Soul of Man, The

<p>Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual.&nbsp; This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.&nbsp; An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him.&nbsp; Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.&nbsp; A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.&nbsp; Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is.&nbsp; It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.&nbsp; Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman.&nbsp; He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.&nbsp; Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known.&nbsp; I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known.&nbsp; Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them.&nbsp; It belongs to the sphere of action.&nbsp; But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.</p> <p>And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it in an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible.&nbsp; It is not quite their fault.&nbsp; The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up.&nbsp; They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.&nbsp; Now Art should never try to be popular.&nbsp; The public should try to make itself artistic.&nbsp; There is a very wide difference.&nbsp; If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all&mdash;well, nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused.&nbsp; Yet it is really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal popular control, to authority&mdash;in fact the authority of either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class.&nbsp; Of course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art still lingers.&nbsp; In fact, it does more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.</p> <p>In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest.&nbsp; Poetry is an instance of what I mean.&nbsp; We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.&nbsp; The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone.&nbsp; In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous.&nbsp; No country produces such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England.&nbsp; It must necessarily be so.&nbsp; The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it.&nbsp; It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist.&nbsp; It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind.&nbsp; It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him.&nbsp; In the case of the drama, things are a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art.&nbsp; Delightful work may be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom.&nbsp; It is when one comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control is seen.&nbsp; The one thing that the public dislike is novelty.&nbsp; Any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter.&nbsp; The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it.&nbsp; It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses.&nbsp; The public are quite right in their attitude.&nbsp; Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.&nbsp; Therein lies its immense value.&nbsp; For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.&nbsp; In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it.&nbsp; They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.&nbsp; They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them.&nbsp; Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to one&rsquo;s own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm.&nbsp; The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean.&nbsp; With regard to the Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not dwell upon the point.&nbsp; But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays.&nbsp; If they saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the drama either.&nbsp; The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art.&nbsp; They degrade the classics into authorities.&nbsp; They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.&nbsp; They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.&nbsp; A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions&mdash;one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.&nbsp; What they mean by these words seems to me to be this.&nbsp; When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.&nbsp; The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.&nbsp; But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones.&nbsp; There is not a single real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.&nbsp; Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word.&nbsp; That they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be expected.&nbsp; Wordsworth was a poet.&nbsp; But that they should have called Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary.&nbsp; Kingsley&rsquo;s prose was not of a very fine quality.&nbsp; Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they can.&nbsp; An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it.&nbsp; The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.&nbsp; But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.</p> <p>Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to such words as &lsquo;immoral,&rsquo; &lsquo;unintelligible,&rsquo; &lsquo;exotic,&rsquo; and &lsquo;unhealthy.&rsquo;&nbsp; There is one other word that they use.&nbsp; That word is &lsquo;morbid.&rsquo;&nbsp; They do not use it often.&nbsp; The meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of using it.&nbsp; Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular newspapers.&nbsp; It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work of art.&nbsp; For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of thought that one cannot express?&nbsp; The public are all morbid, because the public can never find expression for anything.&nbsp; The artist is never morbid.&nbsp; He expresses everything.&nbsp; He stands outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects.&nbsp; To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote &lsquo;King Lear.&rsquo;</p> <p>On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked.&nbsp; His individuality is intensified.&nbsp; He becomes more completely himself.&nbsp; Of course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very contemptible.&nbsp; But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or style from the suburban intellect.&nbsp; Vulgarity and stupidity are two very vivid facts in modern life.&nbsp; One regrets them, naturally.&nbsp; But there they are.&nbsp; They are subjects for study, like everything else.&nbsp; And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.</p> <p>Within the last few years two other adjectives, it may be mentioned, have been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at the disposal of the public.&nbsp; One is the word &lsquo;unhealthy,&rsquo; the other is the word &lsquo;exotic.&rsquo;&nbsp; The latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary mushroom against the immortal, entrancing, and exquisitely lovely orchid.&nbsp; It is a tribute, but a tribute of no importance.&nbsp; The word &lsquo;unhealthy,&rsquo; however, admits of analysis.&nbsp; It is a rather interesting word.&nbsp; In fact, it is so interesting that the people who use it do not know what it means.</p> <p>What does it mean?&nbsp; What is a healthy, or an unhealthy work of art?&nbsp; All terms that one applies to a work of art, provided that one applies them rationally, have reference to either its style or its subject, or to both together.&nbsp; From the point of view of style, a healthy work of art is one whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs, be that material one of words or of bronze, of colour or of ivory, and uses that beauty as a factor in producing the aesthetic effect.&nbsp; From the point of view of subject, a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose subject is conditioned by the temperament of the artist, and comes directly out of it.&nbsp; In fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both perfection and personality.&nbsp; Of course, form and substance cannot be separated in a work of art; they are always one.&nbsp; But for purposes of analysis, and setting the wholeness of aesthetic impression aside for a moment, we can intellectually so separate them.&nbsp; An unhealthy work of art, on the other hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned, and common, and whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the artist has any pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public will pay him for it.&nbsp; In fact, the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public call an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.</p> <p>I need hardly say that I am not, for a single moment, complaining that the public and the public press misuse these words.&nbsp; I do not see how, with their lack of comprehension of what Art is, they could possibly use them in the proper sense.&nbsp; I am merely pointing out the misuse; and as for the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all, the explanation is very simple.&nbsp; It comes from the barbarous conception of authority.&nbsp; It comes from the natural inability of a community corrupted by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism.&nbsp; In a word, it comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called Public Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to control action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control Thought or Art.</p> <p>Indeed, there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of the public than there is in favour of the public&rsquo;s opinion.&nbsp; The former may be fine.&nbsp; The latter must be foolish.&nbsp; It is often said that force is no argument.&nbsp; That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove.&nbsp; Many of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as the continuance of personal government in England, or of feudalism in France, have been solved entirely by means of physical force.&nbsp; The very violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a moment.&nbsp; It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat.&nbsp; They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant.&nbsp; It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.&nbsp; Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic.&nbsp; But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle?&nbsp; And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority.</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />