth are not only stupid! but morally reprehensible as well' the stupid should be educated! the wicked punished and reformed. All these praiseworthy ends can be attained by a course of shocking' retributive pain will be inflicted on the truth-haters by the first shocking truths! whose repetition will gradually build up in those who read them an immunity to pain and will end by reforming and educating the stupid criminals out of their truth-hating. -or a familiar truth ceases to shock. #o render it familiar is therefore a duty. t is also a pleasure. -or! as %audelaire says! "ce #u'il y a d'enivrant dans le mauvais goBt, c'est le laisir aristocrati#ue de d laire." 8 #he aristocratic pleasure of displeasing is not the only delight that bad taste can yield. &ne can love a certain kind of vulgarity for its own sake. #o overstep artistic restraints! to protest too much for the fun of baro$uely protesting = such offenses against

good taste are intoxicatingly delightful to commit! not because they displease other people :for to the great ma/ority they are rather pleasing than otherwise;! but because they are intrinsically vulgar! because the good taste against which they offend is as nearly as possible an absolute good taste' they are artistic offenses that have the exciting $uality of the sin against the Holy 5host. t was -laubert! think! who described how he was tempted! as he wrote! by swarms of gaudy images and how! a new 4t. Antony! he s$uashed them ruthlessly! like lice! against the bare wall of his study. He was resolved that his work should be adorned only with its own intrinsic beauty and with no extraneous /ewels! however lovely in themselves. #he saintliness of this ascetic of letters was duly rewarded' there is nothing in all -laubert"s writings that remotely resembles a vulgarity. #hose who follow his religion must pray for the strength to imitate their saint. #he strength is seldom vouchsafed. #he temptations which -laubert put aside are! by any man of lively fancy and active intellect! incredibly difficult to be resisted. An image presents itself! glittering! iridescent' capture it! pin it down! however irrelevantly too brilliant for its context. A phrase! a situation suggests a whole train of striking or amusing ideas that fly off at a tangent! so to speak! from the round world on which the creator is at work' what an opportunity for saying something witty or profound3 #rue! the ornament will be in the nature of a florid excrescence on the total work' but never mind. n goes the tangent = or rather! out into artistic irrelevancy. And in goes the effective phrase that is too effective! too highly colored for what it is to express' in goes the too emphatic irony! the too tragical scene! the too pathetic tirade! the too poetical description. f we succumb to all these delightful temptations! if we make welcome all these gaudy lice instead of s$uashing them at their first appearance! our work will soon glitter like a 4outh American parvenu! da00ling with parasitic ornament! and vulgar. -or a self-conscious artist! there is a most extraordinary pleasure in knowing exactly what the results of showing off and protesting too much must be and then :in spite of this knowledge! or because of it; proceeding! deliberately and with all the skill at his command! to commit precisely those vulgarities! against which his conscience warns him and which he knows he will afterwards regret. #o the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing other people! the conscious offender against good taste can add the still more aristocratic pleasure of displeasing himself. . . 8 t is vulgar! in literature! to make a display of emotions which you do not naturally have! but think you ought to have! because all the best people do have them. t is also vulgar :and this is the more common case; to have emotions! but to express them so badly! with so many too many protestings! that you seem to have no natural feelings! but to be merely fabricating emotions by a process of literary forgery. 4incerity in art! as have pointed out elsewhere! is mainly a matter of talent. Feats"s love letters ring true! because he had great literary gifts. Most men and women are capable of feeling passion! but not of expressing it' their love letters :as we learn from the specimens read aloud at in$uests and murder trials! in the divorce court! during breach of promise cases; are either tritely flat or tritely bombastic. n either case manifestly insincere! and in the second case also vulgar = for to protest too much is always vulgar! when the protestations are so incompetent as not to carry conviction. And perhaps such excessive protestations can

never be convincing! however accomplished the protester. ,"Annun0io! for example = nobody could do a /ob of writing better than ,"Annun0io. %ut when! as is too often the case! he makes much ado about nothing! we find it hard to be convinced either of the importance of the nothing! or of the sincerity of the author"s emotion about it = and this in spite of the incomparable splendor of ,"Annun0io"s much ado. #rue! excessive pretestings may convince a certain public at a certain time. %ut when the circumstances! which rendered the public sensitive to the force and blind to the vulgarity of the too much protesting! have changed! the protests cease to convince. Macken0ie"s +an o, Ceeling, for example! protests its author"s sensibility with an extravagance that seems now! not merely vulgar! but positively ludicrous. At the time of its publication sentimentality was! for various reasons! extremely fashionable. 1ircumstances changed and The +an o, Ceeling revealed itself as vulgar to the point of ridiculousness' and vulgar and ridiculous it has remained ever since and doubtless will remain. . . #he case of ,ickens is a strange one. #he really monstrous emotional vulgarity! of which he is guilty now and then in all his books and almost continuously in The 2ld Curiosity (ho , is not the emotional vulgarity of one who stimulates feelings which he does not have. t is evident! on the contrary! that ,ickens felt most poignantly for and with his +ittle ?ell' that he wept over her sufferings! piously revered her goodness and exulted in her /oys. He had an overflowing heart' but the trouble was that it overflowed with such curious and even rather repellent secretions. #he creator of the later 7ickwick and the 1heeryble %rothers! of #im +inkinwater the bachelor and Mr. 5arland and so many other gruesome old 7eter 7ans was obviously a little abnormal in his emotional reactions. #here was something rather wrong with a man who could take this lachrymose and tremulous pleasure in adult infantility. He would doubtless have /ustified his rather frightful emotional taste by a reference to the ?ew #estament. %ut the child-like $ualities of character commended by >esus are certainly not the same as those which distinguish the old infants in ,ickens"s novels. #here is all the difference in the world between infants and children. nfants are stupid and unaware and subhuman. 1hildren are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor! for their curiosity! their intolerance of shams! the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. -rom all accounts >esus must have been childlike! not at all infantile. A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested' on the contrary! he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention. An infantile man is one who has not developed at all! or who has regressed toward the womb! into a comfortable unawareness. 4o far from being attractive and commendable! an infantile man is really a most repulsive! because a truly monstrous and misshapen! being. A writer who can tearfully adore these stout or cadaverous old babies! snugly ensconced in their mental and economic womb-substitutes and sucking! between false teeth! their thumbs! must have something seriously amiss with his emotional constitution. &ne of ,ickens"s most striking peculiarities is that! whenever in his writing he becomes emotional! he ceases instantly to use his intelligence. #he overflowing of his heart drowns his head and even dims his eyes' for! whenever he is in the melting mood! ,ickens ceases to be able and probably ceases even to wish to see reality. His one and only desire on these occasions is /ust to overflow! nothing else. .hich he does! with a vengeance and in an atrocious blank verse that is meant to be poetical prose and succeeds

only in being the worst kind of fustian. ".hen ,eath strikes down the innocent and young! from every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free! a hundred virtues rise! in shapes of mercy! charity and love! to walk the world and bless it. &f every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves! some good is born! some gentler nature comes. n the ,estroyer"s steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power! and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven." And so on! a stanchless flux. Mentally drowned and blinded by the sticky overflowings of his heart! ,ickens was incapable! when moved! of re-creating! in terms of art! the reality which had moved him! was even! it would seem! unable to perceive that reality. +ittle ?elly"s sufferings and death distressed him as! in real life! they would distress any normally constituted man' for the suffering and death of children raise the problem of evil in its most unanswerable form. t was ,ickens"s business as a writer to recreate in terms of his art this distressing reality. He failed. #he history of +ittle ?ell is distressing indeed! but not as ,ickens presumably meant it to be distressing' it is distressing in its ineptitude and vulgar sentimentality. A child! lusha! suffers and dies in ,ostoevsky"s *rothers @arama7ov. .hy is this history so agoni0ingly moving! when the tale of +ittle ?ell leaves us not merely cold! but derisive< 1omparing the two stories! we are instantly struck by the incomparably greater richness in factual detail of ,ostoevsky"s creation. -eeling did not prevent him from seeing and recording! or rather re-creating. All that happened round lusha"s deathbed he saw! unerringly. #he emotion-blinded ,ickens noticed practically nothing of what went on in +ittle ?elly"s neighborhood during the child"s last days. .e are almost forced! indeed! to believe that he didn"t want to see anything. He wanted to be unaware himself and he wanted his readers to be unaware of everything except +ittle ?ell"s sufferings on the one hand and her goodness and innocence on the other. %ut goodness and innocence and the undeservedness of suffering and even! to some extent! suffering itself are only significant in relation to the actual realities of human life. solated! they cease to mean anything! perhaps to exist. Even the classical writers surrounded their abstract and algebraical personages with at least the abstract and algebraical implication of the human realities! in relation to which virtues and vices are significant. #hanks to ,ickens"s pathologically deliberate unawareness! ?ell"s virtues are marooned! as it were! in the midst of a boundless waste of unreality' isolated! they fade and die. Even her sufferings and death lack significance because of this isolation. ,ickens"s unawareness was the death of death itself. @nawareness! according to the ethics of %uddhism! is one of the deadly sins. #he stupid are wicked. : ncidentally! the cleverest men can! sometimes and in certain circumstances! reveal themselves as profoundly = criminally = stupid. Aou can be an acute logician and at the same time an emotional cretin.; ,amned in the realm of conduct! the unaware are also damned aesthetically. #heir art is bad' instead of creating! they murder. Art! as have said! is also philosophy! is also science. &ther things being e$ual! the work of art which in its own way "says" more about the universe will be better than the work of art which says less. :#he "other things" which have to be e$ual are the forms of beauty! in terms of which the artist must express his philosophic and scientific truths.; .hy is The $osary a less admirable novel than The *rothers @arama7ov: %ecause the amount of experience of all kinds understood! "felt into!" as the 5ermans would say! and

artistically recreated by Mrs. %arclay is small in comparison with that which ,ostoevsky feelingly comprehended and knew so consummately well how to re-create in terms of the novelist"s art. ,ostoevsky covers all Mrs. %arclay"s ground and a vast area beside. #he pathetic parts of The 2ld Curiosity (ho are as poor in understood and artistically recreated experience as The $osary = indeed! think they are ever poorer. At the same time they are vulgar :which The $osary, that genuine masterpiece of the servants" hall! is not;. #hey are vulgar! because their poverty is a pretentious poverty! because their disease :for the $uality of ,ickens"s sentimentality is truly pathological; professes to be the most radiant health' because they protest their unintelligence! their lack of understanding with a vehemence of florid utterance that is not only shocking! but ludicrous. :-rom "8ulgarity in +iterature!" +usic at &ight0

$8 -8 %a rence t is impossible to write about +awrence except as an artist. He was an artist first of all! and the fact of his being an artist explains a life which seems! if you forget it! inexplicably strange. n (on o, -oman, Mr. Middleton Murry has written at great length about +awrence = but about a +awrence whom you would never suspect! from reading that curious essay in destructive hagiography! of being an artist. -or Mr. Murry almost completely ignores the fact that his sub/ect = his victim! had almost said = was one whom "the fates had stigmati0ed "writer"." His book is Hamlet without the 7rince of ,enmark = for all its metaphysical subtleties and its -reudian ingenuities! very largely irrelevant. #he absurdity of his critical method becomes the more manifest when we reflect that nobody would ever have heard of a +awrence who was not an artist. An artist is the sort of artist he is! because he happens to possess certain gifts. And he leads the sort of life he does in fact lead! because he is an artist! and an artist with a particular kind of mental endowment. ?ow there are general abilities and there are special talents. A man who is born with a great share of some special talent is probably less deeply affected by nurture than one whose ability is generali0ed. His gift is his fate! and he follows a predestined course! from which no ordinary power can deflect him. n spite of Helvetius and ,r. .atson! it seems pretty obvious that no amount of education = including under that term everything from the &edipus complex to the English 7ublic 4chool system = could have prevented Mo0art from being a musician! or musicianship from being the central fact in Mo0art"s life. And how would a different education have modified the expression of! say! %lake"s gift< t is! of course! impossible to answer. &ne can only express the unverifiable conviction that an art so profoundly individual and original! so manifestly "inspired!" would have remained fundamentally the same whatever :within reasonable limits; had been the circumstances of %lake"s upbringing. +awrence! as Mr. -. E. +eavis insists! has many affinities with %lake. "He had the same gift of knowing what he was interested in! the same power of distinguishing his own feelings and emotions from conventional sentiment! the same "terrifying honesty." " +ike %lake! like any man possessed of great special talents! he was predestined by his gifts. Explanations of him in terms of a -reudian hypothesis of nurture may be interesting! but they do not explain. #hat +awrence was profoundly affected by his love for his mother

and by her excessive love for him! is obvious to anyone who has read (ons and 'overs. ?one the less it is! to me at any rate! almost e$ually obvious that even if his mother had died when he was a child! +awrence would still have been! essentially and fundamentally! +awrence. +awrence"s biography does not account for +awrence"s achievement. &n the contrary! his achievement! or rather the gift that made the achievement possible! accounts for a great deal of his biography. He lived as he lived! because he was! intrinsically and from birth! what he was. f we would write intelligibly of +awrence! we must answer! with all their implications! two $uestions6 first! what sort of gifts did he have< and secondly! how did the possession of these gifts affect the way he responded to experience< +awrence"s special and characteristic gift was an extraordinary sensitiveness to what .ordsworth called "unknown modes of being." He was always intensely aware of the mystery of the world! and the mystery was always for him a numen, divine. +awrence could never forget! as most of us almost continuously forget! the dark presence of the otherness that lies beyond the boundaries of man"s conscious mind. #his special sensibility was accompanied by a prodigious power of rendering the immediately experienced otherness in terms of literary art. 4uch was +awrence"s peculiar gift. His possession of it accounts for many things. t accounts! to begin with! for his attitude toward sex. His particular experiences as a son and as a lover may have intensified his preoccupation with the sub/ect' but they certainly did not make it. .hatever his experiences! +awrence must have been preoccupied with sex' his gift made it inevitable. -or +awrence! the significance of the sexual experience was this6 that! in it! the immediate! non-mental knowledge of divine otherness is brought! so to speak! to a focus = a focus of darkness. 7arodying Matthew Arnold"s famous formula! we may say that sex is something not ourselves that makes for = not righteousness! for the essence of religion is not righteousness' there is a spiritual world! as Fierkegaard insists! beyond the ethical = rather! that makes for life! for divineness! for union with the mystery. 7aradoxically! this something not ourselves is yet a something lodged within us' this $uintessence of otherness is yet the $uintessence of our proper being. "And 5od the -ather! the nscrutable! the @nknowable! we know in the flesh! in .oman. 4he is the door for our in-going and our out-coming. n her we go back to the -ather' but like the witnesses of the transfiguration! blind and unconscious." Aes! blind and unconscious' otherwise it is a revelation! not of divine otherness! but of very human evil. "#he embrace of love! which should bring darkness and oblivion! would with these lovers :the hero and heroine of one of 7oe"s tales; be a daytime thing! bringing more heightened consciousness! visions! spectrum-visions! prismatic. #he evil thing that daytime love-making is! and all sex-palaver3" How +awrence hated Eleonora and +igeia and Eoderick @sher and all such soulful Mrs. 4handies! male as well as female3 .hat a horror! too! he had of all ,on >uans! all knowing sensualists and conscious libertines3 :About the time he was writing 'ady Chatterley's 'over he read the memoirs of 1asanova! and was profoundly shocked.; And how bitterly he loathed the .ilhelmMeisterish view of love as an education! as a means to culture! a 4andow-exerciser for the soul3 #o use love in this way! consciously and deliberately! seemed to +awrence wrong! almost a blasphemy. " t seems to me $ueer!" he says to a fellow-writer! "that you prefer to present men chiefly = as if you cared for women not so much for what they were in themselves as for what the men saw in them. 4o that after all in your work

women seem not to have an existence! save they are the pro/ections of the men. . . t"s the ositivity of women you seem to deny = make them sort of instrumental." #he instrumentality of .ilhelm Meister"s women shocked +awrence profoundly. . . -or someone with a gift for sensing the mystery of otherness! true love must necessarily be! in +awrence"s vocabulary! nocturnal. 4o must true knowledge. ?octurnal and tactual = a touching in the night. Man inhabits! for his own convenience! a homemade universe within the greater alien world of external matter and his own irrationality. &ut of the illimitable blackness of that world the light of his customary thinking scoops! as it were! a little illuminated cave = a tunnel of brightness! in which! from the birth of consciousness to its death! he lives! moves and has his being. -or most of us this bright tunnel is the whole world. .e ignore the outer darkness' or if we cannot ignore it! if it presses too insistently upon us! we disapprove! being afraid. ?ot so +awrence. He had eyes that could see! beyond the walls of light! far into the darkness! sensitive fingers that kept him continually aware of the environing mystery. He could not be content with the homemade! human tunnel! could not conceive that anyone else should be content with it. Moreover = and in this he was unlike those others! to whom the world"s mystery is continuously present! the great philosophers and men of science = he did not want to increase the illuminated area' he approved of the outer darkness! he felt at home in it. Most men live in a little puddle of light thrown by the gig-lamps of habit and their immediate interest' but there is also the pure and powerful illumination of the disinterested scientific intellect. #o +awrence! both lights were suspect! both seemed to falsify what was! for him! the immediately apprehended reality = the darkness of mystery. "My great religion!" he was already saying in ()(C! "is a belief in the blood! the flesh! as being wiser than the intellect. .e can go wrong in our minds. %ut what the blood feels! and believes! and says! is always true." +ike %lake! who had prayed to be delivered from "single vision and ?ewton"s sleep"6 like Feats! who had drunk destruction to ?ewton for having explained the rainbow! +awrence disapproved of too much knowledge! on the score that it diminished men"s sense of wonder and blunted their sensitiveness to the great mystery. His dislike of science was passionate and expressed itself in the most fantastically unreasonable terms. "All scientists are liars!" he would say! when brought up some experimentally established fact! which he happened to dislike. "+iars! liars3" t was a most convenient theory. remember in particular one long and violent argument on evolution! in the reality of which +awrence always passionately disbelieved. "%ut look at the evidence! +awrence!" insisted! "look at all the evidence." His answer was characteristic. "%ut don"t care about evidence. Evidence doesn"t mean anything to me. don"t feel it here." And he pressed his two hands on his solar plexus. abandoned the argument and thereafter never! if could avoid it! mentioned the hated name of science in his presence. +awrence could give so much! and what he gave was so valuable! that it was absurd and profitless to spend one"s time with him disputing about a matter in which he absolutely refused to take a rational interest. .hatever the intellectual conse$uences! he remained through thick and thin unshakably loyal to his own genius. #he daimon which possessed him was! he felt! a divine thing! which he would never deny or explain away! never even ask to accept a compromise. #his loyalty to his own self! or rather to his gift! to the strange and powerful numen which! he felt! used him as its tabernacle! is fundamental in +awrence and accounts! as nothing else can do! for all that the world found strange in his beliefs and his behavior. t was not an incapacity to

understand that made him re/ect those generali0ations and abstractions by means of which the philosophers and the men of science try to open a path for the human spirit through the chaos of phenomena. ?ot incapacity! repeat' for +awrence had! over and above his peculiar gift! an extremely acute intelligence. He was a clever man as well as a man of genius. : n his boyhood and adolescence he had been a great passer of examinations.; He could have understood the aim and methods of science perfectly well if he had wanted to. ndeed! he did understand them perfectly well' and it was for that very reason that he re/ected them. -or the methods of science and critical philosophy were incompatible with the exercise of his gift = the immediate perception and artistic rendering of divine otherness. And their aim! which is to push back the frontier of the unknown! was not to be reconciled with his aim! which was to remain as intimately as possible in contact with the surrounding darkness. And so! in spite of their enormous prestige! he re/ected science and critical philosophy' he remained loyal to his gift. Exclusively loyal. He would not attempt to $ualify or explain his immediate knowledge of the mystery! would not even attempt to supplement it by other! abstract knowledge. "#hese terrible! conscious birds! like 7oe and his +igeia! deny the very life that is in them' they want to turn it all into talk! into /nowing. And so life! which will not be known! leaves them." +awrence refused to /now abstractly. He preferred to live' and he wanted other people to live. ?o man is by nature complete and universal' he cannot have first-hand knowledge of every kind of possible human experience. @niversality! therefore! can only be achieved by those who mentally stimulate living experience = by the knowers! in a word! by people like 5oethe :an artist for whom +awrence always felt the most intense repugnance;. Again! no man is by nature perfect! and none can spontaneously achieve perfection. #he greatest gift is a limited gift. 7erfection! whether ethical or aesthetic! must be the result of knowing and of the laborious application of knowledge. -ormal aesthetics are an affair of rules and the best classical models' formal morality! of the ten commandments and the imitation of 1hrist. +awrence would have nothing to do with proceedings so "unnatural!" so disloyal to the gift! to the resident or visiting numen. Hence his aesthetic principle! that art must be wholly spontaneous! and! like the artist! imperfect! limited and transient. Hence! too! his ethical principle! that a man"s first moral duty is not to attempt to live above his human station! or beyond his inherited psychological income. #he great work of art and the monument more perennial than brass are! in their very perfection and everlastingness! inhuman = too much of a good thing. +awrence did not approve of them. Art! he thought! should flower from an immediate impulse toward self-expression or communication! and should wither with the passing of the impulse. &f all building materials +awrence liked adobe the best' its extreme plasticity and extreme impermanence endeared it to him. #here could be no everlasting pyramids in adobe! no mathematically accurate 7arthenons. ?or! thank heaven! in wood. +awrence loved the Etruscans! among other reasons! because they built wooden temples! which have not survived. 4tone oppressed him with its indestructible solidity! its capacity to take and indefinitely keep the hard uncompromising forms of pure geometry. 5reat buildings made him feel uncomfortable! even when they were beautiful. He felt something of the same discomfort in the presence of any highly finished work of art. n music! for

example! he liked the folk-song! because it was a slight thing! born of immediate impulse. #he symphony oppressed him' it was too big! too elaborate! too carefully and consciously worked out! too "would-be" = to use a characteristic +awrencian expression. He was $uite determined that none of his writings should be "would-be." He allowed them to flower as they liked from the depths of his being and would never use his conscious intellect to force them into a semblance of more than human perfection! or more than human universality. t was characteristic of him that he hardly ever corrected or patched what he had written. have often heard him say! indeed! that he was incapable of correcting. f he was dissatisfied with what he had written! he did not! as most authors do! file! clip! insert! transpose' he rewrote. n other words! he gave the daimon another chance to say what it wanted to say. #here are! believe! three complete and totally distinct manuscripts of 'ady Chatterley's 'over. ?or was this by any means the only novel that he wrote more than once. He was determined that all he produced should spring direct from the mysterious! irrational source of power within him. #he conscious intellect should never be allowed to come and impose! after the event! its abstract pattern of perfection. t was the same in the sphere of ethics as in that of art. "#hey want me to have form6 that means! they want me to have their pernicious! ossiferous skin-and-grief form! and won"t." #his was written about his novels' but it is /ust as applicable to his life. Every man! +awrence insisted! must be an artist in life! must create his own moral form. #he art of living is harder than the art of writing. " t is a much more delicate thing to make love! and win love! than to declare love." All the more reason! therefore! for practicing this art with the most refined and subtle sensibility' all the more reason for not accepting that "pernicious skin-and-grief form" of morality! which they are always trying to impose on one. t is the business of the sensitive artist in life to accept his own nature as it is! not to try to force it into another shape. He must take the material given him = the weaknesses and irrationalities! as well as the sense and the virtues' the mysterious darkness and otherness no less than the light of reason and the conscious ego = must take them all and weave them together into a satisfactory pattern' his pattern! not somebody else"s pattern. "&nce said to myself6 "How can blame = why be angry<". . . ?ow say6 ".hen anger comes with bright eyes! he may do his will. n me he will hardly shake off the hand of 5od. He is one of the archangels! with a fiery sword. 5od sent him = it is beyond my knowing." " #his was written in ()(D. Even at the very beginning of his career +awrence was envisaging man as simply the locus of a polytheism. 5iven his particular gifts of sensitiveness and of expression it was inevitable. >ust as it was inevitable that a man of %lake"s peculiar genius should formulate the very similar doctrine of the independence of states of being. All the generally accepted systems of philosophy and of ethics aim at policing man"s polytheism in the name of some >ehovah of intellectual and moral consistency. -or +awrence this was an indefensible proceeding. &ne god had as much right to exist as another! and the dark ones were as genuinely divine as the bright. 7erhaps :since +awrence was so specially sensitive to the $uality of dark godhead and so specially gifted to express it in art;! perhaps even more divine. Anyhow! the polytheism was a democracy. #his conception of human nature resulted in the formulation of two rather surprising doctrines! one ontological and the other ethical. #he first is what may call the ,octrine of 1osmic 7ointlessness. "#here is no point. +ife and +ove are life and love! a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets! and to drag in the idea

of a point is to ruin everything. +ive and let live! love and let love! flower and fade! and follow the natural curve! which flows on! pointless." &ntological pointlessness has its ethical counterpart in the doctrine of insouciance. "#hey simply are eaten up with caring. #hey are so busy caring about -ascism or +eagues of ?ations or whether -rance is right or whether Marriage is threatened! that they never know where they are. #hey certainly never live on the spot where they are. #hey inhabit abstract space! the desert void of politics principles right and wrong! and so forth. #hey are doomed to be abstract. #alking to them is like trying to have a human relationship with the letter " in algebra." As early as ()(( his advice to his sister was6 ",on"t meddle with religion. would leave all that alone! if were you! and try to occupy myself fully in the present." +awrence"s dislike of abstract knowledge and pure spirituality made him a kind of mystical materialist. #hus! the moon affects him strongly' therefore it cannot be a "stony cold world! like a world of our own gone cold. ?onsense. t is a globe of dynamic substance! like radium or phosphorus! coagulated upon a vivid pole of energy." Matter must be intrinsically as lively as the mind which perceives it and is moved by the perception. 8ivid and violent spiritual effects must have correspondingly vivid and violent material causes. And! conversely! any violent feeling or desire in the mind must be capable of producing violent effects upon external matter. +awrence could not bring himself to believe that the spirit can be moved! moved even to madness! without imparting the smallest corresponding movement to the external world. He was a sub/ectivist as well as a materialist' in other words! he believed in the possibility! in some form or another! of magic. +awrence"s mystical materialism found characteristic expression the curious cosmology and physiology of his speculative essays! and in his restatement of the strange 1hristian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. #o his mind! the survival of the spirit was not enough' for the spirit is a man"s conscious identity! and +awrence did not want to be always identical to himself' he wanted to know otherness = to know it by being it! know it in the living flesh! which is always essentially other. #herefore there must be a resurrection of the body. +oyalty to his genius left him no choice' +awrence had to insist on those mysterious forces of otherness which are scattered without! and darkly concentrated within! the body and mind of man. He had to! even though! by doing so! he imposed upon himself! as a writer of novels! a very serious handicap. -or according to his view of things most of men"s activities were more or less criminal distractions from the proper business of human living. He refused to write of such distractions' that is to say! he refused to write of the main activities of the contemporary world. %ut as though this drastic limitation of his sub/ect were not sufficient! he went still further and! in some of his novels! refused even to write of human personalities in the accepted sense of the term. The $ain!ow and -omen in 'ove :and indeed to a lesser extent all his novels; are the practical applications of a theory! which is set forth in a very interesting and important letter to Edward 5arnett! dated >une *th! ()(M. "4omehow! that which is physic = nonhuman in humanity! is more interesting to me than the old-fashioned human element! which causes one to conceive a character in a certain moral scheme and make him consistent. #he certain moral scheme is what ob/ect to. n #urgenev! and in #olstoi! and in ,ostoievsky! the moral scheme into which all the characters fit = and it is nearly the same scheme = is! whatever the extraordinariness of the characters themselves! dull! old!

dead. .hen Marinetti writes6 " t is the solidity of a blade of steel that is interesting in itself! that is! the incomprehending and inhuman alliance of its molecules in resistance to! let us say! a bullet. #he heat of a piece of wood or iron is in fact more passionate! for us! than the laughter or tears of a woman" = then know what he means. He is stupid! as an artist! for contrasting the heat of the iron and the laugh of the woman. %ecause what is interesting in the laugh of the woman is the same as the binding of the molecules of steel or their action in heat6 it is the inhuman will! call it physiology! or like Marinetti! physiology of matter! that fascinates me. don"t so much care about what the woman ,eels = in the ordinary usage of the word. #hat presumes an ego to feel with. only care about what the woman is = what she s = inhumanly! physiologically! materially = according to the use of the word. . . Aou mustn"t look in my novel for the old stable ego of the character. #here is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecogni0able! and passes through! as it were! allotropic states which it needs a deeper sense than any we"ve been used to exercise! to discover are states of the same single radically unchanged element. :+ike as diamond and coal are the same pure single element of carbon. #he ordinary novel would trace the history of the diamond = but say! ",iamond! what3 #his is carbon." And my diamond might be coal or soot! and my theme is carbon.;". . . +awrence! then! possessed! or! if you care to put it the other way round! was possessed by! a gift = a gift to which he was unshakably loyal. have tried to show how the possession and the loyalty influenced his thinking and writing. How did they affect his life< #he answer shall be! as far as possible! in +awrence"s own words. #o 1atherine 1arswell +awrence once wrote6 " think you are the only woman have met who is so intrinsically detached! so essentially separate and isolated! as to be a real writer or artist or recorder. Aour relations with other people are only excursions from yourself. And to want children! and common human fulfillments! is rather a falsity for you! think. Aou were never made to "meet and mingle!" but to remain intact! essentially, whatever your experiences may be." +awrence"s knowledge of "the artist" was manifestly personal knowledge. He knew by actual experience that the "real writer" is an essentially separate being! who must not desire to meet and mingle and who betrays himself when he hankers too yearningly after common human fulfillments. All artists know these facts about their species! and many of them have recorded their knowledge. Eecorded it! very often! with distress' being intrinsically detached is no /oke. +awrence certainly suffered his whole life from the essential solitude to which his gift condemned him. ".hat ails me!" he wrote to the psychologist! ,r. #rigant %urrow! "is the absolute frustration of my primeval societal instinct. . . think societal instinct much deeper than sex instinct = and societal repression much more devastating. #here is no repression of the sexual individual comparable to the repression of the societal man in me! by the individual ego! my own and everybody else"s. . . Myself! suffer badly from being so cut off. . . At times one is ,orced to be essentially a hermit. don"t want to be. %ut anything else is either a personal tussle! or a money tussle' sickening6 except! of course! /ust for ordinary ac$uaintance! which remains ac$uaintance. &ne has no real human relations = that is so devastating." &ne has no real human relations6 it is the complaint of every artist. #he artist"s first duty is to his genius! his daimon4 he cannot serve two masters. +awrence! as it happened! had an extraordinary gift for establishing an intimate relationship with almost anyone he met.

"Here" :in the %ournemouth boarding-house where he was staying after his illness! in ()(C;! " get mixed up in people"s lives so = it"s very interesting! sometimes a bit painful! often /olly. %ut run to such close intimacy with folk! it is complicating. %ut love to have myself in a bit of a tangle." His love for his art was greater! however! than his love for a tangle' and whenever the tangle threatened to compromise his activities as an artist! it was the tangle that was sacrificed6 he retired. +awrence"s only deep and abiding human relationship was with his wife. :" t is hopeless for me!" he wrote to a fellow-artist! "to try to do anything without have a woman at the back of me. . . %[cklin = or somebody like him = daren"t sit in a caf9 except with his back to the wall. daren"t sit in the world without a woman behind me. . . A woman that love sort of keeps me in direct communication with the unknown! in which otherwise am a bit lost."; -or the rest! he was condemned by his gift to an essential separateness. &ften! it is true! he blamed the world for his exile. "And it comes to this! that the oneness of mankind is destroyed in me :by the war;. am ! and you are you! and all heaven and hell lie in the chasm between. %elieve me! am infinitely hurt by being thus torn off from the body of mankind! but so it is and it is right." t was right because! in reality! it was not the war that had torn him from the body of mankind' it was his own talent! the strange divinity to which he owed his primary allegiance. " will not live any more in this time!" he wrote on another occasion. " know what it is. re/ect it. As far as possibly can! will stand outside this time. will live my life and! if possible! be happy. #hough the whole world slides in horror down into the bottomless pit. . . believe that the highest virtue is to be happy! living in the greatest truth! not submitting to the falsehood of these personal times." #he ad/ective is profoundly significant. &f all the possible words of disparagement which might be applied to our uneasy age "personal" is surely about the last that would occur to most of us. #o +awrence it was the first. His gift was a gift of feeling and rendering the unknown! the mysteriously other. #o one possessed by such a gift! almost any age would have seemed unduly and dangerously personal. He had to re/ect and escape. %ut when he had escaped! he could not help deploring the absence of "real human relationships." 4pasmodically! he tried to establish contact with the body of mankind. #here were the recurrent pro/ects for colonies in remote corners of the earth' they all fell through. . . t was! think! the sense of being cut off that sent +awrence on his restless wanderings round the earth. His travels were at once a flight and a search6 a search for some society with which he could establish contact! for a world where the times were not personal and conscious knowing had not yet perverted living' a search and at the same time a flight from the miseries and evils of the society into which he had been born! and for which! in spite of his artist"s detachment! he could not help feeling profoundly responsible. He felt himself "English in the teeth of all the world! even in the teeth of England"6 that was why he had to go to 1eylon and Australia and Mexico. He could not have felt so intensely English in England without involving himself in corporative political action! without belonging and being attached' but to attach himself was something he could not bring himself to do! something that the artist in him felt as a violation. He was at once too English and too intensely an artist to stay at home. "7erhaps it is necessary for me to try these places! perhaps it is my destiny to know the world. t only excites the outside of me. #he inside it leaves more isolated and stoic than ever. #hat"s how it is. t is all a form of running away from oneself and the great problems! all

this wild west and the strange Australia. %ut try to keep $uite clear. &ne forms not the faintest inward attachment! especially here in America." His search was as fruitless as his flight was ineffective. He could not escape either from his homesickness or his sense of responsibility' and he never found a society to which he could belong. n a kind of despair! he plunged yet deeper into the surrounding mystery! into the dark night of that otherness whose essence and symbol is the sexual experience. n 'ady Chatterley's 'over +awrence wrote the epilogue to his travels and! from his long and fruitless experience of flight and search! drew what was! for him! the inevitable moral. t is a strange and beautiful book' but inexpressibly sad. %ut then so! at bottom! was its author"s life. +awrence"s psychological isolation resulted! as we have seen! in his seeking physical isolation from the body of mankind. #his physical isolation reacted upon his thoughts. ",on"t mind if am impertinent!" he wrote to one of his correspondents at the end of a rather dogmatic letter. "+iving here alone one gets so different = sort of excathedra." #o live in isolation! above the medley! has its advantages' but it also imposes certain penalties. #hose who take a bird"s-eye view of the world often see clearly and comprehensively' but they tend to ignore all tiresome details! all the difficulties of social life and! ignoring! to /udge too sweepingly and to condemn too lightly. . . Enough of explanation and interpretation. #o those who knew +awrence! not why, but that he was what he happened to be! is the important fact. remember very clearly my first meeting with him. #he place was +ondon! the time ()(*. %ut +awrence"s passionate talk was of the geographically remote and of the personally very near. &f the horrors in the middle distance = war! winter! the town = he would not speak. -or he was on the point! so he imagined! of setting off to -lorida = to -lorida! where he was going to plant that colony of escape! of which up to the last he never ceased to dream. 4ometimes the name and site of this seed of a happier and different world were purely fanciful. t was called Eananim! for example! and was an island like 7rospero"s. 4ometimes it had its place on the map and its name was -lorida! 1ornwall! 4icily! Mexico and again! for a time! the English countryside. #hat wintry afternoon in ()(* it was -lorida. %efore tea was over he asked me if would /oin the colony! and though was an intellectually cautious young man! not at all inclined to enthusiasms! though +awrence had startled and embarrassed me with sincerities of a kind to which my upbringing had not accustomed me! answered yes. -ortunately! no doubt! the -lorida scheme fell through. 1ities of 5od have always crumbled' and +awrence"s city = his village! rather! for he hated cities = his 8illage of the ,ark 5od would doubtless have disintegrated like all the rest. t was better that it should have remained! as it was always to remain! a pro/ect and a hope. And knew this even as said would /oin the colony. %ut there was something about +awrence which made such knowledge! when one was in his presence! curiously irrelevant. He might propose impracticable schemes! he might say or write things that were demonstrably incorrect or even! on occasion :as when he talked about science;! absurd. %ut to a very considerable extent it didn"t matter. .hat mattered was always +awrence himself! was the fire that burned within him! that glowed with so strange and marvelous a radiance in almost all he wrote. My second meeting with +awrence took place some years later! during one of his brief revisitings of that after-war England! which he had come so much to dread and to

dislike. #hen in ()C*! while in ndia! received a letter from 4potorno. He had read some essays had written on talian travel' said he liked them' suggested a meeting. #he next year we were in -lorence and so was he. -rom that time! till his death! we were often together = at -lorence! at -orte dei Marmi! for a whole winter at ,iablerets! at %andol! in 7aris! at 1hexbres! at -orte again! and finally at 8ence where he died. n a spasmodically kept diary find this entry under the date of ,ecember CQth! ()CQ6 "+unched and spent the p.m. with the +awrences. ,. H. +. in admirable form! talking wonderfully. He is one of the few people feel real respect and admiration for. &f most other eminent people have met feel that at any rate belong to the same species as they do. %ut this man has something different and superior in kind! not degree." ",ifferent and superior in kind." think almost everyone who knew him well must have felt that +awrence was this. A being! somehow! of another order! more sensitive! more highly conscious! more capable of feeling than even the most gifted of common men. He had! of course! his weaknesses and defects' he had his intellectual limitations = limitations which he seemed to have deliberately imposed upon himself. %ut these weaknesses and defects and limitations did not affect the fact of his superior otherness. #hey diminished him $uantitively! so to speak' whereas the otherness was $ualitative. 4pill half your glass of wine and what remains is still wine. .ater! however full the glass may be! is always tasteless and without color. #o be with +awrence was a kind of adventure! a voyage of discovery into newness and otherness. -or! being himself of a different order! he inhabited a different universe from that of common men = a brighter and intenser world! of which! while he spoke! he would make you free. He looked at things with the eyes! so it seemed! of a man who had been at the brink of death and to whom! as he emerges from the darkness! the world reveals itself as unfathomably beautiful and mysterious. -or +awrence! existence was one continuous convalescence' it was as though he were newly reborn from a mortal illness every day of his life. .hat these convalescent eyes saw! his most casual speech would reveal. A walk with him in the country was a walk through that marvelously rich and significant landscape which is at once the background and the principal personage of all his novels. He seemed to know! by personal experience! what it was like to be a tree or a daisy or a breaking wave or even the mysterious moon itself. He could get inside the skin of an animal and tell you in the most convincing detail how it felt and how! dimly! inhumanly! it thought. &f %lack-Eyed 4usan! for example! the cow at his ?ew Mexican ranch! he was never tired of speaking! nor was ever tired of listening to his account of her character and her bovine philosophy. "He sees!" 8ernon +ee once said to me! "more than a human being ought to see. 7erhaps!" she added! "that"s why he hates humanity so much." .hy also he loved it so much. And not only humanity6 nature too! and even the supernatural. -or wherever he looked! he saw more than a human being ought to see' saw more and therefore loved and hated more. #o be with him was to find oneself transported to one of the frontiers of human consciousness. -or an inhabitant of the safe metropolis of thought and feeling it was a most exciting experience. :-rom ",. H. +awrence!" The 2live Tree0

2a3a7(sta or Pa#!os -amagusta reminded me irresistibly of Metro-5oldwyn-Mayer"s back lot at 1ulver 1ity. #here! under the high fog of the 7acific! one used to wander between the faJades of Eomeo and >uliet"s 8erona into #ar0an"s /ungle! and out again! through %ret Harte! into Harun al-Eashid and )ride and )re=udice. Here! in 1yprus! the mingling of styles and epochs is no less extravagant! and the sets are not merely realistic = they are real. At 4alamis! in the suburbs of -amagusta! one can shoot 9uo <adis against a background of solid masonry and genuine marble. And downtown! overlooking the harbor! stands the #ower of &thello :screen play by .illiam 4hakespeare! additional dialogue by +ouella Fat0;' and the #ower of &thello is not the cardboard ga0ebo to which the theater has accustomed us! but a huge High Eenaissance gun emplacement that forms part of a defense system as massive! elaborate and scientific as the Maginot +ine. .ithin the circuit of those prodigious 8enetian walls lies the blank space that was once a flourishing city = a blank space with a few patches of modern #urkish s$ualor! a few %y0antine ruins and! outdoing all the rest in intrinsic improbability! the Mos$ue. -lanked by the domes and colonnades of a pair of pretty little &ttoman buildings! the Mos$ue is a magnificent piece of thirteenth-century -rench 5othic! with a factory chimney! the minaret! tacked onto the north end of its faJade. 5olden and warm under the Mediterranean blue! this lesser 1hartres rises from the midst of palms and carob trees and &riental coffee shops. #he mue00in :reinforced = for this is the twentieth century = by loud-speakers; calls from his holy smoke stack! and in what was once the 1athedral of 4t. ?icholas! the -aithful = or! if you prefer! the nfidels = pray not to an image or an altar! but toward Mecca. .e climbed back into the car. "7aphos!" said to the chauffeur! as matter-offactly as in more familiar surroundings one would say! "4elfridge"s!" or "the .aldorfAstoria." %ut the birthplace of 8enus! it turned out! was a long way off and the afternoon was already half spent. %esides! the driver assured us :and the books confirmed it; there was really nothing to see at 7aphos. %etter go home and read about the temple and its self-mutilated priests in -ra0er. %etter still! read nothing! but emulating Mallarm9! write a sonnet on the magical name. +es !ou#uins re,erms sur le nom de )a hos. "My folios closing on the name of 7aphos! .hat fun! with nothing but genius! to elect A ruin blest by a thousand foams beneath #he hyacinth of its triumphal days3 +et the cold come! with silence like a scythe3 "ll wail no dirge if! level with the ground! #his white! bright frolic should deny to all Earth"s sites the honor of the fancied scene. My hunger! feasting on no mortal fruits! finds in their studied lack an e$ual savor. 4uppose one bright with flesh! human and fragrant3 My foot upon some snake where our love stirs the fire! dream much longer! passionately perhaps! &f the other fruit! the Ama0on"s burnt breast."
@es bou<uins refermEs sur le nom de )aphos, *l m(amuse d(Elire avec le seul gEnie !ne ruine, par mille Ecumes bEnie 4ous l(hyacinthe, au loin, de ses 0ours triomphau'" &oure le froid avec ses silences de fau', Fe n(y hululerai pas de vide nEnie 4i ce trGs blanc Ebat au ras du sol dEnie H tout site l(honneur du paysage fau'"

@a faim <ui d(aucuns fruits ici ne se rEgale Trouve en leur docte man<ue une saveur Egale: Iu(un Eclate de chair humain et parfumantLe pied sur <uel<ue guivre oJ notre amour tisonne, Fe pense plus longtemps, peut,Ktre Eperdument H l(autre, au sein brLlE d une anti<ue ama$one"

How close this is to Feats"s6

7arodying the 5recian @rn in terms of Mallarm9"s Ama0onian metaphor! we have6 "-elt breasts are round! but those unfelt are rounder' therefore! absent paps! swell on." And the Featsian formula can be applied /ust as well to 7aphos. "4een archeological remains are interesting' but those unseen are more impressively like what the ruins of Aphrodite"s birthplace ought to be." All of which! in a /udicial summing up! may be said to be! on the one hand! profoundly true and! on the other! completely false. @nvisited ruins! ditties of no tone! the solipsistic love of non-existent bosoms = these are all chemically pure! uncontaminated by those grotes$ue or horrible irrelevances which Mallarm9 called "blasphemies" and which are the very stuff and substance of real life in a body. %ut this kind of chemical purity :the purity! in Mallarm9an phraseology! of dream and A0ure; is not the same as the saving purity of the 7ure in Heart' this renunciation of irrelevant actuality is not the poverty in which the 7oor in 4pirit find the Fingdom of Heaven. +iberation is for those who react correctly to given reality! not to their own! or other people"s notions and fancies. Enlightenment is not for the Guietists and 7uritans who! in their different ways! deny the world! but for those who have learned to accept and transfigure it. &ur own private silences are better! no doubt! than the heard melodies inflicted upon us by the /uke box. %ut are they better than 1dieu m'1mour or the slow movement of the second Ea0umovsky Guartet< @nless we happen to be greater musicians than ,ufay or %eethoven! the answer is! emphatically! ?o. And what about a love so chemically pure that it finds in the studied lack of fruits a savor e$ual or superior to that of human flesh< +ove is a cognitive process! and in this case nuptial knowledge will be only a knowledge of the lover"s imagination in its relations to his physiology. And it is the same with the stay-at-home knowledge of distant ruins. n certain cases = and the case of 7aphos! perhaps! is one of them = fancy may do a more obviously pleasing /ob than archeological research or a sightseer"s visit. %ut! in general! imagination falls immeasurably short of the inventions of ?ature and History. %y no possibility could ! or even a great poet like Mallarm9! have fabricated 4alamis--amagusta. #o which! of course! Mallarm9 would have answered that he had no more wish to fabricate 4alamis-amagusta than to reproduce the real! historical 7aphos. #he pictures$ue detail! the uni$ue and concrete datum = these held no interest for the poet whose advice to himself and others was6 "Exclude the real! because vile' exclude the too precise meaning and rature ta vague littrature," correct your literature until it becomes :from the realist"s

point of view; completely vague. Mallarm9 defined literature as the antithesis of /ournalism. +iterature! for him! is never a piece of reporting! never an account of a chose vue = a thing seen in the external world or even a thing seen! with any degree of precision! by the inner eye. %oth classes of seen things are too concretely real for poetry and must be avoided. Heredity and a visual environment conspired to make of Mallarm9 a Manichean 7latonist! for whom the world of appearances was nothing or worse than nothing! and the deal .orld everything. .riting in (LPQ from %esanJon where! a martyr to 4econdary Education! he was teaching English to a pack of savage boys who found him boring and ridiculous! he described to his friend Henri 1a0alis the consummation of a kind of philosophical conversion. " have passed through an appalling year. #hought has come to think itself! and have reached a 7ure 1onception. . . am now perfectly dead and the impurest region in which my spirit can venture is Eternity. . . am now impersonal and no longer the 4t9phane you have known = but the 4piritual @niverse"s capacity to see and develop itself through that which once was ." n another historical context Mallarm9 could have devoted himself to Guietism! to the attainment of a ?irvana apart from and antithetical to the world of appearances. %ut he lived under the 4econd Empire and the #hird Eepublic' such a course was out of the $uestion. %esides! he was a poet and! as such! dedicated to the task of "giving a purer meaning to the words of the tribe" = un sens lus ur au" mots de la tri!u. ".ords!" he wrote! "are already sufficiently themselves not to receive any further impression from outside." #his "outside!" this world of appearances! was to be reduced to nothing! and a world of autonomous and! in some sort! absolute words substituted for it. n other! Mallarm9an words! "the pure cup of no li$uor but inexhaustible widowhood announces a rose in the darkness" = a mystic rose of purged! immaculate language that is! in some sort! independent of the given realities for which it is supposed to stand! that exists in its own right! according to the laws of its own being. #hese laws are simultaneously syntactical! musical! etymological and philosophical. #o create a poem capable of living autonomously according to these laws is an undertaking to which only the literary e$uivalent of a great contemplative saint is e$ual. 4uch a saint-surrogate was Mallarm9 = the most devout and dedicated man of letters who ever lived. %ut "patriotism is not enough." ?or are letters. #he poet"s cup can be filled with something more substantial than words and inexhaustible widowhood! and still remain undefiled. t would be possible! if one were sufficiently gifted! to write a sonnet about 4alamis-amagusta as it really is! in all the wild incongruous confusion left by three thousand years of history = a sonnet that should be as perfect a work of art! as immaculate and! though referring to the world of appearances! as self-sufficient and absolute as that which Mallarm9 wrote on the name of 7aphos and the fact of absence. All 3 can do! alas! is to describe and reflect upon this most improbable reality in words a little less impure! perhaps! than those of the tribe! and in passing to pay my homage to that dedicated denier of reality! that self-mortified saint of letters! whose art enchants me as much today as it did forty years ago when! as an undergraduate! first discovered it. ,ream! a0ure! blasphemy! studied lack! inexhaustible widowhood = fiddlesticks3 %ut how incredibly beautiful are the verbal ob/ects created in order to express this absurd philosophy3
Tel <u(en Lui,mKme enfin l(EternitE le change" " " =et unanime blanc conflit

A(une guirlande avec la mKme" " " Le pur vase d(aucun breuvage Iue l(ine'haustible veuvage" " " O si chGre de loin et proche et blanche, si AElicieusement toi, @ary, <ue 0e songe H <uel<ue baume rare EmanE par mensonge 4ur aucun bou<uetier de cristal obscurci" " "

#reasures of sound and syntax! such lines are endowed with some of the intense thereness of natural ob/ects seen by the transfiguring eye of the lover or the mystic. @tterly dissimilar from the given marvels of the world! they are yet! in some obscure way! the e$uivalents of the first leaves in springtime! of a spray of plum blossom seen against the sky! of moss growing thick and velvety on the sunless side of oaks! of a seagull riding the wind. #he very lines in which Mallarm9 exhorts the poet to shut his eyes to given reality partake! in some measure at least! of that reality"s divine and apocalyptic nature.
Ainsi le choeur des romances H la levre vole,t,il /'clus,en si tu commences Le rEel parce <ue vil Le sens trop prEcis rature Ta vague littErature"

Eeading! one smiles with pleasure = smiles with the same smile as is evoked by the sudden sight of a woodpecker on a tree trunk! of a hummingbird poised on the vibration of its wings before a hibiscus flower. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

PAINTIN9

Bre(7!el Most of our mistakes are fundamentally grammatical. .e create our own difficulties by employing an inade$uate language to describe facts. #hus! to take one example! we are constantly giving the same name to more than one thing! and more than one name to the same thing. #he results! when we come to argue! are deplorable. -or we are using a language which does not ade$uately describe the things about which we are arguing. #he word "painter" is one of those names whose indiscriminate application has led to the worst results. All those who! for whatever reason and with whatever intentions! put brushes to canvas and make pictures! are called without distinction! painters. ,eceived by the uni$ueness of the name! aestheticians have tried to make us believe that

there is a single painter-psychology! a single function of painting! a single standard of criticism. -ashion changes and the views of art critics with it. At the present time it is fashionable to believe in form to the exclusion of sub/ect. Aoung people almost swoon away with excess of aesthetic emotion before a Matisse. #wo generations ago they would have been wiping their eyes before the latest +andseer. :Ah! those more than human! those positively 1hrist-like dogs = how they moved! what lessons they taught3 #here had been no religious painting like +andseer"s since 1arlo ,olci died.; #hese historical considerations should make us chary of believing too exclusively in any single theory of art. &ne kind of painting! one set of ideas are fashionable at any given moment. #hey are made the basis of a theory which condemns all other kinds of painting and all preceding critical theories. #he process constantly repeats itself. At the present moment! it is true! we have achieved an unprecedently tolerant eclecticism. .e are able! if we are up-to-date! to en/oy everything! from ?egro sculpture to +occa della Eobbia and from Magnasco to %y0antine mosaics. %ut it is an eclecticism achieved at the expense of almost the whole content of the various works of art considered. .hat we have learned to see in all these works is their formal $ualities! which we abstract and arbitrarily call essential. #he sub/ect of the work! with all that the painter desired to express in it beyond his feelings about formal relations! contemporary criticism re/ects as unimportant. #he young painter scrupulously avoids introducing into his pictures anything that might be mistaken for a story! or the expression of a view of life! while the young @unst,orscher turns! as though at an act of exhibitionism! from any manifestation by a contemporary of any such forbidden interest in drama or philosophy. #rue! the old masters are indulgently permitted to illustrate stories and express their thoughts about the world. 7oor devils! they knew no better3 Aour modern observer makes allowance for their ignorance and passes over in silence all that is not a matter of formal relations. #he admirers of 5iotto :as numerous today as were the admirers of 5uido Eeni a hundred years ago; contrive to look at the master"s frescoes without considering what they represent! or what the painter desired to express. Every germ of drama or meaning is disinfected out of them' only the composition is admired. #he process is analogous to reading +atin verses without understanding them = simply for the sake of the rhythmical rumbling of the hexameters. t would be absurd! of course! to deny the importance of formal relations. ?o picture can hold together without composition and no good painter is without some specific passion for form as such = /ust as no good writer is without a passion for words and the arrangement of words. t is obvious that no man can ade$uately express himself! unless he takes an interest in the terms which he proposes to use as his medium of expression. ?ot all painters are interested in the same sort of forms. 4ome! for example! have a passion for masses and the surfaces of solids. &thers delight in lines. 4ome compose in three dimensions. &thers like to make silhouettes on the flat. 4ome like to make the surface of the paint smooth and! as it were! translucent! so that the ob/ects represented in the picture can be seen distinct and separate! as through a sheet of glass. &thers :as for example Eembrandt; love to make a rich thick surface which shall absorb and draw together into one whole all the ob/ects represented! and that in spite of the depth of the composition and the distance of the ob/ects from the plane of the picture. All these purely aesthetic considerations are! as have said! important. All artists are interested in them' but almost none are interested in them to the exclusion of everything else. t is very

seldom indeed that we find a painter who can be inspired merely by his interest in form and texture to paint a picture. 5ood painters of "abstract" sub/ects or even of still lives are rare. Apples and solid geometry do not stimulate a man to express his feelings about form and make a composition. All thoughts and emotions are interdependent. n the words of the dear old song!
The roses round the door @ake me love mother more"

&ne feeling is excited by another. &ur faculties work best in a congenial emotional atmosphere. -or example! Mantegna"s faculty for making noble arrangements of forms was stimulated by his feelings about heroic and god-like humanity. Expressing those feelings! which he found exciting! he also expressed = and in the most perfect manner of which he was capable = his feelings about masses! surfaces! solids! and voids. "#he roses round the door" = his hero worship = "made him love mother more" = made him! by stimulating his faculty for composition! paint better. f sabella d"Este had made him paint apples! table napkins and bottles! he would have produced! being uninterested in these ob/ects! a poor composition. And yet! from a purely formal point of view! apples! bottles and napkins are $uite as interesting as human bodies and faces. %ut Mantegna = and with him the ma/ority of painters = did not happen to be very passionately interested in these inanimate ob/ects. .hen one is bored one becomes boring.
The apples round the door @ake me a frightful bore"

nevitably' unless happen to be so exclusively interested in form that can paint anything that has a shape' or unless happen to possess some measure of that $ueer pantheism! that animistic superstition which made 8an 5ogh regard the humblest of common ob/ects as being divinely or devilishly alive. "Crains dans le mur aveugle un regard #ui t' ie." f a painter can do that! he will be able! like 8an 5ogh! to make pictures of cabbage fields and the bedrooms of cheap hotels that shall be as wildly dramatic as a Eape of the 4abines. #he contemporary fashion is to admire beyond all others the painter who can concentrate on the formal side of his art and produce pictures which are entirely devoid of literature. &ld Eenoir"s apophthegm! "%n eintre, voye7Dvous, #ui a le sentiment du tton et des ,esses, est un homme sauv," is considered by the purists suspiciously latitudinarian. A painter who has the sentiment of the pap and the buttocks is a painter who portrays real models with gusto. Aour pure aesthete should only have a feeling for hemispheres! curved lines and surfaces. %ut this "sentiment of the buttocks" is common to all good painters. t is the lowest common measure of the whole profession. t is possible! like Mantegna! to have a passionate feeling for all that is solid! and at the same time to be a stoic philosopher and a hero-worshiper' possible! with Michelangelo! to have a complete reali0ation of breasts and also an interest in the soul or! like Eubens! to have a sentiment for human greatness as well as for human rumps. #he greater includes the less' great dramatic or reflective painters know everything that the aestheticians who paint geometrical pictures! apples or buttocks know! and a great deal more besides. .hat they

have to say about formal relations! though important! is only a part of what they have to express. #he contemporary insistence on form to the exclusion of everything else is an absurdity. 4o was the older insistence on exact imitation and sentiment to the exclusion of form. #here need be no exclusions. n spite of the single name! there are many different kinds of painters and all of them! with the exception of those who cannot paint! and those whose minds are trivial! vulgar and tedious! have a right to exist. All classifications and theories are made after the event' the facts must first occur before they can be tabulated and methodi0ed. Eeversing the historical process! we attack the facts forearmed with theoretical pre/udice. nstead of considering each fact on its own merits! we ask how it fits into the theoretical scheme. At any given moment a number of meritorious facts fail to fit into the fashionable theory and have to be ignored. #hus El 5reco"s art failed to conform with the ideal of good painting held by 7hilip the 4econd and his contemporaries. #he 4ienese primitives seemed to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries incompetent barbarians. @nder the influence of Euskin! the later nineteenth century contrived to dislike almost all architecture that was not 5othic. And the early twentieth century! under the influence of the -rench! deplores and ignores! in painting! all that is literary! reflective or dramatic. n every age theory has caused men to like much that was bad and re/ect much that was good. #he only pre/udice that the ideal art critic should have is against the incompetent! the mentally dishonest and the futile. #he number of ways in which good pictures can be painted is $uite incalculable! depending only on the variability of the human mind. Every good painter invents a new way of painting. s this man a competent painter< Has he something to say! is he genuine< #hese are the $uestions a critic must ask himself. ?ot! ,oes he conform with my theory of imitation! or distortion! or moral purity! or significant form< #here is one painter against whom! it seems to me! theoretical pre/udice has always most unfairly told. mean the elder %reughel. +ooking at his best paintings find that can honestly answer in the affirmative all the $uestions which a critic may legitimately put himself. He is highly competent aesthetically' he has plenty to say' his mind is curious! interesting and powerful' and he has no false pretensions! is entirely honest. And yet he has never en/oyed the high reputation to which his merits entitle him. #his is due! think! to the fact that his work has never $uite s$uared with any of the various critical theories which since his days have had a vogue in the aesthetic world. A subtle colorist! a sure and powerful draftsman! and possessing powers of composition that enable him to marshal the innumerable figures with which his pictures are filled into pleasingly decorative groups :built up! as we see! when we try to analy0e his methods of formal arrangement! out of individually flat! silhouette-like shapes standing in a succession of receding planes;! %reughel can boast of purely aesthetic merits that ought to endear him even to the strictest sect of the 7harisees. 1oated with this pure aesthetic /am! the bitter pill of his literature might easily! one would suppose! be swallowed. f 5iotto"s dalliance with sacred history be forgiven him! why may not %reughel be excused for being an anthropologist and a social philosopher< #o which tentatively answer6 5iotto is forgiven! because we have so utterly ceased to believe in 1atholic 1hristianity that we can easily ignore the sub/ect matter of his pictures and concentrate only on their formal $ualities' %reughel! on the other hand! is unforgivable because he made comments on humanity that are still interesting to us. -rom his sub/ect

matter we cannot escape' it touches us too closely to be ignored. #hat is why %reughel is despised by all up-to-date @unst,orschers. And even in the past! when there was no theoretical ob/ection to the mingling of literature and painting! %reughel failed! for another reason! to get his due. He was considered low! gross! a mere comedian! and as such unworthy of serious consideration. #hus! the ?ncyclo edia *ritannica, which in these matters may be safely relied on to give the current opinion of a couple of generations ago! informs us! in the eleven lines which it parsimoniously devotes to 7eter %reughel that "the sub/ects of his pictures are chiefly humorous figures! like those of ,. #eniers' and if he wants the delicate touch and silvery clearness of that master! he has abundant spirit and comic power." .hoever wrote these words = and they might have been written by any one desirous! fifty years ago! of playing for safety and saying the right thing = can never have taken the trouble to look at any of the pictures painted by %reughel when he was a grown and accomplished artist. n his youth! it is true! he did a great deal of hack work for a dealer who speciali0ed in caricatures and devils in the manner of Hieronymus %osch. %ut his later pictures! painted when he had really mastered the secrets of his art! are not comic at all. #hey are studies of peasant life! they are allegories! they are religious pictures of the most strangely reflective cast! they are ex$uisitely poetical landscapes. %reughel died at the height of his powers. %ut there is enough of his mature work in existence = at Antwerp! at %russels! at ?aples and above all at 8ienna = to expose the fatuity of the classical verdict and exhibit him for what he was6 the first landscape painter of his century! the acutest student of manners! and the wonderfully skillful pictorial expounder or suggester of a view of life. t is at 8ienna! indeed! that %reughel"s art can best be studied in all its aspects. -or 8ienna possesses practically all his best pictures of whatever kind. #he scattered pictures at Antwerp! %russels! 7aris! ?aples and elsewhere give one but the faintest notion of %reughel"s powers. n the 8ienna galleries are collected more than a do0en of his pictures! all belonging to his last and best period. #he #ower of %abel! the great 1alvary! the ?umbering of the 7eople at %ethlehem! the two .inter +andscapes and the Autumn +andscape! the 1onversion of 4aint 7aul! the %attle between the sraelites and the 7hilistines! the Marriage -east and the 7easants" ,ance = all these admirable works are here. t is on these that he must be /udged. #here are four landscapes at 8ienna6 the ,ark ,ay :>anuary; and Huntsmen in the 4now :-ebruary;! a ?ovember landscape :the Eeturn of the 1attle;! and the ?umbering of the 7eople at %ethlehem which in spite of its name is little more than a landscape with figures. #his last! like the -ebruary +andscape and the Massacre of the nnocents at %russels! is a study of snow. 4now scenes lent themselves particularly well to %reughel"s style of painting. -or a snowy background has the effect of making all dark or colored ob/ects seen against it appear in the form of very distinct! sharp-edged silhouettes. %reughel does in all his compositions what the snow does in nature. All the ob/ects in his pictures :which are composed in a manner that reminds one very much of the >apanese; are paper-thin silhouettes arranged! plane after plane! like the theatrical scenery in the depth of the stage. 1onse$uently in the painting of snow scenes! where nature starts by imitating his habitual method! he achieves an almost dis$uieting degree of fundamental realism. #hose hunters stepping down over the brow of the hill toward the snowy valley with its fro0en ponds are >ack -rost himself and his crew. #he crowds who move about

the white streets of %ethlehem have their being in an absolute winter! and those ferocious troopers looting and innocent-hunting in the midst of a 1hristmas card landscape are a part of the very army of winter! and the innocents they kill are the young green shoots of the earth. %reughel"s method is less fundamentally compatible with the snowless landscapes of >anuary and ?ovember. #he different planes stand apart a little too flatly and distinctly. t needs a softer! bloomier kind of painting to recapture the intimate $uality of such scenes as those he portrays in these two pictures. A born painter of Autumn! for example! would have fused the beasts! the men! the trees and the distant mountains into a ha0ier unity! melting all together! the near and the far! in the rich surface of his paint. %reughel painted too transparently and too flatly to be the perfect interpreter of such landscapes. 4till! even in terms of his not entirely suitable convention he has done marvels. #he Autumn ,ay is a thing of the most ex$uisite beauty. Here! as in the more somberly dramatic >anuary +andscape! he makes a subtle use of golds and yellows and browns! creating a sober yet luminous harmony of colors. #he ?ovember +andscape is entirely placid and serene' but in the ,ark ,ay he has staged one of those natural dramas of the sky and earth = a conflict between light and darkness. +ight breaks from under clouds along the hori0on! shines up from the river in the valley that lies in the middle distance! glitters on the peaks of the mountains. #he foreground! which represents the crest of a wooded hill! is dark' and the leafless trees growing on the slopes are black against the sky. #hese two pictures are the most beautiful sixteenth-century landscapes of which have any knowledge. #hey are intensely poetical! yet sober and not excessively pictures$ue or romantic. #hose fearful crags and beetling precipices of which the older painters were so fond do not appear in these examples of %reughel"s maturest work. %reughel"s anthropology is as delightful as his nature poetry. He knew his -lemings! knew them intimately! both in their prosperity and during the miserable years of strife! of rebellion! of persecution! of war and conse$uent poverty which followed the advent of the Eeformation in -landers. A -leming himself! and so profoundly and ineradicably a -leming that he was able to go to taly! and! like his great countryman in the previous century! Eoger van der .eyden! return without the faintest tincture of talianism = he was perfectly $ualified to be the natural historian of the -lemish folk. He exhibits them mostly in those moments of orgiastic gaiety with which they temper the laborious monotony of their daily lives6 eating enormously! drinking! uncouthly dancing! indulging in that peculiarly -lemish scatological waggery. #he .edding -east and the 7easants" ,ance! both at 8ienna! are superb examples of this anthropological type of painting. ?or must we forget those two curious pictures! the %attle between 1arnival and +ent and the 1hildren"s 5ames. #hey too show us certain aspects of the /oyous side of -lemish life. %ut the view is not of an individual scene! casually sei0ed at its height and reproduced. #hese two pictures are systematic and encyclopedic. n one he illustrates all children"s games' in the other all the amusements of carnival! with all the forces arrayed on the side of asceticism. n the same way he represents! in his extraordinary #ower of %abel! all the processes of building. #hese pictures are handbooks of their respective sub/ects. %reughel"s fondness for generali0ing and systemati0ing is further illustrated in his allegorical pieces. #he #riumph of ,eath! at the 7rado! is appalling in its elaboration and completeness. #he fantastic ",ulle 5riet" at Antwerp is an almost e$ually elaborate

triumph of evil. His illustrations to proverbs and parables belong to the same class. #hey show him to have been a man profoundly convinced of the reality of evil and of the horrors which this mortal life! not to mention eternity! hold in store for suffering humanity. #he world is a horrible place' but in spite of this! or precisely because of this! men and women eat! drink and dance! 1arnival tilts against +ent and triumphs! if only for a moment' children play in the streets! people get married in the midst of gross re/oicings. %ut of all %reughel"s pictures the one most richly suggestive of reflection is not specifically allegorical or systematic. 1hrist carrying the 1ross is one of his largest canvases! thronged with small figures rhythmically grouped against a wide and romantic background. #he composition is simple! pleasing in itself! and seems to spring out of the sub/ect instead of being imposed on it. 4o much for pure aesthetics. &f the 1rucifixion and the 1arrying of the 1ross there are hundreds of representations by the most admirable and diverse masters. %ut of all that have ever seen this 1alvary of %reughel"s is the most suggestive and! dramatically! the most appalling. -or all other masters have painted these dreadful scenes from within! so to speak! outwards. -or them 1hrist is the center! the divine hero of the tragedy' this is the fact from which they start' it affects and transforms all the other facts! /ustifying! in a sense! the horror of the drama and ranging all that surrounds the central figure in an ordered hierarchy of good and evil. %reughel! on the other hand! starts from the outside and works inwards. He represents the scene as it would have appeared to any casual spectator on the road to 5olgotha on a certain spring morning in the year ZZ A.,. &ther artists have pretended to be angels! painting the scene with a knowledge of its significance. %ut %reughel resolutely remains a human onlooker. .hat he shows is a crowd of people walking briskly in holiday /oyfulness up the slopes of a hill. &n the top of the hill! which is seen in the middle distance on the right! are two crosses with thieves fastened to them! and between them a little hole in the ground in which another cross is soon to be planted. Eound the crosses! on the bare hill top stands a ring of people! who have come out with their picnic baskets to look on at the free entertainment offered by the ministers of /ustice. #hose who have already taken their stand round the crosses are the prudent ones' in these days we should see them with camp stools and thermos flasks! six hours ahead of time! in the vanguard of the $ueue for a Melba night at 1ovent 5arden. #he less provident or more adventurous people are in the crowd coming up the hill with the third and greatest of the criminals whose cross is to take the place of honor between the other two. n their anxiety not to miss any of the fun on the way up! they forget that they will have to take back seats at the actual place of execution. %ut it may be! of course! that they have reserved their places! up there. At #yburn one could get an excellent seat in a private box for half a crown' with the ticket in one"s pocket! one could follow the cart all the way from the prison! arrive with the criminal and yet have a perfect view of the performance. n these later days! when cranky humanitarianism has so far triumphed that hangings take place in private and Mrs. #hompson"s screams are not even allowed to be recorded on the radio! we have to be content with reading about executions! not with seeing them. #he impresarios who sold seats at #yburn have been replaced by titled newspaper proprietors who sell /uicy descriptions of #yburn to a prodigiously much larger public. f people were still hanged at Marble Arch! +ord Eiddell would be much less rich. #hat eager! tremulous! lascivious interest in blood and beastliness which in these

more civili0ed days we can only satisfy at one remove from reality in the pages of our newspapers! was franklier indulged in %reughel"s day' the na\ve ingenuous brute in man was less sophisticated! was given longer rope! and /oyously barks and wags its tail round the appointed victim. 4een thus! impassively! from the outside! the tragedy does not purge or uplift' it appalls and makes desperate' or it may even inspire a kind of gruesome mirth. #he same situation may often be either tragic or comic! according as it is seen through the eyes of those who suffer or those who look on. :4hift the point of vision a little and Macbeth could be paraphrased as a roaring farce.; %reughel makes a concession to the high tragic convention by placing in the foreground of his picture a little group made up of the holy women weeping and wringing their hands. #hey stand $uite apart from the other figures in the picture and are fundamentally out of harmony with them! being painted in the style of Eoger van der .eyden. A little oasis of passionate spirituality! an island of consciousness and comprehension in the midst of the pervading stupidity and brutishness. .hy %reughel put them into his picture is difficult to guess' perhaps for the benefit of the conventionally religious! perhaps out of respect for tradition' or perhaps he found his own creation too depressing and added this noble irrelevance to reassure himself. :-rom 1long the $oad0

*ed"tat"on on El 9reco #he pleasures of ignorance are as great! in their way! as the pleasures of knowledge. -or though the light is good! though it is satisfying to be able to place the things that surround one in the categories of an ordered and comprehensible system! it is also good to find oneself sometimes in the dark! it is pleasant now and then to have to speculate with vague bewilderment about a world! which ignorance has reduced to a $uantity of mutually irrelevant happenings dotted! like so many unexplored and fantastic islands! on the face of a vast ocean of incomprehension. -or me! one of the greatest charms of travel consists in the fact that it offers uni$ue opportunities for indulging in the luxury of ignorance. am not one of those conscientious travelers who! before they visit a new country! spend weeks mugging up its geology! its economics! its art history! its literature. prefer! at any rate during my first few visits! to be a thoroughly unintelligent tourist. t is only later! when my ignorance has lost its virgin freshness! that begin to read what the intelligent tourist would have known by heart before he bought his tickets. read = and forthwith! in a series of apocalypses! my isolated and mysteriously odd impressions begin to assume significance! my /umbled memories fall harmoniously into patterns. #he pleasures of ignorance have given place to the pleasures of knowledge. have only twice visited 4pain = not often enough! that is to say! to have grown tired of ignorance. still en/oy bewilderedly knowing as little as possible about all see between the 7yrenees and 1ape #rafalgar. Another two or three visits! and the time will be ripe for me to go to the +ondon +ibrary and look up "4pain" in the sub/ect index. n one of the numerous! the all too numerous! books there catalogued shall find! no doubt! the explanation of a little mystery that has mildly and intermittently pu00led me for $uite a number of years = ever since! at one of those admirable +oan Exhibitions in

%urlington House! saw for the first time a version of El 5reco"s Dream o, )hili 33. #his curious composition! familiar to every visitor to the Escorial! represents the king! dressed and gloved like an undertaker in inky black! kneeling on a well-stuffed cushion in the center foreground' beyond him! on the left! a crowd of pious kneelers! some lay! some clerical! but all manifestly saintly! are looking upwards into a heaven full of walt0ing angels! cardinal virtues and biblical personages! grouped in a circle round the 1ross and the luminous monogram of the 4aviour. &n the right a very large whale gigantically yawns! and a vast concourse! presumably of the damned! is hurrying :in spite of all that we learned in childhood about the anatomy of whales; down its crimson throat. A curious picture! repeat! and! as a work of art! not remarkably good' there are many much better 5recos belonging even to the same youthful period. ?evertheless! in spite of its mediocrity! it is a picture for which have a special weakness. like it for the now sadly unorthodox reason that the sub/ect interests me. And the sub/ect interests me! because do not know what the sub/ect is. -or this dream of Fing 7hilip = what was it< .as it a visionary anticipation of the +ast >udgment< A mystical peep into Heaven< An encouraging glimpse of the Almighty"s short way with heretics< do not know = do not at present even desire to know. n the face of so extravagant a phantasy as this of 5reco"s! the pleasures of ignorance are peculiarly intense. 1onfronted by the mysterious whale! the undertaker king! the swarming aerial saints and scurrying sinners! give my fancy license and fairly wallow in the pleasure of bewilderedly not knowing. #he fancy like best of all that have occurred to me is the one which affirms that this $ueer picture was painted as a prophetic and symbolic autobiography! that it was meant to summari0e hieroglyphically the whole of 5reco"s future development. -or that whale in the right foreground = that greatgrandfather of Moby ,ick! with his huge yawn! his crimson gullet and the crowd of the damned descending! like bank clerks at six o"clock into the @nderground = that whale! say! is the most significantly autobiographical ob/ect in all El 5reco"s early pictures. -or whither are they bound! those hastening damned< ",own the red lane!" as our nurses used to say when they were encouraging us to swallow the uneatable viands of childhood. ,own the red lane into a dim inferno of tripes. ,own! in a word! into that strange and rather frightful universe which 5reco"s spirit seems to have come more and more exclusively! as he grew older! to inhabit. -or in the 1retan"s later painting every personage is a >onah. Aes! every personage. .hich is where The Dream o, )hili 33 reveals itself as being imperfectly prophetic! a mutilated symbol. t is for the damned alone that the whale opens his mouth. f El 5reco had wanted to tell the whole truth about his future development! he would have sent the blessed to /oin them! or at least have provided his saints and angels with another monster of their own! a supernal whale floating head downwards among the clouds! with a second red lane ascending! straight and narrow! toward a swallowed Heaven. 7aradise and 7urgatory! Hell! and even the common Earth = for El 5reco in his artistic maturity! every department of the universe was situated in the belly of a whale. His Annunciations and Assumptions! his Agonies and #ransfigurations and 1rucifixions! his Martyrdoms and 4tigmati0ations are all! without exception! visceral events. Heaven is no larger than the %lack Hole of 1alcutta! and 5od Himself is whale-engulfed. 1ritics have tried to explain El 5reco"s pictorial agorophobia in terms of his early! 1retan education. #here is no space in his pictures! they assure us! because the typical art of that %y0antium! which was El 5reco"s spiritual home! was the mosaic! and the mosaic

is innocent of depth. A specious explanation! whose only defect is that it happens to be almost entirely beside the point. #o begin with! the %y0antine mosaic was not invariably without depth. #hose extraordinary eighth-century mosaics in the &meyyid mos$ue at ,amascus! for example! are as spacious and airy as impressionist landscapes. #hey are! it is true! somewhat exceptional specimens of the art. %ut even the commoner shut-in mosaics have really nothing to do with El 5reco"s painting! for the %y0antine saints and kings are enclosed! or! to be more accurate! are flatly inlaid in a kind of two-dimensional abstraction = in a pure Euclidean! plane-geometrical Heaven of gold or blue. #heir universe never bears the smallest resemblance to that whale"s belly in which every one of El 5reco"s personages has his or her mysterious and appalling being. El 5reco"s world is no -latland' there is depth in it = /ust a little depth. t is precisely this that makes it seem such a dis$uieting world. n their two-dimensional abstraction the personages of the %y0antine mosaists are perfectly at home' they are adapted to their environment. %ut! solid and three-dimensional! made to be the inhabitants of a spacious universe! El 5reco"s people are shut up in a world where there is perhaps /ust room enough to swing a cat! but no more. #hey are in prison and! which makes it worse! in a visceral prison. -or all that surrounds them is organic! animal. 1louds! rock! drapery have all been mysteriously transformed into mucus and skinned muscle and peritoneum. #he Heaven into which 1ount &rga0 ascends is like some cosmic operation for appendicitis. #he Madrid $esurrection is a resurrection in a digestive tube. And from the later pictures we receive the gruesome impression that all the personages! both human and divine! have begun to suffer a process of digestion! are being gradually assimilated to their visceral surroundings. Even in the Madrid $esurrection the forms and texture of the naked flesh have assumed a strangely tripe-like aspect. n the case of the nudes in 'aocoon and The 2 ening o, the (eventh (eal :both of them works of El 5reco"s last years; this process of assimilation has been carried a good deal further. After seeing their draperies and the surrounding landscape gradually peptoni0ed and transformed! the unhappy >onahs of #oledo discover! to their horror! that they themselves are being digested. #heir bodies! their arms and legs! their faces! fingers! toes are ceasing to be humanly their own' they are becoming = the process is slow but inexorably sure = part of the universal .hale"s internal workings. t is lucky for them that El 5reco died when he did. #wenty years more! and the #rinity! the 1ommunion of 4aints and all the human race would have found themselves reduced to hardly distinguishable excrescences on the surface of a cosmic gut. #he most favored might perhaps have aspired to be taenias and trematodes. -or myself! am very sorry that El 5reco did not live to be as old as #itian. At eighty or ninety he would have been producing an almost abstract art = a cubism without cubes! organic! purely visceral. .hat pictures he would then have painted3 %eautiful! thrilling! profoundly appalling. -or appalling are even the pictures he painted in middle age! dreadful in spite of their extraordinary power and beauty. #his swallowed universe into which he introduces us is one of the most dis$uieting creations of the human mind. &ne of the most pu00ling too. -or what were El 5reco"s reasons for driving mankind down the red lane< .hat induced him to take 5od out of His boundless Heaven and shut Him up in a fish"s gut< &ne can only obscurely speculate. All that am $uite certain of is that there were profounder and more important reasons for the whale than the memory of the mosaics = the wholly unvisceral mosaics = which he may have seen in the course of a 1retan childhood! a 8enetian and Eoman youth. ?or will a disease of the

eye account! as some have claimed! for his strange artistic development. ,iseases must be very grave indeed before they become completely coextensive with their victims. #hat men are affected by their illnesses is obvious' but it is no less obvious that! except when they are almost in e"tremis, they are something more than the sum of their morbid symptoms. ,ostoevsky was not merely personified epilepsy! Feats was other things besides a simple lump of pulmonary tuberculosis. Men make use of their illnesses at least as much as they are made use of by them. t is likely enough that El 5reco had something wrong with his eyes. %ut other people have had the same disease without for that reason painting pictures like the 'aocoon and The 2 ening o, the (eventh (eal. #o say that El 5reco was /ust a defective eyesight is absurd' he was a man who used a defective eyesight. @sed it for what purpose< to express what strange feeling about the world! what mysterious philosophy< t is hard indeed to answer. -or El 5reco belongs as a metaphysician :every significant artist is a metaphysician! a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories; to no known school. #he most one can say! by way of classification! is that! like most of the great artists of the %aro$ue! he believed in the validity of ecstasy! of the non-rational! "numinous" experiences out of which! as a raw material! the reason fashions the gods or the various attributes of 5od. %ut the kind of ecstatic experience artistically rendered and meditated on by El 5reco was $uite different from the kind of experience which is described and symbolically "rationali0ed" in the painting! sculpture and architecture of the great %aro$ue artists of the seicento. #hose mass-producers of spirituality! the >esuits! had perfected a simple techni$ue for the fabrication of orthodox ecstasies. #hey had cheapened an experience! hitherto accessible only to the spiritually wealthy! and so placed it within the reach of all. .hat the talian seicento artists so brilliantly and copiously rendered was this cheapened experience and the metaphysic in terms of which it could be rationali0ed. "4t. #eresa for All." "A >ohn of the 1ross in every Home." 4uch were! or might have been! their slogans. .as it to be wondered at if their sublimities were a trifle theatrical! their tenderness treacly! their spiritual intuitions rather commonplace and vulgar< Even the greatest of the %aro$ue artists were not remarkable for subtlety and spiritual refinement. .ith these rather facile ecstasies and the orthodox 1ounter-Eeformation theology in terms of which they could be interpreted! El 5reco has nothing to do. #he bright reassuring Heaven! the smiling or lachrymose! but always all too human divinities! the stage immensities and stage mysteries! all the stock-in-trade of the seicentisti, are absent from his pictures. #here is ecstasy and flamy aspiration' but always ecstasy and aspiration! as we have seen! within the belly of a whale. El 5reco seems to be talking all the time about the physiological root of ecstasy! not the spiritual flower' about the primary corporeal facts of numinous experience! not the mental derivatives from them. However vulgarly! the artists of the %aro$ue were concerned with the flower! not the root! with the derivatives and theological interpretations! not the brute facts of immediate physical experience. ?ot that they were ignorant of the physiological nature of these primary facts. %ernini"s astonishing (t. Teresa proclaims it in the most une$uivocal fashion' and it is interesting to note that in this statue :as well as in the very similar and e$ually astonishing 'udovica 1l!ertoni in 4an -ranceso a Eipa; he gives to the draperies a kind of organic and! might say! intestinal lusciousness of form. A little softened! smoothed and simplified! the robe of the great mystic would be indistinguishable from

the rest of the swallowed landscape inside El 5reco"s whale. %ernini saves the situation :from the 1ounter-Eeformer"s point of view; by introducing into his composition the figure of the dart-brandishing angel. #his aerial young creature is the inhabitant of an unswallowed Heaven. He carries with him the implication of infinite spaces. 1harmingly and a little preposterously :the hand which holds the fiery dart has a delicately crook"d little finger! like the hand of some too refined young person in the act of raising her teacup;! the angel symboli0es the spiritual flower of ecstasy! whose physiological root is the swooning #eresa in her peritoneal robe. %ernini is! spiritually speaking! a leinDairiste. ?ot so El 5reco. 4o far as he is concerned! there is nothing outside the whale. #he primary physiological fact of religious experience is also! for him! the final fact. He remains consistently on the plane of that visceral consciousness which we so largely ignore! but with which our ancestors :as their language proves; did so much of their feeling and thinking. ".here is thy 0eal and thy strength! the sounding of the bowels and of thy mercies toward me<" "My heart is turned within me! my repentings are kindled together." " will bless the +ord who hath given me counsel' my reins also instruct me in the night season." "-or 5od is my record! how greatly long after you all in the bowels of >esus 1hrist." "-or #hou hast possessed my reins." " s Ephraim my dear son<. . . #herefore my bowels are troubled for him." #he %ible abounds in such phrases = phrases which strike the modern reader as $ueer! a bit indelicate! even repellent. .e are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as thinking entirely with our heads. .rongly! as the physiologists have shown. -or what we think and feel and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and our viscera. #he 7salmist drawing instruction from his reins! the Apostle with his yearning bowels! are thoroughly in the modern physiological movement. El 5reco lived at a time when the reality of the primary visceral consciousness was still recogni0ed = when the heart and the liver! the spleen and reins did all a man"s feeling for him! and the four humors of blood! phlegm! choler and melancholy determined his character and imposed his passing moods. Even the loftiest experiences were admitted to be primarily physiological. #eresa knew 5od in terms of an ex$uisite pain in her heart! her side! her bowels. %ut while #eresa! and along with her the generality of human beings! found it natural to pass from the realm of physiology into that of the spirit = from the belly of the whale out into the wide open sky = El 5reco obstinately insisted on remaining swallowed. His meditations were all of religious experience and ecstasy = but always of religious experience in its raw physiological state! always of primary! immediate! visceral ecstasy. He expressed these meditations in terms of 1hristian symbols = of symbols! that is to say! habitually employed to describe experiences $uite different from the primary physiological states on which he was accustomed to dwell. t is the contrast between these symbols! with their currently accepted significance! and the special private use to which El 5reco puts them = it is this strange contrast which gives to El 5reco"s pictures their peculiarly dis$uieting $uality. -or the 1hristian symbols remind us of all the spiritual open spaces = the open spaces of altruistic feeling! the open spaces of abstract thought! the open spaces of freefloating spiritual ecstasy. El 5reco imprisons them! claps them up in a fish"s gut. #he symbols of the spiritual open spaces are compelled by him to serve as a language in terms of which he talks about the close immediacies of visceral awareness! about the ecstasy that annihilates the personal soul! not by dissolving it out into universal infinity! but by

drawing it down and drowning it in the warm! pulsating! tremulous darkness of the body. .ell! have wandered far and fancifully from the undertaker king and his enigmatic nightmare of whales and >onahs. %ut imaginative wandering is the privilege of the ignorant. .hen one doesn"t know one is free to invent. have sei0ed the opportunity while it presented itself. &ne of these days may discover what the picture is about! and when that has happened shall no longer be at liberty to impose my own interpretations. maginative criticism is essentially an art of ignorance. t is only because we don"t know what a writer or artist meant to say that we are free to concoct meanings of our own. f El 5reco had somewhere specifically told us what he meant to convey by painting in terms of %lack Holes and mucus! should not now be in a position to speculate. %ut luckily he never told us' am /ustified in letting my fancy loose to wander. :-rom +usic at &ight0

2or3 and S#"r"t "n Art A painter or a sculptor can be simultaneously representational and nonrepresentational. n their architectural backgrounds and! above all! in their draperies! many works even of the Eenaissance and the %aro$ue incorporate passages of almost unadulterated abstraction. #hese are often expressive in the highest degree. ndeed! the whole tone of a representational work may be established! and its inner meaning expressed! by those parts of it which are most nearly abstract. #hus! the pictures of 7iero della -rancesca leave upon us an impression of calm! of power! of intellectual ob/ectivity and stoical detachment. -rom those of 1osimo #ura there emanates a sense of dis$uiet! even of anguish. .hen we analy0e the purely pictorial reasons for our perception of a profound difference in the temperaments of the two artists! we find that a very important part is played by the least representational elements in their pictures = the draperies. n 7iero"s draperies there are large unbroken surfaces! and the folds are designed to emphasi0e the elementary solid-geometrical structure of the figures. n #ura"s draperies the surfaces are broken up! and there is a profusion of sharp angles! of /agged and flamelike forms. 4omething analogous may be found in the work of two great painters of a later period! 7oussin and .atteau. .atteau"s draperies are broken into innumerable tiny folds and wrinkles! so that the color of a mantle or a doublet is never the same for half an inch together. #he impression left upon the spectator is one of extreme sensibility and the most delicate refinement. 7oussin"s much broader treatment of these almost nonrepresentational accessories seems to express a more masculine temperament and a philosophy of like akin to 7iero"s noble stoicism. n some works the non-representational passages are actually more important than the representational. #hus! in many of %ernini"s statues! only the hands! feet and face are fully representational' all the rest is drapery = that is to say! a writhing and undulant abstraction. t is the same with El 5reco"s paintings. n some of them a third! a half! even as much as two thirds of the entire surface is occupied by low-level organic abstractions! to which! because of their representational context! we give the name of draperies! or clouds! or rocks. #hese abstractions are powerfully expressive! and it is through them that! to a considerable extent! El 5reco tells the private story that underlies the official

sub/ect matter of his paintings. At this point the pure abstractionist will come forward with a $uestion. 4eeing that the non-representational passages in representational works are so expressive! why should anyone bother with representation< .hy trouble to tell a high-level story about recogni0able ob/ects when the more important low-level story about the artist"s temperament and reactions to life can be told in terms of pure abstractions< myself have no ob/ection to pure abstractions which! in the hands of a gifted artist! can achieve their own kind of aesthetic perfection. %ut this perfection! it seems to me! is a perfection without rather narrow limits. #he 5reeks called the circle "a perfect figure." And so it is = one cannot improve on it. And yet a composition consisting of a red circle inscribed within a black s$uare would strike us! for all its perfection! as being a little dull. Even aesthetically the perfect figure of a circle is less interesting than the perfect figure of a young woman. #his does not mean! of course! that the representation of the young woman by a bad artist will be more valuable! as a picture! than a composition of circles! s$uares and triangles devised by a good one. %ut it does mean! think! that ?ature is a richer source of forms than any textbook of plane or solid geometry. ?ature has evolved innumerable forms and! as we ourselves move from point to point! we see large numbers of these forms! grouped in an endless variety of ways and thus creating an endless variety of new forms! all of which may be used as the raw materials of works of art. .hat is given is incomparably richer than what we can invent. %ut the richness of ?ature is! from our point of view! a chaos upon which we! as philosophers! men of science! technicians and artists! must impose various kinds of unity. ?ow! would say that! other things being e$ual! a work of art which imposes aesthetic unity upon a large number of formal and psychological elements is a greater and more interesting work than one in which unity is imposed upon only a few elements. n other words! there is a hierarchy of perfections. %ach"s #wo-7art nventions are perfect in their way. %ut his Chromatic Cantasia is also perfect' and since its perfection involves the imposition of aesthetic unity upon a larger number of elements it is :as we all in fact recogni0e; a greater work. #he old distinction between the -ine Arts and the crafts is based to some extent upon snobbery and other non-aesthetic considerations. %ut not entirely. n the hierarchy of perfections a perfect vase or a perfect carpet occupies a lower rank than that! say! of 5iotto"s frescoes at 7adua! or Eembrandt"s )olish $ider, or the Grande Jatte of 5eorges 4eurat. n these and a hundred other masterpieces of painting the pictorial whole embraces and unifies a repertory of forms much more numerous! varied! strange and interesting than those which come together in the wholes organi0ed by even the most gifted craftsmen. And! over and above this richer and subtler formal perfection! we are presented with the non-pictorial bonus of a story and! explicit or implicit! a criticism of life. At their best! nonrepresentational compositions achieve perfection' but it is a perfection nearer to that of the /ug or rug than to that of the enormously complex and yet completed unified masterpieces of representational art = most of which! as we have seen! contain expressive passages of almost pure abstraction. At the present time it would seem that the most sensible and rewarding thing for a painter to do is :like %ra$ue! for example; to make the best and the most of both worlds! representational as well as nonrepresentational. .ithin his own %y0antine-8enetian tradition El 5reco did precisely this! combining representation with abstraction in a manner which we are accustomed to

regard as characteristically modern. His intention was to use this powerful artistic instrument to express! in visual terms! man"s capacity for union with the divine. %ut the artistic means he employed were such that it was not possible for him to carry out that intention. #he existence of a spiritual reality transcendent and yet immanent! absolutely other and yet the sustaining spiritual essence of every being! has fre$uently been rendered in visual symbols = but not symbols of the kind employed by El 5reco. #he agitation of $uasi-visceral forms in an overcrowded and almost spaceless world! from which nonhuman ?ature has been banished! cannot! in the very nature of things! express man"s union with the 4pirit who must be worshiped in spirit. +andscape and the human figure in repose = these are the symbols through which! in the past! the spiritual life has been most clearly and powerfully expressed. "%e still and know that am 5od." Eecollectedness is the indispensable means to the unitive knowledge of spiritual reality' and though recollectedness should! and by some actually can! be practiced in the midst of the most violent physical activity! it is most effectively symboli0ed by a body in repose and a face that expresses an inner serenity. #he carved or painted %uddhas and %odhisattvas of ndia and the -ar East are perhaps the most perfect examples of such visual symbols of the spiritual life. Hardly less ade$uate are the ma/estic %y0antine figures of 1hrist! the 8irgin and the saints. t seems strange that El 5reco! who received his first training from %y0antine masters! should not have recogni0ed the symbolical value of repose! but should have preferred to represent or! through his accessory abstractions! to imply! an agitation wholly incompatible with the spiritual life of which he had read in the pages of ,ionysius. ?o less strange is the fact that a disciple of #itian should have ignored landscape and that a ?eo-7latonist should have failed to perceive that! in the aged master"s religious pictures! the only hint of spirituality was to be found! not in the all too human figures! but in the backgrounds of Alpine foothills! peaks and skies. 1ivili0ed man spends most of his life in a co0y little universe of material artifacts! of social conventions and of verbali0ed ideas. &nly rarely! if he is the inhabitant of a well-ordered city! does he come into direct contact with the mystery of the non-human world! does he become aware of modes of being incommensurable with his own! of vast! indefinite extensions! of durations all but everlasting. -rom time immemorial deity has been associated with the boundlessness of earth and sky! with the longevity of trees! rivers and mountains! with +eviathan and the whirlwind! with sunshine and the lilies of the field. 4pace and time on the cosmic scale are symbols of the infinity and eternity of 4pirit. ?on-human ?ature is the outward and visible expression of the mystery which confronts us when we look into the depths of our own being. #he first artists to concern themselves with the spiritual significance of ?ature were the #aoist landscape painters of 1hina. "1herishing the .ay! a virtuous man responds to ob/ects. 1larifying his mind! a wise man appreciates forms. As to landscapes! they exist in material substance and soar into the realm of spirit. . . #he virtuous man follows the .ay by spiritual insight' the wise man takes the same approach. %ut the lovers of landscape are led into the .ay by a sense of form. . . #he significance which is too subtle to be communicated by means of words of mouth may be grasped by the mind through books and writings. #hen how much more so in my case! when have wandered among the rocks and hills and carefully observed them with my own eyes3 render form by form and appearance by appearance. . . #he truth comprises the expression received through the eyes and recogni0ed by the mind. f! in painting! therefore! the likeness of an

ob/ect is skillfully portrayed! both the eye and the mind will approve. .hen the eyes respond and the mind agrees with the ob/ects! the divine spirit may be felt and truth may be attained in the painting." 4o wrote #sung 7ing who was a contemporary of 4t. Augustine! in an 3ntroduction to 'andsca e )ainting, which has become a 1hinese classic. .hen! twelve hundred years later! European artists discovered landscape! they developed no philosophy to explain and /ustify what they were doing. #hat was left to the poets = to .ordsworth! to 4helley! to .hitman. #he 7resence which they found in ?ature! "the 4pirit of each spot!" is identical with Hsuan 7"in! the mysterious 8alley 4pirit of the #ao #e 1hing! who reveals herself to the landscape painter and! by him! is revealed to others in his pictures. %ut the lack of an explanatory philosophy did not prevent the best of the European landscape painters from making manifest that
something far more deeply interfused, %hose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man"

"#his is not drawing!" %lake exclaimed! when he was shown one of 1onstable"s sketches! "this is inspiration." And though 1onstable himself protested that it was only drawing! the fact remains that the best of his landscapes are powerful and convincing renderings of the spiritual reality in which all things have their being. ndeed! they are much more ade$uate as symbols of spiritual life than the ma/ority of the works in which %lake consciously tried to express his spiritualist philosophy. Much less gifted as painter than as poet! and brought up in a deplorable artistic tradition! %lake rarely produced a picture that "comes off" to the extent of expressing what he says so perfectly in his lyrics and in isolated passages of the )ro hetic *oo/s. 1onstable! on the other hand! is a great ?ature mystic without knowing or intending it. n this he reminds us of 4eurat. "#hey see poetry in what do!" complained that consummate master of landscape. "?o' apply my method and that is all there is to it." %ut the method was applied by a painter who combined the most ex$uisite sensibility with intellectual powers of the first order. 1onse$uently what 4eurat supposed to be merely ointillisme was in fact inspiration = a vision of the world in which material reality is the symbol and! one might say! the incarnation of an allembracing spiritual reality. #he famous method was the means whereby he told this #aoistic and .ordsworthian story' ointillisme, as he used it! permitted him to render empty space as no other painter has ever done! and to impose! through color! an unprecedented degree of unity upon his composition. n 4eurat"s paintings the near and the far are separate and yet are one. #he emptiness which is the symbol of infinity is of the same substance as the finite forms it contains. #he transient participates in the eternal! samsara and nirvana are one and the same. 4uch is the poetry with which! in spite of himself! 4eurat filled those wonderful landscapes of Honfleur and 5ravelines and the 4eine. And such is the poetry which El 5reco! in spite of what seems to have been a conscious desire to imply it! was forced by the nature of his artistic instrument to exclude from every picture he painted. His peculiar treatment of space and form tells a story of obscure happenings in the subconscious mind = of some haunting fear of wide vistas and the open air! some dream of security in the imagined e$uivalent of a womb. #he conscious aspiration toward union with! and perfect freedom in! the divine 4pirit is overridden by a subconscious longing for the consolations of some ineffable uterine state.

.hen we think of it in relation to the great world of human experience! El 5reco"s universe of swallowed spirit and visceral rapture seems curiously oppressive and dis$uieting. %ut considered as an isolated artistic system! how strong and coherent it seems! how perfectly unified! how fascinatingly beautiful. And because of this inner harmony and coherence! it asserts in one way all that it had denied in another. El 5reco"s conscious purpose was to affirm man"s capacity for union with the divine. @nconsciously! by his choice of forms and his peculiar treatment of space! he proclaimed the triumph of the organic and the incapacity of spirit! so far as he personally was concerned! to transfigure the matter with which it is associated. %ut at the same time he was a painter of genius. &ut of the visceral forms and cramped spaces! imposed upon him by a part of his being beyond his voluntary control! he was able to create a new kind of order and perfection and! through this order and perfection! to reaffirm the possibility of man"s union with the 4pirit = a possibility which the raw materials of his pictures had seemed to rule out. #here is no $uestion here of a dialectical process of thesis! antithesis and synthesis. A work of art is not a becoming! but a multiple being. t exists and has significance on several levels at once. n most cases these significances are of the same kind and harmoniously reinforce one another. ?ot always! however. &ccasionally it happens that each of the meanings is logically exclusive of all the rest. #here is then a happy marriage of incompatibles! a perfect fusion of contradictions. t is one of those states which! though inconceivable! actually occur. 4uch things cannot be' and yet! when you enter the 7rado! when you visit #oledo! there they actually are. :-rom "8ariations on El 5reco!" Themes and <ariations0

Var"at"ons on 9oya #here are anthologies of almost everything = from the best to the worst! from the historically significant to the eccentric! from the childish to the sublime. %ut there is one anthology! potentially the most interesting of them all! which! to the best of my knowledge! has never yet been compiled' mean! the Anthology of +ater .orks. #o $ualify for inclusion in such an anthology! the artist would have to pass several tests. -irst of all! he must have avoided a premature extinction and lived on into artistic and chronological maturity. #hus the last poems of 4helley! the last compositions of 4chubert and even of Mo0art would find no place in our collection. 1onsummate artists as they were! these men were still psychologically youthful when they died. -or their full development they needed more time than their earthly destiny allowed them. &f a different order are those strange beings whose chronological age is out of all proportion to their maturity! not only as artists! but as human spirits. #hus! some of the letters written by Feats in his early twenties and many of the paintings which 4eurat executed before his death at thirty-two might certainly $ualify as +ater .orks. %ut! as a general rule! a certain minimum of time is needed for the ripening of such fruits. -or the most part! our hypothetical anthologist will make his selections from the art of elderly and middle-aged men and women. %ut by no means all middle-aged and elderly artists are capable of producing

significant +ater .orks. -or the last half century of a long life! .ordsworth preserved an almost unbroken record of dullness. And in this respect he does not stand alone. #here are many! many others whose +ater .orks are their worst. All these must be excluded from our anthology! and would pass a similar /udgment on that other large class of +ater .orks which! though up to the standard of the earlier! are not significantly different from them. Haydn lived to a ripe old age and his right hand never forgot its cunning' but it also failed to learn a new cunning. 7eter 7an-like! he continued! as an old man! to write the same sort of thing he had written twenty! thirty and forty years before. .here there is nothing to distinguish the creations of a man"s maturity from those of his youth it is superfluous to include any of them in a selection of characteristically +ater .orks. #his leaves us! then! with the +ater .orks of those artists who have lived without ever ceasing to learn of life. #he field is relatively narrow' but within it! what astonishing and sometimes what dis$uieting treasures3 &ne thinks of the ineffable serenity of the slow movement of %eethoven"s 1D+inor 9uartet, the peace passing all understanding of the orchestral prelude to the *enedictus of his +issa (olemnis. %ut this is not the old man"s only mood' when he turns from the contemplation of eternal reality to a consideration of the human world! we are treated to the positively terrifying merriment of the last movement of his *DClatD+a=or 9uartet = merriment $uite inhuman! peals of violent and yet somehow abstract laughter echoing down from somewhere beyond the limits of the world. &f the same nature! but if possible even more dis$uieting! is the mirth which reverberates through the last act of 8erdi"s Calsta,,, culminating in that extraordinary final chorus in which the aged genius makes his maturest comment on the world = not with bitterness or sarcasm or satire! but in a huge! contrapuntal paroxysm of detached and already posthumous laughter. #urning to the other arts! we find something of the same non-human! posthumous $uality in the +ater .orks of Aeats and! coupled with a prodigious ma/esty! in those of 7iero della -rancesca. And then! of course there is The Tem est = a work charged with something of the unearthly serenity of %eethoven"s *enedictus but concluding in the most disappointing anti-climax! with 7rospero giving up his magic for the sake :heaven help us3; of becoming once again a duke. And the same sort of all too human anti-climax saddens us at the end of the second part of Caust, with its implication that draining fens is Man"s -inal End! and that the achievement of this end automatically $ualifies the drainer for the beatific vision. And what about the last El 5recos = for example! that unimaginable 3mmaculate Conce tion at #oledo with its fantastic harmony of brilliant! ice-cold colors! its ecstatic gesticulations in a heaven with a third dimension no greater than that of a mine-shaft! its deli$uescence of flesh and flowers and drapery into a set of ectoplasmic abstractions< .hat about them! indeed< All we know is that! beautiful and supremely enigmatic! they will certainly take their place in our hypothetical anthology. And finally! among these and all other extraordinary +ater .orks! we should have to number the paintings! drawings and etchings of 5oya"s final twenty-five or thirty years. #he difference between the young 5oya and the old may be best studied and appreciated by starting in the basement of the 7rado! where his cartoons for the tapestries are hung' climbing thence to the main floor! where there is a room full of his portraits of royal imbeciles! grandees! enchanting duchesses! ma=as, clothed and unclothed' walking

thence to the smaller room containing the two great paintings of the 4econd of May = ?apoleon"s Mamelukes cutting down the crowd and! at night! when the revolt has been $uelled! the firing s$uads at work upon their victims by the light of lanterns' and finally mounting to the top floor where hang the etchings and drawings! together with those unutterably mysterious and disturbing "black paintings!" with which the deaf and aging 5oya elected to adorn the dining room of his house! the Guinta del 4ordo. t is a progress from lighthearted eighteenth-century art! hardly at all unconventional in sub/ect matter or in handling! through fashionable brilliancy and increasing virtuosity! to something $uite timeless both in techni$ue and spirit = the most powerful of commentaries on human crime and madness! made in terms of an artistic convention uni$uely fitted to express precisely that extraordinary mingling of hatred and compassion! despair and sardonic humor! realism and fantasy. " show you sorrow!" said the %uddha! "and the ending of sorrow" = the sorrow of the phenomenal world in which man! "like an angry ape! plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep!" and the ending of sorrow in the beatific vision! the unitive contemplation of transcendental reality. Apart from the fact that he is a great and! one might say! uni$uely original artist! 5oya is significant as being! in his +ater .orks! the almost perfect type of the man who knows only sorrow and not the ending of sorrow. n spite of his virulent anti-clericalism! 5oya contrived to remain on sufficiently good terms with the 1hurch to receive periodical commissions to paint religious pictures. 4ome of these! like the frescoes in the cupola of +a -lorida! are frankly and avowedly secular. %ut others are serious essays in religious painting. t is worth looking rather closely at what is probably the best of these religious pieces = the fine 1gony in the Garden. .ith outstretched arms! 1hrist raises toward the comforting angel a face whose expression is identical with that of the poor creatures whom we see! in a number of unforgettably painful etchings and paintings! kneeling or standing in an excruciating anticipation before the gun barrels of a -rench firing s$uad. #here is no trace here of that loving confidence which! even in the darkest hours! fills the hearts of men and women who live continually in the presence of 5od' not so much as a hint of what -rancois de 4ales calls "holy indifference" to suffering and good fortune! of the fundamental e$uanimity! the peace passing all understanding! which belongs to those whose attention is firmly fixed upon a transcendental reality. -or 5oya the transcendental reality did not exist. #here is no evidence in his biography or his works that he ever had even the most distant personal experience of it. #he only reality he knew was that of the world around him' and the longer he lived the more frightful did that world seem = the more frightful! that is to say! in the eyes of his rational self' for his animal high spirits went on bubbling up irrepressibly! whenever his body was free from pain or sickness! to the very end. As a young man in good health! with money and reputation! a fine position and as many women as he wanted! he had found the world a very agreeable place = absurd! of course! and with enough of folly and roguery to furnish sub/ect matter for innumerable satirical drawings! but eminently worth living in. #hen all of a sudden came deafness! and! after the /oyful dawn of the Eevolution! ?apoleon and -rench imperialism and the atrocities of war' and! when ?apoleon"s hordes were gone! the unspeakable -erdinand 8 and clerical reaction and the spectacle of 4paniards fighting among themselves' and all the time! like the drone of a

bagpipe accompanying the louder noises of what is officially called history! the enormous stupidity of average men and women! the chronic s$ualor of their superstitions! the bestiality of their occasional violences and orgies. Eealistically or in fantastic allegories! with a technical mastery that only increased as he grew older! 5oya recorded it all = not only the agonies endured by his people at the hands of the invaders! but also the follies and crimes committed by these same people in their dealings with one another. #he great canvases of the Madrid massacres and executions! the incomparable etchings of -ar's Disasters, fill us with an indignant compassion. %ut then we turn to the Dis arates and the )inturas &egras. n these! with a sublimely impartial savagery! 5oya sets down exactly what he thinks of the martyrs of the ,os de Mayo when they are not being martyred. Here! for example! are two men = two 4paniards = sinking slowly toward death in an engulfing $uicksand! but busily engaged in knocking one another over the head with bludgeons. And here is a rabble coming home from a pilgrimage = scores of low faces! distorted as though by reflection in the back of a spoon! all open-mouthed and yelling. And all the blank black eyes stare vacantly and idiotically in different directions. #hese creatures who haunt 5oya"s +ater .orks are inexpressibly horrible! with the horror of mindlessness and animality and spiritual darkness. And above the lower depths where they obscenely pullulate is a world of bad priests and lustful friars! of fascinating women whose love is a "dream of lies and inconstancy!" of fatuous nobles and! at the top of the social pyramid! a royal family of half-wits! sadists! Messalinas and per/urers. #he moral of it all is summed up in the central plate of the Ca richos, in which we see 5oya himself! his head on his arms! sprawled across his desk and fitfully sleeping! while the air above is peopled with the bats and owls of necromancy and /ust behind his chair lies an enormous witch"s cat! malevolent as only 5oya"s cats can be! staring at the sleeper with baleful eyes. &n the side of the desk are traced the words! "#he dream of reason produces monsters." t is a caption that admits of more than one interpretation. .hen reason sleeps! the absurd and loathsome creatures of superstition wake and are active! goading their victim to an ignoble fren0y. %ut this is not all. Eeason may also dream without sleeping! may intoxicate itself! as it did during the -rench Eevolution! with the daydreams of inevitable progress! of liberty! e$uality and fraternity imposed by violence! of human self-sufficiency and the ending of sorrow! not by the all too arduous method which alone offers any prospect of success! but by political rearrangements and a better technology. #he Ca richos were published in the last year of the eighteenth century' in (LDL 5oya and all 4pain were given the opportunity of discovering the conse$uences of such daydreaming. Murat marched his troops into Madrid' the Desastres de la Guerra were about to begin. 5oya produced four main sets of etchings = the Ca richos, the Desastres de la Guerra, the Tauroma#uia and the Dis arates or )rover!ios. All of them are +ater .orks. #he Ca richos were not published until he was fifty-three' the plates of the Desastres were etched between the ages of sixty-five and seventy-five' the Tauroma#uia series first saw the light when he was sixty-nine :and at the age of almost eighty he learnt the brand-new techni$ue of lithography in order to be able to do /ustice to his beloved bulls in yet another medium;' the Dis arates were finished when he was seventy-three. -or the non-4paniard the plates of the Tauroma#uia series will probably seem the least interesting of 5oya"s etchings. #hey are brilliant records of the exploits of the bull ring'

but unfortunately! or fortunately! most of us know very little about bullfighting. 1onse$uently! we miss the finer shades of the significance of these little masterpices of documentary art. Moreover! being documentary! the etchings of the Tauroma#uia do not lend themselves to being executed with that splendid audacity! that dramatic breadth of treatment! which delights us in the later paintings and the etchings of the other three series. #rue! we find in this collection a few plates that are as fine as anything 5oya ever produced = for example! that wonderful etching of the bull which has broken out of the arena and stands triumphant! a corpse hanging limp across its horns! among the spectators" benches. %ut by and large it is not to the Tauroma#uia that we turn for the very best specimens of 5oya"s work in black and white! or for the most characteristic expressions of his mature personality. #he nature of the sub/ect matter makes it impossible for him! in these plates to reveal himself fully either as a man or as an artist. &f the three other sets of etchings two! the Ca richos and Dis arates, are fantastic and allegorical in sub/ect matter! while the third! the Desastres, though for the most part it represents real happenings under the ?apoleonic terror! represents them in a way which! being generali0ed and symbolical rather than directly documentary! permits of! and indeed demands! a treatment no less broad and dramatic than is given to the fantasies of the other collections. .ar always weakens and often completely shatters the crust of customary decency which constitutes a civili0ation. t is a thin crust at the best of times! and beneath it lies = what< +ook through 5oya"s Desastres and find out. #he abyss of bestiality and diabolism and suffering seems almost bottomless. #here is practically nothing of which human beings are not capable when war or revolution or anarchy gives them the necessary opportunity and excuse' and to their pain death alone imposes a limit. 5oya"s record of disaster has a number of recurrent themes. #here are those shadowy archways! for example! more sinister than those even of 7iranesi"s )risons, where women are violated! captives s$uat in a hopeless stupor! corpses lie rotting! emaciated children starve to death. #hen there are the vague street corners at which the famine-stricken hold out their hands' but the whiskered -rench hussars and carabiniers look on without pity! and even the rich 4paniards pass by indifferently! as though they were "of another lineage." &f still more fre$uent occurrence in the series are the crests of those naked hillocks on which lie the dead! like so much garbage. &r else! in dramatic silhouette against the sky above those same hilltops! we see the hideous butchery of 4panish men and women! and the no less hideous vengeance meted out by infuriated 4paniards upon their tormentors. &ften the hillock sprouts a single tree! always low! sometimes maimed by gunfire. @pon its branches are impaled! like the beetles and caterpillars in a butcher bird"s larder! whole naked torsos! sometimes decapitated! sometimes without arms! or else a pair of amputated legs! or a severed head = warnings! set there by the con$uerors! of the fate awaiting those who dare oppose the Emperor. At other times the tree is used as a gallows = a less efficient gallows! indeed! than that ma/estic oak which! in 1allot"s +is;res de la Guerre, is fruited with more than a score of swinging corpses! but good enough for a couple of executions en assant, except! of course! in the case recorded in one of 5oya"s most hair-raising plates! in which the tree is too stumpy to permit of a man"s hanging clear of the ground. %ut the rope is fixed! none the less! and to tighten the noose around their victim"s neck! two -rench soldiers tug at the legs! while with his foot a third man thrusts with all his strength against the shoulders.

And so the record proceeds! horror after horror! unalleviated by any of the splendors which other painters have been able to discover in war' for! significantly! 5oya never illustrates an engagement! never shows us impressive masses of troops marching in column or deployed in the order of battle. His concern is exclusively with war as it affects the civilian population! with armies disintegrated into individual thieves and ravishers! tormentors and executioners = and occasionally! when the guerilleros have won a skirmish! into individual victims tortured in their turn and savagely done to death by the avengers of their own earlier atrocities. All he shows us is war"s disasters and s$ualors! without any of the glory or even pictures$ueness. n the two remaining series of etchings we pass from tragedy to satire and from historical fact to allegory and pictorial metaphor and pure fantasy. #wenty years separate the Ca richos from the Dis arates, and the later collection is at once more somber and more enigmatic than the earlier. Much of the satire of the Ca richos is merely 5oya"s sharper version of what may be called standard eighteenth-century humor. A plate such as Hasta la Muerte! showing the old hag before her mirror! co$uettishly trying on a new headdress! is /ust Eowlandson-with-a-difference. %ut in certain other etchings a stranger and more dis$uieting note is struck. 5oya"s handling of his material is such that standard eighteenth-century humor often undergoes a sea-change into something darker and $ueerer! something that goes below the anecdotal surface of life into what lies beneath = the unplumbed depths of original sin and original stupidity. And in the second half of the series the sub/ect matter reinforces the effect of the powerful and dramatically sinister treatment' for here the theme of almost all the plates is basely supernatural. .e are in a world of demons! witches and familiars! half horrible! half comic! but wholly dis$uieting inasmuch as it reveals the sort of thing that goes on in the s$ualid catacombs of the human mind. n the Dis arates the satire is on the whole less direct than in the Ca richos, the allegories are more general and more mysterious. 1onsider! for example! the technically astonishing plate! which shows a large family of three generations perched like huddling birds along a huge dead branch that pro/ects into the utter vacancy of a dark sky. &bviously! much more is meant than meets the eye. %ut what< #he $uestion is one upon which the commentators have spent a great deal of ingenuity = spent it! one may suspect! in vain. -or the satire! it would seem! is not directed against this particular social evil or that political mistake! but rather against unregenerate human nature as such. t is a statement! in the form of an image! about life in general. +iterature and the scriptures of all the great religions abound in such brief metaphorical verdicts on human destiny. Man turns the wheel of sorrow! burns in the fire of craving! travels through a vale of tears! leads a life that is no better than a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. 7oor man! what art< A tennis ball of error! A ship of glass tossed in a sea of terror6 ssuing in blood and sorrow from the womb! 1rawling in tears and mourning to the tomb. How slippery are thy paths! how sure thy fall3 How art thou nothing! when thou art most of all3 And so on. 5ood! bad and indifferent! the $uotations could be multiplied almost

indefinitely. n the language of the plastic arts! 5oya has added a score of memorable contributions to the stock of humanity"s gnomic wisdom. #he Dis arates of the dead branch is relatively easy to understand. 4o is the comment on -ear contained in the plate which shows soldiers running in terror from a gigantic cowled figure! spectral against a /et black sky. 4o is the etching of the ecstatically smiling woman riding a stallion that turns its head and! sei0ing her skirts between its teeth! tries to drag her from her seat. #he allegorical use of the horse! as a symbol of the senses and the passions! and of the rational rider or charioteer who is at liberty to direct or be run away with! is at least as old as 7lato. %ut there are other plates in which the symbolism is less clear! the allegorical significance far from obvious. #hat horse on a tightrope! for example! with a woman dancing on its back' the men who fly with artificial wings against a sky of inky menace' the priests and the elephant' the old man wandering among phantoms6 what is the meaning of these things< And perhaps the answer to that $uestion is that they have no meaning in any ordinary sense of the word' that they refer to strictly private events taking place on the obscurer levels of their creator"s mind. -or us who look at them! it may be that their real point and significance consist precisely in the fact that they image forth so vividly! and yet! of necessity! so darkly and incomprehensibly! some at least of the unknown $uantities that exist at the heart of every personality. 5oya once drew a picture of an ancient man tottering along under the burden of years! but with the accompanying caption! " "m still learning." #hat old man was himself. #o the end of a long life! he went on learning. As a very young man he paints like the feeble eclectics who were his masters. #he first signs of power and freshness and originality appear in the cartoons for the tapestries! of which the earliest were executed when he was thirty. As a portraitist! however! he achieves nothing of outstanding interest until he is almost forty. %ut by that time he really knows what he"s after! and during the second forty years of his life he moves steadily forward toward the consummate technical achievements! in oils! of the )inturas &egras, and! in etching! of the Desastres and the Dis arates. 5oya"s is a stylistic growth away from restraint and into freedom! away from timidity and into expressive boldness. -rom the technical point of view the most striking fact about almost all 5oya"s successful paintings and etchings is that they are composed in terms of one or more clearly delimited masses standing out from the background = often indeed! silhouetted against the sky. .hen he attempts what may be called an "all-over" composition! the essay is rarely successful. -or he lacks almost completely the power which Eubens so conspicuously possessed = the power of filling the entire canvas with figures or details of landscape! and upon that lenum imposing a clear and yet ex$uisitely subtle threedimensional order. #he lack of this power is already conspicuous in the tapestry cartoons! of which the best are invariably those in which 5oya does his composing in terms of silhouetted masses and the worst those in which he attempts to organi0e a collection of figures distributed all over the canvas. And compare! from this point of view! the two paintings of the ,os de Mayo = the Mamelukes cutting down the crowd in the 7uerta del 4ol! and the firing s$uads at work in the suburbs! after dark. #he first is an attempt to do what Eubens would have done with an almost excessive facility = to impose a formally beautiful and dramatically significant order upon a crowd of human and animal figures covering the greater part of the canvas. #he attempt is not successful! and in spite of its

power and the beauty of its component parts! the picture as a whole is less satisfying as a composition! and for that reason less moving as a story! than is the companion piece! in which 5oya arranges his figures in a series of sharply delimited balancing groups! dramatically contrasted with one another and the background. n this picture the artist is speaking his native language! and he is therefore able to express what he wants to say with the maximum force and clarity. #his is not the case with the picture of the Mamelukes. Here! the formal language is not truly his own! and conse$uently his elo$uence lacks the moving power it possesses when he lets himself go in the genuine 5oyescan idiom. -ortunately! in the etchings! 5oya is very seldom tempted to talk in anything else. Here he composes almost exclusively in terms of bold separate masses! silhouetted in luminous grays and whites against a darkness that ranges from stippled pepper-and-salt to intense black! or in blacks and heavily shaded grays against the whiteness of virgin paper. 4ometimes there is only one mass! sometimes several! balanced and contrasted. Hardly ever does he make the! for him! almost fatal mistake of trying to organi0e his material in an all-over composition. .ith the Desastres and the Dis arates his mastery of this! his predestined method of composition! becomes! one might say! absolute. t is not! of course! the only method of composition. ndeed! the nature of this particular artistic idiom is such that there are probably certain things that can never be expressed in it = things which Eembrandt! for example! was able to say in his supremely beautiful and subtle illustrations to the %ible. %ut within the field that he chose to cultivate = that the idiosyncrasies of his temperament and the $uality of his artistic sensibilities compelled him to choose = 5oya remains incomparable. :-rom Themes and <ariations4 originally published in C2+)'?T? ?TCH3&G( 2C G2Y1. @sed by permission of 1rown 7ublishers! nc.;

%andsca#e Pa"nt"n7 as a V"s"on6Ind(c"n7 Art +et us begin by asking a $uestion. .hat landscapes = or! more generally! what representations of natural ob/ects = are most transporting! most intrinsically vision inducing< n the light of my own experience and of what have heard other people say about their reactions to works of art! will risk an answer. &ther things being e$ual :for nothing can make up for lack of talent;! the most transporting landscapes are! first! those which represent natural ob/ects a very long way off! and! second! those which represent them at close range. ,istance lends enchantment to the view' but so does propin$uity. A 4ung painting of faraway mountains! clouds and torrents is transporting' but so are the closeups of tropical leaves in the ,ouanier Eousseau"s /ungles. .hen look at the 4ung landscape! am reminded of the crags! the boundless expanses of plain! the luminous skies and seas of that &ther .orld which lies at the self-conscious mind"s antipodes. And those disappearances into mist and cloud! those sudden emergences of some strange! intensely definite form! a weathered rock! for example! an ancient pine tree twisted by years of

struggle with the wind = these too! are transporting. -or they remind me! consciously or unconsciously! of the &ther .orld"s essential alienness and unaccountability. t is the same with the close-up. look at those leaves with their architecture of veins! their stripes and mottlings! peer into the depths of interlacing greenery! and something in me is reminded of those living patterns! so characteristic of the visionary world! of those endless births and proliferations of geometrical forms that turn into ob/ects! of things that are forever being transmuted into other things. #his painted close-up of a /ungle is what! in one of its aspects! the &ther .orld is like! and so it transports me! it makes me see with eyes that transfigure a work of art into something else! something beyond art. remember = very vividly! though it took place many years ago = a conversation with Eoger -ry. .e were talking about Monet"s ".ater +ilies." #hey had no right! Eoger kept insisting! to be so shockingly unorgani0ed! so totally without a proper compositional skeleton. #hey were all wrong! artistically speaking. And yet! he had to admit! and yet. . . And yet! as should now say! they were transporting. An artist of astounding virtuosity had chosen to paint a close-up of natural ob/ects seen in their own context and without reference to merely human notions of what"s what! or what ought to be what. Man! we like to say! is the measure of all things. -or Monet! on this occasion! water lilies were the measure of water lilies' and so he painted them. #he same non-human point of view must be adopted by any artist who tries to render the distant scene. How tiny! in the 1hinese painting! are the travelers who make their way along the valley3 How frail the bamboo hut on the slope above them3 And all the rest of the vast landscape is emptiness and silence. #his revelation of the wilderness! living its own life according to the laws of its own being! transports the mind toward its antipodes' for primeval ?ature bears a strange resemblance to that inner world where no account is taken of our personal wishes or even of the enduring concerns of man in general. &nly the middle distance and what may be called the remoter foreground are strictly human. .hen we look very near or very far! man either vanishes altogether or loses his primacy. #he astronomer looks even further afield than the 4ung painter and sees even less of human life. At the other end of the scale the physicist! the chemist! the physiologist pursue the close-up = the cellular close-up! the molecular! the atomic and sub-atomic. &f that which! at twenty feet! even at arm"s length! looked and sounded like a human being no trace remains. 4omething analogous happens to the myopic artist and the happy lover. n the nuptial embrace personality is melted down' the individual :it is the recurrent theme of +awrence"s poems and novels; ceases to be himself and becomes a part of the vast impersonal universe. And so it is with the artist who chooses to use his eyes at the near point. n his work humanity loses its importance! even disappears completely. nstead of men and women playing their fantastic tricks before high heaven! we are asked to consider the lilies! to meditate on the unearthly beauty of "mere things!" when isolated from their utilitarian context and rendered as they are! in and for themselves. Alternatively! :or! at an earlier stage of artistic development! exclusively; the non-human world of the near point is rendered in patterns. #hese patterns are abstracted for the most part from leaves and flowers = the rose! the lotus! the acanthus! palm! papyrus = and are elaborated! with

recurrences and variations! into something transportingly reminiscent of the living geometries of the &ther .orld. -reer and more realistic treatments of ?ature at the near point make their appearance at a relatively recent date = but far earlier than those treatments of the distant scene! to which alone :and mistakenly; we give the name of landscape painting. Eome! for example! had its close-up landscapes. #he fresco of a garden! which once adorned a room in +ivia"s villa! is a magnificent example of this form of art. -or theological reasons! slam had to be content! for the most part! with "arabes$ues" = luxuriant and :as in visions; continually varying patterns! based upon natural ob/ects seen at the near point. %ut even in slam the genuine close-up landscape was not unknown. ?othing can exceed in beauty and in vision-inducing power the mosaics of gardens and buildings in the great &mayyad mos$ue at ,amascus. n medieval Europe! despite the prevailing mania for turning every datum into a concept! every immediate experience into a mere symbol of something in a book! realistic close-ups of foliage and flowers were fairly common. .e find them carved on the capitals of 5othic pillars! as in the 1hapter House of 4outhwell 1athedral. .e find them in paintings of the chase = paintings whose sub/ect was that ever-present fact of medieval life! the forest! seen as the hunter or the strayed traveler sees it! in all its bewildering intricacy of leafy detail. #he frescoes in the papal palace at Avignon are almost the sole survivors of what! even in the time of 1haucer! was a widely practiced form of secular art. A century later this art of the forest close-up came to its self-conscious perfection in such magnificent and magical works as 7isanello"s "4t. Hubert" and 7aolo @ccello"s "Hunt in a .ood!" now in the Ashmolean Museum at &xford. 1losely related to the wall paintings of forest close-ups were the tapestries! with which the rich men of northern Europe adorned their houses. #he best of these are vision-inducing works of the highest order. n their own way they are as heavenly! as powerfully reminiscent of what goes on at the mind"s antipodes! as are the great masterpieces of landscape painting at the farthest point = 4ung mountains in their enormous solitude! Ming rivers interminably lovely! the blue sub-Alpine world of #itian"s distances! the England of 1onstable' the talics of #urner and 1orot' the 7rovences of 190anne and 8an 5ogh' the ]le de -rance of 4isley and the ]le de -rance of 8uillard. 8uillard! incidentally! was a supreme master both of the transporting close-up and of the transporting distant view. His bourgeois interiors are masterpieces of visioninducing art! compared with which the works of such conscious and so to say professional visionaries as %lake and &dilon Eedon seem feeble in the extreme. . . At the near point 8uillard painted interiors for the most part! but sometimes also gardens. n a few compositions he managed to combine the magic of propin$uity with the magic of remoteness by representing a corner of a room in which there stands or hangs one of his own! or someone else"s! representations of a distant view of trees! hills and sky. t is an invitation to make the best of both worlds! the telescopic and the microscopic! at a single glance. -or the rest! can think of only a very few close-up landscapes by modern European artists. #here is a strange "#hicket" by 8an 5ogh at the Metropolitan. #here is 1onstable"s wonderful ",ell in Helmington 7ark" at the #ate. #here is a bad picture! Millais"s "&phelia!" made magical! in spite of everything! by its intricacies of summer

greenery seen from the point of view! very nearly! of a water rat. And remember a ,elacroix! glimpsed long ago at some loan exhibition! of bark and leaves and blossom at the closest range. #here must! of course! be others' but either have forgotten! or have never seen them. n any case there is nothing in the .est comparable to the 1hinese and >apanese renderings of nature at the near point. A spray of blossoming plum! eighteen inches of a bamboo stem with its leaves! tits or finches seen at hardly more than arm"s length among the bushes! all kinds of flowers and foliage! of birds and fish and small mammals. Each tiny life is represented as the center of its own universe! the purpose! in its own estimation! for which this world and all that is in it were created' each issues its own specific and individual declaration of independence from human imperialism' each! by ironic implication! derides our absurd pretensions to lay down merely human rules for the conduct of the cosmic game' each mutely repeats the divine tautology6 am that am. ?ature at the middle distance is familiar = so familiar that we are deluded into believing that we really know what it is all about. 4een very close at hand! or at a great distance! or from an odd angle! it seems dis$uietingly strange! wonderful beyond all comprehension. #he closeup landscapes of 1hina and >apan are so many illustrations of the theme that samsara and nirvana are one! that the Absolute is manifest in every appearance. #hese great metaphysical! and yet pragmatic! truths were rendered by the Hen-inspired artists of the -ar East in yet another way. All the ob/ects of their near-point scrutiny were represented in a state of unrelatedness against a blank of virgin silk or paper. #hus isolated! these transient appearances take on a kind of absolute #hing-intselfhood. .estern artists have used this device when painting sacred figures! portraits and! sometimes! natural ob/ects at a distance. Eembrandt"s "Mill" and 8an 5ogh"s "1ypresses" are examples of long-range landscapes in which a single feature has been absoluti0ed by isolation. #he magical power of many of 5oya"s etchings! drawings and paintings can be accounted for by the fact that his compositions almost always take the form of a few silhouettes! or even a single silhouette! seen against a blank. #hese silhouetted shapes possess the visionary $uality of intrinsic significance! heightened by isolation and unrelatedness to preternatural intensity. n nature! as in a work of art! the isolation of an ob/ect tends to invest it with absoluteness! to endow it with that morethan-symbolic meaning which is identical with being.
# ut there(s a Tree # of many, one, " sin!le .ield which * have looked upon, oth of them speak of something that is gone"

#he something which .ordsworth could no longer see was the "visionary gleam." #hat gleam! remember! and that intrinsic significance were the properties of a solitary oak that could be seen from the train! between Eeading and &xford! growing from the summit of a little knoll in a wide expanse of plowland! and silhouetted against the pale northern sky. #he effects of isolation combined with proximity may be studied! in all their magical strangeness! in an extraordinary painting by a seventeenth-century >apanese artist! who was also a famous swordsman and a student of Hen. t represents a butcherbird! perched on the very tip of a naked branch! "waiting without purpose! but in the state of highest tension." %eneath! above and all around is nothing. #he bird emerges from the 8oid! from that eternal namelessness and formlessness! which is yet the very

substance of the manifold! concrete and transient universe. #hat shrike on its bare branch is first cousin to Hardy"s wintry thrush. %ut whereas the thrush insists on teaching us some kind of a lesson! the -ar Eastern butcherbird is content simply to exist! to be intensely and absolutely there. :-rom Heaven and Hell0

*USIC

Po#(lar *(s"c #here is a certain /ovial! bouncing! hoppety little tune with which any one who has spent even a few weeks in 5ermany! or has been tended in childhood by a 5erman nurse! must be very familiar. ts name is "Ach! du lieber Augustin." t is a merry little affair in three-four time' in rhythm and melody so simple! that the village idiot could sing it after a first hearing' in sentiment so innocent that the heart of the most susceptible maiden would not $uicken by a beat a minute at the sound of it. Eum ti-tiddle! @m tum tum! @m tum tum! @m tum tum6 Eum ti-tiddle! @m tum tum! @m tum tum! #@M. %y the very frankness of its cheerful imbecility the thing disarms all criticism. ?ow for a piece of history. "Ach! du lieber Augustin" was composed in (QQD! and it was the first walt0. #he first walt03 must ask the reader to hum the tune to himself! then to think of any modern walt0 with which he may be familiar. He will find in the difference between the tunes a sub/ect richly suggestive of interesting meditations. #he difference between "Ach! du lieber Augustin" and any walt0 tune composed at any date from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards! is the difference between one piece of music almost completely empty of emotional content and another! densely saturated with amorous sentiment! languor and voluptuousness. #he susceptible maiden who! when she hears "Ach! du lieber Augustin!" feels no emotions beyond a general sense of high spirits and cheerfulness! is fairly made to palpitate by the luscious strains of the modern walt0. Her soul is carried swooning along! over waves of syrup' she seems to breathe an atmosphere heavy with ambergris and musk. -rom the /olly little thing it was at its birth! the walt0 has grown into the voluptuous! heart-stirring affair with which we are now familiar. And what has happened to the walt0 has happened to all popular music. t was once innocent but is now provocative' once pellucid! now richly clotted' once elegant! now deliberately barbarous. 1ompare the music of The *eggar's 2 era with the music of a contemporary revue. #hey differ as life in the garden of Eden differed from life in the artistic $uarter of 5omorrah. #he one is prelapsarian in its airy sweetness! the other is rich! luscious and loud with conscious savagery. #he evolution of popular music has run parallel on a lower plane! with the evolution of serious music. #he writers of popular tunes are not musicians enough to be able to invent new forms of expression. All they do is to adapt the discoveries of original geniuses to the vulgar taste. @ltimately and indirectly! %eethoven is responsible for all

the languishing walt0 tunes! all the savage /a00ings! for all that is maudlin and violent in our popular music. He is responsible because it was he who first devised really effective musical methods for the direct expression of emotion. %eethoven"s emotions happened to be noble' moreover! he was too intellectual a musician to neglect the formal! architectural side of music. %ut unhappily he made it possible for composers of inferior mind and character to express in music their less exalted passions and vulgarer emotions. He made possible the weakest sentimentalities of 4chumann! the baro$ue grandiosities of .agner! the hysterics of 4criabine' he made possible the walt0es of all the 4trausses! from the *lue Danu!e to the walt0 from (alome. And he made possible! at a still further remove! such masterpieces of popular art as "Aou made me love you" and "#hat coal black mammy of mine." -or the introduction of a certain vibrant sexual $uality into music! %eethoven is perhaps less directly responsible than the nineteenth-century talians. used often to wonder why it was that Mo0art"s operas were less popular than those of 8erdi! +eoncavallo and 7uccini. Aou couldn"t ask for more! or more infectiously "catchy" tunes than are to be found in Cigaro or Don Giovanni. #he music though "classical!" is not obscure! nor forbiddingly complex. &n the contrary it is clear! simple with that seemingly easy simplicity which only consummate genius can achieve and thoroughly engaging. And yet for every time Don Giovanni is played! 'a *oheme is played a hundred. Tosca is at least fifty times as popular as Cigaro. And if you look through a catalogue of gramophone records you will find that! while you can buy $igoletto complete in thirty discs! there are not more than three records of The +agic Clute. #his seems as first sight extremely pu00ling. %ut the reason is not really far to seek. 4ince Mo0art"s day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual. #he arias of Mo0art have a beautiful clear purity which renders them utterly insipid compared with the sobbing! catch-in-the-throaty melodies of the nineteenth-century talians. #he public! having accustomed itself to this stronger and more turbid brewage! finds no flavor in the crystal songs of Mo0art. ?o essay on modern popular music would be complete without some grateful reference to Eossini! who was! as far as know! the first composer to show what charms there are in vulgar melody. Melodies before Eossini"s day were often exceedingly commonplace and cheap' but almost never do they possess that almost indefinable $uality of low vulgarity which adorns some of the most successful of Eossini"s airs! and which we recogni0e as being somehow a modern! contemporary $uality. #he methods which Eossini employed for the achievement of his melodic vulgarity are not easy to analy0e. His great secret! fancy! was the very short and easily memorable phrase fre$uently repeated in different parts of the scale. %ut it is easiest to define by example. #hink of Moses" first aria in +oses in ?gy t. #hat is an essentially vulgar melody' and it is $uite unlike the popular melodies of an earlier date. ts affinities are with the modern popular tune. t is to his invention of vulgar tunes that Eossini owed his enormous contemporary success. 8ulgar people before his day had to be content with Mo0art"s delicate airs. Eossini came and revealed to them a more congenial music. #hat the world fell down and gratefully worshiped him is not surprising. f he has long ceased to be popular! that is because his successors! profiting by his lessons! have achieved in his own vulgar line triumphs of which he could not have dreamed. %arbarism has entered popular music from two sources = from the music of

barbarous people! like the ?egroes! and from serious music which has drawn upon barbarism for its inspiration. #he techni$ue of being barbarous effectively has come! of course! from serious music. n the elaboration of this techni$ue no musicians have done more than the Eussians. f Eimsky-Forsakoff had never lived! modern dance music would not be the thing it is. .hether! having grown inured to such violent and purely physiological stimuli as the clashing and drumming! the rhythmic throbbing and wailing glissandos of modern /a00 music can supply! the world will ever revert to something less crudely direct! is a matter about which one cannot prophesy. Even serious musicians seem to find it hard to dispense with barbarism. n spite of the monotony and the appalling lack of subtlety which characteri0e the process! they persist in banging away in the old Eussian manner! as though there were nothing more interesting or exciting to be thought of. .hen! as a boy! first heard Eussian music! was carried off my feet by its wild melodies! its persistent! its relentlessly throbbing rhythms. %ut my excitement grew less and less with every hearing. #oday no music seems to me more tedious. #he only music a civili0ed man can take unfailing pleasure in is civili0ed music. f you were compelled to listen every day of your life to a single piece of music! would you choose 4travinsky"s "&iseau de -eu" or %eethoven"s "5rosse -ugue"< &bviously! you would choose the fugue! if only for its intricacy and because there is more in it to occupy the mind than in the Eussian"s too simple rhythms. 1omposers seem to forget that we are! in spite of everything and though appearances may be against us! tolerably civili0ed. #hey overwhelm us not merely with Eussian and negroid noises! but with 1eltic caterwaulings on the black notes! with dismal 4panish wailings! punctuated by the rattle of the castanets and the clashing harmonies of the guitar. .hen serious composers have gone back to civili0ed music = and already some of them are turning from barbarism = we shall probably hear a corresponding change for the more refined in popular music. %ut until serious musicians lead the way! it will be absurd to expect the vulgari0ers to change their style. :-rom 1long the $oad0

*(s"c at N"7!t Moonless! this >une night is all the more alive with stars. ts darkness is perfumed with faint gusts from the blossoming lime trees! with the smell of wetted earth and the invisible greenness of the vines. #here is silence' but a silence that breathes with the soft breathing of the sea and! in the thin shrill noise of a cricket! insistently! incessantly harps on the fact of its own deep perfection. -ar away! the passage of a train is like a long caress! moving gently! with an inexorable gentleness! across the warm living body of the night. Music! you say' it would be a good night for music. %ut have music here in a box! shut up! like one of those bottled d/inns in the 1ra!ian &ights, and ready at a touch to break out of its prison. make the necessary mechanical magic! and suddenly! by some miraculously appropriate coincidence :for had selected the record in the dark! without knowing what music the machine would play;! suddenly the introduction to the *enedictus in %eethoven"s +issa (olemnis begins to trace its patterns on the moonless

sky. #he *enedictus. %lessed and blessing! this music is in some sort the e$uivalent of the night! of the deep and living darkness! into which! now in a single /et! now in a fine interweaving of melodies! now in pulsing and almost solid clots of harmonious sound! it pours itself! stanchlessly pours itself! like time! like the rising and falling! falling tra/ectories of a life. t is the e$uivalent of the night in another mode of being! as an essence is the e$uivalent of the flowers! from which it is distilled. #here is! at least there sometimes seems to be! a certain blessedness lying at the heart of things! a mysterious blessedness! of whose existence occasional accidents or providences :for me! this night is one of them; make us obscurely! or it may be intensely! but always fleetingly! alas! always only for a few brief moments aware. n the *enedictus %eethoven gives expression to this awareness of blessedness. His music is the e$uivalent of this Mediterranean night! or rather of the blessedness as it would be if it could be sifted clear of irrelevance and accident! refined and separated out into its $uintessential purity. "*enedictus, !enedictus. . ." &ne after another the voices take up the theme propounded by the orchestra and lovingly mediated through a long and ex$uisite solo :for the blessedness reveals itself most often to the solitary spirit; by a single violin. "*enedictus, !enedictus. . ." And then! suddenly! the music dies' the flying d/inn has been rebottled. .ith a stupid insect-like insistence! a steel point rasps and rasps the silence. At school! when they taught us what was technically known as English! they used to tell us to "express in our own words" some passage from whatever play of 4hakespeare was at the moment being rammed! with all its annotations = particularly the annotations = down our reluctant throats. 4o there we would sit! a row of inky urchins! laboriously translating "now silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies" into "now smart silk clothes lie in the wardrobe!" or "#o be or not to be" into " wonder whether ought to commit suicide or not." .hen we had finished! we would hand in our papers! and the presiding pedagogue would give us marks! more or less! according to the accuracy with which "our own words" had "expressed" the meaning of the %ard. He ought! of course! to have given us naught all round with a hundred lines to himself for ever having set us the silly exercise. ?obody"s "own words!" except those of 4hakespeare himself! can possibly "express" what 4hakespeare meant. #he substance of a work of art is inseparable from its form' its truth and its beauty are two and yet! mysteriously! one. #he verbal expression of even a metaphysic or a system of ethics is very nearly as much of a work of art as a love poem. #he philosophy of 7lato expressed in the "own words" of >owett is not the philosophy of 7lato' nor in the "own words" of! say! %illy 4unday! is the teaching of 4t. 7aul 4t. 7aul"s teaching. "&ur own words" are inade$uate even to express the meaning of other words' how much more inade$uate! when it is a matter of rendering meanings which have their original expression in terms of music or one of the visual arts3 .hat! for example! does music "say"< Aou can buy at almost any concert an analytical program that will tell you exactly. Much too exactly' that is the trouble. Every analyst has his own version. magine 7haraoh"s dream interpreted successively by >oseph! by the Egyptian soothsayers! by -reud! by Eivers! by Adler! by >ung! by .ohlgemuth6 it would "say" a great many different things. ?ot nearly so many! however! as the -ifth 4ymphony has been made to say in the verbiage of its analysts. ?ot nearly so many as the 8irgin of the Eocks and the

4istine Madonna have no less lyrically said. Annoyed by the verbiage and this absurd multiplicity of attributed "meanings!" some critics have protested that music and painting signify nothing but themselves' that the only things they "say" are things! for example! about modulations and fugues! about color values and three-dimensional forms. #hat they say anything about human destiny or the universe at large is a notion which these purists dismiss as merely nonsensical. f the purists were right! then we should have to regard painters and musicians as monsters. -or it is strictly impossible to be a human being and not to have views of some kind about the universe at large! very difficult to be a human being and not to express those views! at any rate by implication. ?ow! it is a matter of observation that painters and musicians are not monsters. #herefore. . . #he conclusion follows! unescapably. t is not only in program music and problem pictures that composers and painters express their views about the universe. #he purest and most abstract artistic creations can be! in their own peculiar language! as elo$uent in this respect as the most deliberately tendencious. 1ompare! for example! a 8irgin by 7iero della -rancesca with a 8irgin by #ura. #wo Madonnas = and the current symbolical conventions are observed by both artists. #he difference! the enormous difference between the two pictures is a purely pictorial difference! a difference in the forms and their arrangement! in the disposition of the lines and planes and masses. #o any one in the least sensitive to the elo$uence of pure form! the two Madonnas say utterly different things about the world. 7iero"s composition is a welding together of smooth and beautifully balanced solidities. Everything in his universe is endowed with a kind of supernatural substantiality! is much more "there" than any ob/ect of the actual world could possibly be. And how sublimely rational! in the noblest! the most humane acceptation of the word! how orderedly philosophical is the landscape! are all the inhabitants of this world3 t is the creation of a god who "ever plays the geometer." .hat does she say! this Madonna from 4an 4epolcro< f have not wholly mistranslated the elo$uence of 7iero"s forms! she is telling us of the greatness of the human spirit! of its power to rise above circumstance and dominate fate. f you were to ask her! "How shall be saved<" "%y Eeason!" she would probably answer. And! anticipating Milton! "?ot only! not mainly upon the 1ross!" she would say! "is 7aradise regained! but in those deserts of utter solitude where man puts forth the strength of his reason to resist the -iend." #his particular mother of 1hrist is probably not a 1hristian. #urn now to #ura"s picture. t is fashioned out of a substance that is like the living embodiment of flame = flame-flesh! alive and sensitive and suffering. His surfaces writhe away from the eye! as though shrinking! as though in pain. #he lines flow intricately with something of that dis$uieting and! you feel! magical calligraphy! which characteri0es certain #ibetan paintings. +ook closely' feel your way into the picture! into the painter"s thoughts and intuitions and emotions. #his man was naked and at the mercy of destiny. #o be able to proclaim the spirit"s stoical independence! you must be able to raise your head above the flux of things' this man was sunk in it! overwhelmed. He could introduce no order into his world' it remained for him a mysterious chaos! fantastically marbled with patches! now of purest heaven! now of the most excruciating hell. A beautiful and terrifying world! is this Madonna"s verdict' a world like the incarnation! the material pro/ection! of &phelia"s madness. #here are no certainties in it but suffering and

occasional happiness. And as for salvation! who knows the way of salvation< #here may perhaps be miracles! and there is always hope. #he limits of criticism are very $uickly reached. .hen he has said "in his own words" as much! or rather as little! as "own words" can say! the critic can only refer his readers to the original work of art6 let them go and see for themselves. #hose who overstep the limit are either rather stupid! vain people! who love their "own words" and imagine that they can say in them more than "own words" are able in the nature of things to express. &r else they are intelligent people who happen to be philosophers or literary artists and who find it convenient to make the criticism of other men"s work a /umpingoff place for their own creativity. .hat is true of painting is e$ually true of music. Music "says" things about the world! but in specifically musical terms. Any attempt to reproduce these musical statements "in our own words" is necessarily doomed to failure. .e cannot isolate the truth contained in a piece of music' for it is a beauty-truth and inseparable from its partner. #he best we can do is to indicate in the most general terms the nature of the musical beauty-truth under consideration and to refer curious truth-seekers to the original. #hus! the introduction to the *enedictus in the +issa (olemnis is a statement about the blessedness that is at the heart of things. %ut this is about as far as "own words" will take us. f we were to start describing in our "own words" exactly what %eethoven felt about this blessedness! how he conceived it! what he thought its nature to be! we should very soon find ourselves writing lyrical nonsense in the style of the analytical program makers. &nly music! and only %eethoven"s music! and only this particular music of %eethoven! can tell us with any precision what %eethoven"s conception of the blessedness at the heart of things actually was. f we want to know! we must listen = on a still >une night! by preference! with the breathing of the invisible sea for background to the music and the scent of lime trees drifting through the darkness! like some ex$uisite soft harmony apprehended by another sense. :-rom +usic at &ight0

9es(aldo: Var"at"ons on a *(s"cal T!e3e 4pace has been explored! systematically and scientifically! for more than five centuries' time! for less than five generations. Modern geography began in the fourteenhundreds with the voyages of 7rince Henry the ?avigator. Modern history and modern archeology came in with Gueen 8ictoria. Except in the Antarctic there is today no such thing as a terra incognita4 all the corners of all the other continents have now been visited. n contrast! how vast are the reaches of history which still remain obscure3 And how recently ac$uired is most of our knowledge of the past3 Almost everything we know about paleolithic and neolithic man! about the 4umerian! Hittite and Minoan civili0ations! about pre-%uddhist ndia and pre-1olumbian America! about the origins of such fundamental human arts as agriculture! metallurgy and writing! was discovered within the last sixty or seventy years. And there are still new worlds of history to con$uer. Even in such well-dug regions as the ?ear and Middle East literally thousands of sites await the

burrowing archeologist! and thousands more are scattered far and wide over Asia! Africa and the Americas. Moreover! there is work for the explorer in times and cultures much nearer home. -or! strange as it may seem! it is only within the last generation that certain aspects of $uite recent European history have come to be critically investigated. A very striking example of this failure to explore our own back yard is supplied by the history of music. 7ractically everybody likes music' but practically nobody has heard any music composed before (PLD. Eenaissance poetry! painting and sculpture have been studied in minutest detail! and the labors of five generations of scholars have been made available to the public in hundreds of monographs! general histories! critical appreciations and guidebooks. %ut Eenaissance music = an art which was fully the e$ual of Eenaissance poetry! painting and sculpture = has received relatively little attention from scholars and is almost unknown to the concert-going public. ,onatello and 7iero della -rancesca! #itian and Michelangelo = their names are household words and! in the original or in reproduction! their works are familiar to everyone. %ut how few people have heard! or even heard of! the music of ,ufay and >os$uin! of &keghem and &brecht! of Asaac and .ert and Maren0io! of ,unstable! %yrd and 8ictoria3 All that can be said is that! twenty years ago! the number was still smaller than it is today. And a couple of generations earlier the ignorance was almost total. Even so great a historian as %urckhardt = the man who wrote with such insight! such a wealth of erudition! about every other aspect of the Eenaissance in taly = knew next to nothing about the music of his chosen period. t was not his fault' there were no modern editions of the music and nobody ever played or sang it. 1onsider! by way of example! the <es ers, composed in (P(D by one of the most famous! one of the most historically important of talian musicians! 1laudio Monteverdi. After the middle of the seventeenth century this extraordinary masterpiece was never again performed until the year ()Z*. &ne can say without any exaggeration that! until very recent times! more was known about the -ourth ,ynasty Egyptians! who built the pyramids! than about the -lemish and talian contemporaries of 4hakespeare who wrote the madrigals. #his sort of thing! let us remember! has happened before. -rom the time of the composer"s death in (Q*D to the performance under Mendelssohn! in (LC)! of the )assion 1ccording to (t. +atthew, no European audience had ever heard a choral work by >ohn 4ebastian %ach. .hat Mendelssohn and the nineteenth-century musicologists! critics and virtuosi did for %ach another generation of scholars and performers has begun to do for %ach"s predecessors! whose works have been rediscovered! published in critical editions! performed here and there and even occasionally recorded. t is gradually dawning upon us that the three centuries before %ach are /ust as interesting musically speaking! as the two centuries after %ach. #here exists in +os Angeles a laudable institution called the 4outhern 1alifornia 1hamber Music 4ociety. #his society sponsors a series of Monday evening concerts! at which! besides much fine and seldom-heard classical and contemporary music! many pre%ach compositions are performed. Among these earlier compositions one group stands out in my memory as uni$uely interesting = a group of madrigals and motets by an almost exact contemporary of 4hakespeare! 1arlo 5esualdo. Another English poet! >ohn Milton! was an admirer of 5esualdo and! while in taly! bought a volume of his madrigals which! with a number of other books! he sent home by ship from 8enice. Milton"s admiration is understandable' for 5esualdo"s music is so strange and! in its strangeness!

so beautiful that it haunts the memory and fires the imagination. +istening to it! one is filled with $uestioning wonder. .hat sort of a man was it who wrote such music< .here does it fit into the general musical scheme! and what is its relevance for us< n the paragraphs that follow shall try! in the light of my sadly limited knowledge of 5esualdo"s time and of 5esualdo"s art! to answer! or at least to speculate about! these $uestions. +et us begin! then! with the biographical facts. 1arlo 5esualdo was born in or about (*PD! either at ?aples or in one of his father"s numerous castles in the neighborhood of ?aples. #he 5esualdi were of ancient and noble lineage! had been barons for fifteen generations! counts for eight! dukes for four or five! and! for the past three generations! hereditary 7rinces of 8enosa. 1arlo"s mother hailed from northern taly and was a sister of the great 1ardinal 1arlo %orromeo! who died in (*LM and was canoni0ed in (P(D. n his later years 5esualdo could speak not only of my father! the 7rince! but even :going one better; of my uncle! the 4aint. &f the boy"s education we know nothing and can only infer! from his later achievements! that he must have had a very thorough grounding in music. Every age has its own characteristic horrors. n ours there are the 1ommunists and nuclear weapons! there are nationalism and the threat of overpopulation. #he violence in which we indulge is truly monstrous' but it is! so to say! official violence! ordered by the proper authorities! sanctioned by law! ideologically /ustified and confined to periodical world wars! between which we en/oy the blessings of law! order and internal peace. n the ?aples of 5esualdo"s day! violence was ruggedly individualistic! unorgani0ed and chronic. #here was little nationalism and world wars were unknown' but dynastic s$uabbles were fre$uent and the %arbary 1orsairs were incessantly active! raiding the coasts of taly in search of slaves and booty. %ut the citi0en"s worst enemies were not the pirates and the foreign princes' they were his own neighbors. %etween the wars and the forays of the infidels there were no lucid intervals! such as we en/oy between our wholesale massacres! of civic decency! but an almost lawless and policeless free-for-all in a society composed of a class of nobles! utterly corrupted by 4panish ideas of honor :?aples was then a 4panish colony;! a small and insignificant middle class and a vast mob of plebeians living in bestial s$ualor and savagery! and sunk! head over ears! in the most degrading superstition. t was in this monstrous environment that 1arlo grew up! an immensely talented and profoundly neurotic member of the overprivileged minority. n (*LP he married Maria d"Avalos! a girl of twenty! but already a widow. :Her previous husband! it was whispered! had died of too much connubial bliss.; 5esualdo had two children by this lady! one of his own begetting! the other almost certainly not' for after two years of marriage! the lovely and lively ,onna Maria had taken a lover! ,on -abri0io 1arafa! ,uke of Andria. &n the night of &ctober (P! (*)D! accompanied by three of his retainers! armed with swords! halberds and ar$uebuses! 5esualdo broke into his wife"s room! found the lovers in bed and had them killed. After which he took horse and galloped off to one of his castles where! after li$uidating his second child :the one of doubtful paternity;! he remained for several months = not to escape the law :for he was never prosecuted and! if he had been! would certainly have been ac$uitted as having done only what any in/ured husband had the right and even the duty to do;! but to avoid the private vengeance of the Avalos and 1arafa families. #hese last were outraged! not so much by the murder :which was entirely in order; as by the fact that the killing had been

done by lackeys and not by 5esualdo himself. According to the code of honor! blue blood might be spilled only by the possessor of blue blood! never by a member of the lower classes. #ime passed and the storm! as all storms finally do! blew over. -rom his feudal keep in the hills 5esualdo was able to return to ?aples and the cultivated society of madrigal-singing amateurs and professional musicians. He began composing! he even published. 4econd and third editions of his madrigals were called for. He was almost a best seller. #he 7rince of 8enosa! the (erenissimo as he was called by his respectful contemporaries! was now an eligible widower! and sometime in (*)C or (*)Z his paternal uncle! the Archbishop of ?aples! entered into negotiations with Alfonso ! ,uke of -errara! with a view to securing for his nephew a princess of the great house of Este. 4uitable financial arrangements were made! and in -ebruary! (*)M! the nuptials of 1arlo 5esualdo and ,onna +eonora d"Este were celebrated at -errara with all the usual pomp. After a short stay in the south! 5esualdo returned to -errara with his bride! now pregnant! rented a palace and settled down for a long stay. -errara in (*)M was a setting sun! still da00ling! but on the brink of darkness. #hree years later! on the death of ,uke Alfonso without a male heir! the city! which was a papal fief! reverted to its overlord! the 7ope! and was incorporated into the 4tates of the 1hurch. #he glory that was -errara vanished overnight! forever. #hat -errara should ever have become a glory is one of the unlikeliest facts in that long succession of actuali0ed improbabilities which make up human history. #he ducal territory was small and! in those malarious days! unhealthy. ts material resources were scanty! and the most important local industry was the smoking of eels! caught in the winding channels of the delta of the 7o. Militarily! the state was feeble in the extreme. 7owerful and not always friendly neighbors surrounded it and! to make matters worse! it lay on the invasion route from 5ermany and Austria. n spite of which -errara became and for a hundred and fifty years = from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century = remained not only a sovereign state of considerable political importance! but also one of the most brilliant intellectual centers of .estern Europe. #his position the city owed entirely to the extraordinary ability and good taste of its rulers! the dukes of the house of Este. n the game of international and interdynastic politics! the Estensi were consummately skillful players. At home they were not too tyrannical! and had a happy knack! when discontent ran high! of blaming their ministers for everything and so maintaining their own popularity. #heir domestic life was relatively harmonious. @nlike many of the ruling families of taly! the Estensi seldom murdered one another. #rue! a few years before 1arlo"s marriage to +eonora! the ,uke had had his sister"s lover strangled. %ut this was an exceptional act = and anyhow he refrained from strangling the lady' the integrity of the clan was preserved. %ut from our present point of view the most remarkable thing about the ,ukes of -errara was their steady patronage of talent! especially in the fields of literature and music. #he greatest talian poets of the sixteenth century = from Ariosto at the beginning to 5uarini and #asso at the end = were summoned to -errara! where the dukes either gave them /obs in the administration of the state! or else paid them a pension! so that they might devote the whole of their time to literature. Musicians were no less welcome than poets. -rom (M*D to (PDD most of the greatest composers of the time visited -errara! and many of them stayed at the court for

long periods. #hey came from %urgundy and -landers! the most productive centers of early Eenaissance music' they came from -rance! they came even from faraway England. And later! when the talians had learned their lesson from the ?orth and had become! in their turn! the undisputed leaders in the field! they came from all over the peninsula. #he huge s$uare castello at the heart of the city! the ducal hunting lodges! the summer palaces by the sea! the mansions of the nobles and the foreign ambassadors = all of them resounded with music6 +earned polyphonic music and popular songs and dances. Music for lutes :there was a functionary at the ducal court whose sole duty it was to keep the lutes perpetually in tune; and music for the organ! for viols! for wind instruments! for the earliest forms of harpsichord and clavichord. Music performed by amateurs sitting around the fire or at a table! and music rendered by professional virtuosi. Music in church! music at home and :this was a novelty; music in the concert hall. -or there were daily concerts in the various ducal palaces! concerts in which as many as sixty players and singers would take part. &n grand occasions = and at -errara there seems to have been a grand occasion at least twice a week = there were mas$ues with choral interludes! there were plays with overtures and incidental music! there were performances! in those sunset years of decline! of the first rudimentary operas. And what wonderful voices could be heard at Alfonso"s court3 -errara"s #hree 4inging +adies were world famous. #here was +ucre0ia %endidio! there was +aura 7eperara and! most remarkable of the trio! there was the beautiful! learned and many-talented #ar$uinia Mol0a. %ut every Eden! alas! has its serpent! and! in #ar$uinia"s musical paradise! there was not merely a reptile to rear its ugly head' there were several Adams as well. #ar$uinia married and was widowed' then! in her middle thirties she fell under the spell of that most charming and romantic of men! #or$uato #asso. #he poet! who wrote a great deal about love! but very seldom made it! was alarmed! and! putting up a barrage of platonic verse! beat a hasty retreat. #ar$uinia had to be content! for several years! with lovers of less exalted intellectual rank. #hen! in her forties! she found another man of genius! the great -lemish composer! 5iaches .ert! who was in the employ of the ,uke of Mantua. #heir passion was reciprocal and so violent that it created a scandal. #he unhappy #ar$uinia was exiled to Modena and .ert returned! alone! to the court of the 5on0agas. -or a man of 5esualdo"s gifts and sensibilities! -errara combined the advantages of a seat of higher education with those of a heaven on earth. t was a place where he could simultaneously en/oy himself and learn. And learn he certainly did. #he madrigals he composed before (*)M are admirable in their workmanship' but their style! though his own! is still within the bounds of sixteenth-century music. #he madrigals and motets written after his stay at -errara are beyond those bounds = far out in a kind of no-man"s land. 5esualdo left no memoirs and! in spite of his high contemporary reputation and his exalted position in the world! very little is known of his later life! except that he was unhappy and dogged by misfortune. His son by his second wife died in childhood. His son by the murdered ,onna Maria! the heir to all the family titles and estates! grew up to loathe his father and long for his death' but it was he who died first. &ne of 5esualdo"s daughters went to the bad and presented him with several illegitimate grandchildren. Meanwhile he was constantly tormented! says a contemporary gossip writer! by a host of demons. His lifelong neurosis had deepened! evidently into something like insanity.

Apart from music! which he went on composing with undiminished powers! his only pleasure seems to have been physical pain. He would! we are told! submit ecstatically to fre$uent whippings. #hese at last became a physiological necessity. According to that much persecuted philosopher! #ommaso 1ampanella! the 7rince of 8enosa could never go to the bathroom Ecacare non oterat0 unless he had first been flogged by a servant specially trained to perform this duty. Eemorse for the crimes of his youth weighed heavily on 5esualdo"s conscience. #he law might excuse! public opinion might even approve' but Holy .rit was explicit6 Thou shalt not /ill. 1 few years before his death in (P(Z he endowed a 1apuchin friary in his native town of 5esualdo and built a handsome church. &ver the altar hung a huge penitential picture! painted to the prince"s order and under his personal direction. #his picture! which still survives! represents 1hrist the >udge seated on high and flanked by the %lessed 8irgin and the Archangel Michael. %elow Him! arranged symmetrically! in descending tiers! to right and left! are 4aint -rancis and 4aint Mary Magdalen! 4aint ,ominic and 4aint 1atherine of 4iena! all of them! to /udge by their gestures! emphatically interceding with the 4avior on behalf of 1arlo 5esualdo! who kneels in the lower left-hand corner! dressed in black velvet and an enormous ruff! while! splendid in the scarlet robes of a 7rince of the 1hurch! his uncle! the 4aint! stands beside him! with one hand resting protectively on the sinner"s shoulder. &pposite them kneels 1arlo"s aunt! sabella %orromeo! in the costume of a nun! and at the center of this family group is the murdered child! as a heavenly cherub. %elow! at the very bottom of the composition! ,onna Maria and the ,uke of Andria are seen roasting everlastingly in those flames from which the man who had them butchered still hopes against hope to be delivered. 4o much for the facts of our composer"s life = facts which confirm an old and slightly dis$uieting truth6 namely! that between an artist"s work and his personal behavior there is no very obvious correspondence. #he work may be sublime! the behavior anything from silly to insane and criminal. 1onversely the behavior may be blameless and the work uninteresting or downright bad. Artistic merit has nothing to do with any other kind of merit. n the language of theology! talent is a gratuitous grace! completely unconnected with saving grace or even with ordinary virtue or sanity. -rom the man we now pass to his strange music. +ike most of the great composers of his day! 5esualdo wrote exclusively for the human voice = to be more precise! for groups of five or six soloists singing contrapuntally. All his five- or six-part compositions belong to one or other of two closely related musical forms! the madrigal and the motet. #he motet is the older of the two forms and consists of a setting! for any number of voices from three to twelve! of a short passage! in +atin! from the %ible or some other sacred text. Madrigals may be defined as nonreligious motets. #hey are settings! not of sacred +atin texts! but of short poems in the vernacular. n most cases! these settings were for five voices' but the composer was free to write for any number of parts from three to eight or more. #he madrigal came into existence in the thirties of the sixteenth century and! for seventy or eighty years! remained the favorite art form of all composers of secular music. 1ontrapuntal writing in five parts is never likely to be popular! and the madrigal made its appeal! not to the general public! but to a select audience of professional musicians and highly educated amateurs! largely aristocratic and connected for the most part with one or other of the princely or ecclesiastical courts of the day. :&ne is ama0ed! when one reads

the history of renaissance music! by the good taste of Europe"s earlier rulers. 7opes and emperors! kings! princes and cardinals = they never make a mistake. nvariably! one might almost say infallibly! they choose for their chapel masters and court composers the men whose reputation has stood the test of time and whom we now recogni0e as the most gifted musicians of their day. +eft to themselves! what sort of musicians would our twentieth-century monarchs and presidents choose to patroni0e< &ne shudders to think.; 5esualdo wrote madrigals! and a madrigal! as we have seen! is a non-religious motet. %ut what else is it< +et us begin by saying what it is not. -irst and foremost! the madrigal! though sung! is not a song. t does not! that is to say! consist of a tune! repeated stan0a after stan0a. ?or has it anything to do with the art form known to later musicians as the aria. An aria is a piece of music for a solo voice! accompanied by instruments or by other voices. t begins! in most cases! with an introduction! states a melodic theme in one key! states a second theme in another key! goes into a series of modulations and ends with a recapitulation of one or both themes in the original key. ?othing of all this is to be found in the madrigal. n the madrigal there is no solo singing. All the five or more voices are of e$ual importance! and they move! so to speak! straight ahead! whereas the aria and the song move in the e$uivalent of circles or spirals. n other words! there are! in the madrigal! no returns to a starting point! no systematic recapitulations. ts form bears no resemblance to the sonata form or even to the suite form. t might be described as a choral tone poem! written in counterpoint. .hen counterpoint is written within a structural pattern! such as the fugue or canon! the listener can follow the intricacies of the music almost indefinitely. %ut where the counterpoint has no structural pattern imposed upon it! where it moves forward freely! without any returns to a starting point! the ear finds it very hard to follow it! attentively and understandingly! for more than a few minutes at a stretch. Hence the brevity of the typical madrigal! the extraordinary succinctness of its style. ,uring the three $uarters of a century of its existence! the madrigal underwent a steady development in the direction of completer! ever intenser expressiveness. At the beginning of the period it is a piece of emotionally neutral polyphony! whose whole beauty consists in the richness and complexity of its many-voiced texture. At the end! in the work of such masters as Maren0io! Monteverdi and! above all! 5esualdo! it has become a kind of musical miracle! in which seemingly incompatible elements are reconciled in a higher synthesis. #he intricacies of polyphony are made to yield the most powerfully expressive effects! and this polyphony has become so flexible that it can! at any moment! transmute itself into blocks of chords or a passage of dramatic declamation. ,uring his stay at -errara! 5esualdo was in contact with the most "advanced" musicians of his day. A few miles away! at Mantua! the great 5iaches .ert! sick and prematurely old! was still composing' and at the same court lived a much younger musician! 1laudio Monteverdi! who was to carry to completion the revolution in music begun by .ert. #hat revolution was the supersession of polyphony by monody! the substitution of the solo voice! with instrumental or vocal accompaniment! for the madrigalist"s five or six voices of e$ual importance. 5esualdo did not follow the Mantuans into monody' but he was certainly influenced by .ert"s essays in musical expressionism. #hose strange cries of grief! pain and despair! which occur so fre$uently in his later madrigals! were echoes of the cries introduced by .ert into his dramatic cantatas.

At -errara itself 5esualdo"s closest musical friends were 1ount -ontanelli and a professional composer and virtuoso! +u00asco +u00aschi. +ike 5esualdo! -ontanelli was an aristocrat and had murdered an unfaithful wife' unlike 5esualdo! he was not a man of genius! merely a good musician passionately interested in the latest developments of the art. +u00aschi was a writer of madrigals! and had invented a number of expressive devices! which 5esualdo employed in his own later productions. More important! he was the only man who knew how to play on! and even compose for! an extraordinary machine! which was the greatest curiosity in ,uke Alfonso"s collection of musical instruments. #his was the archicembalo! a large keyboard instrument belonging to the harpsichord family! but so designed that a player could distinguish! for example! between % flat and A sharp! could descend chromatically from E! through E flat! , sharp! ,! , flat! 1 sharp to a final 1 ma/or chord. #he archicembalo re$uired thirty-one keys to cover each octave and must have been fantastically difficult to play and still harder! one would imagine! to compose for. #he followers of 4choenberg are far behind +u00aschi' their scale has only twelve tones! his, thirty-one. +u00aschi"s thirty-one-tone compositions :none of which! unfortunately! survive; and his own experiments on the archicembalo profoundly influenced the style of 5esualdo"s later madrigals. -orty years ago! the &xford musicologist! Ernest .alker! remarked that 5esualdo"s most famous madrigal! +oro lasso, sounded like ".agner gone wrong." Hardly an ade$uate criticism of 5esualdo! but not without significance. #he mention of .agner is fully /ustified' for the incessant chromaticisms of 5esualdo"s later writing found no parallel in music until the time of Tristan. As for the "gone-wrongness" = this is due to 5esualdo"s unprecedented and! until recent times! almost unimitated treatment of harmonic progression. n his madrigals successive chords are related in ways which conform neither to the rules of sixteenth-century polyphony! nor to the rules of harmony which hold good from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. An infallible ear is all that! in most cases! preserves these strange and beautiful progressions from seeming altogether arbitrary and chaotic. #hanks to that infallible ear of his! 5esualdo"s harmonies move! always astonishingly! but always with a logic of their own! from one impossible! but perfectly satisfying! beauty to another. And the harmonic strangeness is never allowed to continue for too long at a stretch. .ith consummate art! 5esualdo alternates these extraordinary passages of .agner-gone-wrong with passages of pure traditional polyphony. #o be fully effective! every elaboration must be shown in a setting of simplicity! every revolutionary novelty should emerge from a background of the familiar. -or the composers of arias! the simple and familiar background for their floridly expressive melodies was a steady! rhythmically constant accompaniment. -or 5esualdo! simplicity and familiarity meant the rich! manyvoiced texture of contrapuntal writing. #he setting for .agner-gone-wrong is 7alestrina. Every madrigal is the setting of a short poem in the vernacular! /ust as every motet is the setting of a short passage from the 8ulgate or some other piece of sacred +atin literature. #he texts of the motets were generally in prose! and the early polyphonists saw no obvious reason for imposing upon this essentially rectilinear material a circular musical form. After the invention of the aria! the composers of music for prose texts habitually distorted the sense and rhythm of their words in order to force them into the circular! verselike patterns of their new art form. -rom Alessandro 4carlatti! through %ach and Handel! Mo0art! Haydn and Mendelssohn = all the great composers from (P*D

to (L*D provide examples! in their musical settings! of what may be called the versification of prose. #o do this! they were compelled to repeat phrases and individual words again and again! to prolong single syllables to inordinate length! to recapitulate! note for note! or with variations! entire paragraphs. How different was the procedure of the madrigalists3 nstead of versifying prose! they found it necessary! because of the nature of their art form! to prosify verse. #he regular recurrences of lines and stan0as = these have no place in the madrigal! /ust as they have no place in the motet. +ike good prose! the madrigal is rectilinear! not circular. ts movement is straight ahead! irreversible! asymmetrical. .hen they set a piece of poetry to music! the madrigalists set it phrase by phrase! giving to each phrase! even each word! its suitable expression and linking the successive moods by a constant adaptation of the polyphonic writing! not by the imposition from outside of a structural pattern. Every madrigal! as have said! is a choral tone poem. %ut instead of lasting for a whole hour! like the huge! spectacular machines of +is0t and Eichard 4trauss! it concentrates its changing moods into three or four minutes of elaborate and yet intensely expressive counterpoint. #he talian madrigalists chose their texts! for the most part! from the best poets. ,ante was considered too harsh and old-fashioned' but his great fourteenth-century successor! 7etrarch! remained a perennial favorite. Among more recent poets! Ariosto! though set fairly fre$uently! was much less popular than 5uarini and #asso! whose emotional tone was more emphatic and who took pleasure in /ust those violent contrasts of feeling which lent themselves most perfectly to the purposes of the madrigalist. n their shorter pieces :pieces written expressly to be set to music; #asso and his contemporaries made use of a kind of epigrammatic style! in which antithesis! paradox and oxymoron played a ma/or part and were turned into a literary convention! so that every versifier now talked of dolorous /oy! sweet agony! loathing love and living death = to the immense delight of the musicians! for whom these emotional ambiguities! these abrupt changes of feeling offered golden opportunities. 5esualdo was a personal friend of #or$uato #asso and! during the last! mad! wandering years of the poet"s life! helped him with money and letters of introduction. As we should expect! he set a number of #asso"s poems to music. -or the rest he made use of anything that came to hand. Many of his finest madrigals are based on snatches of verse having no literary merit whatsoever. #hat they served his purpose was due to the fact that they were written in the current idiom and contained plenty of emphatically contrasting words! which he could set to appropriately expressive music. 5esualdo"s indifference to the poetical $uality of his texts! and his methods of setting words to music! are very clearly illustrated in one of the most astonishing of his madrigals! 1rdita 7an7aretta = a work! incidentally! whose performance at +os Angeles in the Autumn of ()** was probably the first in more than three hundred years. #his extraordinary little masterpiece compresses into less than three minutes every mood from the cheerfully indifferent to the perversely voluptuous! from the gay to the tragic! and in the process employs every musical resource! from traditional polyphony to .agner-gone-wrong chromaticism and the strangest harmonic progressions! from galloping rhythms to passages of long! suspended notes. #hen we look at the text and discover that this ama0ing music is the setting of half-a-do0en lines of doggerel. #he theme of 1rdita 7an7aretta is the same as the theme of a tiny poem by #asso! tasteless enough in all conscience! but written with a certain elegance of style. A little mos$uito E7an7aretta0 settles on the bosom of the

beloved! bites and gets swatted by the exasperated lady. .hat a delicious fate! muses #asso! to die in a place where it is such bliss to swoon away3 Celice te ,elice iF che net rogo oriental Cenice5 :&h happy! happy bug = more happy than the 7hoenix on its oriental pyre3; 5esualdo"s nameless librettist takes the same sub/ect! robs it of whatever charm #asso was able to lend it! and emphasi0es the bloodiness of the mos$uito"s fate by introducing = twice over in the space of only six lines = the word stringere, meaning to s$uee0e! s$uash! s$uelch. Another improvement on #asso is the addition of a playful sally by the lover. 4ince he longs to share the mos$uito"s fate! he too will take a bite in the hope of being s$uashed to death on the lady"s bosom. .hat follows is a literal translation of this nonsense! accompanied by a description of the music accompanying each phrase. "A bold little mos$uito bites the fair breast of her who consumes my heart." #his is set to a piece of pure neutral polyphony! very rapid and! despite its textural richness! very light. %ut the lady is not content with consuming the lover"s heart' she also "keeps it in cruel pain." Here the dancing polyphony of the first bars gives place to a series of chords moving slowly from dissonance to unprepared dissonance. #he pain! however unreal in the text! becomes in the music genuinely excruciating. ?ow the mos$uito "makes its escape! but rashly flies back to that fair breast which steals my heart away. .hereupon she catches it." All this is rendered in the same kind of rapid! emotionally neutral polyphony as was heard in the opening bars. %ut now comes another change. #he lady not only catches the insect! "she s$uee0es it and gives it death." #he word morte, death! occurs in almost all 5esualdo"s madrigals. 4ometimes it carries its literal meaning' more often! however! it is used figuratively! to signify sensual ecstasy! the swoon of love. %ut this makes no difference to 5esualdo. .hatever its real significance! and whoever it is that may be dying :the lover metaphorically or! in a literal sense! a friend! a mos$uito! the crucified 4avior;! he gives the word! morte, a musical expression of the most tragic and excruciating kind. -or the remorseful assassin! death was evidently the most terrifying of prospects. -rom the insect"s long-drawn musical martyrdom! we return to cheerfulness and pure polyphony. "#o share its happy fate! too will bite you." 5esualdo was a painloving masochist and this playful suggestion of sadism left him unmoved. #he counterpoint glides along in a state of emotional neutrality. #hen comes a passage of chromatic yearning on the words "my beloved! my precious one." #hen polyphony again. "And if you catch and s$uee0e me. . ." After this! the music becomes unadulterated 5esualdo. #here is a cry of pain = ahi5 = and then " will swoon away and! upon that fair breast! taste delicious poison." #he musical setting of these final words is a concentrated version of the love-potion scene in Tristan = the chief difference being that 5esualdo"s harmonic progressions are far bolder than any attempted! two and a half centuries later! by Eichard .agner. 4hould pictures tell stories< 4hould music have a connection with literature< n the past the answer would have been! unanimously! yes. Every great painter was a raconteur of %iblical or mythological anecdotes' every great composer was a setter-tomusic of sacred or profane texts. #oday the intrusion of literature into the plastic arts is

regarded almost as a crime. n the field of music! this anti-literary reign of terror has been less savage. 7rogram music is deplored :not without reason! considering the horrors be$ueathed to us by the 8ictorian era;' but in spite of much talk about "pure music!" good composers still write songs! masses! operas and cantatas. 5ood painters would do well to follow their example and permit themselves to be inspired to still better painting by the promptings of a literary theme. n the hands of a bad painter! pictorial storytelling! however sublime the sub/ect matter! is merely comicstrip art on a large scale. %ut when a good painter tells the same story! the case is entirely different. #he exigencies of illustration = the fact that he has to show such-and-such personages! in such-and-such an environment! performing such-and-such actions = stimulates his imagination on every level! including the purely pictorial level! with the result that he produces a work which! though literary! is of the highest $uality as a formal composition. #ake any famous painting of the past = %otticelli"s "1alumny of Apelles!" for example! or #itian"s "%acchus and Ariadne." %oth of these are admirable illustrations' but both are much more than illustrations = they are very complex and yet perfectly harmonious and unified arrangements of forms and colors. Moreover the richness of their formal material is a direct conse$uence of their literary sub/ect matter. +eft to itself! the pictorial imagination even of a painter of genius could never con/ure up such a subtle and complicated pattern of shapes and hues as we find in these illustrations of texts by +ucian and &vid. #o achieve their purely plastic triumphs! %otticelli and #itian re$uired to be stimulated by a literary theme. t is a highly significant fact that! in no abstract or non-representational painting of today! do we find a purely formal composition having anything like the richness! the harmonious complexity! created in the process of telling a story! by the masters of earlier periods. #he traditional distinction between the crafts and the fine arts is based! among other things! on degrees of complexity. A good picture is a greater work of art than a good bowl or a good vase. .hy< %ecause it unifies in one harmonious whole more! and more diverse! elements of human experience than are or can be unified and harmoni0ed in the pot. 4ome of the non-representational pictures painted in the course of the last fifty years are very beautiful' but even the best of them are minor works! inasmuch as the number of elements of human experience which they combine and harmoni0e is pitifully small. n them we look in vain for that ordered profusion! that lavish and yet perfectly controlled display of intellectual wealth! which we discover in the best works of the "literary" painters of the past. n this respect the composer is more fortunate than the painter. t is psychologically possible to write "pure music" that shall be /ust as harmoniously complex! /ust as rich in unified diversities! as music inspired by a literary text. %ut even in music the intrusion of literature has often been beneficent. %ut for the challenge presented by a rather absurd anecdote couched in very feeble language! %eethoven would never have produced the astonishing "pure music" of the second act of Cidelio. And it was ,a 7onte! with his rhymed versions of the stories of -igaro and ,on 5iovanni! who stimulated Mo0art to reveal himself in the fullness of his genius. .here music is a matter of monody and harmony! with a structural pattern :the sonata form or the suite form; imposed! so to speak! from the outside! it is easy to write "pure music!" in which the successive moods shall be expressed! at some length! in successive movements. %ut where there is no structural pattern! where the style is polyphonic and the movement of the music is not circular! but straight ahead! irreversible and rectilinear! the case is

different. 4uch a style demands extreme brevity and the utmost succinctness of expression. #o meet these demands for brevity and succinctness! the musical imagination re$uires a text = and a text! moreover! of the kind favored by the madrigalists! paradoxical! antithetical! full of
All things counter, original, spare, strange %hatever is fickle, freckled 1who know howM2 %ith swift, slow; sweet, sour; ada$$le, dim"

1ontemporary musicians! who aspire to write "pure music" in forms as rich! subtle and compact as those devised by 5esualdo and his contemporaries! would do well to turn once more to the poets. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

*ATTERS O2 TASTE AN$ ST.%E

Var"at"ons on a Baro:(e To3& "#he skeleton!" as we all know! "was invisible in the happy days of pagan art." And invisible it remained! in spite of 1hristianity! for most of the centuries that followed. #hroughout the Middle Ages! the knights! the mitered bishops! the ladies who warm their feet on the backs of little dogs = all are reassuringly in the flesh. ?o skulls adorn their tombs! no bones! no grisly reapers. Artists in words may cry! "Alas! my heart will break in three' Terri!ilis mors contur!at me." Artists in stone are content to carve the likeness of a sleeper upon a bed. #he Eenaissance comes and still the sleep persists! tran$uil amid the sculptured dreams of a paradise half earthly! half celestial.
Those )ans and 7ymphs ye wot of, and perchance 4ome tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The 4avior at his sermon on the mount, 4t" )ra'ed in a glory, and one )an >eady to twitch the 7ymph(s last garment off, And @oses with the tables"

%ut by the middle of the sixteenth century a change has taken place. #he effigy no longer sleeps! but opens its eyes and sits up = ideally noble! as on the Medicean tombs! or soberly a portrait! like any one of those admirable busts in their round niches between the pilasters of a classical design. And at the base! below the +atin inscription! it not infre$uently happens :at any rate in Eome and after (**D; that a little skull! in bone-white marble! reminds the onlooker of what he himself will soon be! of what the original of the portrait has already become. .hy should the death"s head have become fashionable at this particular moment of history< #he religiously minded might surmise that it had something to do with the 1ounter Eeformation' the medically minded! that it was connected with that sixteenth-

century pandemic of syphilis! whose noseless victims were a constant reminder of man"s latter end' the artistically minded! that some mortuary sculptor of the time had a taste for! and a happy knack with! bones. do not venture to decide between the possible alternatives! but am content to record the fact! observable by anyone who has been in Eome! that there! after the middle of the century! the skulls indubitably are. As the years pass these reminders of mortality assume an even greater importance. -rom being miniatures they grow in a short time into full-blown! death-si0ed replicas of the thing behind the face. And suddenly! imitating those bodiless seraphs of medieval and Eenaissance painting! they sprout a pair of wings and learn to fly. Meanwhile the art of the late Eenaissance has become the %aro$ue. %y an aesthetic necessity! because it is impossible for self-conscious artists to go on doing what has been supremely well done by their predecessors! the symmetrical gives place to the disbalanced! the static to the dynamic! the formali0ed to the realistic. 4tatues are caught in the act of changing their positions' pictorial compositions try to break out of their frames. .here there was understatement! there is now emphasis' where there was measure and humanity! there is now the enormous! the astounding! the demigod and the epileptic sub-man. 1onsider! for example! those skulls on the monuments. #hey have grown in si0e' their truth to death is overpowering and! to heighten the effect of verisimilitude! the sculptor has shifted them from their old place on the central axis and now shows them! casual and unposed! in profile or three-$uarters face! looking up to heaven or down into the grave. And their wings3 8ast! wildly beating! windblown = the wings of vultures in a hurricane. #he appetite for the inordinate grows with what it feeds upon! and along with it grow the virtuosity of the artists and the willingness of their patrons to pay for ever more astounding monuments. %y (PZD the skull is no longer ade$uate as a memento mori' it has become necessary to represent the entire skeleton. #he most grandiose of these reminders of our mortality are the mighty skeletons which %ernini made for the tombs of @rban 8 and Alexander 8 in 4t. 7eter"s. Ma/estic in his vestments and intensely alive! each of the two 7opes sits there aloft! blessing his people. 4ome feet below him! on either side! are his special 8irtues = -aith! #emperance! -ortitude! who knows< n the middle! below the 7ontiff! is the gigantic emblem of death. &n @rban"s tomb the skeleton is holding :slightly cock-eyed! for it would be intolerably old-fashioned and unrealistic if the thing were perfectly level; a black marble scroll inscribed with the 7ope"s name and title' on Alexander"s the monster has been "stopped!" as the photographers say! in the act of shooting up from the doorway leading into the vault. @p it comes! like a rocket! at an angle of sixty or seventy degrees! and as it rises it effortlessly lifts six or seven tons of the red marble drapery! which mitigates the rigidities of architecture and transforms the statically geometrical into something mobile and indeterminate. #he emphasis! in these two extraordinary works! is not on heaven! hell! and purgatory! but on physical dissolution and the grave. #he terror which inspired such works as the Dies 3rae was of the second death! the death inflicted by an angry /udge upon the sinner"s soul. Here! on the contrary! the theme is the first death! the abrupt passage from animation to insensibility and from worldly glory to supper with the convocation of politic worms.
&hi un tempo, carco d#amorose prede,

ebbe l#ostro alle !uance e l#oro al crine, deforme, arido teschio, ecco, si vede.

%ernini"s tombs are by no means uni$ue. #he Eoman churches are full of cautionary skeletons. n 4anta Maria sopra Minerva! for example! there is a small monument attached to one of the columns on the north side of the church. t commemorates a certain 8i00ani! if remember rightly! a /urisconsult who died some time before the middle of the seventeenth century. Here! as in the wall monuments of the High Eenaissance! a bust looks out of a rounded niche placed above the long +atin catalogue of the dead man"s claims upon the attention of posterity. t is the bust! so intensely life-like as to be almost a caricature! of a florid individual in his middle forties! no fool evidently! but wearing an expression of serene and un$uestioning complacency. 4ocially! professionally! financially! what a huge success his life has been3 And how strongly! like Milton! he feels that "nothing profits more than self-esteem founded on /ust and right"3 %ut suddenly we become aware that the bust in its round frame is being held in an almost amorous embrace by a great skeleton in high relief! whi00ing diagonally! from left to right! across the monument. #he lawyer and all his achievements! all his selfsatisfaction! are being wafted away into darkness and oblivion. &f the same kind! but still more astounding! are the tombs of the 7allavicino family in 4an -rancesco a Eipa. Executed by Ma00uoli at the beginning of the eighteenth century! these monuments are among the last and at the same time the most extravagant outflowerings of the %aro$ue spirit. Admirably carved! the usual 8irtues keep guard at the base of each of the vast pyramidal structures. Above them! flapping huge wings! a ten-foot skeleton in bron0e holds up for our inspection a pair of oval frames! containing busts of the departed 7allavicini. &n one side of the family chapel we see the likenesses of two princely ecclesiastics. ,eath holds them with a studied carelessness! tilting their frames a little! one to the left! the other to the right! so that the grave ascetic faces look out! as though through the ports of a rolling ship. &pposite them! in the hands of another and! if possible! even more frightful skeleton! are two more members of the family = an elderly princess! this time! and her spouse. And what a spouse3 @nder the ma/estic wig the face is gross! many-chinned! complacently imbecile. High blood pressure inflates the whole s$uat person almost to bursting point' pride keeps the pig-snout chronically pointing to the skies. And it is ,eath who now holds him aloft' it is 1orruption who! with triumphant derision! exhibits him! forever pilloried in marble! a grotes$ue and pitiable example of human bumptiousness. +ooking at the little fat man up there in the skeleton"s clutches! one reflects! with a certain astonishment! that some 7allavicino must have ordered and presumably paid for this strange monument to a departed relative. .ith what intentions< #o display the absurdity of the old gentleman"s pretensions to grandeur< #o make a mock of everything he had lived for< #he answer to these $uestions is! at least in part! affirmative. All these %aro$ue tombs were doctrinally sound. #he heirs of popes and princes laid out huge sums to celebrate the glories of their distinguished forebears = but laid them out on monuments whose emphatically 1hristian theme is the transience of earthly greatness and the vanity of human wishes. After which they addressed themselves with redoubled energy to the task of satisfying their own cravings for money! position and power. A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the ma/ority of human beings from behaving as

though death were no more than an unfounded rumor and survival! a thing beyond the bounds of possibility. #he men of the %aro$ue differed from those of other epochs not in what they actually did! not even in what they thought about those doings! but in what they were ready to express of their thoughts. #hey liked an art that harps on death and corruption! and were neither better nor worse than we who are reticent about such things. #he fantastic dance of death in 4an -rancesco a Eipa is almost the last of its kind. #hirty years after it was carved! Eobert %lair could achieve a modest popularity by writing such lines as these6
@ethinks * see thee with thy head low laid, %hile surfeited upon thy damask cheek The high,fed worm, in la$y volumes rolled, >iots unscared"

%ut eighteenth-century sculptors made no attempt to reali0e these gruesome images. &n graves and monuments ,eath no longer comments upon the mad pretensions of his victims. %roken columns! extinguished torches! weeping angels and muses = these are now the emblems in vogue. #he artist and his patron are concerned to evoke sentiments less painful than the horror of corruption. .ith the nineteenth century we enter an age of stylistic revivals' but there is never a return to the mortuary fashions of the %aro$ue. -rom the time of Ma00uoli until the present day no monument to any important European has been adorned with death"s heads or skeletons. .e live habitually on at least three levels = the level of strictly individual existence! the level of intellectual abstraction and the level of historical necessity and social convention. &n the first of these levels our life is completely private' on the others it is! at least partially! a shared and public life. #hus! writing about death! am on the level of intellectual abstraction. 7articipating in the life of a generation to which the mortuary art of the %aro$ue seems odd and alien! am on the level of history. %ut when actually come to die! shall be on the first level! the level of exclusively individual experience. #hat which! in human life! is shared and public has always been regarded as more respectable than that which is private. Fings have their Astronomers Eoyal! emperors their official Historiographers' but there are no Eoyal 5astronomers! no 7apal or mperial 7ornographers. Among crimes! the social and the historical are condoned as last infirmities of noble minds! and their perpetrators are very generally admired. #he lustful and intemperate! on the contrary! are condemned by all = even by themselves :which was why >esus so much preferred them to the respectable 7harisees;. .e have no 5od of %rothels! but the 5od of %attles! alas! is still going strong. %aro$ue mortuary sculpture has as its basic sub/ect matter the conflict! on one important front! between the public and the private! between the social and the individual! between the historical and the existential. #he prince in his curly wig! the 7ope in his vestments! the lawyer with his +atin eulogy and his smirk of self-satisfaction = all these are pillars of society! representatives of great historical forces and even makers of history. %ut under smirk and wig and tiara is the body with its unsharable physiological processes! is the psyche with its insights and sudden graces! its abysmal imbecilities and its unavowable desires. Every public figure = and to some extent we are all public figures = is also an island universe of private experiences' and the most private of all these experiences is that of falling out of history! of being separated from society = in a

word! the experience of death. %ased as they always are upon ignorance = invincible in some cases! voluntary and selective in others = historical generali0ations can never be more than partially true. n spite of which and at the risk of distorting the facts to fit a theory! would suggest that! at any given period! preoccupation with death is in inverse ratio to the prevalence of a belief in man"s perfectibility through and in a properly organi0ed society. n the art and literature of the age of 1ondorcet! of the age of Herbert 4pencer and Farl Marx! of the age of +enin and the .ebbs there are few skeletons. .hy< %ecause it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that men came to believe in progress! in the march of history toward an ever bigger and better future! in salvation! not for the individual! but for society. #he emphasis is on history and environment! which are regarded as the primary determinants of individual destiny. ndeed! among orthodox Marxians they are now :since the canoni0ation of +ysenko and the anathema pronounced on "reactionary Morganism"; regarded as the sole determinants. 7redestination! whether Augustinian or Mendelian! whether /armic or genetic! has been ruled out! and we are back with Helvetius and his shepherd boys who can all be transformed into ?ewtons! back with ,r. .atson and his infinitely conditionable infants. %ut meanwhile the fact remains that! in this still unregenerate world! each of us inherits a physi$ue and a temperament. Moreover the career of every individual man or woman is essentially non-progressive. .e reach maturity only to decline into decrepitude and the body"s death. 1ould anything be more painfully obvious< And yet how rarely in the course of the past two hundred and fifty years has death been made the theme of any considerable work of art3 Among the great painters only 5oya has chosen to treat of death! and then only of death by violence! death in war. #he mortuary sculptors! as we have seen! harp only on the sentiments surrounding death = sentiments ranging from the noble to the tender and even the voluptuous. :#he most delicious buttocks in the whole repertory of art are to be found on 1anova"s monument to the last of the 4tuarts.; n the literature of this same period death has been handled more fre$uently than in painting or sculpture! but only once :to my knowledge! at least; with complete ade$uacy. #olstoy"s The Death o, 3van 3lyitch is one of the artistically most perfect and at the same time one of the most terrible books ever written. t is the story of an utterly commonplace man who is compelled to discover! step by agoni0ing step! that the public personage with whom! all his life! he has identified himself is hardly more than a figment of the collective imagination! and that his essential self is the solitary! insulated being who falls sick and suffers! re/ects and is re/ected by the world and finally :for the story has a happy ending; gives in to his destiny and in the act of surrender! at the very moment of death! finds himself alone and naked in the presence of the +ight. #he %aro$ue sculptors are concerned with the same theme but they protest too much and their conscious striving for sublimity is apt to defeat its own ob/ect. #olstoy is never emphatic! indulges in no rhetorical flourishes! speaks simply of the most difficult matters and flatly! matter-of-factly of the most terrible. #hat is why his book has such power and is so profoundly disturbing to our habitual complacency. .e are shocked by it in much the same way as we are shocked by pornography = and for the same reason. 4ex is almost as completely private a matter as death! and a work of art which powerfully expresses the truth about either of them is very painful to the respectable public figure we imagine ourselves to be. ?obody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has

first experienced their desolations. And nothing is more desolating than a thorough knowledge of the private self. Hence the utility of such books as 3van 3lyitch and! would venture to add! such books as Henry Miller"s Tro ic o, Cancer. And here let me add a parenthetical note on the pornography of the age which witnessed the rise of the ideas of progress and social salvation. Most of it is merely pretty! an affair of wish-fulfillments = %oucher carried to his logical conclusion. #he most celebrated pornographer of the time! the Mar$uis de 4ade! is a mixture of escapist maniac and hiloso he. He lives in a world where insane phantasy alternates with post8oltairean ratiocination' where impossible orgies are interrupted in order that the participants may talk! sometimes shrewdly! but more often in the shallowest eighteenthcentury way! about morals! politics and metaphysics. Here! for example! is a typical specimen of 4adian sociology. " s incest dangerous< 1ertainly not. t extends family ties and conse$uently renders more active the citi0en"s love of his fatherland." n this passage! as throughout the work of this oddest product of the Enlightenment! we see the public figure doing his silly best to rationali0e the essentially unrationali0able facts of private existence. %ut what we need! if we are to know ourselves! is the truthful and penetrating expression in art of precisely these unrationali0able facts = the facts of death! as in 3van 3lyitch, the facts of sex! as in Tro ic o, Cancer, the facts of pain and cruelty! as in 5oya"s Disasters, the facts of fear and disgust and fatigue! as in that most horrifyingly truthful of war books! The &a/ed and the Dead. gnorance is a bliss we can never afford' but to know only ourselves is not enough. f it is to be a fruitful desolation! self-knowledge must be made the road to a knowledge of the &ther. @nmitigated! it is but another form of ignorance and can lead only to despair or complacent cynicism. -loundering between time and eternity! we are amphibians and must accept the fact. &overim me, noverim Te, the prayer expresses an essentially realistic attitude toward the universe in which! willynilly! we have to live and to die. ,eath is not the only private experience with which %aro$ue art concerns itself. A few yards from the 7allavicino tombs reclines %ernini"s statue of %lessed +udovica Albertoni in ecstasy. Here! as in the case of the same artist"s more celebrated 4t. #eresa! the experience recorded is of a privacy so special that! at a first glance! the spectator feels a shock of embarrassment. Entering those rich chapels in 4an -rancesco and 4anta Maria della 8ittoria! one has the impression of having opened a bedroom door at the most inopportune of moments! almost of having opened The Tro ic o, Cancer at one of its most startling pages. #he posture of the ecstatics! their expression and the exuberance of the tripe-like drapery which surrounds them and! in the Albertoni"s case! overflows in a kind of peritoneal cataract onto the altar below = all conspire to emphasi0e the fact that! though saints may be important historical figures! their physiology is as dis$uietingly private as anyone else"s. %y the inner logic of the tradition within which they worked! %aro$ue artists were committed to a systematic exploitation of the inordinate. Hence the epileptic behavior of their gesticulating or swooning personages! and hence! also! their failure to find an ade$uate artistic expression for the mystical experience. #his failure seems all the more surprising when one remembers that their period witnessed a great efflorescence of mystical religion. t was the age of 4t. >ohn of the 1ross and %enet of 1anfield! of Mme. Acarie and -ather +allemant and 1harles de 1ondren! of Augustine %aker and 4urin and &lier.

All these had taught that the end of the spiritual life is the unitive knowledge of 5od! an immediate intuition of Him beyond discursive reason! beyond imagination! beyond emotion. And all had insisted that visions! raptures and miracles were not the "real thing!" but mere by-products which! if taken too seriously! could become fatal impediments to spiritual progress. %ut visions! raptures and miracles are astounding and pictures$ue occurrences' and astounding and pictures$ue occurrences were the predestined sub/ect matter of artists whose concern was with the inordinate. n %aro$ue art the mystic is represented either as a psychic with supernormal powers! or as an ecstatic! who passes out of history in order to be alone! not with 5od! but with his or her physiology in a state hardly distinguishable from that of sexual en/oyment. And this in spite of what all the contemporary masters of the spiritual life were saying about the dangers of precisely this sort of thing. 4uch a misinterpretation of mysticism was made inevitable by the very nature of %aro$ue art. 5iven the style in which they worked! the artists of the seventeenth century could not have treated the theme in any other way. And! oddly enough even at times when the current style permitted a treatment of the less epileptic aspects of religion! no fully ade$uate rendering of the contemplative life was ever achieved in the plastic arts of 1hristendom. #he peace that passes all understanding was often sung and spoken' it was hardly ever painted or carved. #hus! in the writings of 4t. %ernard! of Albertus Magnus! of Eckhart and #auler and Euysbroeck one may find passages that express very clearly the nature and significance of mystical contemplation. %ut the saints who figure in medieval painting and sculpture tell us next to nothing about this anticipation of the beatific vision. #here are no e$uivalents of those -ar Eastern %uddhas and %odhisattvas who incarnate! in stone and paint! the experience of ultimate reality. Moreover the 1hristian saints have their being in a world from which non-human ?ature :that mine of supernatural beauties and transcendent significances; has been almost completely excluded. n his handbook on painting 1ennini gives a recipe for mountains. #ake some large /agged stones! arrange them on a table! draw them and! lo and behold! you will have a range of Alps or Apennines good enough for all the practical purposes of art. n 1hina and >apan mountains were taken more seriously. #he aspiring artist was advised to go and live among them! to make himself alertly passive in their presence! to contemplate them lovingly until he could understand the mode of their being and feel within them the workings of the immanent and transcendent #ao. As one might have expected! the medieval artists of 1hristendom painted mere backgrounds! whereas those of the -ar East painted landscapes that are the e$uivalent of mystical poetry = formally perfect renderings of man"s experience of being related to the &rder of #hings. #his experience is! of course! perfectly private! non-historical and unsocial. #hat is why! to the organi0ers of churches and the exponents of salvation through the 4tate! it has always seemed to be suspect! shady and even indecent. And yet! like sex and pain and death! there it remains! one of the brute facts with which! whether we like them or not! we have to come to terms. Maddeningly! unbearably! an occasional artist rubs our noses in his rendering of these facts. 1onfronted by the pornographies of suffering! of sensuality! of dissolution! by The Disasters o, -ar and The &a/ed and the Dead, by Tro ic o, Cancer, by 3van llyitch and even :despite their ludicrous sublimity; by the %aro$ue tombs! we shrink and are appalled. And in another way there is something hardly less appalling in the pornographies :as many good rationalists regard them; of mysticism.

Even the consolations of religion and philosophy are pretty desolating for the average sensual man! who clings to his ignorance as the sole guarantee of happiness. Terri!ilis mors contur!at me4 but so does terri!ilis <ita. :-rom Themes and <ariations0

2a"t!+ Taste+ and -"story Among tall stories! surely one of the tallest is the history of Mormonism. A founder whose obviously homemade revelations were accepted as more-than-gospel truth by thousands of followers' a lieutenant and successor who was "for daring a 1romwell! for intrigue a Machiavelli! for executive force a Moses! and for utter lack of conscience a %onaparte"' a body of doctrine combining the most penetrating psychological insights with preposterous history and absurd metaphysics' a society of puritanical but theatergoing and music-loving po-lygamists' a chuch once condemned by the 4upreme 1ourt as an organi0ed rebellion! but now a monolith of respectability' a passionately loyal membership distinguished! even in these middle years of the twentieth century! by the old-fashioned 7rotestant and pioneering virtues of self-reliance and mutual aid = together! these make up a tale which no self-respecting reader even of 4pillane! even of science fiction! should be asked to swallow. And yet! in spite of its total lack of plausibility! the tale happens to be true. My book knowledge of its truth had been ac$uired long since and intermittently kept up to date. t was not! however! until the spring of ()*Z that had occasion actually to see and touch the concrete evidences of that strange history. .e had driven all day in torrential rain! sometimes even in untimely snow! across ?evada. Hour after hour in the vast blankness of desert plains! past black bald mountains that suddenly closed in through the driving rain! to recede again! after a score of wintry miles! into the gray distance. At the state line the weather had cleared for a little! and there below us! unearthly in a momentary gleam of sunshine! lay the 5reat 4alt ,esert of @tah! snow-white between the nearer crags! with the line of blue or inky peaks rising! far off! from the opposite shore of that dry ghost of an inland sea. #here was another storm as we entered 4alt +ake 1ity! and it was through sheets of falling water that we caught our first glimpse! above the chestnut trees! of a flood-lit ob/ect $uite as difficult to believe in! despite the evidence of our senses! as the strange history it commemorates. #he improbability of this greatest of the Mormon #emples does not consist in its astounding ugliness. Most 8ictorian churches are astoundingly ugly. t consists in a certain combination of oddity! dullness and monumentality uni$ue! so far as know! in the annals of architecture. -or the most part 8ictorian buildings are more or less learned pastiches of something else = something 5othic! something 5reek or nobly Eoman! something Eli0abethan or -lamboyant -lemish or even vaguely &riental. %ut this #emple looks like nothing on earth = looks like nothing on earth and yet contrives to be completely unoriginal! utterly and uniformly prosaic.

%ut whereas most of the churches built during the past century are gimcrack affairs of brick veneered with imitation stone! of lattice work plastered to look like masonry! this vast essay in eccentric dreariness was reali0ed! from crypt to capstone! in the solidest of granite. ts foundations are cyclopean! its walls are three yards thick. +ike the Escorial! like the 5reat 7yramid! it was built to last indefinitely. +ong after the rest of 8ictorian and twentieth-century architecture shall have crumbled back to dust! this thing will be standing in the .estern desert! an ob/ect! to the neo-neolithic savages of postatomic times! of uncomprehending reverence and superstitious alarm. #o what extent are the arts conditioned by! or indebted to! religion< And is there! at any given moment of history! a common socio-psychological source that gives to the various arts = music and painting! architecture and sculpture = some kind of common tendency< .hat saw that night in #emple 4$uare and what heard next day during an organ recital in the #abernacle! brought up the old problem in a new and! in many ways! enlightening context. Here! in the floodlights! was the most grandiose by far of all .estern cathedrals. #his 1hartres of the desert was begun and largely built under economic and social conditions hardly distinguishable from those prevailing in -rance or England in the tenth century. n (L*Z! when the #emple"s foundation stone was laid! +ondon could boast its 1rystal 7alace! could look back complacently on its Exhibition of the marvels of Early 8ictorian technology. %ut here in @tah men were still living in the ,ark Ages = without roads! without towns! with no means of communication faster than the ox wagon or mule train! without industry! without machines! without tools more elaborate than saws and scythes and hammers = and with precious few even of those. #he granite blocks of which the #emple is built were $uarried by man power! dressed by man power! hauled over twenty miles of trackless desert by man power and ox power! hoisted into position by man power. +ike the cathedrals of medieval Europe the #emple is a monument! among other things! to the strength and heroic endurance of striped muscle. n the 4panish colonies! as in the American 4outh! striped muscle was activated by the whip. %ut here in the .est there were no African slaves and no local supply of domesticable aborigines. .hatever the settlers wanted to do had to be done by their own hands. #he ordinary run of settlers wanted only houses and mills and mines and :if the nuggets were large enough; 7aris fashions imported at immense expense around the Horn. %ut these Mormons wanted something more = a granite #emple of indestructible solidity. .ithin a few years of their arrival in @tah they set to work. #here were no whips to stimulate their muscles! only faith = but in what abundance3 t was the kind of mountain-moving faith that gives men power to achieve the impossible and bear the intolerable! the kind of faith for which men die and kill and work themselves beyond the limits of human capacity! the kind of faith that had launched the 1rusades and raised the towers of Angkor-8at. &nce again it performed its historic miracle. Against enormous odds! a great cathedral was built in the wilderness. Alas! instead of %ourges or 1anterbury! it was This. -aith! it is evident! may be relied on to produce sustained action and! more rarely! sustained contemplation. #here is! however! no guarantee that it will produce good art. Eeligion is always a patron of the arts! but its taste is by no means impeccable. Eeligious art is sometimes excellent! sometimes atrocious' and the excellence is not necessarily associated with fervor nor the atrocity with lukewarmness. #hus! at the turn of our era!

%uddhism nourished in ?orthwestern ndia. 7iety! to /udge by the large number of surviving monuments! ran high' but artistic merit ran pretty low. &r consider Hindu art. -or the last three centuries it has been astonishingly feeble. Have the many varieties of Hinduism been taken less seriously than in the times when ndian art was in its glory< #here is not the slightest reason to believe it. 4imilarly there is not the slightest reason to believe that 1atholic fervor was less intense in the age of the Mannerists than it had been three generations earlier. &n the contrary! there is good reason to believe that! during the 1ounter-Eeformation! 1atholicism was taken more seriously by more people than at any time since the fourteenth century. %ut the bad 1atholicism of the High Eenaissance produced superb religious art' the good 1atholicism of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced a great deal of rather bad religious art. #urning now to the individual artist = and after all! there is no such thing as "Art!" there are only men at work = we find that the creators of religious masterpieces are sometimes! like -ra Angelico! extremely devout! sometimes no more than conventionally orthodox! sometimes :like 7erugino! the supreme exponent of pietism in art; active and open disbelievers. -or the artist in his professional capacity! religion is important because it offers him a wealth of interesting sub/ect matter and many opportunities to exercise his skill. @pon the $uality of his production it has little or no influence. #he excellence of a work of religious art depends on two factors! neither of which has anything to do with religion. t depends primarily on the presence in the artist of certain tendencies! sensibilities and talents' and! secondarily! it depends on the earlier history of his chosen art! and on what may be called the logic of its formal relations. At any given moment that internal logic points toward conclusions beyond those which have been reached by the ma/ority of contemporary artists. A recognition of this fact may impel certain artists = especially young artists = to try to reali0e those possible conclusions in concrete actuality. 4ometimes these attempts are fully successful' sometimes! in spite of their author"s talents! they fail. n either case! the outcome does not depend on the nature of the artist"s metaphysical beliefs! nor on the warmth with which he entertains them. #he Mormons had faith! and their faith enabled them to reali0e a prodigious ideal = the building of a #emple in the wilderness. %ut though faith can move mountains! it cannot of itself shape those mountains into cathedrals. t will activate muscle! but has no power to create architectural talent where none exists. 4till less can it alter the facts of artistic history and the internal logic of forms. -or a great variety of reasons! some sociological and some intrinsically aesthetic! some easily discernible and others obscure! the traditions of the European arts and crafts had disintegrated! by the middle years of the nineteenth century! into a chaos of fertile bad taste and ubi$uitous vulgarity. n their fervor! in the intensity of their concern with metaphysical problems! in their readiness to embrace the most eccentric beliefs and practices! the Mormons! like their contemporaries in a hundred 1hristian! 4ocialist or 4piritualist communities! belonged to the Age of the 5nostics. n everything else they were typical products of rustic nineteenth-century America. And in the field of the plastic arts nineteenth-century America! especially rustic America! was worse off even than nineteenth-century Europe. %arry"s Houses of 7arliament were as much beyond these #emple-builders as %ourges or 1anterbury. ?ext morning! in the enormous wooden tabernacle! we listened to the daily organ recital. #here was some %ach and a piece by 19sar -ranck and finally some improvised

variations on a hymn tune. #hese last reminded one irresistibly of the good old days of the silent screen = the days when! in a solemn hush and under spotlights! the tail-coated organist at the console of his .urlit0er would rise ma/estically from the cellarage! would turn and bend his swanlike loins in acknowledgment of the applause! would resume his seat and slowly extend his white hands. 4ilence! and then boom3 the picture palace was filled with the enormous snoring of thirty-two-foot contratrombones and bombardes. And after the snoring would come the "+ondonderry Air" on the vo" Humana, "A +ittle 5rey Home in the .est" on the vo" angelica, and perhaps :what bliss3; "#he End of a 7erfect ,ay" on the vo" treacliana, the vo" !edroomica, the vo" unementiona!ilis. How strange! found myself reflecting! as the glutinous tide washed over me! how strange that people should listen with apparently e$ual en/oyment to this kind of thing and the 7relude and -ugue in E-flat Ma/or. &r had got hold of the wrong end of the stick< 7erhaps mine was the strange! the essentially abnormal attitude. 7erhaps there was something wrong with a listener who found it difficult to adore both these warblings around a hymn tune and the 7relude and -ugue. -rom these unanswerable $uestions my mind wandered to others! hardly less pu00ling! in the domain of history. Here was this huge instrument. n its original and already monumental state! it was a product of pioneering faith. An Australian musician and early Mormon convert! >oseph Eidges! had furnished the design and supervised the work. #he timber used for making the pipes was hauled by oxen from forests three hundred miles to the south. #he intricate machinery of a great organ was home-made by local craftsmen. .hen the work was finished! what kind of music! one wonders! was played to the +atter-day 4aints assembled in the tabernacle< Hymns! of course! in profusion. %ut also Handel! also Haydn and Mo0art! also Mendelssohn and perhaps even a few pieces by that $ueer old fellow whom Mendelssohn had resurrected! >ohn 4ebastian %ach. t is one of the paradoxes of history that the people who built the monstrosities of the 8ictorian epoch should have been the same as the people who applauded! in their hideous halls and churches! such masterpieces of orderliness and unaffected grandeur as The +essiah, and who preferred to all his contemporaries that most elegantly classical of the moderns! -elix Mendelssohn. 7opular taste in one field may be more or less completely at variance with popular taste outside that field. 4till more surprisingly! the fundamental tendencies of professionals in one of the arts may be at variance with the fundamental tendencies of professionals in other arts. @ntil very recently the music of the fifteenth! sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was! to all but learned specialists! almost completely unknown. ?ow! thanks to long-playing phonograph records! more and more of this buried treasure is coming to the surface. #he interested amateur is at last in a position to hear for himself what! before! he could only read about. He knows! for example! what people were singing when %otticelli was painting "8enus and Mars"' what 8an Eyck might have heard in the way of love songs and polyphonic masses' what kind of music was being sung or played in 4t. Mark"s while #intoretto and 8eronese were at work! next door! in the ,oge"s 7alace' what developments were taking place in the sister art during the more than sixty years of %ernini"s career as sculptor and architect. ,unstable and ,ufay! &ckeghem and >os$uin! +assus! 7alestrina! 8ictoria = their overlapping lives cover the whole of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Music! in

those two centuries! underwent momentous changes. #he dissonances of the earlier! 5othic polyphony were reduced to universal consonance' the various artifices = imitation! diminution! augmentation and the rest = were perfected and! by the greater masters! used to create rhythmical patterns of incredible subtlety and richness. %ut through the whole period virtually all serious music retained those open-ended! freefloating forms which it had inherited from the 5regorian 1hant and! more remotely! from some &riental ancestor. European folk music was symmetrical! four-s$uare! with regular returns to the same starting point and balanced phrases! as in metrical poetry! of preestablished and foreseeable length. %ased upon plain chant and written! for the part! as a setting to the liturgical texts! learned music was analogous! not to scanned verse! but to prose. t was a music without bars = that is to say! with no regularity of emphasis. ts component elements were of different lengths! there were no returns to recogni0able starting points! and its geometrical analogue was not some closed figure like the s$uare or circle! but an open curve undulating away to infinity. #hat such a music ever reached a close was due! not to the internal logic of its forms! but solely to the fact that even the longest liturgical texts come at last to their Amen. 4ome attempt to supply a purely musical reason for not going on forever was made by those composers who wrote their masses around a cantus ,irmus= a melody borrowed! almost invariably! from the closed! symmetrical music of popular songs. 4ung or played in very slow time! and hidden in the tenor! sometimes even in the bass! the cantus ,irmus was! for all practical purposes! inaudible. t existed for the benefit! not of listeners! but of the composer' not to remind bored church-goers of what they had heard last night in the tavern! but to serve a strictly artistic purpose. Even when the cantus ,irmus was present! the general effect of unconditioned! free-floating continuousness persisted. %ut! for the composer! the task of organi0ation had been made easier' for! buried within the fluid heart of the music! was the unbending armature of a fully metrical song. .hile ,ufay was still a choir boy at 1ambrai! 5hiberti was at work on the bron0e doors of 4anta Maria del -iore! the young ,onatello had been given his first commissions. And when 8ictoria! the last and greatest of the Eoman masters! died in (P(Z! +oren0o %ernini was already a fullblown infant prodigy. -rom Early Eenaissance to %aro$ue! the fundamental tendency of the plastic arts was through symmetry and beyond it! away from closed forms toward unbalanced openness and the implication of infinity. n music! during this same period! the fundamental tendency was through openness and beyond it! away from floating continuousness toward meter! toward fours$uare symmetry! toward regular and foreseeable recurrence. t was in 8enice that the two opposite tendencies! of painting and of music! first became conspicuous. .hile #intoretto and 8eronese moved toward openness and the asymmetrical! the two 5abrielis moved! in their motets and their instrumental music! toward harmony! toward regular scansion and the closed form. n Eome! 7alestrina and 8ictoria continued to work in the old free-floating style. At 4t. Mark"s! the music of the future = the music which in due course was to develop into the music of 7urcell and 1ouperin! of %ach and Handel = was in process of being born. %y the sixteen-thirties! when even sculpture had taken wing for the infinite! %ernini"s older contemporary! Heinrich 4chuet0! the pupil of 5iovanni 5abrieli! was writing :not always! but every now and then; symmetrical music that sounds almost like %ach. -or some odd reason this kind of music has recently been labeled "baro$ue." #he

choice of this nickname is surely unfortunate. f %ernini and his talian! 5erman and Austrian followers are baro$ue artists :and they have been so designated for many years;! then there is no /ustification! except in the fact that they happened to be living at the same time! for applying the same epithet to composers! whose fundamental tendencies in regard to form were radically different from theirs. About the only seventeenth-century composer to whom the term "baro$ue" can be applied in the same sense as we apply it to %ernini! is 1laudio Monteverdi. n his operas and his religious music! there are passages in which Monteverdi combines the openness and boundlessness of the older polyphony with a new expressiveness. #he feat is achieved by setting an unconditionally soaring melody to an accompaniment! not of other voices! but of variously colored chords. #he so-called baro$ue composers are baro$ue :in the established sense of the word; only in their desire for a more direct and dramatic expression of feeling. #o reali0e this desire! they developed modulation within a fully tonal system! they exchanged polyphony for harmony! they varied the tempo of their music and the volume of its sound! and they invented modern orchestration. n this concern with expressiveness they were akin to their contemporaries in the fields of painting and sculpture. %ut in their desire for s$uareness! closedness and symmetry they were poles apart from men whose first wish was to overthrow the tyranny of centrality! to break out of the cramping frame or niche! to transcend the merely finite and the all too human. %etween (*)L and (PLD = the years of %ernini"s birth and death = baro$ue painting and sculpture moved in one direction! baro$ue music! as it is miscalled! moved in another! almost opposite direction. #he only conclusion we can draw is that the internal logic and the recent history of the art in which a man is working exercise a more powerful influence upon him than do the social! religious and political events of the time in which he lives. -ifteenth-century sculptors and painters inherited a tradition of symmetry and closedness. -ifteenth-century composers inherited a tradition of openness and asymmetry. &n either side the intrinsic logic of the forms was worked out to its ultimate conclusion. %y the end of the sixteenth century neither the musical nor the plastic artists could go any further along the roads they had been following. 5oing beyond themselves! the painters and sculptors pursued the path of open-ended asymmetry! the free-floating musicians turned to the exploration of regular recurrence and the closed form. Meanwhile the usual wars and persecutions and sectarian throatcuttings were in full swing' there were economic revolutions! political and social revolutions! revolutions in science and technology. %ut these merely historical events seem to have affected artists only materially = by ruining them or making their fortunes! by giving or withholding the opportunity to display their skill! by changing the social or religious status of potential patrons. #heir thought and feeling! their fundamental artistic tendencies were reactions to events of a totally different order = events not in the social world! but in the special universe of each man"s chosen art. #ake 4chuet0! for example. Most of his adult life was spent in running away from the recurrent horrors of the #hirty Aears" .ar. %ut the changes and chances of a discontinuous existence left no corresponding traces upon his work. .hether at ,resden or in taly! in ,enmark or at ,resden again! he went on drawing the artistically logical conclusions from the premises formulated under 5abrieli at 8enice and gradually modified! through the years! by his own successive achievements and the achievements

of his contemporaries and /uniors. Man is a whole! but a whole with an astounding capacity for living! simultaneously or successively! in water-tight compartments. .hat happens here has little or no effect on what happens there. #he seventeenth-century taste for closed forms in music was inconsistent with the seventeenth-century taste for asymmetry and openness in the plastic arts. #he 8ictorian taste for Mendelssohn and Handel was inconsistent with the 8ictorian taste for Mormon #emples! Albert Halls and 4t. 7ancras Eailway 4tations. %ut in fact these mutually exclusive tastes coexisted and had no perceptible effect on one another. 1onsistency is a verbal criterion! which cannot be applied to the phenomena of life. #aken together! the various activities of a single individual may "make no sense!" and yet be perfectly compatible with biological survival! social success and personal happiness. &b/ective time is the same for every member of a human group and! within each individual! for each inhabitant of a watertight compartment. %ut the self in one compartment does not necessarily have the same Geitgeist as the selves in other compartments or as the selves in whom other individuals do their e$ually inconsistent living. .hen the stresses of history are at a maximum! men and women tend to react to them in the same way. -or example! if their country is involved in war! most individuals become heroic and self-sacrificing. And if the war produces famine and pestilence! most of them die. %ut where the historical pressures are more moderate! individuals are at liberty! within rather wide limits! to react to them in different ways. .e are always synchronous with ourselves and others' but it often happens that we are not contemporary with either. At +ogan! for example! in the shadow of another #emple! whose battlemented turrets gave it the air of an Early 8ictorian "folly!" of a backdrop to Edmund Fean in $ichard 333, we got into conversation with a charming contemporary! not of Harry Emerson -osdick or %ishop %arnes! but of %rother >uniper = a Mormon whose faith had all the fervor! all the un$ualified literalness! of peasant faith in the thirteenth century. He talked to us at length about the weekly baptisms of the dead. -ifteen hundred of them bapti0ed by proxy every 4aturday evening and thus! at long last! admitted to that heaven where all the family ties persist throughout the aeons. #o a member of a generation brought up on -reud! these posthumous prospects seemed a bit forbidding. ?ot so to %rother >uniper. He spoke of them with a kind of $uiet rapture. And how celestially beautiful! in his eyes! was this cyclopean ga0ebo3 How inestimable the privilege! which he had earned! of being allowed to pass through its doors3 ,oors forever closed to all 5entiles and even to a moiety of the +atter-day 4aints. Around that heavenly #emple the lilac trees were in full scent and the mountains that ringed the fertile valley were white with the snowy symbol of divine purity. %ut time pressed. .e left %rother >uniper to his paradise and drove on. #hat evening! in the tiny ?atural History Museum at daho -alls! we found ourselves talking to two people from a far remoter past = a fascinating couple straight out of a cave. ?ot one of your fancy Magdalenian caves with all that modernistic art work on the walls. ?o! no = a good old-fashioned! down-to-earth cave belonging to nice ordinary people three thousand generations before the invention of painting. #hese were Australopiths! whose reaction to the stuffed gri00ly was a remark about si00ling steaks of bear meat' these were early ?eanderthalers who could not see a fish or bird or four-

footed beast without immediately dreaming of slaughter and a gu00le. "%oy3" said the cave lady! as we stood with them before the solemn! clergymanlike head of an enormous moose. ".ould he be good with onions3" t was fortunate! reflected! that we were so very thin! they so remarkably well fed and therefore! for the moment! so amiable. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

SECTION III

-ISTOR.

*a"ne de B"ran: T!e P!"loso#!er "n -"story 4ystematic knowledge of historical trends and "waves of the future" is sought only by the intellectual few. %ut every individual lives here and now! and is more or less profoundly affected by the fact that now is not then! nor here somewhere else. .hat are! and what should be! the relations between the personal and the historical! the existential and the social< &ur philosopher! Maine de %iran never posed this $uestion in so many words' conse$uently we have to infer his answers from what he says in other contexts. .hat he seems to suggest! throughout the Journal 3ntime, is that the individual"s relation to history and society is normally that of victim to monster. #his being so! every reasonable person should try! so far as he can! to escape from history = but into what< nto abstract thought and the inner life! or else :and this was the conclusion reached by our philosopher toward the end of his career; into the loving contemplation of the divine 4pirit. #he problem is so important that it deserves a more thorough examination than %iran chose to give it. +et us begin with an analogy drawn from inanimate matter. #he laws of gases are concerned with the interdependence of volume! pressure and temperature. %ut the individual molecules of which the gas is composed have neither temperature nor pressure! but only kinetic energy and a tendency to random movement. n a word! the laws of single molecules are entirely different from the laws of the gases they constitute. 4omething of the same kind is true of individuals and societies. n groups consisting of large numbers of human individuals! certain regularities can be detected and certain sociological laws can be formulated. %ecause of the relatively small si0e of even the most considerable human groups! and because of the enormous differences! congenital and ac$uired! between individual and individual! these regularities have numerous exceptions and these sociological laws are rather inexact. %ut this is no reason for dismissing them. -or! in the words of Edgar Hilser! from whose essay on "#he 7roblems of Empiricism" have borrowed this simile of molecules and gases! "no

physicist or astronomer would disregard a regularity on the ground that it did not always hold." -or our purposes the important thing about the sociological laws is not their inexactness but the fact that they are $uite different from the psychological and physiological laws which govern the individual person. " f!" says Hilser! "we look for social regularities by means of empathy" = feeling ourselves into a situation by imagining what would be our own behavior in regard to it = "we may never find them! since ideas! wishes and actions might not appear in them at all." n a word! changes in $uantity! if sufficiently great! result in changes in kind. %etween the individual and the social! the personal and the historical! there is a difference amounting to incommensurability. ?obody now reads Herbert 4pencer"s +an <ersus the (tate. And yet the conflict between what is good for a psycho-physical person and what is good for an organi0ation wholly innocent of feelings! wishes and ideas is real and seems destined to remain forever unresolved. &ne of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organi0ation is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organi0ations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their homemade monsters. History reveals the 1hurch and the 4tate as a pair of indispensable Molochs. #hey protect their worshiping sub/ects! only to enslave and destroy them. #he relations between social organi0ations and the individuals who live under them is symbolically expressed by the word "shepherd!" as applied to the priests and rulers! who like to think of themselves as 5od"s earthly representatives! and even to 5od Himself. #he metaphor is of high! but not the highest! anti$uity' for it was first used by the herd-owning! land-destroying! meat-eating and warwaging peoples who replaced the horticulturists of the first civili0ation and put an end to that 5olden Age of 7eace! which not long since was regarded as a mere myth but is now revealed by the light of archaeology as a proto- and pre-historical reality. %y force of unreflecting habit we go on talking sentimentally about the 4hepherd of his people! about 7astors and their flocks! about stray lambs and a 5ood 4hepherd. .e never pause to reflect that a shepherd is "not in business for his health!" still less for the health of his sheep. f he takes good care of the animals! it is in order that he may rob them of their wool and milk! castrate their male offspring and finally cut their throats and convert them into mutton. Applied to most of the 4tates and 1hurches of the last two or three thousand years! this pastoral metaphor is seen to be exceedingly apt = so apt! indeed! that one wonders why the civil and ecclesiastical herders of men should ever have allowed it to gain currency. -rom the point of view of the individual lambs! rams and ewes there is! of course! no such thing as a good shepherd' their problem is to find means whereby they may en/oy the benefits of a well-ordered social life without being exposed to the shearings! milkings! geldings and butcheries which have always been associated with the pastoral office. #o discuss those means would lead us too far afield. +et it suffice to say that! given! first! the manifest unfitness of almost all human beings to exercise much power for very long! and! second! the tendency for social institutions to become pseudodivine ends! to which individual men and women are merely means! it follows that every grant of authority should be hedged about with effective reservations' that political! economic and religious organi0ations should be small and co-operative! never large! and therefore inhuman and hierarchical' that the centrali0ation of economic and political power should be avoided at all costs' and that nations and groups of nations should be

organi0ed as federations of local and professional bodies! having wide powers of selfgovernment. At the present time! unfortunately! all signs point! not to decentrali0ation and the abolition of man-herders! but rather to a steady increase in the power of the %ig 4hepherd and his oligarchy of bureaucratic dogs! to a growth in the si0e! the complexity! the machine-like efficiency and rigidity of social organi0ations! and to a completer deification of the 4tate! accompanied by a completer reification! or reduction to thinghood! of individual persons. Maine de %iran"s temperament was such that! even when he found himself on the winning side! even when = as Guaestor of the 1hamber under +ouis 28 = he was an official personage of some importance! he continued to regard the social and the historical with the same apprehensive dislike as he had felt toward them in the days of %onaparte and the >acobins. n his diary the longing to escape from his pigeonhole in the social hierarchy! to break out of contemporary history and return to a purely private life! is expressed almost as fre$uently as the longing to be delivered from the body of this death. And yet he remained to the end embedded in politics and chained to his legislative functions. .hy< #o begin with! our philosopher was far from rich and found it very hard! without his official salary! to make both ends meet. ?ext there was his sense of duty. He felt morally obliged to do all he could for the royal house and for his rustic neighbors in 79rigord. And finally there was his very unphilosophical desire to seem important! to be a personage among the pompous personages of the great world. 5roaning and reluctant! yet perennially hopeful of the miracle that should transform him from a tongue-tied introvert into the brilliant and commanding herder of men! he went on clinging to his barbed perch among the great. t was death! and not his own will! that finally relaxed that agoni0ing clutch. -ortunately for %iran! his martyrdom was not continuous. Even at moments when history pressed upon him most alarmingly! he found it possible to take a complete holiday in abstract thought. 4ometimes he did not even have to ta/e his holiday' it came to him! spontaneously! gratuitously! in the form of an illumination or a kind of ecstasy. #hus! to our philosopher! the spring of (Q)M was memorable not for the executions of H9bert and ,anton! not because Eobespierre had now dedicated the #error to the greater glory of the 4upreme %eing! but on account of an event that had nothing whatever to do with history or the social environment. "#oday! the CQth of May! had an experience too beautiful! too remarkable by its rarity ever to be forgotten. was walking by myself a few minutes before sundown. #he weather was perfect' spring was at its freshest and most brilliant' the whole world was clothed in that charm which can be felt by the soul! but not described in words. All that struck my senses filled my heart with a mysterious! sad sweetness. #he tears stood in my eyes. Eavishment succeeded ravishment. f could perpetuate this state! what would be lacking to my felicity< should have found upon this earth the /oys of heaven." ,uring the Hundred ,ays %iran was a good deal closer to history! than he had been at his ancestral estate of 5rateloup in (Q)M. Every event that occurred between the return from Elba and .aterloo filled him with a bitter indignation. " am no longer kind! for men exasperate me. can now see only criminals and cowards. 7ity for misfortune! the need to be useful and to serve my fellows! the desire to relieve distress! all the expansive and generous sentiments which were! up till now! my principles of action! are suffering a daily diminution in my heart."

4uch are the ordinary psychological conse$uences of violent events on the historical level. ndividuals react to these events with a chronic uncharitableness punctuated by paroxysms of hate! rage and fear. Happily! in the long run! malice is always self-destructive. f it were not! this earth would be! not a Middle .orld of inextricably mingled good and evil! but plain! unmitigated Hell. n the short run! however! the war-born uncharitableness of many individuals constitutes a public opinion in favor of yet more collective violence. n %iran"s case the bitterness with which he reacted to contemporary history filled only his heart. "My mind! meanwhile! is occupied with abstract speculations! foreign to all the interests of this world. #he speculations keep me from thinking about my fellow men = and this is fortunate' for cannot think of them except to hate and despise." #he life of every individual occupies a certain position in time! is contemporary with certain political events and runs parallel! so to speak! with certain social and cultural movements. n a word! the individual lives surrounded by history. %ut to what extent does he actually live in history< And what precisely is this history by which individuals are surrounded and within which each of them does at least some of his living< +et us begin by considering the second of these two $uestions6 .hat is history< s history something which exists! in its intelligible perfection! only in the minds of historians< &r is it something actually experienced by the men and women who are born into time! live out their lives! die and are succeeded by their sons and daughters< Mr. #oynbee puts the $uestion somewhat differently6 ".hat!" he asks! "will be singled out as the salient event of our time by future historians< ?ot! fancy! any of those sensational or tragic or catastrophic political and economic events which occupy the headlines of our newspapers and the foregrounds of our minds!" but rather! "the impact of .estern 1ivili0ation upon all the other societies of the world!" followed by the reaction :already perceptible; of those other civili0ations upon .estern 1ivili0ation and the ultimate emergence of a religion affirming "the unity of mankind." #his is an answer to our $uestion as well as to Mr. #oynbee"s. -or! obviously! the processes he describes are not a part of anybody"s immediate experience. ?obody now living is intimately aware of them' nobody feels that they are happening to himself or sees them happening to his children or his friends. %ut the :to a philosophical historian; unimportant tragedies and catastrophes! which fill the headlines! actually happen to some people! and their repercussions are part of the experience of almost everybody. f the philosophical historians are right! everything of real importance in history is a matter of very long durations and very large numbers. %etween these and any given person! living at any given moment of time! lie the events predominantly "tragic or catastrophic" which are the sub/ect matter of unphilosophical history. 4ome of these events can become part of the immediate experience of persons! and! conversely! some persons can to some extent modify the tragedies and control the catastrophes. nasmuch as they involve fairly large numbers and fairly long durations! such events are a part of history. %ut from the philosophical historian"s point of view they are important only in so far as they are at once the symptoms of a process involving much greater numbers and longer durations! and the means to the reali0ation of that process. ndividuals can never actually experience the long-range process which! according to the philosophical historians! gives meaning to history. All that they can experience :and this experience is largely subconscious; is the circumambient culture. And should they be intellectually curious! they can discover!

through appropriate reading! that the culture by which they are surrounded is different in certain respects from the culture which surrounded their ancestors. %etween one state of a culture and another later state there is not! and there cannot be! a continuity of experience. Every individual simply finds himself where in fact he is = here! not there' now! not then. ?ecessarily ignorant of the meaningful processes of long-range history! he has to make the best of that particular tract of short-range tragedy and catastrophe! that particular section of a cultural curve! against which his own personal life traces its organic pattern of youth! maturity and decay. &nce again! it is a case of the gas and its constituent molecules. 5as laws are not the same as the laws governing the particles within the gas. #hough he himself must act! suffer and en/oy as a molecule! the philosophical historian does his best to think as a gas = or rather :since a society is incapable of thought; as the detached observer of a gas. t is! of course! easy enough to take the gaseous view of a period other than one"s own. t is much more difficult to take it in regard to the time during which one is oneself a molecule within the social gas. #hat is why a modern historian feels himself /ustified in revising the estimates of their own time made by the authors of his documents = in correcting! for example! the too unfavorable view of the age of A$uinas and the cathedral-builders taken by all thirteenth-century moralists! or the too favorable view of industrial civili0ation taken by many 8ictorian moralists. History as something experienced can never be fully recorded. -or! obviously! there are as many such histories as there have been experiencing human beings. #he nearest approach to a general history-as-something-experienced would be an anthology of a great variety of personal documents. 7rofessor 1oulton has compiled a number of excellent anthologies of this kind covering the medieval period. #hey should be read by anyone who wants to know! not what modern historians think about the Middle Ages! but what it actually felt like to be a contemporary of 4t. -rancis! or ,ante! or 1haucer. History-as-something-experienced being unwritable! we must perforce be content with history-as-something-in-the-minds-of-historians. #his last is of two kinds6 the shortrange history of tragedies and catastrophes! political ups and downs! social and economic revolutions' and the long-range! philosophical history of those very long durations and very large numbers in which it is possible to observe meaningful regularities! recurrent and developing patterns. ?o two philosophical historians discover precisely the same regularities or meanings' and even among the writers of the other kind of history there is disagreement in regard to the importance of the part played by individuals in the shortrange political and economic movements which are their chosen sub/ect matter. #hese divergences of opinion are unfortunate but! in view of our present ignorance! inevitable. .e may now return to the first of our two $uestions6 #o what extent does the individual! who lives surrounded by history! actually live in history< How much is his existence conditioned by the sociologists" trinity of 7lace! .ork and -olk< How is he related to the circumambient culture< n what ways is his molecular personality affected by the general state of the social gas and his own position within it< #he answer! it is evident! will be different in each particular case' but it is possible! nonetheless! to cast up a reckoning sufficiently true to average experience to have at least some significance for every one of us. +et us begin with the obvious but nonetheless very strange fact that all human beings pass nearly a third of their lives in a state that is completely non-historical! non-

social! non-cultural = and even non-spatial and non-temporal. n other words! for eight hours out of every twenty-four they are asleep. 4leep is the indispensable condition of physical health and mental sanity. t is in sleep that our body repairs the damage caused by the day"s work and the day"s amusements' in sleep that the vis medicatri" naturae overcomes our disease' in sleep that our conscious mind finds some respite from the cravings and aversions! the fears! anxieties and hatreds! the planning and calculating which drive it during waking hours to the brink of nervous exhaustion and sometimes beyond. Many of us are chronically sick and more or less far gone in neurosis. #hat we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces! sleep. Even a Himmler! even a Mar$uis de 4ade! even a >ay 5ould and a Haharoff must resign themselves to being! during thirty per cent of their existence! innocent! sane and obscurely at one with the divine ground of all being. &ne of the most dreadfully significant facts about political! social and ecclesiastical institutions is that they never sleep. n so far as individual human beings create and direct them! they embody the ideals and the calculating cleverness! inextricably combined with the conscious or unconscious cravings! aversions and fears! of a group of waking selves. Every large organi0ation exists in a state of chronic insomnia and so can never receive directly those accessions of new life and wisdom which! in dreams and dreamless unconsciousness! come sometimes trickling! sometimes pouring in from the depths of the sleeper"s being or even from some source beyond those depths. An institution can be revivified only by individuals who! because they are capable of sleep and inspiration! are capable of becoming more than themselves. #he enlightened person! as the word "%uddha" implies! is fully and forever awake = but with a wakefulness radically different from that of the social organi0ation' for he is awake even during the day to that which the unregenerate can approach only in sleep! that which social organi0ations never approach at all. .hen such organi0ations are left to their insomnia! when they are permitted to function according to the laws of their own being! subordinating individual insights to collective tradition! they become mad = not like an individual lunatic! but with a solemn! traditional and systematic madness that is at once ma/estic and ludicrous! grotes$ue and terrifying. #here is a hymn which exhorts us to thank 5od that the 1hurch unsleeping her watch is keeping. nstead of re/oicing in the fact we should lament and deplore. @nsleeping! the 1hurch kept watch! century after century! over its bank accounts! its lands! its prestige! its political influence! its idolatrously worshiped dogmas! rites and traditions. All the enormous evils and imbecilities recorded in ecclesiastical history are the products of this fatal incapacity of a social organi0ation to go to sleep. 1onversely all the illuminations and charities of personal religion have their source in the 4pirit! which transcends and yet is the most inward ground of our own being! and with which! gratuitously in sleep! and in moments of insight and illumination prepared for by a deliberate "dying to self!" the individual spirit is able to establish contact. &ne culture gives us the pyramids! another the Escorial! a third! -orest +awn. %ut the act of dying remains always and everywhere identical. +ike sleep! death is outside the pale of history = a molecular experience unaffected by the state of the social gas. Every individual has to die alone! to die by himself to himself. #he experience cannot be shared' it can only be privately undergone. "How painful it is!" writes 4hestov! "to read 7lato"s

account of the last days of 4ocrates3 His hours are numbered! and he talks! talks! talks. . . #hat is what comes of having disciples. #hey won"t allow you even to die in peace. #he best death is the death we consider the worst! when one is alone! far from home! when one dies in the hospital like a dog in a ditch. #hen at least one cannot spend one"s last moments pretending! talking! teaching. &ne is allowed to keep silence and prepare oneself for the terrible and perhaps specially important event. 7ascal"s sister reports that he too talked a great deal before he died. Musset! on the contrary! wept like a child. May it not be that 4ocrates and 7ascal talked as much as they did because they were afraid of crying<" Hardly less unhistorical than death is old age. Modern medicine has done something to make the last years of a long life a little more comfortable! and pension plans have relieved the aged of a dependence upon charity or their children. ?evertheless! in spite of vitamins and social security! old age is still essentially what it was for our ancestors = a period of experienced decline and regression! to which the facts of contemporary history! the social and economic movements of the day are more or less completely irrelevant. #he aging man of the middle twentieth century lives! not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies! of welfare states and supersonic speed! but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay. t was the same with our philosopher. +aplace was his older contemporary' 1uvier and AmpRre were his friends. %ut his last years were lived! not in the age of scientific progress which history records! but in the intimate experience of dying ever more completely to love! to pleasure! to enthusiasm! to sensibility! even to his intellect. "#he most painful manner of dying to oneself!" he writes! "is to be left with only so much of a reflective personality as suffices to recogni0e the successive degradation of those faculties! on account of which one could feel some self-esteem." 1ompared with these facts of his immediate experience! the social and the historical seemed unimportant. 7rogress is something that exists on the level of the species :as increasing freedom from and control over natural environment; and perhaps also on the level of the society or the civili0ation :as an increase in prosperity! knowledge and skill! an improvement in laws and manners;. -or the individual it does not exist! except as an item of abstract knowledge. +ike the other trends and movements recorded in books of history-as-something-in-the-mind-of-the-historian! it is never an ob/ect of individual experience. And this for two reasons. #he first of these must be sought in the fact that man"s organic life is intrinsically non-progressive. t does not keep on going up and up! in the manner of the graphs representing literacy! or national income! or industrial production. &n the contrary! it is a curve like a flattened cocked hat. .e are born! rise through youth to maturity! continue for a time on one level! then drop down through old age and decrepitude into death. An aging member of even the most progressive society experiences only molecular decay! never gaseous expansion. #he second reason for the individual"s incapacity to experience progress is purely psychological and has nothing to do with the facts of physiology. Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. %y the mere fact of having come into existence! the most ama0ing novelty becomes in a few months! even a few days! a familiar and! as it were! self-evident part of the environment. Every aspiration is for a golden ceiling overhead' but the moment that ceiling has been reached! it becomes a

commonplace and disregarded floor! on which we dance or trudge in a manner indistinguishable! so far as our feeling-tone is concerned! from that in which we danced and trudged on the floor below. Moreover! every individual is born into a world having a social and technological floor of a particular kind! and is completely unaware! except through reading and by hearsay! that there was ever any other kind of floor. %etween the members of one generation and the members of the preceding and subse$uent generations there is no continuity of immediate experience. #his means that one can read or write books about progress! but that one cannot feel it or live it in the same way as one feels a pain or lives one"s old age. 4leep and old age account for about thirty years of our allotted three score and ten. n other words! nearly half of every life is passed either completely outside of the social and the historical or in a world of enforced privacy! to which the social and the historical are only slightly relevant. +ike the experience of old age! the experience of sickness takes the individual out of history and society. #his does not mean! of course! that history is without effect on the bodily and mental health of individuals. .hat it does mean! however! is that! though certain diseases are less common and less dangerous than in the past! though hospitals are better and medical treatment more rational! sickness still causes an alienation from the world of history! and that! while it lasts! this alienation is as complete as ever it was in the past. Moreover! in spite of the progress in hygiene and medicine! in spite of the elimination from many parts of the earth of the contagious diseases which used to plague our forefathers! sickness is still appallingly common. 1hronic! degenerative ailments are on the increase! and so are mental disorders! ranging from mild neuroses! with their accompanying physical disabilities! to severe and often incurable psychoses. &ur fever hospitals are empty! but our asylums are full to bursting. #hanks to events which can be recorded in social history! a person living in the twentieth century is much less likely to catch the plague than was a person living in the fourteenth! but rather more likely to develop cancer! diabetes! coronary disease! hypertension! neurosis! psychosis and all the varieties of psychosomatic disorders. +ike death! sickness has had a great variety of cultural concomitants' but these changing concomitants have not changed the essential fact that sick persons experience an alienation from their culture and society! that they temporarily fall out of history into their private world of pain and fever. #hus! because %iran was a child of the century which had perfected the chronometer and the clockwork flute player! he always! though a strenuous anti-mechanist! referred to his body as "the machine." And because 4t. -rancis had been brought up in thirteenth-century @mbria! among peasants and their beasts! he always referred to his body as "%rother Ass." ,ifferences in place! work and folk account for these differences in terminology. %ut when "the machine" suffered! it suffered in /ust the same way as "%rother Ass" had suffered nearly six hundred years before! in /ust the same way as 4t. 7aul"s "body of this death" had suffered in the first century. 4ickness! then! and old age take us out of history. ,oes this mean that the young and the healthy are permanently in history< ?ot at all. n the normal person! all the physiological processes are in their nature unhistorical and incommunicably non-social. #he arts of breathing and assimilation! for example! of regulating body temperature and the chemistry of the blood! were ac$uired before our ancestors were even human. ,igestion and excretion have no history' they are always there! as given facts of experience! as permanent elements in the destiny of every individual man and woman who has ever lived. #he pleasures of good

and the discomforts of bad digestion are the same at all times! in all places! under whatever political regime or cultural dispensation. Maine de %iran! as we learn from his >ournal! had a very delicate and capricious digestion. .hen it worked well! he found life worth living and experienced a sense of well-being which made even a dinner party at his mother-in-law"s seem delightful. %ut when it worked badly! he felt miserable! found it impossible to think his own thoughts or even to understand what he read. "8an Helmont!" he thinks! "was $uite right when he situated in the stomach the center of all our affections and the active cause of our intellectual dispositions and even our ideas." #his is not a piece of cheap cynicism! for never was any man less cynical than our philosopher. t is simply the statement of a fact in the life of incarnated spirits = a fact which has to be accepted! whether we like it or not! and made the best of. A great 1atholic mystic has recorded his inability to place his mind in the presence of 5od during the half hour which followed his principal repast. t was the same with %iran. After dinner he was generally incapable of any but the most physiologically private life. #he psychologist and the metaphysician disappeared! and for an hour or two their place was taken by the mere dim consciousness of a stomach. %iran felt these humiliations profoundly and never ceased to bemoan them. His friend AmpRre! on the contrary! preferred to treat his body with a slightly theatrical defiance. "Aou ask of my health!" he writes in reply to an in$uiry from Maine de %iran. "As if that were the $uestion3 %etween us there can be no $uestion but of what is eternal." ?oble words3 And yet all knowledge is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. 1an the man who has an unsound body ac$uire an undistorted knowledge of the eternal< 7erhaps health is not without its importance even for philosophers. #hough themselves nonhistorical! physiological processes can! of course! be influenced by the kind of events that are recorded in short-range! non-philosophical history books. %y way of obvious example! wars and revolutions ordinarily result in famine! and famine strikes at the very roots of organic life in countless individuals. &n a smaller scale! the same effects may be produced by a slump or! for certain classes of a population! by a faulty distribution of purchasing power. As an organic experience! sex is as private and unhistorical a matter as death or sleep! digestion or sickness. As a psychological experience it may be shared to some extent by two people = not indeed completely! for no experience can be shared completely! but as much as any experience of one person can be participated in by another. Je crois !ien, says Mallarm9.
'e crois bien $ue deux bouches n#ont Bu, ni son amant, ni ma m(re, 'amais ) la m*me &him(re.

n the final analysis the poet is right. %ut fortunately analysis is rarely pushed to the limit. -or the practical purposes of life! the 1himeras which two lovers drink at one another"s lips are sufficiently alike to be regarded as identical. 4ocial control of sex behavior is through laws! religious precepts! ethical ideals and codes of manners. At every period of history great organi0ations and a host of individuals have dedicated themselves to the task of compelling or persuading people to conform! in sexual matters! to the locally accepted norm. #o what extent has this drive for conformity been successful< #he evidence on which an accurate answer to this $uestion

might be based is simply not available. %ut such evidence as we have tends rather emphatically to suggest that collective efforts to make the sexual life of individuals conform to a socially acceptable pattern are seldom successful. n a minority of cases they are evidently successful enough to produce more or less severe mental conflicts and even neuroses. %ut the ma/ority go their private way without paying more than lip-service to religion and respectability. #hus! fifty years ago! the rules of sexual decorum were much more rigid than they are today! and yet! if the Finsey Eeport may be believed! the actual behavior of men who were young at the beginning of our century was very similar to the behavior of those who were young in its middle forties. Among the writers of memoirs! diaries and autobiographies few indeed have left us an honest and unvarnished account of their sexual behavior. %ut if we read such all but uni$ue documents as >ean->ac$ues %ouchard"s account of a seventeenth-century adolescence and youth! or as 4amuel 7epys"s day-by-day record of how the average sensual man comported himself a generation later! we shall be forced to the conclusion that laws and precepts! ideals and conventions have a good deal less influence on private life than most educators would care to admit. 7epys grew to manhood under the 1ommonwealth' %ouchard! during the revival of -rench 1atholicism after the close of the religious wars. %oth were piously brought up' both had to listen to innumerable sermons and exhortations' both were assured that sexual irregularity would lead them infallibly to Hell. And each behaved like a typical case from the pages of Ellis or Ebbing or 7rofessor Finsey. #he same enormous gulf between theory and actual behavior is revealed by the casuists of the 1ounter Eeformation and! in the Middle Ages! by the denunciatory moralists and the secular tellers of tales. Modern authors sometimes write as though the literary conventions of chivalrous or 7latonic love! which have appeared at various times in European history! were the reflections of an unusually refined behavior on the part of writers and the members of their public. Again! such evidence as we have points to $uite different conclusions. #he fact that he was the author of all those sonnets did not prevent 7etrarch from acting! in another poet"s words! "as doves and sparrows do." And the man who transformed %eatrice into a heavenly principle was not only a husband and father! but also! if we may believe his first biographer = and there seems to be absolutely no reason why we should $uestion %occaccio"s good faith or the truthfulness of his informants = a fre$uenter of prostitutes. 1ulture"s relation to private life is at once more superficial! more spotty and more 7ickwickian than most historians are ready to admit. n the individual"s intellectual! artistic and religious activities history plays! as we might expect! a much more considerable part than in the strictly private life of physiological processes and personal emotions. %ut even here we find enclaves! as it were! and ndian Eeservations of the purest non-historicity. #he insights and inspirations of genius are gratuitous graces! which seem to be perfectly independent of the kind of events that are described in the works of philosophical or non-philosophical historians. 1ertain favored persons were as richly gifted a thousand or five thousand years ago as similarly favored persons are today. #alent exists within a particular cultural and social framework! but itself belongs to realms outside the pales of culture and society. At any given moment the state of the gas sets certain limits to what the creative molecules can think and do. %ut within those limits the performance of the exceptionally gifted is as remarkable! aesthetically speaking! in one age as another. n this context

remember a conversation between the directors of two of the world"s largest and best museums. #hey agreed that! from the resources at their disposal! they could put on an exhibition of Art in the ,ark Ages which should be as fine :within the limits imposed by the social conditions of the time; and as aesthetically significant as an exhibition of the art of any other period. Historians have tried to find social and cultural explanations for the fact that some epochs are very rich in men of talent! others abnormally poor. And! in effect! it may be that certain environments are favorable to the development of creative gifts! while others are unfavorable. %ut meanwhile we must remember that every individual has his or her genes! that mating combines and recombines these genes in an indefinite number of ways! and that the chances against the kind of combination that results in a 4hakespeare or a ?ewton are a good many millions to one. Moreover! in any game of ha0ard we observe that! though in the long run everything conforms to the laws of probability! in the short run there may be the most wildly improbable runs of good or bad luck. 7ericlean Athens! Eenaissance taly! Eli0abethan England = these may be the e$uivalents! on the genetic plane! of those extraordinary freaks of chance which sometimes permit roulette players to break the bank. #o those politically minded people who believe that man can be perfected from outside and that environment can do everything! this is! of course! an intolerable conclusion. Hence +ysenko and the current 4oviet attack upon reactionary! idealist Mendelo-Morganism. #he issue between 4oviet geneticists and the geneticists of the .est is similar in essence to that which divided the 7elagians from the Augustinians. +ike Helv9tius and the %ehaviorists! 7elagius affirmed that we are born non leni :without an inherited character; and that we are affected by the sin of Adam non ro agine sed e"em lo = in our modern /argon! through social heredity rather than physical! individual heredity. Augustine and his followers retorted than man in his nature is totally depraved! that he can do nothing by his own efforts and that salvation is only through grace. According to 4oviet theory! .estern geneticists are pure Augustinians. n reality they occupy a position halfway between Augustine and 7elagius. +ike Augustine! they affirm that we are born with "original sin!" not to mention "original virtue"' but they hold! with 7elagius! that we are not wholly predestined! but can do $uite a lot to help ourselves. -or example! we can make it easier for gifted individuals to develop their creative talents! but we cannot! by modifying the environment! increase the number of such individuals. .here religion is concerned! the experiences of individuals may be classified under two main heads6 experiences related to homemade deities and all too human notions! feelings and imaginings about the universe' and experiences related to the primordial fact of an immanent and transcendent 4pirit. Experiences of the first class have their source in history' those of the second class are non-historical. n so far as they are non-historical and immediately given! the religious experiences of all times and places resemble one another and convey a knowledge of the divine nature. n so far as they are concerned with the all too human! the homemade and the historically conditioned! the various religions of the world are dissimilar and tell us little or nothing about the primordial fact. #he direct apprehension of the immanence of a transcendent 4pirit is an experience of which we have records going far back in time! an experience which! it would seem! can be had by persons belonging to very primitive cultures. At what point in their development human beings became capable of this apprehension we do not know' but for practical purposes we are probably /ustified in saying that! at least

for some persons! this apprehension is as much an immediate datum! as little conditioned by history! as the experience of a world of ob/ects. &nly the verbal descriptions of the mystical experience are historically conditioned' the experiences themselves are not. 1ompare! for example! the literary styles of .illiam +aw and >acob %oehme! the first ex$uisitely pure! lucid and elegant! the second barbarous! obscure! crabbed in the extreme. And yet +aw chose %oehme as his spiritual master = chose him because! through the verbal disguises! he could recogni0e a spiritual experience essentially similar to his own. &r consider our philosopher and his English contemporary! .illiam .ordsworth. %oth were "?ature mystics!" to whom were vouchsafed ecstatic insights into the divine ground of all being. #heir immediate experiences were essentially similar. .e may add! think! that they were both essentially non-historical. n Europe! it is true! the capacity to see in the more savage aspects of ?ature! not only terrifying power! but also beauty! love and wisdom is of fairly recent growth and may be regarded as being! in some measure! historically conditioned. n the -ar East! on the contrary! this capacity is of very high anti$uity. Moreover ?ature is not invariably savage! and at all times and in all places many persons have had no difficulty in perceiving that her more smiling aspects were manifestations of the divine. #he ubi$uitous cult of trees! the myths of Eden and Avalon! of Ava-iki and the 5arden of the Hesperides! are sufficient proof that "?ature mysticism" is primordial and permanent! as unconditionally "built-in" and non-historical as any other unchanging datum of our psycho-physical experience. %iran and .ordsworth were among those moderns who had not chosen or been compelled to close the doors of their perception. #hey actually saw = as all might see if they were not self-blinded or the victims of unfavorable circumstances = the divine mystery that manifests itself in ?ature. %ut while .ordsworth :in his youth; was a great poet! capable of creating! within the splendid tradition of English poetry! a new medium of expression as nearly ade$uate to ineffable experience as any expression can be! %iran at his most lyrical was merely an imitator! and an imitator merely of >ean->ac$ues Eousseau. %oth historically and nonhistorically! as inheritor of a stylistic tradition and as literary genius! he was far less well e$uipped than .ordsworth to tell of what he had actually perceived and understood. And yet there is no reason to suppose that his experiences at 5rateloup and in the 7yrenees were intrinsically inferior to the experiences which .ordsworth had in the +ake 1ountry or at #intern. .e see! then! that while every person"s life is lived within a given culture and a given period of history! by no means all the experiences in that life are historically conditioned. And those which are not historically conditioned = sleep! for example! all the processes of our organic life in health or sickness! all our unmediated apprehensions of 5od as 4pirit and of 5od as manifest in ?ature and persons = are more fundamental! more important for us in our amphibious existence between time and eternity! than those which are so conditioned. 5as laws are entirely different from the laws governing molecules. ndividuals think! feel and variously apprehend' societies do not. Men achieve their -inal End in a timeless moment of conscious experience. 4ocieties are incapable of conscious experience! and therefore can never! in the very nature of things! be "saved" or "delivered." Ever since the eighteenth century many philosophers have argued! and many non-philosophers have more or less passionately believed! that Mankind will somehow be

redeemed by progressive History. n his book Caith and History, ,r. Eeinhold ?iebuhr has rightly insisted that! in itself! history is not! and cannot be! a redemptive process. %ut he goes on airily to dismiss the age-old revelation that man"s -inal End is the unitive knowledge of 5od here and now! at any time and in any place! and proclaims that! though history is not redemptive in any ordinary sense of the word! it is yet supremely important for salvation in some 7ickwickian sense = because of the 5eneral Eesurrection and the +ast >udgment. "#hese eschatological expectations in ?ew #estament faith! however embarrassing when taken literally! are necessary!" he insists! "for a 1hristian interpretation of history." 4o far as am able to understand him! ,r. ?iebuhr seems to imply that the meaning of life will be clarified only in the future! through a history culminating in "the end of history! in which historical existence will be transfigured." #his seems to imply that all persons living in the past! present and pre-millennial future are in some sort mere means and instruments! and that their redemption depends! not upon a personal relationship! here and now! with the divine 4pirit! but upon future events in which it is impossible for them to participate. ,r. ?iebuhr re/ects the classical and oriental conceptions of history on the ground that they reduce historical events to the "inferior realm of coming-to-be and passing away." #hey offer no hope for the fulfillment of the uni$ue capacities of human personality. %ut "human personality" is an abstraction. n reality there are only individual personalities. %etween personalities existing today and personalities existing in ZDDD %.1. there is no continuity of experience. -ulfillments of persons living now are not fulfillments of persons living then' nor will fulfillments of persons living during the millennium be fulfillments of persons living in the twentieth century. ,r. ?iebuhr obscures this obvious fact by speaking of societies as though they possessed the characteristics of persons. #hus "mankind will continue to "see through a glass darkly." " Again! "collective organisms!" like individuals! have a "sense of the contingent and insecure character of social existence." %ut it is very doubtful whether a society is an organism' and it is certain that it can know nothing about the character of human existence. ndividuals may make true statements about large groups' but large groups can say nothing about either individuals or themselves. &r consider the following6 "Man in his individual life and in his total enterprise! moves from a limited to a more extensive expression of freedom over nature." Here everything depends upon an ambiguity of language. %y a simple trick of sentence construction "man in his individual life" is assimilated to "man in his total enterprise." %ut the first phrase stands for 4mith and >ones! for all the 4miths and >oneses since the ce Age! each considered as an experiencing person' the second stands for those very large groups with which actuaries! sociologists and historians are accustomed to deal. 5as laws are not the same as the laws governing molecules. .hat is true of large numbers is not true of individuals. -rom the fact that a society has achieved some measure of control over its natural environment it does not follow that the individuals who at any given moment constitute that society en/oy an analogous freedom in regard to their environment = an environment consisting of ?ature! their neighbors and their own thoughts! passions and organic processes. n the history of societies novelty is constantly emerging' but within the framework of these novelties the problems with which individuals have to deal remain fundamentally the same. #he fact that one can travel in a /et plane rather than on foot does not! of itself! make the solution of those problems any easier. " show you sorrow!" said the %uddha! "and the ending of sorrow." 4orrow is the

unregenerate individual"s life in time! the life of craving and aversion! pleasure and pain! organic growth and decay. #he ending of sorrow is the awareness of eternity = a knowledge that liberates the knower and transfigures the temporal world of his or her experience. Every individual exists within the fields of a particular history! culture and society. 4orrow exists within all fields and can be ended within all fields. ?evertheless it remains true that some fields put more obstacles in the way of individual development and individual enlightenment than do others. &ur business! as politicians and economists! is to create and maintain the social field which offers the fewest possible impediments to the ending of sorrow. t is a fact of experience that if we are led into powerful and prolonged temptations! we generally succumb. 4ocial! political and economic reforms can accomplish only two things6 improvement in the conditions of organic life! and the removal of certain temptations to which individuals are all too apt to yield = with disastrous results for themselves and others. -or example! a centrali0ed and hierarchical organi0ation in 4tate or 1hurch constitutes a standing temptation to abuse of power by the few and to subservient irresponsibility and imbecility on the part of the many. #hese temptations may be reduced or even eliminated by reforms aiming at the decentrali0ation of wealth and power and the creation of a federated system of self-governing cooperatives. 5etting rid of these and other temptations by means of social reforms will not! of course! guarantee that there shall be an ending of sorrow for all individuals within the reformed society. All we can say is that in a society which does not constantly tempt individuals to behave abominably the obstacles to personal deliverance will probably be fewer than in a society whose structure is such that men and women are all the time encouraged to indulge their worst propensities. &f all possible fields! about the worst! so far as persons are concerned! is that within which ever greater numbers of our contemporaries are being forced to live = the field of militaristic and industriali0ed totalitarianism. .ithin this field! persons are treated as means to non-personal ends. #heir right to a private existence! unconditioned by history and society! is denied on principle' and whereas the old tyrannies found it hard to make this denial universally effective! their modern counterparts! thanks to applied science and the improved techni$ues of in$uisition and coercion! are able to translate their principles into practice on a scale and with a discriminatory precision unknown in the past. "How small!" ,r. >ohnson could write two centuries ago!
How small of all that human hearts endure The part which kings or laws can cause or cure-

n the eighteenth century it was still perfectly true that "public affairs vex no man"' that the news of a lost battle caused "no man to eat his dinner the worse"' that "when a butcher tells you that his heart !leeds ,or his country, he has! in fact! no uneasy feeling." And even in the bloody sixteenth century Montaigne "doubts if he can honestly enough confess with how very mean a sacrifice of his peace of mind and tran$uillity he has lived more than half his life! whilst his country was in ruins." %ut the progress of technology is rapidly changing this relatively happy state of things. #he modern dictator has! not only the desire! but also the effective means to reduce the whole man to the mere citi0en! to deprive individuals of all private life but the most rudimentarily physical and to convert

them at last into un$uestioning instruments of a social organi0ation whose ends and purposes are different from! and indeed incompatible with! the purposes and ends of personal existence. :-rom "8ariations on a 7hilosopher!" Themes and <ariations0

Us(ally $estroyed &ur guide through the labyrinthine streets of >erusalem was a young 1hristian refugee from the other side of the wall which now divides the ancient city from the new! the non-viable state of >ordan from the non-viable state of srael. He was a sad! embittered young man = and well he might be. His prospects had been blighted! his family reduced from comparative wealth to the most ab/ect penury! their house and land taken away from them! their bank account fro0en and devaluated. n the circumstances! the surprising thing was not his bitterness! but the melancholy resignation with which it was tempered. He was a good guide = almost too good! indeed' for he was $uite remorseless in his determination to make us visit all those deplorable churches which were built! during the nineteenth century! on the ruins of earlier places of pilgrimage. #here are tourists whose greatest pleasure is a trip through historical associations and their own fancy. am not one of them. .hen travel! like to move among intrinsically significant ob/ects! not through an absence peopled only by literary references! 8ictorian monuments and the surmises of archaeologists. >erusalem! of course! contains much more than ghosts and architectural monstrosities. %esides being one of the most profoundly depressing of the earth"s cities! it is one of the strangest and! in its own way! one of the most beautiful. @nfortunately our guide was far too conscientious to spare us the horrors and the unembodied! or ill-embodied! historical associations. .e had to see everything = not merely 4t. Anne"s and 4t. >ames"s and the ,ome of the Eock! but the hypothetical site of 1aiaphas"s house and what the Anglicans had built in the seventies! what the #sar and the 5erman Emperor had countered with in the eighties! what had been considered beautiful in the early nineties by the 1opts or the -rench -ranciscans. %ut! luckily! even at the dreariest moments of our pilgrimage there were compensations. &ur sad young man spoke English well and fluently! but spoke it as eighteenth-century virtuosi played music = with the addition of ,ioriture and even whole caden0as of their own invention. His most significant contribution to collo$uial English :and! at the same time! to the science and art of history; was the insertion into almost every sentence of the word "usually." .hat he actually meant by it! cannot imagine. t may be! of course! that he didn"t mean anything at all! and that what sounded like an adverb was in fact no more than one of those vocali0ed tics to which nervous persons are sometimes sub/ect. used to know a professor whose lectures and conversations were punctuated! every few seconds! by the phrase! ".ith a thing with a thing." ".ith a thing with a thing" is manifestly gibberish. %ut our young friend"s no less compulsive "usually" had a fascinating way of making a kind of sense = much more sense! very often! than the speaker had intended. "#his area!" he would say as he showed us one of the 8ictorian monstrosities! "this area" Wit was one of his favorite wordsX "is very rich in anti$uity. 4t. Helena built here a very vast church!

but the area was usually destroyed by the 4amaritans in the year *C) after &ur +ord >esus 1hrist. #hen the 1rusaders came to the area! and built a new church still more vast. Here were mosaics the most beautiful in the world. n the seventeenth century after &ur +ord >esus 1hrist the #urks usually removed the lead from the roof to make ammunition' conse$uently rain entered the area and the church was thrown down. #he present area was erected by the 7russian 5overnment in the year (LQ) after &ur +ord >esus 1hrist and all these broken-down houses you see over there were usually destroyed during the war with the >ews in ()ML." @sually destroyed and then usually rebuilt! in order! of course! to be destroyed again and then rebuilt! da ca o ad in,initum. #hat vocali0ed tic had compressed all history into a four-syllabled word. +istening to our young friend! as we wandered through the brown! dry s$ualor of the Holy 1ity! felt myself overwhelmed! not by the mere thought of man"s enduring misery! but by an obscure! immediate sense of it! an organic reali0ation. #hese pullulations among ruins and in the dark of what once were sepulchers' these hordes of sickly children' these galled asses and the human beasts of burden bent under enormous loads' these mortal enemies beyond the dividing wall' these priestconducted groups of pilgrims befuddling themselves with the vain repetitions! against which the founder of their religion had gone out of his way to warn them = they were dateless! without an epoch. n this costume or that! under one master or another! praying to whichever 5od was temporarily in charge! they had been here from the beginning. Had been here with the Egyptians! been here with >oshua! been here when 4olomon in all his glory ordered his slaves in all their misery to build the temple! which ?ebuchadne00ar had usually demolished and Hedekiah! /ust as usually! had put together again. Had been here during the long pointless wars between the two kingdoms! and at the next destruction under 7tolemy! the next but one under Antiochus and the next rebuilding under Herod and the biggest! best destruction of all by #itus. Had been here when Hadrian abolished >erusalem and built a brand-new Eoman city! complete with baths and a theater! with a temple of >upiter! and a temple of 8enus! to take its place. Had been here when the insurrection of %ar 1ocheba was drowned in blood. Had been here while the Eoman Empire declined and turned 1hristian! when 1hosroes the 4econd destroyed the churches and when the 1aliph &mar brought slam and! most unusually! destroyed nothing. Had been here to meet the 1rusaders and then to wave them good-by! to welcome the #urks and then to watch them retreat before Allenby. Had been here under the Mandate and through the troubles of "ML! and were here now and would be here! no doubt! in the same brown s$ualor! alternately building and destroying! killing and being killed! indefinitely. " do not think!" +ord Eussell has recently written! "that the sum of human misery has ever in the past been so great as it has been in the last twenty-five years." &ne is inclined to agree. &r are we! on second thoughts! merely flattering ourselves< At most periods of history moralists have liked to boast that theirs was the most ini$uitous generation since the time of 1ain = the most ini$uitous and therefore! since 5od is /ust! the most grievously afflicted. #oday! for example! we think of the thirteenth century as one of the supremely creative periods of human history. %ut the men who were actually contemporary with the cathedrals and 4cholastic 7hilosophy regarded their age as hopelessly degenerate! uni$uely bad and condignly punished. .ere they right! or are we< #he answer! suspect is6 %oth. #oo much evil and too much suffering can make it

impossible for men to be creative' but within very wide limits greatness is perfectly compatible with organi0ed insanity! sanctioned crime and intense! chronic unhappiness for the ma/ority. Every one of the great religions preaches a mixture of profound pessimism and the most extravagant optimism. " show you sorrow!" says the %uddha! pointing to man in his ordinary unregenerate condition. And in the same context 1hristian theologians speak of the -all! of &riginal 4in! of the 8ale of #ears! while Hindus refer to the workings of man"s home-made destiny! his evil karma. %ut over against the sorrow! the tears! the self-generated! self-inflicted disasters! what superhuman prospects3 f he so wishes! the Hindu affirms! a man can reali0e his identity with %rahman! the 5round of all being' if he so wishes! says the 1hristian! he can be filled with 5od' if he so wishes! says the %uddhist! he can live in a transfigured world where nirvana and samsara! the eternal and the temporal! are one. %ut! alas = and from optimism based on the experience of the few! the saints and sages return to the pessimism forced upon them by their observation of the many = the gate is narrow! the threshold high! few are chosen because few choose to be chosen. n practice man usually destroys himself = but has done so up till now a little less thoroughly than he has built himself up. n spite of everything! we are still here. #he spirit of destruction has been willing enough! but for most of historical time its technological flesh has been weak. #he Mongols had only horses as transport! only bows and spears and butchers" knives for weapons' if they had possessed our machinery! they could have depopulated the planet. As it was! they had to be content with small triumphs = the slaughter of only a few millions! the stamping out of civili0ation only in .estern Asia. n this universe of ours nobody has ever succeeded in getting anything for nothing. n certain fields! progress in the applied sciences and the arts of organi0ation has certainly lessened human misery' but it has done so at the cost of increasing it in others. #he worst enemy of life! freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy' their second worst enemy is total efficiency. Human interests are best served when society is tolerably well organi0ed and industry moderately advanced. 1haos and ineptitude are anti-human' but so too is a superlatively efficient government! e$uipped with all the products of a highly developed technology. .hen such a government goes in for usually destroying! the whole race is in danger. #he Mongols were the aesthetes of militarism' they believed in gratuitous massacre! in destruction for destruction"s sake. &ur malice is less pure and spontaneous' but! to make up for this deficiency! we have ideals. #he end proposed! on either side of the ron 1urtain! is nothing less than the 5ood of Humanity and its conversion to the #ruth. 1rusades can go on for centuries! and wars in the name of 5od or Humanity are generally diabolic in their ferocity. #he unprecedented depth of human misery in our time is proportionate to the unprecedented height of the social ideals entertained by the totalitarians on the one side! the 1hristians and the secularist democrats on the other. And then there is the $uestion of simple arithmetic. #here are far more people on the earth today than there were in any earlier century. #he miseries which have been the usual conse$uence of the usual course of nature and the usual behavior of human beings are the lot today! not of the three hundred millions of men! women and children who were contemporary with 1hrist! but of more than two and a half billions. &bviously! then! the sum of our present misery cannot fail to be greater than the sum of misery in the past. Every individual is the center of a world! which it takes very little to transform into a

world of unadulterated suffering. #he catastrophes and crimes of the twentieth century can transform almost ten times as many human universes into private hells as did the catastrophes and crimes of two thousand years ago. Moreover! thanks to improvements in technology! it is possible for fewer people to do more harm to greater numbers than ever before. After the capture of >erusalem by ?ebuchadne00ar! how many >ews were carried off to %abylon< >eremiah puts the figure at four thousand six hundred! the compiler of the 4econd %ook of Fings at ten thousand. 1ompared with the forced migrations of our time! the Exile was the most trivial affair. How many millions were uprooted by Hitler and the 1ommunists< How many more millions were driven out of 7akistan into ndia! out of ndia into 7akistan< How many hundreds of thousands had to flee! with our young guide! from their homes in srael< %y the waters of %abylon ten thousand at the most sat down and wept. n the single refugee camp at %ethlehem there are more exiles than that. And %ethlehem"s is only one of do0ens of such camps scattered far and wide over the ?ear East. 4o it looks! all things considered! as though +ord Eussell were right = that the sum of misery is indeed greater today than at any time in the past. And what of the future< 5erm warfare and the H-bomb get all the headlines and! for that very reason! may never be resorted to. #hose who talk a great deal about suicide rarely commit it. #he greatest threat to happiness is biological. #here were about twelve hundred million people on the planet when was born! six years before the turn of the century. #oday there are two thousand seven hundred millions' thirty years from now there will probably be four thousand millions. At present about sixteen hundred million people are underfed. n the nineteen-eighties the total may well have risen to twenty-five hundred millions! of whom a considerable number may actually be starving. n many parts of the world famine may come even sooner. n his Eeport on the 1ensus of ()*( the Eegistrar 5eneral of ndia has summed up the biological problem as it confronts the second most populous country of the world. #here are now three hundred and seventy-five million people living within the borders of ndia! and their numbers increase by five millions annually. #he current production of basic foods is seventy million tons a year! and the highest production that can be achieved in the foreseeable future is ninety-four million tons. ?inety-four million tons will support four hundred and fifty million people at the present substandard level! and the population of ndia will pass the four hundred and fifty million mark in ()P). After that! there will be a condition of what the Eegistrar 5eneral calls "catastrophe." n the index at the end of the sixth volume of ,r. #oynbee"s 1 (tudy o, History, 7opilius +aenas gets five mentions and 7orphyry of %atamaea! two' but the word you would expect to find between these names! 7opulation! is conspicuous by its absence. n his second volume! Mr. #oynbee has written at length on "the stimulus of pressures" = but without ever mentioning the most important pressure of them all! the pressure of population on available resources. And here is a note in which the author describes his impressions of the Eoman 1ampagna after twenty years of absence. " n ()(( the student who made the pilgrimage of the 8ia Appia Antica found himself walking through a wilderness almost from the moment when he passed beyond the 1ity .alls. . . .hen he repeated the pilgrimage in ()Z(! he found that! in the interval! Man had been busily reasserting his mastery over the whole stretch of country that lies between Eome and the

1astelli Eomani. . . #he tension of human energy on the Eoman 1ampagna is now beginning to rise again for the first time since the end of the third century %.1." And there the matter is left! without any reference to the compelling reason for this "rise of tension." %etween ()(( and ()Z( the population of taly had increased by the best part of eight millions. 4ome of these eight millions went to live in the Eoman 1ampagna. And they did so! not because Man with a large M had in some mystical way increased the tension of human energy! but for the sufficiently obvious reason that there was nowhere else for them to go. n terms of a history that takes no cogni0ance of demographical facts! the past can never be fully understood! the present is $uite incomprehensible and the future entirely beyond prediction. #hinking! for a change! in demographic as well as in merely cultural! political and religious terms! what kind of reasonable guesses can we make about the sum of human misery in the years to come< -irst! it seems pretty certain that more people will be hungrier and that! in many parts of the world! malnutrition will modulate into periodical or chronic famine. :&ne would like to know something about the -amines of earlier ages! but the nearest one gets to them in Mr. #oynbee"s index is a blank space between Muhammad -alak-al-,in and 5aius -annius.; 4econd! it seems pretty certain that! though they may help in the long run! remedial measures aimed at reducing the birthrate will be powerless to avert the miseries lying in wait for the next generation. #hird! it seems pretty certain that improvements in Agriculture :not referred to in Mr. #oynbee"s index! though Agrigentum gets two mentions and Agis 8! Fing of 4parta! no less than fortyseven; will be unable to catch up with current and foreseeable increases in population. f the standard of living in industrially backward countries is to be improved! agricultural production will have to go up every single year by at least two and a half per cent! and preferably by three and a half per cent. nstead of which! according to the -A&! -ar Eastern food production per head of population will be ten per cent less in ()*P :and this assumes that the current -ive-Aear 7lans will be fully reali0ed; than it was in ()ZL. -ourth! it seems pretty certain that! as a larger and hungrier population "mines the soil" in a desperate search for food! the destructive processes of erosion and deforestation will be speeded up. -ertility will therefore tend to go down as human numbers go up. :&ne looks up Erosion in Mr. #oynbee"s index but finds only Esarhaddon! Esotericism and Esperanto' one hunts for -orests! but has to be content! alas! with -ormosus of 7orto.; -ifth! it seems pretty certain that the increasing pressure of population upon resources will result in increasing political and social unrest! and that this unrest will culminate in wars! revolutions and counter-revolutions. 4ixth! it seems pretty certain that! whatever the avowed political principles and whatever the professed religion of the societies concerned! increasing pressure of population upon resources will tend to increase the power of the central government and to diminish the liberties of individual citi0ens. -or! obviously! where more people are competing for less food! each individual will have to work harder and longer for his ration! and the central government will find it necessary to intervene more and more fre$uently in order to save the rickety economic machine from total breakdown! and at the same time to repress the popular discontent begotten by deepening poverty. f +ord Eussell lives to a hundred and twenty :and! for all our sakes! hope most fervently that he will;! he may find himself remembering these middle decades of the

twentieth century as an almost 5olden Age. n ()*M! it is true! he decided that the sum of human misery had never been so great as it had been in the preceding $uarter century. &n the other hand! "you ain"t seen nuthin" yet." 1ompared with the sum of four billion people"s misery in the eighties! the sum of two billion miseries /ust before! during and after the 4econd .orld .ar may look like the Earthly 7aradise. %ut meanwhile here we were in >erusalem! looking at the usually destroyed anti$uities and rubbing shoulders with the usually poverty-stricken inhabitants! the usually superstitious pilgrims. Here was the .ailing .all! with nobody to wail at it' for srael is on the other side of a barrier! across which there is no communication except by occasional bursts of rifle fire! occasional exchanges of hand grenades. Here! propped up with steel scaffolding! was the 1hurch of the Holy 4epulchre = that empty tomb to which! for three centuries! the early 1hristians paid no attention whatsoever! but which came! after the time of 1onstantine! to be regarded! throughout Europe! as the most important thing in the entire universe. And here was 4iloam! here 4t. Anne"s! here the ,ome of the Eock and the site of the #emple! here! more ominous than 7ompeii! the >ewish $uarter! leveled! usually! in ()ML and not yet usually reconstructed. Here! finally! was 4t. >ames"s! of the Armenians! gay with innumerable rather bad but charming paintings! and a wealth of gaudily colored tiles. #he great church glowed like a dim religious merry-go-round. n all >erusalem it was the only oasis of cheerfulness. And not alone of cheerfulness. As we came out into the courtyard! through which the visitor must approach the church"s main entrance! we heard a strange and wonderful sound. High up! in one of the houses surrounding the court! somebody was playing the opening -antasia of %ach"s 7artita in A Minor = playing it! what was more! remarkably well. -rom out of the open window! up there on the third floor! the ordered torrent of bright pure notes went streaming out over the city"s immemorial s$ualor. Art and religion! philosophy and science! morals and politics = these are the instruments by means of which men have tried to discover a coherence in the flux of events! to impose an order on the chaos of experience. #he most intractable of our experiences is the experience of #ime = the intuition of duration! combined with the thought of perpetual perishing. Music is a device for working directly upon the experience of #ime. #he composer takes a piece of raw! undifferentiated duration and extracts from it! as the sculptor extracts the statue from his marble! a complex pattern of tones and silences! of harmonic se$uences and contrapuntal interweavings. -or the number of minutes it takes to play or listen to his composition! duration is transformed into something intrinsically significant! something held together by the internal logics of style and temperament! of personal feelings interacting with an artistic tradition! of creative insights expressing themselves within and beyond some given technical convention. #his -antasia! for example = with what a tireless persistence it drills its way through time3 How effectively = and yet with no fuss! no self-conscious heroics = it transfigures the mortal lapse through time into the symbol! into the very fact! of a more than human life3 A tunnel of /oy and understanding had been driven through chaos and was demonstrating! for all to hear! that perpetual perishing is also perpetual creation. .hich was precisely what our young friend had been telling us! in his own inimitable way! all the time. @sually destroyed = but also! and /ust as often! usually rebuilt. +ike the rain! like sunshine! like the grace of 5od and the devastations of ?ature! his verbali0ed tic was perfectly impartial. .e walked out of the courtyard and down the narrow street. %ach faded! a donkey brayed! there was a smell of undisposed sewage. " n

the year of &ur +ord ()(P!" our guide informed us! "the #urkish 5overnment usually massacred approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand Armenians." :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

PO%ITICS

Words and Be!av"or .ords form the thread on which we string our experiences. .ithout them we should live spasmodically and intermittently. Hatred itself is not so strong that animals will not forget it! if distracted! even in the presence of the enemy. .atch a pair of cats! crouching on the brink of a fight. %alefully the eyes glare' from far down in the throat of each come bursts of a strange! strangled noise of defiance' as though animated by a life of their own! the tails twitch and tremble. .ith aimed intensity of loathing3 Another moment and surely there must be an explosion. %ut no' all of a sudden one of the two creatures turns away! hoists a hind leg in a more than fascist salute and! with the same fixed and focused attention as it had given a moment before to its enemy! begins to make a lingual toilet. Animal love is as much at the mercy of distractions as animal hatred. #he dumb creation lives a life made up of discreet and mutually irrelevant episodes. 4uch as it is! the consistency of human characters is due to the words upon which all human experiences are strung. .e are purposeful because we can describe our feelings in rememberable words! can /ustify and rationali0e our desires in terms of some kind of argument. -aced by an enemy we do not allow an itch to distract us from our emotions' the mere word "enemy" is enough to keep us reminded of our hatred! to convince us that we do well to be angry. 4imilarly the word "love" bridges for us those chasms of momentary indifference and boredom which gape from time to time between even the most ardent lovers. -eeling and desire provide us with our motive power' words give continuity to what we do and to a considerable extent determine our direction. nappropriate and badly chosen words vitiate thought and lead to wrong or foolish conduct. Most ignorances are vincible! and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the %uddha pronounced it to be! a sin. -or! consciously! or subconsciously! it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand = because incomprehension allows us! with a good conscience! to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities! because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes! but ought not! to do. &ur egotisms are incessantly fighting to preserve themselves! not only from external enemies! but also from the assaults of the other and better self with which they are so uncomfortably associated. gnorance is egotism"s most effective defense against that ,r. >ekyll in us who desires perfection' stupidity! its subtlest stratagem. f! as so often happens! we choose to give continuity to our experience by means of words which falsify the facts! this is because the falsification is somehow to our advantage as egotists. 1onsider! for example! the case of war. .ar is enormously discreditable to those who order it to be waged and even to those who merely tolerate its existence.

-urthermore! to developed sensibilities the facts of war are revolting and horrifying. #o falsify these facts! and by so doing to make war seem less evil than it really is! and our own responsibility in tolerating war less heavy! is doubly to our advantage. %y suppressing and distorting the truth! we protect our sensibilities and preserve our selfesteem. ?ow! language is! among other things! a device which men use for suppressing and distorting the truth. -inding the reality of war too unpleasant to contemplate! we create a verbal alternative to that reality! parallel with it! but in $uality $uite different from it. #hat which we contemplate thenceforward is not that to which we react emotionally and upon which we pass our moral /udgments! is not war as it is in fact! but the fiction of war as it exists in our pleasantly falsifying verbiage. &ur stupidity in using inappropriate language turns out! on analysis! to be the most refined cunning. #he most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings! and that these individual human beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in $uarrels not their own! to inflict upon the innocent and! innocent themselves of any crime against their enemies! to suffer cruelties of every kind. #he language of strategy and politics is designed! so far as it is possible! to conceal this fact! to make it appear as though wars were not fought by individuals drilled to murder one another in cold blood and without provocation! but either by impersonal and therefore wholly non-moral and impassible forces! or else by personified abstractions. Here are a few examples of the first kind of falsification. n place of "cavalrymen" or "foot-soldiers" military writers like to speak of "sabres" and "rules." Here is a sentence from a description of the %attle of Marengo6 "According to 8ictor"s report! the -rench retreat was orderly' it is certain! at any rate! that the regiments held together! for the six thousand Austrian sabres found no opportunity to charge home." #he battle is between sabres in line and muskets in Echelon = a mere clash of ironmongery. &n other occasions there is no $uestion of anything so vulgarly material as ironmongery. #he battles are between 7latonic ideas! between the abstractions of physics and mathematics. -orces interact' weights are flung into scales' masses are set in motion. &r else it is all a matter of geometry. +ines swing and sweep' are protracted or curved' pivot on a fixed point. Alternatively the combatants are personal! in the sense that they are personifications. #here is "the enemy!" in the singular! making "his" plans! striking "his" blows. #he attribution of personal characteristics to collectivities! to geographical expressions! to institutions! is a source! as we shall see! of endless confusions in political thought! of innumerable political mistakes and crimes. 7ersonification in politics is an error which we make because it is to our advantage as egotists to be able to feel violently proud of our country and of ourselves as belonging to it! and to believe that all the misfortunes due to our own mistakes are really the work of the -oreigner. t is easier to feel violently toward a person than toward an abstraction' hence our habit of making political personifications. n some cases military personifications are merely special instances of political personifications. A particular collectivity! the army or the warring nation! is given the name and! along with the name! the attributes of a single person! in order that we may be able to love or hate it more intensely than we could do if we thought of it as what it really is6 a number of diverse individuals. n other cases

personification is used for the purpose of concealing the fundamental absurdity and monstrosity of war. .hat is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal $uarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. %y personifying opposing armies or countries! we are able to think of war as a conflict between individuals. #he same result is obtained by writing of war as though it were carried on exclusively by the generals in command and not by the private soldiers in their armies. :"Eennenkampf had pressed back von 4chubert."; #he implication in both cases is that war is indistinguishable from a bout of fisticuffs in a bar room. .hereas in reality it is profoundly different. A scrap between two individuals is forgivable' mass murder! deliberately organi0ed! is a monstrous ini$uity. .e still choose to use war as an instrument of policy' and to comprehend the full wickedness and absurdity of war would therefore be inconvenient. -or! once we understood! we should have to make some effort to get rid of the abominable thing. Accordingly! when we talk about war! we use a language which conceals or embellishes its reality. gnoring the facts! so far as we possibly can! we imply that battles are not fought by soldiers! but by things! principles! allegories! personified collectivities! or :at the most human; by opposing commanders! pitched against one another in single combat. -or the same reason! when we have to describe the processes and the results of war! we employ a rich variety of euphemisms. Even the most violently patriotic and militaristic are reluctant to call a spade by its own name. #o conceal their intentions even from themselves! they make use of pictures$ue metaphors. .e find them! for example! clamoring for war planes numerous and powerful enough to go and "destroy the hornets in their nests" = in other words! to go and throw thermite! high explosives and vesicants upon the inhabitants of neighboring countries before they have time to come and do the same to us. And how reassuring is the language of historians and strategists3 #hey write admiringly of those military geniuses who know "when to strike at the enemy"s line" :a single combatant deranges the geometrical constructions of a personification;' when to "turn his flank"' when to "execute an enveloping movement." As though they were engineers discussing the strength of materials and the distribution of stresses! they talk of abstract entities called "man power" and "fire power." #hey sum up the long-drawn sufferings and atrocities of trench warfare in the phrase! "a war of attrition"' the massacre and mangling of human beings is assimilated to the grinding of a lens. A dangerously abstract word! which figures in all discussions about war! is "force." #hose who believe in organi0ing collective security by means of military pacts against a possible aggressor are particularly fond of this word. "Aou cannot!" they say! "have international /ustice unless you are prepared to impose it by force." "7eace-loving countries must unite to use force against aggressive dictatorships." ",emocratic institutions must be protected! if need be! by force." And so on. ?ow! the word "force!" when used in reference to human relations! has no single! definite meaning. #here is the "force" used by parents when! without resort to any kind of physical violence! they compel their children to act or refrain from acting in some particular way. #here is the "force" used by attendants in an asylum when they try to prevent a maniac from hurting himself or others. #here is the "force" used by the police when they control a crowd! and that other "force" which they used in a baton charge. And finally there is the "force" used in war. #his! of course! varies with the technological devices at the disposal of the belligerents! with the policies they are pursuing! and with

the particular circumstances of the war in $uestion. %ut in general it may be said that! in war! "force" connotes violence and fraud used to the limit of the combatants" capacity. 8ariations in $uantity! if sufficiently great! produce variations in $uality. #he "force" that is war! particularly modern war! is very different from the "force" that is police action! and the use of the same abstract word to describe the two dissimilar processes is profoundly misleading. :4till more misleading! of course! is the explicit assimilation of a war! waged by allied +eague-of-?ations powers against an aggressor! to police action against a criminal. #he first is the use of violence and fraud without limit against innocent and guilty alike' the second is the use of strictly limited violence and a minimum of fraud exclusively against the guilty.; Eeality is a succession of concrete and particular situations. .hen we think about such situations we should use the particular and concrete words which apply to them. f we use abstract words which apply e$ually well :and e$ually badly; to other! $uite dissimilar situations! it is certain that we shall think incorrectly. +et us take the sentences $uoted above and translate the abstract word "force" into language that will render :however inade$uately; the concrete and particular realities of contemporary warfare. "Aou cannot have international /ustice! unless you are prepared to impose it by force." #ranslated! this becomes6 "Aou cannot have international /ustice unless you are prepared! with a view to imposing a /ust settlement! to drop thermite! high explosives and vesicants upon the inhabitants of foreign cities and to have thermite! high explosives and vesicants dropped in return upon the inhabitants of your cities." At the end of this proceeding! /ustice is to be imposed by the victorious party = that is! if there is a victorious party. t should be remarked that /ustice was to have been imposed by the victorious party at the end of the last war. %ut! unfortunately! after four years of fighting! the temper of the victors was such that they were $uite incapable of making a /ust settlement. #he Allies are reaping in ?a0i 5ermany what they sowed at 8ersailles. #he victors of the next war will have undergone intensive bombardments with thermite! high explosives and vesicants. .ill their temper be better than that of the Allies in ()(L< .ill they be in a fitter state to make a /ust settlement< #he answer! $uite obviously! is6 ?o. t is psychologically all but impossible that /ustice should be secured by the methods of contemporary warfare. #he next two sentences may be taken together. "7eace-loving countries must unite to use force against aggressive dictatorships. ,emocratic institutions must be protected! if need be! by force." +et us translate. "7eace-loving countries must unite to throw thermite! high explosives and vesicants on the inhabitants of countries ruled by aggressive dictators. #hey must do this! and of course abide the conse$uences! in order to preserve peace and democratic institutions." #wo $uestions immediately propound themselves. -irst! is it likely that peace can be secured by a process calculated to reduce the orderly life of our complicated societies to chaos< And! second! is it likely that democratic institutions will flourish in a state of chaos< Again! the answers are pretty clearly in the negative. %y using the abstract word "force!" instead of terms which at least attempt to describe the realities of war as it is today! the preachers of collective security through military collaboration disguise from themselves and from others! not only the contemporary facts! but also the probable conse$uences of their favorite policy. #he

attempt to secure /ustice! peace and democracy by "force" seems reasonable enough until we reali0e! first! that this noncommittal word stands! in the circumstances of our age! for activities which can hardly fail to result in social chaos' and second! that the conse$uences of social chaos are in/ustice! chronic warfare and tyranny. #he moment we think in concrete and particular terms of the concrete and particular process called "modern war!" we see that a policy which worked :or at least didn"t result in complete disaster; in the past has no prospect whatever of working in the immediate future. #he attempt to secure /ustice! peace and democracy by means of a "force!" which means! at this particular moment of history! thermite! high explosives and vesicants! is about as reasonable as the attempt to put out a fire with a colorless li$uid that happens to be! not water! but petrol. .hat applies to the "force" that is war applies in large measure to the "force" that is revolution. t seems inherently very unlikely that social /ustice and social peace can be secured by thermite! high explosives and vesicants. At first! it may be! the parties in a civil war would hesitate to use such instruments on their fellow-countrymen. %ut there can be little doubt that! if the conflict were prolonged :as it probably would be between the evenly balanced Eight and +eft of a highly industriali0ed society;! the combatants would end by losing their scruples. #he alternatives confronting us seem to be plain enough. Either we invent and conscientiously employ a new techni$ue for making revolutions and settling international disputes' or else we cling to the old techni$ue and! using "force" :that is to say! thermite! high explosives and vesicants;! destroy ourselves. #hose who! for whatever motive! disguise the nature of the second alternative under inappropriate language! render the world a grave disservice. #hey lead us into one of the temptations we find it hardest to resist = the temptation to run away from reality! to pretend that facts are not what they are. +ike 4helley :but without 4helley"s acute awareness of what he was doing; we are perpetually weaving
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun Of this familiar life"

.e protect our minds by an elaborate system of abstractions! ambiguities! metaphors and similes from the reality we do not wish to know too clearly' we lie to ourselves! in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance! the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension! possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes6
The poor wretch who has learned his only prayers .rom curses, who knows scarcely words enough To ask a blessing from his Heavenly .ather, ecomes a fluent phraseman, absolute And technical in victories and defeats, And all our dainty terms for fratricide; Terms which we trundle smoothly o(er our tongues Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which %e 0oin no meaning and attach no formAs if the soldier died without a wound: As if the fibers of this godlike frame %ere gored without a pang: as if the wretch

%ho fell in battle, doing bloody deeds, )assed off to Heaven translated and not killed; As though he had no wife to pine for him, 7o =od to 0udge him"

#he language we use about war is inappropriate! and its inappropriateness is designed to conceal a reality so odious that we do not wish to know it. #he language we use about politics is also inappropriate' but here our mistake has a different purpose. &ur principal aim in this case is to arouse and! having aroused! to rationali0e and /ustify such intrinsically agreeable sentiments as pride and hatred! self-esteem and contempt for others. #o achieve this end we speak about the facts of politics in words which more or less completely misrepresent them. #he concrete realities of politics are individual human beings! living together in national groups. 7oliticians = and to some extent we are all politicians = substitute abstractions for these concrete realities! and having done this! proceed to invest each abstraction with an appearance of concreteness by personifying it. -or example! the concrete reality of which "%ritain" is the abstraction consists of some forty-odd millions of diverse individuals living on an island off the west coast of Europe. #he personification of this abstraction appears! in classical fancy-dress and holding a very large toasting fork! on the backside of our copper coinage' appears in verbal form! every time we talk about international politics. "%ritain!" the abstraction from forty millions of %ritons! is endowed with thoughts! sensibilities and emotions! even with a sex = for! in spite of >ohn %ull! the country is always a female. ?ow! it is of course possible that "%ritain" is more than a mere name = is an entity that possesses some kind of reality distinct from that of the individuals constituting the group to which the name is applied. %ut this entity! if it exists! is certainly not a young lady with a toasting fork' nor is it possible to believe :though some eminent philosophers have preached the doctrine; that it should possess anything in the nature of a personal will. &ne must agree with #. H. 5reen that "there can be nothing in a nation! however exalted its mission! or in a society however perfectly organi0ed! which is not in the persons composing the nation or the society. . . .e cannot suppose a national spirit and will to exist except as the spirit and will of individuals." %ut the moment we start resolutely thinking about our world in terms of individual persons we find ourselves at the same time thinking in terms of universality. "#he great rational religions!" writes 7rofessor .hitehead! "are the outcome of the emergence of a religious consciousness that is universal! as distinguished from tribal! or even social. %ecause it is universal! it introduces the note of solitariness." :And he might have added that! because it is solitary! it introduces the note of universality.; "#he reason of this connection between universality and solitude is that universality is a disconnection from immediate surroundings." And conversely the disconnection from immediate surroundings! particularly such social surrounding as the tribe or nation! the insistence on the person as the fundamental reality! leads to the conception of an all-embracing unity. A nation! then! may be more than a mere abstraction! may possess some kind of real existence apart from its constituent members. %ut there is no reason to suppose that it is a person' indeed! there is every reason to suppose that it isn"t. #hose who speak as though it were a person :and some go further than this and speak as though it were a personal god; do so! because it is to their interest as egotists to make precisely this

mistake. n the case of the ruling class these interests are in part material. #he personification of the nation as a sacred being! different from and superior to its constituent members! is merely : $uote the words of a great -rench /urist! +9on ,uguit; "a way of imposing authority by making people believe it is an authority de =ure and not merely de ,acto." %y habitually talking of the nation as though it were a person with thoughts! feelings and a will of its own! the rulers of a country legitimate their own powers. 7ersonification leads easily to deification' and where the nation is deified! its government ceases to be a mere convenience! like drains or a telephone system! and! partaking in the sacredness of the entity it represents! claims to give orders by divine right and demands the un$uestioning obedience due to a god. Eulers seldom find it hard to recogni0e their friends. Hegel! the man who elaborated an inappropriate figure of speech into a complete philosophy of politics! was a favorite of the 7russian government. "?s ist," he had written! "es ist der Gang Gottes in der -elt, das der (taat ist." #he decoration bestowed on him by -rederick .illiam was richly deserved. @nlike their rulers! the ruled have no material interest in using inappropriate language about states and nations. -or them! the reward of being mistaken is psychological. #he personified and deified nation becomes! in the minds of the individuals composing it! a kind of enlargement of themselves. #he superhuman $ualities which belong to the young lady with the toasting fork! the young lady with plaits and a brass soutienDgorge, the young lady in a 7hrygian bonnet! are claimed by individual Englishmen! 5ermans and -renchmen as being! at least in part! their own. Dulce et decorum est ro atria mori. %ut there would be no need to die! no need of war! if it had not been even sweeter to boast and swagger for one"s country! to hate! despise! swindle and bully for it. +oyalty to the personified nation! or to the personified class or party! /ustifies the loyal in indulging all those passions which good manners and the moral code do not allow them to display in their relations with their neighbors. #he personified entity is a being! not only great and noble! but also insanely proud! vain and touchy' fiercely rapacious' a braggart' bound by no considerations of right and wrong. :Hegel condemned as hopelessly shallow all those who dared to apply ethical standards to the activities of nations. #o condone and applaud every ini$uity committed in the name of the 4tate was to him a sign of philosophical profundity.; dentifying themselves with this god! individuals find relief from the constraints of ordinary social decency! feel themselves /ustified in giving rein! within duly prescribed limits! to their criminal proclivities. As a loyal nationalist or party-man! one can en/oy the luxury of behaving badly with a good conscience. #he evil passions are further /ustified by another linguistic error = the error of speaking about certain categories of persons as though they were mere embodied abstractions. -oreigners and those who disagree with us are not thought of as men and women like ourselves and our fellow-countrymen' they are thought of as representatives and! so to say! symbols of a class. n so far as they have any personality at all! it is the personality we mistakenly attribute to their class = a personality that is! by definition! intrinsically evil. .e know that the harming or killing of men and women is wrong! and we are reluctant consciously to do what we know to be wrong. %ut when particular men and women are thought of merely as representatives of a class! which has previously been defined as evil and personified in the shape of a devil! then the reluctance to hurt or

murder disappears. %rown! >ones and Eobinson are no longer thought of as %rown! >ones and Eobinson! but as heretics! gentiles! Aids! niggers! barbarians! Huns! communists! capitalists! fascists! liberals = whichever the case may be. .hen they have been called such names and assimilated to the accursed class to which the names apply! %rown! >ones and Eobinson cease to be conceived as what they really are = human persons = and become for the users of this fatally inappropriate language mere vermin or! worse! demons whom it is right and proper to destroy as thoroughly and as painfully as possible. .herever persons are present! $uestions of morality arise. Eulers of nations and leaders of parties find morality embarrassing. #hat is why they take such pains to depersonali0e their opponents. All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim6 to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. #he propagandist"s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. %y robbing them of their personality! he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation. Mere symbols can have no rights = particularly when that of which they are symbolical is! by definition! evil. 7olitics can become moral only on one condition6 that its problems shall be spoken of and thought about exclusively in terms of concrete reality' that is to say! of persons. #o depersonify human beings and to personify abstractions are complementary errors which lead! by an inexorable logic! to war between nations and to idolatrous worship of the 4tate! with conse$uent governmental oppression. All current political thought is a mixture! in varying proportions! between thought in terms of concrete realities and thought in terms of depersonified symbols and personified abstractions. n the democratic countries the problems of internal politics are thought about mainly in terms of concrete reality' those of external politics! mainly in terms of abstractions and symbols. n dictatorial countries the proportion of concrete to abstract and symbolic thought is lower than in democratic countries. ,ictators talk little of persons! much of personified abstractions! such as the ?ation! the 4tate! the 7arty! and much of depersonified symbols! such as Aids! %olshies! 1apitalists. #he stupidity of politicians who talk about a world of persons as though it were not a world of persons is due in the main to self-interest. n a fictitious world of symbols and personified abstractions! rulers find that they can rule more effectively! and the ruled! that they can gratify instincts which the conventions of good manners and the imperatives of morality demand that they should repress. #o think correctly is the condition of behaving well. t is also in itself a moral act' those who would think correctly must resist considerable temptations. :-rom The 2live Tree0

$ecentral";at"on and Self69overn3ent #he Anarchists propose that the state should be abolished' and in so far as it serves as the instrument by means of which the ruling class preserves its privileges' in so far as it is a device for enabling paranoiacs to satisfy their lust for power and carry out their cra0y dreams of glory! the state is obviously worthy of abolition. %ut in complex societies like our own the state has certain other and more useful functions to perform. t is clear! for example! that in any such society there must be some organi0ation

responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the various constituent groups' clear! too! that there must be a body to which is delegated the power of acting in the name of the society as a whole. f the word "state" is too unpleasantly associated with ideas of domestic oppression and foreign war! with irresponsible domination and no less irresponsible submission! then by all means let us call the necessary social machinery by some other name. -or the present there is no general agreement as to what that name should be' shall therefore go on using the bad old word! until some better one is invented. ?o economic reform! however intrinsically desirable! can lead to desirable changes in individuals and the society they constitute! unless it is carried through in a desirable context and by desirable methods. 4o far as the state is concerned! the desirable context for reform is decentrali0ation and self-government all round. #he desirable methods for enacting reform are the methods of non-violence. 7assing from the general to the particular and the concrete! the rational idealist finds himself confronted by the following $uestions. -irst! by what means can the principle of self-government be applied to the daily lives of men and women< 4econd! to what extent is the self-government of the component parts of a society compatible with its efficiency as a whole< And! thirdly! if a central organi0ation is needed to coordinate the activities of the self-governing parts! what is to prevent this organi0ation from becoming a ruling oligarchy of the kind with which we are only too painfully familiar< #he techni$ue for self-government all round! self-government for ordinary people in their ordinary avocation! is a matter which we cannot profitably discuss unless we have a clear idea of what may be called the natural history and psychology of groups. Guantitatively! a group differs from a crowd in si0e' $ualitatively! in the kind and intensity of the mental life of the constituent individuals. A crowd is a lot of people' a group is a few. A crowd has a mental life inferior in intellectual $uality and emotionally less under voluntary control than the mental life of each of its members in isolation. #he mental life of a group is not inferior! either intellectually or emotionally! to the mental life of the individual composing it and may! in favorable circumstances! actually be superior. #he significant psychological facts about the crowd are as follows. #he tone of crowd emotion is essentially orgiastic and dionysiac. n virtue of his membership of the crowd! the individual is released from the limitations of his personality! made free of the sub-personal! sub-human world of unrestrained feeling and uncritici0ed belief. #o be a member of a crowd is an experience closely akin to alcoholic intoxication. Most human beings feel a craving to escape from the cramping limitations of their ego! to take periodical holidays from their all too familiar! all too s$ualid little selves. As they do not know how to travel upwards from personality into a region of super-personality and as they are unwilling! even if they do know! to fulfill the ethical! psychological and physiological conditions of self-transcendence! they turn naturally to the descending road! the road that leads down from personality to the darkness of sub-human emotionalism and panic animality. Hence the persistent craving for narcotics and stimulants! hence the never failing attraction of the crowd. #he success of the dictators is due in large measure to their extremely skillful exploitation of the universal human need for escape from the limitations of personality. 7erceiving that people wished to take holidays from themselves in sub-human emotionality! they have systematically provided their sub/ects

with the occasions for doing so. #he 1ommunists denounce religion as the opium of the people' but all they have done is to replace this old drug by a new one of similar composition. -or the crowd round the relic of the saint they have substituted the crowd at the political meeting' for religious processions! military reviews and May ,ay parades. t is the same with -ascist dictators. n all the totalitarian states the masses are persuaded! and! even compelled! to take periodical holidays from themselves in the sub-human world of crowd emotion. t is significant that while they encourage and actually command the descent into sub-humanity! the dictators do all they can to prevent men from taking the upward road from personal limitation! the road that leads toward non-attachment to the "things of this world" and attachment to that which is super-personal. #he higher manifestations of religion are far more suspect to the tyrants than the lower = and with reason. -or the man who escapes from egotism into super-personality has transcended his old idolatrous loyalty! not only to himself! but also to the local divinities = nation! party! class! deified boss. 4elf-transcendence! escape from the prison of the ego into union with what is above personality! is generally accomplished in solitude. #hat is why the tyrants like to herd their sub/ects into those vast crowds! in which the individual is reduced to a state of intoxicated sub-humanity. t is time now to consider the group. #he first $uestion we must ask ourselves is this6 when does a group become a crowd< #his is not a problem in verbal definition' it is a matter of observation and experience. t is found empirically that group activities and characteristic group feeling become increasingly difficult when more than about twenty or less than about five individuals are involved. 5roups which come together for the purpose of carrying out a specific /ob of manual work can afford to be larger than groups which meet for the purpose of pooling information and elaborating a common policy! or which meet for religious exercises! or for mutual comfort! or merely for the sake of convivially "getting together." #wenty or even as many as thirty people can work together and still remain a group. %ut these numbers would be much too high in a group that had assembled for the other purposes have mentioned. t is significant that >esus had only twelve apostles' that the %enedictines were divided into groups of ten under a dean :+atin decanus from 5reek ten;' that ten is the number of individuals constituting a 1ommunist cell. 1ommittees of more than a do0en members are found to be unmanageably large. Eight is the perfect number for a dinner party. #he most successful Guaker meetings are generally meetings at which few people are present. Educationists agree that the most satisfactory si0e for a class is between eight and fifteen. n armies! the smallest unit is about ten. #he witches" "coven" was a group of thirteen. And so on. All evidence points clearly to the fact that there is an optimum si0e for groups and that this optimum is round about ten for groups meeting for social! religious or intellectual purposes and from ten to thirty for groups engaged in manual work. #his being so! it is clear that the units of self-government should be groups of the optimum si0e. f they are smaller than the optimum! they will fail to develop that emotional field which gives to group activity its characteristic $uality! while the available $uantity of pooled information and experience will be inade$uate. f they are larger than the optimum! they will tend to split into sub-groups of the optimum si0e or! if the constituent individuals remain together in a crowd there will be a danger of their relapsing into the crowd"s sub-human stupidity and emotionality. #he techni$ue of industrial self-government has been discussed with a wealth of

concrete examples in a remarkable book by the -rench economist Hyacinthe ,ubreuil! entitled! 1 Chacun sa Chance. Among the writers on industrial organi0ation ,ubreuil occupies a place apart' for he is almost the only one of them who has himself had experience of factory conditions as a workman. Accordingly! what he writes on the sub/ect of industrial organi0ation carries an authority denied to the utterances of those who rely on second-hand information as a basis for their theories. ,ubreuil points out that even the largest industries can be organi0ed so as to consist of a series of selfgoverning! yet co-ordinated! groups of! at the outside! thirty members. .ithin the industry each one of such groups can act as a kind of sub-contractor! undertaking to perform so much of such and such a kind of work for such and such a sum. #he e$uitable division of this sum among the constituent members is left to the group itself! as is also the preservation of discipline! the election of representatives and leaders. #he examples which ,ubreuil $uotes from the annals of industrial history and from his own experience as a workman tend to show that this form of organi0ation is appreciated by the workers! to whom it gives a measure of independence even within the largest manufacturing concern! and that in most cases it results in increased efficiency of working. t possesses! as he points out! the further merit of being a form of organi0ation that educates those who belong to it in the practice of co-operation and mutual responsibility. @nder the present dispensation! the great ma/ority of factories are little despotisms! benevolent in some cases! malevolent in others. Even where benevolence prevails! passive obedience is demanded of the workers! who are ruled by overseers! not of their own election! but appointed from above. n theory! they may be the sub/ects of a democratic state' but in practice they spend the whole of their working lives as the sub/ects of a petty tyrant. ,ubreuil"s scheme! if it were generally acted upon! would introduce genuine democracy into the factory. And if some such scheme is not acted upon! it is of small moment to the individual whether the industry in which he is working is owned by the state! by a co-operative society! by a /oint stock company or by a private individual. 7assive obedience to officers appointed from above is always passive obedience! whoever the general in ultimate control may be. 1onversely! even if the ultimate control is in the wrong hands! the man who voluntarily accepts rules in the making of which he has had a part! who obeys leaders he himself has chosen! who has helped to decide how much and in what conditions he himself and his companions shall be paid! is to that extent the free and responsible sub/ect of a genuinely democratic government! and en/oys those psychological advantages which only such a form of government can give. &f modern wage-slaves! +enin writes that they "remain to such an extent crushed by want and poverty that they "can"t be bothered with democracy!" have "no time for politics!" and in the ordinary peaceful course of events! the ma/ority of the population is debarred from participating in public political life." #his statement is only partially true. ?ot all those who can"t be bothered with democracy are debarred from political life by want and poverty. 7lenty of well-paid workmen and! for that matter! plenty of the wealthiest beneficiaries of the capitalistic system! find that they can"t be bothered with politics. #he reason is not economic! but psychological' has its source! not in environment! but in heredity. 7eople belong to different psycho-physiological types and are endowed with different degrees of general intelligence. #he will and ability to take an effective interest in large-scale politics do not belong to all! or even a ma/ority of! men

and women. 7reoccupation with general ideas! with things and people distant in space! with contingent events remote in future time! is something which it is given to only a few to feel. ".hat"s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba<" #he answer in most cases is6 ?othing whatsoever. An improvement in the standard of living might perceptibly increase the number of those for whom Hecuba meant something. %ut even if all were rich! there would still be many congenitally incapable of being bothered with anything so far removed from the warm! tangible facts of everyday experience. As things are at present! millions of men and women come into the world disfranchised by nature. #hey have the privilege of voting on long-range! large-scale political issues' but they are congenitally incapable of taking an intelligent interest in any but short-range! small-scale problems. #oo often the framers of democratic constitutions have acted as though man were made for democracy! not democracy for man. #he vote has been a kind of bed of 7rocrustes upon which! however long their views! however short their ability! all human beings were expected to stretch themselves. ?ot unnaturally! the results of this kind of democracy have proved disappointing. ?evertheless! it remains true that democratic freedom is good for those who en/oy it and that practice in self-government is an almost indispensable element in the curriculum of man"s moral and psychological education. Human beings belong to different types' it is therefore necessary to create different types of democratic and self-governing institutions! suitable for the various kinds of men and women. #hus! people with short-range! small-scale interests can find scope for their kind of political abilities in self-governing groups within an industry! within a consumer or producer cooperative! within the administrative machinery of the parish! borough or county. %y means of comparatively small changes in the existing systems of local and professional organi0ation it would be possible to make almost every individual a member of some self-governing group. n this way the curse of merely passive obedience could be got rid of! the vice of political indolence cured and the advantages of responsible and active freedom brought to all. n this context it is worth remarking on a very significant change which has recently taken place in our social habits. Materially! this change may be summed up as the decline of the community' psychologically! as the decline of the community sense. #he reasons for this double change are many and of various kinds. Here are a few of the more important. %irth control has reduced the si0e of the average family and! for various reasons which will be apparent later! the old habits of patriarchal living have practically disappeared. t is very rare nowadays to find parents! married children! and grandchildren living together in the same house or in close association. +arge families and patriarchal groups were communities in which children and adults had to learn :often by very painful means; the art of co-operation and the need to accept responsibility for others. #hese admittedly rather crude schools of community sense have now disappeared. ?ew methods of transport have profoundly modified the life in the village and small town. @p to only a generation ago most villages were to a great extent selfsufficing communities. Every trade was represented by its local technician' the local produce was consumed or exchanged in the neighborhood' the inhabitants worked on the spot. f they desired instruction or entertainment or religion! they had to mobili0e the local talent and produce it themselves. #oday all this is changed. #hanks to improved transport! the village is now closely bound up with the rest of the economic world. 4upplies and technical services are obtained from a distance. +arge numbers of the

inhabitants go out to work in factories and offices in far-off cities. Music and the drama are provided! not by local talent! but over the ether and in the picture theater. &nce all the members of the community were always on the spot' now! thanks to cars! motor cycles and buses the villagers are rarely in their village. 1ommunity fun! community worship! community efforts to secure culture have tended to decline for the simple reason that! in leisure hours! a large part of the community"s membership is always somewhere else. ?or is this all. #he older inhabitants of Middletown! as readers of the +ynds" classical study of American small-town life will remember! complained that the internal combustion engine had led to a decline of neighborliness. ?eighbors have -ords and 1hevrolets! conse$uently are no longer there to be neighborly' or if by chance they should be at home! they content themselves with calling up on the telephone. #echnological progress has reduced the number of physical contacts! and thus impoverished the spiritual relations between the members of a community. 1entrali0ed professionalism has not only affected local entertainment' it had also affected the manifestations of local charity and mutual aid. 4tate-provided hospitals! state-provided medical and nursing services are certainly much more efficient than the ministrations of the neighbors. %ut this increased efficiency is purchased at the price of a certain tendency on the part of neighbors to disclaim liability for one another and throw their responsibilities entirely upon the central authority. @nder a perfectly organi0ed system of state socialism charity would be! not merely superfluous! but actually criminal. 5ood 4amaritans would be prosecuted for daring to interfere in their bungling amateurish way with what was obviously a case for state-paid professionals. #he last three generations have witnessed a vast increase in the si0e and number of large cities. +ife is more exciting and more money can be earned in the cities than in villages and small towns. Hence the migration from country to city. n the van of this migrating host have marched the ambitious! the talented! the adventurous. -or more than a century! there has been a tendency for the most gifted members of small rural communities to leave home and seek their fortune in the towns. 1onse$uently what remains in the villages and country towns of the industriali0ed countries is in the nature of a residual population! dysgenically selected for its lack of spirit and intellectual gifts. .hy is it so hard to induce peasants and small farmers to adopt new scientific methods< Among other reasons! because almost every exceptionally intelligent child born into a rural family for a century past has taken the earliest opportunity of deserting the land for the city. 1ommunity life in the country is thus impoverished' but :and this is the important point; the community life of the great urban centers is not correspondingly enriched. t is not enriched for the good reason that! in growing enormous! cities have also grown chaotic. A metropolitan "wen!" as 1obbett was already calling the relatively tiny +ondon of his day! is no longer an organic whole! no longer exists as a community! in whose life individuals can fruitfully participate. Men and women rub shoulders with other men and women' but the contact is external and mechanical. Each one of them can say! in the words of the >olly Miller of the song! " care for nobody! no! not ! and nobody cares for me." Metropolitan life is atomistic. #he city! as a city! does nothing to correlate its human particles into a pattern of responsible! communal living. .hat the country loses on the swings! the city loses all over again on the roundabouts. n the light of this statement of the principal reasons for the recent decline of the community and of the community sense in individuals! we can suggest certain remedies.

4chools and colleges can be transformed into organic communities and used to offset! during a short period of the individual"s career! the decay in family and village life. :A very interesting experiment in this direction is being made at %lack Mountain 1ollege in ?orth 1arolina.; #o some extent! no doubt! the old! "natural" life of villages and small towns! the life that the economic! technological and religious circumstances of the past conspired to impose upon them! can be replaced by a consciously designed synthetic product = a life of associations organi0ed for local government! for sport! for cultural activities and the like. 4uch associations already exist! and there should be no great difficulty in opening them to larger numbers and! at the same time! in making their activities so interesting that people will wish to /oin them instead of taking the line of least resistance! as they do now! and living unconnected! atomistic lives! passively obeying during their working hours and passively allowing themselves to be entertained by machinery during their hours of leisure. #he existence of associations of this kind would serve to make country life less dull and so do something to arrest the flight toward the city. At the same time! the decentrali0ation of industry and its association with agriculture should make it possible for the countryman to earn as much as the city dweller. n spite of the ease with which electric power can now be distributed! the movement toward the decentrali0ation of industry is not yet a very powerful one. 5reat centers of population! like +ondon and 7aris! possess an enormous power of attraction to industries. #he greater the population! the greater the market' and the greater the market! the stronger the gravitational pull exercised upon the manufacturer. ?ew industries establish themselves on the outskirts of large cities and make them become still larger. -or the sake of slight increased profits! due to lower distributing costs! the manufacturers are busily engaged in making +ondon chaotically large! hopelessly congested! desperately hard to enter or leave! and vulnerable to air attacks as no other city of Europe is vulnerable. #o compel a rational and planned decentrali0ation of industry is one of the legitimate! the urgently necessary functions of the state. +ife in the great city is atomistic. How shall it be given a communal pattern< How shall the individual be incorporated in a responsible! self-governing group< n a modern city! the problem of organi0ing responsible community life on a local basis is not easily solved. Modern cities have been created and are preserved by the labors of highly speciali0ed technicians. #he massacre of a few thousands of engineers! administrators and doctors would be sufficient to reduce any of the great metropolitan centers to a state of plague-stricken! starving chaos. Accordingly! in most of its branches! the local government of a great city has become a highly technical affair! a business of the kind that must be centrally planned and carried out by experts. #he only department in which there would seem to be a possibility of profitably extending the existing institutions of local self-government is the department concerned with police-work and the observance of laws. have read that in >apan! the cities were! and perhaps still are! divided into wards of about a hundred inhabitants apiece. #he people in each ward accepted a measure of liability for one another and were to some extent responsible for good behavior and the observance of law within their own small unit. #hat such a system lends itself to the most monstrous abuses under a dictatorial government is obvious. ndeed! it is reported that the ?a0is have already organi0ed their cities in this way. %ut there is no governmental institution that cannot be abused. Elected parliaments have been used as instruments of oppression' plebiscites have served to confirm and strengthen tyranny' courts of /ustice

have been transformed into 4tar 1hambers and military tribunals. +ike all the rest! the ward system may be a source of good in a desirable context and a source of unmitigated evil in an undesirable context. t remains in any case a device worth considering by those who aspire to impose a communal pattern upon the atomistic! irresponsible life of modern city dwellers. -or the rest! it looks as though the townsman"s main experience of democratic institutions and responsible self-government would have to be obtained! not in local administrations! but in the fields of industry and economics! of religious and cultural activity! of athletics and entertainment. n the preceding paragraphs have tried to answer the first of our $uestions and have described the methods by which the principle of self-government can be applied to the daily lives of ordinary men and women. &ur second $uestion concerns the compatibility of self-government all round with the efficiency of industry in particular and society as a whole. n Eussia self-government in industry was tried in the early years of the revolution and was abandoned in favor of authoritarian management. .ithin the factory discipline is no longer enforced by elected representatives of the 4oviet or worker"s committee! but by appointees of the 1ommunist 7arty. #he new conception of management current in 4oviet Eussia was summed up by Faganovitch in a speech before the seventeenth congress of the 1ommunist 7arty. "Management!" he said! "means the power to distribute material things! to appoint and discharge subordinates! in a word! to be master of the particular enterprise." #his is a definition of management to which every industrial dictator in the capitalist countries would unhesitatingly subscribe. %y supporters of the present Eussian government it is said that the change over from self-government to authoritarian management had to be made in the interests of efficiency. #hat extremely inexperienced and ill-educated workers should have been unable to govern themselves and keep up industrial efficiency seems likely enough. %ut in .estern Europe and the @nited 4tates such a situation is not likely to arise. ndeed! ,ubreuil has pointed out that! as a matter of historical fact! self-government within factories has often led to increased efficiency. t would seem! then! that in countries where all men and women are relatively well educated and have been accustomed for some time to the working of democratic institutions! there is no danger that selfgovernment will lead to a breakdown of discipline within the factory or a decline in output. %ut! like "liberty" the word "efficiency" covers a multitude of sins. Even if it should be irrefragably demonstrated that self-government in industry invariably led to a greater contentment and increased output! even if it could be proved experimentally that the best features of individualism and collectivism could be combined if the state were to co-ordinate the activities of self-governing industries! there would still be complaints of "inefficiency." And by their own lights! the complainers would be $uite right. -or to the ruling classes! not only in the totalitarian! but also in the democratic countries! "efficiency" means primarily "military efficiency." ?ow! a society in which the principle of self-government has been applied to the ordinary activities of all its members! is a society which! for purely military purposes! is probably decidedly inefficient. A militarily efficient society is one whose members have been brought up in habits of passive obedience and at the head of which there is an individual exercising absolute authority through a perfectly trained hierarchy of administrators. n time of war! such a society can be manipulated as a single unit and with extraordinary rapidity and precision. A society composed of men and women habituated to working in self-governing groups is not a

perfect war-machine. ts members may think and have wills of their own. %ut soldiers must not think nor have wills. "#heirs not to reason why' theirs but to do and die." -urthermore a society in which authority is decentrali0ed! a society composed of coordinated but self-governing parts! cannot be manipulated so swiftly and certainly as a totalitarian society under a dictator. 4elf-government all round is not compatible with military efficiency. 4o long as nations persist in using war as an instrument of policy! military efficiency will be pri0ed above all else. #herefore schemes for extending the principle of self-government will either not be tried at all or! if tried! as in Eussia! will be speedily abandoned. nevitably! we find ourselves confronted! yet once more! by the central evil of our time! the overpowering and increasing evil of war. must now try to answer our $uestions concerning the efficiency of a society made up of co-ordinated self-governing units and the nature of the co-ordinating body. ,ubreuil has shown that even the largest industrial undertakings can be organi0ed so as to consist of a number of co-ordinated but self-governing groups' and he has produced reasons for supposing that such an organi0ation would not reduce the efficiency of the businesses concerned and might even increase it. #his small-scale industrial democracy is theoretically compatible with any kind of large-scale control of the industries concerned. t can be :and in certain cases actually has been; applied to industries working under the capitalist system' to businesses under direct state control' to co-operative enterprises' to mixed concerns! like the 7ort of +ondon Authority! which are under state supervision! but have their own autonomous! functional management. n practice this small-scale industrial democracy! this self-government for all! is intrinsically most compatible with business organi0ations of the last two kinds = co-operative and mixed. t is almost e$ually incompatible with capitalism and state socialism. 1apitalism tends to produce a multiplicity of petty dictators! each in command of his own little business kingdom. 4tate socialism tends to produce a single! centrali0ed! totalitarian dictatorship! wielding absolute authority over all its sub/ects through a hierarchy of bureaucratic agents. 1o-operatives and mixed concerns already exist and work extremely well. #o increase their numbers and to extend their scope would not seem a revolutionary act! in the sense that it would probably not provoke the violent opposition which men feel toward pro/ects involving an entirely new principle. n its effects! however! the act would !e revolutionary' for it would result in a profound modification of the existing system. #his alone is a sufficient reason for preferring these forms of ultimate industrial control to all others. #he intrinsic compatibility of the co-operative enterprise and mixed concern with small-scale democracy and self-government all round constitutes yet another reason for the preference. #o discuss the arrangements for co-ordinating the activities of partially autonomous co-operative and mixed concerns is not my business in this place. -or technical details! the reader is referred once again to the literature of social and economic planning. will confine myself here to $uoting a relevant passage from the admirable essay contributed by 7rofessor ,avid Mitrany to the Aale Eeview in ()ZM. 4peaking of the need for comprehensive planning! 7rofessor Mitrany writes that "this does not necessarily mean more centrali0ed government and bureaucratic administration. 7ublic control is /ust as likely to mean decentrali0ation = as! for instance! the taking over from a nation-wide private corporation of activities and services which could be performed with better results by local authorities. 7lanning! in fact! if it is intelligent!

should allow for a great variety of organi0ation! and should adapt the structure and working of its parts to the re$uirements of each case." A striking change of view on this point is evident in the paradox that the growing demand for state action comes together with a growing distrust of the state"s efficiency. Hence! even among socialists! as may be seen from the more recent -abian tracts! the old idea of the nationali0ation of an industry under a government department! responsible to 7arliament for both policy and management! has generally been replaced by schemes which even under public ownership provide for autonomous functional managements. After describing the constitution of such mixed concerns as the 1entral Electricity %oard :set up in England by a 1onservative government; the %ritish %roadcasting 1orporation and the +ondon #ransport %oard! 7rofessor Mitrany concludes that it is only "by some such means that the influence both of politics and of money can be eliminated. Eadicals and conservatives now agree on the need for placing the management of such public undertakings upon a purely functional basis! which reduces the role of 7arliament or of any other representative body to a distant! occasional and indirect determination of general policy." Above these semi-autonomous "functional managers" there will have to be! it is clear! an ultimate co-ordinating authority = a group of technicians whose business it will be to manage the managers. .hat is to prevent the central political executive from /oining hands with these technical managers of managers to become the ruling oligarchy of a totalitarian state< #he answer is that! so long as nations continue to prepare for the waging of scientific warfare! there is nothing whatever to prevent this from happening = there is every reason! indeed! to suppose that it will happen. n the context of militarism! even the most intrinsically desirable changes inevitably become distorted. n a country which is preparing for modern war! reforms intended to result in decentrali0ation and genuine democracy will be made to serve the purpose of military efficiency = which means in practice that they will be used to strengthen the position of a dictator or a ruling oligarchy. .here the international context is militaristic! dictators will use the necessity for "defense" as their excuse for sei0ing absolute power. %ut even where there is no threat of war! the temptation to abuse a position of authority will always be strong. How shall our hypothetical managers of managers and the members of the central political executive be delivered from this evil< Ambition may be checked! but cannot be suppressed by any kind of legal machinery. f it is to be scotched! it must be scotched at the source! by education in the widest sense of the word. n our societies men are paranoiacally ambitious! because paranoiac ambition is admired as a virtue and successful climbers are adored as though they were gods. More books have been written about ?apoleon than about any other human being. #he fact is deeply and alarmingly significant. .hat must be the day-dreams of people for whom the world"s most agile social climber and ablest bandit is the hero they most desire to hear about< ,uces and -uehrers will cease to plague the world only when the ma/ority of its inhabitants regard such adventurers with the same disgust as they now bestow on swindlers and pimps. 4o long as men worship the 1aesars and ?apoleons! 1aesars and ?apoleons will duly rise and make them miserable. #he proper attitude toward the "hero" is not 1arlyle"s! but %acon"s. "He doth like the ape!" wrote %acon of the ambitious tyrant! "he doth like the ape that! the higher he clymbes! the more he shewes his ars." #he hero"s $ualities are brilliant' but so is the mandril"s rump.

.hen all concur in the great +ord 1hancellor"s /udgment of -uehrers! there will be no more -uehrers to /udge. Meanwhile we must content ourselves by putting merely legal and administrative obstacles in the way of the ambitious. #hey are a great deal better than nothing' but they can never be completely effective. :-rom ?nds and +eans0

Pol"t"cs and Rel"7"on About politics one can make only one completely un$uestionable generali0ation! which is that it is $uite impossible for statesmen to foresee! for more than a very short time! the results of any course of large-scale political action. Many of them! it is true! /ustify their actions by pretending to themselves and others that they can see a long way ahead' but the fact remains that they can"t. f they were completely honest they would say! with -ather >oseph!
'#i!nore o+ mon dessein, $ui surpasse ma vue. Si vite me conduit% Mais comme un astre ardent $ui brille dans la nue, Il me !uide en la nuit.

f hell is paved with good intentions! it is! among other reasons! because of the impossibility of calculating conse$uences. %ishop 4tubbs therefore condemns those historians who amuse themselves by fixing on individuals or groups of men responsibility for the remoter conse$uences of their actions. " t strikes me!" he writes! "as not merely un/ust! but as showing an ignorance of the plainest aphorisms of common sense! . . . to make an historical character responsible for evils and crimes! which have resulted from his actions by processes which he could not foresee." #his is sound so far as it goes' but it does not go very far. %esides being a moralist! the historian is one who attempts to formulate generali0ations about human events. t is only by tracing the relations between acts and their conse$uences that such generali0ations can be made. .hen they have been made! they are available to politicians in framing plans of action. n this way past records of the relation between acts and conse$uences enter the field of ethics as relevant factors in a situation of choice. And here it may be pointed out that! though it is impossible to foresee the remoter conse$uences of any given course of action! it is by no means impossible to foresee! in the light of past historical experience! the sort of conse$uences that are likely! in a general way! to follow certain sorts of acts. #hus! from the records of past experience! it seems sufficiently clear that the conse$uences attendant on a course of action involving such things as large-scale war! violent revolution! unrestrained tyranny and persecution are likely to be bad. 1onse$uently! any politician who embarks on such courses of action cannot plead ignorance as an excuse. -ather >oseph! for example! had read enough history to know that policies like that which Eichelieu and he were pursuing are seldom! even when nominally successful! productive of lasting good to the parties by whom they were framed. %ut his passionate ambition for the %ourbons made him cling to a voluntary ignorance! which he proceeded to /ustify by speculations about the will of 5od.

Here it seems worth while to comment briefly on the curious time sense of those who think in political terms. 1ourses of action are recommended on the ground that if carried out! they cannot fail to result in a solution to all outstanding problems = a solution either definitive and everlasting! like that which Marx foresaw as the result of the setting up of a classless society! or else of very long duration! like the thousand-year futures foretold for their regimes by Mussolini and Hitler. Eichelieu"s admirers envisaged a %ourbon golden age longer than the hypothetical ?a0i or -ascist era! but shorter :since it had a limit; than the final! classless stage of 1ommunism. n a contemporary defense of the 1ardinal"s policy against the Huguenots! 8oiture /ustifies the great expenditures involved by saying that "the capture of +a Eochelle alone has economi0ed millions' for +a Eochelle would have raised rebellion at every royal minority! every revolt of the nobles during the next two thousand years." 4uch are the illusions cherished by the politically minded when they reflect on the conse$uences of a policy immediately before or immediately after it has been put in action. %ut when the policy has begun to show its fruits! their time sense undergoes a radical change. 5one are the calculations in terms of centuries or millennia. A single victory is now held to /ustify a Te Deum, and if the policy yields apparently successful results for only a few years! the statesman feels satisfied and his sycophants are lavish in their praise of his genius. Even sober historians writing long after the event tend to express themselves in the same vein. #hus! Eichelieu is praised by modern writers as a very great and far-sighted statesman! even though it is perfectly clear that the actions he undertook for the aggrandi0ement of the %ourbon dynasty created the social and economic and political conditions which led to the downfall of that dynasty! the rise of 7russia and the catastrophes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His policy is praised as if it had been eminently successful! and those who ob/ected to it are blamed for their short-sighted views. Here! for example! is what 5ustave -agnie0 has to say of the -rench peasants and burgesses who opposed the 1ardinal"s war policy = a policy for which they had to pay with their money! their privations and their blood. "Always selfish and unintelligent! the masses cannot be expected to put up for a long time with hardships! of which future generations are destined to reap the fruits." And this immediately after a passage setting forth the nature of these particular fruits = the union of all Europe against +ouis 2 8 and the ruin of the -rench people. 4uch extraordinary inconsistency can only be explained by the fact that! when people come to talk of their nation"s successes! they think in terms of the very briefest periods of time. A triumph is to be hymned and gloated over! even if it lasts no more than a day. Eetrospectively! men like Eichelieu and +ouis 2 8 and ?apoleon are more admired for the brief glory they achieved than hated for the long-drawn miseries which were the price of that glory. Among the sixteen hundred-odd ladies whose names were set down in the catalogue of ,on 5iovanni"s con$uests! there were doubtless not a few whose favors made it necessary for the hero to consult his physician. %ut pox or no pox! the mere fact that the favors had been given was a thing to feel proud of! a victory worth recording in +eporello"s chronicle of successes. #he history of the nations is written in the same spirit. 4o much for the conse$uences of the policy which -ather >oseph helped to frame and execute. ?ow for the $uestions of ethics. Ethically! -ather >oseph"s position was not the same as that of an ordinary politician. t was not the same because! unlike ordinary politicians! he was an aspirant to sanctity! a contemplative with a considerable working knowledge of mysticism! one who knew the nature of spiritual religion and had actually

made some advance along the "way of perfection" toward union with 5od. #heologians agree that all 1hristians are called to union with 5od! but that few are willing to make the choice which $ualifies them to be chosen. -ather >oseph was one of those few. %ut having made the choice! he went on! some years later! to make another' he chose to go into politics! as Eichelieu"s collaborator. As we have seen! -ather >oseph"s intention was to combine the life of political activity with that of contemplation! to do what power politics demanded and to annihilate it in 5od"s will even while it was being done. n practice! the things which had to be done proved unannihilatable! and with one part of his being -ather >oseph came to be bitterly sorry that he had ever entered politics. %ut there was also another part of him! a part that craved for action! that yearned to do something heroic for the greater glory of 5od. +ooking back over his life! -ather >oseph! the contemplative! felt that he had done wrong! or at any rate been very unwise! to enter politics. %ut if he had not done so! if he had remained the evangelist! teacher and religious reformer! he would probably have felt to the end of his days that he had done wrong to neglect the opportunity of doing 5od"s will in the great world of international politics = gesta Dei er Crancos. -ather >oseph"s dilemma is one which confronts all spirituals and contemplatives! all who aspire to worship 5od theocentrically and for his own sake! all who attempt to obey the commandment to be perfect as their -ather in heaven is perfect. n order to think clearly about this dilemma! we must learn first of all to think clearly about certain matters of more general import. 1atholic theologians had done a great deal of this necessary clear thinking! and! if he had cared to make use of them! -ather >oseph could have found in the teachings of his predecessors and contemporaries most of the materials for a sound philosophy of action and a sound sociology of contemplation. #hat he did not make use of them was due to the peculiar nature of his temperament and talents and! above all! to his intense vicarious ambition for the -rench monarchy. He was lured away from the path of perfection by the most refined of all temptations = the baits of loyalty and selfsacrifice! but of a loyalty to a cause inferior to the supreme good! a sacrifice of self undertaken in the name of something less than 5od. +et us begin by a consideration of the theory of action which was current in the speculative writings available to -ather >oseph. #he first thing we have to remember is that! when theologians speak of the active life as contrasted with that of contemplation! they do not refer to what contemporary! non-theological writers call by the same name. #o us! "life of action" means the sort of life led by movie heroes! business executives! war correspondents! cabinet ministers and the like. #o the theologians! all these are merely worldly lives! lived more or less unregenerately by people who have done little or nothing to get rid of their &ld Adams. .hat they call active life! is the life of good works. #o be active is to follow the way of Martha! who spent her time ministering to the material needs of the master! while Mary :who in all mystical literature stands for the contemplative; sat and listened to his words6 .hen -ather >oseph chose the life of politics! he knew very well that it was not the life of action in the theological sense! that the way of Eichelieu was not identical with the way of Martha. #rue! -rance was! e" hy othesi and almost by definition! the instrument of divine providence. #herefore any policy tending to the aggrandi0ement of -rance must be good in its essence. %ut though its essence might be good and entirely accordant with 5od"s will! its accidents were often $uestionable. #his was where the practice of active annihilation came in. %y means of it!

-ather >oseph hoped to be able to sterili0e the rather dirty things he did and to make them harmless! at any rate to himself. Most people at the present time probably take for granted the validity of the pragmatists" contention! that the end of thought is action. n the philosophy which -ather >oseph had studied and made his own! this position is reversed. Here contemplation is the end and action :in which is included discursive thought; is valuable only as a means to the beatific vision of 5od. n the words of 4t. #homas A$uinas! "action should be something added to the life of prayer! not something taken away from it." #o the man of the world! this statement is almost totally devoid of meaning. #o the contemplative! whose concern is with spiritual religion! with the kingdom of 5od rather than the kingdom of selves! it seems axiomatic. 4tarting from this fundamental principle of theocentric religion! the practical mystics have critically examined the whole idea of action and have laid down! in regard to it! a set of rules for the guidance of those desiring to follow the mystical path toward the beatific vision. &ne of the best formulations of the traditional mystical doctrine in regard to action was made by -ather >oseph"s contemporary! +ouis +allemant. +allemant was a >esuit! who! in spite of the prevailing anti-mystical tendencies of his order! was permitted to teach a very advanced :but entirely orthodox; kind of spirituality to the men entrusted to his care. .henever we undertake any action! -ather +allemant insists! we must model ourselves upon 5od himself! who creates and sustains the world without in any way modifying his essential existence. %ut we cannot do this unless we learn to practice formal contemplation and a constant awareness of 5od"s presence. %oth are difficult! especially the latter which is possible only to those very far advanced along the way of perfection. 4o far as beginners are concerned! even the doing of good works may distract the soul from 5od. Action is not safe! except for proficients in the art of mental prayer. " f we have gone far in orison!" says +allemant! "we shall give much to action' if we are but middlingly advanced in the inward life! we shall give ourselves only moderately to outward life' if we have only a very little inwardness! we shall give nothing at all to what is external! unless our vow of obedience commands the contrary." #o the reasons already given for this in/unction we may add others of a strictly utilitarian nature. t is a matter of experience and observation that actions undertaken by ordinary unregenerate people! sunk in their selfhood and without spiritual insight! seldom do much good. A generation before +allemant! 4t. >ohn of the 1ross had put the whole matter in a single $uestion and answer. #hose who rush headlong into good works without having ac$uired through contemplation the power to act well = what do they accomplish< ")oco mas #ue nada, y a veces nada, y aun a veces dano." :+ittle more than nothing! and sometimes nothing at all! and sometimes even harm.; &ne reason for hell being paved with good intentions has already been mentioned! and to this! the impossibility of foreseeing the conse$uences of actions! we must now add another! the intrinsically unsatisfactory nature of actions performed by the ordinary run of average unregenerate men and women. #his being so! +allemant recommends the least possible external activity until such time as! by contemplation and the unremitting practice of the presence! the soul has been trained to give itself completely to 5od. #hose who have traveled only a little way along the road to union! "should not go out of themselves for the service of their neighbors! except by way of trial and experiment. .e must be like those hunting dogs that are still half held upon the leash. .hen we shall have come by contemplation to possess 5od! we shall be able to

give greater freedom to our 0eal." External activity causes no interruption in the orison of the proficient' on the contrary it is a means for bringing them nearer to reality. #hose for whom it is not such a means should as far as possible refrain from action. &nce again -ather +allemant /ustifies himself by the appeal to experience and a purely utilitarian consideration of conse$uences. n all that concerns the saving of souls and the improving of the $uality of people"s thoughts and feelings and behavior! "a man of orison will accomplish more in one year than another man in all his life." .hat is true of good works is true! a ,ortiori, of merely worldly activity! particularly when it is activity on a large scale! involving the collaboration of great numbers of individuals in every stage of unenlightenment. 5ood is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals' it cannot be mass-produced. All 1atholic theologians were well aware of this truth! and the church has acted upon it since its earliest days. #he monastic orders = and preeminently that to which -ather >oseph himself belonged = were living demonstrations of the traditional doctrine of action. #his doctrine affirmed that goodness of more than average $uantity and $uality could be practically reali0ed only on a small scale! by self-dedicated and specially trained individuals. n his own work of religious reform and spiritual instruction! -ather >oseph always acted on this same principle. #he art of mental prayer was taught by him only to individuals or small groups' the 1alvarian rule was given as a way of life to only a very few of the nuns of -ontevrault! the order as a whole being much too large to be capable of reali0ing that peculiar spiritual good which the reform was intended to produce. And yet! in spite of his theoretical and experimental knowledge that good cannot be massproduced in an unregenerate society! -ather >oseph went into power politics! convinced not only that by so doing he was fulfilling the will of 5od! but also that great and lasting material and spiritual benefits would result from the war which he did his best to prolong and exacerbate. He knew that it was useless to try to compel the good ladies of -ontevrault to be more virtuous and spiritual than they wanted to be' and yet he believed that active -rench intervention in the #hirty Aears" .ar would result in "a new golden age." #his strange inconsistency was! as we have often insisted! mainly a product of the will = that will which -ather >oseph thought he had succeeded in subordinating to the will of 5od! but which remained! in certain important respects! unregenerately that of the natural man. n part! however! it was also due to intellectual causes! specifically to his acceptance of a certain theory of providence! widely held in the church and itself inconsistent with the theories of action and the good outlined above. According to this theory! all history is providential and its interminable catalogue of crimes and insanities is an expression of the divine will. As the most spectacular crimes and insanities of history are perpetrated at the orders of governments! it follows that these and the states they rule are also embodiments of 5od"s will. 5ranted the truth of this providential theory of history and the state! -ather >oseph was /ustified in believing that the #hirty Aears" .ar was a good thing and that a policy which disseminated cannibalism! and universali0ed the practice of torture and murder! might be wholly accordant with 5od"s will! provided only that it was advantageous to -rance. #his condition was essential' for as a politician! one was /ustified by the providential theory of history in believing that 5od performs his gesta er Crancos, even though! as a practical reformer and spiritual director one knew very well that the deeds of 5od get done! not by the -ranks at large! but by one -rank here and another there! even by occasional %ritons! such as %enet -itch! and occasional

4paniards! such as 4t. #eresa. Mystical philosophy can be summed up in a single phrase6 "#he more of the creature! the less of 5od." #he large-scale activities of unregenerate men and women are almost wholly creaturely' therefore they almost wholly exclude 5od. f history is an expression of the divine will! it is so mainly in a negative sense. #he crimes and insanities of large-scale human societies are related to 5od"s will only in so far as they are acts of disobedience to that will! and it is only in this sense that they and the miseries resulting from them can properly be regarded as providential. -ather >oseph /ustified the campaigns he planned by an appeal to the 5od of %attles. %ut there is no 5od of %attles' there is only an ultimate reality! expressing itself in a certain nature of things! whose harmony is violated by such events as battles! with conse$uences more or less disastrous for all directly or indirectly concerned in the violation. #his brings us to the heart of that great paradox of politics = the fact that political action is necessary and at the same time incapable of satisfying the needs which called it into existence. &nly static and isolated societies! whose way of life is determined by an un$uestioned tradition! can dispense with politics. n unstable! unisolated! technologically progressive societies! such as ours! large-scale political action is unavoidable. %ut even when it is well-intentioned :which it very often is not; political action is always foredoomed to a partial! sometimes even a complete! self-stultification. #he intrinsic nature of the human instruments with which! and the human materials upon which! political action must be carried out! is a positive guarantee against the possibility that such action shall yield the results that were expected from it. #his generali0ation could be illustrated by an indefinite number of instances drawn from history. 1onsider! for example! the results actually achieved by two reforms upon which well-intentioned people have placed the most enormous hopes = universal education and public ownership of the means of production. @niversal education has proved to be the state"s most effective instrument of universal regimentation and militari0ation! and has exposed millions! hitherto immune! to the influence of organi0ed lying and the allurements of incessant! imbecile and debasing distractions. 7ublic ownership of the means of production has been put into effect on a large scale only in Eussia! where the results of the reform have been! not the elimination of oppression! but the replacement of one kind of oppression by another = of money power by political and bureaucratic power! of the tyranny of rich men by a tyranny of the police and the party. -or several thousands of years now men have been experimenting with different methods for improving the $uality of human instruments and human material. t has been found that a good deal can be done by such strictly humanistic methods as the improvement of the social and economic environment! and the various techni$ues of character training. Among men and women of a certain type! startling results can be obtained by means of conversion and catharsis. %ut though these methods are somewhat more effective than those of the purely humanistic variety! they work only erratically and they do not produce the radical and permanent transformation of personality! which must take place! and take place on a very large scale! if political action is ever to produce the beneficial results expected from it. -or the radical and permanent transformation of personality only one effective method has been discovered = that of the mystics. t is a difficult method! demanding from those who undertake it a great deal more patience!

resolution! self-abnegation and awareness than most people are prepared to give! except perhaps in times of crisis! when they are ready for a short while to make the most enormous sacrifices. %ut unfortunately the amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices in moments of crisis' it depends on the efforts made and constantly repeated during the humdrum! uninspiring periods! which separate one crisis from another! and of which normal lives mainly consist. %ecause of the general reluctance to make such efforts during uncritical times! very few people are prepared! at any given moment of history! to undertake the method of the mystics. #his being so! we shall be foolish if we expect any political action! however well-intentioned and however nicely planned! to produce more than a fraction of the general betterment anticipated. #he history of any nation follows an undulatory course. n the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy' but the crest is not more or less complete @topia! but only! at best! a tolerably humane! partially free and fairly /ust society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence. +arge-scale organi0ations are capable! it would seem! of going down a good deal further than they can go up. .e may reasonably expect to reach the upper limit once again' but unless a great many more people than in the past are ready to undertake the only method capable of transforming personality! we may not expect to rise appreciably above it. .hat can the politicians do for their fellows by actions within the political field! and without the assistance of the contemplatives< #he answer would seem to be6 not very much. 7olitical reforms cannot be expected to produce much general betterment! unless large numbers of individuals undertake the transformation of their personality by the only known method which really works = that of the contemplatives. Moreover! should the amount of mystical! theocentric leaven in the lump of humanity suffer a significant decrease! politicians may find it impossible to raise the societies they rule even to the very moderate heights reali0ed in the past. Meanwhile! politicians can do something to create a social environment favorable to contemplatives. &r perhaps it is better to put the matter negatively and say that they can refrain from doing certain things and making certain arrangements which are specially unfavorable. #he political activity that seems to be least compatible with theocentric religion is that which aims at increasing a certain special type of social efficiency = the efficiency re$uired for waging or threatening large-scale war. #o achieve this kind of efficiency! politicians always aim at some kind of totalitarianism. Acting like the man of science who can only deal with the complex problems of real life by arbitrarily simplifying them for experimental purposes! the politician in search of military efficiency arbitrarily simplifies the society with which he has to deal. %ut whereas the scientist simplifies by a process of analysis and isolation! the politician can only simplify by compulsion! by a 7rocrustean process of chopping and stretching designed to make the living organism conform to a certain easily understood and readily manipulated mechanical pattern. 7lanning a new kind of national! military efficiency! Eichelieu set himself to simplify the complexity of -rench society. #hat complexity was largely chaotic! and a policy of simplification! /udiciously carried out by desirable means would have been fully /ustified. %ut Eichelieu"s policy was not /udicious and! when continued after his death! resulted in the totalitarianism of +ouis 2 8 = a totalitarianism which was intended to be as complete as anything we see in the modern world! and which only failed to be so by

reason of the wretched systems of communication and organi0ation available to the 5rand Monar$ue"s secret police. #he tyrannical spirit was very willing! but! fortunately for the -rench! the technological flesh was weak. n an era of telephones! finger printing! tanks and machine guns! the task of a totalitarian government is easier than it was. #otalitarian politicians demand obedience and conformity in every sphere of life! including! of course! the religious. Here! their aim is to use religion as an instrument of social consolidation! an increaser of the country"s military efficiency. -or this reason! the only kind of religion they favor is strictly anthropocentric! exclusive and nationalistic. #heocentric religion! involving the worship of 5od for his own sake! is inadmissible in a totalitarian state. All the contemporary dictators! Eussian! #urkish! talian and 5erman! have either discouraged or actively persecuted any religious organi0ation whose members advocate the worship of 5od! rather than the worship of the deified state or the local political boss. +ouis 2 8 was what is called "a good 1atholic"' but his attitude toward religion was characteristically totalitarian. He wanted religious unity! therefore he revoked the Edict of ?antes and persecuted the Huguenots. He wanted an exclusive! nationalistic religion' therefore he $uarreled with the 7ope and insisted on his own spiritual supremacy in -rance. He wanted state-worship and king-worship' therefore he sternly discouraged those who taught theocentric religion! who advocated the worship of 5od alone and for his own sake. #he decline of mysticism at the end of the seventeenth century was due in part to the fatal over-orthodoxy of %9rulle and his school! but partly also to a deliberate persecution of mystics at the hands of ecclesiastics! who could say! with %ossuet! that they worshiped 5od under the forms of the Fing! >esus 1hrist and the 1hurch. #he attack on $uietism was only partly the thing it professed to be = a punitive expedition against certain rather silly heretical views and certain rather undesirable practices. t was also and more significantly a veiled assault upon mysticism itself. #he controversial writings of ?icole! who worked in close collaboration with %ossuet! make it $uite clear that the real enemy was spiritual religion as such. @nfortunately for ?icole! the church had given its approval to the doctrines and practices of earlier mystics! and it was therefore necessary to proceed with caution' but this caution was not incompatible with a good deal of anti-mystical violence. 1onsciously! or unconsciously! ?icole and the other enemies of contemplation and theocentric religion were playing the game of totalitarianism. #he efficiency of a pre-industrial totalitarian state! such as that which Eichelieu planned and +ouis 2 8 actually reali0ed! can never be so high as that of an industrial state! possessed of modern weapons! communications and organi0ing methods. 1onversely! it does not need to be so high. A national industrial system is something so complicated that! if it is to function properly and compete with other national systems! it must be controlled in all its details by a centrali0ed state authority. Even if the intentions of the various centrali0ed state authorities were pacific! which they are not! industrialism would tend of its very nature to transform them into totalitarian governments. .hen the need for military efficiency is added to the need for industrial efficiency! totalitarianism becomes inevitable. #echnological progress! nationalism and war seem to guarantee that the immediate future of the world shall belong to various forms of totalitarianism. %ut a world made safe for totalitarianism is a world! in all probability! made very unsafe for mysticism and theocentric religion. And a world made unsafe for mysticism and theocentric religion is a world where the only proved method of transforming personality

will be less and less practiced! and where fewer and fewer people will possess any direct! experimental knowledge of reality to set up against the false doctrine of totalitarian anthropocentrism and the pernicious ideas and practices of nationalistic pseudomysticism. n such a world there seems little prospect that any political reform! however well intentioned! will produce the results expected of it. #he $uality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved. ndividuals and small groups do not always and automatically behave well. %ut at least they can be moral and rational to a degree unattainable by large groups. -or! as numbers increase! personal relations between members of the group! and between its members and those of other groups! become more difficult and finally! for the vast ma/ority of the individuals concerned! impossible. magination has to take the place of direct ac$uaintance! behavior motivated by a reasoned and impersonal benevolence! the place of behavior motivated by personal affection and a spontaneous and unreflecting compassion. %ut in most men and women reason! sympathetic imagination and the impersonal view of things are very slightly developed. #hat is why! among other reasons! the ethical standards prevailing within large groups! between large groups! and between the rulers and the ruled in a large group! are generally lower than those prevailing within and among small groups. #he art of what may be called "goodness politics!" as opposed to power politics! is the art of organi0ing on a large scale without sacrificing the ethical values which emerge only among individuals and small groups. More specifically! it is the art of combining decentrali0ation of government and industry! local and functional autonomy and smallness of administrative units with enough over-all efficiency to guarantee the smooth running of the federated whole. 5oodness politics have never been attempted in any large society! and it may be doubted whether such an attempt! if made! could achieve more than a partial success! so long as the ma/ority of individuals concerned remain unable or unwilling to transform their personalities by the only method known to be effective. %ut though the attempt to substitute goodness politics for power politics may never be completely successful! it still remains true that the methods of goodness politics combined with individual training in theocentric theory and contemplative practice alone provide the means whereby human societies can become a little less unsatisfactory than they have been up to the present. 4o long as they are not adopted! we must expect to see an indefinite continuance of the dismally familiar alternations between extreme evil and a very imperfect! self-stultifying good! alternations which constitute the history of all civili0ed societies. n a world inhabited by what the theologians call unregenerate! or natural men! church and state can probably never become appreciably better than the best of the states and churches! of which the past has left us the record. 4ociety can never be greatly improved! until such time as most of its members choose to become theocentric saints. Meanwhile! the few theocentric saints which exist at any given moment are able in some slight measure to $ualify and mitigate the poisons which society generates within itself by its political and economic activities. n the gospel phrase! theocentric saints are the salt which preserves the social world from breaking down into irremediable decay. #his antiseptic and antidotal function of the theocentric is performed in a variety of ways. -irst of all! the mere fact that he exists is profoundly salutary and important. #he potentiality of knowledge of! and union with! 5od is present in all men and women. n most of them! however! it is covered! as Eckhart puts it! "by thirty or forty skins or hides!

like an ox"s or a bear"s! so thick and hard." %ut beneath all this leather! and in spite of its toughness! the divine more-than-self! which is the $uick and principle of our being! remains alive! and can and does respond to the shining manifestation of the same principle in the theocentric saint. #he "old man dressed all in leather" meets the new man! who has succeeded in stripping off the carapace of his thirty or forty ox-hides! and walks through the world! a naked soul! no longer opa$ue to the radiance immanent within him. -rom this meeting! the old man is likely to come away profoundly impressed by the strangeness of what he has seen! and with the nostalgic sense that the world would be a better place if there were less leather in it. Again and again in the course of history! the meeting with a naked and translucent spirit! even the reading about such spirits! has sufficed to restrain the leather men who rule over their fellows from using their power to excess. t is respect for theocentric saints that prompts the curious hypocrisy which accompanies and seeks to veil the brutal facts of political action. #he preambles of treaties are always drawn up in the choicest 7ecksniffian style! and the more sinister the designs of a politician! the more high-flown! as a rule! becomes the nobility of his language. 1ant is always rather nauseating' but before we condemn political hypocrisy! let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of 5od! and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic. #he theocentric saint is impressive! not only for what he is! but also for what he does and says. His actions and all his dealings with the world are marked by disinterestedness and serenity! invariable truthfulness and a total absence of fear. #hese $ualities are the fruits of the doctrine he preaches! and their manifestation in his life enormously reinforces that doctrine and gives him a certain strange kind of uncoercive but none the less compelling authority over his fellow men. #he essence of this authority is that it is purely spiritual and moral! and is associated with none of the ordinary social sanctions of power! position or wealth. t was here! of course! that -ather >oseph made his gravest and most fatal mistake. Even if his mysticism had proved to be compatible with his power politics! which it did not! he would still have been wrong to accept the position of Eichelieu"s collaborator' for by accepting it he automatically deprived himself of the power to exercise a truly spiritual authority! he cut himself off from the very possibility of being the apostle of mysticism. #rue! he could still be of use to his 1alvarian nuns! as a teacher of contemplation' but this was because he entered their convent! not as the foreign minister of -rance! but as a simple director. &utside the convent! he was always the 5rey Eminence. 7eople could not speak to him without remembering that he was a man from whom there was much to hope or fear' between themselves and this friar turned politician! there could no longer be the direct contact of soul with naked soul. -or them! his authority was temporal! not spiritual. Moreover! they remembered that this was the man who had organi0ed the secret service! who gave instructions to spies! who had outwitted the Emperor at Eatisbon! who had worked his hardest to prolong the war' and remembering these things! they could be excused for having their doubts about -ather >oseph"s brand of religion. #he tree is known by its fruits! and if these were the fruits of mental prayer and the unitive life = why! then they saw no reason why they shouldn"t stick to wine and women! tempered by church on 4undays! confession once a $uarter and communion at 1hristmas and Easter. t is a fatal thing! say the ndians! for the members of one caste to usurp the

functions that properly belong to another. #hus when the merchants trespass upon the ground of the /shatriyas and undertake the business of ruling! society is afflicted by all the evils of capitalism' and when the /shatriyas do what only the theocentric !rahmin has a right to do! when they presume to lay down the law on spiritual matters! there is totalitarianism! with its idolatrous religions! its deifications of the nation! the party! the local political boss. Effects no less disastrous occur when the !rahmins go into politics or business' for then they lose their spiritual insight and authority! and the society which it was their business to enlighten remains wholly dark! deprived of all communication with divine reality! and conse$uently an easy victim to preachers of false doctrines. -ather >oseph is an eminent example of this last confusion of the castes. Abandoning seership for rulership! he gradually! despite his most strenuous efforts to retain it! lost the mystical vision which had given him his spiritual authority = but not! unfortunately! before he had covered with that authority many acts and policies of the most $uestionable nature. :Eichelieu was a good psychologist! and it will be remembered that "whenever he wanted to perform some piece of knavery! he always made use of men of piety."; n a very little while! the last vestiges of -ather >oseph"s spiritual authority disappeared! and he came! as we have seen! to be regarded with general horror! as a man capable of every crime and treachery. #he politically minded >esuits! who practiced the same disastrous confusion of castes! came to have a reputation as bad as -ather >oseph"s. #he public was wrong in thinking of these generally virtuous and well-intentioned men as fairy-tale monsters' but in condemning the fundamental principle of their work in the world! it was profoundly right. #he business of a seer is to see! and if he involves himself in the kind of 5odeclipsing activities which make seeing impossible! he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him. Mystics and theocentrics are not always loved or invariably listened to' far from it. 7re/udice and the dislike of what is unusual! may blind their contemporaries to the virtues of these men and women of the margin! may cause them to be persecuted as enemies of society. %ut should they leave their margin! should they take to competing for place and power within the main body of society! they are certain to be generally hated and despised as traitors to their seership. #o be a seer is not the same thing as to be a mere spectator. &nce the contemplative has fitted himself to become! in +allemant"s phrase! "a man of much orison!" he can undertake work in the world with no risk of being thereby distracted from his vision of reality! and with fair hope of achieving an appreciable amount of good. As a matter of historical fact! many of the great theocentrics have been men and women of enormous and beneficent activity. #he work of the theocentrics is always marginal! is always started on the smallest scale and! when it expands! the resulting organi0ation is always subdivided into units sufficiently small to be capable of a shared spiritual experience and of moral and rational conduct. #he first aim of the theocentrics is to make it possible for any one who desires it to share their own experience of ultimate reality. #he groups they create are organi0ed primarily for the worship of 5od for 5od"s sake. #hey exist in order to disseminate various methods :not all of e$ual value; for transforming the "natural man!" and for learning to know the more-than-personal reality immanent within the leathery casing of selfhood. At this point! many theocentrics are content to stop. #hey have their experience

of reality and they proceed to impart the secret to a few immediate disciples! or commit it to writing in a book that will be read by a wider circle removed from them by great stretches of space and time. &r else! more systematically! they establish small organi0ed groups! a self-perpetuating order of contemplatives living under a rule. n so far as they may be expected to maintain or possibly increase the number of seers and theocentrics in a given community! these proceedings have a considerable social importance. Many theocentrics! however! are not content with this! but go on to employ their organi0ations to make a direct attack upon the thorniest social problems. 4uch attacks are always launched from the margin! not the center! always :at any rate in their earlier phases; with the sanction of a purely spiritual authority! not with the coercive power of the state. 4ometimes the attack is directed against economic evils! as when the %enedictines addressed themselves to the revival of agriculture and the draining of swamps. 4ometimes! the evils are those of ignorance and the attack is through various kinds of education. Here again the %enedictines were pioneers. : t is worth remarking that the %enedictine order owed its existence to the apparent folly of a young man who! instead of doing the proper! sensible thing! which was to go through the Eoman schools and become an administrator under the 5othic emperors! went away and! for three years! lived alone in a hole in the mountains. .hen he had become "a man of much orison!" he emerged! founded monasteries and composed a rule to fit the needs to a self-perpetuating order of hard-working contemplatives. n the succeeding centuries! the order civili0ed northwestern Europe! introduced or re-established the best agricultural practice of the time! provided the only educational facilities then available! and preserved and disseminated the treasures of ancient literature. -or generations %enedictinism was the principal antidote to barbarism. Europe owes an incalculable debt to the young man who! because he was more interested in knowing 5od than in getting on! or even "doing good!" in the world! left Eome for that burrow in the hillside above 4ubiaco.; .ork in the educational field has been undertaken by many theocentric organi0ations other than the %enedictine order = all too often! unhappily! under the restrictive influence of the political! state-supported and state-supporting church. More recently the state has everywhere assumed the role of universal educator = a position that exposes governments to peculiar temptations! to which sooner or later they all succumb! as we see at the present time! when the school system is used in almost every country as an instrument of regimentation! militari0ation and nationalistic propaganda. n any state that pursued goodness politics rather than power politics! education would remain a public charge! paid for out of the taxes! but would be returned! sub/ect to the fulfillment of certain conditions! to private hands. @nder such an arrangement! most schools would probably be little or no better than they are at present' but at least their badness would be variegated! while educators of exceptional originality or possessed of the gift of seership would be given opportunities for teaching at present denied them. 7hilanthropy is a field in which many men and women of the margin have labored to the great advantage of their fellows. .e may mention the truly astounding work accomplished by -ather >oseph"s contemporary! 4t. 8incent de 7aul! a great theocentric! and a great benefactor to the people of seventeenth-century -rance. 4mall and insignificant in its beginnings! and carried on! as it expanded! under spiritual authority alone and upon the margin of society! 8incent"s work among the poor did something to mitigate the sufferings imposed by the war and by the ruinous fiscal policy which the war

made necessary. Having at their disposal all the powers and resources of the state! Eichelieu and -ather >oseph were able! of course! to do much more harm than 4t. 8incent and his little band of theocentrics could do good. #he antidote was sufficient to offset only a part of the poison. t was the same with another great seventeenth-century figure! 5eorge -ox. %orn at the very moment when Eichelieu was made president of the council and -ather >oseph finally committed himself to the political life! -ox began his ministry the year before the 7eace of .estphalia was signed. n the course of the next twenty years the 4ociety of -riends gradually crystalli0ed into its definitive form. -anatically marginal = for when invited! he refused even to dine at 1romwell"s table! for fear of being compromised = -ox was never corrupted by success! but remained to the end the apostle of the inner light. #he society he founded has had its ups and downs! its long seasons of spiritual torpor and stagnation! as well as its times of spiritual life' but always the Guakers have clung to -ox"s intransigent theocentrism and! along with it! to his conviction that! if it is to remain at all pure and unmixed! good must be worked for upon the margin of society! by individuals and by organi0ations small enough to be capable of moral! rational and spiritual life. #hat is why! in the two hundred and seventy-five years of its existence! the 4ociety of -riends has been able to accomplish a sum of useful and beneficent work entirely out of proportion to its numbers. Here again the antidote has always been insufficient to offset more than a part of the poison in/ected into the body politic by the statesmen! financiers! industrialists! ecclesiastics and all the undistinguished millions who fill the lower ranks of the social hierarchy. %ut though not enough to counteract more than some of the effects of the poison! the leaven of theocentrism is the one thing which! hitherto! has saved the civili0ed world from total self-destruction. -ather >oseph"s hope of leading a whole national community along a political short cut into the kingdom of heaven on earth is illusory! so long as the human instruments and material of political action remain untransformed. His place was with the antidote-makers! not with those who brew the poisons. :-rom Grey ?minence0

T!e Sc"ent"st<s Role t is fashionable nowadays to say that Malthus was wrong! because he did not foresee that improved methods of transportation can now guarantee that food surpluses produced in one area shall be $uickly and cheaply transferred to another! where there is a shortage. %ut first of all! modern transportation methods break down whenever the power politicians resort to modern war! and even when the fighting stops they are apt to remain disrupted long enough to guarantee the starvation of millions of persons. And! secondly! no country in which population has outstripped the local food supply can! under present conditions! establish a claim on the surpluses of other countries without paying for them in cash or exports. 5reat %ritain and the other countries in western Europe! which cannot feed their dense populations! have been able! in times of peace! to pay for the food they imported by means of the export of manufactured goods. %ut industrially backward ndia and 1hina = countries in which Malthus" nightmare has come true with a vengeance and

on the largest scale = produce few manufactured goods! conse$uently lack the means to buy from underpopulated areas the food they need. %ut when and if they develop massproducing industries to the point at which they are able to export enough to pay for the food their rapidly expanding populations re$uire! what will be the effect upon world trade and international politics< >apan had to export manufactured goods in order to pay for the food that could not be produced on the overcrowded home islands. 5oods produced by workers with a low standard of living came into competition with goods produced by the better paid workers of the .est! and undersold them. #he .est"s retort was political and consisted of the imposition of high tariffs! $uotas and embargoes. #o these restrictions on her trade >apan"s answer was the plan for creating a vast Asiatic empire at the expense of 1hina and of the .estern imperialist powers. #he result was war. .hat will happen when ndia and 1hina are as highly industriali0ed as prewar >apan and seek to exchange their low-priced manufactured goods for food! in competition with .estern powers! whose standard of living is a great deal higher than theirs< ?obody can foretell the future' but undoubtedly the rapid industriali0ation of Asia :with e$uipment! let it be remembered! of the very latest and best postwar design; is pregnant with the most dangerous possibilities. t is at this point that internationally organi0ed scientists and technicians might contribute greatly to the cause of peace by planning a world-wide campaign! not merely for greater food production! but also :and this is the really important point; for regional self-sufficiency in food production. 5reater food production can be obtained relatively easily by the opening up of the earth"s vast subarctic regions at present almost completely sterile. 4pectacular progress has recently been made in this direction by the agricultural scientists of the 4oviet @nion' and presumably what can be done in 4iberia can also be done in northern 1anada. 7owerful ice-breakers are already being used to solve the problems of transportation by sea and river' and perhaps commercial submarines! specially e$uipped for traveling under the ice may in the future insure a regular service between arctic ports and the rest of the world. Any increase of the world"s too scanty food supply is to be welcomed. %ut our re/oicings must be tempered by two considerations. -irst! the surpluses of food produced by the still hypothetical arctic granaries of 4iberia and 1anada will have to be transferred by ship! plane and rail to the overpopulated areas of the world. #his means that no supplies would be available in wartime. 4econd! possession of food-producing arctic areas constitutes a natural monopoly! and this natural monopoly will not! as in the past! be in the hands of politically weak nations! such as Argentina and Australia! but will be controlled by the two great power systems of the postwar period = the Eussian power system and the Anglo-American power system. #hat their monopolies of food surpluses will be used as weapons in the game of power politics seems more than probable. "+ead us not into temptation." #he opening up of the Arctic will be undoubtedly a great good. %ut it will also be a great temptation for the power politicians = a temptation to exploit a natural monopoly in order to gain influence and finally control over hitherto independent countries! in which population has outstripped the food supply. t would seem! then! that any scientific and technological campaign aimed at the fostering of international peace and political and personal liberty must! if it is to succeed! increase the total planetary food supply by increasing the various regional supplies to the point of self-sufficiency. Eecent history makes it abundantly clear that nations! as at present constituted! are $uite unfit to have extensive commercial dealings with one

another. nternational trade has always! hitherto! gone hand in hand with war! imperialism and the ruthless exploitation of industrially backward peoples by the highly industriali0ed powers. Hence the desirability of reducing international trade to a minimum! until such time as nationalist passions lose their intensity and it becomes possible to establish some form of world government. As a first step in this direction! scientific and technical means must be found for making it possible for even the most densely populated countries to feed their inhabitants. #he improvement of existing food plants and domestic animals' the acclimati0ation in hitherto inhospitable regions of plants that have proved useful elsewhere' the reduction of the present enormous wastes of food by the improvement of insect controls and the multiplication of refrigerating units' the more systematic exploitation of seas and lakes as sources of food' the development of entirely new foods! such as edible yeasts' the synthesi0ing of sugars as a food for such edible yeasts' the synthesi0ing of chlorophyll so as to make direct use of solar energy in food production = these are a few of the lines along which important advances might be made in a relatively short time. Hardly less important than regional self-sufficiency in food is self-sufficiency in power for industry! agriculture and transportation. &ne of the contributing causes of recent wars has been international competition for the world"s strictly locali0ed sources of petroleum! and the current /ockeying for position in the Middle East! where all the surviving great powers have staked out claims to 7ersian! Mesopotamian and Arabian oil! bodes ill for the future. &rgani0ed science could diminish these temptations to armed conflict by finding means for providing all countries! whatever their natural resources! with a sufficiency of power. .ater power has already been pretty well exploited. %esides! over large areas of the earth"s surface there are no mountains and therefore no sources of hydroelectric power. %ut across the plains where water stands almost still! the air often moves in strong and regular currents. 4mall windmills have been turning for centuries' but the use of large-scale wind turbines is still! strangely enough! only in the experimental stage. @ntil recently the direct use of solar power has been impracticable! owing to the technical difficulty of constructing suitable reflectors. A few months ago! however! it was announced that Eussian engineers had developed a cheap and simple method for constructing paraboloid mirrors of large si0e! capable of producing superheated steam and even of melting iron. #his discovery could be made to contribute very greatly to the decentrali0ation of production and population and the creation of a new type of agrarian society making use of cheap and inexhaustible power for the benefit of individual small holders or self-governing! co-operative groups. -or the peoples of such tropical countries as ndia and Africa the new device for directly harnessing solar power should be of enormous and enduring benefit = unless! of course! those at present possessing economic and political power should choose to build mass-producing factories around enormous mirrors! thus perverting the invention to their own centralistic purposes! instead of encouraging its small-scale use for the benefit of individuals and village communities. #he technicians of solar power will be confronted with a clear-cut choice. #hey can work either for the completer enslavement of the industrially backward peoples of the tropics! or for their progressive liberation from the twin curses of poverty and servitude to political and economic bosses. #he storage of the potentialities of power is almost as important as the production of power. &ne of the most urgent tasks before applied science is the development of some

portable source of power to replace petroleum = a most undesirable fuel from the political point of view! since deposits of it are rare and unevenly distributed over the earth"s surface! thus constituting natural monopolies which! when in the hands of strong nations! are used to increase their strength at the expense of their neighbors and! when possessed by weak ones! are coveted by the strong and constitute almost irresistible temptations to imperialism and war. -rom the political and human point of view! the most desirable substitute for petroleum would be an efficient battery for storing the electric power produced by water! wind or the sun. -urther research into atomic structure may perhaps suggest new methods for the construction of such a battery. Meanwhile it is possible that means may be devised! within the next few years! for applying atomic energy to the purposes of peace! as it is now being applied to those of war. .ould not this technological development solve the whole problem of power for industry and transportation< #he answer to this $uestion may turn out to be simultaneously affirmative and negative. #he problems of power may indeed be solved = but solved in the wrong way! by which mean in a way favorable to centrali0ation and the ruling minority! not for the benefit of individuals and co-operative! self-governing groups. f the raw material of atomic energy must be sought in radioactive deposits! occurring sporadically! here and there! over the earth"s surface! then we have natural monopoly with all its undesirable political conse$uences! all its temptations to power politics! war! imperialistic aggression and exploitation. %ut of course it is always possible that other methods of releasing atomic energy may be discovered = methods that will not involve the use of uranium. n this case there will be no natural monopoly. %ut the process of releasing atomic energy will always be a very difficult and complicated affair! to be accomplished only on the largest scale and in the most elaborately e$uipped factories. -urthermore! whatever political agreements may be made! the fact that atomic energy possesses uni$ue destructive potentialities will always constitute a temptation to the boy gangster who lurks within every patriotic nationalist. And even if a world government should be set up within a fairly short space of time! this will not necessarily guarantee peace. #he 7ax Eomana was a very uneasy affair! troubled at almost every imperial death by civil strife over the $uestion of succession. 4o long as the lust for power persists as a human trait = and in persons of a certain kind of physi$ue and temperament this lust is over-masteringly strong = no political arrangement! however well contrived! can guarantee peace. -or such men the instruments of violence are as fearfully tempting as are! to others! the bodies of women. &f all instruments of violence! those powered by atomic energy are the most decisively destructive' and for power lovers! even under a system of world government! the temptation to resort to these all too simple and effective means for gratifying their lust will be great indeed. n view of all this! we must conclude that atomic energy is! and for a long time is likely to remain! a source of industrial power that is! politically and humanly speaking! in the highest degree undesirable. t is not necessary in this place! nor am competent! to enter any further into the hypothetical policy of internationally organi0ed science. f that policy is to make a real contribution toward the maintenance of peace and the spread of political and personal liberty! it must be patterned throughout along the decentralist lines laid down in the preceding discussion of the two basic problems of food and power. .ill scientists and technicians collaborate to formulate and pursue some such policy as that which has been

adumbrated here< &r will they permit themselves! as they have done only too often in the past! to become the conscious or unconscious instruments of militarists! imperialists and a ruling oligarchy of capitalistic or governmental bosses< #ime alone will show. Meanwhile! it is to be hoped that all concerned will carefully consider a suggestion made by ,r. 5ene .eltfish in the 4eptember! ()M*! issue of the (cienti,ic +onthly. %efore embarking upon practice! all physicians swear a professional oath = the oath of Hippocrates = that they will not take improper advantage of their position! but always remember their responsibilities toward suffering humanity. #echnicians and scientists! proposes ,r. .eltfish! should take a similar oath in some such words as the following6 " pledge myself that will use my knowledge for the good of humanity and against the destructive forces of the world and the ruthless intent of men' and that will work together with my fellow scientists of whatever nation! creed or color for these our common ends." :-rom (cience, 'i!erty and )eace0

To3orro and To3orro and To3orro %etween (LDD and ()DD the doctrine of 7ie in the 4ky gave place! in a ma/ority of .estern minds! to the doctrine of 7ie on the Earth. #he motivating and compensatory -uture came to be regarded! not as a state of disembodied happiness! to be en/oyed by me and my friends after death! but as a condition of terrestrial well-being for my children or :if that seemed a bit too optimistic; my grandchildren! or maybe my great-grandchildren. #he believers in 7ie in the 4ky consoled themselves for all their present miseries by the thought of posthumous bliss! and whenever they felt inclined to make other people more miserable than themselves :which was most of the time;! they /ustified their crusades and persecutions by proclaiming! in 4t. Augustine"s delicious phrase! that they were practicing a "benignant asperity!" which would ensure the eternal welfare of souls through the destruction or torture of mere bodies in the inferior dimensions of space and time. n our days! the revolutionary believers in 7ie on the Earth console themselves for their miseries by thinking of the wonderful time people will be having a hundred years from now! and then go on to /ustify wholesale li$uidations and enslavements by pointing to the nobler! humaner world which these atrocities will somehow or other call into existence. ?ot all the believers in 7ie on the Earth are revolutionaries! /ust as not all believers in 7ie in the 4ky were persecutors. #hose who think mainly of other people"s future life tend to become proselytisers! crusaders and heresy hunters. #hose who think mainly of their own future life become resigned. #he preaching of .esley and his followers had the effect of reconciling the first generations of industrial workers to their intolerable lot and helped to preserve England from the horrors of a full-blown political revolution. #oday the thought of their great-grandchildren"s happiness in the twenty-first century consoles the disillusioned beneficiaries of progress and immuni0es them against 1ommunist propaganda. #he writers of advertising copy are doing for this generation what the Methodists did for the victims of the first ndustrial Eevolution. #he literature of the -uture and of that e$uivalent of the -uture! the Eemote! is

enormous. %y now the bibliography of @topia must run into thousands of items. Moralists and political reformers! satirists and science fictioneers = all have contributed their $uota to the stock of imaginary worlds. +ess pictures$ue! but more enlightening! than these products of phantasy and idealistic 0eal are the forecasts made by sober and well-informed men of science. #hree very important prophetic works of this kind have appeared within the last two or three years=The Challenge o, +an's Cuture by Harrison %rown! The Coreseea!le Cuture by 4ir 5eorge #homson! and The &e"t +illion Years by 4ir 1harles ,arwin. 4ir 5eorge and 4ir 1harles are physicists and Mr. %rown is a distinguished chemist. 4till more important! each of the three is something more and better than a specialist. +et us begin with the longest look into the future=The &e"t +illion Years. 7aradoxically enough! it is easier! in some ways! to guess what is going to happen in the course of ten thousand centuries than to guess what is going to happen in the course of one century. .hy is it that no fortune tellers are millionaires and that no insurance companies go bankrupt< #heir business is the same = foreseeing the future. %ut whereas the members of one group succeed all the time! the members of the other group succeed! if at all! only occasionally. #he reason is simple. nsurance companies deal with statistical averages. -ortune tellers are concerned with particular cases. &ne can predict with a high degree of precision what is going to happen in regard to very large numbers of things or people. #o predict what is going to happen to any particular thing or person is for most of us $uite impossible and even for the specially gifted minority! exceedingly difficult. #he history of the next century involves very large numbers' conse$uently it is possible to make certain predictions about it with a fairly high degree of certainty. %ut though we can pretty confidently say that there will be revolutions! battles! massacres! hurricanes! droughts! floods! bumper crops and bad harvests! we cannot specify the dates of these events nor the exact locations! nor their immediate! short-range conse$uences. %ut when we take the longer view and consider the much greater numbers involved in the history of the next ten thousand centuries! we find that these ups and downs of human and natural happenings tend to cancel out! so that it becomes possible to plot a curve representing the average of future history! the mean between ages of creativity and ages of decadence! between propitious and unpropitious circumstances! between fluctuating triumph and disaster. #his is the actuarial approach to prophecy = sound on the large scale and reliable on the average. t is the kind of approach which permits the prophet to say that there will be dark handsome men in the lives of " per cent of women! but not which particular woman will succumb. A domesticated animal is an animal which has a master who is in a position to teach it tricks! to sterili0e it or compel it to breed as he sees fit. Human beings have no masters. Even in his most highly civili0ed state! Man is a wild species! breeding at random and always propagating his kind to the limit of available food supplies. #he amount of available food may be increased by the opening up of new land! by the sudden disappearance! owing to famine! disease or war! of a considerable fraction of the population! or by improvements in agriculture. At any given period of history there is a practical limit to the food supply currently available. Moreover! natural processes and the si0e of the planet being what they are! there is an absolute limit! which can never be passed. %eing a wild species! Man will always tend to breed up to the limits of the moment. 1onse$uently very many members of the species must always live on the verge

of starvation. #his has happened in the past! is happening at the present time! when about sixteen hundred millions of men! women and children are more or less seriously undernourished! and will go on happening for the next million years = by which time we may expect that the species Homo sapiens will have turned into some other species! unpredictably unlike ourselves but still! of course! sub/ect to the laws governing the lives of wild animals. .e may not appreciate the fact' but a fact nevertheless it remains6 we are living in a 5olden Age! the most gilded 5olden Age of human history = not only of past history! but of future history. -or! as 4ir 1harles ,arwin and many others before him have pointed out! we are living like drunken sailors! like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now s$uandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth"s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on< Estimates vary. %ut all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia! Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live! for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens! strictly on income. 4ir 1harles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water! from coal! oil! uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources = but with a far greater expense in man hours! a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civili0ation depends. %y doing a great deal more work than they are doing now! men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet"s metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. n such an event! some human beings will still live fairly well! but not in the style to which we! the s$uanderers of planetary capital! are accustomed. Mr. Harrison %rown has his doubts about the ability of the human race to make the transition to new and less concentrated sources of energy and raw materials. As he sees it! there are three possibilities. "#he first and by far the most likely pattern is a return to agrarian existence." #his return! says Mr. %rown! will almost certainly take place unless Man is able not only to make the technological transition to new energy sources and new raw materials! but also to abolish war and at the same time stabili0e his population. 4ir 1harles! incidentally! is convinced that Man will never succeed in stabili0ing his population. %irth control may be practiced here and there for brief periods. %ut any nation which limits its population will ultimately be crowded out by nations which have not limited theirs. Moreover! by reducing cut-throat competition within the society which practices it! birth control restricts the action of natural selection. %ut wherever natural selection is not allowed free play! biological degeneration rapidly sets in. And then there are the short-range! practical difficulties. #he rulers of sovereign states have never been able to agree on a common policy in relation to economics! to disarmament! to civil liberties. s it likely! is it even conceivable! that they will agree on a common policy in relation to the much more ticklish matter of birth control< #he answer would seem to be in the negative. And if! by a miracle! they should agree! or if a world government should someday come into existence! how could a policy of birth control be enforced< Answer6 only by totalitarian methods and! even so! pretty ineffectively. +et us return to Mr. %rown and the second of his alternative futures. "#here is a

possibility!" he writes! "that stabili0ation of population can be achieved! that war can be avoided! and that the resource transition can be successfully negotiated. n that event mankind will be confronted with a pattern which looms on the hori0on of events as the second most likely possibility = the completely controlled! collectivi0ed industrial society." :4uch a future society was described in my own fictional essay in @topianism! *rave &ew -orld.0 "#he third possibility confronting mankind is that of a world-wide free industrial society! in which human beings can live in reasonable harmony with their environment." #his is a cheering prospect' but Mr. %rown $uickly chills our optimism by adding that "it is unlikely that such a pattern can exist for long. t certainly will be difficult to achieve! and it clearly will be difficult to maintain once it is established." -rom these rather dismal speculations about the remoter future it is a relief to turn to 4ir 5eorge #homson"s prophetic view of what remains of the present 5olden Age. 4o far as easily available power and raw materials are concerned! .estern man never had it so good as he has it now and! unless he should choose in the interval to wipe himself out! as he will go on having it for the next three! or five! or perhaps even ten generations. %etween the present and the year CD*D! when the population of the planet will be at least five billions and perhaps as much as eight billions! atomic power will be added to the power derived from coal! oil and falling water! and Man will dispose of more mechanical slaves than ever before. He will fly at three times the speed of sound! he will travel at seventy knots in submarine liners! he will solve hitherto insoluble problems by means of electronic thinking machines. High-grade metallic ores will still be plentiful! and research in physics and chemistry will teach men how to use them more effectively and will provide at the same time a host of new synthetic materials. Meanwhile the biologists will not be idle. 8arious algae! bacteria and fungi will be domesticated! selectively bred and set to work to produce various kinds of food and to perform feats of chemical synthesis! which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. More pictures$uely :for 4ir 5eorge is a man of imagination;! new breeds of monkeys will be developed! capable of performing the more troublesome kinds of agricultural work! such as picking fruit! cotton and coffee. Electron beams will be directed onto particular areas of plant and animal chromosomes and! in this way! it may become possible to produce controlled mutations. n the field of medicine! cancer may finally be prevented! while senility :"the whole business of old age is odd and little understood"; may be postponed! perhaps almost indefinitely. "4uccess!" adds 4ir 5eorge! "will come! when it does! from some $uite unexpected directions' some discovery in physiology will alter present ideas as to how and why cells grow and divide in the healthy body! and with the right fundamental knowledge! enlightenment will come. t is only the rather easy superficial problems that can be solved by working on them directly' others depend on still undiscovered fundamental knowledge and are hopeless till this has been ac$uired." All in all! the prospects for the industriali0ed minority of mankind are! in the short run! remarkably bright. 7rovided we refrain from the suicide of war! we can look forward to very good times indeed. #hat we shall be discontented with our good time goes without saying. Every gain made by individuals or societies is almost instantly taken for granted. #he luminous ceiling toward which we raise our longing eyes becomes! when we have climbed to the next floor! a stretch of disregarded linoleum beneath our feet. %ut the right to disillusionment is as fundamental as any other in the catalogue. :Actually the

right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.; #urning now from the industriali0ed minority to that vast ma/ority inhabiting the underdeveloped countries! the immediate prospects are much less reassuring. 7opulation in these countries is increasing by more than twenty millions a year and in Asia at least! according to the best recent estimates! the production of food per head is now ten per cent less than it used to be in ()ZL. n ndia the average diet provides about two thousand calories a day = far below the optimum figure. f the country"s food production could be raised by forty per cent = and the experts believe that! given much effort and a very large capital investment! it could be increased to this extent within fifteen or twenty years = the available food would provide the present population with twenty-eight hundred calories a day! a figure still below the optimum level. %ut twenty years from now the population of ndia will have increased by something like one hundred millions! and the additional food! produced with so much effort and at such great expense! will add little more than a hundred calories to the present woefully inade$uate diet. And meanwhile it is not at all probable that a forty per cent increase in food production will in fact be achieved within the next twenty years. #he task of industriali0ing the underdeveloped countries! and of making them capable of producing enough food for their peoples! is difficult in the extreme. #he industriali0ation of the .est was made possible by a series of historical accidents. #he inventions which launched the ndustrial Eevolution were made at precisely the right moment. Huge areas of empty land in America and Australia were being opened up by European colonists or their descendants. A great surplus of cheap food became available! and it was upon this surplus that the peasants and farm laborers! who migrated to the towns and became factory hands! were enabled to live and multiply their kind. #oday there are no empty lands = at any rate none that lend themselves to easy cultivation = and the over-all surplus of food is small in relation to present populations. f a million Asiatic peasants are taken off the land and set to work in factories! who will produce the food which their labor once provided< #he obvious answer is6 machines. %ut how can the million new factory workers make the necessary machines if! in the meanwhile! they are not fed< @ntil they make the machines! they cannot be fed from the land they once cultivated' and there are no surpluses of cheap food from other! emptier countries to support them in the interval. And then there is the $uestion of capital. "4cience!" you often hear it said! "will solve all our problems." 7erhaps it will! perhaps it won"t. %ut before science can start solving any practical problems! it must be applied in the form of usable technology. %ut to apply science on any large scale is extremely expensive. An underdeveloped country cannot be industriali0ed! or given an efficient agriculture! except by the investment of a very large amount of capital. And what is capital< t is what is left over when the primary needs of a society have been satisfied. n most of Asia the primary needs of most of the population are never satisfied' conse$uently almost nothing is left over. ndians can save about one hundredth of their per capita income. Americans can save between one tenth and one sixth of what they make. 4ince the income of Americans is much higher than that of ndians! the amount of available capital in the @nited 4tates is about seventy times as great as the amount of available capital in ndia. #o those who have shall be given and from those who have not shall be taken away even that which they have. f the

underdeveloped countries are to be industriali0ed! even partially! and made selfsupporting in the matter of food! it will be necessary to establish a vast international Marshall 7lan providing subsidies in grain! money! machinery! and trained manpower. %ut all these will be of no avail! if the population in the various underdeveloped areas is permitted to increase at anything like the present rate. @nless the population of Asia can be stabili0ed! all attempts at industriali0ation will be doomed to failure and the last state of all concerned will be far worse than the first = for there will be many more people for famine and pestilence to destroy! together with much more political discontent! bloodier revolutions and more abominable tyrannies. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0

SECTION IV

PS.C-O%O9.

*adness+ Badness+ Sadness 5oering and Hitler displayed an almost maudlin concern for the welfare of animals' 4talin"s favorite work of art was a celluloid musical about &ld 8ienna! called The Great -alt7. And it is not only dictators who divide their thoughts and feelings into unconnected! logic-tight compartments' the whole world lives in a state of chronic and almost systematic inconsistency. Every society is a case of multiple personality and modulates! without a $ualm! without even being aware of what it is up to! from >ekyll to Hyde! from the scientist to the magician! from the hardheaded man of affairs to the village idiot. &urs! for example! is the age of unlimited violence' but it is also the age of the welfare state! of bird sanctuaries! of progressive education! of a growing concern for the old! the physically handicapped! the mentally sick. .e build orphanages! and at the same time we stockpile the bombs that will be dropped on orphanages. "A foolish consistency!" says Emerson! "is the hobgoblin of little minds! adored by little statesmen! philosophers and divines." n that case! we must be very great indeed. #hat all! or even most! human beings will ever be consistently humane seems very unlikely. .e must be content with the smaller mercies of unemployment benefits and school lunches in the midst and in spite of an armament race. .e must console ourselves with the thought that our inky darks are relieved by $uite a number of lights. %etween +os Angeles and +ong %each! 1alifornia! there stands a mental hospital which admirably illustrates our blessed inconsistency. %omber plants and guided-missile laboratories surround it on every side! but have not succeeded in obliterating this oasis of organi0ed and instructed benevolence. .ith their wide lawns! their tree-lined walks! their scattering of nondescript buildings! the hospital grounds look like the campus of an unpretentious college. #he inmates! unfortunately! could never be mistaken for

undergraduates and co-eds. #he mind is its own place! and their gait! their posture! the distressed or remotely preoccupied expression of their faces reveal them as the inhabitants of dark worlds! full of confusion! fertile in private terrors. %ut at least nothing is being done in this green oasis among the /ets and the rockets to deepen the confusion or intensify the terrors. &n the contrary! much good will and intelligence! much knowledge and skill are going into a concerted effort to transform their isolated! purgatorial universes into something happier and more accessible. ?ot long ago a psychiatrist friend took me with him to this oasis. .alking through one of the ,isturbed .ards! found myself suddenly remembering the first occasion on which had visited a mental hospital. #he place was Fashmir! the time more than thirty years ago! and the hospital was actually no hospital! but that part of the local prison which was used for the confinement of maniacs. ?aked! unkempt! horribly unwashed! these unfortunates were shut up in cages. ?ot the spacious enclosures reserved! in 0oos! for gibbons and orangutans! but filthy little pens! in which a couple of steps in any direction would bring their occupants to the confining bars. Fashmir is remote! "uncivili0ed!" non-1hristian. %ut let us be in no hurry to flatter ourselves. #he horrors witnessed there! among the Himalayas! were of exactly the same kind as the horrors which my grandfather and his contemporaries could see in any asylum in civili0ed and 1hristian England! -rance or 5ermany! in civili0ed and 1hristian America. &f the many dark and hideous pages of our history! few are more shameful than the record of .estern man"s treatment of the mentally ill. #he story has been told at length in ,octor 5regory Hilboorg"s History o, +edical )sychology and there are whole libraries of books dealing with special periods and particular aspects of the long martyrdom of the insane. #he tormentors of the insane have been drawn! in the main! from two professions = the medical and the clerical. #o which shall we award the palm< Have clergymen been responsible for more gratuitous suffering than doctors< &r have doctors made up for a certain lack of intensity in their brand of torture :after all! they never went so far as to burn anyone alive for being mad; by its longer duration and the greater number of the victims to whom it was applied< t is a nice point. #o prevent hard feelings! let us divide the pri0e e$ually between the contenders. 4o far as the mentally sick are concerned! .estern history has had only two golden ages. #he first lasted from about fifty years before the birth of 1hrist into the second century of our era' the second began! very hesitantly! in the early years of the nineteenth century and is still continuing. ,uring these golden ages the mentally sick! or at least the more fortunate of them in the more civili0ed parts of the classical and modern world! were treated with a measure of common decency! as though they were unfortunate human beings. ,uring the intervening centuries they were either ignored! or else systematically tormented! first :on the highest theological grounds; by the clergy! later :for the soundest of medical reasons; by the doctors. +et us ask ourselves a $uestion. f had lived in the eighteenth century! and if had been afflicted by some mental illness! what would have happened to me< .hat happened to you in those days depended! first of all! on the financial situation of your family. 7eople with money either locked up their insane relatives in some remote corner of the family mansion! or banished them! with a staff of attendants! to an isolated cottage in the country! or else boarded them out! at considerable expense! in

a private madhouse run for profit by a doctor or! under medical supervision! by some glorified /ailer. +unatics confined in the attics :like Mr. Eochester"s wife in Jane ?yre0 or in a country cottage were spared the rigors of medical treatment! which could only be administered in an institution staffed by brawny attendants and e$uipped with the instruments of coercion. #hose who were sent to such an institution were first stripped naked. Mad people were generally kept in a state of partial or complete nudity. ?akedness solved the problem of soiled clothes and contributed! in what was felt to be a most salutary way! to the patient"s sense of degradation and inferiority. After being stripped! the patient was shaved! so as to prepare him or her for that part of the treatment which consisted in rubbing various salves into the scalp with a view to soothing or stimulating the brain. #hen he or she was taken to a cell! tied down to the bed and locked in for the night. f the patient struggled and screamed! that was a sign of mania' if he reacted with silent resignation! he was obviously suffering from some form of melancholy. n either case he needed treatment and! duly! next morning the treatment was commenced. n the medical literature of the time it was referred to as "Eeducing the 7atient by 7hysic." &ver a period of eight or ten weeks the victim was repeatedly bled! at least one pound of blood being taken on each occasion. &nce a week! or if the doctor thought it advisable at shorter intervals! he or she was given an emetic = a "%risk 8omit" as our ancestors! with their admirable command of English! liked to call it. #he favorite %risk 8omit was a concoction of the roots of black hellebore. Hellebore had been used in the treatment of the insane since the time of Melampus! a legendary soothsayer! first mentioned by Homer. #aken internally! the toxicologists tell us! hellebore "occasions ringing in the ears! vertigo! stupor! thirst! with a feeling of suffocation! swelling of the tongue and fauces! emesis and catharsis! slowing of the pulse and finally collapse and death from cardiac paralysis. nspection after death reveals much inflammation of the stomach and intestines! more especially the rectum." #he doses prescribed by the old psychiatrists were too small to be fatal! but $uite large enough to produce a dangerous syndrome! known in medical circles as "helleborism." Every administration of the drug resulted in an iatrogenic :doctor-induced; disease of the most distressing and painful kind. &ne %risk 8omit was more than enough' there were no volunteers for a second dose. All the later administrations of hellebore had to be forcible. After five or six bouts of helleborism! the time was ripe for purgatives. 4enna! rhubarb! sulphur! colocynth! antimony! aloes = blended into %lack ,raughts or worked up into enormous boluses! these violent cathartics were forced! day after day! down the patient"s throat. At the end of the two-month course of bloodlettings! vomits and purges! most psychotics were "reduced by physic" to a point where they were in no condition to give trouble. #hese reductions were repeated every spring during the patient"s incarceration and in the meantime he was kept on a low diet! deficient in proteins! vitamins and even calories. t is a testimony to the ama0ing toughness of the human species that many psychotics survived under this treatment for decades. ndeed! they did more than survive' in spite of chronic undernourishment and periodical reductions by physic! some of them still found the strength to be violent. #he answer to violence was mechanical restraint and corporal punishment. " have seen!" wrote ,orothea ,ix in (LML! "more than nine thousand idiots! epileptics and insane in the @nited 4tates! destitute of appropriate care and protection! bound with galling chains! bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains! lacerated with ropes! scourged with rods and terrified beneath

storms of execration and cruel blows." #he armamentarium of an English asylum of the Early 8ictorian period comprised "strait-waistcoats! handcuffs! leg locks! various coarse devices of leather and iron! including gags and horrible screws to force open the mouths of patients who were unwilling or even unable to take food." n the +ancaster Asylum good old-fashioned chains had been ingeniously combined with the very latest in plumbing. n (LMD its two Eestraint Eooms were fitted up with "rows of stalled seats serving the double purpose of a water closet and an ordinary seat. #he patients were secured by hand locks to the upper portion of the stalls and by leg locks to the lower portion." #he +ancaster lunatics were relatively well off. #he toilets to which they were chained guaranteed a certain cleanliness and the newly installed heating system! of which the asylum was /ustly proud! preserved them from the long-drawn torture-by-free0ing! which was the lot! each whiter! of the overewhelming ma/ority of mentally sick paupers. -or while the private madhouses provided a few of the rudimentary creature comforts! the public asylums and workhouses! in which the psychotic "&b/ects of 1harity" were confined! were simply dungeons. : n official documents the phrase! "&b/ects of 1harity" is abbreviated! and the insane poor are regularly referred to as "&b/ects."; " have seen them naked!" wrote Es$uirol of the &b/ects in -rench asylums! "and protected only by straw from the damp! cold pavement on which they were lying." And here is .illiam #uke"s account of what he saw in the lunatic ward of an English workhouse in (L((6 "#he poor women were absolutely without any clothes. #he weather was intensely cold! and the evening previous to our visit the thermometer had been sixteen degrees below free0ing. &ne of these forlorn &b/ects lay buried under a miserable covering of straw! without a blanket or even a horsecloth to defend her from the cold." #he feet of chained lunatics often became frostbitten. -rom frostbite to gangrene was a short step! and from gangrene through amputation to death was only a little longer. +unatics were not merely confined. Attempts were even made to cure them. #he procedures by which patients were reduced to physical exhaustion were also supposed to restore them to sanity. 7sychoses were thought to be due to an imbalance between the four humors of the body! together with a local excess or deficiency of the vital and animal spirits. #he bloodlettings! the vomits and the purges were intended to rid the viscera and the circulatory system of peccant humors! and at the same time to relieve the pressure of the animal spirits upon the brain. 7hysical treatment was supplemented by psychological treatment. #his last was based upon the universally accepted principle that the most effective cure for insanity is terror. %oerhaave! the most influential medical teacher of the first half of the eighteenth century! instructed his pupils "to throw the 7atient into the 4ea! and to keep him under for as long as he can possibly bear without being stifled." n the intervals between duckings the mentally sick were to be kept in constant fear by the threat of punishment. #he simplest and handiest form of punishment is beating! and beating! in conse$uence! was regularly resorted to. ,uring his psychotic episodes even 5eorge was beaten = with the permission! of course! of his 7rivy 1ouncil and both Houses of 7arliament. %ut beating "was only one form! and that the slightest! of cruelty toward the insane." : $uote the words of the great -rench reformer! ,octor 7inel.; "#he inventions to give pain were truly marvelous." #hus an eminent 5erman doctor had devised a therapeutic punishment! which consisted in tying a rope about the patient"s middle! hoisting him to a great height and then lowering him very rapidly! so that he should have the sensation of falling! into a dark cellar! "which was to

be all the better if it could be stocked with serpents." A very similar torture is minutely described by the Mar$uis de 4ade! the heroine of whose novel! Justine, is punished for being virtuous :among many other ways; by being dangled halfway down a shaft opening into a cavern full of rats and corpses! while her tormentor of the moment keeps threatening! from above! to cut the rope. #hat this fiendish notion should have occurred not only to the most famous psychotic of the period! but also to one of its leading psychiatrists! throws a revealing light on our ancestors" attitude toward the mentally sick. n relation to these predestined victims sadistic behavior was right and proper! so much so that it could be publicly avowed and rationali0ed in terms of current scientific theories. 4o much for what would have happened to me! if had become mentally sick in the eighteenth! or even the first half of the nineteenth! century. f had lived in the sixteenth century! my fate might have been even worse. -or in the sixteenth century most of the symptoms of mental illness were regarded as supernatural in origin. -or example! the pathological refusal or inability to speak was held to be a sure sign of diabolic possession. Mutism was fre$uently punished by the infliction of torture and death at the stake. ,umb devils are mentioned in the 5ospels' but the evangelists made no mention of another hysterical symptom! locali0ed insensibility to pain. @nfortunately for the mentally ill! the Early -athers noticed this curious phenomenon. -or them! the insensitive spots on the body of a mentally sick person were "the ,evil"s stigmata!" the marks with which 4atan branded his human cattle. n the sixteenth century anyone suspected of witchcraft would be systematically pricked with an awl or bodkin. f an insensitive spot were found! it was clear that the victim was allied with the devil and must therefore be tortured and burned alive. Again! some mentally sick persons hear voices! see visions of sinister figures! have phantasies of omnipotence or alternatively of persecution! believe themselves to be capable of flying! of being sub/ect to metamorphosis into animals. n the sixteenth century these common symptoms of mental derangement were treated as so many statements of ob/ective fact! so many confessions! explicit or implicit! of collaboration with the Enemy. %ut! obviously! anyone who collaborated with the ,evil had to be tortured and burned alive. And what about the neurotics! particularly the female neurotics! who suffer from sexual illusions. "All witchcraft!" proclaim the learned clerical authors of the +alleus +ale,icarum, the standard textbook for sixteenth-century in$uisitors and magistrates! "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust! which in women is insatiable." -rom this it followed that any disturbed woman! whose sexual daydreams were more than ordinarily vivid! was having relations with an ncubus. %ut an ncubus is a devil. #herefore she too must be tortured and burned alive. ,octor >ohann .eier! who has been called the -ather of 7sychiatry! had the humanity! courage and common sense to assail the theories and hellish practices of the 1atholic theologians and magistrates! and the no-less-ferocious 7rotestant witch-hunters of his time. %ut the ma/ority even of well-educated men approved the crimes and follies of the 1hurch. -or having ventured to treat the witches" confessions as symptoms of mental illness! .eier was regarded as a diabolical fellow traveler! even a full-blown sorcerer. #hat he was not arrested! tortured and burned was due to the fact that he was the personal physician of a ruling prince. .eier died in his bed' but his book was placed on the ndex! and the persecution of the mentally ill continued! unabated! for another century. How many witches were tortured and burned during the sixteenth century is not exactly known. #he total number is variously estimated at anything from one hundred

thousand to several millions. Many of the victims were perfectly sane adherents of the old fertility cult which still lingered on in every part of Europe. &f the rest! some were persons incriminated by informers! some the unhappy victims of a mental illness. " f we took the whole of the population of our present-day hospitals for mental diseases!" writes ,r. Hilboorg! "and if we sorted out the cases of dementia praecox! some of the senile psychoses! some of those afflicted with general paralysis! and some of the so-called involution melancholies! we should see that %odin :the great -rench /urist! who denounced ,r. .eier as a sorcerer and heretic; would not have hesitated to plead for their death at the stake! so similar and characteristic are their trends to those he describes. t is truly striking that the ideational contents of the mental diseases of four hundred years ago are so similar to those of today." n the second half of the seventeenth century the mentally sick ceased to be the prey of the clergy and the theologically minded lawyers! and were left instead to the tender mercies of the doctors. #he crimes and follies committed in the name of 5alen were! as we have seen! almost as monstrous as those committed at an earlier period in the name of 5od. mprovement came at last in the closing years of the eighteenth century! and was due to the efforts of a few nonconforming individuals! some of them doctors! others outside the pale of medicine. #hese nonconformists did their work in the teeth of official indifference! sometimes of active official resistance. As corporations! neither the 1hurch nor the medical profession ever initiated any reform in the treatment of the mentally sick. &bscure priests and nuns had often cared for the insane with kindness and understanding' but the theological bigwigs thought of mental illness in terms of diabolic possession! heresy and apostasy. t was the same with the medical bigwigs. 4trait /ackets! %risk 8omits and systematic terrorism remained the official medical policy until well into the nineteenth century. t was only tardily and reluctantly that the bigwigs accepted the reforms initiated by heroic nonconformists! and officially changed their old! bad tune. Eeform began almost simultaneously on either side of the 1hannel. n England a Guaker merchant! .illiam #uke! set up the Aork Eetreat! a hospital for the mentally sick! in which restraint was never used and the psychological treatment was aimed! not at frightening the patients! but at bringing them back from their isolation by persuading them to work! play! eat! talk and worship together. n -rance the pioneer in reform was ,octor 7hilippe 7inel! who was appointed to the direction of the %icetre Asylum in 7aris at the height of the -rench Eevolution. Many of the patients were kept permanently chained in unlighted cells. 7inel asked permission of the revolutionary government to set them free. t was refused. +iberty! E$uality and -raternity were not for lunatics. 7inel insisted! and at last permission was grudgingly given. #he account of what followed is touching in the extreme. "#he first man on whom the experiment was tried was an English captain! whose history no one knew! as he had been in chains for forty years. He was thought to be one of the most furious among them. His keepers approached him with caution! as he had in a fit of fury killed one of them on the spot with a blow from his manacles. He was chained more rigorously than any of the others. 7inel entered his cell unattended and calmly said to him! "1aptain! will order your chains to be taken off and give you liberty to walk in the court! if you will promise me to behave well and in/ure no one." "Aes! promise!" said the maniac. "%ut you are laughing at me. . ." His chains were removed and the keepers retired! leaving the door of his cell open. He raised himself many times from the seat! but fell again on it' for he had been in a sitting posture so long

that he had lost the use of his legs. n a $uarter of an hour he succeeded in maintaining his balance and with tottering steps came to the door of his dark cell. His first look was at the sky! and he exclaimed! "How beautiful! how beautiful3" ,uring the rest of the day he was constantly in motion! uttering exclamations of delight. n the evening he returned of his own accord to his cell and slept tran$uilly." n Europe the pioneer work of #uke and 7inel was continued by 1onolly! Es$uirol and a growing number of their followers in every country. n America! the standard bearer of reform was a heroic woman! ,orothea ,ix. %y the middle of the century many of the worst abominations of the old regime were things of the past. #he mentally ill began to be treated as unfortunate human beings! not as &b/ects. t was an immense advance' but it was not yet enough. Eeform had produced institutional care! but still no ade$uate treatment. -or most nineteenth-century doctors! things were more real than thoughts and the study of matter seemed more scientific than the study of mind. #he dream of 8ictorian medicine was! in Hilboorg"s phrase! to develop a psychiatry that should be completely independent of psychology. Hence the widespread and passionate re/ection of the procedures lumped under the names of Animal Magnetism and Hypnotism. n -rance! 1harcot! +iebault and %ernheim achieved remarkable results with hypnosis' but the intellectually respectable psychiatrists of Europe and America turned their backs on this merely psychological treatment of mental illness and concentrated instead on the more "ob/ective!" the more "scientific" methods of surgery. t had all happened before! of course. 1utting holes in the skull was an immemorially ancient form of psychiatry. 4o was castration! as a cure for epilepsy. 1ontinuing this grand old tradition! the 8ictorian doctors removed the ovaries of their hysterical patients and treated neurosis in young girls by the gruesome operation known to ethnologists as "female circumcision." n the early years of the present century Metchnikoff was briefly a prophet! and autointoxication was all the rage in medical circles. Along with practically every other disease! neuroses were supposed to be due to intestinal stasis. ?o intestine! no stasis = what could be more logical< #he lucky neurotics who could afford a ma/or operation went to hospital! had their colons cut out and the end of their small intestines stitched to the stump. #hose who recovered found themselves with yet another reason for being neurotic6 they had to hurry to the bathroom six or eight times a day. ntestinal stasis went out with the hobble skirt! and the new vogue was focal infection. According to the surgical psychiatrists! people were neurotic not because of conflicts in their unconscious mind! but because of inflammation in their tonsils or abscesses at the roots of their teeth. #he dentists! the nose-and-throat men set to work with a will. #oothless and tonsilectomi0ed! the neurotics! needless to say! went on behaving /ust as neurotically as ever. -ocal infections followed intestinal stasis into oblivion! and the surgical psychiatrists now prefer to make a direct assault upon the brain. #he current fashion is shock treatment or! on great occasions! prefrontal lobotomy. Meanwhile the pharmacologists have not been idle. #he barbiturates! hailed not so long ago as panaceas! have given place to 1hlorproma0ine! Eeserpine! -ren$uel and Miltown. nsofar as they facilitate the specifically psychological treatment of mental disorders! these tran$uili0ers may prove to be extremely valuable. Even as symptom stoppers they have their uses. #he green oasis among the /ets and the rockets is crammed to overflowing. 4o are all the other mental hospitals of the .estern world. #echnological and economic progress

seems to have been accompanied by psychological regress. #he incidence of neuroses and psychoses is apparently on the increase. 4till larger hospitals! yet kinder treatment of patients! more psychiatrists and better pills = we need them all and need them urgently. %ut they will not solve our problem. n this field prevention is incomparably more important than cure' for cure merely returns the patient to an environment which begets mental illness. %ut how is prevention to be achieved< #hat is the sixty-four-billion-dollar $uestion. :-rom ?s#uire Maga0ine;

A Case of Vol(ntary I7norance #hat men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. (i vis acem, the Eomans liked to say! ara !ellum = if you want peace prepare for war. -or the last few thousand years the rulers of all the world"s empires! kingdoms and republics have acted upon this maxim = with the result! as 7rofessor 4orokin has laboriously shown! that every civili0ed nation has spent about half of every century of its existence waging war with its neighbors. %ut has mankind learned this lesson of history< #he answer is emphatically in the negative. (i vis acem, ara !ellum still is the watchword of every sovereign state! with the possible exception of Monaco. Again! what happens when economic power is concentrated in a few hands< History"s answer to that $uestion is that! whatever else it may be! that which happens is most certainly not democracy. %ut while politicians everywhere proclaim the virtues of democracy :even the totalitarian states are 7eople"s Eepublics;! advancing technology is everywhere allowed and even encouraged to work for the concentration of economic power. 4mall-scale operators in agriculture and industry are progressively eliminated! and in their place advancing technology installs an oligarchy of giant concerns! owned and operated either by private corporations and their managers! or by the state and its bureaucrats. t is interesting to note that the men who! in the teeth of history! proclaimed that! if you want peace! you must prepare for war! were the self-same men who solemnly declared that Experience teaches! e" erientia docet= or! as Mrs. Micawber more aptly put it! "?" erientia does it." %ut as a matter of brute historical fact! ?" erientia generally doesn"t. .e got on doing what our own and our father"s experience has demonstrated! again and again! to be inappropriate or downright disastrous' and we go on hoping :this time like +r. Micawber; that "something will turn up" = something completely different from anything which! on the basis of experience! we have any right to expect. ?eedless to say! it does not turn up. #he same old mistakes have the same old conse$uences and we remain in the same old mess. And even when we do permit ourselves to be taught by experience! as embodied in our own or our society"s history! how slow! in all too many cases! how grudging and reluctant is the process of learning3 #rue! we learn very $uickly the things we really want to learn. %ut the only things we really want to learn are the things which satisfy our physical needs! the things which arouse and /ustify our darling passions! and the things which confirm us in our intellectual pre/udices. #hus! in any field of science! new facts

and new hypotheses are accepted $uickly and easily by those whose metaphysical beliefs happen to be compatible with the new material. #hey are re/ected :or! if accepted! accepted very slowly and grudgingly; by those into whose philosophy the new material cannot be fitted = those! in a word! whose intellectual presuppositions are outraged by the facts and hypotheses in $uestion. #o take an obvious example! the evolutionary hypothesis and the factual evidence on which it was based were re/ected by the -undamentalists! or accepted only in a 7ickwickian sense and after years of stubborn resistance. n precisely the same way the dogmatic materialists of our own day refuse to accept the factual evidence for E47! or to consider the hypotheses based upon that evidence. -rom their own experience or from the recorded experience of others :history;! men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical pre/udices allow them to learn. A wonderfully instructive example of this truth is provided by the history of hypnotism in its relations with orthodox medicine = the history! that is to say! of an extremely odd and still unexplained phenomenon in its relations with a body of anatomical and physiological facts! with certain officially sanctioned methods of treatment! with a system :in part explicit! in part tacit and unexpressed; of metaphysical beliefs! and with the men who have held the beliefs and used the methods. At the time of writing :the 4ummer of ()*P; hypnotism is in fairly good odor among medical men. ,uring .orld .ar it was extensively used in the treatment of the psychosomatic symptoms produced by so-called "battle fatigue." And at the present time it is being used by a growing number of obstetricians to prepare expectant mothers for childbirth and to make that blessed event more bearable! and by a growing number of dentists to eliminate the pain of probing and drilling. Most psychiatrists! it is true! fight shy of it' but for that overwhelming ma/ority of neurotics who cannot afford to spend two or three years and seven or eight thousand dollars on a conventional analysis! hypnotic treatment! mainly at the hands of lay therapists! is being made increasingly available. And now let us listen to what a distinguished anesthesiologist! ,octor Milton >. Manner of +os Angeles! has to say about the value of hypnotism in his special field. "Hypnotism is the best way to make a patient fearless before surgery! painless during it and comfortable after it." ,r. Manner adds that! in severe operations! "perfect anesthesia should be attained by employing hypnotism in con/unction with chemical agents. t can then be a pleasant experience! involving no tension or apprehension." %ut! it may be asked! why bother with hypnotism! when so many and such excellent chemical anesthetics lie ready to hand< -or the good reason! says ,r. Manner! that hypnotism "places no extra load on circulation! breathing! or on the liver and kidney systems." n a word! it is entirely non-toxic. Hypnotism! he adds! is epecially valuable in operations on children. 1hildren who have been hypnoti0ed into unconsciousness are more cheerful after surgery! "more alert! more responsive! more comfortable and more co-operative than those who undergo anesthesia produced by chemicals alone." 7atients who have suffered severe burns are in constant pain! greatly depressed and without appetite. Hypnotism will relieve pain! improve morale and restore appetite! thereby greatly accelerating the process of healing. Alone or in con/unction with relatively small amounts of chemical anesthetics! hypnotism has been used by ,r. Marmer in every kind of surgical situation! including even the removal of a tumor from the lung. Every anesthesiologist! ,r. Marmer concludes! should also be a hypnotist. 4o much for hypnotism today. ?ow let us turn back to the past and see what lessons the history of hypnotism has to teach. Among the books in my library are two

rather battered volumes=+esmerism in 3ndia, by >ames Esdaile! M.,.! first published in (LMP! and +esmerism, in its $elation to Health and Disease, and the )resent (tate o, +edicine, by .illiam ?eilson! published at Edinburgh in (L**. Esdaile was a 4cottish physician and surgeon! who went out to ndia as a young man and was put in charge of two hospitals in %engal = one a hospital for prisoners in the local /ail! the other a charity hospital for the general public. n these hospitals and! later! in a hospital at 1alcutta! Esdaile performed more than three hundred ma/or operations on patients in a state of hypnotic :or as it was then called! "mesmeric" or "magnetic"; anesthesia. #hese operations included amputations of limbs! removals of cancerous breasts! numerous operations for varicocele! cataract and chronic ulcers! removals of tumors in the throat and mouth! and of the enormous tumors! weighing from thirty to more than a hundred pounds apiece! caused by elephantiasis! then exceedingly prevalent in %engal. Esdaile"s ndian patients felt no pain! even during the most drastic operations. .hat was still more remarkable! they survived. n (LMP = the year in which Esdaile published his book = 4emmelweiss had not yet taught his students to wash their hands when they came from the dissecting room to the maternity ward! 7asteur was years away from his discovery of bacterial infection! +ister! a mere boy in his teens. 4urgery was strictly septic. n the words of a historian of medicine! "suppuration and septic poisonings of the system carried away even the most promising patients and followed even trifling operations. &ften! too! these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences! so that patients! however extreme their need! feared the very name of hospital! and the most skillful surgeons distrusted their own craft." %efore the advent of ether and chloroform :which began to be used about (LMQ;! the mortality of patients after surgery averaged twentynine per cent in a well-run hospital and would rise! when the streps and staphs were more than usually active! to over fifty per cent. 1hloroform changed the techni$ues of surgery! but not! to any marked extent! its results. #he agonies of the fully conscious patient "had naturally and rightly compelled the public to demand rapid if not slapdash surgery! and the surgeon to pride himself on it. .ithin decent limits of precision! the $uickest craftsman was the best." :#here were famous specialists who could perform an operation for stone in fifty-eight seconds flat.; #hanks to chloroform! "the surgeon was enabled to be not only as cautious and sedulous as he was dexterous! but also to venture on long! profound and intricate operations which! before the coming of anesthetics! had been out of the $uestion. %ut unfortunately this new enfranchisement seemed to be but an ironic liberty of ?ature! who with the other hand took away what she had given." %igger and better operations were performed under chemical anesthesia! but the patients went on dying at almost the same ghastly rate. n the twenty years following the introduction of chloroform and preceding +ister"s advocacy of aseptic surgery! the death rate from postoperative infections fell by only six percentage points = from twenty-nine in every hundred cases to twenty-three. n other words! almost a $uarter of every Early 8ictorian surgeon"s clients were still regularly slaughtered. 1hloroform had abolished the pain of operations! but not the virtual certainty of infection afterwards! nor the one-in-four chance of a lingering and unpleasant death. Meanwhile! what was happening in %engal< #he answer is startling in the extreme. n a debilitating climate and among sickly and undernourished patients! ,octor Esdaile was performing ma/or surgery without any deaths on the operating table :a distressingly fre$uent event in the early days of badly administered chloroform; and with

a mortality from postoperative infection of only five per cent. How are we to account for this extraordinary state of affairs< -irst of all! Esdaile never allowed his patients" morale to be undermined by apprehension. #he men and women who came to him were not told in advance when they were to be operated! nor even! in many cases! that an operation would be necessary. After examination by the surgeon! they were taken into a dark room! asked to lie down on a couch! and then put to sleep by "magnetic passes!" which were made by relays of orderlies! who would work on the patient! if it seemed necessary! for three and four hours at a stretch. .hen the passes had taken effect and the patient was in a deep hypnotic coma! he would be taken into the operating room! have his leg cut off! or his forty-pound elephantiasis tumor removed! be stitched up and carried! still unconscious! to his bed. n most cases patients remained in trance for several hours after being operated! and would wake up unaware of what had happened and feeling no pain whatever. n the days that followed they were fre$uently re-mesmeri0ed! and so spent most of their time in a state of trance. %ut in trance! as in natural sleep! the vis medicatri" naturae, nature"s healing power! is able to do its work with the greatest possible effectiveness. #he agitated and anxious ego is put to sleep and can make no trouble' left to its own devices! the autonomic system or 8egetative 4oul :as it used to be called; goes about its business with infallible skill. n order to be freed from pain and selfconsciousness! Esdaile"s patients did not have to be poisoned by narcotics and analgesics' thanks to hypnotism! they were spared most of the miseries that normally follow an operation! and! thanks to hypnotism! their resistance was raised to such an extent that they could easily get the better of the deadly microorganisms associated with septic surgery. -ive deaths to every hundred operations = it was the biggest medical news since the days of Hippocrates3 %ut when Esdaile published the facts! what happened< .ere his colleagues delighted< ,id they hasten in a body to follow his example< ?ot at all. Most of them were extremely angry when they heard of his achievement! and the bigwigs of the faculty did everything in their power to prevent ,r. Esdaile from continuing his beneficient work and! when that proved impossible :for Esdaile was backed up by the 5overnor 5eneral of ndia;! to suppress the! to them! embarrassing and distasteful facts. ,octor >ames 4impson! the first surgeon to advocate the use of chloroform and a most courageous crusader! in the teeth of -undamentalist opposition! for painless childbirth! was at first intensely interested in mesmeric anesthesia. n a letter to Esdaile he wrote that he had "always considered the few deaths out of so many formidable operations one of the most remarkable things in the history of surgery." -urthermore! says Esdaile! ",r. 4impson sent me a message that owed it to myself and my profession to let my proceedings be known in England! and that! if wrote an article! he would get it published in the /ournal he was connected with. therefore sent him an account of one hundred and sixty-one scrotal tumors removed in the mesmeric trance." #his paper was re/ected on the ground that parts of it had appeared :in a greatly garbled form; in another medical /ournal. "A more general paper was offered' but after some compliments and considerable delay!" Esdaile was informed that ,r. 4impson"s brother editors had declined it as "not being sufficiently practical." "&ne of the most remarkable things in the history of surgery3" is ?eilson"s /ustifiably bitter comment. "?amely! how to reduce CZ per cent of deaths to * per cent = not ractical." And he adds that "it is very curious that! when ,r. 4impson professed to publish an account of all the means that have ever been

used to prevent the pain of operations! he $uite forgot to mention mesmerism." #his sort of thing had happened before Esdaile"s day and was destined to happen again! and yet again! thereafter. ,octor >ohn Elliotson! an eminent physician and 7rofessor of 7hysiology at the @niversity of +ondon! had been derided and boycotted for his advocacy of mesmerism in surgery and general practice. 4ome of his critics had gone so far as to assert that a mesmeri0ed man who had a leg amputated without showing the slightest sign of discomfort was a mere impostor = pretending that he felt no pain /ust to annoy the orthodox doctors. And one of them! ,octor 1opland! solemnly declared that "pain is a wise provision of ?ature' and patients ought to suffer pain! while their surgeon is operating' they are all the better for it and recover better." +ater on! when the anesthetic properties of ether and chloroform had been discovered! the first reaction of many doctors was not to give thanks that the pain of operations had been abolished. ?o! their first reaction was to gloat over the discomfiture of the mesmerists. "Hurrah3" wrote Eobert +isten! the first surgeon to perform an operation under ether. "Ee/oice3 Mesmerism and its professors have met with a heavy blow and great discouragement." More soberly! but with e$ual satisfaction! the official 'ancet smugly editoriali0ed6 ".e suppose that we shall hear no more of mesmerism and its absurdities." And! in effect! the absurdity of a five per cent death rate was not heard of again until +ister discovered that! if the surgeon used aseptic methods! the patient could survive in spite of lowered resistance and systematic poisoning by chemical anesthetics! narcotics and analgesics. %ut mesmerism and its absurdities were observable facts and! in spite of everything! they refused to disappear. t therefore became necessary to legislate against them. -or almost half a century after the publication of Esdaile"s book! any English doctor who made use of hypnotism ran the risk of being hounded out of his profession. t was not until (L)C that the %ritish Medical Association officially admitted the reality of hypnosis and officially sanctioned hypnotic treatment. n -rance hypnotism fared better than in England. #he first Eoyal 1ommission on Mesmerism :of which %en/amin -ranklin was a member; had denied the existence of the "magnetic fluid!" which was supposed to account for the phenomena of hypnotism! but had not pronounced on the reality of the physical and psychological phenomena induced by mesmeric procedures. #he second commission pronounced in favor of mesmeric treatment. #he third! dominated by the orthodox party! pronounced against mesmerism. +ater! 1harcot tried to prove that hypnosis was a form of hysterical epilepsy. %ut in spite of everything the practice of hypnotism continued and! at the close of the nineteenth century! was being extensively used for the relief of pain and the cure of sickness. #oday! strangely enough! hypnotism is almost unknown among medical circles in -rance. t is as though such pioneers as +iebault and %ernheim had lived and labored in vain. #he remarkable successes achieved by those men and their followers have been more or less completely forgotten. #hese ups and downs in the popularity of hypnotism are characteristic of its history in every country. At one moment hypnotism seems to be on the point of entering medicine as a widely used form of therapy' then! a few years later! the public and the professional men seem to lose interest in this kind of treatment! which is either $uietly ignored or else denounced as dangerous or vaguely immoral. n the @nited 4tates! for example! hypnotism en/oyed wide popularity in the years following the 1ivil .ar. #hree $uarters of a century ago the editor of the American edition of Deleu7e's Treatise on

1nimal +agnetism could write as follows6 "7robably there is not a city nor village in ?orth America where there could not be found at this time = (LQL = one or more magneti0ers. @sually one is to be found in every family." 8ery few of these magneti0ers were medical men' for most American doctors disapproved of hypnotism almost as heartily as did their %ritish colleagues. %ut! medical or non-medical! the hypnotists existed and were evidently plentiful. %y the turn of the century! however! the American magneti0er was already a rare bird! and by the early #wenties the species was almost extinct. #oday! it seems to be on its way back. .ithin a few years! if present trends persist! every city and village in ?orth America may have its medical or dental hypnotist! every family its practitioners of autohypnotism and mutual suggestion. .hy has the history of hypnotism been so strangely checkered< .hy is it that! in the words of a great psychologist! the late .illiam Mc,ougall! "in spite of the fre$uent occurrence of states identical with or closely allied to hypnosis! some three centuries of enthusiastic investigation and of bitter controversy were re$uired to establish the hypnotic state among the facts accepted by the world of European science"< #he answer! as have already suggested! is that most of us believe only what our interests! our passions and our metaphysical pre/udices permit us to believe. "As Hobbes has well observed! if it were for the ro,it of a governing body that the three angles of a triangle should not be e$ual to two right angles! the doctrine that they were would! by that body! inevitably be denounced as false and pernicious. #he most curious examples of this truth have been found in the history of medicine. #his! on the one hand! is nothing more than a history of variations and! on the other! a still more wonderful history of how every successive variation has! by medical bodies! been first furiously denounced and then bigotedly adopted." 4o wrote an older contemporary of the persecuted mesmerists! the 4cottish philosopher and essayist! 4ir .illiam Hamilton :who! like every intelligent man of the period outside the medical profession! took a lively interest in the phenomena of hypnotism;. t should be added that the "profit" of a professional body is not to be measured exclusively in terms of money and power! or even of prestige. #here are vested interests not only in the fields of economics and social position! but also in the field of pure ideas. #hat a beautiful and genuinely anti$ue theory should be ruined by some new! coarse! essentially vulgar fact of mere observation seems $uite intolerable to a mind brought up in a proper reverence for words and consecrated notions. And it goes without saying that! if the threat to a beloved theory should at the same time be a threat to personal reputation! this resentment will be raised to the pitch of outraged disapproval and a burning! righteous indignation. #his was clearly recogni0ed by one of the early historians of science! >ohn 7layfair! who noted that new ideas! new observations and new methods "must often change the relative place of men engaged in scientific pursuits! and must oblige many! after descending from the stations they formerly occupied! to take a lower place in the scale of intellectual improvement. #he enmity of such men! if they be not animated by a spirit of real candor and the love of truth! is likely to be directed against the methods! observations and ideas by which their vanity is mortified and their importance lessened." f the Early 8ictorian doctors hated mesmerism! it was because it threatened their vested interests in such time-hallowed therapeutic methods as blood-letting and pillprescribing! and at the same time their vested interests in a time-hallowed philosophy of man and the universe! which had no place in it for the odder phenomena of human

psychology. Moreover! they felt that they could not give up these methods or modify this philosophy without gravely in/uring their professional dignity. " f mesmerism be true!" wrote Esdaile! "the doctors! old and young! will have to go to school again' and this is what constitutes the bitterness of the mesmeric pill." :4ubstitute "parapsychology" for "mesmerism" and "para-psychological" for "mesmeric" = and you have here an explanation of the refusal! on the part of some contemporary scientists! to consider the vast accumulations of evidence in favor of the reality of E47.; #he extreme bitterness of the pill accounts for the extreme violence of the medical diatribes against the new observations and the new methods of treatment! along with all those who had had anything to do with them. t is a violence comparable to that which! all too fre$uently! has characteri0ed the controversies of clergymen. #he doctors loathed the mesmerists with a full-blown odium theologicum, a theological hatred. n his volume of (L**! .illiam ?eilson $uotes many examples of this truly religious intemperance of language. ,isdaining argument and paying no attention to facts! the anti-mesmeric contributors to the 'ancet and the +edical Times confined themselves exclusively to abuse. ".hile pursuing their frauds among lunatics and fools! mesmerists give us neither umbrage nor dis$uiet' but within the walls of our colleges :there were mesmerists of the highest scientific eminence at the @niversities of Edinburgh and +ondon; they are scandalous nuisances and an insufferable disgrace." Elliotson and his followers practice "a harlotry which they call science." .orse still! they refuse to bow to the authority of those licensed repositories of ultimate truth! the doctors. nstead! they make their appeal to mere reason and uncensored experience! with the shocking result that they have found enthusiastic supporters in every class of society = "the pert folly of the nobility! the weakest among the literary people! high and low ladies! $uack clergymen :among whom! it may be remarked! were several bishops and even an archbishop;! itinerant lecturers and exhibiting buffoons." #o sum up! mesmerism is merely a compound of "$uackery! obscenity and imposture! and its advocates are at the best deluded idiots! at the worst swindling knaves." n one of its aspects! as we have seen! the history of medicine is the history of variations = the history of fads pursued and then re/ected! of fashions adopted with enthusiasm and then $uietly dropped in favor of some more modish style of diagnosis or of treatment. .hen all these fads and fashions are strictly physiological! the change from one to another can be made without difficulty and without any feeling of mental distress. %ut where non-physiological factors are involved = factors which cannot be explained in terms of the prevailing medical philosophy = changes of fashion are painful and the resistance to change is stubborn and often violent. Hypnotism involves non-physiological factors' conse$uently the reality of hypnosis and the value of hypnotic treatment were vehemently denied by the official spokesmen of the medical profession. #hat the ban upon hypnotism ever came to be lifted was due to a variety of causes. -irst of all! the metaphysical susceptibilities of the doctors were soothed by the work of 7rofessor Heidenhain. #his 5erman researcher was able to convince himself and his colleagues that hypnosis was always the result of strictly physiological causes. t didn"t happen to be true' but! to use the religious phraseology which seems appropriate to the case! it was highly edifying! it brought comfort to the troubled spirit of the doctors! and it helped! incidentally! to make hypnotism respectable. Meanwhile intensive research into the nature of mental illness was being carried on! especially in -rance and 5ermany! and the

idea of subconscious mental activity gradually forced itself upon even the most physiologically minded psychiatrists. .ithin the enlarged framework of medical philosophy! hypnosis! though still unexplained! began to make a little more sense. %ut then = fortunately in some ways! unfortunately in others = the great ,octor -reud made his appearance. -reud banned hypnotism from his system of psychotherapy and! as an entirely illogical conse$uence of this ban! hypnotism came to be largely neglected in surgery and general medicine! where it is of such inestimable value as a nonpoisonous anesthetic! as a raiser of resistance to infection! as an improver of morale! as a promoter of healing and an accelerator of convalescence. .ars tend to stimulate medical advance! at any rate in those countries which have escaped severe devastation. #he current revival of interest in hypnotism is in part due to its successful employment in military hospitals. Medicine has now returned to the position once occupied by Esdaile and Elliotson. #hat it should have taken four generations to recon$uer that position is certainly unfortunate. %ut better late than never. :-rom ?s#uire Maga0ine;

T!e Oddest Sc"ence #he reading of yet another book about modern psychological theories is always! find! a rather exasperating experience. 1lothed in an ugly and hardly comprehensible /argon! the obvious is portentously enunciated! as though it were some kind of esoteric mystery. #he immemorially ancient is presented! with fanfares! as a brand-new! epochmaking discovery. nstead of open-mindedness! we find dogmatism' instead of comprehensive views! we are given theories which ignore whole provinces of given reality! whole categories of the most significant kinds of facts. And instead of the concreteness so essential in a science of observation! instead of the principle of multiple causation which must govern all thinking about so complex a creature as man! we are treated to shameless displays of those gravest of intellectual sins! overabstraction! overgenerali0ation and oversimplification. All this does not mean! of course! that treatises about modern psychological theories should not be read. #hese treatises are conspicuous facts in the life of our time and! as such! they must not be ignored. %esides! it goes without saying that! in spite of all their defects! the formulators of modern psychological theories have made substantial contributions to the sum of practical wisdom and have done something to deepen our understanding of human nature. As a history of modern psychology in terms of "an integrative evaluation of -reud! Adler! >ung and Eank!" ,octor ra 7rogoff"s recent book! The Death and $e!irth o, )sychology, is clear and illuminating. 4o clear! indeed! and so illuminating that not only the virtues of modern psychology"s founding fathers! but also their shortcomings stand out! in its pages! with glaring distinctness. +et us begin with what is! suppose! the most serious! as it is certainly the most conspicuous! shortcoming of them all = the absence from all these theories :with the partial exception of Adler"s; of any mention of the body as a conditioning factor in the formation of a personality! or as a determinant of thoughts! feelings and behavior. Adler!

it is true! made a number of penetrating remarks on the conse$uences of a sense of organic inferiority' but even Adler was very far from giving the body its due as a shaper of individual character and destiny. -reud! >ung and Eank seem to have imagined that they could understand human minds without taking into account the bodies with which those minds are indissolubly associated. #heir one-sidedness is the mirror-image of the one-sidedness of the exclusively physiological physician. %ut /ust as it is perfectly clear that bodies cannot be understood or successfully treated without reference to their minds! so too it is perfectly clear that minds cannot be understood or successfully treated without reference to their bodies. ,octors are at last reconciling themselves to the idea of psychosomatic medicine. t is time for psychologists to reconcile themselves to the complementary notion of a somato-psychic approach to the problems of mind and character. t was not only by psychology"s founding fathers that the body was neglected. #he same absurd one-sidedness was and still is observable in most of their successors. How rarely! in recent books on psychology! do we come upon a passage like the following from ,octor Erich -romm"s work on dreams! The Corgotten 'anguage. 1ommenting on the words of an ancient Hindu writer! ,r. -romm remarks that "he points to a significant connection between temperament Ei.e., those psychic $ualities which are rooted in a constitutionally given somatic basis; and dream content"= a connection "which has found hardly any attention in contemporary dream interpretation! although it is a significant factor in dream interpretation! as further research will undoubtedly show." After which ,r. -romm passes on to other! one-sidedly psychological considerations. +et us hope that this passing reference to the significance of temperament may serve as an opening wedge to a new somato-psychic approach! not merely to dreaming! but to all mental activities. t will not be difficult to make such an approach' for all the really hard preparatory work has already been done by ,octor .illiam 4heldon and his colleagues. @sing 4heldon"s rigorous and powerful methods! it is now possible for any psychologist or psychiatrist to make an accurate assessment of the "constitutionally given somatic basis!" in which our "psychic $ualities" are rooted. %ut though the means are available! they are hardly ever used! and psychologists continue to treat minds without reference to bodies! and to publish what they are pleased to call "case histories" without deigning to give the slightest indication of what sort of people! somatically speaking! their patients were. How much did Mrs. 2 weigh = ninety pounds or two hundred< ,id Mr. A have the physi$ue of an ox or a daddy longlegs! of a panther or a /ellyfish< #o these $uestions most psychologists never vouchsafe an answer = presumably because! unlike the rest of mankind! they have never thought of asking them. n his monumental 1tlas o, +en, ,r. 4heldon has published several thousands of photographs showing the continuous variation of masculine physi$ue! and assessing those variations within a frame of reference having three coordinates! endomorphy! mesomorphy and ectomorphy. #urning over the pages of this book! one sees at a glance that it is obviously impossible for creatures so unlike one another as men at the extreme limits of possible variation to feel! think and behave in the same way. #his is something which every one of normal intelligence has known for the last two or three hundred thousand years. t has remained for modern psychologists to ignore this self-evident fact and to talk! in their vague! rhetorical way! about "Man!" "Modern Man!" or even "Man in the Era of 4exuality!" as though there were standardi0ed ob/ects corresponding to these words. %ut in fact! of

course! nobody has ever encountered these mythical beings. ?obody has ever encountered anyone but #om! ,ick and Harry! ,olly! Molly and 7olly. %ut! as everybody knows perfectly well! #om is congenitally unlike ,ick! and Harry is constitutionally different from both of the others. And the same is true of ,olly! Molly and 7olly. #hey are profoundly different one from another! and many of their differences are built in! or :as ,r. -romm would say;! "rooted in a constitutionally given somatic basis." .hy! one wonders! do the men and women whose profession it is to understand and treat people"s minds neglect to study these constitutionally determined differences between individuals< 4uch voluntary ignorance can be accounted for! suppose! partly by the force of inertia and ingrained habit' the one-sided approach is traditional! time-hallowed! sanctioned by the bad example of the founding fathers. ?or must we forget that it is a great deal easier to be one-sided than to think and act realistically in terms of multiple causation. .herever the line of least resistance can be followed! it generally is followed. .e see! then! that in their theories! as in their practice! the founding fathers completely neglected the "constitutionally given somatic basis!" which determines so much of our thinking! feeling and behavior. However! they did not neglect heredity altogether. >ung and! above all! Eank lightheartedly maintained that ac$uired characteristics are inherited = a doctrine which all geneticists! even :since the fall of +ysenko; in Eussia! now repudiate. t was assumed in their theori0ing that notions popular in earlier periods of history are somehow built into the hereditary make-up of twentieth-century babies. According to Eank! "the meeting of the points of view of these two eras :the 4piritual Era and the 4exual Era; and the resulting tension that remained in man ever a,terwards Witalics mineX comprise the main source of those inner conflicts that a later age described as "psychological." " #his! surely! is pure balderdash. Hardly less nonsensical is >ung"s e$uation of a human culture-pattern with the built-in behavior of an insect. -or the East African tribe of the Elgonyi! he writes! their morning ritual "is a part of the pattern of behavior that life re$uires! /ust as the leaf-cutting ant cannot do otherwise than live out the pattern inherent in the nature of its species." %ut in fact the behavior-pattern built into the cells of the leaf-cutting ant is of a radically different kind from the behavior-pattern ac$uired! during infancy and childhood! by an East African tribesman. #ake a batch of ant"s eggs from the tropics and hatch them out in a greenhouse in 4tockholm' the adult leaf-cutters will behave precisely as adult leaf-cutters behave in Africa. %ut now take a new-born Elgonyi baby and bring him up in 4tockholm. %y the time he grows up! he will be thinking! feeling! speaking and behaving like any 4wede of his particular physi$ue and temperament. #he morning ritual performed by the Elgonyi in Africa is no more built into them than are their table manners or their language. And now consider the following statement. ".hen >ung refers to 1hrist as a "symbol of the 4elf!" he means to indicate the ,act Witalics mineX that for the western psyche some variation of the image of >esus 1hrist is inevita!ly Witalics mineX the center! around which the symbolism of individuation is expressed." %ut it is an observable fact that many people born and brought up in the .est :and so! presumably! possessed of a "western psyche"; do not experience the image of 1hrist as a central symbol. ts presence or absence depends on the nature of the conditioning to which the individual happens to have been sub/ected. t is not only through their inherited make-up that bodies affect thoughts! feelings and behavior. &ur moods! our general mental tone! our metaphysical theories and view of life! may be determined by faulty nutrition or a chronic infection. #here is ample

evidence that many undesirable mental states have their primary source! not in some traumatic event of childhood or the more recent past! but in what the late -. M. Alexander aptly called "the improper use of the self" = in bad postural habits! resulting in impaired physiological and psychological functioning. f you teach an individual first to be aware of his physical organism and then to use it as it was meant to be used! you can often change his entire attitude to life and cure his neurotic tendencies. %ut this! of course! is something which no one-sided psychologist has been taught to do! or would approve of doing! even if he knew how. He /ust goes on with free association and dream analysis! and hopes for the best. And the best :as those who have tried to assess the effectiveness of psychoanalysis assure us; does not happen as often as one might hope or! given the exorbitant cost of the treatment! legitimately expect. And here let us ask ourselves a $uestion which is obviously of the highest importance. .hy is it that! though practically every child has to endure large numbers of traumatic experiences! only some children grow up to be neurotics< #his is a $uestion to which neither the founding fathers! nor their successors! have paid the attention it deserves. 1learly! we are concerned here with one aspect of the more general problem of resistance. .hy are some people so resistant to almost every kind of illness! while others go down like ninepins< #here are doubtless many reasons for differences in individual resistance! some strictly environmental! others :more difficult! but perhaps not impossible! to control; built in and hereditary. #hus! extreme susceptibility to the common cold is probably due to a mutant gene. .hen the biochemical conse$uences of this mutation can be offset by pharmacological means! the problem of the common cold will be solved. :After which! no doubt! we shall have another! as yet unsuspected! problem to take its place3; And what of extreme susceptibility of psychological traumas< 7erhaps this too is genetic in origin. #he number of psychotics in relation to the total population has remained! it would seem! remarkably constant. 7resumably susceptibility to these severe mental illnesses is due to inherited metabolic anomalies! which result in en0yme disbalance and a special kind of self-poisoning. #hat some genetic factor may be responsible! at least in part! for susceptibility to the milder forms of mental illness seems perfectly possible. f this is the case! we may look forward to a time when the pharmacologists will achieve rapidly and certainly the results which present-day psychiatrists! with their one-sided methods! can achieve! if at all! only after years of analysis. ,r. 7rogoff says of -reud that his psychological theories were too materialistic. My own view is that! like the theories of most other modern psychologists! they are not nearly materialistic enough. t is worthy of note that the most "spiritual" religions have been the ones to pay the closest! most scientific attention to the body. Hindu and %uddhist theology has a well-developed theory of inherited temperaments. According to this theory! a man is born to follow either the path of devotion! or the path of active duty! or the path of contemplation. And this is not all. f he is born with the capacity to unite himself with 5od through contemplation! he will be well advised to facilitate the contemplative process by paying special attention to his bodily posture and to such bodily functions as breathing! eating and excreting. Every &riental philosophy is at bottom a treatise on transcendental psychotherapy. #he aim of this therapy is to cure the :statistically speaking; normal of their complacent belief that they are sane! and to lead them on to a state of what may be called absolute! rather than statistical! normality = a

state in which they reali0e who! at bottom! they are. #here can be no spirituality except on a basis of well-informed materialism. +acking completely such a basis! psychology as we know it at present is doomed to go on being theoretically unrealistic and! in practice! largely ineffective. Hardly less ama0ing than the founding fathers" neglect of the body is their failure to pay any attention to language as a determinant of thought! feeling and behavior. .e are human because we talk! and the universe in which we live is largely a homemade affair! carved out of the given world by our vocabulary and our syntax! and re-created by ourselves so as to conform in its structure to the structure of the language in which we happen to have been brought up. All the founding fathers! and especially >ung! were deeply interested in what ,r. -romm calls "the forgotten language" of dreams! myths and fairy tales. %ut incomparably more important to every human being than this forgotten language is the well-remembered dialect in which he talks to other human beings! the native language = English! 1hinese! Eskimo = in terms of which he does most of his learning! almost all his thinking and even much of his feeling and perceiving. :&ur perceiving is hardly ever of events as they are immediately given' it is rather of our own ready-made! verbali0ed concepts pro/ected by the perceiver into the outside world and super-imposed! so to speak! upon the ob/ects of our immediate experience.; &ur dependence on language is such that! for most of us! words no longer stand for things = rather things stand for words! and ob/ects are treated as so many illustrations of our verbali0ed abstractions. ?o language is completely true to the inner and outer world! to which it is supposed to refer. Most languages! indeed! are so untrue to given reality that it has become necessary to supplement them with the special languages of mathematics. #hus! the world is un$uestionably a continuum' there are in reality no separate substantial things! there are only merging events and interacting processes in space-time. %ut our languages :at any rate those of the ndo-European stock; do not permit us to speak about the world as a continuum! and whenever we want to discuss this aspect of reality! we must use such special! ad hoc languages as the calculus. &ur linguistic troubles would be grave enough! even if we always used our language correctly! according to the rules of logic and the dictates of common sense. %ut in many circumstances of life! we use language incorrectly and with a total disregard for the rules. #he result is unrealistic thinking! debauched feeling and distorted perception! leading to action of every degree of inappropriateness from the merely eccentric to the diabolic! from harmless Micawberism to such collective insanities as Hitlerism! heresy hunting and religious wars. 1onsistently bad language! as For0ybski and the 4emanticists have pointed out! is a prime cause of delin$uency in thinking! feeling and behaving. %ut most modern psychologists! as we have seen! are more interested in s$uabbling about the interpretation of the coded rigmarole of dreams than in studying the far more important sub/ect of the language nobody ever forgets! and the ways in which! during our waking hours! we talk ourselves and one another out of all contact with cosmic reality and the elementary conventions of human decency. And now let us briefly consider a few more of the shortcomings of the founding fathers. As ,r. 7rogoff has pointed out! all of them indulged in the intellectual sin of working up their private experiences into universal generali0ations. #hus -reud! for psychological reasons of his own! extolled the extroverted life as "the way of health for every man." #his conclusion is wholly unwarranted' for it is $uite obvious that many

people are congenially introverted and that! for them! the extroverted life is the way of misery! neurosis and disease. And here is another curious example of the same kind of intellectual delin$uency. &tto Eank broke with -reud by performing what was for him a great creative act = the writing of his book! The Trauma o, *irth. -reud had been very kind to Eank! and! after the break! the latter felt severe pangs of remorse. @niversali0ing his private feelings! he proceeded to "make the acute observation that one of the aftermaths of a creative act is an attack of guilt feelings! remorse and anxiety." #he only trouble with this "acute observation" is that it happens to be untrue to all the facts! except those of Eank"s private experience in a very special situation. .hen Eank asserted that all creative acts are followed by guilt feelings! he was not making an acute observation' he was merely indulging in bad logic! egotism and voluntary ignorance. have known many artists! and have observed that their creative acts were sometimes followed by boredom and a sense of emptiness! due to the fact that they had finished their task and had nothing further! for the moment! to do. &ccasionally! too! some of them would experience a feeling of disgust at the thought that they had put forth their best efforts and exposed their very souls for the amusement of an indifferent! uncomprehending and profoundly frivolous public. #he artists of my ac$uaintance never suffered from guilt feelings after an act of creation = for the good reason that none was in the peculiar position! while creating! of having $uarreled with a benefactor. %uilding up grandiose generali0ations from a few cases! or even from a single case = this! among the psychologists! has been standard procedure. ?o less characteristic! and no less deplorably unscientific! has been their tendency to dogmati0e. #he founding fathers $uarreled with one another' for each was convinced of his own absolute rightness. #hus! in the matter of dream interpretations! "-reud!" to $uote the words of ,r. -romm! "rigidly refused to accept any modification and insisted that the only possible interpretation of a dream was that of the wish-fulfillment theory. . . >ung. . . e$ually dogmatically tended to interpret the dream as an expression of the wisdom of the unconscious." 4ome of the old odium theologicum :the theological hatred! the loathing on principle; tends to survive among their followers! and we are treated to the ludicrous spectacle = ludicrous! that is to say! in a field which is supposed to be scientific = of -reudianity pitted against >ungism! orthodoxy against orthodoxy! and both against the eclectic Modernism which is gradually taking their place. 7erhaps the most ludicrous fact of all is that forty years of sectarian s$uabbling might have been avoided! if the combatants had taken the trouble to study a book! which appeared at the dawn of the "7sychological Era." refer to -. .. H. Myers" Human )ersonality, first published in ()DZ. Myers set forth a theory of the unconscious far more comprehensive than -reud"s narrow and one-sided hypothesis! and superior to >ung"s in being better documented with concrete facts and less encumbered with those psycho-anthropologicopseudo-genetic speculations which becloud the writings of the 4age of Hurich. >ung is like those 5erman classical scholars! of whom 7erson once said that "they dive deeper and come up muddier than any others." Myers has the immense merit of diving as deeply as >ung into that impersonal! spiritual world which transcends and interpenetrates our bodies! our conscious minds and our personal unconscious = of diving as deeply! but of coming up again with the minimum of mud on him. &ne of the oddest facts about the oddest of the sciences! is that this ama0ingly rich! wide-ranging and profound book should have been neglected in favor of description of psychological reality much less

complete and realistic! and of explanatory theories much less ade$uate to the given facts. :-rom ?s#uire Maga0ine;

R, 2OR SENSE AN$ PS.C-E

T!e $oors of Perce#t"on t was in (LLP that the 5erman pharmacologist! +udwig +ewin! published the first systematic study of the cactus! to which his own name was subse$uently given. 1nhalonium 'ewinii was new to science. #o primitive religion and the ndians of Mexico and the American 4outhwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing. ndeed! it was much more than a friend. n the words of one of the early 4panish visitors to the ?ew .orld! "they eat a root which they call peyote! and which they venerate as though it were a deity." .hy they should have venerated it as a deity became apparent when such eminent psychologists as >aensch! Havelock Ellis and .eir Mitchell began their experiments with mescalin! the active principle of peyote. #rue! they stopped short at a point well this side of idolatry' but all concurred in assigning to mescalin a position among drugs of uni$ue distinction. Administered in suitable doses! it changes the $uality of consciousness more profoundly and yet is less toxic than any other substance in the pharmacologist"s repertory. Mescalin research has been going on sporadically ever since the days of +ewin and Havelock Ellis. 1hemists have not merely isolated the alkaloid' they have learned how to synthesi0e it! so that the supply no longer depends on the sparse and intermittent crop of a desert cactus. Alienists have dosed themselves with mescalin in the hope thereby of coming to a better! a first-hand! understanding of their patients" mental processes. .orking unfortunately upon too few sub/ects within too narrow a range of circumstances! psychologists have observed and catalogued some of the drug"s more striking effects. ?eurologists and physiologists have found out something about the mechanism of its action upon the central nervous system. And at least one professional philosopher has taken mescalin for the light it may throw on such ancient! unsolved riddles as the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness. #here matters rested until! two or three years ago! a new and perhaps highly significant fact was observed. Actually the fact had been staring everyone in the face for several decades' but nobody! as it happened! had noticed it until a young English psychiatrist! at present working in 1anada! was struck by the close similarity! in chemical composition! between mescalin and adrenalin. -urther research revealed that lysergic acid! an extremely potent hallucinogen derived from ergot! has a structural biochemical relationship to the others. #hen came the discovery that adrenochrome! which is a product of the decomposition of adrenalin! can produce many of the symptoms observed

in mescalin intoxication. %ut adrenochrome probably occurs spontaneously in the human body. n other words! each one of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical! minute doses of which are known to cause profound changes in consciousness. 1ertain of these changes are similar to those which occur in that most characteristic plague of the twentieth century! schi0ophrenia. s the mental disorder due to a chemical disorder< And is the chemical disorder due! in its turn! to psychological distresses affecting the adrenals< t would be rash and premature to affirm it. #he most we can say is that some kind of a rima ,acie case has been made out. Meanwhile the clue is being systematically followed! the sleuths = biochemists! psychiatrists! psychologists = are on the trail. %y a series of! for me! extremely fortunate circumstances found myself! in the spring of ()*Z! s$uarely athwart that trail. &ne of the sleuths had come on business to 1alifornia. n spite of seventy years of mescalin research! the psychological material at his disposal was still absurdly inade$uate! and he was anxious to add to it. was on the spot and willing! indeed eager! to be a guinea pig. #hus it came about that! one bright May morning! swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescalin dissolved in half a glass of water and sat down to wait for the results. . . Half an hour after swallowing the drug became aware of a slow dance of golden lights. A little later there were sumptuous red surfaces swelling and expanding from bright nodes of energy that vibrated with a continuously changing! patterned life. At another time the closing of my eyes revealed a complex of gray structures! within which pale bluish spheres kept emerging into intense solidity and! having emerged! would slide noiselessly upwards! out of sight. %ut at no time were there faces or forms of men or animals. saw no landscapes! no enormous spaces! no magical growth and metamorphosis of buildings! nothing remotely like a drama or a parable. #he other world to which mescalin admitted me was not the world of visions' it existed out there! in what could see with my eyes open. #he great change was in the realm of ob/ective fact. .hat had happened to my sub/ective universe was relatively unimportant. took my pill at eleven. An hour and a half later! was sitting in my study! looking intently at a small glass vase. #he vase contained only three flowers = a fullblown %elle of 7ortugal rose! shell pink with a hint at every petal"s base of a hotter! flamier hue' a large magenta and cream-colored carnation' and! pale purple at the end of its broken stalk! the bold heraldic blossom of an iris. -ortuitous and provisional! the little nosegay broke all the rules of traditional good taste. At breakfast that morning had been struck by the lively dissonance of its colors. %ut that was no longer the point. was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation = the miracle! moment by moment! of naked existence. " s it agreeable<" somebody asked. :,uring this part of the experiment! all conversations were recorded on a dictating machine! and it has been possible for me to refresh my memory of what was said.; "?either agreeable nor disagreeable!" answered. " t /ust is." 3stig/eit= wasn"t that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use< " s-ness." #he %eing of 7latonic philosophy = except that 7lato seems to have made the enormous! the grotes$ue mistake of separating %eing from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the dea. He could never! poor fellow! have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but $uivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged' could never have perceived that what rose

and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more! and nothing less! than what they were = a transience that was yet eternal life! a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure %eing! a bundle of minute! uni$ue particulars in which! by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox! was to be seen the divine source of all existence. continued to look at the flowers! and in their living light seemed to detect the $ualitative e$uivalent of breathing = but of a breathing without returns to a starting point! with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty! from deeper to ever deeper meaning. .ords like "grace" and "transfiguration" came to my mind! and this! of course! was what! among other things! they stood for. My eyes traveled from the rose to the carnation! and from that feathery incandescence to the smooth scrolls of sentient amethyst which were the iris. #he %eatific 8ision! (at Chit 1nanda, %eing-Awareness-%liss = for the first time understood! not on the verbal level! not by inchoate hints or at a distance! but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then remembered a passage had read in one of 4u0uki"s essays. ".hat is the ,harma-%ody of the %uddha<" :"#he ,harma-%ody of the %uddha" is another way of saying Mind! 4uchness! the 8oid! the 5odhead.; #he $uestion is asked in a Hen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx %rothers! the Master answers! "#he hedge at the bottom of the garden." "And the man who reali0es this truth!" the novice dubiously in$uires! "what! may ask! is he<" 5roucho gives him a whack over the shoulders with his staff and answers! "A golden-haired lion." t had been! when read it! only a vaguely pregnant piece of nonsense. ?ow it was all as clear as day! as evident as Euclid. &f course the ,harma-%ody of the %uddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time! and no less obviously! it was these flowers! it was anything that = or rather the blessed ?ot- ! released for a moment from my throttling embrace = cared to look at. #he books! for example! with which my study walls were lined. +ike the flowers! they glowed! when looked at them! with brighter colors! a profounder significance. Eed books! like rubies' emerald books' books bound in white /ade' books of agate' of a$uamarine! of yellow topa0' lapis la0uli books whose color was so intense! so intrinsically meaningful! that they seemed to be on the point of leaving the shelves to thrust themselves more insistently on my attention. ".hat about spatial relationships<" the investigator in$uired! as was looking at the books. t was difficult to answer. #rue! the perspective looked rather odd! and the walls of the room no longer seemed to meet in right angles. %ut these were not the really important facts. #he really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as -here: = How ,ar: = How situated in relation to what: n the mescalin experience the implied $uestions to which the eye responds are of another order. 7lace and distance cease to be of much interest. #he mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence! profundity of significance! relationships within a pattern. saw the books! but was not at all concerned with their positions in space. .hat noticed! what impressed itself upon my mind was the fact that all of them glowed with living light and that in some the glory was more manifest than in others. n this context position and the three

dimensions were beside the point. ?ot! of course! that the category of space had been abolished. .hen got up and walked about! could do so $uite normally! without mis/udging the whereabouts of ob/ects. 4pace was still there' but it had lost its predominance. #he mind was primarily concerned! not with measures and locations! but with being and meaning. And along with indifference to space there went an even more complete indifference to time. "#here seems to be plenty of it!" was all would answer! when the investigator asked me to say what felt about time. 7lenty of it! but exactly how much was entirely irrelevant. could! of course! have looked at my watch' but my watch! knew! was in another universe. My actual experience had been! was still! of an indefinite duration or alternatively of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse. -rom the books the investigator directed my attention to the furniture. A small typing table stood in the center of the room' beyond it! from my point of view! was a wicker chair and beyond that a desk. #he three pieces formed an intricate pattern of hori0ontals! uprights and diagonals = a pattern all the more interesting for not being interpreted in terms of spatial relationships. #able! chair and desk came together in a composition that was like something by %ra$ue or >uan 5ris! a still life recogni0ably related to the ob/ective world! but rendered without depth! without any attempt at photographic realism. was looking at my furniture! not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs! to write at desks and tables! and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder! but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. %ut as looked! this purely aesthetic! 1ubist"s-eye view gave place to what can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. was back where had been when was looking at the flowers = back in a world where everything shone with the nner +ight! and was infinite in its significance. #he legs! for example! of that chair = how miraculous their tubularity! how supernatural their polished smoothness3 spent several minutes = or was it several centuries< = not merely ga0ing at those bamboo legs! but actually !eing them = or rather being myself in them' or! to be still more accurate :for " " was not involved in the case! nor in a certain sense were "they"; being my ?ot-self in the ?ot-self which was the chair. Eeflecting on my experience! find myself agreeing with the eminent 1ambridge philosopher! ,r. 1. ,. %road! "that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which %ergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. #he suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. #he function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge! by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment! and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." According to such a theory! each one of us is potentially Mind at +arge. %ut in so far as we are animals! our business is at all costs to survive. #o make biological survival possible! Mind at +arge has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and

nervous system. .hat comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. . . #he effects of mescalin are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. .hen the brain runs out of sugar! the undernourished ego grows weak! can"t be bothered to undertake the necessary chores! and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As Mind at +arge seeps past the no longer watertight valve! all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. n some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. &ther persons discover a world of visionary beauty. #o others again is revealed the glory! the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence! of the given! unconceptuali0ed event. . . "#his is how one ought to see!" kept saying as looked down at my trousers! or glanced at the /eweled books in the shelves! at the legs of my infinitely more than 8an5oghian chair. "#his is how one ought to see! how things really are." And yet there were reservations. -or if one always saw like this! one would never want to do anything else. >ust looking! /ust being the divine ?ot-self of flower! of book! of chair! of flannel. #hat would be enough. %ut in that case what about other people< .hat about human relations< n the recording of that morning"s conversations find the $uestion constantly repeated! ".hat about human relations<" How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel< "&ne ought to be able!" said! "to see these trousers as infinitely important and human beings as still more infinitely important." &ne ought = but in practice it seemed to be impossible. #his participation in the manifest glory of things left no room! so to speak! for the ordinary! the necessary concerns of human existence! above all for concerns involving persons. -or persons are selves and! in one respect at least! was now a ?ot-self! simultaneously perceiving and being the ?ot-self of the things around me. #o this new-born ?ot-self! the behavior! the appearance! the very thought of the self it had momentarily ceased to be! and of other selves! its one-time fellows! seemed not indeed distasteful :for distastefulness was not one of the categories in terms of which was thinking;! but enormously irrelevant. 1ompelled by the investigator to analy0e and report on what was doing :and how longed to be left alone with Eternity in a flower! nfinity in four chair legs and the Absolute in the folds of a pair of flannel trousers3;! reali0ed that was deliberately avoiding the eyes of those who were with me in the room! deliberately refraining from being too much aware of them. &ne was my wife! the other a man respected and greatly liked' but both belonged to the world from which! for the moment! mescalin had delivered me = the world of selves! of time! of moral /udgments and utilitarian considerations! the world :and it was this aspect of human life which wished! above all else! to forget; of self-assertion! of cocksureness! of overvalued words and idolatrously worshiped notions. At this stage of the proceedings was handed a large colored reproduction of the well-known self-portrait by 190anne = the head and shoulders of a man in a large straw hat! red-cheeked! red-lipped! with rich black whiskers and a dark unfriendly eye. t is a magnificent painting' but it was not as a painting that now saw it. -or the head promptly took on a third dimension and came to life as a small goblin-like man looking out through a window in the page before me. started to laugh. And when they asked me why! ".hat

pretensions3" kept repeating. ".ho on earth does he think he is<" #he $uestion was not addressed to 190anne in particular! but to the human species at large. .ho did they all think they were< -or relief turned back to the folds in my trousers. "#his is how one ought to see!" repeated yet again. And might have added! "#hese are the sort of things one ought to look at." #hings without pretensions! satisfied to be merely themselves! sufficient in their 4uchness! not acting a part! not trying! insanely! to go it alone! in isolation from the ,harma-%ody! in +uciferian defiance of the grace of 5od. "#he nearest approach to this!" said! "would be a 8ermeer." Aes! a 8ermeer. -or that mysterious artist was trebly gifted = with the vision that perceives the ,harma-%ody as the hedge at the bottom of the garden! with the talent to render as much of that vision as the limitations of human capacity permit! and with the prudence to confine himself in his paintings to the more manageable aspects of reality' for though 8ermeer represented human beings! he was always a painter of still life. 190anne! who told his female sitters to do their best to look like apples! tried to paint portraits in the same spirit. %ut his pippin-like women are more nearly related to 7lato"s deas than to the ,harma-%ody in the hedge. #hey are Eternity and nfinity seen! not in sand or flower! but in the abstractions of some very superior brand of geometry. 8ermeer never asked his girls to look like apples. &n the contrary! he insisted on their being girls to the very limit = but always with the proviso that they refrain from behaving girlishly. #hey might sit or $uietly stand but never giggle! never display self-consciousness! never say their prayers or pine for absent sweethearts! never gossip! never ga0e enviously at other women"s babies! never flirt! never love or hate or work. n the act of doing any of these things they would doubtless become more intensely themselves! but would cease! for that very reason! to manifest their divine essential ?ot-self. n %lake"s phrase! the doors of 8ermeer"s perception were only partially cleansed. A single panel had become almost perfectly transparent' the rest of the door was still muddy. #he essential ?ot-self could be perceived very clearly in things and in living creatures on the hither side of good and evil. n human beings it was visible only when they were in repose! their minds untroubled! their bodies motionless. n these circumstances 8ermeer could see 4uchness in all its heavenly beauty = could see and! in some small measure! render it in a subtle and sumptuous still life. 8ermeer is undoubtedly the greatest painter of human still lives. . . %ut meanwhile my $uestion remained unanswered. How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern with human relations! with the necessary chores and duties! to say nothing of charity and practical compassion< #he ageold debate between the actives and the contemplatives was being renewed = renewed! so far as was concerned! with an unprecedented poignancy. -or until this morning had known contemplation only in its humbler! its more ordinary forms = as discursive thinking' as a rapt absorption in poetry or painting or music' as a patient waiting upon those inspirations! without which even the prosiest writer cannot hope to accomplish anything' as occasional glimpses! in ?ature! of .ordsworth"s "something far more deeply interfused"' as systematic silence leading! sometimes! to hints of an "obscure knowledge." %ut now knew contemplation at its height. At its height! but not yet in its fullness. -or in its fullness the way of Mary includes the way of Martha and raises it! so to speak! to its own higher power. Mescalin opens up the way of Mary! but shuts the door

on that of Martha. t gives access to contemplation = but to a contemplation that is incompatible with action and even with the will to action! the very thought of action. n the intervals between his revelations the mescalin taker is apt to feel that! though in one way everything is supremely as it should be! in another there is something wrong. His problem is essentially the same as that which confronts the $uietest! the arhat and! on another level! the landscape painter and the painter of human still lives. Mescalin can never solve that problem' it can only pose it! apocalyptically! for those to whom it had never before presented itself. #he full and final solution can be found only by those who are prepared to implement the right kind of -eltanschauung by means of the right kind of behavior and the right kind of constant and unstrained alertness. &ver against the $uietist stands the active-contemplative! the saint! the man who! in Eckhart"s phrase! is ready to come down from the seventh heaven in order to bring a cup of water to his sick brother. &ver against the arhat, retreating from appearances into an entirely transcendental ?irvana! stands the %odhisattva! for whom 4uchness and the world of contingencies are one! and for whose boundless compassion every one of those contingencies is an occasion not only for transfiguring insight! but also for the most practical charity. And in the universe of art! over against 8ermeer and the other painters of human still lives! over against the masters of 1hinese and >apanese landscape painting! over against 1onstable and #urner! against 4isley and 4eurat and 190anne! stands the allinclusive art of Eembrandt. #hese are enormous names! inaccessible eminences. -or myself! on this memorable May morning! could only be grateful for an experience which had shown me! more clearly than had ever seen it before! the true nature of the challenge and the completely liberating response. :-rom The Doors o, )erce tion0

$r(7s T!at S!a#e *en<s *"nds n the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. #he craving for ethyl alcohol and the opiates has been stronger! in these millions! than the love of 5od! of home! of children' even of life. #heir cry was not for liberty or death' it was for death preceded by enslavement. #here is a paradox here! and a mystery. .hy should such multitudes of men and women be so ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause so utterly hopeless and in ways so painful and so profoundly humiliating< #o this riddle there is! of course! no simple or single answer. Human beings are immensely complicated creatures! living simultaneously in a half do0en different worlds. Each individual is uni$ue and! in a number of respects! unlike all the other members of the species. ?one of our motives is unmixed! none of our actions can be traced back to a single source and! in any group we care to study! behavior patterns that are observably similar may be the result of many constellations of dissimilar causes. #hus! there are some alcoholics who seem to have been biochemically predestined to alcoholism. :Among rats! as 7rof. Eoger .illiams! of the @niversity of #exas! has shown! some are born drunkards' some are born teetotalers and will never touch the stuff.; &ther alcoholics have been foredoomed not by some inherited defect in their

biochemical make-up! but by their neurotic reactions to distressing events in their childhood or adolescence. Again! others embark upon their course of slow suicide as a result of mere imitation and good fellowship because they have made such an "excellent ad/ustment to their group" = a process which! if the group happens to be criminal! idiotic or merely ignorant! can bring only disaster to the well-ad/usted individual. ?or must we forget that large class of addicts who have taken to drugs or drink in order to escape from physical pain. Aspirin! let us remember! is a very recent invention. @ntil late in the 8ictorian era! "poppy and mandragora!" along with henbane and ethyl alcohol! were the only pain relievers available to civili0ed man. #oothache! arthritis and neuralgia could! and fre$uently did! drive men and women to become opium addicts. ,e Guincey! for example! first resorted to opium in order to relieve "excruciating rheumatic pains of the head." He swallowed his poppy and! an hour later! ".hat a resurrection from the lowest depths of the inner spirit3 .hat an apocalypse3" And it was not merely that he felt no more pain. "#his negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened up before me! in the abyss of divine en/oyment thus suddenly revealed. . . Here was the secret of happiness! about which the philosophers had disputed for so many ages! at once discovered." "Eesurrection! apocalypse! divine en/oyment! happiness. . ." ,e Guincey"s words lead us to the very heart of our paradoxical mystery. #he problem of drug addiction and excessive drinking is not merely a matter of chemistry and psychopathology! of relief from pain and conformity with a bad society. t is also a problem in metaphysics = a problem! one might almost say! in theology. n #he 8arieties of Eeligious Experience! .illiam >ames has touched on these metaphysical aspects of addiction6
The sway of alcohol over mankind is un<uestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties in human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour" 4obriety diminishes, discriminates and says no" Arunkenness e'pands, unites and says yes" *t is in fact the great e'citer of the ,es function in man" *t brings its votary from the chill periphery of things into the radiant core" *t makes him for the moment one with truth" 7ot through mere perversity do men run after it" To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recogni$e as e'cellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only through the fleeting earlier phases of what, in its totality, is so degrading a poison" The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole"

.illiam >ames was not the first to detect a likeness between drunkenness and the mystical and premystical states. &n the day of 7entecost there were people who explained the strange behavior of the disciples by saying! "#hese men are full of new wine." 7eter soon undeceived them6 "#hese are not drunken! as ye suppose! seeing it is but the third hour of the day. %ut this is that which was spoken by the prophet >oel. And it shall come to pass in the last days! saith 5od! will pour out of my 4pirit upon all flesh." And it is not only by "the dry critics of the sober hour" that the state of 5odintoxication has been likened to drunkenness. n their efforts to express the inexpressible! the great mystics themselves have done the same. #hus! 4t. #heresa of Avila tells us that she "regards the center of our soul as a cellar! into which 5od admits us as and when it pleases Him! so as to intoxicate us with the delicious wine of His grace."

Every fully developed religion exists simultaneously on several different levels. t exists as a set of abstract concepts about the world and its governance. t exists as a set of rites and sacraments! as a traditional method for manipulating the symbols! by means of which beliefs about the cosmic order are expressed. t exists as the feelings of love! fear and devotion evoked by this manipulation of symbols. And finally it exists as a special kind of feeling or intuition = a sense of the oneness of all things in their divine principle! a reali0ation :to use the language of Hindu theology; that "thou art #hat!" a mystical experience of what seems self-evidently to be union with 5od. #he ordinary waking consciousness is a very useful and! on most occasions! an indispensable state of mind' but it is by no means the only form of consciousness! nor in all circumstances the best. nsofar as he transcends his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness! the mystic is able to enlarge his vision! to look more deeply into the unfathomable miracle of existence. #he mystical experience is doubly valuable' it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life. n hell! a great religious poet has written! the punishment of the lost is to be "their sweating selves! but worse." &n earth we are not worse than we are' we are merely our sweating selves! period. Alas! that is $uite bad enough. .e love ourselves to the point of idolatry' but we also intensely dislike ourselves = we find ourselves unutterably boring. 1orrelated with this distaste for trie idolatrously worshiped self! there is in all of us a desire! sometimes latent! sometimes conscious and passionately expressed! to escape trom the prison of our individuality! an urge to self-transcendence. t is to this urge that we owe mystical theology! spiritual exercises and yoga = to this! too! that we owe alcoholism and drug addiction. Modern pharmacology has given us a host of new synthetics! but in the field of the naturally occurring mind changers it has made no radical discoveries. All the botanical sedatives! stimulants! vision revealers! happiness promoters and cosmicconsciousness arousers were found out thousands of years ago! before the dawn of history. n many societies at many levels of civili0ation attempts have been made to fuse drug intoxication with 5od intoxication. n ancient 5reece! for example! ethyl alcohol had its place in the established religion. ,ionysus! or %acchus! as he was often called! was a true divinity. His worshipers addressed him as 'usios, "+iberator!" or as Theoinos, "5od-wine." #he latter name telescopes fermented grape /uice and the supernatural into a single pentecostal experience. "%orn a god!" writes Euripides! "%acchus is poured out as a libation to the gods! and through him men receive good." @nfortunately they also receive harm. #he blissful experience of self-transcendence which alcohol makes possible has to be paid for! and the price is exorbitantly high. 1omplete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed! but cannot be enforced! and tends to create more evils than it cures. Even more unsatisfactory has been the policy of complete toleration and unrestricted availability. n England! during the first years of the eighteenth century! cheap untaxed gin = "drunk for a penny! dead drunk for two-pence" = threatened society with complete demorali0ation. A century later! opium!

in the form of laudanum! was reconciling the victims of the ndustrial Eevolution to their lot = but at an appalling cost in terms of addiction! illness and early death. #oday most civili0ed societies follow a course between the two extremes of total prohibition and total toleration. 1ertain mind-changing drugs! such as alcohol! are permitted and made available to the public on payment of a very high tax! which tends to restrict their consumption. &ther mind changers are unobtainable except under doctors" orders = or illegally from a dope pusher. n this way the problem is kept within manageable bounds. t is most certainly not solved. n their ceaseless search for self-transcendence! millions of would-be mystics become addicts! commit scores of thousands of crimes and are involved in hundreds of thousands of avoidable accidents. ,o we have to go on in this dismal way indefinitely< @p until a few years ago! the answer to such a $uestion would have been a rueful "Aes! we do." #oday! thanks to recent developments in biochemistry and pharmacology! we are offered a workable alternative. .e see that it may soon be possible for us to do something better in the way of chemical self-transcendence than what we have been doing so ineptly for the last seventy or eighty centuries. s it possible for a powerful drug to be completely harmless< 7erhaps not. %ut the physiological cost can certainly be reduced to the point where it becomes negligible. #here are powerful mind changers which do their work without damaging the taker"s psychophysical organism and without inciting him to behave like a criminal or a lunatic. %iochemistry and pharmacology are /ust getting into their stride. .ithin a few years there will probably be do0ens of powerful but = physiologically and socially speaking = very inexpensive mind changers on the market. n view of what we already have in the way of powerful but nearly harmless drugs' in view! above all! of what un$uestionably we are very soon going to have = we ought to start immediately to give some serious thought to the problem of the new mind changers. How ought they to be used< How can they be abused< .ill human beings be better and happier for their discovery< &r worse and more miserable< #he matter re$uires to be examined from many points of view. t is simultaneously a $uestion for biochemists and physicians! for psychologists and social anthropologists! for legislators and law-enforcement officers. And finally it is an ethical $uestion and a religious $uestion. 4ooner or later = and the sooner! the better = the various specialists concerned will have to meet! discuss and then decide! in the light of the best available evidence and the most imaginative kind of foresight! what should be done. Meanwhile let us take a preliminary look at this many-faceted problem. +ast year American physicians wrote ML!DDD!DDD prescriptions for tran$uili0ing drugs! many of which have been refilled! probably more than once. #he tran$uili0ers are the best known of the new! nearly harmless mind changers. #hey can be used by most people! not indeed with complete impunity! but at a reasonably low physiological cost. #heir enormous popularity bears witness to the fact that a great many people dislike both their environment and "their sweating selves." @nder tran$uili0ers the degree of their self-transcendence is not very great' but it is enough to make all the difference! in many cases! between misery and contentment. n theory! tran$uili0ers should be given only to persons suffering from rather severe forms of neurosis or psychosis. n practice! unfortunately! many physicians have been carried away by the current pharmacological fashion and are prescribing

tran$uili0ers to all and sundry. #he history of medical fashions! it may be remarked! is at least as grotes$ue as the history of fashions in women"s hats = at least as grotes$ue and! since human lives are at stake! considerably more tragic. n the present case! millions of patients who had no real need of the tran$uili0ers have been given the pills by their doctors and have learned to resort to them in every predicament! however triflingly uncomfortable. #his is very bad medicine and! from the pill taker"s point of view! dubious morality and poor sense. #here are circumstances in which even the healthy are /ustified in resorting to the chemical control of negative emotions. f you really can"t keep your temper! let a tran$uili0er keep it for you. %ut for healthy people to resort to a chemical mind changer every time they feel annoyed or anxious or tense is neither sensible nor right. #oo much tension and anxiety can reduce a man"s efficiency = but so can too little. #here are many occasions when it is entirely proper for us to feel concerned! when an excess of placidity might reduce our chances of dealing effectively with a ticklish situation. &n these occasions! tension mitigated and directed from within by the psychological methods of self-control is preferable from every point of view to complacency imposed from without by the methods of chemical control. And now let us consider the case = not! alas! a hypothetical case = of two societies competing with each other. n 4ociety A! tran$uili0ers are available by prescription and at a rather stiff price = which means! in practice! that their use is confined to that rich and influential minority which provides the society with its leadership. #his minority of leading citi0ens consumes several billions of the complacency-producing pills every year. n 4ociety %! on the other hand! the tran$uili0ers are not so freely available! and the members of the influential minority do not resort! on the slightest provocation! to the chemical control of what may be necessary and productive tension. .hich of these two competing societies is likely to win the race< A society whose leaders make an excessive use of soothing syrups is in danger of falling behind a society whose leaders are not overtran$uili0ed. ?ow let us consider another kind of drug = still undiscovered! but probably /ust around the corner = a drug capable of making people feel happy in situations where they would normally feel miserable. 4uch a drug would be a blessing! but a blessing fraught with grave political dangers. %y making harmless chemical euphoria freely available! a dictator could reconcile an entire population to a state of affairs to which self-respecting human beings ought not to be reconciled. ,espots have always found it necessary to supplement force by political or religious propaganda. n this sense the pen is mightier than the sword. %ut mightier than either the pen or the sword is the pill. n mental hospitals it has been found that chemical restraint is far more effective than strait /ackets or psychiatry. #he dictatorships of tomorrow will deprive men of their freedom! but will give them in exchange a happiness none the less real! as a sub/ective experience! for being chemically induced. #he pursuit of happiness is one of the traditional rights of man' unfortunately! the achievement of happiness may turn out to be incompatible with another of man"s rights = namely! liberty. t is $uite possible! however! that pharmacology will restore with one hand what it takes away with the other. 1hemically induced euphoria could easily become a threat to individual liberty' but chemically induced vigor and chemically heightened intelligence could easily be liberty"s strongest bulwark. Most of us function at about (* per cent of

capacity. How can we step up our lamentably low efficiency< #wo methods are available = the educational and the biochemical. .e can take adults and children as they are and give them a much better training than we are giving them now. &r! by appropriate biochemical methods! we can transform them into superior individuals. f these superior individuals are given a superior education! the results will be revolutionary. #hey will be startling even if we continue to sub/ect them to the rather poor educational methods at present in vogue. .ill it in fact be possible to produce superior individuals by biochemical means< #he Eussians certainly believe it. #hey are now halfway through a -ive Aear 7lan to produce "pharmacological substances that normali0e higher nervous activity and heighten human capacity for work." 7recursors of these future mind improvers are already being experimented with. t has been found! for example! that when given in massive doses some of the vitamins = nicotinic acid and ascorbic acid for example = sometimes produce a certain heightening of psychic energy. A combination of two en0ymes = ethylene disulphonate and adenosine triphosphate! which! when in/ected together! improve carbohydrate metabolism in nervous tissue = may also turn out to be effective. Meanwhile good results are being claimed for various new synthetic! nearly harmless stimulants. #here is ipronia0id! which! according to some authorities! "appears to increase the total amount of psychic energy." @nfortunately! ipronia0id in large doses has side effects which in some cases may be extremely serious. Another psychic energi0er is an amino alcohol which is thought to increase the body"s production of acetylcholine! a substance of prime importance in the functioning of the nervous system. n view of what has already been achieved! it seems $uite possible that! within a few years! we may be able to lift ourselves up by our own biochemical bootstraps. n the meantime let us all fervently wish the Eussians every success in their current pharmacological venture. #he discovery of a drug capable of increasing the average individual"s psychic energy! and its wide distribution throughout the @.4.4.E.! would probably mean the end of Eussia"s present form of government. 5enerali0ed intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy. Even in the democratic .est we could do with a bit of psychic energi0ing. %etween them! education and pharmacology may do something to offset the effects of that deterioration of our biological material to which geneticists have fre$uently called attention. -rom these political and ethical considerations let us now pass to the strictly religious problems that will be posed by some of the new mind changers. .e can foresee the nature of these future problems by studying the effects of a natural mind changer! which has been used for centuries past in religious worship' refer to the peyote cactus of ?orthern Mexico and the 4outhwestern @nited 4tates. 7eyote contains mescaline = which can now be produced synthetically = and mescaline! in .illiam >ames" phrase! "stimulates the mystical faculties in human nature" far more powerfully and in a far more enlightening way than alcohol and! what is more! it does so at a physiological and social cost that is negligibly low. 7eyote produces self-transcendence in two ways = it introduces the taker into the &ther .orld of visionary experience! and it gives him a sense of solidarity with his fellow worshipers! with human beings at large and with the divine nature of things. #he effects of peyote can be duplicated by synthetic mescaline and by +4,

:lysergic acid diethylamide;! a derivative of ergot. Effective in incredibly small doses! +4, is now being used experimentally by psychotherapists in Europe! in 4outh America! in 1anada and the @nited 4tates. t lowers the barrier between conscious and subconscious and permits the patient to look more deeply and understandingly into the recesses of his own mind. #he deepening of self-knowledge takes place against a background of visionary and even mystical experience. .hen administered in the right kind of psychological environment! these chemical mind changers make possible a genuine religious experience. #hus a person who takes +4, or mescaline may suddenly understand = not only intellectually but organically! experientially = the meaning of such tremendous religious affirmations as "5od is love!" or "#hough He slay me! yet will trust in Him." t goes without saying that this kind of temporary self-transcendence is no guarantee of permanent enlightenment or a lasting improvement of conduct. t is a "gratuitous grace!" which is neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation! but which if properly used! can be enormously helpful to those who have received it. And this is true of all such experiences! whether occurring spontaneously! or as the result of swallowing the right kind of chemical mind changer! or after undertaking a course of "spiritual exercises" or bodily mortification. #hose who are offended by the idea that the swallowing of a pill may contribute to a genuinely religious experience should remember that all the standard mortifications = fasting! voluntary sleeplessness and self-torture = inflicted upon themselves by the ascetics of every religion for the purpose of ac$uiring merit! are also! like the mindchanging drugs! powerful devices for altering the chemistry of the body in general and the nervous system in particular. &r consider the procedures generally known as spiritual exercises. #he breathing techni$ues taught by the yogi of ndia result in prolonged suspensions of respiration. #hese in turn result in an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood' and the psychological conse$uence of this is a change in the $uality of consciousness. Again! meditations involving long! intense concentration upon a single idea or image may also result = for neurological reasons which do not profess to understand = in a slowing down of respiration and even in prolonged suspensions of breathing. Many ascetics and mystics have practiced their chemistry-changing mortifications and spiritual exercises while living! for longer or shorter periods! as hermits. ?ow! the life of a hermit! such as 4aint Anthony! is a life in which there are very few external stimuli. %ut as Hebb! >ohn +illy and other experimental psychologists have recently shown in the laboratory! a person in a limited environment! which provides very few external stimuli! soon undergoes a change in the $uality of his consciousness and may transcend his normal self to the point of hearing voices or seeing visions! often extremely unpleasant! like so many of 4aint Anthony"s visions! but sometimes beatific. #hat men and women can! by physical and chemical means! transcend themselves in a genuinely spiritual way is something which! to the s$ueamish idealist! seems rather shocking. %ut! after all! the drug or the physical exercise is not the cause of the spiritual experience' it is only its occasion. .riting of .illiam >ames" experiments with nitrous oxide! %ergson has summed up the whole matter in a few lucid sentences. "#he psychic disposition was there! potentially! only waiting a signal to express itself in action. t might have been evoked

spiritually by an effort made on its own spiritual level. %ut it could /ust as well be brought about materially! by an inhibition of what inhibited it! by the removing of an obstacle' and this effect was the wholly negative one produced by the drug." .here! for any reason! physical or moral! the psychological dispositions are unsatisfactory! the removal of obstacles by a drug or by ascetic practices will result in a negative rather than a positive spiritual experience. 4uch an infernal experience is extremely distressing! but may also be extremely salutary. #here are plenty of people to whom a few hours in hell = the hell that they themselves have done so much to create = could do a world of good. 7hysiologically costless! or nearly costless! stimulators of the mystical faculties are now making their appearance! and many kinds of them will soon be on the market. .e can be $uite sure that! as and when they become available! they will be extensively used. #he urge to self-transcendence is so strong and so general that it cannot be otherwise. n the past! very few people have had spontaneous experiences of a premystical or fully mystical nature' still fewer have been willing to undergo the psychophysical disciplines which prepare an insulated individual for this kind of selftranscendence. #he powerful but nearly costless mind changers of the future will change all this completely. nstead of being rare! premystical and mystical experiences will become common. .hat was once the spiritual privilege of the few will be made available to the many. -or the ministers of the world"s organi0ed religions! this will raise a number of unprecedented problems. -or most people! religion has always been a matter of traditional symbols and of their own emotional! intellectual and ethical response to those symbols. #o men and women who have had direct experience of self-transcendence into the mind"s &ther .orld of vision and union with the nature of things! a religion of mere symbols is not likely to be very satisfying. #he perusal of a page from even the most beautifully written cookbook is no substitute for the eating of dinner. .e are exhorted to "taste and see that the +ord is good." n one way or another! the world"s ecclesiastical authorities will have to come to terms with the new mind changers. #hey may come to terms with them negatively! by refusing to have anything to do with them. n that case! a psychological phenomenon! potentially of great spiritual value! will manifest itself outside the pale of organi0ed religion. &n the other hand! they may choose to come to terms with the mind changers in some positive way = exactly how! am not prepared to guess. My own belief is that! though they may start by being something of an embarrassment! these new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life of the communities in which they are available. #hat famous "revival of religion!" about which so many people have been talking for so long! will not come about as the result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television appearances of photogenic clergymen. t will come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. And this revival of religion will be at the same time a revolution. -rom being an activity mainly concerned with symbols! religion will be transformed into an activity concerned mainly with experience and intuition = an everyday mysticism underlying and giving significance to everyday rationality! everyday tasks and duties! everyday human relationships. :-rom The (aturday ?vening )ost0

WA. O2 %I2E

-oly 2ace 5ood #imes are chronic nowadays. #here is dancing every afternoon! a continuous performance at all the picture-palaces! a radio concert on tap! like gas or water! at any hour of the day or night. #he fine point of seldom pleasure is duly blunted. -easts must be solemn and rare! or else they cease to be feasts. "+ike stones of worth they thinly placed are" :or! at any rate! they were in 4hakespeare"s day! which was the day of Merry England;! "or captain /ewels in the carconet." #he ghosts of these grand occasional /ollifications still haunt our modern year. %ut the stones of worth are indistinguishable from the loud imitation /ewelry which now adorns the entire circlet of days. 5ems! when they are too large and too numerous! lose all their precious significance' the treasure of an ndian prince is as unimpressive as Aladdin"s cave at the pantomime. 4et in the midst of the stage diamonds and rubies of modern pleasure! the old feasts are hardly visible. t is only among more or less completely rustic populations! lacking the means and the opportunity to indulge in the modern chronic 5ood #ime! that the surviving feasts preserve something of their ancient glory. Me personally the unflagging pleasures of contemporary cities leave most lugubriously unamused. #he prevailing boredom = for oh! how desperately bored! in spite of their grim determination to have a 5ood #ime! the ma/ority of pleasure-seekers really are3 = the hopeless weariness! infect me. Among the lights! the alcohol! the hideous /a00 noises! and the incessant movement feel myself sinking into deeper and ever deeper despondency. %y comparison with a night-club! churches are positively gay. f ever want to make merry in public! go where merrymaking is occasional and the merriment! therefore! of genuine $uality' go where feasts come rarely. -or one who would fre$uent only the occasional festivities! the great difficulty is to be in the right place at the right time. have traveled through %elgium and found! in little market towns! kermesses that were orgiastic like the merry-making in a %reughel picture. %ut how to remember the date< And how! remembering it! to be in -landers again at the appointed time< #he problem is almost insoluble. And then there is -rogmore. #he nineteenth-century sculpture in the royal mausoleum is reputed to be the most ama0ing of its ama0ing kind. should like to see -rogmore. %ut the anniversary of Gueen 8ictoria"s death is the only day in the year when the temple is open to the public. #he old $ueen died! believe! in >anuary. %ut what was the precise date< And! if one en/oys the blessed liberty to be elsewhere! how shall one reconcile oneself to being in England at such a season< -rogmore! it seems! will have to remain unvisited. And there are many other places! many other dates and days! which! alas! shall always miss. must even be resignedly content with the few festivities whose times can remember and whose scene coincides! more or less! with that of my existence in each particular portion of the year.

&ne of these rare and solemn dates which happen never to forget is 4eptember the thirteenth. t is the feast of the Holy -ace of +ucca. And since +ucca is within thirty miles of the seaside place where spend the summer! and since the middle of 4eptember is still serenely and transparently summer by the shores of the Mediterranean! the feast of the Holy -ace is counted among the captain /ewels of my year. At the religious function and the ensuing fair am! each 4eptember! a regular attendant. "%y the Holy -ace of +ucca3" t was .illiam the 1on$ueror"s favorite oath. And if were in the habit of cursing and swearing! think it would also be mine. -or it is a fine oath! admirable both in form and substance. "%y the Holy -ace of +ucca3" n whatever language you pronounce them! the words reverberate! they rumble with the rumbling of genuine poetry. And for any one who has ever seen the Holy -ace! how pregnant they are with power and magical compulsion3 -or the -ace! the Holy -ace of +ucca! is certainly the strangest! the most impressive thing of its kind have ever seen. magine a huge wooden 1hrist! larger than life! not naked! as in later representations of the 1rucifixion! but dressed in a long tunic! formally fluted with stiff %y0antine folds. #he face is not the face of a dead! or dying! or even suffering man. t is the face of a man still violently alive! and the expression of its strong features is stern! is fierce! is even rather sinister. -rom the dark sockets of polished cedar wood two yellowish tawny eyes! made! apparently! of some precious stone! or perhaps of glass! stare out! slightly s$uinting! with an unsleeping balefulness. 4uch is the Holy -ace. #radition affirms it to be a true! contemporary portrait. History establishes the fact that it has been in +ucca for the best part of twelve hundred years. t is said that a rudderless and crewless ship miraculously brought it from 7alestine to the beaches of +uni. #he inhabitants of 4ar0ana claimed the sacred flotsam' but the Holy -ace did not wish to go to 4ar0ana. #he oxen harnessed to the wagon in which it had been placed were divinely inspired to take the road to +ucca. And at +ucca the -ace has remained ever since! working miracles! drawing crowds of pilgrims! protecting and at intervals failing to protect the city of its adoption from harm. #wice a year! at Easter time and on the thirteenth of 4eptember! the doors of its little domed tabernacle in the cathedral are thrown open! the candles are lighted! and the dark and formidable image! dressed up for the occasion in a /eweled overall and with a glittering crown on its head! stares down = with who knows what mysterious menace in its bright s$uinting eyes< = on the throng of its worshipers. #he official act of worship is a most handsome function. A little after sunset a procession of clergy forms up in the church of 4an -rediano. n the ancient darkness of the basilica a few candles light up the liturgical ballet. #he stiff embroidered vestments! worn by generations of priests and from which the heads and hands of the present occupants emerge with an air of almost total irrelevance :for it is the sacramental carapace that matters' the little man who momentarily fills it is without significance;! move hieratically hither and thither through the rich light and the velvet shadows. @nder his balda$uin the /eweled old archbishop is a museum specimen. #here is a forest of silvery mitres! spear-shaped against the darkness :bishops seem to be plentiful in +ucca;. #he choir boys wear lace and scarlet. #here is a guard of halberdiers in a gaudily-pied medieval uniform. #he ritual charade is solemnly danced through. #he procession emerges from the dark church into the twilight of the streets. #he municipal band strikes up loud inappropriate music. .e hurry off to the cathedral by a short cut to take our

places for the function. #he Holy -ace has always had a partiality for music. Aearly! through all these hundreds of years! it has been sung to and played at! it has been treated to symphonies! cantatas! solos on every instrument. ,uring the eighteenth century the most celebrated castrati came from the ends of taly to warble to it' the most eminent professors of the violin! the flute! the oboe! the trombone scraped and blew before its shrine. 7aganini himself! when he was living in +ucca in the court of Elisa %onaparte! performed at the annual concerts in honor of the -ace. #imes have changed! and the image must now be content with local talent and a lower standard of musical excellence. #rue! the good will is always there' the +ucchesi continue to do their musical best' but their best is generally no more nor less than /ust dully creditable. ?ot always! however. shall never forget what happened during my first visit to the -ace. #he musical program that year was ambitious. #here was to be a rendering! by choir and orchestra! of one of those vast oratorios which the clerical musician! ,om 7erosi! composes in a strange and rather frightful mixture of the musical idioms of 7alestrina! .agner! and 8erdi. #he orchestra was enormous' the choir was numbered by the hundred' we waited in pleased anticipation for the music to begin. %ut when it did begin! what an astounding pandemonium3 Everybody played and sang like mad! but without apparently any reference to the playing and singing of anybody else. &f all the musical performances have ever listened to it was the most Manchester-+iberal! the most 8ictorian-democratic. #he conductor stood in the midst of them waving his arms' but he was only a constitutional monarch = for show! not use. #he performers had revolted against his despotism. ?or had they permitted themselves to be regimented into 7russian uniformity by any soul-destroying excess of rehearsal. 5odwin"s prophetic vision of a perfectly individualistic concert was here actually reali0ed. #he noise was hair-raising. %ut the performers were making it with so much gusto that! in the end! was infected by their high spirits and en/oyed the hullabaloo almost as much as they did. #hat concert was symptomatic of the general anarchy of post-war taly. #hose times are now past. #he -ascists have come! bringing order and discipline = even to the arts. .hen the +ucchesi play and sing to their Holy -ace! they do it now with decorum! in a thoroughly professional and well-drilled manner. t is admirable! but dull. #here are times! must confess! when regret the loud delirious blaring and bawling of the days of anarchy. Almost more interesting than the official acts of worship are the unofficial! the private and individual acts. have spent hours in the cathedral watching the crowd before the shrine. #he great church is full from morning till night. Men and women! young and old! they come in their thousands! from the town! from all the country round! to ga0e on the authentic image of 5od. And the image is dark! threatening! and sinister. n the eyes of the worshipers often detected a certain meditative dis$uiet. ?ot unnaturally. -or if the face of 7rovidence should really and in truth be like the Holy -ace! why! then = then life is certainly no /oke. Anxious to propitiate this rather appalling image of ,estiny! the worshipers come pressing up to the shrine to deposit a little offering of silver or nickel and kiss the reli$uary proffered to every almsgiver by the attendant priest. -or two francs fifty perhaps -ate will be kind. %ut the Holy -ace continues! unmoved! to s$uint inscrutable menace. -ixed by that sinister regard! and with the smell of incense in his nostrils! the darkness of the church around and above him! the most ordinary man begins to feel himself obscurely a 7ascal. Metaphysical gulfs open before him. #he mysteries of

human destiny! of the future! of the purpose of life oppress and terrify his soul. #he church is dark' but in the midst of the darkness is a little island of candlelight. &h! comfort3 %ut from the heart of the comforting light! incongruously /eweled! the dark face stares with s$uinting eyes! appalling! balefully mysterious. %ut luckily! for those of us who are not 7ascal! there is always a remedy. .e can always turn our back on the -ace! we can always leave the hollow darkness of the church. &utside! the sunlight pours down out of a flawless sky. #he streets are full of people in their holiday best. At one of the gates of the city! in an open space beyond the walls! the merry-go-rounds are turning! the steam organs are playing the tunes that were popular four years ago on the other side of the Atlantic! the fat woman"s drawers hang unmoving! like a huge forked pennon! in the windless air outside her booth. #here is a crowd! a smell! an unceasing noise = music and shouting! roaring of circus lions! giggling of tickled girls! s$uealing from the switchback of deliciously frightened girls! laughing and whistling! tooting of cardboard trumpets! cracking of guns in the rifle-range! breaking of crockery! howling of babies! all blended together to form the huge and formless sound of human happiness. 7ascal was wise! but wise too consciously! with too consistent a spirituality. -or him the Holy -ace was always present! haunting him with its dark menace! with the mystery of its baleful eyes. And if ever! in a moment of distraction! he forgot the metaphysical horror of the world and those abysses at his feet! it was with a pang of remorse that he came again to himself! to the self of spiritual consciousness. He thought it right to be haunted! he refused to en/oy the pleasures of the created world! he liked walking among the gulfs. n his excess of conscious wisdom he was mad' for he sacrificed life to principles! to metaphysical abstractions! to the overmuch spirituality which is the negation of existence. He preferred death to life. ncomparably grosser and stupider than 7ascal! almost immeasurably his inferiors! the men and women who move with shouting and laughter through the dusty heat of the fair are yet more wise than the philosopher. #hey are wise with the unconscious wisdom of the species! with the dumb! instinctive! physical wisdom of life itself. -or it is life itself that! in the interests of living! commands them to be inconsistent. t is life itself that! having made them obscurely aware of 7ascal"s gulfs and horrors! bids them turn away from the baleful eyes of the Holy -ace! bids them walk out of the dark! hushed! incense-smelling church into the sunlight! into the dust and whirling motion! the sweaty smell and the vast chaotic noise of the fair. t is life itself' and ! for one! have more confidence in the rightness of life than in that of any individual man! even if the man be 7ascal. :-rom Do -hat You -ill0

Pascal 'i,e and the $outine o, 'iving t is worth remarking that the revelation of life confirms many of the revelations of death.T #he business and the distractions which 7ascal hated so much! because they made men forget that they must die! are hateful to the life-worshiper because they prevent men from fully living. ,eath makes these distractions seem trivial and silly' but e$ually so does life. t was from pain and gradually approaching dissolution that van lyitch

learned to understand the futility of his respectable bourgeois career. f he had ever met a genuinely living man! if he had ever read a book! or looked at a picture! or heard a piece of music by a living artist! he would have learned the same lesson. %ut 7ascal and the later #olstoy would not permit the revelation to come from life. #heir aim was to humiliate men by rolling them in the corruption of the grave! to inflict a defiling punishment on them' they condemned! not only the distracting! life-destroying futilities with which men fill their days! but also the life which these futilities destroyed. #he lifeworshiper agrees with them in hating the empty fooleries and sordidnesses of average human existence. ncidentally the progress of science and industry has enormously increased the element of foolery and sordidness in human life. #he clerk and the taylori0ed workman leave their imbecile tasks to spend their leisure under the influence of such opiate distractions as are provided by the newspaper! the cinema! the radio' they are given less and less opportunity to do any active or creative living of their own. 7ascal and #olstoy would have led them from silliness to despair by talking to them of death' but "memento vivere" is the life-worshiper"s advice. f people remembered to live! they would abstain from occupations which are mere substitutes for life.
3 * have borrowed the phrase from 4hestov" (La >evelation de la @ort( is the title, in its .rench translation, of one of his most interesting books"

The 'i,eD-orshi er's Creed #he life-worshiper"s philosophy is comprehensive. As a manifold and discontinuous being! he is in a position to accept all the partial and apparently contradictory syntheses constructed by other philosophers. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic6 now haunted by the thought of death :for the apocalypse of death is one of the incidents of living; and now a ,ionysian child of nature' now a pessimist and now! with a change of lover or liver or even the weather! an exuberant believer that 5od"s in his heaven and all"s right with the world. He holds these different beliefs because he is many different people. Each belief is the rationali0ation of the prevailing mood of one of these persons. #here is really no $uestion of any of these philosophies being true or false. #he psychological state called /oy is no truer than the psychological state called melancholy :it may be more valuable as an aid to social or individual living = but that is another matter;. Each is a primary fact of experience. And since one psychological state cannot be truer than another! since all are e$ually facts! it follows that the rationali0ation of one state cannot be truer than the rationali0ation of another. .hat Hardy says about the universe is no truer than what Meredith says' if the ma/ority of contemporary readers prefer the world-view expressed in Tess o, the D'%r!ervilles to the optimism which forms the background to *eaucham 's Career, that is simply because they happen to live in a very depressing age and conse$uently suffer from a more or less chronic melancholy. Hardy seems to them truer than Meredith because the philosophy of "#ess" and ">ude" is more ade$uate as a rationali0ation of their own prevailing mood than the philosophy of Eichard -everel or %eauchamp. .hat applies to optimism and pessimism applies e$ually to other trends of philosophical thought. Even the doctrines of "fixed fate! free will! foreknowledge absolute!" for all the elaborateness of their form! are in substance only expression of emotional and physiological states. &ne feels free or one feels conditioned. %oth feelings are e$ually facts of experience! so are the facts called "mystical ecstasy" and "reasonableness." &nly

a man whose life was rich in mystical experiences could have constructed a cosmogony like that of %oehme"s' and the works of 8oltaire could have been written only by one whose life was singularly poor in such experiences. 7eople with strongly marked idiosyncrasies of character have their world-view almost forced upon them by their psychology. #he only branches of philosophy in regard to which it is permissible to talk of truth and falsehood are logic and the theory of knowledge. -or logic and the theory of knowledge are concerned with the necessities and the limitations of thought = that is to say! with mental habits so primordial that it is all but impossible for any human being to break them. .hen a man commits a paralogism or lays claim to a more than human knowledge of the nature of things! we are /ustified in saying that he is wrong. may! for example! admit that all men are mortal and that 4ocrates is a man! but nevertheless feel impelled to conclude that 4ocrates is immortal. Am not as well /ustified in this opinion as am in my optimism or pessimism! whichever the case may be< #he answer is6 no. may have a personal taste for 4ocrates"s immortality' but! in the syllogistic circumstances! the taste is so outrageously bad! so universally condemned! that it would be madness to try to /ustify it. Moreover! should discover that! if put my paralogistic theories into practice! should find myself in serious trouble! not only with other human beings! but even with things. #he hero of ,ostoievsky"s &otes ,rom %nderground protests against the intolerable tyranny of two and two making four. He prefers that they shall make five! and insists that he has a right to his preference. And no doubt he has a right. %ut if an express train happens to be passing at a distance of two plus two yards! and he advances four yards and a half under the impression that he will still be eighteen inches on the hither side of destruction! this right of his will not save him from coming to a violent and bloody conclusion. 4cientific thought is true or false because science deals with sense impressions which are! if not identical for all human beings! at least sufficiently similar to make something like universal agreement possible. #he difference between a scientific theory and a metaphysical world-view is that the first is a rationali0ation of psychological experiences which are more or less uniform for all men and for the same man at different times! while the second is a rationali0ation of experiences which are diverse! occasional! and contradictory. A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will"s freedom after it' but both before and after his meal he will observe that the color of the sky is blue! that stones are hard! that the sun gives light and warmth. t is for this reason that there are many philosophies! and only one science. %ut even science demands that its votaries shall think! according to circumstances! in a variety of different ways. #he mode of thinking which gives valid results when applied to ob/ects of more than a certain si0e :in other words! to large numbers of ob/ects' for anything big enough to be perceptible to our senses is built up! apparently! of enormous numbers of almost infinitesimal components; is found to be absolutely inapplicable to single ob/ects of atomic or subatomic dimensions. About large agglomerations of atoms we can think in terms of "organi0ed common sense." %ut when we come to consider individual atoms and their minuter components! common-sense gives results which do not s$uare with the observed facts. :?obody! of course! has ever actually observed an atom or an electron' but the nature of their behavior can be inferred! with more or less probability! from such happenings on a macroscopical scale as accompany their invisible activity.; n the sub-atomic world practically all our necessities

of thought become not only unnecessary but misleading. A description of this universe reads like a page from +ewis 1arroll or Edward +ear. 4eeing! then! that even sense impressions not only can but must be rationali0ed in irreconcilably different ways! according to the class of ob/ect with which they are supposed to be connected! we need not be troubled or surprised by the contradictions which we find in the rationali0ation of less uniform psychological experiences. #hus! the almost indefinitely numerous rationali0ations of the aesthetic and the mystical experiences not only contradict one another! but agree in contradicting those rationali0ations of sense experience known as scientific theories. #his fact greatly disturbed our grandfathers! who kept on losing their faith! sacrificing their reason! striking attitudes of stoical despair! and! in general! performing the most extraordinary spiritual antics! because of it. 4cience is "true!" they argued' therefore art and religion! therefore beauty and honor! love and ideals! must be "false." "Eeality" has been "proved" by science to be an affair of space! time! mass! number! and cause' therefore all that makes life worth living is an "illusion." &r else they started from the other end. Art! religion! beauty! love! make life worth living' therefore science! which disregards the existence of these things! must be false. t is unnecessary for us to take so tragic a view. 4cience! we have come to reali0e! takes no cogni0ance of the things that make life worth living! for the simple reason that beauty! love! and so on! are not measurable $uantities! and science deals only with what can be measured. &ne psychological fact is as good as another. .e perceive beauty as immediately as we perceive hardness' to say that one sensation is illusory and that the other corresponds with reality is a gratuitous piece of presumption. Answers to the riddle of the universe often have a logical form and are expressed in such a way that they raise $uestions of epistemology and involve the acceptance or re/ection of certain scientific theories. n substance! however! they are simply rationali0ations of diverse and e$ually valid psychological states! and are therefore neither true nor false. : ncidentally! similar states are not necessarily or invariably rationali0ed in the same way. Mystical experiences which! in Europe! are explained in terms of a personal 5od are interpreted by the %uddhists in terms of an entirely godless order of things. .hich is the truer rationali0ation< 5od! or not-5od! whichever the case may be! knows.; #he life-worshiper who adopts in turn all the solutions to the cosmic riddle is committing no crime against logic or the truth. He is simply admitting the obvious fact that he is a human being = that is to say! a series of distinct psychological states! a colony of diverse personalities. Each state demands its appropriate rationali0ations' or! in other words! each personality has its own philosophies of life. 7hilosophical consistency had some /ustification so long as it could be imagined that the substance of one"s world-view :as opposed to the logical trappings in which it was clothed and the problems of epistemology and science connected with it; was uni$uely true. %ut if we admit! as think we must! that one world-view cannot be truer than another! but that each is the expression in intellectual terms of some given and undeniable fact of experience! then consistency loses all philosophical merit. t is pointless to ignore all the occasions when you feel that the world is good! for the sake of being consistently a pessimist' it is pointless! for the sake of being consistently a positivist! to deny that your body is sometimes tenanted by a person who has mystical experiences. 7essimism is no truer than optimism! nor positivism than mysticism. 7hilosophically! there is no reason

why a man should deny the thoughts of all but one of his potential selves. Each self on occasion exists' each has its feelings about the universe! its cosmic tastes = or! to put it in a different way! each inhabits its own universe. .hat relation these various private universes bear to the @niverse in tself! if such a thing exists! it is clearly impossible to say. .e can believe! if we like! that each of them represents one aspect of the whole. " n my -ather"s house are many mansions." ?ature has given to each individual the key to $uite a number of these metaphysical mansions. #he life-worshiper suggests that man shall make use of all his keys instead of throwing all but one of them away. He admits the fact of vital diversity and makes the best of it. n this he is unlike the general run of thinkers! who are very reluctant to admit diversity! and! if they do confess the fact! deplore it. #hey find diversity shocking! they desire at all costs to correct it. And even if it came to be universally admitted that no one world-view could possibly be true! these people would continue! none the less! to hold fast to one to the exclusion of all the rest. #hey would go on worshiping consistency! if not on philosophical! then on moral grounds. &r! in other words! they would practice and demand consistency through fear of inconsistency! through fear of being dangerously free! through fear of life. -or morality is always the product of terror' its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others! because they dare not trust themselves! to walk in liberty. %y such poor terror-stricken creatures consistency in thought and conduct is pri0ed among the highest virtues. n order to achieve this consistency they re/ect as untrue! or as immoral or antisocial :it matters not which' for any stick will serve to beat a dog;! all the thoughts which do not harmoni0e with the particular system they have elected to defend' they do their best to repress all impulses and desires which cannot be fitted into their scheme of moral behavior. .ith what deplorable results3 )ascal, the DeathD-orshi er #he consistent thinker! the consistently moral man! is either a walking mummy or else! if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality! a fanatical monomaniac. :%y the admirers of consistency the mummies are called "serene" or "stoical!" the monomaniacs "single-minded" = as though single-mindedness were a virtue in a being to whom bountiful nature has given a multiple mind3 4ingle-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons' in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as 4hakespeare it is simply disgraceful.; n spite of all his heroic efforts! 7ascal never succeeded in entirely suppressing the life that was in him. t was not in his power to turn himself into a pious automaton. 8itality continued to flow out of him! but through only one channel. He became a monomaniac! a man with but one aim = to impose the death of 1hristian spirituality on himself and all his fellows. ".hat religion!" he asks! "will teach us to cure pride and concupiscence<" n other words! what religion will cure us of living< -or concupiscence! or desire! is the instrument of life! and "the pride of the peacock is the glory of 5od" = not of 7ascal"s 5od! of course! but of the 5od of +ife. 1hristianity! he concludes! is the only religion which will cure men of living. #herefore all men must become 1hristians. 7ascal expended all his extraordinary powers in trying! by persuasion! by argument! to convert his fellows to consistent death-worship. t was with the )rovincial 'etters that he opened the campaign. .ith what consummate generalship3 #he casuists were routed with terrific slaughter. Entranced by that marvelous prose! we find ourselves even now

believing that their defeat was merited! that 7ascal was in the right. %ut if we stop our ears to the charmer"s music and consider only the substance of what he says! we shall reali0e that the rights were all on the side of the >esuits and that 7ascal was using his prodigious talents to make the worse appear the better cause. #he casuists were often silly and pedantic. %ut their conception of morality was! from a life-worshiper"s point of view! entirely sound. Eecogni0ing the diversity of human beings! the infinite variety of circumstances! they perceived that every case should be considered on its own merits. +ife was to be tethered! but with an elastic rope' it was to be permitted to do a little gamboling. #o 7ascal this libertarianism seemed horrible. #here must be no compromise with life' the hideous thing must be ruthlessly suppressed. Men must be bound down by rigid commandments! coffined in categorical imperatives! paraly0ed by the fear of hell and the incessant contemplation of death! buried under mounds of prohibitions. He said so with such ex$uisite felicity of phrase and cadence that people have gone on imagining! from that day to this! that he was upholding a noble cause! when in fact he was fighting for the powers of darkness. After the 'etters came the )enses = the fragmentary materials of what was to have been a colossal work of 1hristian apology. mplacably the fight against life continued. "Admiration spoils everything from childhood onwards. &h! isn"t he clever3 sn"t he good3 #he children of the 7ort Eoyal school! who are not urged on with this spur of envy and glory! sink into indifference." 7ascal must have been delighted. A system of education which resulted in children sinking into "la nonchalance" was obviously! in his eyes! almost ideal. f the children had $uietly withered up into mummies! it would have been absolutely perfect. #he man was to be treated to the same deadening influences as the child. t was first to be demonstrated that he lived in a state of hopeless wretchedness. #his is a task which 7ascal undertook with the greatest satisfaction. All his remarks on the "misRre de l"homme" are magnificent. %ut what is this misery< .hen we examine 7ascal"s arguments we find that man"s misery consists in not being something different from a man. n not being simple! consistent! without desires! omniscient and dead! but on the contrary alive and full of concupiscence! uncertain! inconsistent! multiple. %ut to blame a thing for not being something else is childish. 4heep are not men' but that is no reason for talking about the "misRre du mouton." +et sheep make the best of their sheepishness and men of their humanity. %ut 7ascal does not want men to make the best of their human life' he wants them to make the worst of it! to throw it away. After depressing them with his remarks about misery! he brings them into paraly0ing contact with death and infinity' he demonstrates the nothingness! in the face of this darkness! these immensities! of every thought! action! and desire. #o clinch the argument he invokes the >ansenist 5od! the 1hristian revelation. f it is man"s true nature to be consistent and undesiring! then :such is 7ascal"s argument; >ansenistic death-worship is a psychological necessity. t is more than a psychological necessity' death-worship has been made obligatory by the 5od of ,eath in person! has been decreed in a revelation which 7ascal undertakes to prove indubitably historical. )ascal's %niverse #he spectacle of so much malignity! so much hatred! is profoundly repulsive. Hate begets hate! and it is difficult not to detest 7ascal for his venomous detestation of everything that is beautiful and noble in human existence. t is a detestation! however!

which must be tempered with pity. f the man sinned against the Holy 5host = and surely few men have sinned like 7ascal! since few indeed have been endowed with 7ascal"s extraordinary gifts = it was because he could not help it. His desires! in %lake"s words! were weak enough to be restrained. -eeble! a sick man! he was afraid of life! he dreaded liberty. Ac$uainted only with the mystical states that are associated with malady and deprivation! this ascetic had never experienced those other! no less significant! states that accompany the fulfillment of desire. -or if we admit the significance of the mystical rapture! we must e$ually admit the significance of the no less prodigious experiences associated with love in all its forms! with the perception of sensuous beauty! with intoxication! with rhythmic movement! with anger! with strife and triumph! with all the positive manifestations of concupiscent life. Ascetic practices produce a condition of abnormality and so enable the ascetic to get out of the ordinary world into another and! as he feels! more significant and important universe. Anger! the feeling inspired by sensuous beauty! the orgasm of amorous desire! are abnormal states precisely analogous to the state of mystical ecstasy! states which permit the angry man! the aesthete! the lover! to become temporary inhabitants of non-7odsnapian universes which are immediately felt :/ust as the mystic"s universe is immediately felt; to be of peculiar value and significance. 7ascal was ac$uainted with only one abnormal universe = that which the ecstatic mystic briefly inhabits. &f all the rest he had no personal knowledge' his sickly body did not permit of his approaching them. .e condemn easily that which we do not know! and with pleasure that which! like the fox who said the grapes were sour! we cannot en/oy. #o a sickly body 7ascal /oined an extraordinarily powerful analytical intellect. #oo acute to be taken in by the gross illusions of rationalism! too subtle to imagine that a homemade abstraction could be a reality! he derided the academic philosophers. He perceived that the basis of reason is unreasonable' first principles come from "the heart!" not from the mind. #he discovery would have been of the first importance if 7ascal had only made it with the right organ. %ut instead of discovering the heart with the heart! he discovered it with the head. t was abstractly that he re/ected abstractions! and with the reason that he discovered unreason. His realism was only theoretical' he never lived it. His intelligence would not permit him to find satisfaction in the noumena and abstractions of rationalist philosophy. %ut for fixed noumena and simple unchanging abstractions he none the less longed. He was able to satisfy these longings of an invalid philosopher and at the same time to salve his intellectual conscience by choosing an irrational abstraction to believe in = the 5od of 1hristianity. Marooned on that static Eock of Ages! he felt himself safe = safe from the heaving flux of appearances! safe from diversity! safe from the responsibilities of freedom! safe from life. f he had allowed himself to have a heart to understand the heart with! if he had possessed a body with which to understand the body! and instincts and desires capable of interpreting the meaning of instinct and desire! 7ascal might have been a life-worshiper instead of a devotee of death. %ut illness had strangled the life out of his body and made his desires so weak that to resist them was an easy virtue. Against his heart he struggled with all the force of his tense and focused will. #he Moloch of religious principle demanded its sacrifice. &bediently! 7ascal performed the rite of harakiri. Moloch! unsatisfied! demanded still more blood. 7ascal offered his services' he would make other people do as he had done. Moloch should be glutted with entrails. All his writings are persuasive

invitations to the world to come and commit suicide. t is the triumph of principle and consistency. +usical Conclusion And yet the life-worshiper is also! in his own way! a man of principles and consistency. #o live intensely = that is his guiding principle. His diversity is a sign that he consistently tries to live up to his principles' for the harmony of life = of the single life that persists as a gradually changing unity through time = is a harmony built up of many elements. #he unity is mutilated by the suppression of any part of the diversity. A fugue has need of all its voices. Even in the rich counterpoint of life each separate small melody plays its indispensable part. #he diapason closes full in man. n man. %ut 7ascal aspired to be more than a man. Among the interlaced melodies of the human counterpoint are love songs and anacreontics! marches and savage dance-rhythms! hymns of hate and loud hilarious chanties. &dious voices in the ears of one who wanted his music to be wholly celestial3 7ascal commanded them to be still and they were silent. %ending toward his life! we listen expectantly for a strain of angelic singing. %ut across the centuries what harsh and painful sounds come creaking down to us3 :-rom "7ascal!" Do -hat You -ill0

Bel"efs ?o account of the scientific picture of the world and its history would be complete unless it contained a reminder of the fact! fre$uently forgotten by scientists themselves! that this picture does not even claim to be comprehensive. -rom the world we actually live in! the world that is given by our senses! our intuitions of beauty and goodness! our emotions and impulses! our moods and sentiments! the man of science abstracts a simplified private universe of things possessing only those $ualities which used to be called "primary." Arbitrarily! because it happens to be convenient! because his methods do not allow him to deal with the immense complexity of reality! he selects from the whole of experience only those elements which can be weighed! measured! numbered! or which lend themselves in any other way to mathematical treatment. %y using this techni$ue of simplification and abstraction! the scientist has succeeded to an astonishing degree in understanding and dominating the physical environment. #he success was intoxicating and! with an illogicality which! in the circumstances! was doubtless pardonable! many scientists and philosophers came to imagine that this useful abstraction from reality was reality itself. Eeality as actually experienced contains intuitions of value and significance! contains love! beauty! mystical ecstasy! intimations of godhead. 4cience did not and still does not possess intellectual instruments with which to deal with these aspects of reality. 1onse$uently it ignored them and concentrated its attention upon such aspects of the world as it could deal with by means of arithmetic! geometry and the various branches of higher mathematics. &ur conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact :discussed in a later paragraph; that the philosophy of meaninglessness lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of erotic or political passion' in part to a genuine intellectual error = the error of identifying the world of

science! a world from which all meaning and value has been deliberately excluded! with ultimate reality. t is worth while to $uote in this context the words with which Hume closes his ?n#uiry. " f we take in our hand any volume' of divinity or school metaphysics! for instance' let us ask! ,oes it contain any abstract reasoning concerning $uantity or number< ?o. ,oes it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence< ?o. 1ommit it then to the flames' for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Hume mentions only divinity and school metaphysics' but his argument would apply /ust as cogently to poetry! music! painting! sculpture and all ethical and religious teaching. Hamlet contains no abstract reasoning concerning $uantity or number and no experimental reason concerning evidence' nor does the Hammerklavier 4onata! nor ,onatello"s ,avid! nor the Tao Te Ching, nor the Collowing o, Christ. 1ommit them therefore to the flames6 for they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. .e are living now! not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science! but in a rather grisly morning-after! when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends. n this condition of apprehensive sobriety we are able to see that the contents of literature! art! music = even in some measure of divinity and school metaphysics = are not sophistry and illusion! but simply those elements of experience which scientists chose to leave out of account! for the good reason that they had no intellectual methods for dealing with them. n the arts! in philosophy! in religion men are trying = doubtless! without complete success = to describe and explain the non-measurable! purely $ualitative aspects of reality. 4ince the time of 5alileo! scientists have admitted! sometimes explicitly but much more often by implication! that they are incompetent to discuss such matters. #he scientific picture of the world is what it is because men of science combine this incompetence with certain special competences. #hey have no right to claim that this product of incompetence and speciali0ation is a complete picture of reality. As a matter of historical fact! however! this claim has constantly been made. #he successive steps in the process of identifying an arbitrary abstraction from reality with reality itself have been described! very fully and lucidly! in %urtt"s excellent "Metaphysical -oundations of Modern 4cience"' and it is therefore unnecessary for me to develop the theme any further. All that need add is the fact that! in recent years! many men of science have come to reali0e that the scientific picture of the world is a partial product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values! religious experiences and intuitions of significance. @nhappily! novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable timelag. 4ixty or seventy years ago the ma/ority of scientists believed = and the belief often caused them considerable distress = that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. #oday this belief has begun to give way! in scientific circles! to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience. #he masses! on the contrary! have /ust reached the point where the ancestors of today"s scientists were standing two generations back. #hey are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. %ut nobody likes living in such a world. #o satisfy their hunger for meaning and value! they turn to such

doctrines as nationalism! fascism and revolutionary communism. 7hilosophically and scientifically! these doctrines are absurd' but for the masses in every community! they have this great merit6 they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living. #hese last considerations raise an important $uestion! which must now be considered in some detail. ,oes the world as a whole possess the value and meaning that we constantly attribute to certain parts of it :such as human beings and their works;' and! if so! what is the nature of that value and meaning< #his is a $uestion which! a few years ago! should not even have posed. -or! like so many of my contemporaries! took it for granted that there was no meaning. #his was partly due to the fact that shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole' partly also to other! non-intellectual reasons. had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning' conse$uently assumed that it had none! and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. .e don"t know because we don"t want to know. t is our will that decides how and upon what sub/ects we shall use our intelligence. #hose who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because! for one reason or another! it suits their books that the world should be meaningless. #he behavior of the insane is merely sane behavior! a bit exaggerated and distorted. #he abnormal casts a revealing light upon the normal. Hence the interest attaching! among other madmen! to the extravagant figure of the Mar$uis de 4ade. #he mar$uis prided himself upon being a thinker. His books! indeed! contain more philosophy than pornography. #he hungry smut-hound must plough through long chapters of abstract speculation in order to find the cruelties and obscenities for which he hungers. ,e 4ade"s philosophy was the philosophy of meaninglessness carried to its logical conclusion. +ife was without significance. 8alues were illusory and ideals merely the inventions of cunning priests and kings. 4ensations and animal pleasures alone possessed reality and were alone worth living for. #here was no reason why any one should have the slightest consideration for any one else. -or those who found rape and murder amusing! rape and murder were fully legitimate activities. And so on. .hy was the Mar$uis unable to find any value or significance in the world< .as his intellect more piercing than that of other men< .as he forced by the acuity of his vision to look through the veils of pre/udice and superstition to the hideous reality behind them< .e may doubt it. #he real reason why the Mar$uis could see no meaning or value in the world is to be found in those descriptions of fornications! sodomies and tortures which alternate with the philosophi0ings of Justine and Juliette. n the ordinary circumstances of life! the Mar$uis was not particularly cruel' indeed! he is said to have got into serious trouble during the #error for his leniency toward those suspected of antirevolutionary sentiments. His was a strictly sexual perversion. t was for flogging actresses! sticking pen-knives into shop girls! feeding prostitutes on sugar-plums impregnated with cantharides! that he got into trouble with the police. His philosophical dis$uisitions! which! like the pornographic day-dreams! were mostly written in prisons and asylums! were the theoretical /ustification of his erotic practices. 4imilarly his politics were dictated by the desire to avenge himself on those members of his family and his class who had! as he thought! un/ustly persecuted him. He was enthusiastically a

revolutionary = at any rate in theory' for! as we have seen! he was too gentle in practice to satisfy his fellow >acobins. His books are of permanent interest and value because they contain a kind of reductio ad a!surdum of revolutionary theory. 4ade is not afraid to be a revolutionary to the bitter end. ?ot content with denying the particular system of values embodied in the ancien rgime, he proceeds to deny the existence of any values! any idealism! any binding moral imperatives whatsoever. He preaches violent revolution not only in the field of politics and economics! but :logical with the appalling logicality of the maniac; also on that of personal relations! including the most intimate of all! the relations between lovers. And! after all! why not< f it is legitimate to torment and kill in one set of circumstances! it must be e$ually legitimate to torment and kill in all other circumstances. ,e 4ade is the one completely consistent and thorough-going revolutionary of history. f have lingered so long over a maniac! it is because his madness illuminates the dark places of normal behavior. ?o philosophy is completely disinterested. #he pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need! consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and the most intelligent philosophers! to /ustify a given form of personal or social behavior! to rationali0e the traditional pre/udices of a given class or community. #he philosopher who finds meaning in the world is concerned! not only to elucidate that meaning! but also to prove that it is most clearly expressed in some established religion! some accepted code of morals. #he philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do! or why his friends should not sei0e political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. #he voluntary! as opposed to the intellectual! reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism! for example! may be predominantly erotic! as they were in the case of +amettrie :see his lyrical account of the pleasures of the bed in 'a <olu t and at the end of ''Homme +achine0, or predominantly political! as they were in the case of Farl Marx. #he desire to /ustify a particular form of political organi0ation and! in some cases! of a personal will to power has played an e$ually large part in the formulation of philosophies postulating the existence of a meaning in the world. 1hristian philosophers have found no difficulty in /ustifying imperialism! war! the capitalistic system! the use of torture! the censorship of the press! and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort from the tyranny of Eome to the tyrannies of 5eneva and ?ew England. n all these cases they have shown that the meaning of the world was such as to be compatible with! or actually most completely expressed by! the ini$uities have mentioned above = ini$uities which happened! of course! to serve the personal or sectarian interests of the philosophers concerned. n due course! there arose philosophers who denied not only the right of these 1hristian special pleaders to /ustify ini$uity by an appeal to the meaning of the world! but even their right to find any such meaning whatsoever. n the circumstances! the fact was not surprising. &ne unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions. 7assions may be satisfied in the process' but the disinterested love of knowledge suffers eclipse. -or myself as! no doubt! for most of my contemporaries! the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. #he liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. .e ob/ected to the morality because it interfered with

our sexual freedom' we ob/ected to the political and economic system because it was un/ust. #he supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning :a 1hristian meaning! they insisted; of the world. #here was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time /ustifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt6 we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. 4imilar tactics had been adopted during the eighteenth century and for the same reasons. -rom the popular novelists of the period! such as 1r9billon and Andr9a de ?erciat! we learn that the chief reason for being "philosophical" was that one might be free from pre/udices = above all pre/udices of a sexual nature. More serious writers associated political with sexual pre/udice and recommended philosophy :in practice! the philosophy of meaninglessness; as a preparation for social reform or revolution. #he early nineteenth century witnessed a reaction toward meaningful philosophy of a kind that could! unhappily! be used to /ustify political reaction. #he men of the new Enlightenment! which occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century! once again used meaninglessness as a weapon against the reactionaries. #he 8ictorian passion for respectability was! however! so great that! during the period when they were formulated! neither 7ositivism nor ,arwinism was used as a /ustification for sexual indulgence. After the .ar the philosophy of meaninglessness came once more triumphantly into fashion. As in the days of +amettrie and his successors the desire to /ustify a certain sexual looseness played a part in the populari0ation of meaninglessness at least as important as that played by the desire for liberation from an un/ust and inefficient form of social organi0ation. %y the end of the twenties a reaction had begun to set in = away from the easy-going philosophy of general meaninglessness toward the hard! ferocious theologies of nationalistic and revolutionary idolatry. Meaning was reintroduced into the world! but only in patches. #he universe as a whole still remained meaningless! but certain of its parts! such as the nation! the state! the class! the party! were endowed with significance and the highest value. #he general acceptance of a doctrine that denies meaning and value to the world as a whole! while assigning them in a supreme degree to certain arbitrarily selected parts of the totality! can have only evil and disastrous results. "All that we are :and conse$uently all that we do; is the result of what we have thought." .e have thought of ourselves as members of supremely meaningful and valuable communities = deified nations! divine classes and what not = existing within a meaningless universe. And because we have thought like this! rearmament is in full swing! economic nationalism becomes ever more intense! the battle of rival propagandas grows ever fiercer! and general war becomes increasingly more probable. t was the manifestly poisonous nature of the fruits that forced me to reconsider the philosophical tree on which they had grown. t is certainly hard! perhaps impossible! to demonstrate any necessary connection between truth and practical goodness. ndeed it was fashionable during the Enlightenment of the middle nineteenth century to speak of the need for supplying the masses with "vital lies" calculated to make those who accepted them not only happy! but well behaved. #he truth = which was that there was no meaning or value in the world = should be revealed only to the few who were strong enough to stomach it. ?ow! it may be! of course! that the nature of things has fixed a great gulf between truth about the world on the one hand and practical goodness on the other. Meanwhile! however! the nature of things seems to have so constituted the human mind that it is extremely reluctant to accept such a conclusion! except under the pressure

of desire or self-interest. -urthermore those who! to be liberated from political or sexual restraint! accept the doctrine of absolute meaninglessness tend in a short time to become so much dissatisfied with their philosophy :in spite of the services it renders; that they will exchange it for any dogma! however manifestly nonsensical! which restores meaning if only to a part of the universe. 4ome people! it is true! can live contentedly with a philosophy of meaninglessness for a very long time. %ut in most cases it will be found that these people possess some talent or accomplishment that permits them to live a life which! to a limited extent! is profoundly meaningful and valuable. #hus an artist! or a man of science can profess a philosophy of general meaninglessness and yet lead a perfectly contented life. #he reason for this must be sought in the fact that artistic creation and scientific research are absorbingly delightful occupations! possessing! moreover! a certain special significance in virtue of their relation to truth and beauty. ?evertheless! artistic creation and scientific research may be! and constantly are! used as devices for escaping from the responsibilities of life. #hey are proclaimed to be ends absolutely good in themselves = ends so admirable that those who pursue them are excused from bothering about anything else. #his is particularly true of contemporary science. #he mass of accumulated knowledge is so great that it is now impossible for any individual to have a thorough grasp of more than one small field of study. Meanwhile! no attempt is made to produce a comprehensive synthesis of the general results of scientific research. &ur universities possess no chair of synthesis. All endowments! moreover! go to special sub/ects = and almost always to sub/ects which have no need of further endowment! such as physics! chemistry and mechanics. n our institutions of higher learning about ten times as much is spent on the natural sciences as on the sciences of man. All our efforts are directed! as usual! to producing improved means to unimproved ends. Meanwhile intensive speciali0ation tends to reduce each branch of science to a condition almost approaching meaninglessness. #here are many men of science who are actually proud of this state of things. 4peciali0ed meaninglessness has come to be regarded! in certain circles! as a kind of hall mark of true science. #hose who attempt to relate the small particular results of speciali0ation with human life as a whole and its relation to the universe at large are accused of being bad scientists! charlatans! selfadvertisers. #he people who make such accusations do so! of course! because they do not wish to take any responsibility for anything! but merely to retire to their cloistered laboratories! and there amuse themselves by performing delightfully interesting researches. 4cience and art are only too often a superior kind of dope! possessing this advantage over boo0e and morphia6 that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that! in the process of indulging! one is leading the "higher life." @p to a point! of course! this is true. #he life of the scientist or the artist is a higher life. @nfortunately! when led in an irresponsible! one-sided way! the higher life is probably more harmful for the individual than the lower life of the average sensual man and certainly! in the case of the scientist! much worse for society at large. . . .e are now at the point at which we discover that an obviously untrue philosophy of life leads in practice to disastrous results' the point where we reali0e the necessity of seeking an alternative philosophy that shall be true and therefore fruitful of good. A critical consideration of the classical arguments in favor of theism would reveal that some carry no conviction whatever! while the rest can only raise a presumption in favor of the theory that the world possesses some integrating principle that gives it significance and

value. #here is probably no argument by which the case for theism! or for deism! or for pantheism in either its pancosmic or acosmic form! can be convincingly proved. #he most that "abstract reasoning" :to use Hume"s phrase; can do is to create a presumption in favor of one or other hypothesis' and this presumption can be increased by means of "experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence." -inal conviction can only come to those who make an act of faith. #he idea is one which most of us find very distressing. %ut it may be doubted whether this particular act of faith is intrinsically more difficult than those which we have to make! for example! every tune we frame a scientific hypothesis! every time that! from the consideration of a few phenomena! we draw inference concerning all phenomena! past! present and future. &n very little evidence! but with no $ualms of intellectual conscience! we assume that our craving for explanation has a real ob/ect in an explicable universe! that the aesthetic satisfaction we derive from certain arguments is a sign that they are true! that the laws of thought are also laws of things. #here seems to be no reason why! having swallowed this camel! we should not swallow another! no larger really than the first. &nce recogni0ed! the reasons why we strain at the second camel cease to exist and we become free to consider on their merits the evidence and arguments that would reasonably /ustify us in making the final act of faith and assuming the truth of a hypothesis that we are unable fully to demonstrate. "Abstract reasoning" must now give place to "experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence." ?atural science! as we have seen! deals only with those aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical treatment. #he rest it merely ignores. %ut some of the experiences thus ignored by natural science = aesthetic experiences! for example! and religious experiences = throw much light upon the present problem. t is with the fact of such experiences and the evidence they furnish concerning the nature of the world that we have now to concern ourselves. #o discuss the nature and significance of aesthetic experience would take too long. t is enough! in this place! merely to suggest that the best works of literary! plastic and musical art give us more than mere pleasure' they furnish us with information about the nature of the world. #he (anctus in %eethoven"s Mass in ,! 4eurat"s Grande Jatte, +ac!eth = works such as these tell us! by strange but certain implication! something significant about the ultimate reality behind appearances. Even from the perfection of minor masterpieces = certain sonnets of Mallarm9! for instance! certain 1hinese ceramics = we can derive illuminating hints about the "something far more deeply interfused!" about "the peace of 5od that passeth all understanding." %ut the sub/ect of art is enormous and obscure! and my space is limited! shall therefore confine myself to a discussion of certain religious experiences which bear more directly upon the present problem than do our experiences as creators and appreciators of art. Meditation! in %abbitt"s words! is a device for producing a "super-rational concentration of the will." %ut meditation is more than a method of self-education' it has also been used! in every part of the world and from the remotest periods! as a method for ac$uiring knowledge about the essential nature of things! a method for establishing communion between the soul and the integrating principle of the universe. Meditation! in other words! is the techni$ue of mysticism. 7roperly practiced! with due preparation! physical! mental and moral! meditation may result in a state of what has been called "transcendental consciousness" = the direct intuition of! and union with! an ultimate spiritual reality that is perceived as simultaneously beyond the self and in some way

within it. :"5od in the depths of us!" says Euysbroeck! "receives 5od who comes to us' it is 5od contemplating 5od."; ?on-mystics have denied the validity of the mystical experience! describing it as merely sub/ective and illusory. %ut it should be remembered that to those who have never actually had it! any direct intuition must seem sub/ective and illusory. t is impossible for the deaf to form any idea of the nature or significance of music. ?or is physical disability the only obstacle in the way of musical understanding. An ndian! for example! finds European orchestral music intolerably noisy! complicated! over-intellectual! inhuman. t seems incredible to him that any one should be able to perceive beauty and meaning! to recogni0e an expression of the deepest and subtlest emotions in this elaborate cacophony. And yet! if he has patience and listens to enough of it! he will come at last to reali0e! not only theoretically but also by direct! immediate intuition! that this music possesses all the $ualities which Europeans claim for it. &f the significant and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are open indiscriminately to all. #he rest cannot be had except by those who have undergone a suitable training. &ne must be trained even to en/oy the pleasures of alcohol and tobacco' first whiskies seem revolting! first pipes turn even the strongest of boyish stomachs. 4imilarly first 4hakespeare sonnets seem meaningless' first %ach fugues! a bore' first differential e$uations! sheer torture. %ut training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. n due course! contact with an obscurely beautiful poem! an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning! causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. t is the same in the moral world. A man who has trained himself in goodness comes to have certain direct intuitions about character! about the relations between human beings! about his own position in the world = intuitions that are $uite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man. Fnowledge is always a function of being. .hat we perceive and understand depends upon what we are' and what we are depends partly on circumstances! partly! and more profoundly! on the nature of the efforts we have made to reali0e our ideal and the nature of the ideal we have tried to reali0e. #he fact that knowing depends upon being leads! of course! to an immense amount of misunderstanding. #he meaning of words! for example! changes profoundly according to the character and experiences of the user. #hus! to the saint! words like "love!" "charity!" "compassion" mean something $uite different from what they mean to the ordinary man. Again! to the ordinary man! 4pino0a"s statement that "blessedness is not the reward of virtue! but is virtue itself" seems simply untrue. %eing virtuous is! for him! a most tedious and distressing process. %ut it is clear that to some one who has trained himself in goodness! virtue really is blessedness! while the life of the ordinary man! with its petty vices and its long spells of animal thoughtlessness and insentience! seems a real torture. n view of the fact that knowing is conditioned by being and that being can be profoundly modified by training! we are /ustified in ignoring most of the arguments by which nonmystics have sought to discredit the experience of mystics. #he being of a color-blind man is such that he is not competent to pass /udgment on a painting. #he color-blind man cannot be educated into seeing colors! and in this respect he is different from the ndian musician! who begins by finding European symphonies merely deafening and bewildering! but can be trained! if he so desires! to perceive the beauties of this kind of music. 4imilarly! the being of a non-mystical person is such that he cannot understand the nature of the mystic"s intuitions. +ike the ndian musician! however! he is at liberty! if he so chooses! to have some kind of direct experience of what at present he does not

understand. #his training is one which he will certainly find extremely tedious' for it involves! at first! the leading of a life of constant awareness and unremitting moral effort' second! steady practice in the techni$ue of meditation! which is probably about as difficult as the techni$ue of violin playing. %ut! however tedious! the training can be undertaken by any one who wishes to do so. #hose who have not undertaken the training can have no knowledge of the kind of experiences open to those who have undertaken it and are as little /ustified in denying the validity of those direct intuitions of an ultimate spiritual reality! at once transcendent and immanent! as were the 7isan professors who denied! on a riori grounds! the validity of 5alileo"s direct intuition :made possible by the telescope; of the fact that >upiter has several moons. . . 4ystematic training in recollection and meditation makes possible the mystical experience! which is a direct intuition of ultimate reality. At all times and in every part of the world! mystics of the first order have always agreed that this ultimate reality! apprehended in the process of meditation! is essentially impersonal. #his direct intuition of an impersonal spiritual reality! underlying all being! is in accord with the findings of the ma/ority of the world"s philosophers. "#here is!" writes 7rofessor .hitehead! in $eligion in the +a/ing, "a large concurrence in the negative doctrine that the religious experience does not include any direct intuition of a definite person! or individual. . . #he evidence for the assertion of a general! though not universal! concurrence in the doctrine of no direct vision of a personal 5od! can only be found by a consideration of the religious thought of the civili0ed world. . . #hroughout ndia and 1hina! religious thought! so far as it has been interpreted in precise form! disclaims the intuition of ultimate personality substantial to the universe. #his is true of 1onfucian philosophy! %uddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy. #here may be personal embodiments! but the substratum is impersonal. 1hristian theology has also! in the main! adopted the position that there is no direct intuition of such a personal substratum for the world. t maintains the doctrine of a personal 5od as a truth! but holds that our belief in it is based upon inference." #here seems! however! to be no cogent reason why! from the existing evidence! we should draw such an inference. Moreover! the practical results of drawing such an inference are good only up to a point' beyond that point they are very often extremely bad. .e are now in a position to draw a few tentative and fragmentary conclusions about the nature of the world and our relation to it and to one another. #o the casual observer! the world seems to be made up of great numbers of independent existents! some of which possess life and some consciousness. -rom very early times philosophers suspected that this common-sense view was in part at least! illusory. More recently investigators! trained in the discipline of mathematical physics and e$uipped with instruments of precision! have made observations from which it could be inferred that all the apparently independent existents in the world were built up of a limited number of patterns of identical units of energy. An ultimate physical identity underlies the apparent physical diversity of the world. Moreover! all apparently independent existents are in fact interdependent. Meanwhile the mystics had shown that investigators! trained in the discipline of recollection and meditation! could obtain direct experience of a spiritual unity underlying the apparent diversity of independent consciousness. #hey made it clear that what seemed to be the ultimate fact of personality was in reality not an ultimate fact and that it was possible for individuals to transcend the limitations of personality and to

merge their private consciousness into a greater! impersonal consciousness underlying the personal mind. . . #he physical world of our daily experience is a private universe $uarried out of a total reality which the physicists infer to be far greater than it. #his private universe is different! not only from the real world! whose existence we are able to infer! even though we cannot directly apprehend it! but also from the private universe inhabited by other animals = universes which we can never penetrate! but concerning whose nature we can! as 8on @exkull has done! make interesting speculative guesses. Each type of living creature inhabits a universe whose nature is determined and whose boundaries are imposed by the special inade$uacies of its sense organs and its intelligence. n man! intelligence has been so far developed that he is able to infer the existence and even! to some extent! the nature of the real world outside his private universe. #he nature of the sense organs and intelligence of living beings is imposed by biological necessity or convenience. #he instruments of knowledge are good enough to enable their owners to survive. +ess inade$uate instruments of knowledge might not only lead to no biological advantage but might actually constitute a biological handicap. ndividual human beings have been able to transcend the limitations of man"s private universe only to the extent that they are relieved from biological pressure. An individual is relieved from biological pressure in two ways6 from without! thanks to the efforts of others! and from within! thanks to his own efforts. f he is to transcend the limitations of man"s private universe he must be a member of a community which gives him protection against the inclemencies of the environment and makes it easy for him to supply his physical wants. %ut this is not enough. He must also train himself in the art of being dispassionate and disinterested! must cultivate intellectual curiosity for its own sake and not for what he! as an animal! can get out of it. #he modern conception of man"s intellectual relationship to the universe was anticipated by the %uddhist doctrine that desire is the source of illusion. #o the extent that it has overcome desire! a mind is free from illusion. #his is true not only of the man of science! but also of the artist and the philosopher. &nly the disinterested mind can transcend common-sense and pass beyond the boundaries of animal or average-sensual human life. #he mystic exhibits disinterestedness in the highest degree possible to human beings and is therefore able to transcend ordinary limitations more completely than the man of science! the artist or the philosopher. #hat which he discovers beyond the frontiers of the average sensual man"s universe is a spiritual reality underlying and uniting all apparently separate existents = a reality with which he can merge himself and from which he can draw moral and even physical powers which! by ordinary standards! can only be described as super-normal. #he ultimate reality discoverable by those who choose to modify their being! so that they can have direct knowledge of it! is not! as we have seen! a personality. 4ince it is not personal! it is illegitimate to attribute to it ethical $ualities. "5od is not good!" said Eckhart. " am good." 5oodness is the means by which men and women can overcome the illusion of being completely independent existents and can raise themselves to a level of being upon which it becomes possible! by recollection and meditation! to reali0e the fact of their oneness with ultimate reality! to know and in some measure actually associate themselves with it. #he ultimate reality is "the peace of 5od which passeth all understanding"' goodness is the way by which it can be approached. "-inite beings!" in

the words of Eoyce! "are always such as they are in virtue of an inattention which at present blinds them to their actual relations to 5od and to one another." #hat inattention is the fruit! in %uddhist language! of desire. .e fail to attend to our true relations with ultimate reality and! through ultimate reality! with our fellow beings! because we prefer to attend to our animal nature and to the business of getting on in the world. #hat we can never completely ignore the animal in us or its biological needs is obvious. &ur separateness is not wholly an illusion. #he element of specificity in things is a brute fact of experience. ,iversity cannot be reduced to complete identity even in scientific and philosophical theory! still less in life which is lived with bodies! that is to say! with particular patternings of the ultimately identical units of energy. t is impossible in the nature of things! that no attention should be given to the animal in us' but in the circumstances of civili0ed life! it is certainly unnecessary to give all or most of our attention to it. 5oodness is the method by which we divert our attention from this singularly wearisome topic of our animality and our individual separateness. Eecollection and meditation assist goodness in two ways6 by producing! in %abbitt"s words! "a suprarational concentration of will!" and by making it possible for the mind to reali0e! not only theoretically! but also by direct intuition! that the private universe of the average sensual man is not identical with the universe as a whole. 1onversely! of course! goodness aids meditation by giving detachment from animality and so making it possible for the mind to pay attention to its actual relationship with ultimate reality and to other individuals. 5oodness! meditation! the mystical experience and the ultimate impersonal reality discovered in mystical experience are organically related. #his fact disposes of the fears expressed by ,r. Albert 4chweit0er in his recent book on ndian thought. Mysticism! he contends! is the correct world view' but! though correct! it is unsatisfactory in ethical content. #he ultimate reality of the world is not moral :"5od is not good"; and the mystic who unites himself with ultimate reality is uniting himself with a non-moral being! therefore is not himself moral. %ut this is mere verbalism and ignores the actual facts of experience. t is impossible for the mystic to pay attention to his real relation to 5od and to his fellows! unless he has previously detached his attention from his animal nature and the business of being socially successful. %ut he cannot detach his attention from these things except by the consistent and conscious practice of the highest morality. 5od is not good' but if want to have even the smallest knowledge of 5od! must be good at least in some slight measure' and if want as full a knowledge of 5od as it is possible for human beings to have! must be as good as it is possible for human beings to be. 8irtue is the essential preliminary to the mystical experience. And this is not all. #here is not even any theoretical incompatibility between an ultimate reality! which is impersonal and therefore not moral! and the existence of a moral order on the human level. 4cientific investigation has shown that the world is a diversity underlain by an identity of physical substance' the mystical experience testifies to the existence of a spiritual unity underlying the diversity of separate consciousnesses. 1oncerning the relation between the underlying physical unity and the underlying spiritual unity it is hard to express an opinion. ?or is it necessary! in the present context! that we should express one. -or our present purposes the important fact is that it is possible to detect a physical and a spiritual unity underlying the independent existents :to some extent merely apparent! to some extent real! at any rate for beings on our plane of existence;! of which our commonsense universe is composed. ?ow! it is a fact of experience that we can either emphasi0e our separateness from other

beings and the ultimate reality of the world or emphasi0e our oneness with them and it. #o some extent at least! our will is free in this matter. Human beings are creatures who! in so far as they are animals and persons tend to regard themselves as independent existents! connected at most by purely biological ties! but who! in so far as they rise above animality and personality! are able to perceive that they are interrelated parts of physical and spiritual wholes incomparably greater than themselves. -or such beings the fundamental moral commandment is6 Aou shall reali0e your unity with all being. %ut men cannot reali0e their unity with others and with ultimate reality unless they practice the virtue of love and understanding. +ove! compassion and understanding or intelligence = these are the primary virtues in the ethical system! the virtues organically correlated with what may be called the scientific-mystical conception of the world. @ltimate reality is impersonal and non-ethical' but if we would reali0e our true relations with ultimate reality and our fellow beings! we must practice morality and :since no personality can learn to transcend itself unless it is reasonably free from external compulsion; respect the personality of others. %elief in a personal! moral 5od has led only too fre$uently to theoretical dogmatism and practical intolerance = to a consistent refusal to respect personality and to the commission in the name of the divinely moral person of every kind of ini$uity. "#he fact of the instability of evil!" in 7rofessor .hitehead"s words! "is the moral order of the world." Evil is that which makes for separateness' and that which makes for separateness is self-destructive. #his self-destruction of evil may be sudden and violent! as when murderous hatred results in a conflict that leads to the death of the hater' it may be gradual! as when a degenerative process results in impotence or extinction' or it may be reformative! as when a long course of evil-doing results in all concerned becoming so sick of destruction and degeneration that they decide to change their ways! thus transforming evil into good. #he evolutionary history of life clearly illustrates the instability of evil in the sense in which it has been defined above. %iological speciali0ation may be regarded as a tendency on the part of a species to insist on its separateness' and the result of speciali0ation! as we have seen! is either negatively disastrous! in the sense that it precludes the possibility of further biological progress! or positively disastrous! in the sense that it leads to the extinction of the species. n the same way intraspecific competition may be regarded as the expression of a tendency on the part of related individuals to insist on their separateness and independence' the effects of intraspecific competition are! as we have seen! almost wholly bad. 1onversely! the $ualities which have led to biological progress are the $ualities which make it possible for individual beings to escape from their separateness = intelligence and the tendency to co-operate. +ove and understanding are valuable even on the biological level. Hatred! unawareness! stupidity and all that makes for increase of separateness are the $ualities that! as a matter of historical fact! have led either to the extinction of a species! or to its becoming a living fossil! incapable of making further biological progress. :-rom "%eliefs!" ?nds and +eans0

=no led7e and Understand"n7

Fnowledge is ac$uired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. @nderstanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct! unmediated contact with the new! the mystery! moment by moment! of our existence. #he new is the given on every level of experience = given perceptions! given emotions and thoughts! given states of unstructured awareness! given relationships with things and persons. #he old is our home-made system of ideas and word patterns. t is the stock of finished articles fabricated out of the given mystery by memory and analytical reasoning! by habit and the automatic associations of accepted notions. Fnowledge is primarily a knowledge of these finished articles. @nderstanding is primarily direct awareness of the raw material. Fnowledge is always in terms of concepts and can be passed on by means of words or other symbols. @nderstanding is not conceptual! and therefore cannot be passed on. t is an immediate experience! and immediate experience can only be talked about :very inade$uately;! never shared. ?obody can actually feel another"s pain or grief! another"s love or /oy or hunger. And similarly nobody can experience another"s understanding of a given event or situation. #here can! of course! be knowledge of such an understanding! and this knowledge may be passed on in speech or writing! or by means of other symbols. 4uch communicable knowledge is useful as a reminder that there have been specific understandings in the past! and that understanding is at all times possible. %ut we must always remember that knowledge of understanding is not the same thing as the understanding! which is the raw material of that knowledge. t is as different from understanding as the doctor"s prescription for penicillin is different from penicillin. @nderstanding is not inherited! nor can it be laboriously ac$uired. t is something which! when circumstances are favorable! comes to us! so to say! of its own accord. All of us are knowers! all the time' it is only occasionally and in spite of ourselves that we directly understand the mystery of given reality. 1onse$uently we are very seldom tempted to e$uate understanding with knowledge. &f the exceptional men and women! who have understanding in every situation! most are intelligent enough to see that understanding is different from knowledge and that conceptual systems based upon past experience are as necessary to the conduct of life as are spontaneous insights into new experiences. -or these reasons the mistake of identifying understanding with knowledge is rarely perpetrated and therefore poses no serious problem. How different is the case with the opposite mistake! the mistake of supposing that knowledge is the same as understanding and interchangeable with it3 All adults possess vast stocks of knowledge. 4ome of it is correct knowledge! some of it is incorrect knowledge! and some of it only looks like knowledge and is neither correct nor incorrect' it is merely meaningless. #hat which gives meaning to a proposition is not :to use the words of an eminent contemporary philosopher! Eudolf 1arnap; "the attendant images or thoughts! but the possibility of deducing from it perceptive propositions! in other words the possibility of verification. #o give sense to a proposition! the presence of images is not sufficient! it is not even necessary. .e have no image of the electro-magnetic field! nor even! should say! of the gravitational field' nevertheless the proposition which physicists assert about these fields have a perfect sense! because perceptive propositions are deductible from them." Metaphysical doctrines are propositions which cannot be

operationally verified! at least on the level of ordinary experience. #hey may be expressive of a state of mind! in the way that lyrical poetry is expressive' but they have no assignable meaning. #he information they convey is only pseudo-knowledge. %ut the formulators of metaphysical doctrines and the believers in such doctrines have always mistaken this pseudo-knowledge for knowledge and have proceeded to modify their behavior accordingly. Meaningless pseudo-knowledge has at all times been one of the principal motivators of individual and collective action. And that is one of the reasons why the course of human history has been so tragic and at the same time so strangely grotes$ue. Action based upon meaningless pseudo-knowledge is always inappropriate! always beside the point! and conse$uently always results in the kind of mess mankind has always lived in = the kind of mess that makes the angels weep and the satirists laugh aloud. 1orrect or incorrect! relevant or meaningless! knowledge and pseudo-knowledge are as common as dirt and are therefore taken for granted. @nderstanding! on the contrary! is as rare! very nearly! as emeralds! and so is highly pri0ed. #he knowers would dearly love to be understanders' but either their stock of knowledge does not include the knowledge of what to do in order to be understanders' or else they know theoretically what they ought to do! but go on doing the opposite all the same. n either case they cherish the comforting delusion that knowledge and! above all! pseudo-knowledge are understanding. Along with the closely related errors of over-abstraction! overgenerali0ation and over-simplification! this is the commonest of all intellectual sins and the most dangerous. &f the vast sum of human misery about one third! would guess! is unavoidable misery. #his is the price we must pay for being embodied! and for inheriting genes which are sub/ect to deleterious mutations. #his is the rent extorted by ?ature for the privilege of living on the surface of a planet! whose soil is mostly poor! whose climates are capricious and inclement! and whose inhabitants include a countless number of microorganisms capable of causing in man himself! in his domestic animals and cultivated plants! an immense variety of deadly or debilitating diseases. #o these miseries of cosmic origin must be added the much larger group of those avoidable disasters we bring upon ourselves. -or at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity! human malice and those great motivators and /ustifiers of malice and stupidity! idealism! dogmatism and proselyti0ing 0eal on behalf of religious or political idols. %ut 0eal! dogmatism and idealism exist only because we are forever committing intellectual sins. .e sin by attributing concrete significance to meaningless pseudo-knowledge' we sin in being too la0y to think in terms of multiple causation and indulging instead in oversimplification! over-generali0ation and over-abstraction' and we sin by cherishing the false but agreeable notion that conceptual knowledge and! above all! conceptual pseudoknowledge are the same as understanding. 1onsider a few obvious examples. #he atrocities of organi0ed religion :and organi0ed religion! let us never forget! has done about as much harm as it has done good; are all due! in the last analysis! to "mistaking the pointing finger for the moon" = in other words to mistaking the verbali0ed notion for the given mystery to which it refers or! more often! only seems to refer. #his! as have said! is one of the original sins of the intellect! and it is a sin in which! with a rationalistic bumptiousness as grotes$ue as it is distasteful! theologians have systematically wallowed. -rom indulgence in this kind of

delin$uency there has arisen! in most of the great religious traditions of the world! a fantastic over-valution of words. &ver-valuation of words leads all too fre$uently to the fabrication and idolatrous worship of dogmas! to the insistence on uniformity of belief! the demand for assent by all and sundry to a set of propositions which! though meaningless! are to be regarded as sacred. #hose who do not consent to this idolatrous worship of words are to be "converted" and! if that should prove impossible! either persecuted or! if the dogmati0ers lack political power! ostraci0ed and denounced. mmediate experience of reality unites men. 1onceptuali0ed beliefs! including even the belief in a 5od of love and righteousness! divide them and! as the dismal record of religious history bears witness! set them for centuries on end at each other"s throats. &ver-simplification! over-generali0ation and over-abstraction are three other sins closely related to the sin of imagining that knowledge and pseudo-knowledge are the same as understanding. #he over-generali0ing over-simplifier is the man who asserts! without producing evidence! that "All 2"s are A!" or! "All A"s have a single cause! which is %." #he over-abstractor is the one who cannot be bothered to deal with >ones and 4mith! with >ane and Mary! as individuals! but en/oys being elo$uent on the sub/ect of Humanity! of 7rogress! of 5od and History and the -uture. #his brand of intellectual delin$uency is indulged in by every demagogue! every crusader. n the Middle Ages the favorite over-generali0ation was "All infidels are damned." :-or the Moslems! "all infidels" meant "all 1hristians"' for the 1hristians! "all Moslems."; Almost as popular was the nonsensical proposition! "All heretics are inspired by the devil" and "All eccentric old women are witches." n the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the wars and persecutions were /ustified by the luminously clear and simple belief that "All Eoman 1atholics :or! if you happened to be on the 7ope"s side! all +utherans! 1alvinists and Anglicans; are 5od"s enemies." n our own day Hitler proclaimed that all the ills of the world had one cause! namely >ews! and that all >ews were subhuman enemies of mankind. -or the 1ommunists! all the ills of the world have one cause! namely capitalists! and all capitalists and their middle-class supporters are subhuman enemies of mankind. t is perfectly obvious! on the face of it! that none of these over-generali0ed statements can possibly be true. %ut the urge to intellectual sin is fearfully strong. All are sub/ect to temptation and few are able to resist. #here are in the lives of human beings very many situations in which only knowledge! conceptuali0ed! accumulated and passed on by means of words! if of any practical use. -or example! if want to manufacture sulphuric acid or to keep accounts for a banker! do not start at the beginnings of chemistry or economics' start at what is now the end of these sciences. n other words! go to a school where the relevant knowledge is taught! read books in which the accumulations of past experience in these particular fields are set forth. can learn the functions of an accountant or a chemical engineer on the basis of knowledge alone. -or this particular purpose it is not necessary for me to have much understanding of concrete situations as they arise! moment by moment! from the depths of the given mystery of our existence. .hat is important for me as a professional man is that should be familiar with all the conceptual knowledge in my field. &urs is an industrial civili0ation! in which no society can prosper unless it possesses an elite of highly trained scientists and a considerable army of engineers and technicians. #he possession and wide dissemination of a great deal of correct! speciali0ed knowledge has become a prime condition of national survival. n the @nited 4tates! during the last

twenty or thirty years! this fact seems to have been forgotten. 7rofessional educationists have taken >ohn ,ewey"s theories of "learning through doing" and of "education as lifead/ustment!" and have applied them in such a way that! in many American schools! there is now doing without learning! along with courses in ad/ustment to everything except the basic twentieth-century fact that we live in a world where ignorance of science and its methods is the surest! shortest road to national disaster. ,uring the past half century every other nation has made great efforts to impart more knowledge to more young people. n the @nited 4tates professional educationists have chosen the opposite course. At the turn of the century fifty-six per cent of the pupils in American high schools studied algebra' today less than a $uarter of them are so much as introduced to the sub/ect. n ()** eleven per cent of American boys and girls were studying geometry' fifty years ago the figure was twenty-seven per cent. -our per cent of them now take physics! as against nineteen per cent in ()DD. -ifty per cent of American high schools offer no courses in chemistry! fifty-three per cent no course in physics. #his headlong decline in knowledge has not been accompanied by any increase in understanding' for it goes without saying that high school courses in life ad/ustment do not teach understanding. #hey teach only conformity to current conventions of personal and collective behavior. #here is no substitute for correct knowledge! and in the process of ac$uiring correct knowledge there is no substitute for concentration and prolonged practice. Except for the unusually gifted! learning! by whatever method! must always be hard work. @nfortunately there are many professional educationists who seem to think that children should never be re$uired to work hard. .herever educational methods are based on this assumption! children will not in fact ac$uire much knowledge' and if the methods are followed for a generation or two! the society which tolerates them will find itself in full decline. n theory! deficiencies in knowledge can be made good simply by changing the curriculum. n practice! a change in the curriculum will do little good! unless there is a corresponding change in the point of view of professional educationists. -or the trouble with American educationists! writes a distinguished member of their profession! ,r. H. +. ,odge! is that they "regard any sub/ect from personal grooming to philosophy as e$ually important or interchangeable in furthering the process of self-reali0ation. #his anarchy of values has led to the displacement of the established disciplines of science and the humanities by these new sub/ects." .hether professional educationists can be induced to change their current attitudes is uncertain. 4hould it prove impossible! we must fall back on the comforting thought that time never stands still and that nobody is immortal. .hat persuasion and the threat of national decline fail to accomplish! retirement! high blood pressure and death will bring to pass! more slowly! it is true! but much more surely. #he dissemination of correct knowledge is one of the essential functions of education! and we neglect it at our peril. %ut! obviously! education should be more than a device for passing on correct knowledge. t should also teach what ,ewey called life ad/ustment and self-reali0ation. %ut precisely how should self-reali0ation and life ad/ustment be promoted< #o this $uestion modern educators have given many answers. Most of these answers belong to one or other of two main educational families! the 7rogressive and the 1lassical. Answers of the 7rogressive type find expression in the provision of courses in such sub/ect as "family living! consumer economics! /ob information! physical and mental health! training for world citi0enship and statesmanship and last! and we are afraid least" : $uote again the words of ,r. ,odge; "training in

fundamentals." .here answers of the 1lassical type are preferred! educators provide courses in +atin! 5reek and modern European literature! in world history and in philosophy = exclusively! for some odd reason! of the .estern brand. 4hakespeare and 1haucer! 8irgil and Homer = how far away they seem! how irrevocably dead3 .hy! then! should we bother to teach the classics< #he reasons have been stated a thousand times! but seldom with more force and lucidity than by Albert >ay ?ock in his +emoirs o, a (u er,luous +an. "#he literatures of 5reece and Eome provide the longest! the most complete and most nearly continuous record we have of what the strange creature Homo sapiens has been busy about in virtually every department of spiritual! intellectual and social activity. Hence the mind that has canvassed this record is much more than a disciplined mind' it is an experienced mind. t has come! as Emerson says! into a feeling of immense longevity! and it instinctively views contemporary man and his doings in the perspective set by this profound and weighty experience. &ur studies were properly called formative! because! beyond all others! their effect was powerfully maturing. 1icero told the unvarnished truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must for ever remain children. And if one wished to characteri0e the collective mind of this period! or indeed of any period! the use it makes of its powers of observation! reflection! logical inference! one would best do it by the word "immaturity." " #he 7rogressive and the 1lassical approaches to education are not incompatible. t is perfectly possible to combine a schooling in the local cultural tradition with a training! half vocational! half psychological! in adaptation to the current conventions of social life! and then to combine this combination with training in the sciences! in other words with the inculcation of correct knowledge. %ut is this enough< 1an such an education result in the self-reali0ation which is its aim< #he $uestion deserves our closest scrutiny. ?obody! of course! can doubt the importance of accumulated experience as a guide for individual and social conduct. .e are human because! at a very early stage in the history of the species! our ancestors discovered a way of preserving and disseminating the results of experience. #hey learned to speak and were thus enabled to translate what they had perceived! what they had inferred from given fact and home-grown phantasy! into a set of concepts! which could be added to by each generation and be$ueathed! a treasure of mingled sense and nonsense! to posterity. n Mr. ?ock"s words "the mind that has canvassed this record is an experienced mind." #he only trouble! so far as we are concerned! is that the vicarious experience derived from a study of the classics is! in certain respects! completely irrelevant to twentieth-century facts. n many ways! of course! the modern world resembles the world inhabited by the men of anti$uity. n many other ways! however! it is radically different. -or example! in their world the rate of change was exceedingly slow' in ours advancing technology produces a state of chronic revolution. They took infanticide for granted :#hebes was the only 5reek city which forbade the exposure of babies; and regarded slavery as not only necessary to the 5reek way of life! but as intrinsically natural and right' we are the heirs of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century humanitarianism and must solve our economic and demographic problems by methods less dreadfully reminiscent of recent totalitarian practice. %ecause all the dirty work was done by slaves! they regarded every form of manual activity as essentially unworthy of a gentleman and in conse$uence never sub/ected their overabstract! over-rational theories to the test of experiment' we have learned! or at least are learning! to think operationally. They despised "barbarians!" never bothered to learn a

foreign language and could therefore na\vely regard the rules of 5reek grammar and syntax as the +aws of #hought' we have begun to understand the nature of language! the danger of taking words too seriously! the ever-present need for linguistic analysis. They knew nothing about the past and therefore! in 1icero"s words! were like children. :#hucydides! the greatest historian of anti$uity! prefaces his account of the 7eloponnesian .ar by airily asserting that nothing of great importance had happened before his own time.; -e, in the course of the last five generations! have ac$uired a knowledge of man"s past extending back to more than half a million years and covering the activities of tribes and nations in every continent. They developed political institutions which! in the case of 5reece! were hopelessly unstable and! in the case of Eome! were only too firmly fixed in a pattern of aggressiveness and brutality' but what we need is a few hints on the art of creating an entirely new kind of society! durable but adventurous! strong but humane! highly organi0ed but liberty-loving! elastic and adaptable. n this matter 5reece and Eome can teach us only negatively = by demonstrating! in their divergent ways! what not to do. -rom all this it is clear that a classical education in the humanities of two thousand years ago re$uires to be supplemented by some kind of training in the humanities of today and tomorrow. #he 7rogressives profess to give such a training' but surely we need something a little more informative! a little more useful in this vertiginously changing world of ours! than courses in present-day consumer economics and current /ob information. %ut even if a completely ade$uate schooling in the humanities of the past! the present and the foreseeable future could be devised and made available to all! would the aims of education! as distinct from factual and theoretical instruction! be thereby achieved< .ould the recipients of such an education be any nearer to the goal of self-reali0ation< #he answer! am afraid! is! ?o. -or at this point we find ourselves confronted by one of those paradoxes which are of the very essence of our strange existence as amphibians inhabiting! without being completely at home in! half a do0en almost incommensurable worlds = the world of concepts and the world of data! the ob/ective world and the sub/ective! the small! bright world of personal consciousness and the vast! mysterious world of the unconscious. .here education is concerned! the paradox may be expressed in the statement that the medium of education! which is language! is absolutely necessary! but also fatal' that the sub/ect matter of education! which is the conceptuali0ed accumulation of past experiences! is indispensable! but also an obstacle to be circumvented. "Existence is prior to essence." @nlike most metaphysical propositions! this slogan of the existentialists can actually be verified. ".olf children!" adopted by animal mothers and brought up in animal surroundings! have the form of human beings! but are not human. #he essence of humanity! it is evident! is not something we are born with' it is something we make or grow into. .e learn to speak! we accumulate conceptuali0ed knowledge and pseudo-knowledge! we imitate our elders! we build up fixed patterns of thought and feeling and behavior! and in the process we become human! we turn into persons. %ut the things which make us human are precisely the things which interfere with self-reali0ation and prevent understanding. .e are humani0ed by imitating others! by learning their speech and by ac$uiring the accumulated knowledge which language makes available. %ut we understand only when! by liberating ourselves from the tyranny of words! conditioned reflexes and social conventions! we establish direct! unmediated contact with experience. #he greatest

paradox of our existence consists in this6 that! in order to understand! we must first encumber ourselves with all the intellectual and emotional baggage which is an impediment to understanding. Except in a dim! pre-conscious way! animals do not understand a situation! even though! by inherited instinct or by an ad hoc act of intelligence! they may be reacting to it with complete appropriateness! as though they understood it. 1onscious understanding is the privilege of men and women! and it is a privilege which they have earned! strangely enough! by ac$uiring the useful or delin$uent habits! the stereotypes of perception! thought and feeling! the rituals of behavior! the stock of second-hand knowledge and pseudo-knowledge! whose possession is the greatest obstacle to understanding. "+earning!" says +ao-tsu! "consists in adding to one"s stock day by day. #he practice of the #ao consists in subtracting." #his does not mean! of course! that we can live by subtraction alone. +earning is as necessary as unlearning. .herever technical proficiency is needed! learning is indispensable. -rom youth to old age! from generation to generation! we must go on adding to our stock of useful and relevant knowledge. &nly in this way can we hope to deal effectively with the physical environment! and with the abstract ideas which make it possible for men to find their way through the complexities of civili0ation and technology. %ut this is not the right way to deal with our personal reactions to ourselves or to other human beings. n such situations there must be an unlearning of accumulated concepts' we must respond to each new challenge not with our old conditioning! not in the light of conceptual knowledge based on the memory of past and different events! not by consulting the law of averages! but with a consciousness stripped naked and as though newborn. &nce more we are confronted by the great paradox of human life. t is our conditioning which develops our consciousness' but in order to make full use of this developed consciousness! we must start by getting rid of the conditioning which developed it. %y adding conceptual knowledge to conceptual knowledge! we make conscious understanding possible' but this potential understanding can be actuali0ed only when we have subtracted all that we have added. t is because we have memories that we are convinced of our self-identity as persons and as members of a given society.
The child is father of the @an; And * could wish my days to be ound each to each by natural piety"

.hat .ordsworth called "natural piety" a teacher of understanding would describe as indulgence in emotionally charged memories! associated with childhood and youth. -actual memory = the memory! for example! of the best way of making sulphuric acid or of casting up accounts = is an unmixed blessing. %ut psychological memory :to use Frishnamurti"s term;! memory carrying an emotional charge! whether positive or negative! is a source at the worst of neurosis and insanity :psychiatry is largely the art of ridding patients of the incubus of their negatively charged memories;! at the best of distractions from the task of understanding = distractions which! though socially useful! are none the less obstacles to be climbed over or avoided. Emotionally charged memories cement the ties of family life :or sometimes make family life impossible3; and serve! when conceptuali0ed and taught as a cultural tradition! to hold communities together. &n the level of understanding! on the level of charity and on the level! to some extent! of

artistic expression! an individual has it in his power to transcend his social tradition! to overstep the bounds of the culture in which he has been brought up. &n the level of knowledge! manners and custom! he can never get very far away from the ersona created for him by his family and his society. #he culture within which he lives is a prison = but a prison which makes it possible for any prisoner who so desires to achieve freedom! a prison to which! for this and a host of other reasons! its inmates owe an enormous debt of gratitude and loyalty. %ut though it is our duty to "honor our father and our mother!" it is also our duty "to hate our father and our mother! our brethren and our sisters! yea and our own life" = that socially conditioned life we take for granted. #hough it is necessary for us to add to our cultural stock day by day! it is also necessary to subtract and subtract. #here is! to $uote the title of 4imone .eil"s posthumous essay! a great "?eed for Eoots"' but there is an e$ually urgent need! on occasion! for total rootlessness. n our present context this book by 4imone .eil and the preface which Mr. #. 4. Eliot contributes to the English edition are particularly instructive. 4imone .eil was a woman of great ability! heroic virtue and boundless spiritual aspiration. %ut unfortunately for herself! as well as for her readers! she was weighed down by a burden of knowledge and pseudo-knowledge! which her own almost maniacal over-valuation of words and notions rendered intolerably heavy. A clerical friend reports of her that he did not "ever remember 4imone .eil! in spite of her virtuous desire for ob/ectivity! give way in the course of a discussion." 4he was so deeply rooted in her culture that she came to believe that words were supremely important. Hence her love of argument and the obstinacy with which she clung to her opinions. Hence too her strange inability! on so many occasions! to distinguish the pointing finger from the indicated moon. "%ut why do you prate of 5od<" Meister Eckhart asked' and out of the depth of his understanding of given reality! he added ".hatever you say of Him is untrue." ?ecessarily so' for "the saving truth was never preached by the %uddha!" or by anyone else. #ruth can be defined in many ways. %ut if you define it as understanding :and this is how all the masters of the spiritual life have defined it;! then it is clear that "truth must be lived and there is nothing to argue about in this teaching' any arguing is sure to go against the intent of it." #his was something which Emerson knew and consistently acted upon. #o the almost fren0ied exasperation of that pugnacious manipulator of religious notions! the elder Henry >ames! he refused to argue about anything. And the same was true of .illiam +aw. "Away! then! with the fiction and workings of discursive reason! either for or against 1hristianity3 #hey are only the wanton spirit of the mind! whilst ignorant of 5od and insensible of its own nature and condition. . . -or neither 5od! nor heaven! nor hell! nor the devil! nor the flesh! can be any other way knowable in you or by you! but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And any pretended knowledge of any of those things! beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you! is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that has never entered into him." #his does not mean! of course! that discursive reason and argument are without value. .here knowledge is concerned! they are not only valuable' they are indispensable. %ut knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. f we want to understand! we must uproot ourselves from our culture! by-pass language! get rid of emotionally charged memories! hate our fathers and mothers! subtract and subtract from our stock of notions. "?eeds must it be a virgin!" writes Meister Eckhart! "by whom >esus

is received. 8irgin! in other words! is a person! void of alien images! free as he was when he existed not." 4imone .eil must have known! theoretically! about this need for cultural virginity! of total rootlessness. %ut! alas! she was too deeply embedded in her own and other people"s ideas! too superstitious a believer in the magic of the words she handled with so much skill! to be able to act upon this knowledge. "#he food!" she wrote! "that a collectivity supplies to those who form part of it has no e$uivalent in the universe." :#hank 5od3 we may add! after sniffing the spiritual nourishment provided by many of the vanished collectivities of the past.; -urthermore! the food provided by a collectivity is food "not only for the souls of the living! but also for souls yet unborn." -inally! "the collectivity constitutes the sole agency for preserving the spiritual treasures accumulated by the dead! the sole transmitting agency by means of which the dead can speak to the living. And the sole earthly reality which is connected with the eternal destiny of man is the irradiating light of those who have managed to become fully conscious of this destiny! transmitted from generation to generation." #his last sentence could only have been penned by one who systematically mistook knowledge for understanding! homemade concepts for given reality. t is! of course! desirable that there should be knowledge of what men now dead have said about their understanding of reality. %ut to maintain that a knowledge of other people"s understanding is the same! for us! as understanding! or can even directly lead us to understanding! is a mistake against which all the masters of the spiritual life have always warned us. #he letter in 4t. 7aul"s phrase! is full of "oldness." t has therefore no relevance to the ever novel reality! which can be understood only in the "newness of the spirit." As for the dead! let them bury their dead. -or even the most exalted of past seers and avatars "never taught the saving truth." .e should not! it goes without saying! neglect the records of dead men"s understandings. &n the contrary! we ought to know all about them. %ut we must know all about them without taking them too seriously. .e must know all about them! while remaining acutely aware that such knowledge is not the same as understanding and that understanding will come to us only when we have subtracted what we know and made ourselves void and virgin! free as we were when we were not. #urning from the body of the book to the preface! we find an even more striking example of that literally preposterous over-valuation of words and notions to which the cultured and the learned are so fatally prone. " do not know!" Mr. Eliot writes! "whether she W4imone .eilX could read the @panishads in 4anskrit = or! if so! how great was her mastery of what is not only a highly developed language! but a way of thought! the difficulties of which become more formidable to a European student the more diligently he applies himself to it." %ut like all the other great works of &riental philosophy! the @panishads are not systems of pure speculation! in which the niceties of language are all important. #hey were written by #ranscendental 7ragmatists! as we may call them! whose concern was to teach a doctrine which could be made to "work!" a metaphysical theory which could be operationally tested! not through perception only! but by a direct experience of the whole man on every level of his being. #o understand the meaning of tat tvam asi, "thou art #hat!" it is not necessary to be a profound 4anskrit scholar. :4imilarly! it is not necessary to be a profound Hebrew scholar in order to understand the meaning of "thou shalt not kill."; @nderstanding of the doctrine :as opposed to conceptuali0ed knowledge about the doctrine; will come only to those who choose to

perform the operations that permit tat tvam asi to become a given fact of direct! unmediated experience! or in +aw"s words "a self-evident sensibility of its birth within them." ,id 4imone .eil know 4anskrit! or didn"t she< #he $uestion is entirely beside the point = is /ust a particularly smelly cultural red herring dragged across the trail that leads from selfhood to more-than-selfhood! from notionally conditioned ego to unconditioned spirit. n relation to the @panishads or any other work of Hindu or %uddhist philosophy! only one $uestion deserves to be taken with complete seriousness. t is this. How can a form of words! tat tvam asi, a metaphysical proposition such as &irvana and samsara are one, be converted into the direct! unmediated experience of a given fact< How can language and the learned foolery of scholars :for! in this vital context! that is all it is; be circumvented! so that the individual soul may finally understand the That which! in spite of all its efforts to deny the primordial fact! is identical with the thou: 4pecifically! what methods should we follow< #hose inculcated by 7atan/ali! or those of the Hinayana monks< #hose of the #antriks of northern ndia and #ibet! those of the -ar Eastern #aoists! of the followers of Hen< #hose described by 4t. >ohn of the 1ross and the author of The Cloud o, %n/nowing: f the European student wishes to remain shut up in the prison created by his private cravings and the thought patterns inherited from his predecessors! then by all means let him plunge! through 4anskrit! or 7ali! or 1hinese! or #ibetan! into the verbal study of "a way of thought! the difficulties of which become more formidable the more diligently he applies himself to it." f! on the other hand! he wishes to transcend himself by actually understanding the primordial fact described or hinted at in the @panishads and the other scriptures of what! for lack of a better phrase! we will call "spiritual religion!" then he must ignore the problems of language and speculative philosophy! or at least relegate them to a secondary position! and concentrate his attention on the practical means whereby the advance from knowledge to understanding may best be made. -rom the positively charged collective memories! which are organi0ed into a cultural or religious tradition! let us now return to the positively charged private memories! which individuals organi0e into a system of "natural piety." .e have no more right to wallow in natural piety = that is to say! in emotionally charged memories of past happiness and vanished loves = than to bemoan earlier miseries and torment ourselves with remorse for old offenses. And we have no more right to waste the present instant in relishing future and entirely hypothetical pleasures than to waste it in the apprehension of possible disasters to come. "#here is no greater pain!" says ,ante! "than! in misery! to remember happy times." "#hen stop remembering happy times and accept the fact of your present misery!" would be the seemingly unsympathetic answer to all those who have had understanding. #he emptying of memory is classed by 4t. >ohn of the 1ross as a good second only to the state of union with 5od! and an indispensable condition of such union. #he word *uddha may be translated as "awakened." #hose who merely know about things! or only think they know! live in a state of self-conditioned and culturally conditioned somnambulism. #hose who understand given reality as it presents itself! moment by moment! are wide awake. Memory charged with pleasant emotions is a soporific or! more accurately! an inducer of trance. #his was discovered empirically by an American hypnotist! ,r. .. %. -ahnestock! whose books (tatuvolism, or 1rti,icial (omnam!ulism, was published in (LQ(. ".hen persons are desirous of entering into this

state Wof artificial somnambulismX place them in a chair! where they may be at perfect ease. #hey are next instructed to throw their minds to some familiar place it matters not where! so that they have been there before and seem desirous of going there again! even in thought. .hen they have thrown the mind to the place! or upon the desired ob/ect! endeavor by speaking to them fre$uently to keep their mind upon it. . . #his must be persisted in for some time." n the end! "clairvoyancy will be induced." Anyone who has experimented with hypnosis! or who has watched an experienced operator inducing trance in a difficult sub/ect! knows how effective -ahnestock"s method can be. ncidentally! the relaxing power of positively charged memory was rediscovered! in another medical context! by an oculist! ,r. .. H. %ates! who used to make his patients cover their eyes and revisit in memory the scenes of their happiest experiences. %y this means muscular and mental tensions were reduced and it became possible for the patients to use their eyes and minds in a relaxed and therefore efficient way. -rom all this it is clear that! while positively charged memories can and should be used for specific therapeutic purposes! there must be no indiscriminate indulgence in "natural piety"' for such indulgence may result in a condition akin to trance = a condition at the opposite pole from the wakefulness that is understanding. #hose who live with unpleasant memories become neurotic and those who live with pleasant ones become somnambulistic' sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof = and the good thereof. #he Muses! in 5reek mythology! were the daughters of Memory! and every writer is embarked! like Marcel 7roust! on a hopeless search for time lost. %ut a good writer is one who knows how to "donner un sens lus ur au" mots de la tri!u." #hanks to this purer sense! his readers will react to his words with a degree of understanding much greater than they would have had! if they had reacted! in their ordinary self-conditioned or culture-conditioned way! to the events to which the words refer. A great poet must do too much remembering to be more than a sporadic understander' but he knows how to express himself in words which cause other people to understand. #ime lost can never be regained' but in his search for it! he may reveal to his readers glimpses of timeless reality. @nlike the poet! the mystic is "a son of time present." "7ast and present veil 5od from our sight!" says >alal-ud din Eumi! who was a 4ufi first and only secondarily a great poet. "%urn up both of them with fire. How long will you let yourself be partitioned by these segments like a reed< 4o long as it remains partitioned! a reed is not privy to secrets! neither is it vocal in response to lips or breathing." Along with its mirror image in anticipation! emotionally charged memory is a barrier that shuts us out from understanding. ?atural piety can very easily be transformed into artificial piety' for some emotionally charged memories are common to all the members of a given society and lend themselves to being organi0ed into religious! political or cultural traditions. #hese traditions are systematically drummed into the young of each successive generation and play an important part in the long drama of their conditioning for citi0enship. 4ince the memories common to one group are different from the memories shared by other groups! the social solidarity created by tradition is always partial and exclusive. #here is natural and artificial piety in relation to everything belonging to us, coupled with suspicion! dislike and contempt in relation to everything belonging to them. Artificial piety may be fabricated! organi0ed and fostered in two ways = by the repetition of verbal formulas of belief and worship! and by the performance of symbolic

acts and rituals. As might be expected! the second is the more effective method. .hat is the easiest way for a skeptic to achieve faith< #he $uestion was answered three hundred years ago by 7ascal. #he unbeliever must act "as though he believed! take holy water! have masses said etc. #his will naturally cause you to believe and will besot you." ECela vous a!>tira = literally! will make you stupid.; .e have to be made stupid! insists 7rofessor >ac$ues 1hevalier! defending his hero against the critics who have been shocked by 7ascal"s blunt language' we have to stultify our intelligence! because "intellectual pride deprives us of 5od and debases us to the level of animals." .hich is! of course! perfectly true. %ut it does not follow from this truth that we ought to besot ourselves in the manner prescribed by 7ascal and all the propagandists of all the religions. ntellectual pride can be cured only by devaluating pretentious words! only by getting rid of conceptuali0ed pseudo-knowledge and opening ourselves to reality. Artificial piety based on conditioned reflexes merely transfers intellectual pride from the bumptious individual to his even more bumptious 1hurch. At one remove! the pride remains intact. -or the convinced believer! understanding or direct contact with reality is exceedingly difficult. Moreover! the mere fact of having a strong reverential feeling about some hallowed thing! person or proposition is no guarantee of the existence of the thing! the infallibility of the person or the truth of the proposition. n this context! how instructive is the account of an experiment undertaken by that most imaginative and versatile of the Eminent 8ictorians! 4ir -rancis 5alton3 #he aim of the experiment! he writes in his 1uto!iogra hy, was to "gain an insight into the ab/ect feelings of barbarians and others concerning the power of images which they know to be of human handiwork. wanted if possible to enter into these feelings. . . t was difficult to find a suitable ob/ect for trial! because it ought to be in itself $uite unfitted to arouse devout feelings. fixed on a comic picture! it was that of 7unch! and made believe in its possession of divine attributes. addressed it with much $uasi-reverence as possessing a mighty power to reward or punish the behavior of men toward it! and found little difficulty in ignoring the impossibilities of what professed. #he experiment succeeded. began to feel and long retained for the picture a large share of the feelings that a barbarian entertains toward his idols! and learned to appreciate the enormous potency they might have over him." #he nature of a conditioned reflex is such that! when the bell rings! the dog salivates! when the much worshiped image is seen! or the much repeated credo! litany or mantram is pronounced! the heart of the believer is filled with reverence and his mind with faith. And this happens regardless of the content of the phrase repealed! the nature of the image to which obeisance has been made. He is not responding spontaneously to given reality' he is responding to some thing! or word! or gesture! which automatically brings into play a previously installed post-hypnotic suggestion. Meister Eckhart! that acutest of religious psychologists! clearly recogni0ed this fact. "He who fondly imagines to get more of 5od in thoughts! prayers! pious offices and so forth than by the fireside or in the stall in sooth he does but take 5od! as it were! and swaddle His head in a cloak and hide Him under the table. -or he who seeks 5od in settled forms lays hold of the form! while missing the 5od concealed in it. %ut he who seeks 5od in no special guise lays hold of him as He is in Himself! and such an one lives with the 4on and is the life itself." " f you look for the %uddha! you will not see the %uddha." " f you deliberately try to become a %uddha! your %uddha is samsara." " f a person seeks the #ao! that person loses the #ao." "%y intending to bring yourself into accord with 4uchness! you instantly

deviate." ".hosoever will save his life shall lose it." #here is a +aw of Eeversed Effort. #he harder we try with the conscious will to do something! the less we shall succeed. 7roficiency and the results of proficiency come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of simultaneously doing and not doing! of combining relaxation with activity! of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent @nknown Guantity may take hold. .e cannot make ourselves understand' the most we can do is to foster a state of mind! in which understanding may come to us. .hat is this state< 1learly it is not any state of limited consciousness. Eeality as it is given moment by moment cannot be understood by a mind acting in obedience to post-hypnotic suggestion! or so conditioned by its emotionally charged memories that it responds to the living now as though it were the dead then. ?or is the mind that has been trained in concentration any better e$uipped to understand reality. -or concentration is merely systematic exclusion! the shutting away from consciousness of all but one thought! one ideal! one image! or one negation of all thoughts! ideals and images. %ut however true! however lofty! however holy! no thought or ideal or image can contain reality or lead to the understanding of reality. ?or can the negation of awareness result in that completer awareness necessary to understanding. At the best these things can lead only to a state of ecstatic dissociation! in which one particular aspect of reality! the so-called "spiritual" aspect! may be apprehended. f reality is to be understood in its fullness! as it is given moment by moment! there must be an awareness which is not limited! either deliberately by piety or concentration! or involuntarily by mere thoughtlessness and the force of habit. @nderstanding comes when we are totally aware = aware to the limits of our mental and physical potentialities. #his! of course! is a very ancient doctrine. "Fnow thyself" is a piece of advice which is as old as civili0ation! and probably a great deal older. #o follow that advice! a man must do more than indulge in introspection. f would know myself! must know my environment' for as a body! am part of the environment! a natural ob/ect among other natural ob/ects! and! as a mind! consist to a great extent of my immediate reactions to the environment and of my secondary reactions to those primary reactions. n practice "know thyself" is a call to total awareness. #o those who practice it! what does total awareness reveal< t reveals! first of all! the limitations of the thing which each of us calls " !" and the enormity! the utter absurdity of its pretensions. " am the master of my fate!" poor Henley wrote at the end of a celebrated morsel of rhetoric! " am the captain of my soul." ?othing could be further from the truth. My fate cannot be mastered' it can only be collaborated with and thereby! to some extent! directed. ?or am the captain of my soul' am only its noisiest passenger = a passenger who is not sufficiently important to sit at the captain"s table and does not know! even by report! what the soul-ship looks like! how it works or where it is going. #otal awareness starts! in a word! with the reali0ation of my ignorance and my impotence. How do electro-chemical events in my brain turn into the perception of a $uartet by Haydn or a thought! let us say! of >oan of Arc< haven"t the faintest idea = nor has anyone else. &r consider a seemingly much simpler problem. 1an lift my right hand< #he answer is! ?o! can"t. can only give the order' the actual lifting is done by somebody else. .ho< don"t know. How< don"t know. And when have eaten! who digests the bread and cheese< .hen have cut myself! who heals the wound< .hile am sleeping! who restores the tired body to strength! the neurotic mind to sanity. All can say is that " " cannot do any of these things. #he catalogue of what do not know and am incapable of achieving could be

lengthened almost indefinitely. Even my claim to think is only partially /ustified by the observable facts. ,escartes"s primal certainty! " think! therefore am!" turns out! on closer examination! to be a most dubious proposition. n actual fact it is 3 who do the thinking< .ould it not be truer to say! "#houghts come into existence! and sometimes am aware of them"< +anguage! that treasure house of fossil observations and latent philosophy! suggests that this is in fact what happens. .henever find myself thinking more than ordinarily well! am apt to say! "An idea has occurred to me!" or! " t came into my head!" or! " see it clearly." n each case the phrase implies that thoughts have their origin "out there!" in something analogous! on the mental level! to the external world. #otal awareness confirms the hints of idiomatic speech. n relation to the sub/ective " !" most of the mind is out there. My thoughts are a set of mental! but still external facts. do not invent my best thoughts' find them. #otal awareness! then! reveals the following facts6 that am profoundly ignorant! that am impotent to the point of helplessness and that the most valuable elements in my personality are unknown $uantities existing "out there!" as mental ob/ects more or less completely independent of my control. #his discovery may seem at first rather humiliating and even depressing. %ut if wholeheartedly accept them! the facts become a source of peace! a reason for serenity and cheerfulness. am ignorant and impotent and yet! somehow or other! here am! unhappy! no doubt! profoundly dissatisfied! but alive and kicking. n spite of everything! survive! get by! sometimes even get on. -rom these two sets of facts = my survival on the one hand and my ignorance and impotence on the other = can only infer that the not- ! which looks after my body and gives me my best ideas! must be ama0ingly intelligent! knowledgeable and strong. As a self-centered ego! do my best to interfere with the beneficent workings of this not- . %ut in spite of my likes and dislikes! in spite of my malice! my infatuations! my gnawing anxieties! in spite of all my overvaluation of words! in spite of my self-stultifying insistence on living! not in present reality! but in memory and anticipation! this not- ! with whom am associated! sustains me! preserves me! gives me a long succession of second chances. .e know very little and can achieve very little' but we are at liberty! if we so choose! to co-operate with a greater power and a completer knowledge! an unknown $uantity at once immanent and transcendent! at once physical and mental! at once sub/ective and ob/ective. f we co-operate! we shall be all right! even if the worst should happen. f we refuse to co-operate! we shall be all wrong even in the most propitious of circumstances. #hese conclusions are only the first-fruits of total awareness. Aet richer harvests are to follow. n my ignorance am sure that am eternally . #his conviction is rooted in emotionally charged memory. &nly when! in the words of 4t. >ohn of the 1ross! the memory has been emptied! can escape from the sense of my watertight separateness and so prepare myself for the understanding! moment by moment! of reality on all its levels. %ut the memory cannot be emptied by an act of will! or by systematic discipline or by concentration = even by concentration on the idea of emptiness. t can be emptied only by total awareness. #hus! if am aware of my distractions = which are mostly emotionally charged memories or phantasies based upon such memories = the mental whirligig will automatically come to a stop and the memory will be emptied! at least for a moment or two. Again! if become totally aware of my resentment! my uncharitableness! these feelings will be replaced! during the time of my awareness! by a more realistic reaction to the events taking place around me. My awareness! of course! must be

uncontaminated by approval or condemnation. 8alue /udgments are conditioned! verbali0ed reactions to primary reactions. #otal awareness is a primary! choiceless! impartial response to the present situation as a whole. #here are in it no limiting conditioned reactions to the primary reaction! to the pure cognitive apprehension of the situation. f memories of verbal formulas of praise or blame should make their appearance in consciousness! they are to be examined impartially as any other present datum is examined. 7rofessional moralists have confidence in the surface will! believe in punishments and rewards and are adrenalin addicts who like nothing better than a good orgy of righteous indignation. #he masters of the spiritual life have little faith in the surface will or the utility! for their particular purposes! of rewards or punishments! and do not indulge in righteous indignation. Experience has taught them that the highest good can never! in the very nature of things! be achieved by morali0ing. ">udge not that ye be not /udged" is their watchword and total awareness is their method. #wo or three thousand years behind the times! a few contemporary psychiatrists have now discovered this method. "4ocrates!" writes 7rofessor 1arl Eogers! "developed novel ideas! which have proven to be socially constructive." .hy< %ecause he was "notably non-defensive and open to experience. #he reasoning behind this is based primarily upon the discovery in psychotherapy that if we can add to the sensory and visceral experiencing! characteristic of the whole animal kingdom! the gift of a free undirected awareness! of which only the human animal seems fully capable! we have an organism which is as aware of the demands of the culture as it is of its own physiological demands for food and sex! which is /ust as aware of its desire for friendly relationships as it is aware of its desire to aggrandi0e itself' which is /ust as aware of its delicate and sensitive tenderness toward others as it is of its hostilities toward others. .hen man is less than fully man! when he denies to awareness various aspects of his experience! then indeed we have all too often reason to fear him and his behavior! as the present world situation testifies. %ut when he is most fully man! when he is his complete organism! when awareness of experience! that peculiarly human attribute! is fully operating! then his behavior is to be trusted." %etter late than never3 t is comforting to find the immemorial commonplaces of mystical wisdom turning up as a brand-new discovery in psychotherapy. Gnosce tei sum = know yourself. Fnow yourself in relation to your overt intentions and your hidden motives! in relation to your thinking! your physical functioning and to those greater not-selves! who see to it that! despite all the ego"s attempts at sabotage! the thinking shall be tolerably relevant and the functioning not too abnormal. %e totally aware of what you do and think and of the persons with whom you are in relationship! the events which prompt you at every moment of your existence. %e aware impartially! realistically! without /udging! without reacting in terms of remembered words to your present cognitive reactions. f you do this! the memory will be emptied! knowledge and pseudo-knowledge will be relegated to their proper place! and you will have understanding = in other words! you will be in direct contact with reality at every instant. %etter still! you will discover what 1arl Eogers calls your "delicate and sensitive tenderness toward others." And not only your tenderness! the cosmic tenderness! the fundamental all-rightness of the universe = in spite of death! in spite of suffering. "#hough He slay me! yet will trust Him." #his is the utterance of someone who is totally aware. And another such utterance is! "5od is love." -rom the standpoint of common sense! the first is the raving of a lunatic! the second flies in the face of all

experience and is obviously untrue. %ut common sense is not based on total awareness' it is a product of convention! of organi0ed memories of other people"s words! of personal experiences limited by passion and value /udgments! of hallowed notions and naked selfinterest. #otal awareness opens the way to understanding! and when any given situation is understood! the nature of all reality is made manifest! and the nonsensical utterances of the mystics are seen to be true! or at least as nearly true as it is possible for a verbal expression of the ineffable to be. &ne in all and all in &ne' samsara and nirvana are the same' multiplicity is unity! and unity is not so much one as not-two' all things are void! and yet all things are the ,harma-%ody of the %uddha = and so on. 4o far as conceptual knowledge is concerned! such phrases are completely meaningless. t is only when there is understanding that they make sense. -or when there is understanding! there is an experienced fusion of the End with the Means! of the .isdom which is the timeless reali0ation of 4uchness with the 1ompassion which is .isdom in action. &f all the worn! smudged! dog"s-eared words in our vocabulary! "love" is surely the grubbiest! smelliest! slimiest. %awled from a million pulpits! lasciviously crooned through hundreds of millions of loud-speakers! it has become an outrage to good taste and decent feeling! an obscenity which one hesitates to pronounce. And yet it has to be pronounced! for! after all! +ove is the last word. :-rom Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow0