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MENS CREATRIX
AN ESSAY
BY
WILLIAM TEMPLE
if
RECTOR OF ST. JAMES'S, PICCADILLY } HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING
CHAPLAIN TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
PRESIDENT OF THE WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION
FORMERLY HEADMASTER OF REPTON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1917
COPYRIGHT
First Edition, January 1917
Reprinted May 1917
PATRI CARISSIMO
MORTUO PRAESENTI
3G5600
PREFACE
THIS book was planned in the year 1908 when I was
a junior don engaged in lecturing on Philosophy. At
that time I had the presumption to believe that I was
myself destined to be a philosopher. The course of
events has led to my since being mainly occupied with
what are foolishly distinguished as " practical affairs "
(for what is so powerful in practice as a philosophy ?),
and the completion of this book has been the work of
odd moments. It was partly written in Oxford ; partly
at Repton, while I was Headmaster there ; but more
than half of it has been dictated in spare half-hours
since I came to London, indeed during the first six
months of 1916. I have been eager to finish it, partly
as a tribute to an old ambition, partly as a stimulus,
if it may be so, to some real philosopher to do more
adequately what I am only able to sketch out. We
need very urgently some one who will do for our day
the work that St. Thomas Aquinas did for his.
It would be impossible to give any adequate list of
acknowledgments. It is said of Bishop Westcott that
he held in especial veneration St. John, Origen, and
Browning. I do not in any way claim comparison
with that great scholar and seer if I say that the first
name and the third, with Plato's in place of Origen's,
Vll
viii MENS CREATRIX
would designate the master- influences upon my own
thought. Among contemporaries I have derived
especial advantage from close friendship with such
thinkers as the authors of Concerning Prayer, upon the
one side and with so rigid an Augustinian as Father
Kelly (of the Society of the Sacred Mission) upon the
other, and with Bishop Gore as one who shares to
some extent the view-point of both.
I have not hesitated to include practical matters.
With Plato's example before one it is absurd to shrink
from them. Moreover, real political philosophy must
deal with real politics.
My title is intended to indicate at once my debt to
Bergson and my difference from him.
And so I offer to Christ and His Church what is
likely to be my only extensive essay in the sphere
which I once hoped would be mine. May He pardon
deficiencies due to negligence, counteract all tendencies
to error, and allow to my work only such influence as
may promote His glory.
W. TEMPLE.
ST. JAMES'S RECTORY,
PICCADILLY, October 1916.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE . . . vii
PROLOGUE
BOOK I
MAN'S SEARCH
CHAPTER I
INFINITE AND FINITE ; THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHICAL
ENQUIRY ...... 7
PART I
KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER II
THE WILL TO KNOW . . . . .27
CHAPTER III
INTELLECT AND IMAGINATION . . . .36
ix
x MENS CREATRIX
CHAPTER IV
PAGE
KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, AND REALITY . . . .44
CHAPTER V
THE JUDGMENT . . . . v .52
CHAPTER VI
THE METHOD OF INTELLECT AND THE PROVINCE OF TRUTH 66
CHAPTER VII
RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY '. . . -73
CHAPTER VIII
KNOWLEDGE AND PERSONALITY : THE SOCIETY OF INTELLECTS 82
CHAPTER IX
TIME, VALUE, AND THE ABSOLUTE . . . .87
PART II
ART
CHAPTER X
THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ART . . .93
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER XI
PAGB
THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY . . . .129
CHAPTER XII
INTELLECT, IMAGINATION, AND WILL . . .153
PART III
CONDUCT
CHAPTER XIII
WILL AND PURPOSE . . . . .165
CHAPTER XIV
GOOD AND MORAL GOOD . . . . .178
CHAPTER XV
THE MORAL CRITERION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER . .195
CHAPTER XVI
LIBERTY : INDIVIDUAL AND POLITICAL . . .213
xii MENS CREATRIX
CHAPTER XVII
EDUCATION . .... 226
PAGE
CHAPTER XVIII
INTERNATIONALISM .... . 243
PART IV
RELIGION
CHAPTER XIX
RELIGION, THE CULMINATION OF SCIENCE, ART, AND MORALITY 255
CHAPTER XX
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 261
BOOK II
GOD'S ACT
CHAPTER XXI
THE NEW START ...... 295
CHAPTER XXII
ISRAEL AND GREECE ..... 300
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER XXIII
PAGE
THE WORD INCARNATE . . . . .311
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CHURCH AND CHRISTENDOM . . . .324
CHAPTER XXV
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE HOLY SPIRIT . . 335
CHAPTER XXVI
CHRISTUS CONSUMMATOR . . . . .351
l
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER XXVII
ALPHA AND OMEGA . . . . -355
PROLOGUE
'Ev apxy fy o \6yos . , . Kdl 6 \6yos tyfrero. ST. JOHN.
THE Argument of this book is as follows. It traces
the outline of the Sciences of Knowledge, Art, Morality,
and Religion, as the author understands these, not
pausing to discuss what is disputable but merely affirm-
ing the position which is adopted. The four philo-
sophical sciences are found to present four converging
lines which do not in fact meet. Man's search for an
all-inclusive system of Truth is thus encouraged and
yet baffled.
Then the view-point changes. The Christian hypo-
thesis is accepted and its central " fact " the Tncarna-
tion is found to supply just what was needed, the
point in which these converging lines meet and find
their unity.
Book L, entitled " Man's Search/ ' is philosophical
in method ; Book II., entitled " God's Act," is theo-
logical. It will make my subsequent procedure more
intelligible if I state what I conceive to be the difference
between these two.
Philosophy is the attempt to reach an understand-
ing of experience. It may be called the science of the
sciences. It takes the results of all departmental
studies and tries to exhibit them as forming one
single system, just as these separate sciences themselves
try to exhibit the facts which they study as united in
coherent systems. Philosophy has no presuppositions
2 MENS CREATRIX
or assumptions, except the validity of reason (or, to
put it otherwise, the rationality of the universe).
Philosophy assumes the competence of reason not
necessarily your reason or mine, but reason when free
from all distraction of impulse to grasp the world as
a whole. It begins with experience, and may include
within that all which we can mean by " religious ex-
perience " ; it may even give to this the chief place
among the various forms of experience ; but it begins
with human experience and tries to make sense of that.
If it reaches a belief in God at all, its God is the con-
clusion of an inferential process ; His Nature is con-
ceived in whatever way the form of philosophy in
question finds necessary in order to make Him the
solution of its perplexities. He may be a Person, or
an Impersonal Absolute, or Union of all Opposites
whichever will meet the facts from which the philosophy
set out.
But religion is not a discovery of man at all. It is
indeed an attitude of man's heart and mind and will ;
but it is an attitude towards a God, or something put
in the place of a God, who (or which) is supposed to
exist independently of our attitude. In particular,
Christianity is either sheer illusion, or else it is the
self-revelation of God. The religious man believes in
God quite independently of philosophic reasons for
doing so ; he believes in God because he has a con-
viction that God has taken hold of him. Consequently,
in theology, which is the science of religion, God is not
the conclusion but the starting-point. Religion does
not argue to a First Cause or a Master-Designer or any
other such conclusion ; it breaks in upon our habitual
experience " Thus saith the Lord." It does not say
that as nature, in the form of human nature, possesses
conscience, therefore the Infinite Ground of nature must
be moral ; it says that God has issued orders, and
man's duty is therefore to obey. If the religion is one
of fear, it may be something far inferior to naked
PROLOGUE 3
ethics ; but if it is of love, then it is far superior.
Anyhow, it starts with God, whose Being and Nature
are its primary certainties ; it goes on to show, so far
as it can, that God, as He has revealed Himself, is
indeed the solution of our problems. In the language
of the old-fashioned Euclid, philosophy attempts a
problem to construct a conception of God equal
to the universe ; theology attempts a theorem to
show that our God is equal to the universe.
Now, it is abundantly clear that a perfect theology
and a perfect philosophy would coincide. There can
only be one Truth. And it is one of the great glories
of Christianity that it has fully recognised this. It
insists that the Life of Christ is an act of God ; Christ
did not emerge out of the circumstances of His time ;
He is not just the supreme achievement of man in his
search for God ; He is God Himself, " who for us
men and for our salvation came down from heaven."
And yet He is also, in perfect manifestation, the
Eternal Wisdom of God, which was in the beginning
with God, and apart from which there hath never a
thing happened. He is that which philosophers would
have found if they could have collected the whole
universe of facts and reasoned with perfect cogency
concerning them.
But while theology and philosophy are ideally
identical in result, though not in process, it is equally
plain that they are not at all identical in their present
stage of development. Philosophy working inwards
from the circumference, and theology working outwards
from the centre, have not yet met, at least in such a way
as to present a single system whose combination of com-
prehensiveness and coherence would supply a guarantee
of its truth. The Christian who is also in any degree
a philosopher will not claim that by reason he can
irrefragably establish his faith ; indeed, it is possible
that his search may lead him to nothing but perplexity,
from which he saves himself only by falling back upon
4 MENS CREATRIX
his unreasoned convictions, which come to him from
the authority of the saints or from his own specifically
religious experience. In the same way his theology
may fail to give a satisfying account of empirical facts
of this war, for example, and all its horrors ; but he
still believes that by loyalty to his central conviction he
will find his way through the maze at last. We live
by faith and not by sight. But the aim of this book
is to indicate a real unity between faith and knowledge
as something to which we can even now in part attain.
We shall watch the Creative Mind of Man as it
builds its Palace of Knowledge, its Palace of Art, its
Palace of Civilisation, its Palace of Spiritual Life.
And we shall find that each edifice is incomplete in a
manner that threatens its security. Then we shall see
that the Creative Mind of God, in whose image Man
was made, has offered the Revelation of Itself to be
the foundation of all that the Human Mind can wish
to build. Here is the security we seek ; here, and
nowhere else. " Other foundation can no man lay
than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
Yet even at the last the security is of Faith and
not of Knowledge ; it is not won by intellectual grasp
but by personal loyalty ; and its test is not in logic
only, but in life.
BOOK I
MAN'S SEARCH
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
INFINITE AND FINITE ; THE METHOD OF
PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY
'0 yap ffvvoTTTiKos dta\KTiK6s, 6 5 //.TJ otf. PLATO.
'Edv re TLV' &\\ov ^y^o'w/icu Swarbv els ev Kal eirl iro\\a 7re0u/c60' opav,
TOVTOV 5tw/co> KaT6Triff6e ^uer' t~xyiov were deoio. PLATO.
" There must be a systole and diastole in all enquiry j a man's mind must be
continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the
horizon of an object glass." GEORGE ELIOT.
PHILOSOPHY is, or should be, the most thorough-
going effort that is prompted by the scientific impulse.
It is not a visionary flight in realms of meaningless
abstraction ; it is a determined effort to think clearly
and comprehensively about the problems of life and
existence. No one is content with first impressions on
all subjects ; every one criticises, at least to some extent,
the apparent deliverances of the senses ; but for most
of the purposes of life a small amount of such criticism
is sufficient. I can confidently sit on a chair and eat
my dinner off a table without knowing anything about
the electrical theory of matter ; it may be the case that
the table and the chair and my body all consist of
atoms, each of which is in itself something like a solar
system of electrical forces ; but whether it is true or
not, the chair and table are solid enough for my
purpose.
Yet thinking has had its effect on the most purely
practical of our notions. Let us take an illustration
7
8 MENS CREATRIX
from contemporary life. When a sympathetic person
meets a hungry man, the first impression is that it
would be a good thing to feed him ; he does so, and
is shortly afterwards severely reprimanded by the
Charity Organisation Society for encouraging vagrancy,
increasing pauperism, undermining the virility and
independence of the entire population, and generally
aggravating the evil he sought to cure. His hair
naturally stands on end at the enormity of the crime
he so innocently committed, and he now adopts as his
guiding principle the maxim that nothing should ever
be given to beggars. He fortifies himself in this posi-
tion, if exposed to attack, by such portions of the 1834
Poor Law Report as have filtered into the minds of
the young men who write leading articles for his
newspaper. He now has, and acts upon, a theory.
It is, as he thinks, self-evident that the chief aim of a
patriotic rate-payer's existence should be to " reduce
pauperism," and above all to take very good care that
the state of the " pauper " is "less eligible" than that
of the " independent labourer." He thinks he knows
quite well what he means by the terms " pauper,"
" eligible," and " independent." Hinc illae lacrimae ;
he has a theory, and condemns further theorising as
" abstract " or even as just " theoretical." And yet
all his three terms are ambiguous to a fatal degree.
Technically a pauper is one who receives relief from
the Poor Rate ; morally a pauper is one who is not
self-supporting ; and it is by no means clear that the
reduction of technical pauperism (by rigid application
of another hopeless ambiguity called " The Workhouse
Test ") tends to the reduction of moral pauperism ; for
it is more demoralising to a man that he should live by
sponging on his friends or exploiting his wife and
children in " sweated " industries than that he should
be " relieved " adequately and rapidly by the Society
which his labour supports. So, too, " eligibility " of
status depends on the moral and social standards of
INFINITE AND FINITE 9
the person who elects ; it is possible for a Workhouse
to appear " ineligible to a self-respecting man and
" eligible " in the highest degree to a waster. " Inde-
pendence " may mean self-supporting, or it may mean
only " not supported by the Poor Rate " which comes
near to being an " infinite " negation, for it does not
give us any answer to the question how the man actually
is supported.
It is of course possible that what the Commissioners
of 1834 intended to say was quite right ; there is no
means of determining what they intended to say. Their
value for our present purpose is this : that they have
provided the English people with a set of terms by
which to classify and understand the facts of Pauperism ;
and the most "practical" people are willing to accept
this intellectual apparatus without further criticism.
To that extent our practical people " think " about the
subject, and on the basis of their " thought " they
proceed to act, dismissing as academic hair-splitting the
complaint that all their leading terms are ambiguous.
But the truth is the exact converse of what they suppose.
It is not true that the " practical " person in touch with
affairs has the real perception of facts, while the academic
student follows the ramifications of some " abstract
intellectual plan of life quite irrespective of life's plainest
laws " ; rather it is the former who has put on the
blinkers of an unconscious dogmatism, so that he can
see only what his dogma tells him to look for, while
the philosopher is engaged in testing that very dogma,
not only by the intellectual criterion of self-consistency,
but also by the practical and empirical criterion of
applicability to the facts.
Science and philosophy alike spring from the need
of man for fuller knowledge, a need which may be
utilitarian, as when the knowledge is needed for the
guidance of conduct, but may also be quite ultimate, as
when the knowledge is needed for the mere good of
knowing. Anyhow both science and philosophy are
io MENS CREATRIX
BOOK 1
rooted in the " Will to know " a subject to which we
must attend in detail later. But that " Will to know "
is itself the rejection of the claim advanced by other
interests to interfere in the process which ends in
knowledge. Its satisfaction is found in apprehension
of a reality which is presupposed to exist apart from its
apprehension and that, too, without any reference to
the practical convenience of the judgment ultimately
accepted as true. It is a distinct and definite purpose,
with a method of its own. The formulation of that
method is the task of Logic.
In an enquiry into the methods by which the intellect
pursues its search for truth we must take account
of the fact that the great bulk of our thinking is sub-
conscious. When some proposal is made which is
entirely novel to us, we are inclined to say, " Let me
stop and think about it." The mind immediately goes
blank and for a certain period remains so. At the end
of this period a man will look up and say how the
proposal strikes him, or what there is about it which he
disapproves of or does not understand ; he does not
know, as a rule, what has gone on in the interval, neither
does he know why the interval ends when it does. In
the subconscious regions of the mind some process has
been at work resulting in a judgment or a question
which appears within the field of consciousness. All
that logic, therefore, can do is to trace out these joints of
thought which are all that is recoverable of the infinitely
subtle process by which beliefs are formed. This is
true not only of theoretical opinions but of practical
convictions. We believe intensely many things for
which we are unable to state the reason, though we also
hold that our right to this belief depends on a reason
being discoverable. In regard to the great conventions
of life there is nearly always a vast inductive process
through which the human race has passed, and of which
no individual has ever been at all fully conscious. An
infinite number of facts in the experience of men has
INFINITE AND FINITE 1 1
led them to believe that certain courses of conduct are
vital to the well-being of society. The conclusion is a
truly scientific induction, yet no one ever consciously
drew the inference, and the facts which form the data
are so numerous and so subtly differentiated that their
statement in words could never represent the full weight
which they possess in experience.
Far from being less reasonable than consciously
formed theories of life, these convictions have probably
far more reason, a far greater empirical basis, and have
been reached by a far more cogent inferential process.
For when a man sets out an array of facts and then
draws conclusions from them after the manner of a
physicist or chemist, he is inevitably omitting a great
number of the facts that are relevant. One may take
as an extreme instance Mr. Bernard Shaw, who with
perfect logic deduces conclusions from quite accurate
observations ; but what he observes is a very small
portion of all the facts of human nature, inasmuch as
he seems to be entirely blind to the whole sphere of
human sentiment and even passion ; consequently,
however sincere and cogent his argument, we all
know that his conclusions have no applicability, and
this we know by what seems an instinct but is really
the deposit in us of the whole process of human
reasoning, some small part of which has been conscious
in a few individuals, but the vastly greater proportion
of which has never become conscious at all.
None the less it is only with consciousness that the
philosopher can deal, and it is to this, therefore, that we
must address 'ourselves, remembering throughout how
small a part of human thought it is, and recalling this
truth to mind at the points where to forget it is most
likely to be a source of error.
Here I would venture, with much hesitation, to
suggest that it is in Logic more than anywhere else
that philosophers have given ground for the accusation
that they leave facts behind them when they come to
12 MENS CREATRIX
BOOK
make theories. No doubt this accusation is in part due
to the fact that many people expect Logic to do the
work of Psychology and tell them how they actually
pass from one unwarrantable conviction to another ; for
this is often the character of our " thinking." But Logic
is the science of mental process, so far as this leads to
knowledge ; it studies the method of the Will to Know,
not the fortuitous emergence of those opinions upon
which " practical " men are ready to take action of
momentous consequence. And finding two main
directions in which scientific thought may move, Logic
has, for purposes of investigation, separated these and
set them up as the Deductive and Inductive Methods.
Now, scarcely any one ever thinks deductively,
according to the patterns of deduction provided in the
text-books. The authority of the Syllogism has, it is
true, been broken for a quarter of a century at least,
but having held the throne for two thousand years, it
still exerts a subtle and malign influence. The chief
trouble about it is familiar enough ; it lies in the Major
Premise. In some manifestly valid arguments there
is no room for any Major Premise ; * and where such a
Premise is employed, it is very hard to justify. Even
in the case of our old friend
All men are mortal or Man is mortal,
Socrates is a man,
Socrates is mortal
the difficulty appears. If the major is enumerative we
have no right to make it until Socrates (and we our-
selves) are dead ; and the charge of question-begging
is irrefutable. Or if it is a true generic judgment
representing our knowledge of the present physiological
conditions of human life and their inevitable result in
death, the proposition seems to become a definition, and
it is doubtful whether the minor can be referred to it ;
1 As, e.g., in Mr. Bradley's instance A is 10 miles north of B 5 B is 10 miles
west of C ; C is 10 miles south of D ; therefore A is 10 miles west of D,
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 13
for until Socrates has died, we cannot be sure that he
comes under the definition ; it is always just possible
that in him biological evolution has produced an
organism which replaces its own decay, and is human in
every respect except those which lead to mortality. In
short, universal propositions are only possible as
definitions, 1 and there are traces -of Nominalism about
our best-established generalisations. All we can be sure
of is that if a is the cause of , whenever a occurs b will
follow ; for it is part of the being of a that it produces
b. But we may come upon an object which resembles
a in every observable respect, and look for the appear-
ance of b ; if instead of b, ft emerges, we shall have to
say, " It was not a after all, but a." That is, we make
production of b part of the meaning of our term a ;
but then we can never tell whether or not any given
object is a until b has followed. Only by making
" productive of b " part of the meaning of the term a
can we make the proposition "a produces b" strictly
universal ; but this proposition is now so purely
analytical as to be a tautology. Thus the only sense in
which the Uniformity of Nature is certain is that which
makes it a statement of the Law of Identity : A is A. 2
It is in this sense that the Uniformity of Nature is a
necessary postulate of thought.
It was possible for our forefathers to transfer the
unconditional certainty of the Uniformity of Nature
thus interpreted to specific " causal " relations because
they believed in Real Kinds, each self-contained and
essentially distinct from all others. Whatever was true
of the Kind was therefore true of each instance ; and
every phenomenon was an instance of a Kind or Genus.
Biological evolution, with all the scientific development
it has assisted, has destroyed the basis of that way
of thinking ; we are no longer at liberty to believe in
Real Kinds as thus existing distinctly and unalterably
1 Cf. Poincare, Science and Hypothesis (E.T.), pp. 48-50, 135-139 and passim.
2 Cf. Joseph, Introduction to Logic, chap. xix. (specially pp. 376-390).
i 4 MENS CREATRIX BOOKI
over against each other. It is very hard to say where
the line should be drawn between, for instance, the
animal and the vegetable. No doubt the elephant is an
animal and the cabbage is a vegetable, but what about
the Sun Dew or Venus' Fly Trap ? Whether these are
vegetable or animal will depend on our definition. The
tiresome Nominalist element appears in all our attempts
to reach universal judgments. Absolute divisions of
kinds do not exist in nature any more than between the
periods of a human being's life. A boy of ten is a
boy ; a man of fifty is a man. The law must fix a
definite point for the transition and selects the twenty-
first birthday ; but no one supposes that Boyhood is
one fixed type and Manhood another, and that every
English male miraculously passes from one to the other on
becoming twenty-one years old. Syllogistic inferences
from Major Premises about Boyhood and Manhood are
likely to be most misleading.
The ancients at least avoided the blunder of sup-
posing that exact knowledge of Real Kinds was in itself
exact knowledge of particular cases ; in fact both Plato
and Aristotle regard particulars as not strictly know-
able at all. 1 So far as Matter is indeterminate, as it
usually and perhaps always is to some extent, we are,
according to Aristotle, in a region of uncertainty, and
the educated man will not demand more exactitude in
the science than is permitted by the subject-matter of
enquiry. 2 Yet the method of science remains for him
the construction of Universals through the five-staged
process of atcr#?7<7t9, fjuvr)^, efjLTreipia, eTraywytf, vovs
(where the last universalises, on its own authority,
the product so far reached and makes of it a definition,
o/)Kr//,o9), 3 followed by deduction of properties from the
definition of essence thus formed. Science for him
rests on the assumption of Real Kinds.
1 Cf., e.g., Plato, Republic, 476 A-48o A.
2 Cf., e.g., Met. 1027 a 13-17 ; Eth. Nic. 1094 b 11-28.
3 Sensation, Memory, Competence due to experience, Adduction of instances,
Reason. Cf. Anal. Post. 99 b 15-100 b 17.
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 15
The difficulty about Deduction is that we have no
certain right to our starting-point. The difficulty
about Induction is that we have no certain right to
any conclusion. The only way to prove a conclusion
inductively would be to form a complete list of all
possibilities and disprove all but one ; but the forma-
tion of such a list is impossible, except in mathematics.
In mathematics it is possible, because there terms mean
exactly what we define them to mean and have no
tiresome fringes where one is doubtful whether the
name can be applied or not ; but this advantage tends
to disappear the moment we try to apply the results.
A triangle is what the geometrician defines it to be ;
whether any apparently triangular piece of wood is
really a triangle is another, and perhaps an unanswer-
able question ; presumably there is no rectilinear figure
in matter.
These considerations are less disastrous than might
be supposed, because no living thought is either De-
ductive or Inductive : it is always both at once. The
student or investigator does not approach his subject
with a perfectly blank mind ; he assumes at least that
the group of facts before him forms some kind of
system, and generally he has some conception, however
vague, of this system's nature. His study of the indi-
vidual facts modifies the system in which he holds them
together ; the modified system suggests new points to
be examined in the facts. In the former phase his
procedure is predominantly inductive, in the latter pre-
dominantly deductive. But his method is a see-saw
between the system as a whole and its constituent parts ;
his knowledge of both grows together. We may
imagine a Royal Commission setting out to investigate
Unemployment. Their aim is to relate all the facts to
one another within a system of thought. They will
not try to establish universal laws and argue from
them ; nor will they try to arrive at some universal
formula by induction ; but they will try to find the
1 6 MENS CREATRIX BOOK i
ground of the various types of unemployment in the
whole tissue of the social and economic conditions of
the world, and to gain such an apprehension of those
conditions as will reveal the ground of all types of
unemployment.
Plato presented the ideal method (at one period) l as
a single ascent to the supreme principle and a single
descent from it to the particular manifestations of it
the latter being required for practical, not theoretical,
reasons. But indeed it is necessary to turn from
generalisations to particulars and back again as often as
possible. We cannot begin with generalisation ; but
neither can we begin with "facts," as Induction requires ;
we cannot " build upon the facts " because, until our
structure is complete, we do not know what they are ;
the aim of our whole enquiry is to find them. Facts
are not always the original data, nor are these always
facts. The truth about the Earth and the Sun is not
what the senses suggest (that the sun goes round the
earth), but what science establishes (that the earth goes
round the sun). It is at the end, not at the beginning,
of our intellectual process that we are in possession of
the " facts." Hence our " conclusion " should always
modify its own premises ; for our goal is not the forma-
tion of one judgment whose truth is guaranteed by
others, but a whole system whose parts support each
other and in which all the "facts" are found.
Deductive or Inductive Logic arranges its terms in
triangles ; at the apex is the Genus, below it stand the
Species, below each of these the sub-species, and below
these again the individuals. Whatever was true of any
term in this pyramid of classification was therefore true
of every term falling under it. This is an excellent
method of argument ; if one's opponent will admit a
proposition he can be forced to admit its consequences.
But it is a device rather of Rhetoric than of Logic,
except in so far as a man may argue with himself in
1 Rep. vi. and vii.
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 17
the search for truth. Even the Syllogism has great
rhetorical value.
But living thought is circular ; it moves round and
round a system of facts, improving its understanding of
the system and its constituent parts at every stage.
The Middle Term in such inference is clearly the system
itself as a whole not any abstract quality nor any fixed
genus ; the better understanding of this " concrete
universal " and the better apprehension of its particular
" differences " are one and the same thing. Thus tri-
dimensional rectilinear space is the system articulated
in Euclidean geometry ; and the process results in a
fuller knowledge of the system than was possessed at
the outset. Thus the Poor Law Report of 1909
investigates the fact of Unemployment ; but Unem-
ployment is not a mere being-out-of-work, but is a
whole system of fact, set out in detail in the evidence
and grasped as a unity in the Report. 1
How effective in practical life a purely logical doctrine
may become is made clear by the feudal system, which
is simply Deductive Logic in practice. The satisfac-
tion of that logic was reached when terms were arranged
in pyramids, with the summum genus at the top, the
various genera below, the species arranged each below
its own genus, and the individuals again below these.
So in Feudalism the King stood at the top ; below him
were his vassals ; below them again the sub-vassals. It
is interesting and typical that France alone adopted
Feudalism in its most " logical " shape. Further, all
Europe constituted a still further and inclusive pyramid,
for all kings were (in theory) vassals of the Emperor ;
similarly the Pope stood at the head of the ecclesiastical
system, and the pyramid was finally completed, accord-
ing to the Imperial Theory, by the fact that both Pope
and Emperor derived their right from God, or, accord-
1 For this reason the exposition of a body of truth is bound to contain many
repetitions. The old deductive method avoided this. The exposition moved steadily
down the chain of argument. But if the system consists of interlocking parts, not
of one straight chain, repetition is unavoidable.
C
1 8 MENS CREATRIX BOOK:
ing to the Papal Theory, by the fact that the Emperor
was a vassal of the Pope God's earthly representative
(for had not the Pope bestowed the imperial crown on
Charlemagne on his own initiative in St. Peter's Basilica
on Christmas Day, 800 ?).
It is interesting also to notice what happened to
so vigorous an intellect as that of Hobbes when the
Reformation had knocked off the apex of the pyramid.
He has to make the citizens (infimae species) produce
their own summum genus by contracting away their rights
to an absolute monarch. And the frontispiece of the
Leviathan represents the monarch (whether Cromwell
or Stuart) as such an apex, the source of civil authority
represented by the sword in the right hand and the
symbols below it, and also of ecclesiastical authority
represented by the pastoral staff in the left hand ^and
the corresponding symbols below it. The Royalist
theory that the King had Divine Right (i.e. "held of"
God without intermediary) is a precisely similar attempt
to retain the mediaeval form of political thought after
the life was out of it.
Democracy, on the other hand, consorts well with
the modern method in logic. Here there is no source
of authority over against the individuals, but the indi-
viduals constitute the system which they obey and obey
the system which they constitute. And it may be
noticed that whereas the old form of Government was
rigid in principle whatever development it may have
permitted in detail so that progress was only possible
through compromising the fundamental article as was
done by Locke the modern form becomes perfectly
plastic so that every particle of the machine of
Government may be changed at the will of the
sovereign people without any derogation of its
sovereignty. Just so in science, the old method de-
pended on the rigidity and permanence of its Genera
or Kinds, while the modern enquirer allows new facts
to modify his system, and his system to throw new
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 19
light on the facts, to any degree, without check or
hindrance.
The enquirer then must perpetually allow his general-
isation to help him in the apprehension of particulars,
and the further apprehension of particulars to react
on his generalisation. Only so can he do full justice
both to the particular and to the universal function,
which coexist in every individual fact. 1 But in no
sphere is this more important than in philosophy.
Perpetually generalisations are reached and accepted as
final, or definitions are received as fixed, while modifi-
cation is still called for. We need to come back to the
world with our generalisation in our mind, and see the
world again in the light of it ; and then to return to
the generalisation with the new material obtained by
our last vision of the world. " A man's mind must be
continually expanding and shrinking between the whole
human horizon and the horizon of an object glass."
Thus we may consider what things are good and so
reach a general conception of Good, perhaps as that in
which the soul finds perfect satisfaction ; but then we
must see what are the things in which the soul finds
satisfaction, a process which may leave the formula un-
touched but will almost certainly modify its content.
We may have interpreted the formula in a hedonistic
way ; we generally do at first ; and then we may have
found that a great act of self-sacrifice may be peculiarly
satisfying to the soul ; this would kill our hedonism
forthwith, and therefore alter our general conception
of Good. The same process needs very vitally to be
applied to such terms as Liberty, Justice, Right, Re-
sponsibility, Empire. In the case of the term Socialism
it is going on before our eyes. With thought-systems
so complex as those denoted by these names, many a
swing backwards and forwards, from the One to the
1 Nothing is merely " This " ; to be at all, it must have some character be of
some sort ; every existent is r6de rotdrSe This-and-nothing-else and this-sort-of-
thing.
20 MENS CREATRIX BOOKI
Many and from the Many again to the One, will be
needed before anything like truth is found. One chief
duty of the philosopher is to keep each Universal
plastic, until he is certain that all the relevant facts are
coherently united under it.
This means, no doubt, that absolute and final
certainty is not attainable outside the sphere of mathe-
matics. But it does not mean that advance in knowledge
is impossible. Modern science is far nearer the truth
than the fantasy of a medicine- man ; it holds in a
comprehensive grasp far more of the relevant facts ; its
generalisations are far less arbitrary, its universals more
concrete ; the Nominalist element in its definitions is
being perpetually reduced.
Nowhere is the danger of resting in abstract uni-
versals more serious than in Theology. 1 We are liable
to argue in support of the Being of God, without
troubling ourselves as to what sort of God we are
establishing. He emerges in the argument perhaps as
the Ground of existence. But it is not thereby clear
that He deserves our respect, to say nothing of worship ;
this will depend on our view of the existence He has
produced and His own attitude towards it. There is
a tale of a member of Parliament who was prepared
to tolerate diversity of opinion in non-essentials ; but
Charles Bradlaugh, positively an Atheist, he could not
allow to take his seat unhindered. " Mr. Speaker," he
said, "we all believe in a sort of a something." The
religious value of such belief is perhaps open to
question.
Our method, then, must be simply the progressive
systematisation of our experience as we apprehend it ;
we shall not argue from Universals to Particulars or
from Particulars to Universals or from Particulars to
1 An "abstract universal " is a principle of unity imperfectly apprehended, so that
only some of its real content is before the mind, e.g. " Dog," conceived, not as a
Notion requiring all the kinds of Dog for its full manifestation, but as the mere
quality of " Dogness ; ' which is identically the same in all Dogs. It is not clear
that there is any such quality.
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 21
Particulars. All these phrases describe passing moments
in the activity of thought, which never exist in isolation.
And when we are told that the French are a logical
nation, because having adopted a principle they " see it
through," we shall say, " That may prove that they are
a very deductive nation, but not that they are peculiarly
logical." l Or if we are led to say that we believe in
equality of Opportunity and some friend urges, " Then
do at least be logical and abolish the family," we may
find ourselves answering, " That would indeed facilitate
the equalising of opportunity, but it would not be at all
L O A 1 J '
logical, because it would do more to frustrate than to
further that improvement of life for the sake of which
equality of opportunity is desired." There is nothing
logical in forcing a principle upon circumstances to
which it is inapplicable ; the logical course is rather to
find out precisely the sphere of its applicability. Com-
promise is inherently just as logical as fanaticism, and
in most circumstances is a great deal more rational.
So when we come to consider Reality as a whole,
we shall not be agitated by meaningless dilemmas as to
whether it is One or Many, and whether we ourselves
are Monists or Pluralists. We shall say that no doubt
it is both One and Many, and shall set about seeing
in what senses it is either ; we shall not expect to see
the unity swallow the plurality nor the plurality break
up the unity. Lastly, we shall not set Infinite and Finite
over against one another as if one must oust the other ;
but we shall say that the Finite is that whose explanation
is in something other than itself, and the Infinite is just
the whole whose explanation must be within itself : if
this involves endless extent in Space and Time, we shall
accept that implication. But just as for us a universal
is not something diverse from a particular, but is just
1 This deductive quality of the French mind is rooted in a noble passion for
intellectual integrity. As Mr. Glutton-Brock wrote in The Challenge (May 31,1916):
" There is a peculiar beauty in the French logic : it is thought become passionate but
not bewildered with passion, the idea pushed as far as it can be pushed, for the love of
it, as the Gothic idea was carried as far as it could be carried at Amiens or Rheims."
22 MENS CREATR1X
BOOK
the system of particulars, so the Infinite will not be
something diverse from the Finite, but just the system
of the finites.
Every special science deals with some group of facts
provisionally assumed to constitute an independent
system. Philosophy attempts to deal with all facts as
related in the one system of the Universe, and with that
one system as uniting them. And its method is neither
Inductive nor Deductive. It aims at a comprehension
covering the multitude of particular facts and pene-
trating to the principle of unity which holds them
together ; l it does not proceed from first principles or to
them, 2 but it allows particulars and universals, differences
and unity, parts and whole, to influence one another in
the intellectual construction which it forms, until all
facts are seen knit together in one system whose principle
is the explanation of the world.
This is the work of thought, and must follow the
laws of thought. The intellect's demand for coherence
must therefore govern it. But coherence alone will be
found inadequate as the all-explaining principle, for the
simple reason that coherence must always be coherence
of something. When we come back from this demand
for coherence, which is the universal principle first
given, to study the facts which are to be exhibited
as cohering, we shall find that the principle of their
unity must be more than intellectual or intelligible.-
The particulars of experience are given on one side,
the intellect's demand for coherence on the other. As
these two data influence each other, both are affected.
We begin to " understand " the particulars ; that is, we
begin to experience them more completely as related
parts of a system and not only as isolated entities:
And we begin to give content to our principle of
co'herence ; it passes from the mere absence of contra-
diction into the concrete harmony of different elements.
1 Eis $v Kai tirl iroXXa bpav (Plato, Phaedrus, 266 B).
2 'A?r6 T&V dpx&v T) ciri ras apx&s (Aristotle, Eth. NIC. 1094 331).
CHAP, i INFINITE AND FINITE 23
But so we pass beyond Intellect, as the word is
commonly used, to Imagination and to Conscience.
But all of these are functions of one Mind or Reason,
and the later or higher functions are already implicit in
the scientific intellect. Art and Science are in principle
utterly distinct ; but they are complementary to each
other, as will be more fully seen later on. And Philo-
sophy the attempt to grasp the whole as a whole
requires Imagination as well as Intellect, the artistic as
well as the scientific capacity. Plato's supremacy
among philosophers is due to just this combination.
In the discussions which follow we shall try to adopt
the method we have outlined in dealing with some of
the problems confronting those who try to think about
the four main departments of Mind's activity Know-
ledge, Art, Conduct, and Religion. We shall try to
find a principle capable in its own nature of uniting and
so explaining the facts thus brought before us ; and we
shall consider whether the facts themselves give any
ground for accepting this principle as their explanation.
The enquiry is tentative ; but for the sake of clearness
and brevity the exposition will be confident. Views
not accepted will only be mentioned when the ground
for their rejection seems to be also ground for the
acceptance of others. At the end we shall be near the
vision of the " Idea of Good " ; but we shall still have
to rest content with the confession, with which for that
reason we commence : Soicel o-oi Slfcaiov elvat, Trepl &v
Tt? /j,rj olftev \eyeiv co? elSora ; . . . aXX', w yu-a/capo*,
avrb fiev TI TTOT' eVrl rayaOov e'a<7&)yu,ei> TO vvv elvat,
7r\eov yap pot, fyalverai rj Kara rrjv Trapovcrav op/j,rjv
efyiicicrOai, rov ye Soicovvros e/jiol ra vvv 09 e e/cyovos
re rov ayadov fyalverai, /cal o/zotoraro? eiceiva), \eyeiv
\ f l'-\ 'S 1 ^ f >1
6i Kai V/JLIV quXov, i oe /JLTJ, eav.
We count not ourselves to have apprehended.
1 Plato, Republic, 506 c-x.
BOOK I continued
PART I
KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER II
THE WILL TO KNOW
Hdvres dvOpuTroi rov eldtvai opfyovrai 0tfe\T]67)(reTcu v^dvrtjs 3) TCKTWV Trpbs rrjv avr
et'Scbs rb avrb TOVTO ayad6t>, % TTWS iarpiK^epos T) ffTparrjyiKWTepos &TTCU 6 TTJJ/
avTT]v redeafdvos (Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1097 a 8-13).
D
34 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. i
is valued both for its own sake and for its results. 1 It
is one of the good things in life, and is also the means
of attaining others. And its own inherent value is
increased by its living relation to all our other interests
and pursuits. As Tennyson shrewdly observed
Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters,
And never can be sundered without tears. 2
Knowledge divorced from other goods becomes pedantry
and dry-as-dust. Its value is then slight. But the
exact knowledge of the man of wide culture and
sympathy is undoubtedly one of the best things in the
world. Knowledge is therefore to be pursued for its
own sake, but not for its own sake alone, nor in isolation
from all other interests.
This is what we should expect. For the procedure
which leads to knowledge must be vitalised by a will to
know. But no one has or can have this in a perfectly
general form. If the necessary effort is ever to be
started, the will to know must take a particular form :
it must begin somewhere ; it must become an effort to
know this or that. And its field of investigation is
bound to be determined by interest of some kind. The
determining interest must result from general psycho-
logical conditions ; it cannot live in the soul entirely
apart from all other psychic activities.
For it only exists, so far as we know, in actual
persons ; so far as my knowledge is concerned, it is
rooted in my will to know ; and this is not only my
will that there shall be knowledge, but also my will
that / may have that knowledge. Knowledge is desired
as good, and as good for me. But while all knowledge
may be good for me in some degree, unquestionably
knowledge of some things is better for me both in
itself and in its consequences than knowledge of some
other things. Which departments of knowledge have
1 Plato, Republic, 358 A.
2 The Palace of Art : Dedication.
CHAP, ii THE WILL TO KNOW 35
this superior value for me is determined by my whole
character and circumstances. The starting-point of
my search, the questions I ask, are given me by my
individual personality.
Knowledge, in short, is one of the good things of the
world ; and, as we shall find to be the case with all
good things, its value lies in its relation to some
individual personality. It may be as good for some
people as anything else whatever ; it is not for any-
body the highest good, for the highest good is a
condition of the whole soul in which knowledge takes
its place with other good things. It is one of the
proper treasures of a complete personality, the first and
simplest deliberate work of the creative mind.
CHAPTER III
INTELLECT AND IMAGINATION
OflS^rore voel avef> 0avrdo-/iaros 17 ^X 7 ?- ARISTOTLE.
" Aliquis forte putabit quod fictio fictionem terminal, sed non intellectio . . .
" Cum non distinguimus inter imaginationem et intellectionem putamus ea,
quae facilius imaginamur, nobis esse clariora et id quod imaginamur, putamus
intelligere." SPINOZA.
BEFORE the mind ever starts upon any deliberate and
self-conscious activity, it has before it a vast amount of
material. This is not altogether raw material, for, as
we all agree, it is impossible for a rational being to
apprehend anything at all without rationalising it in
the process. We start of necessity from our sensations.
But we never have a mere sensation, which is a sensation
and nothing more ; or, if we have it, we are unaware
of it. We may say, if we like, that every stimulation
of the nervous system which has any effect on the
outermost fringe of consciousness, though it never
itself comes into the field of consciousness at all, is
really a sensation. In that case I have a sensation of
those innumerable sounds which fill the air in most
parts of a country like our own, but of which I am
totally unaware until I notice their absence in the
silence of some remote valley among the hills. Such
" sensations " may give a colour and tone to the opera-
tions of the mind, but are not themselves material for
it. We do not find that material until we reach those
definite and individualised sensations to which we give
names. But these names are of necessity Universals.
36
CH. in INTELLECT AND IMAGINATION 37
As soon as an element in experience is so fully realised
that it can be made material for thought, it is more
than a mere " this." It is already " this instance of
such and such a thing " it is roSe roiovSe. This
complex character it never loses, and the elaboration
and articulation of this complexity is the whole task of
science.
But the whole emphasis of science is on one of the
two elements in the complex fact. It is bound to
ignore as far as possible the " this " in its effort more
perfectly to understand the u such." It passes from
perception to conception ; but it never leaves perception
altogether. Euclid is concerned with the isosceles
triangle as such ; but he cannot move a step without
the particular triangle ABC. Plato indeed regarded
the need of the figure as a weakness, and desiderated
an activity of pure thought. But this weakness, if
such it be, is inherent in all thought. Just as a mere
particular can never be an object of experience, so a
mere universal can never be entertained in thought.
What then becomes of all our universals ? When I
say, " This rose is red," I am no doubt analysing a
particular red rose. But the Predicate contains a wider
meaning than the redness of the rose before me ; it
refers the Subject to the whole class of red objects, and
thus to a place in the intellectual construction which we
call the science of Optics. Moreover, a judgment of
this type may be almost entirely synthetic. I may ask
somebody to find a book for me ; he asks what it looks
like, and I answer, " The book is red." For me the
judgment is mainly (though not entirely) analytic ; for
him it is entirely synthetic. A new content redness
is added to his idea of the book ; what is so added
is a quality, a universal. Without a particular instance
of this universal before him, he yet holds it in his mind,
so that he knows what is meant when its name is spoken.
Is he not then holding in his mind the universal bare
and unalloyed ?
38 MENS CREATRIX
If we examine the action of our own minds, I think
we shall find that this is not so. Certainly I myself am
quite incapable of holding a general idea in my mind
without the help of its name or some other symbol. If
I want to think of " ten," I have to imagine either the
sound or the appearance of " ten " or De Anima, ii. 417 a 21-29.
CH. iv KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, REALITY 51
an idea is a mental apprehension of reality ; it may be
adequate or inadequate, just as the image on the retina
of the eye may be correct or incorrect according to the
health of the whole eye ; if it is incorrect we see the
object amiss, but it is perfect nonsense to say that what
we see is the image on the retina ; this is the one
thing which we can never see at all, for it is that by
means of which we see anything.
Similarly, if our mental grasp is either distorted or
inadequate we may express this by saying that we have
a wrong idea, but it is only for subsequent reflection
that this idea becomes itself the object of thought ; it is
essentially the thinking mind, but because the mind is
self-conscious it can think about itself qua thinking,
and therein make its own ideas into its objects. Psycho-
logists and logicians are always doing so, but they must
not allow the process which constitutes their science to
lead them to believe that the thinking which they study
follows the same process. Thought itself is primarily
concerned with the world ; but this thought is itself
part of the world, and there is therefore a special science
of thought just as there is a special science of chemistry.
If we begin with the notion that the mind never has any
objects except its own ideas, we can never argue to a world
beyond at all. Reality is the presupposition of all think-
ing ; in actual fact the distinction between mind and its
objects .is drawn within the given totum of experience,
and we have knowledge of the object or not-self before
we have any knowledge of the subject or self. Self-
knowledge, even knowledge of our own existence, is more
inferential than knowledge of the world about us, just as,
in its content, it is, as a rule, far more rudimentary.
Now we have seen that Truth is not the whole of
Reality, and the knowledge which grasps Reality must
therefore be something more than that scientific know-
ledge which grasps Truth, and whose perfect type is
Mathematics. Let us, however, attend first to the method
of scientific knowledge and some of its peculiarities.
CHAPTER V
THE JUDGMENT
" In abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition : The individual
is the universal." HEGEL.
THE unit of thought is the Judgment. This has been
obscured to some extent by the fact that the verbal
expression of any judgment requires at least two words,
and, in English, three. From this fact has arisen the
suggestion that the judgment is a union of two ideas,
and other similar doctrines. But we find that the two
terms of the judgment the Subject and Predicate
can only exist as terms of a judgment. The mere act
of naming a thing or a thought is an implicit, and usually
even an explicit, judgment. Our consciousness registers
something simpler than a judgment only, if at all, in an
apprehension whose only expression is an ejaculation;
and even this becomes a judgment as soon as it is made
in the very least degree an object of reflection.
The essence of the Judgment quite plainly lies in the
assertion that the Subject is the Predicate. " S is P "
is its rudimentary form. And plainly the value of this
statement depends on there being a real difference
between S and P. The Judgment, then, is the con-
scious apprehension of a complex unity or, in other
words, of a system. The development of the Judgment
from its simplest to its most fully elaborated form is
simply the growth of articulation in the expression of
this fact.
52
CHAP.V THE JUDGMENT 53
The system apprehended is, of course, real. There
can be no occasion to discuss whether the "copula"
(the word "is") has any existential value when used
in a predicative sense. It is enough to remind our-
selves that we do not as a matter of fact exercise our
minds upon nothing. The Judgment is assuredly an
apprehension of reality, though, of course, reality is not
to be limited to the world of our sense-experience.
Alice when " through the looking-glass " is quite real,
and so are the Red Queen, and Humpty Dumpty, and
the White Knight (bless him !), for they are all char-
acters in real fiction. All judgments, then, are in their
various ways apprehensions of statements about
reality.
The direct Judgment pure and simple is the Cate-
gorical. Its form is the normal form of Judgment ;
and while, in the effort to understand it, we shall find
ourselves driven to change that form, yet at the end of
the enquiry, when we have reached the most complete
and perfect form the Disjunctive we shall find that
it is again Categorical. Let us, however, begin at the
beginning with a simple judgment of perception e.g.
This is red. Clearly the object before me is " this red
(flower or other object)." . The judgment, therefore,
has analysed " This red " into the fact that it is the
object occupying attention " This," and the further
fact that its colour is red. The judgment, in fact, is
analytic of the experience. But it is also synthetic, for
it adds to the content of the experience by naming the
object red, and so relating it to all other red things and
to a place in the scheme of colour. In this sense of the
words every judgment is both analytic and synthetic;
and it may be well to remark that it is in this sense
that I use the words unless the contrary is specially
stated.
For there is another sense in which these words are
used of judgments the sense in which they were used
54 MENS CREATRIX
by Kant. According to this use of terms a judgment
is analytic when the Predicate adds nothing to the
meaning of the Subject but only states explicitly part
of that meaning ; whereas a judgment is synthetic when
the Predicate increases our knowledge of the Subject.
Thus Kant gives as an instance of the analytic judgment,
" Matter is extended in space/' on the ground that
extension is part of what is meant by Matter ; while,
as an instance of the synthetic judgment, he gives,
" Matter is ponderable," on the ground that weight is
not part of what is meant by matter.
The two uses of the terms do not lie very far apart,
for it is clear that, in our former instance, it is the
Redness of This which enables us to say, " This is
red," so that our statement might be put, " This red
thing is red." Kant's use of the terms is the less
valuable of the two, because it really depends not on
anything essential to the judgment but on its verbal
expression in the Proposition, and, further, it gives no
expression to the synthetic element in judgments which
are, in Kant's sense of the term, analytic. For if I say,
" This red thing is red," I am insisting precisely on the
redness of the red thing, that is, on its relation to other
red things and its place in the scheme of colour, in
opposition (perhaps) to some one who thought it would
look particularly well if placed next to a bright magenta-
coloured object. And it is only for the sake of this syn-
thetic element that the mind proceeds from perception to
explicit judgment at all.
In every perception we apprehend a complex unit,
for the object perceived is at least " This instance of a
Kind " roSe roioi'Se, e.g. This red thing. But I only
convert this perception or implicit judgment into an
explicit judgment for the sake of some increase of
knowledge which this brings. This knowledge may
be my own or some one else's. To take our former
illustration : * I may ask a friend to fetch a book
1 Chap. III. p. 37.
CHAP.V THE JUDGMENT 55
for me from another room ; he asks what it looks
like, and I reply, " It is a red book," or, u The
book is red." Here 1 have before my mind the red
book ; part of that complex unit my friend too has
before his mind, for he knows that the object in question
is a book. I analyse the real object grasped by my
mind in order that I may add the element Red to the
element Book already grasped by his. And we find
that here, as in all other cases, the analytic element is
what makes the judgment 'possible and conditions its truth^
while the synthetic element is what makes it interesting and
conditions its occurrence ; for I shall not make it unless I
have some interest in making it.
But as we attend to our Judgment " This is red "
with a view to understanding fully what we mean by
it and what grounds we have for making it, we become
aware that we have to think about a great many things
besides the immediate object of our interest. Science
with its perpetually reiterated question " Why ? "
endeavours to see the original subject of enquiry in
an ever-widening context of relations. If our aim in
making the Judgment is purely practical, we may feel
at any moment that we have enough knowledge to
guide our action, or that we are now bound to act on
such knowledge as we have, however defective it may
be. But the Will to Know is not thus satisfied ; nor
will it be satisfied until it is impossible to ask " Why ? "
once .more with any intelligible meaning. But if the
universe is a single system, as philosophy presupposes
and experience increasingly testifies, no one part of it
can be wholly unconnected with any other part. And
thus our enquirer, who is impelled by the Will to
Know, finds that wherever he starts, he is bound to
make the entire universe the object of his thought.
This is what logicians mean when they tell us that the
logical subject of every judgment is Reality as a whole ;
for if all the implications of any judgment are fully
thought out, the judgment itself becomes something
56 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. i
requiring for its expression a phrase like " Reality is
such that, etc."
Perhaps this is clearer in less elaborately simple
instances. Suppose that a man inspired or afflicted
with the Will to Know is confronted by the statement
that " John Brown's character was profoundly modified
by the peculiar tone of his Public School." At once he
will want to know what this " tone " was, wherein it
was " peculiar/' and therefore what is the general and
characteristic tone of a " Public School," why Public
Schools have such general characteristics, and so forth.
Plainly he is launched upon an enquiry into English
History. He will also enquire what John Brown's
character is now, what it was before he went to school,
what other influences besides those of school have
affected him, what his home was like, why his home
was of such a sort, how far the Industrial Revolution
had affected the economic position of his family, why
the Industrial Revolution took the course it did, and
so forth. This line of enquiry also has led to English
indeed to European History. But the full under-
standing of this depends on some knowledge of the
geographical and climatic conditions of this and other
countries, which leads in due course to the nebula
theory of the formation of the Solar System. Now if
the interest prompting the original judgment is the
doubt whether or not John Brown should be appointed
to some post requiring special aptitudes, part of this
prolonged investigation may be omitted ; but if the
interest is precisely a desire to understand how John
Brown came to be what he is, as much of it as there is
time for must be undertaken, and the Will to Know is
unsatisfied until it has been carried through. Con-
sequently there must be in all scientific thought an
explicit or implicit reference to the system of reality as
a whole.
In the elementary Judgment from which we set out
there is one term which especially challenges further
CHAP, v THE JUDGMENT 57
consideration. If I am to say with full right, " This is
red," I must know what is meant by the term Red,
and I must know (which is part of the same thing)
to what objects it is applicable.
But the knowledge here desiderated is a knowledge
of Universals ; and when we examine the Judgments
which constitute this knowledge we find that they take
two forms Enumerative and Generic ; e.g. " All men
are mortal," and " Man is mortal." 1 Of these the
former clearly depends upon the latter ; for, strictly
speaking, we can have no right as a mere result of
enumeration to say that all men are mortal until all
men, including ourselves, are dead. Our right to make
any such judgment must be derived from the judgment
" Man (as such) is mortal " ; and if that can be shown
to be true, then of course all (individual) men must be
mortal. The stock instance of a purely enumerative
universal is, " All swans are white," which almost any
one would have assented to before the discovery of
black swans ; but the only justifiable judgment would
have been, "All swans hitherto observed are white."
The generic form of the Universal proposition is no
doubt formally valid, whereas the enumerative form is
not formally valid inasmuch as the enumerative universal
derives its validity from the generic for which it has
been substituted. But, as we have already seen, 2 this
generic knowledge Spinoza's cognitio secundi generis
of which mathematics is the chief and perhaps the only
perfect instance is not directly applicable to the physical
world. We cannot argue from the definition of Man
as mortal to the mortality of any particular biped
hitherto regarded as human, because there always may
be some peculiarity about him which exempts him from
the law of the class to which in most respects he belongs.
So that in the syllogism proving the mortality of
Socrates, if the Major is stated enumeratively it is
1 Cf. Chap. I. p. 12.
2 Cf. Chap. I. p. 13, and IV. p. 49.
58 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. i
itself unwarranted, and if the Major is stated generically
the Minor is unwarranted : either " All men are mortal "
or " Socrates is a man " carries us further than we have
a right to go.
Consequently the Will to Know throws its proposi-
tion into hypothetical form " If man, then mortal."
To this as it stands no exception can be taken, but the
" reference to reality " is now very thin ; and the
question how we can find warrant for the inference is
very pressing. It is not the case that the Hypothetical
Judgment affirms nothing ; quite clearly it affirms a
connexion of content. But its warrant for this must
come from a perception that the two " contents " are
mutually implicated in a system which contains them
both ; and the full understanding of it will require the
articulation of this system. And so the Will to Know
presses on from the Hypothetical judgment (if A then
B) to the Disjunctive, which is the form adapted to the
articulation of a system. This is not the kind of
Disjunction where the subject is an individual particular,
and the Predicate gives a list of alternative determina-
tions e.g. This wooden triangle is either equilateral
or isosceles or scalene ; for our right to make this
Judgment depends on previous knowledge of the
possible modes of triangularity. The Disjunction we
require is precisely that which states this previous
knowledge where a system is stated in its unity by the
Subject and in its differences by the Predicate ; e.g.
Triangle (or triangularity) is equilateral, isosceles,
scalene : the three alternative predicates exclude one
another, but the subject includes them all and only
through all of them finds its full expression.
In this way the Disjunction, as the form of the
articulation of system, is the proper form of knowledge ;
it is the form of Omniscience, which may be represented
as a Disjunctive Judgment in which the Universe is
the subject and its whole wealth of variety the predicate.
But this predicate does not give a mere list of observed
THE JUDGMENT 59
determinations of the subject ; the alternatives must be
at once mutually exclusive and exhaustive, as in our
geometrical example every triangle must be either
equilateral or isosceles or scalene, but cannot be more
than one of these. This so far realises the ideal of
knowledge, which is, as Plato says, not only to group
the Many under the One but also to insert How many
(OTTOO-O) after which the Many may be allowed to go
to infinity. 1 It does not matter for geometrical
purposes how many triangles there are ; what matters
is how many modes of triangularity there are.
We find, then, that the effort to understand fully
what is contained in the simplest act of thought will
carry us from the initial categorical judgment of per-
ception to the disjunctive, in which we return to the
categorical form (S is P) after passing through the
hypothetical (If S, then P). And the reason why we
are thus carried forward is; that from the very first we v
are engaged with a system a unity of differences and
only the Disjunctive Judgment gives adequate expression
to this systematic character of our experience. In other
words, our process is the gradual elucidation of the fact
that " the individual is the universal." At first we see
the subject merely as an individual marked by certain
features ; but the effort to understand this reveals the
individual as the concrete universal of its own com-
ponent elements or modes of actuality. So Triangle
is the concrete unity of Equilateral, Isosceles, and
Scalene ; so Athens is the concrete unity of Pericles,
Phidias, Aeschylus, and Plato, and all its host of citizens ;
so a man's Self is the concrete unity or universal of his
actions and his varying forms of property, which are
united in a system by their relations to him.
The development of the Forms of Judgment which
we have traced is not a mere accident. It results from
the nature of experience itself. It represents the in-
creasingly adequate expression of the systematic nature
1 Philebus, 16 D, E.
60 MENS CREATRIX
of the world which all science and philosophy presuppose,
and experience perpetually reaffirms. The simplest and
most elementary judgment is an apprehension of unity
in difference ; the fullest and most elaborate is at once
the apprehension of differences held together in the unity
of a universal, and the articulation of a universal into
its differences.
We saw, however, that any given Judgment is formed
as a separate affirmation only for the sake of an addition
to knowledge- our own or some one else's. In the
direct grasp of any object or system of truth judgments
are implicit but not explicit ; a man absorbed in con-
templation of a picture is not actually forming judg-
ments ; but his experience contains the material for
very many judgments, which are really in the picture
(or his experience of it) and are not only made about
it, but which none the less remain latent and implicit.
It is especially important to remember this in relation
to the Negative Judgment. Negation, as the mere form
of difference or distinction, is as all-pervasive as affirma-
tion, the form of identity. 1 But a man does not make
a specific and explicit negative judgment except to
correct some actual or possible error of his own (i.e.
to add to his own knowledge), or else to correct
some actual or possible error of another man (i.e. to
add to that other's knowledge). We may illustrate
the positive value of the Negative Judgment by the
part it plays in the game of Twenty Questions, where
some one member of the party has to discover an object
agreed upon by the rest in the course of twenty
questions to which the answer must be either Yes or
No. 2 The only skill in asking the questions is to
choose questions to which the Negative answer is as
instructive as the Affirmative. Thus, for purposes of
1 Cf. Plato, Sophist, 255-258.
2 The first question is always, "Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? " and here
one of the three may be named in the answer : this exception to the rule implies
that the question is understood to be a complete disjunction of the universe. I may
add that in my experience the questions only serve to narrow the field of attention j
when that is done, the precise object is reached (if at all) by telepathy.
CHAP.V THE JUDGMENT 61
this game, Europe and non-Europe are almost equally
large, owing to the players being far more fully
acquainted with Europe. So the question, " Is it in
Europe ? " just about halves the field of enquiry, and
the answer " No " is just about as useful as the answer
"Yes." And in either case, the judgment is analytic
to the person giving the answer, and synthetic to the
questioner, for whose sake it is made ; the analytic
element is what makes the judgment possible and
conditions its truth ; the synthetic element is what
makes it interesting and conditions its occurrence.
The amount of positive knowledge gained by a
negative judgment depends upon the number of terms
in the Predicate of the Disjunction within which the
negation is made. Let us suppose (per impossible) that
a man has a desire to go to Bletchley. He may be
resident in Oxford, and know that there are two and
only two railway stations in that " Academical Retreat,"
one of which is " right for " Bletchley. He goes to the
Great Western Station, and is told, " This is not the
station for Bletchley." This negative is precisely
equivalent to the positive judgment, "The North-
Western is the station for Bletchley." But if he were
resident in London and began with Charing Cross, the
discovery of his error would hardly help him at all.
The number of railway stations in London is presumably
finite, and he would therefore inevitably reach a moment
when he could say with certainty, " Euston must be,
and indubitably is, the station for Bletchley." But
the method of exclusion would in this case be very
cumbrous.
But while negation is explicitly employed only in
order to increase knowledge or to facilitate the increase
of knowledge by the rejection of false suggestion, yet
the principle on which it rests is all-pervasive, being the
principle of difference or distinction. In order to be at
all, a thing must be something ; to be without being
anything is obviously to be nothing : Sein = nicht sein.
62 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT . i
And in being something (e.g. red), an object inevitably
is not something else (e.g. yellow).
It is important, though by now so evident as hardly
to deserve mention, that this Difference is always
within a system or unity of some sort, and that explicit
negation must therefore always have reference to some
intelligible " world of discourse." Thus " not red "
implies that the object is (or is supposed to be) coloured,
so that to say, " The present system of inheritance is
not red," is to talk nonsense.
We have now considered the main forms of the
Judgment as the unit of thought. But it has become
clear that as it is the unit, so it is the whole of thought.
For the Judgment in its various forms is always the
articulation of a system, the realisation of the concrete
universal or unity as a whole of parts or as a principle
operative in divers modes. And Inference is essentially
nothing more than this ; it is the apprehension of the
relation between two or more of the differences inherent
in some one universal or system.
For it is clear by now that a universal so far as it
is of any real use in thought is not an abstract quality
but a concrete principle or whole. When we begin to
think about any subject, our universals are still very
abstract. Indeed, at this stage it is true that the ex-
tension and intension of terms, as we use them, vary
inversely. The white wooden triangle is more concrete
than the universal " Triangle," for the latter term means
only a plane figure bounded by three straight lines.
But as we study triangularity its meaning increases ; we
find that it exists in three modes equilateral, isosceles,
scalene ; that, whatever its shape, its internal angles
are equal to two right angles, etc. And while it lacks
whiteness and woodenness no doubt, it is far more
rich in geometrical significance than the particular white
wooden triangle. It is only in regard to irrelevant
qualities that the particular is more concrete than the
CHAP, v THE JUDGMENT 63
universal ; in regard to what is relevant, the universal,
when we understand it, is concrete and the particular
relatively abstract.
To increase our knowledge of relevant facts is there-
fore the same thing as developing our apprehension of
the concrete universal. It needs all its different elements
for its full expression. But as the system or concrete
universal grows before our mind we perceive new rela-
tions between its different elements ; and this is Inference.
It is not a new form of thought ; it is an incident in
the progress of the Judgment to that perfect Disjunc-
tion which is the form of omniscience. We speak
sometimes of " drawing " a conclusion ; but, strictly
speaking, we perceive it. By putting together two pre-
misses we construct a system in which we see the relation
between the Subject and Predicate of our " conclusion. "
This is so in the syllogism, where the essential matter
is the apprehension of the Major and Minor Premisses
in one act of thought. It is equally so in the well-
known instance already cited : If A is ten miles north
of B, B ten miles west of C, C ten miles south of D,
then A is ten miles west of D. Clearly what happens
here is this : we put together the various facts given us,
and perceive that they constitute a system (a square in
this case) in which the previously unknown relation
of A to D is a manifest element.
The conclusion of an inference is then that element
in a concrete universal which we are at the moment
interested in emphasising. Inference does for the con-
crete universal what the most elementary judgment does
for a fact of perception ; it analyses one element out
from the whole and then remakes the synthesis precisely
in order to lay stress on this particular element in the
synthetic or concrete whole from which it starts.
A good illustration of this is given by the principle
of causation. We are generally content to regard the
antecedent which we call the cause as actually itself
producing the effect. But it is clear that " causation
64 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. i
in time can only be understood as the manifestation of
an underlying system itself not temporal." l In practice,
when we ask for the cause, e.g., of some accident, we
mean that one of the conditioning antecedents which
was preventable. But the whole cause, from which the
effect necessarily follows, is the totality of its conditions.
At some point in the continuous stream of events we
make a cross section ; we treat what follows that section
as the effect and what precedes as cause : or rather
(inasmuch as we are not ever thinking of the whole
course of the Universe at all) we select what interests
us in the consequent and call it effect, and similarly
select what interests us in the antecedent as being
preventable, or unexpected, within the same system, 2
and call it cause. But in each case we are really doing
no more than emphasising the relation between two
differences or particulars within a known system or
concrete universal. A judgment affirming causal relation
is a case of inference the intuition of the connexion
of elements within an intellectual system.
Let us revert to our instance of the Royal Commis-
sion. It begins with endless facts on one side, and an
abstract universal Unemployment, Vagrancy, Railway
Nationalisation on the other. At the end, if it is
successful, it has correlated the facts, and thereby made
the universal concrete, so that to the reader of the
Report the term Unemployment, for instance, means
no longer merely a being out of work but a whole
system of conditions which is itself part of the larger
system called the Industrial Organisation of the country,
or the like. Certain elements in this concrete whole
are singled out as capable of improvement by prac-
ticable means. These are the " recommendations "
brought forward by the Commissioners as the " conclu-
sions " of their investigation.
1 Bosanquet, The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 301. Cf. the same
author's discussion of the causal relation of Day and Night in his Logic, vol. i. p. 275.
2 It is to secure that it is within the same system that we apply such methods as
Mill formulates : they carry us no further than that.
THE JUDGMENT 65
This is the invariable nature of thought. The Will
to Know urges the mind to wider and wider apprehen-
sion ; it is the impulse towards totality in the intellectual
sphere ; logic is simply the method of this impulse ;
and if we attend to real thinking and not to debating,
we shall find that while the details of the method are
dictated by the subject-matter, so that logic cannot
legislate for any science, yet; its essential principle is
always the same : the ever fuller apprehension of the
concrete universal which is the same thing as the ever
wider grasp and closer correlation of the facts of experi-
ence. " A man's mind must be continually expanding
and shrinking between the whole human horizon and
and the horizon of an object glass." If a man is able
els ev /cal eirl iro\\a opdv, he has the divine capacity for
Truth.
CHAPTER VI
THE METHOD OF INTELLECT AND THE
PROVINCE OF TRUTH
" Truth is one aspect of experience, and is therefore made imperfect and limited
by what it fails to include. So far as it is absolute, it does, however, give the general
type and character of all that possibly can be true or real. And the universe in this
general character is known completely. It is not known, and it never can be known,
in all its details.
"Absolute truth is error only if you expect from it more than mere general
knowledge. It is abstract and fails to supply its own subordinate details. It is one-
sided and cannot give bodily all sides of the Whole. But on the other side nothing,
so far as it goes, can fall outside it. It is utterly all-inclusive and contains before-
hand all that could ever be set against it. For nothing can be set against it which
does not become intellectual and itself enter as a vassal into the kingdom of truth.
Thus, even when you go beyond it, you can never advance outside it. ...
" Truth is the whole world in one aspect, an aspect supreme in philosophy, and
yet even in philosophy conscious of its own incompleteness." BRADLEY.
IF our consideration of the Judgment has been success-
ful, we are now acquainted with the essential quality
and method of the intellect. We may summarise it in
this way: contradiction is at once its enemy and its
stimulus. It finds incoherence in its apprehension at
any given time and reorganises its content to remove
that incoherence. Contradiction is what it cannot
think ; and yet contradiction is what makes it think.
So by the perpetual discovery of new contradiction it is
forced on to a more and more systematic apprehension.
Perhaps this is most easily seen in the vast move-
ments of the logic of a civilisation. At first we see
the tribe or clan whose communistic organisation allows
little or no initiative to the individual. Then we find
a consciousness of this " contradiction " ; for it is not
66
CH.VI THE METHOD OF INTELLECT 67
only a strain in feeling but a contradiction in thought,
inasmuch as the community exists for the good life of
its citizens and is found to be checking that good life
in certain ways. Gradually, with many subordinate
oscillations, the thought of the citizens moves from the
communist to the individualist position. But here a
new contradiction arises, for it seems possible that the
strife of unfettered competition may ruin many in-
dividuals and even disrupt the community itself. Con-
sequently a new tendency towards centrality appears,
under the name of Socialism or Collectivism, which aims
at state control precisely for the sake of individual
freedom. This tendency will probably develop, with
subordinate oscillations, for five or ten centuries, until
it is found to " contradict " some interest which it exists
to safeguard, and so will again be thrown back by a
new individualism. We shall find, when we come to
consider The Problem of Evil, 1 that the same principle
holds good of moral development. We have, moreover,
already seen how close may be the relation between
theoretical logic and political organisation in any
period. 2 Feudalism and subsumptive Logic belong to
one another ; so do Democracy and the modern Logic.
And the transition from Feudal to Democratic political
theory (through Hobbes who kept the pyramidal form,
Locke who compromised it, and Rousseau who reached
the modern doctrine in general and failed to apply it in
particular) is a fair sample of the dialectical movement
which is the vital process of all thought. Perhaps it is
as well to remark, lest we be accused of making too
much of tendencies and too little of individuals, that
the supreme and lonely genius of Spinoza had already
reached a full apprehension of the modern doctrine of
the state.
This close connexion of political fact with theory in
what seems to most people its most abstract form for
Logic is the theory of Theory is no accident or freak; it
1 Pt. IV. Chap. XX. 2 Chap. I. pp. 17, 1 8.
68 MENS CREATRIX
is due to the fact emphasised in the passage quoted from
Appearance and Reality at the head of this chapter. So
soon as any part of experience becomes matter of reflec-
tion it enters the sphere of intellect, and must be handled
by the principles of the intellect. It is futile to protest
against this in the name of Pragmatism or Vitalism or
Activism or any other -ism. " Truth is one aspect of
experience " of all experience. And while it is only
one, it is not to be supposed that we can gain any
advantage by trying to escape from it in any way ; we
may supplement it, but we cannot do without it. Art
is other than science ; but there is a science of art, and
its name is criticism. Conduct is other than science ;
but there is a science of conduct, and its name is ethics.
Religion is more than science ; but there is a science of
religion, and its name is theology. Truth is an all-
pervasive aspect of the real world ; in no department
may the claims of the intellect be ignored or flouted,
nor the admissibility of its method denied.
Having said so much we may safely, perhaps, go on
to speak of the one-sidedness of the intellect without
being supposed to underestimate its authority. We
said in Chapter III. 1 that science inevitably begins with
a two-sided abstraction. It is bound to ignore the
mental image which accompanies and makes possible
the apprehension of the content ; and thereby it ignores
the particularity of the facts with which it deals.
Scientific truth, then, is a system of contents or, as we
may express it, a nexus of relations ; but we cannot
suppose that Reality is a nexus of relations, for a
relation at least implies related terms. A relation in
which nothing is related is bare nothing. But a term
cannot be altogether constituted by its relations. This
has sometimes been suggested by the language of some
philosophers, and perhaps believed by them. But it is
impossible. Such a belief must rest on the root fallacy
of Determinism a term generally reserved for ethics,
1 Pp. 37, 38 j 41, 42-
CH.VI THE METHOD OF INTELLECT 69
but really a logical term. In fact, the main objection
to Determinism is logical. Determinism, the theory
that everything is constituted by its relations to other
things that it consists, in fact, of these relations is
seen to be fallacious so soon as its application is
universally extended. It tells us that in a system
A B C, A is only A in virtue of its relations to B and
C ; B and C determine it as A. And that seems easy ;
but why is B, B ? It must be determined as B by A
and C. And similarly C by A and B. If, then, each
term is nothing till its external relations constitute it,
we are confronted with the spectacle of nothing at all
developing internal differentiation by the interaction of
its non-existent parts. We may echo the question
which Coleridge asks about the self-differentiation of
Schelling's Absolute Unde haec nihili in nihila tarn
portentosa tramnihilatio ? Nor does this matter become
any better by being put into the Time-series, though we
may veil some of the difficulties by so doing ; for an
individual to be entirely determined by its past, or by
its present, environment, or by both, is utterly impossible.
For as its present environment is only other individuals,
so is its past environment ; and what determined them ?
To regard this process as strictly infinite is really to
give up the game ; it is only a way of saying that you
never do reach a positive which may commence turning
nothing into something. Infinite Time, the only escape
for the pure Determinist, seems to be the assertion of
an infinite undifferentiated substance ; and an un-
differentiated substance is for this purpose the same
as nothing at all. It is logically the same, for bare
being (seiri), which is not a something, is indistinguish-
able from not being (nicht sein) ; and it is the same in
effect, for there is still no means of getting the differentia-
tion started. But if we allow the differentiation as a
fact, we are giving up pure external Determinism.
We are now in the position of saying that in the
system A B C, A is determined as A by B and C ; but
70 MENS CREATRIX BK. i. PT. i
it must have been something in its own right first, and
that too of such a kind as to make the determination as
A possible to it a. Thus if we abolish, or suppose
abolished, B and C, A will not disappear but will
become a. A hand cut off from the body, to use the
old illustration, is no longer a hand in the full sense ;
but it is not become nothing. We are led, then, to the
position that the system A B C is the synthesis of a, /?,
and 7. That is to say, A is not isolable, because the
attempt to isolate it reduces it at once to a; and so
with B and C. Of course the actual distinction between
a and A must be determined specifically in each case ;
but the distinction is real, and this is the fact represented
by the scientific method of reducing all individuals to
their relations. An individual is what it is in virtue of
its relations ; that is true ; but we are not justified in
concluding that apart from its relations it is nothing at
all. All of this will call for revision later on ; but we
may say at once that the effort of science to reduce
everything to relations can only be provisionally fruit-
ful. Science has to treat every particular instance as a
case, a specimen of a species, not as this case ; but yet
each case is just itself, so that for full apprehension we
must, in Spinoza's language, proceed from cognitio secundi
generis to scientia intuitiva. The generic character of
scientific knowledge requires the individuality of things,
from which it abstracts in order to make sense of itself.
The intellect is, of course, quite able to form the
conception of particularity and attend to the particularity
of existent things ; but particularity is itself a generic
term, and is not a particular.
The intellect is ready enough to assert that particular
and universal are different aspects of an identity ; and
some writers always seem quite happy as soon as they
have pointed out that two opposites are complementary
aspects of an identity. But this is a mere formality.
The problem here is for the mind to realise the identity
of universal and particular ; and I submit that the mind
CH.VI THE METHOD OF INTELLECT 71
cannot do it qua scientific intelligence. It only sees
that it " must " be done " somehow " ; but it cannot
display the how. This is why the word " somehow "
occurs so very often in some metaphysical works, and
why some philosophers talk of merging the different
aspects in their unity. I believe all this occurs because
they try to make the intellect solve problems which it
sets by being the intellect i.e. by treating things in the
scientific way ; and we can only solve these problems
by moving on to another method altogether in this
case the artistic. In perception where an adequate
percept is forthcoming, and in artistic imagination
where an adequate image is created, the problem is
solved, though it did not admit of intellectual solution.
The characters, for instance, in a drama are both types
and individuals ; they have universal significance, though
they are utterly particular. There is no need to empha-
sise the universal significance of artistic creations ; and
their particularity is clear enough ; when the characters
in a drama are mere types we at once condemn the
piece from the dramatic point of view. We require
that they should be living and individual. Now I have
already said that it is clear that Truth cannot be a
complete system in itself because it has got to make a
complete unity with other modes of personal life. 1
Here then, as it seems to me, we reach an ultimate
dualism which scientific thought as such cannot solve,
but which finds solution when thought passes into
imagination.
Of course it is not intended to make a strict and rigid
distinction between intellect and imagination. The
movement of the mind in these two functions is
sufficiently distinct to make the use of separate names
advantageous ; but it is still one mind at work.
The goal of the intellect is the apprehension of the
whole universe as a nexus of relations. No doubt the
ideal is unattainable by a human mind within the period
1 Chap. II. pp. 34, 35.
72 MENS CREATRIX
of a human life on this planet ; but it cannot be un-
attainable in principle. And the judgment in which
such an apprehension is realised will be a non-temporal
statement or grasp of an object known to be successive.
This non-temporal grasp of the successive is reached in
every department of science in whatever degree the
mind has mastered the subject-matter. But at present
the temporal character is not altogether overcome. For
while we are still at the intellectual or scientific stage,
the mind is characterised by unrest and motion. This
is the essence of " intellection " or science, that it asks
" Why ? " perpetually ; as soon as it is answered it asks
" Why ? " again. And when, having rounded off some
relatively complete whole or system, it contemplates
the result, the mind is passing from the intellectual and
scientific to the imaginative and artistic function.
In Mathematics we are emancipated from Time by
the way of sheer escape ; we are free from it because
our material, being an object of thought only, is itself
non-temporal. All Science seeks to approximate to
Mathematics, but its material is the temporal and
changing world. Its achievement is reached when it
presents a complete nexus of relations which gives the
unchanging ground or law of the changes in the real
world a timeless formula of the temporal. It thus
delivers us from mere transitoriness by giving us the
permanent law of the transitory.
Thus the goal of the intellect is a Truth which
emancipates from the control of Time, but never gives
that actual mastery over Time which, as we shall see, is
conferred by imagination.
CHAPTER VII
RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
" No kind of relation could be assumed as subsisting between things, acting upon
them, conditioning, preparing, favouring or hindering their reciprocal action j but
reciprocal action itself, the passion and action of things, must take the place of
relation." LOTZE.
THE scientific intellect, ignoring the particularity of
things, grasps the world as a nexus of relations. But
a relation, by itself, is just nothing at all ; it is irredeem-
ably adjectival, and must have substantives between
which it exists. Again, the smallest consideration shows
that in fact there is nothing between the two substantives,
and the relation is seen to be a character of the sub-
stances said to be related. Similarly a law of nature is
a mere generalisation of the way in which individual
things behave.
We are here on the fringe of innumerable contro-
versies ; but they do not affect our purpose. It is easy
to see that the abstraction made by the intellect in its
search for pure content has set well-defined limits to
the scope of its enquiry. It is a perfectly legitimate,
indeed a necessary, function of Mind, but by itself it
can never give to Mind its final satisfaction.
In fact, the whole machinery by which the intellect
works is incapable of leading to a full grasp of Reality.
As we have already seen, it works with Terms and
Relations. But these never exhaust the significance of
the whole within which both exist. The musical critic
analyses a symphony into themes and the relations
73
74 MENS CREATRIX BK.I.PT.I
between them in the whole ; and yet the whole is more
than the themes and their relations. In some cases the
terms in the relation are modified by the relation in
which they stand ; in others there is no such modifica-
tion. But in all cases we begin with the continuous
Whole of presented experience, and we get the terms
of our reflective thought by analysis of that experience ;
we do not reflectively build up our world by adding
one term to another. Our analysis will follow lines
suggested by our interest in making it ; and at any
point where we stop we shall have Terms and Relations.
The Intellect, then, obtains its individual Terms and
their Relations in this way. We begin with the whole
continuous given Reality : in order to deal with it we
have to analyse it, to isolate the elements with which
we are to deal. This isolation must, of course, remove
those elements from their setting in the rest of Reality.
Whether the removal of this contact has any further
consequences must be specially determined in each
case. (The removal may, of course, be either actual,
as in physical experiment, or ideal, as in any case of
selective attention.) Thus if we remove Plato's philo-
sophy altogether from its relations to Greek thought
and civilisation, we shall certainly miss a great deal of
his actual meaning, for much of what he says derives
its meaning from that relation. Or, on the other hand,
we may presumably remove the lack of sunshine during
the summers of 1912 and 1913 from its relation of
simultaneity with Mr. Asquith's Premiership without
affecting its nature at all in any other respect. The
two are connected, in so far as in the metaphysical ideal
they would be seen to cohere in a single system ; but
it is at least possible that there is no more direct con-
nexion than that ; the bare relation of simultaneity is,
of course, a fact, but it may have no determining influence
on the two simultaneous events. If so, it may be said
that in such a case the relation is in the whole which
the related elements make up, and yet not in any of
CH. vii RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 75
those elements. But let us take another instance where
we seem to have the same sort of relation a musical
chord ; take the common chord of C major CEG.
That chord is no doubt an individual fact. But it is
quite vital to its nature that all the three notes com-
posing it should remain in the chord what they were
outside it ; if they are altered, it becomes a different
chord. If, for instance, E becomes Elj, the chord is
that of C minor and not of C major ; if it approximates
to EJ7, it is out of tune. Each note is in the chord what
it was outside Yet the chord is a single new fact :
" Taking three sounds, I frame, not a fourth sound,
but a star." And the reason is that in the chord there
are three relations C to E, E to G, and C to G and
the further relation of these relations to one another,
which are not in the separate notes, but are in the
whole chord. When the chord is analysed into the
separate notes i.e. when these are played separately
these relations disappear ; but the notes remain what
they were. The whole is thus more than the sum of
any parts that can be reached by analysis ; yet those
parts are present, unaltered, in the whole. The point
which I want to emphasise in this connexion is that
there are some relations whose removal makes no
difference to the related term other than this removal
itself ; in all other respects the term out of that relation
is just what it is in it. Such relations, then, may fairly
be said to involve no modification of the related terms ;
the weight of a book in its place upon the shelf is the
same as its weight in the hand.
But not all relations are of this character. Some
relations modify their terms through and through ; and
the higher we go in the scale of being, the more do we
find this to be the case. Mere mechanical objects are
not capable of entering into really intimate relations :
the brick that is built into a wall thereby enters into
new relations ; but its colour and its weight remain
what they were. The new relation does not affect the
76 MENS CREATRIX
old relations or at any rate not all of them. I suppose
it is true that the atom, or the electron, or whatever we
call the last result of physical analysis, in so far as it is
regarded as really existent, must be held to be totally
unaffected by any relation into which it enters except
in the manner specified by that relation. But as we rise
in the scale, the dependence of any individual on its
relations becomes greater and greater : the dependence
of the plant on the soil is greater than that of the stone.
And at last, in the animal organism we find that the
most important characteristics are given by relation. A
hand is still something when it is cut off; for anatomy
it may even be still a hand. But for all purposes which
the hand itself should serve it is not a hand at all.
This process reaches its climax, so far as we can tell, in
human beings. The individual man derives very nearly
all his characteristics from his environment ; take from
him all his social relations, and he is at once changed
out of all recognition.
Yet this does not contradict our previous argument.
It is still true that the individual cannot be dissolved
into relations. Rather the fact is that Reality is a con-
tinuous system which we analyse along the lines sug-
gested by our interest from time to time, and that the
results of this analysis are always individual members
of the system, each containing its own original and un-
derived contribution to the whole, which would remain
extant even though everything but it were abolished,
but determined in character, to a smaller or greater
degree, by the other members of the system. Its rela-
tions to those other members may be purely external,
as in the simultaneity of two totally disparate events ;
or they may be internal, or intimate, as in the relation
of an individual man to the civilisation into which he is
born, and under which he is brought up. In neither
case is it constituted by its relations, as I hope that we
have sufficiently shown : l in the former case it is not
1 Chap. VI. pp. 69, 70.
CH. vii RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 77
even modified ; in the latter it is. The whole can never
be actually dissected into its parts, because in the process
the external relations vanish, and the modifications of
the parts are changed. Yet the parts are really there
in the whole, for each is an original and underived
element ; in entering the whole it may be modified,
but it cannot become something quite different it can
only become actually what it always was potentially.
I have been saying that we arrive at finite individuals
by analysing a given continuous Reality, and that we
analyse on principles suggested by our interest from
time to time. But this does not mean that the ascrip-
tion of individuality is determined by our caprice, or
indeed by us at all. In that analysis we discover it, we
do not make it. We determine what principles of divi-
sion we shall apply, but after that we have no control
over the result. Suppose that there are upon a hanging
bookshelf four books on philosophy, three bound in
red and one in green ; and three books on history, two
bound in red and one in green. If our interest is with
the weight of the whole, we treat shelf and books as a
single individual analysing it out of the whole room
where it hangs ; if our interest is with the subject-
matter of the books, there are two individuals a group
of four and a group of three ; if our interest is with the
colours, there are again two individuals a red group of
five books and a green group of two books ; if our in-
terest is in reading the books, inasmuch as we can only
attend to one at a time, the separate books are in-
dividuals. In each case our analysis only discovers
what is actual fact without it ; the last result, the in-
dividuality of the separate books, is no more real than
the other individualities, but is more important, because
it is relevant to the essential purpose of the books. It
is, of course, logically quite legitimate to analyse a
book into pages, and the pages into square inches, and
even into molecules and atoms. The analysis into
pages seems sane, and the analysis of the pages into
78 MENS CREATRIX BK.I.PT.I
atoms seems sane, because each is valuable for a rational
purpose ; the analysis of a page into square inches
seems insane and yet it is not logically invalid. There
is no reason why a man should not count the square
inches contained in the page of a book if he likes ; but
it is for liking it that we call him insane. The process
is logical, but is not rational. Logically, those square
inches are perfectly individual. But we do not attend
to their individuality because they are not differentiated
by any function relative to the purpose of the page or
the book. Individuality, then, is discovered by analysis,
that analysis being guided by interest ; but individuality
is not determined by either analysis or interest ; it is
determined by function.
But not only is the individuality so discovered real
in itself; the degrees of individuality differ also in
things themselves. We may say that it is more fitting
to call a man an individual than his foot, because for
normal human purposes the analysis that reveals the
whole man is more important than the analysis that
reveals the foot as an individual. But there is more in
it than this. Individuality is discovered by analysis ;
but it is determined by function, and some functions are
dependent on, and therefore secondary to, others, as in
any organic whole the part is dependent on and second-
ary and subservient to the whole ; this would not be
true in the case of stones in a heap, but it is so in the
case of the limbs of a body.
In the sense we have adopted, individual means
amongst other things irreplaceable ; the individual is
this unique case of a universal. But irreplaceable may
be used in the barely logical sense of necessary to the
coherence of a system ; or it may mean irreplaceable in
the realisation of a purpose ; the two are not really dis-
tinct, for in postulating the coherence of the system of
Truth or Reality we are formulating a Purpose the
Purpose that our own experience shall become coherent
with the coherence ascribed to ultimate Reality. But
CH. vii RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 79
this purpose has to be realised piecemeal through the
accomplishment of many minor purposes. And so we
may legitimately test, not indeed the uniqueness, but
the richness of any individual by considering the number
and comprehensiveness of the purposes for which it is
irreplaceable ; and then it is at once clear that the self-
conscious ethical spirit has an individuality of far greater
fulness than any other known to us. Even the social
system, of which the individual man forms a part, is
less completely individual in many ways ; for it has no
sensations, except those of the individuals who compose
it, and these are strictly confined in each case to the
particular individual in question. The nation is an in-
dividual for political purposes, but those very political
purposes must be formed and held by separate persons,
and it is therefore self -contradictory to merge the
citizen in the State, or the individual believer in the
Church. Inasmuch as man is social, the State and the
Church must be maintained even at great cost ; but it
must not be forgotten that the happiness or character
they aim at producing can only be actualised by their
individual members, and the individuality of the State
is subservient to that of the citizens, because its func-
tion is subservient. Individuality is therefore ascribed
to persons with more right than to anything else. And
yet no being is so dependent as man on his environment.
Indeed, paradoxical as it may at first appear, it is just
those whom we call the greatest individuals who owe
most to their surroundings. The original contribution
which every man brings into the world is a capacity or
capacities ; that is, it is always something which may or
may not become something else, as circumstances deter-
mine ; and the greater the number of these capacities,
the greater is the man's dependence. The stone is cap-
able of motion and rest, and is scarcely affected by its
environment except in the matter of motion and rest.
But the infant who is capable of being a great statesman
or a great artist depends for his character almost wholly
8o MENS CREATRIX
on his environment. There may be a capacity for
scholarship, for painting, for music, for finance all
latent in one child ; if his environment develops these
capacities he becomes a great man ; if not, he remains,
it may be, a casual labourer, warped in sentiment and
sluggish in mind. Or the case may be like that of
Plato's youth, with the gifts that might make him a
philosopher-king all perverted by false education. The
greater the natural gifts, the more dependent is the man
on environment. The ideal genius would be a man
with a capacity corresponding to every function of the
universe ; and for the development of those capacities
he would be dependent on all existence. The great in-
dividual is not one who is independent of his environ-
ment, but one whose environment or horizon is so
wide that he is relatively independent of isolated occur-
rences. The man who is dependent on the whole
universe will not fear what flesh can do unto him, and he
seems independent of circumstance because he is almost
independent of those few and trivial circumstances on
which most people depend altogether. He is condi-
tioned just as completely as other men, and in far more
ways. He is responsive to the whole universe ; the
whole universe is focused in him. And he alone fully
realises the whole ideal of individuality. For he alone
contains his significance within himself.
And yet he above all others derives his significance
from outside. So entirely does the machinery of Terms
and Relations fail us at the critical point. At the most
elementary stage it works fairly well, as long, that is,
as we are dealing with purely mechanical objects. But
in proportion as the individual object is higher in the
scale, the relations into which it enters affect it more
radically, till at last we reach the stage where the com-
pletest development of individuality coincides with the
completest receptivity of influence.
For full understanding of such an individual, still
more of several such individuals in mutual interaction,
CH. vii RELATIVITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 81
the scientific method is of little use. It is not to be
ignored, but it must be supplemented. The dramatist
tells us more truth about men than the moralist, or the
psychologist, or the sociologist, or the criminologist.
For the Imagination does not move between Terms
and Relations, but contemplates the whole fact of which
they are the dissection. The analysis of the intellect
is useful, but only provided we return from it to the
contemplation of the Whole.
CHAPTER VIII
KNOWLEDGE AND PERSONALITY : THE SOCIETY
OF INTELLECTS
"The representative centre of any range of externality can only represent it in
a way of its own." BOSANQUET.
ACTUAL knowledge is not only the work of Mind but
of this mind and that mind. Every mind is a separate
focus of the universe ; according to its capacity it
apprehends the world about it, and according to its
instinct for totality (or will to know) it tries to increase
its range and hold together in a united system all that
it can experience. We conceived at the end of the last
chapter a mind whose range was that of the whole uni-
verse. Such a mind would be in possession of all truth.
And yet it would focus it in its own way. For its
apprehension must always be coloured by the history
preceding and conditioning it. No amount of develop-
ment of my mind can make irrelevant the circumstances
of my birth and early training, the ease or difficulty
with which various departments of knowledge have
been, or hereafter shall be, mastered. 1 If not the
knowledge itself, yet its preciousness is vitally affected
by the mode of its attainment. And here as elsewhere
there are values of great excellence, which are yet not
compatible with one another, and must be realised, if at
all, in different subjects.
1 I am here (to my sorrow) in direct conflict with Dr. Bosanquet, The Value and
Destiny of the Individual, pp. 282-289.
82
CH. vin KNOWLEDGE AND PERSONALITY 83
We have introduced the Category of Value ; and
that carries us on at once to a new stage of the enquiry.
We now need to make a distinction, somewhat parallel
to that drawn by Locke between Primary and Secondary
Qualities. Without entering on the controversy between
Realism and Idealism, 1 we can see that there are certain
propositions which are true (if at all) for all minds, and
some which are only true for certain minds ; or perhaps
it is more accurate to say that certain aspects of reality
are only actualised in the experience of certain minds.
Thus the qualities which can be mathematically estimated
are identical for all intelligences ; but there are other
qualities, equally real, which vary from one person to
another. The colour of a red and green object has a
totally different aesthetic value for a man with normal
sight from that which it has for a colour-blind man ;
the very words "red" and "green" have different
meanings for the two men. But the statements of
optical science as regards "wave-lengths" in the ethereal
undulations and so forth have the same meaning for all
minds which attach any meaning to them at all.
It is to be noticed that the variable element is always
to some degree adjectival ; it is a product of the
qualities which are mathematically determinable and
therefore constant in the sense of identical for all
intelligences. But these " secondary " qualities, to use
Locke's term, are perfectly real, whether they are in the
object or in the percipient, or are produced by the
meeting together of these two ; 2 these qualities are real,
but certain persons can never apprehend them.
We have considered the most elementary case ; but
it is clear that there is a peculiar excellence in the easy
grace of a character richly endowed by nature and
developed by favourable conditions ; there is another
excellence in the grit and force of a character richly
1 To which, in my judgment, too much attention is usually paid as compared
with other problems. No one is going to assert a complete disparity between mind
and its objects or a complete dependence of either upon the other.
2 Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 156-7.
84 MEN'S CREATRIX
endowed by nature and developed through a persistent
struggle with unfavourable conditions ; and there is yet
another excellence in the steady worth of a character
not richly endowed which is content to fulfil con-
scientiously the tasks for which it is fitted. These
three types cannot be realised in the same person.
Again each of these three types will be appreciative
of different excellences and so bring to its completion
a different function of Reality. In countless ways it
appears that only through the diversity of personalities
is the whole of Reality apprehended or its whole Truth
known. For it seems impossible to deny that when a
beautiful object is appreciated, it gains in quality itself.
Whether or not a thing can fitly be called beautiful if
no one can see it, I do not know ; but I am quite clear
that, if no one can see it, 1 it does not matter whether it
is beautiful or not. Its value begins when it is appreci-
ated. Good must mean good for somebody ; apart
from consciousness, value is non-existent.
And yet it seems impossible to say that the value is
in the appreciating mind. It exists for it, and only so ;
but it is in the object. So the object when appreciated
becomes something which it was not until then. But if
so, and if there are various values which cannot be all
realised for the same consciousness, then the variety of
intelligences is necessary for the full actualisation of the
value of the world. The complete truth, therefore, if
we include Value, is only grasped by the whole society
of intelligences, and can never be fully grasped by one
alone.
This phase of the subject cannot be ignored. For
the value-judgment even within the realm of Art is
still a judgment, an act of the intellect. It is possible
to conceive a state of things where every one made the
same value-judgments, but only if many of these are
accepted from others on trust ; and there is a clear
1 I.e. literally no one no man or angel or God. I must confess that I simply
attach no meaning whatever to Mr. G. E. Moore's position on this point, Principia
Ethica, pp. 83-85.
CH. vni KNOWLEDGE AND PERSONALITY 85
difference between the judgment " This is beautiful,"
where it is a real analysis of experience, and " This is
beautiful " where it is a repetition of the verdict of an
expert : in the former case it means, " This gives me
aesthetic pleasure/ 'while in the latter it means, at best,
" This would give aesthetic pleasure to any one of
sufficiently trained susceptibilities," and in this case the
value is itself still potential and not actual.
But our value-judgments depend upon our characters
not just our moral character, but upon the whole
psychic quality of our nature. This looks as if we
were reduced to utter chaos, for it is clear that no one
man can dictate what values another ought to find. But
inasmuch as there is a particular character which every
individual, as this member of the society of spirits, ought
to make his own, so, by consequence, there are certain
values which he ought to appreciate and thereby actualise.
So when we consider our experience as it is handled
by knowledge, we find a world which is known and
appreciated by the whole society of finite intelligences.
The whole grasp of their collective experience cannot
be held in one centre of consciousness however
" Absolute " or " Infinite," because some of the
elements are intrinsically incompatible. There cannot
be one Mind which includes all of this. The Absolute
Being (so far) appears precisely as the society of
intelligences.
But why should we bring in the Absolute Being at
this point at all ? We are bound to do so because the
impulse of Self-Transcendence, of which the Will to
Know is one manifestation, is always an impulse to the
Whole ; it reveals itself alike in the sacrifice of love or
loyalty and in the search of science ; it is the determina-
tion to get beyond one's mere particularity (though we
can never leave it behind), and apprehend the Whole
and our place in it and dependence on it ; " Love is
the mainspring of logic." * And this effort towards
1 Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 341. Cf. p. 243.
86 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. i
the Whole is stultified, and therefore all science is in
principle stultified (for science is a phase of this effort),
unless there is a Whole.
But this Whole or Absolute appears at this stage
only as the physical world * and the perfected or rather
the mutually self-perfecting society of spirits. And
this is a real Whole. From the standpoint of the Will
to Know we can demand no more. The intellect
working only upon the principles of its own procedure
will never lead to the Transcendent God of Religion,
for its claims can be satisfied with less, and the further
step is a leap in the dark such as Science may not take.
Let us, however, not underestimate what is implied
in the Will to Know. The conception of the Universe
coming to focus in a multitude of intelligences, and
realising its own value 2 in their manifold appreciation
of it, is not a notion which degrades our spiritual life ;
nor is it alien from the life of religion ; for' this Society
of Spirits is the Communion of Saints, and the agency
that builds it up is the Holy Church, which is that
Communion as so far realised and active, and its spirit
of self-transcendence and self-sacrifice (which are two
names for one thing) is the Holy Spirit.
For the Society of Intelligences in which the truth
and value of the world is grasped must be independent
of the chances of Time. If the value realised by the
heroes and artists of antiquity is simply perished, and
other similar values come into being and again pass out
of it almost daily, and if this flux is all that can be said
to be at all, then our Society and the world of values
make up no Whole at all, and again the effort towards
the Whole is stultified. Somehow 3 that Whole must
be Supra-temporal, and hold within itself all the values
realised in all the ages.
1 I put in these words to avoid begging the Idealist-Realist question.
2 See next chapter.
3 Cf. Chap. VI. p. 71. We shall begin to see how later on.
CHAPTER IX
TIME, VALUE, AND THE ABSOLUTE
/ 5t' ijvnva alrtav y^veaiv Kal rb irav r65e 6
ayadbs fy, aya&$ 5 ouSeis irepl ovdevbs ovS^-rrore eyylyverat os opOdrara d7ro5^x otr ' & v - PLATO.
WE have said that " the intellect, working only upon
the principles of its own procedure," carries us to a
belief in a perfectly united Society of Intelligences, but
no further. And it may as well be said at once that
nothing which follows can invalidate that result ; it will
be supplemented but not abrogated.
But even at the point which we have already reached
it is possible to determine the ways in which such
supplementary process may be permissible.
At present we have a conception of the world as a
supra-temporal whole which " somehow " contains all
the facts and values actualised in all history. Such a
conception satisfies the scientific intellect. It is all-
inclusive and perfectly coherent. And though there is
an impulse to ask, " But why is it there at all ? and why
is it of this sort ? " Science must regard that impulse as
a temptation, a desire acting outside its proper sphere ;
for how can we get outside the world to judge it?
And how can there be any cause of the Whole ?
But within the Whole as the intellect apprehends it
there are elements favourable to an expansion of our
conception though they cannot be said to demand it.
Let us see what they are, so that we may know what
87
MENS CREATRIX
BK. I. FT. I
the intellect will allow us to accept if other functions
of Mind suggest.
We have said that as the Universe comes to focus
in the various centres of consciousness it realises its
own value. But there must be potentially an exceed-
ing value precisely in the unity of all these values,
which, ex hypothesi, no finite mind can grasp. If
therefore on other grounds we find ourselves led to
the thought of an Infinite Mind, which is yet other than
the finite minds and also other than the society of finite
minds, this will supply something, which the scientific
intellect cannot on the basis of its own procedure
demand, but which it will welcome as the appropriate
culmination of its own edifice. 1
Now in all activity of the human mind, value (while
always in one sense a mere adjective of fact) gives the
reason for action ; where the action is productive, it
gives the reason for production, and therefore the
raison d'etre of the thing produced. In such cases,
value is the explanation of fact. The thing is there
because some one wanted it ; but what is wanted is
not the mathematical properties of the thing, but the
good which depends on appreciation for its existence.
If, then, on other grounds we find ourselves led to the
thought that the world as a whole exists for the sake
of its Value, and that the Mind which appreciates the
Whole is also Creative Mind or Will (as the human
mind is creative when it sets out to build its palaces of
Science, Art, Civilisation, and Religion), this too will
be welcomed by the intellect as adding to its scheme a
final completion.
For we found the intellect anxious to ask why the
world is here at all. The question for the moment
was rejected as a temptation. Totality had been reached,
and the legitimate impulse of Intellect had reached its
goal. But if from some other department of Mind's
activity an answer is suggested, the intellect (if not
The First Person begins to be surmised behind the Third.
CH. ix TIME, VALUE, & THE ABSOLUTE 89
impeded by " intellectualist " dogmatism) will gladly
accept it. And Mind does accept as final an explana-
tion in terms of Purpose and Will ; for this (and, so
far as our experience goes, this alone) combines efficient
and final causation. " Why is this canvas covered with
paint ? " " Because I painted it." " Why did you do
that? " " Because I hoped to create a thing of beauty
for the delight of myself and others." If, then, we
find any ground for saying that the world is the product
of an Infinite Will, created for the sake of its Value, 1
the intellect, which could not from any consideration of
its own -procedure reach any such result, will none the
less accept this doctrine as altogether agreeable to
itself.
And further, if it appears that the Value of the
Whole, and therefore the Content of the Infinite Will,
can be adequately symbolised in terms appreciable by
the human mind, 2 so that the human mind may thereby,
in some degree at least, enter into the joy of the
Eternal, that too will be welcomed by the intellect as
the very crown of its endeavour, exceeding the utmost
limits of its hopes.
Let us summarise our results so far.
The rationality of the Universe is the primary
certainty. This certainty is, no doubt, an act of faith,
but all other certainty depends upon it. I have no
right to say that . 2 + 2 = 4, * 2 apples -f 2 apples = 4
apples, except on the supposition that my principles of
reasoning are valid of the real world.
Truth is a universal aspect of experience, and there
is nothing, therefore, which can claim exemption from
the criticism and analysis of the scientific intellect.
But Truth is only one aspect of experience, and
must not be treated as if it were the whole. The
intellect is not the only function of Mind.
1 The Problem of Evil is here crying out for attention, as in John i. 3. But,
like St. John, we ignore it for the present. See Chap. XX.
2 The Second Person is surmised beside the First and Third.
90 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. i
Truth emancipates from Time, but does not give
mastery over Time. In itself it gives only a timeless
formula of the successive (except in mathematics whose
subject-matter is even below succession in the scale of
reality). But herein it gives promise of a real appre-
hension of the successive, wherein the Mind would rise
above succession altogether and contemplate it as with
a bird's-eye view.
The intellect is an unending restlessness of Mind,
asking Why ? and again Why ?
It recognises the fact of value, and the further fact
that values, while real only for the appreciating mind,
cannot all be real for the same mind.
It therefore demands the existence of a Society of
Minds in which, as a supra-temporal Whole, all values
may be realised.
Beyond that it regards nothing as requisite for the
validity of its own method, but it will accept certain
further positions if other functions of Mind suggest
them :
A real experience perfecting the emancipation from
Time effected by Truth into the very mastery and
possession of the successive ;
The existence of an Infinite Mind realising the value
precisely of the whole of the values realised in the
experience of the collective society of Intellects ;
The recognition of this Infinite Mind as Eternal
Will, purposing the Universe for the Value which it
will realise therein ;
The adequate symbolic representation of this Infinite
and Eternal " the express image of His Person" by
contemplation of which the human mind may be rapt
into the joy for which the world was made.
BOOK I continued
PART II
ART
CHAPTER X
THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ART
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WE have already said that the activity of art is
complementary to that of science. In reality, as given
to us at the most elementary stage of apprehension,
there are always two aspects or functions the particular
and universal. Science for its own purpose attends
almost entirely to the universal function ; this is because
the scientific method of understanding is to relate any
given object to the rest of the universe ; it asks Why ?
and to the answer asks Why ? again. Everything is
explained by its reference to environment and context.
For this reason a scientific theory may become out of
date, as the Ptolemaic astronomy has, and so lose all
but a historic interest. A change in the understanding
of the context may lead to a change in the explanation
of any given fact. The artistic method of under-
standing is the exact opposite of this ; it concentrates
attention upon the particular fact which at the moment
excites interest, and helps us to understand it by helping
us to see it better than we had seen it before; it holds
us contemplating it until we grasp its whole detail.
The work of art is therefore never out of date. If it
was successful it actually presented some object, and it
then has for ever whatever value it has at all. Shake-
speare's world is richer and more complex than Homer's,
93
94 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
but Homer is not out of date. Whereas science is
mental restlessness, art is essentially mental repose ; it is
indeed an activity of repose, but repose is the dominant
note. If we consider such a thing as a sunset, the
scientist will explain it by general laws concerning the
refraction of light and so forth, which will help us to
understand how such a thing occurs ; but the poet or
the painter, with more vivid apprehension, will speak
of it in such a way that by sympathy with him we come
to see what he has seen and to realise the sunset in and
for itself. The nature of the imaginative activity by
means of which this is accomplished and the experience
which it occasions must now be considered.
Mr. Balfour concluded his delightful Romanes
Lecture with the following suggestions as to the nature
of the aesthetic experience :
I regard it as the highest element, the highest sub-class in
that whole class of emotions a much larger class of emotions
which do not suggest or lead to action. You enjoy a picture,
you enjoy a poem, you enjoy a symphony, but your enjoyment
does not go beyond this ; it never prompts any policy, any
course of action ; it does not drive you into the practical world
at all. A great many feelings which answer to that description
hardly rise to the level of what we call aesthetic emotion. We
keep that name, rightly I think, for the highest classes of the
species, and if we are wise we do not attempt any too nice or
precise distinction between these higher classes and others lower
in the same scale. But the pleasure we derive from what is
neat, from what is dexterous, from the presentation of anything
which seems to us to be suitable these are genuine pleasures.
They belong to the same great species as aesthetic emotions,
though in my terminology they are lower in the same scale.
But there is another class, and, let us admit it, a much greater
class of emotions which do lead to action, which are sharply
distinguished from the aesthetic class in its wider aspect. This
other class extends over the whole area of conscious life ;
it may perhaps even go below conscious life. They may
lose themselves, these emotions, at the lower end of the
scale, in the mere reaction, the mere muscular reaction or
nervous irritability and sensibility. At the higher end of the
scale they may rise to the greatest feelings of which human
THE NATURE OF ART 95
nature is capable ; rise to love celestial and terrestrial ; the love
of God, humanity, country, family ; love in all its innumerable
aspects. These are at the upper end of the scale, and with all
the pedigree behind them, which like the pedigree of every
great thing either in human institutions or in human nature
is very unworthy of its final progeny. If therefore you have
in mind these two great classes of emotion ; at the head of one,
a great class of aesthetic emotions ; at the head of the other, a
class of these loftiest feelings of love and devotion, why should
you quarrel because you find no adequate philosophy of the
aesthetic emotions, when we live in fair contentment without
being able to have any philosophy of even the highest and the
greatest of the practical emotions ?
*****
These two great departments of human emotion and human
feeling, each graded from the lowest to the highest, stand side
by side, both of them recalcitrant, as I think at present, to any
logical or philosophical treatment. If you ask me whether I
am finally content with such a state of things I frankly admit
that I am not. If you ask me how I propose to escape from
it, I can only say that I see no escape at present, except in
something which may deserve, as a term either of praise or of
reproach, the description of mysticism. 1
Various reflections are at once suggested by the con-
ception of two parallel series of emotions here outlined ;
chiefly perhaps this, that in the term which he uses as
the climax and culmination of one series he has a prin-
ciple of unity by which, if he chose, he could draw the
two series together. For love, whether terrestrial or
celestial, is not only practical ; it always contains a
strong aesthetic element. Duty is the climax of the
purely practical emotions or impulses, as Beauty is of
the purely contemplative. In Love, the practical or
the contemplative may be the more prominent, but both
must be there. If I have passed through respect to real
love of a person whose physical features are in them-
selves not beautiful, these features will none the less be
for me the symbol and expression of the person I have
learnt to love. In short, beauty may generate love,
1 Questionings on Criticism and Beauty, pp. 21-23. The lecture was subsequently
rewritten under the title Criticism and Beauty.
96 MENS CREATRIX
but also love may discover beauty, not by adoring
its object but, as we sometimes say, by seeing it with
new eyes. Cupid is not blind ; nor does he wear rose-
coloured spectacles. When the lover finds beauty where
others find none, both are right ; they are looking at
different objects : the indifferent see the physical form ;
the lover, as in a glass darkly, sees the animating soul, and
that a soul that perhaps can only be revealed to love.
Lo, the moon's self !
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
Full she- flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy ?
Nay : for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats him, even !
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal
When she turns round, comes, again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better !
Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals ?
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain ?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also !
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 97
What were seen ? None knows, none ever shall know.
Only this is sure the sight were other,
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her !
This I say of me, but think of you, Love !
This to you yourself my moon of poets !
Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you !
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.
Love surely is aesthetic at least as much as it is prac-
tical. But, at any rate, we may agree with Mr. Balfour
that the aesthetic emotion is quite non-practical in the
sense that while it, and it alone, possesses us, the will
and every kind of desire is quiescent. The perception
of beauty may indeed stir up all manner of impulses ;
but in itself it is merely contemplative. All writers,
I think, agree on this ; Schopenhauer even regards
the contemplation of beauty as the nearest approach
permitted to living man to that complete annihilation
of the will which, with Buddhism, he regards as the
true goal of life. So long as the aesthetic emotion, and
it alone, possesses us, we are content, we even long, to
gaze and gaze. The past and the future vanish ; space
itself is forgotten ; whether or not mysticism is, as Mr.
Balfour fears, the only possible philosophy of art, it is
beyond all question that the aesthetic experience is a
purely mystical experience ; that is to say, it is the
direct and immediate apprehension of an absolutely
satisfying object.
No one has ever grasped and expressed the nature
of this experience with so great a vividness as Robert
H
9 8 MENS CREATRIX
Browning ; two poems are enough to illustrate the
abolition of time and space in the artistic experience ;
the first is Abt Vogler, which describes the musician's
memory of the sounds he has just called forth, and of
how, while the music lasted, the pride of his soul was in
sight.
In sight ? Not half ! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's
birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I ;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the
earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky :
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star ;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze : and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.
Nay more ; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and
glow,
Presences plain in the place ; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last ;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and
gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their
new :
What never had been, was now ; what was, as it shall be anon ;
And what is, shall I say, matched both ? for I was made perfect
too.
The other poem that I will quote is a love-poem
which treats the emotion of love in a purely mystical
and aesthetic manner it is the little gem called Now.
Out of your whole life give but a moment !
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me
Me sure that despite of time future, time past,
This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me !
CHAP, x THE NATURE OF ART 99
How long such suspension may linger ? Ah, Sweet
The moment eternal just that and no more
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet !
" The moment eternal " that is the essence of the
aesthetic emotion. It is a moment, for in it there is no
duration ; and it is eternal for exactly the same reason.
The occurrence of this experience in our life that creeps
in its petty pace from day to day is a paradox ; ,here is
an essentially timeless experience which begins and ends ;
but we must return to that problem when the nature of
the experience is more clearly before us.
There is no doubt some impudence, and some im-
prudence, in trying to understand this experience more
fully ; we may spoil our capacity for enjoying it in the
future. Professor Bradley, speaking of the Spirit of
Poetry, magnificently applied the words of Marcellus
about the ghost in Hamlet :
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air invulnerable
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
With this we must all sympathise ; and if any one is
altogether content with that, let him rest content and
not think about aesthetics ; but if any one itches to
understand, let him proceed, taking the inevitable risk.
Benedetto Croce, in his quite admirable ALsihetic?
has done good service by defining the limits of Esthetic
more clearly, so far as I know, than any previous
writer. At two points he seems to me to attain this
clearness at the cost of definite error ; but it is useful
to start with a sharp and crisp definition, even though
we may wish to modify it later. Croce's leading points,
1 Translated by Douglas Ainslie (Macmillan). If I have rightly understood this
work, I am in full agreement with it, except on the points mentioned later on, and
must express the indebtedness of nearly all that follows to its lucidity of statement
and sureness of grasp. In many places I have simply adopted Croce's expressions
and illustrations.
ioo MENS CREATRIX BK.I.PT.H
then, are these : Esthetic is concerned only with
expression ; and all intuition is expression.
All art is expression ; and the primary aesthetic
question is simply this : Do these words, these lines
and colours, express anything at all ? Until this
question is answered, artistic criticism has no interest
in the value of the thing expressed ; and so far at
least the maxim of the independence of art is sound.
So far there is no difference of opinion. But many
people think that artistic expression differs in its very
nature from other expressions ; they never succeed in
telling us wherein this difference consists, and take
refuge, with Mr. Balfour, in mysticism. I wish to
deny altogether any essential difference between artistic
and other expressions. But if we follow Croce in this,
we must follow him in his further contention that all
intuition is expression, and that we only possess fully
such thoughts and images as we express that is, make
clear and distinct to ourselves ; for whether our
expression is one that others can understand and appre-
ciate is a secondary matter. Art is primarily a matter
of experience ; it is an experience which is also its own
expression. No doubt we often claim to possess im-
portant ideas which we cannqt formulate ; but the fact is
that on those occasions we only know that an important
idea is needed as the solution of our confusion ; we
know the intellectual function it is to exercise, but we
do not know what it is. This we discover in discovering
the expression ; the two discoveries are identical. Our
expression may be for ourselves alone ; expression that
communicates knowledge is a further matter altogether,
which we must consider later. In the case of spatial
form, however, this difference does not exist ; if a man
says he knows the shape of Great Britain, but, when he
comes to draw it, puts Edinburgh due north of Ports-
mouth, or even of London, whereas it is due north of
Cardiff, he can only mean that he would recognise a map
of Great Britain if he saw one, not that he carries an
:'-: :
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 101
exact map of it in his head. If 1 have such a map in
my head, I can draw it not very precisely perhaps,
but with substantial accuracy ; and here the expression
must be just as adequate for others as it is to me. This
is so in the case of all our primary qualities ; " two
inches " means the same to every one who attaches any
meaning to the words at all. But where any emotions
are involved, this is not so. As the Cheshire Cat
pointed out to Alice, the noise by which a dog expresses
anger is very like the cat's expression of pleasure, and
the two animals certainly use their tails in very diverse
ways. So, too, a phrase which seems infinitely suggestive
to one may be almost barren to another ; this is due to
a lack of sympathy : another man's expression can
never create in me the experience of which it is a part
unless he respects the ordinary significance of words
and I am capable of the experience ; but so far as I am
capable of the experience, I am identical with him in
artistic power. Let me quote Croce's statement of this
point :
The individual A is seeking the expression of an impression,
which he feels or has a presentiment of, but has not yet
expressed. Behold him trying various words and phrases,
which may give the sought-for expression, which must exist,
but which he does not know. He tries the combination M,
but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive, incomplete, ugly j he
tries the combination N, with a like result. HE DOES NOT
SEE ANYTHING, OR HE DOES NOT SEE CLEARLY. The expression
still flies from him. After other vain attempts, during which
he sometimes approaches, sometimes leaves the sign that offers
itself, all of a sudden (almost as though formed spontaneously
of itself) he creates the sought-for expression, and LUX FACTA
EST. He enjoys for an instant aesthetic pleasure or the
pleasure of the beautiful. The ugly, with its correlative dis-
pleasure, was the aesthetic activity, which had not succeeded
in conquering the obstacle ; the beautiful is the expressive
activity, which now displays itself triumphant.
We have taken this example from the domain of speech, as
being nearer and more accessible, and because we all talk,
though we do not all draw or paint. Now if another individual,
102 MEMS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
whom we shall term B, desire to judge this expression and
decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he MUST OF NECESSITY
PLACE HIMSELF AT A's POINT OF VIEW, and go through
the whole process again, with the help of the physical sign,
supplied to him by A. If A has seen clearly, then B (who has
placed himself at A's point of view) will also see clearly, and
will find this expression beautiful. If A has not seen clearly,
then B also will not see clearly, and will find the expression
more or less ugly, JUST AS A DID.
It is clear from the preceding theorem that the judicial
activity, which criticises and recognises the beautiful, is
identical with that which produces it. The only difference
lies in the diversity of circumstances, since in the one case it is
a question of aesthetic production, in the other of reproduction.
The judicial activity is called TASTE ; the productive activity is
called GENIUS : genius and taste are therefore substantially
IDENTICAL.
To posit a substantial difference between genius and taste,
between artistic production and reproduction, would render
communication and judgment alike inconceivable. How could
we judge what remained extraneous to us ? How could that
which is produced by a given activity be judged by a different
activity ? The critic will be a small genius, the artist a great
genius ; the one will have the strength of ten, the other of a
hundred ; the former, in order to raise himself to the altitude
of the latter, will have need of his assistance ; but the nature
of both must be the same. In order to judge Dante, we must
raise ourselves to his level : let it be well understood that
empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we j but in that
moment of judgment and contemplation, our spirit is one with
that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one single
thing. In this identity alone resides the possibility that our
little souls can unite with the great souls, and become great
with them, in the universality of the spirit. 1
Expression, then, is the first element in the aesthetic
fact ; Croce would say the only element, and I shall
discuss that view in a moment ; but beyond question
it is the first and indispensable element, and good
expression is simply expression that really does express
1 Croce, op. cit. pp. 194-199.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 103
that is, which is itself the experience of the artist.
Of such cases Emerson's fine phrase is an accurate
account : " The word is one with that it tells of."
There are no rules of good style. " Effectiveness of
assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style." l Elegance
is all right when appropriate ; it can be more vicious
than any bareness. Only he can have style who has
something to say ; for style is precisely the right way
of saying things. If any one wants to write Latin
Oratory such as would please an ancient Roman if he
could hear it, he must study the stylistic habits of the
Roman Orators : the composition of Latin Oratory is
quite harmless, and if he likes it he had better do it ;
but do not let him suppose that it has any aesthetic value,
unless it may be said to add generally to the amenities
of life, like a military band at a garden party. There
would only be aesthetic value in such composition if the
rhythms that were expressive to the old Romans were
also expressive to us.
I am far from asserting that the study of ancient
forms is valueless ; intellectually it is of the greatest
interest ; but I emphatically deny that the imitation of
ancient forms has any aesthetic value, unless those forms
are as effective expressions to us as they were to those
who created them. On the other hand, it is worth
while to spend almost endless time and trouble in
recovering the general psychical conditions which made
the ancient forms expressive ; as an antecedent and
preparatory study no antiquarianism is amiss, if at the
end we feel what Sophocles felt when he wrote the Oedipus
Coloneus, or what any chance Roman felt as he read
Catullus's Elegy on his brother. This is the great and
inalienable privilege of criticism to put us in the
environment from which the artist's experience sprang.
We do not want to be told whether the figures are in
or out of drawing ; if we do not detect an error, we
can enjoy the more. Ruskin was quite right when, to
1 G. Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman : Epistle Dedicatory, p. xxxv.
104 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
enable us to appreciate Bellini, he wrote a vivid history
of Venice in her days of splendour.
Style is expression ; and for this reason " slang " may
be excellent style, provided, of course, that it is appro-
priately used ; it may be good style but cannot be " in
the grand style." If a new word is able to " catch on/'
it thereby proves its right to a place in the language.
Objection to the style of an orator, if it is not a silly
squeamishness, must be due either to the fact that he
does not express his meaning, or that his meaning is
one that ought not to be expressed. From the point
of view of style or expression the only kind of slang
which is objectionable is the use of great words for
little matters ; and the objection here is twofold they
do not really express what is intended, and they are
made useless for the occasions that require them. The
ruin of the word " awful " is a case in point. They do
not really express ; their " slang " use is like all bad
art. It is good art to call a spade a spade ; indeed this
is the fundamental quality of art ; but it is bad art to
call it a " damned shovel " for the simple reason that
it is nothing of the kind. For purposes of communi-
cation this sort of thing may be necessary. I once
heard a working man say rather querulously : " One
never knows whether you University men mean what
you say ; you have such calm countenances." There are
some people who always understand less than is said ;
they are not sensitive to verbal or pictorial or musical
expression, and the truth must be exaggerated if it is to
be conveyed at all. That is why we all like bad art at
first; if the symptoms of emotion are not overdone, we
do not detect them at all ; great art, therefore, seems
cold and lifeless, while Dore and Gounod seem to
express the quintessence of pathos and longing. After
some practice in reading the works of the painters and
musicians, we find that Dore's women are not really
crying, as we thought, but have recently put some rouge
into their eyes by accident, while Gounod's religious
CHAP, x THE NATURE OF ART 105
music is not the outpouring of a soul with strong
crying unto God, but the screams and whimperings of
undisciplined sentimentalism.
Art is expression ; what then does it express ?
Itself. There is no other expression. Most of our
language is so inartistic that we think different sets of
words will serve as expression of the same thought or
feeling ; that is because none of them really express it ;
they are mere labels. " Death" is the name for an
experience we must all endure ; it has other names
decease, demise, passing away, and so on. But these
are labels, sufficient for many practical purposes, but
wholly inexpressive of the gigantic fact they stand for ;
to find that fact expressed we must go to the artists
to Watts, or Michael Angelo, or Beethoven, or Shake-
speare. But it is not only our language that is inartistic.
Our imaginations are normally so feeble that unless we
can discover a conceptual meaning in a poem or picture,
we are inclined to say that it has no meaning at all.
When a man says, " But what does it all mean ? " he
is very often requiring what can never be given a
statement of the artist's meaning in the terms of the
understanding ; he is assuming that the poet or other
artist always begins with an idea or notion, which he
then embodies in a decorative presentation ; thus he
may suppose that a man paints a picture of a girl with
bowed back and blindfolded eyes, sitting upon the globe
of the world and listening to the note of the one string
left unbroken in her lyre, because he thinks Hope the
dominating force in life, though perpetually on the verge
of extinction. And where no such conceptual meaning
is present, we think there is no meaning at all : if there
is no doctrine we think there is no reality. Very often,
of course, we may find doctrine in a picture, but not
always ; and certainly no great artist thinks of his
meaning first and packs it into a picture afterwards.
Moreover, much art is in its nature incapable of such
expression of notions ; music, for example, does not tell
io6 MENS CREATRIX BK. i. FT. n
us truths ; it presents us with beauty, which is in itself
neither true nor false, though it has a definite relation
to Truth and Falsehood, and has always the logical
structure of Truth, as we shall find later on. Even in
poetry, though here the use of words must almost
inevitably suggest a skeleton of conceptual meaning, it
is often quite impossible to paraphrase. Professor
Bradley has amused us by a paraphrase of Hamlet's
line
To be or not to be, that is the question,
into the words, " What is just now occupying my
attention is the comparative disadvantages of continuing
to live and putting an^end to myself." The absurdity
is clear ; yet this meaning is no doubt present in the
original. As Professor Bradley says, for the practical
or scientific purposes of the coroner the paraphrase may
be said to mean the same thing as the original, but not
for the sympathies of a human being. Other lines defy
paraphrase altogether. Take a celebrated instance
the last two lines of the third act of Shelley's Prometheus
Unbound :
The loftiest star of unascended heaven
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
It is impossible to produce a paraphrase of that ; it has
a quite definite meaning, but its meaning is just itself.
Or if any one finds those two lines, without their con-
text, inexpressive, let me quote the last three stanzas of
The Cloud :
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer ;
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 107
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through ^which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow ;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky ;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
It is plainly impossible to paraphrase that passage.
But it must be added that the test is entirely empirical.
All that can be said is that most of us, with practice,
find the same words or forms or melodies to be ex-
pressive. When we meet with a genuine expression of
any emotion we recognise it. There is no external
criterion discoverable. No one can say why the bronze
Charioteer at Delphi is absolutely perfect ; but no one
is likely to deny it.
So far we have simply been following the lead of
io8 MENS CREATRIX BK.I.PT.H
Croce's two main doctrines that Art consists in expres-
sion, and that all intuition is expression. And before
we pass on a word or two more must be said on the
latter point. It is sometimes suggested that whereas
Science deals with facts, Art carries us away into realms
of fancy. This is a misrepresentation of a truth to
which we must attend in a moment ; just now we must
observe that the first requisite of the artist is to attend
to his actual impressions without being biased by his
scientific knowledge. This is very difficult ; most of
our conscious perceptions are so highly inferential that
we find it hard to attend to the basis of the inference
alone. Thus if a child is set to draw a cube he is very
likely to show four or even five sides at once in the
drawing, though only three are visible. I remember
watching a lady sketch Helvellyn as seen from south-
west at sunset ; she was quite correctly colouring the
mountain a deep purple, but her little daughter, having
been up Helvellyn the day before, objected vigorously.
" Why do you make it that colour ? " she asked, " it's
green, it's all grass." It is just the same with per-
spective ; I know the ceiling of my room is level, and
find it very hard to recover the original impression of
it as coming a long way down in the corner opposite
my table ; I know the sides of a road are parallel, and
my attempt to draw a road makes it look like an ever-
widening waste that turns at last into a great desert of
mud and gravel. No doubt there are technical devices
to be employed here ; but the great difficulty and the
prime necessity is to recover the true impression which
our scientific knowledge of the world so utterly obscures.
If I am to express something, I must first have a com-
plete apprehension or intuition of it in its individuality
an apprehension which is itself the expression I am
seeking.
But here I must leave Croce. For he insists that
this apprehension is the only aesthetic fact there is. He
regards what he calls the externalisation of this as
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 109
secondary and relatively unimportant ; l and he refuses
to see the value of what is expressed as an aesthetic fact
at all : he refers the discussion of this to Psychology. 2
The former leads him to the assertion that the artist
always possesses his meaning, or expresses it to himself,
before he externalises it, and the latter is a denial of
degrees of Beauty. But it is simply not true that an
artist always knows what he is going to say before he
says it. Painters and poets no doubt have different
methods ; but some at least have composed in the
manner magnificently attributed by Chesterton to
Watts. " Standing before a dark canvas upon some
quiet evening, he has made lines and something has
happened. In such an hour the strange and splendid
phrase of the Psalm he has literally fulfilled. He has
gone on because of the word of meekness and truth and
of righteousness ; and his right hand has taught him
terrible things." 3 With regard to the poets we may
quote a passage which both handles this point and
admirably sums up what I have attempted to say so far.
" Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived
and clearly defined matter : it springs from the creative
impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for
development and definition. If the poet already knew
exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the
poem ? The poem would, in fact, already be written.
For only its completion can reveal, even to him, exactly
what he wanted. When he began, and while he was at
work, he did not possess his meaning ; it possessed him.
It was not a fully formed soul asking for a body ; it
was an inchoate soul in the inchoate body of perhaps
two or three vague ideas and a few scattered phrases.
The growing of this body into its full stature and per-
fect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-defini-
tion of the meaning. And this is the reason why such
poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have
1 Croce, op. cit. pp. 156-158, 182 ff. 2 Pp. 142-152.
3 Chesterton, Wafts, p. 169.
no MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
the magical effect which mere decoration cannot pro-
duce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on
asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can only be
answered, * It means itself/ " x
Croce's exclusion of everything but expressiveness is
a more serious matter ; it leads him to the paradox
that there are no degrees of Beauty. " The beautiful
does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a
more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more
expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate.
Ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from
the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely
ugly." He admits aesthetic grades, but only calls
perfection of expression " Beauty." This may be
permitted in the interest of clearness ; but quite plainly
one perfect expression has more value than another if
its range and significance is wider and deeper. Ariel's
song in The Tempest is beautiful in Croce's sense ; it is
a perfect expression ; but its value is not equal to that
of King Lear ; and to refer this difference to some
other science than ^Esthetic is to dissect a living whole
into lifeless fragments. Croce's main doctrine is that
aesthetic meaning and aesthetic expression are the same ;
and if so, the value of the meaning is part of the
aesthetic fact. 8
An accurate grasp of a geometrical figure would be
for Croce an intuition which was also expression ; 4
but it is not' artistic. The truth I take to be this.
Science gives us facts and (by its method of external
relations) the truth concerning facts ; Art gives us facts
and (by concentrated apprehension of the facts in their
1 Bradley, Poetry for Poetry's Sake, pp. 28-29.
2 Croce, of. cit. p. 130.
3 His error is parallel to that of Hedonism, which separates Pleasure from
pleasant activities, and then treats all pleasures as alike.
4 Cf. his discussion of this on pp. 174-5, where " bodies which possess geometrical
forms " are said to be " ugly or beautiful, like every natural fact, according to the
ideal connexions in which they are placed." But what are these "ideal con-
nexions"? If they are the apprehension of other facts, the statement seems
meaningless j if they are " values'" then the value of the " meaning " is brought
back into the aesthetic sphere.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART in
entirety) the value inherent in facts. Like all distinc-
tions in the spiritual world, this must be taken broadly ;
there is no accurate line of demarcation ; but Euclid is
scientific in aim and temper, while Shelley is artistic in
aim and temper. To Euclid it is fatal that his con-
clusion should be proved false, or his chain of reasoning
unsound ; to our appreciation of Shelley it is a matter
of very little importance whether or not we agree with
his objections to orthodox theology or monarchical
government. It is sometimes claimed as a mark of
Tennyson's superiority that In Memoriam was written
before the publication of The Origin of Species. That
may show that he was intellectually alert, but plainly
it has nothing to do with the value of the poem.
Homer is not immortal because he observed that the
Pleiades do or do not set in the ocean. The greater
part of poetry's subject matter is as old as humanity :
it is the things which " go with hunger and thirst and
love and the facing of death." The one thing we want
to know is this : has the poet really presented his fact,
or has he only talked about it? If the motives and
passions are those which we recognise as our own,
expressed fully and as we could not express them, that
is enough. No doubt all conclusions and abstract
theories have an emotional value, and are thus capable
of artistic treatment ; but this treatment will reveal
their value and not their truth.
The function of the artist, then, is not only to give
the " expression of impressions/' * but so to express as
to reveal value. That is why he must first go back to
the actual impressions which objects make upon us ;
his process is not that of science, and he must go
behind all scientific procedure to the original data of
sensation, and work over the material on his own
principles from the outset. No doubt a work of art
may contain scientific truths or moral maxims, but
they are subordinate to the general emotional value to
1 Croce, op. cit. p. 21.
1 1 2 MENS CREATRIX
which they contribute ; 1 just as a scientific work may
contain artistic passages, but only in subordination to
its conceptual purpose. No doubt, too, the value
revealed in any object by the artist must be accepted
not as imaginary, but as the real value, which we
should have detected there ourselves had we the artist's
faculty. And for this reason Art and Philosophy
must meet, as we shall see, when each is brought to its
full development.
It is in order to reveal the true value of the objects
it handles that Art must lay all our volitional activities
to rest. Volition is the effort to reach an ideal as yet
unrealised ; but so far as the artist succeeds, the ideal
is realised. Also, in order that we may attend to the
beauty before us and appreciate it in and for itself, it
must be isolated from the other facts of experience and
concentrate our attention upon itself alone. But not
only must there be no movement of the mind from the
work of art to anything outside it, there must be no
movement of the mind within its limits. An intuition
is of necessity one and individual, and the connexion of
different intuitions is of necessity conceptual ; a work
of art, therefore, in which we pass from one impression
to another and link them all up in our minds is really
a scientific treatise whose several paragraphs or sections
are artistically presented. This is the fundamental law
of unity. A work of art must produce a single
impression. " In works of art that are failures, the
beautiful is present as unity and the ugly as multi-
plicity." 2 A good instance of this failure is Botticelli's
large picture of the Coronation of the Virgin in the
Academia at Florence ; the picture consists of two
halves above there is the main subject, encircled with
dancing Angels, and below, separated by a great stretch
of sky, the figures of four adoring Saints. The
connexion between the upper and lower halves of the
picture is purely conceptual ; one knows that the Saints
1 Cf. Croce, op. cit. p. 4. 2 Croce, of. cit. p. 129.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 113
are adoring the figures in the scene above ; but one
merely knows that, of course, this must be so, one does
not see that it is so. I very much fear that a similar
criticism must be made of another picture by the same
artist the great Enthroned Madonna which hangs
immediately opposite the Prima Vera. This picture
seems to me to contain more beauty than any I know ;
the yearning pathos of the Virgin, the astonished pity of
the Angels, the rapt contemplation and deep meditation
of the two ecclesiastical Saints, the silent, pondering
wonder of St. Michael all these are depicted in a
manner beyond praise. Yet somehow as a whole the
great picture is not a complete success ; though it
contains so much beauty, it is not altogether beautiful.
And I believe that this is because it produces no single
impression ; the connexion between the figures is
logical, not intuitive. Let me mention one other
picture by the same painter the round Magnificat
Madonna in the Uffizzi. Here there are not perhaps
so many figures of astounding beauty, but the picture
is a single whole ; one may study it point by point, and
appreciate it the better in consequence ; but its
impression is single and its meaning is one and in-
divisible. We may notice that the Child is reading
His Mother's song, moving His finger along the words ;
He has reached the word " humilitatem," and pausing
there has thrown back His head to look up in her face,
as though to say, " Ah ! that was it ; we know about
that " ; and she leans over Him, and is quite un-
conscious that from behind her the Angels are lowering
a crown upon her head. And, no doubt, it helps our
appreciation of the picture to notice such points
separately ; but as we sit in front of that picture, it
seems that nothing else exists but the Divine Humility
and the Crown which quite unconsciously it wears.
But I am attempting the impossible : if anybody wants
to know what the greatest picture in the world is like,
he must go to Florence and look at it.
n 4 MENS CREATRIX
I suppose that this effect of unity is technically
achieved through " grouping," and an arrangement of
the lines which compels the eye to travel from any
point in the picture to some other kindred point, so
that we move spontaneously from point to point within
the picture, and never have to think out connecting
links. In music it is achieved through the manipula-
tion of the endlessly repeated "subject" and of the
rhythm ; in poetry through a balance of rhythms and
rhymes. Among musicians Chopin strikes me as one
whose compositions are patchworks of beautiful pieces,
but very often fail to be altogether beautiful precisely
because they are incoherent and lack unity.
Dramatic unity is a complex form of the same fact.
Here each character may be admirably drawn, and yet
the whole play remain inexpressive ; all the characters
must so act on each other as to give the impression of
a single living society. Even in an almost one-part
play like Hamlet the total effect is that of a social life,
in which no doubt one person was more interesting
than all the others put together, but which would not
have been the same had a single character been removed ;
and this total effect is moreover an impression of the
value of a very rich experience, with thoughts and
ambitions and disappointments and actions all stored
within it. The artistic value of the play is not the
value of any one of these, nor the sum of all their
values, but the value of their unity in the artistic
experience.
It is from a failure to grasp this point that Brown-
ing's Dramatic Monologues- the greatest artistic
creations in recent poetry have sometimes failed to
secure full appreciation. Let me refer to one of the
greatest Bishop Elougrams Apology. The subject
handled in the Monologue is Christian Apologetics.
But that is not the subject of the poem. The subject
of the poem is Bishop Blougram, a modern, realistic,
and partially sceptical ecclesiastic, revealing as much of
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 115
his mind, as he thinks fit to "Gigadibs, the literary
man." This canting journalist demanded perfect
honesty and no humbug ; and the Bishop sums up his
position and meets it :
So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realised
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realise one jot.
I am much, you are nothing ; you would be all,
I would be merely much : you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me : hearken why !
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Is not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means : a very different thing !
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.
Well, any donkey can say " Pure Prose ! " It is not
that, because, as Coleridge said, " The opposite of prose
is not poetry but verse, and the opposite of poetry is
not prose but science." But this passage is nearer
science than poetry, and this is what is meant. The
fact to be presented is not what Blougram really felt,
which would require poetry, but his tone towards
Gigadibs. The metre is merely formal only endless
iambi cut into lengths, with five to a length. That
exactly expresses the fact requiring expression
Blougram's contempt for and lack of interest in his
guest. But a little later he comes to something
which he cares about so much that even before
Gigadibs he will show his emotion. The suggestion
has been made that since doubt is inevitable we should
give up faith and take to deliberate and absolute
1 1 6 MENS CREATRIX
unbelief. Blougram says, " Very well ; try it. Can
you live on in undisturbed denial of religious doctrines ?
Not a bit of it."
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again
The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly.
Here we have poetry ; but it is no more artistic than
the " prose " before. In both cases the style expresses
exactly the emotion of the man who is the subject of
the poem. Let me quote another passage, where the
great artist turns not from " prose " to poetry, but from
poetry to prose, on realising suddenly that he is cast-
ing his pearls before a pig.
Pure faith indeed you know not what you ask !
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth :
I say it is meant to hide him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
Its use in Time is to environ us,
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
Less certainly would wither up at once
Than mind, confronted with the truth of Him.
But time and earth case-harden us to live ;
The feeblest sense is trusted most ; the child
Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 117
Or, if that's too ambitious here's my box
I need the excitation of a pinch
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.
" Leave it in peace " advise the simple folk :
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,
Say I let doubt occasion still more faith !
One feels at once the Bishop's sudden shyness at talk-
ing in any high vein to the shallow-pated journalist.
Prose and poetry alike are justified, because the aim of
the poem is not to express emotions, as a lyric poem
does, still less to defend the Christian faith, as a treatise
might set out to do, but to exhibit the character of
Bishop Blougram as it would be seen in such a con-
versation, and to reveal its value r in this aim it
triumphantly succeeds.
I am impelled by sheer love of it to give another
instance of Browning's abrupt introduction of the
sublime a passage from Aristophanes' Apology.
So, swift to supper, Poet ! No mistake,
This play ; nor, like the unflavoured " Grasshoppers,"
Salt without thyme ! Right merrily we supped,
Till something happened.
Out it shall at last !
Mirth drew to ending, for the cup was crowned
To the Triumphant ! "Kleonclapper erst,
Now, plier of a scourge Euripides
Fairly turns tail from, flying Attike
For Makedonia's rocks and frosts and bears,
Where, furry grown, he growls to match the squeak
Of girl-voiced, crocus-vested Agathon !
Ha ha, he he ! " When, suddenly a knock
Sharp, solitary, cold, authoritative.
"Babaiax ! Sokrates a-passing by,
A-peering in for Aristullos' sake,
To put a question touching comic law ? "
No ! Enters an old pale-swathed majesty,
Makes slow mute passage through two ranks as mute
(Strattis stood up with all the rest, the sneak !)
Grey brow still bent on ground, upraised at length
When, our priest reached, full front the vision paused.
1 1 8 MENS CREATRIX
" Priest ! " the deep tone succeeded the fixed gaze
"Thou carest that thy god have spectacle
Decent and seemly ; wherefore I announce
That, since Euripides is dead to-day,
My Chores, at the Greater Feast next month,
Shall, clothed in black, appear ungarlanded ! "
Then the grey brow sank low, and Sophokles
Re-swathed him, sweeping doorward : mutely passed
'Twixt rows as mute, to mingle possibly
With certain gods who convoy age to port ;
And night resumed him.
By the simple device of maintaining a formal identity
of metre and yet changing the rhythm almost in-
definitely Browning is able' to reduce to artistic unity
the most incongruous elements.
Whenever such unity is achieved, we have the sense
of absolute freedom. The artist has then overcome all
obstacles and made -his material the vehicle of his mean-
ing. As moral freedom is reached through obedience
to law, so the freedom of art is won where all the
elements in the artistic expression combine through the
precision of its form to make up a single whole. Ease
of style is reached by careful polish, not by headlong
dash. It is the same in the motion of perfect dancing ;
just because the rhythm is perfect, it seems that there
is no set rhythm at all. Freedom in art as elsewhere
means the combination of many elements to produce a
single total effect.
But the unity of a work of art is not only internal.
Not only must its own effect be single ; it must be all-
engrossing. If our attention keeps wandering to other
matters, the general effect upon our minds is one of
multiplicity. The impression of the picture itself or
the poem itself may be one and indivisible ; but if the
picture or the poem is set in a whole environment of
other impressions, the total effect upon the mind is one
of multiplicity, and therefore of either confusion or
logical and not artistic connexion. The work of art
must focus all our attention upon itself.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 119
I sometimes think that the whole Nature of Art is
best realised when we ask why pictures should be put
into frames. The aim is to assist just that concentra-
tion of the mind upon the aesthetic object which con-
stitutes contemplation. We put something abruptly
irrelevant, though not discordant, round the picture so as
to keep the attention from wandering to other objects.
Buildings such as towers or spires are more " beautiful "
when " framed in trees " or seen through an archway,
because in such a setting the object in question receives
a more concentrated attention, and we actually see it
more perfectly. The frame comes to the assistance of the
system of the grouping or the arrangement of archi-
tectural " lines," which make the object a unity in itself
and keep the attention moving within its limits. In
music the same unity, both internal and external, is
reached by the regularity of the rhythm and the inter-
twining of the melodies ; in poetry by the interaction of
images, rhythm and (often) rhyme. It should be noticed
that rhyme, far from being " the invention of a barbarous
age to set off wretched matter and lame metre," is a
most potent force in numbing desire or restlessness and
leaving us purely contemplative ; its repetitions, par-
ticularly when somewhat complicated as in the Spenserian
stanza, give the poem an effect of turning in upon
itself, and thus help to exclude all other themes from
the field of attention. Milton's phrase about " wretched
matter" has, however, this amount of justification, that
rhyme is particularly appropriate in a poem dealing with
slight subjects ; Shelley's poem, The Cloud, depends
almost entirely on its exquisite rhymes and their see-
saw effect. We could not attend with pleasure to the
" matter " of the poem even through the three stanzas
quoted above, if it were not for the fascination of the
rhymes. Where the subject is in itself of absorbing
interest, as in Epic or Drama, we do not need this assist-
ance in fixing the attention, so that rhyme is unneces-
sary and at once seems artificial and vexatious. Even
1 20 MENS CRE ATRIX
the rhythm in such cases should be as elastic and flex-
ible as possible, " blank verse, " or its parallels in other
languages, being the most appropriate.
No doubt rhythmic forms and rhyme, once intro-
duced, have a further value as part of the expression in
each case ; some rhythms at once suggest certain types
of emotion. But the question why this or that move-
ment or gesture or rhythm should accompany this or
that emotion is one that Esthetic cannot investigate ;
the question why amusement should find expression in
laughter does not belong to ^Esthetic, which merely
notes the fact that the connexion exists and that there-
fore laughter is the true expression of that emotion.
We find, then, that these factors in the expression
have the effect of making the whole expression still
more effective through their power of assisting concen-
tration upon it. In demanding such concentration, the
work of art implicitly claims to offer a complete satis-
faction. It is here, of course, that the mystical char-
acter of the work of art is most apparent, and it is here
that the meaning, as well as the expression, becomes
aesthetically important ; for if our whole attention is to
be held, there must be no opposition from any part of
our nature. As Professor Bradley has pointed out, in
a poem or tale of any length we demand the exhibition
of certain moral principles ; a long poem cannot be
taken as the expression of a passing mood, and though
we might pardon, for instance, the utter pessimism of a
short lyric, utter pessimism is intolerable in a Tragedy.
And it is aesthetically bad ; for if as we watch we are
in an attitude of protest, our experience is plainly not
purely aesthetic. If we are to be in the aesthetic attitude,
our whole nature must be satisfied ; it is for this reason
that Art and Philosophy must at last unite ; we must
like what is said as well as the way it is said ; in fact,
the meaning is here more important than the style, for
to find sentiments one wishes to repudiate expressed in
an elegant manner is quite peculiarly vexatious. And
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 121
here the leading question seems to be, Are we in sym-
pathy with the artist ? He may depict vice if he likes ;
he may depict it so as to make us sympathise ; but he
must not depict either vice or virtue in such a way as
to make us angry with him. This, for example, is my
trouble with Tennyson ; I am in an attitude of per-
manent opposition to his moral judgments. When in
a poem of unquestionable beauty Guinevere he shows
every symptom of approbation for Arthur as he stands
over his wife and talks like an Archdeacon, I am
reduced to something approaching frenzy. Browning,
of course, would either have made him hug her, or else
would haye shown his own indignation. To create
a Pharisee may be well enough, but to hold him up
to admiration is an insult to any Christian reader.
Browning and Tennyson have both expressed their
natures very perfectly in their poems ; so far, there is
little to choose between them. But one of them is to
me uniquely attractive, and the other is distinctly the
reverse. Incidentally, moreover, Browning created
scores of " Men and Women " all of them interesting
and attractive, though not all admirable ; Tennyson
never created a character at all. Arthur is Tennyson
virtuous ; Launcelot is Tennyson less virtuous, but, as
Guinevere discovered, better company, though still un-
interesting. Elaine is presumably his ideal of woman-
hood ; she is a dead doll. In short, to one of these
poets I am naturally in an aesthetic attitude ; to the
other not.
This aesthetic attitude must be induced in us by the
artist ; we cannot force ourselves into it. For in the
artistic experience the will must be wholly quiescent.
That experience is of its very essence experience of
attainment ; and volition is therefore out of place. But
there are degrees of attainment, or at least of satisfac-
tion. A poem may be perfect and thus satisfactory in
itself ; it still remains to ask how much of my nature
is satisfied ? Here we find the reason for the revived
122 MENS CREATRIX *>;
appreciation of the pre-Raphaelites. We have been
rapidly recovering the experience of the great epoch of
Catholicism, and are consequently in sympathy with
Fra Angelico and the two Lippis from the outset, so
that we can again hear what they are saying. Despite
some lack of technique they have something to say
which we wish to hear. Raphael has a better voice,
but we are not interested in most of what he says with
it. For myself, there are only two Madonnas by
Raphael which I wish to see again the Granduca at
Florence and the Sistine at Dresden. His women are
more like real women than, say, " Cimabue's " ; but
" Cimabue " gives a poor likeness of an interesting
woman, though good enough, of course, to show that
she is interesting ; Raphael usually gives us a good
likeness of a nugatory woman. The Madonna in Santa
Maria Novella used to move all Florentines to worship ;
no one can ever have felt a touch of reverence for La
Belle Jardiniere however much he may admire its tech-
nical skill or enjoy its prettiness. "Cimabue" is a
great artist that is, an artist handling great themes
with sufficient skill to convey his meaning ; but he is
not a good artist. Raphael is always a good artist, but
not always a great one.
No doubt the inclusion of this sympathetic element
introduces vagueness and ruins precision. But as
Aristotle reminds us, we must not require more exact-
ness in the treatment than the subject-matter permits.
If we introduce any value other than adequacy of ex-
pression we make it impossible to give a definition of
the beautiful by which taste may be guided ; for one
age will find beautiful what the next thinks insipid or
even unpleasing as indeed actually occurs. But this
is determined by the general spiritual character of the
successive ages ; and when we say that a work of art
"expresses itself," we must remember that this "self"
varies from age to age. Value is only realised in rela-
tion to consciousness ; and that relation may be affected
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 123
by the subjective as well as by the objective term in the
relation. And it is through the variations on the sub-
jective side that transitions from the classical to the
romantic and the like are made possible. There is no
absolute division here ; but the romantic artist is one
who reveals the value of momentous facts directly, while
the classical artist reveals the value of order and of man's
control of matter. Michael Angelo's great figures are
divine ; the Hermes of Praxiteles is not divine at all ;
but the power that made it is. Again to some people
at all times, and to all people at some times, the prime
necessity is to reveal the mere goodness of common-
place existence ; the landscape-painter makes us attend
to the goodness of quite ordinary objects and therefore
to see it for the first time.
For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love
First, when we see them painted, things we've passed
Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see ?
Others, who realise by nature the goodness of mere
living, find such art rather tiresome, and require that
there shall be revealed the goodness of what seems
terrible and of the ultimate forces. Yet through all
these varieties of human need, and therefore of what is
important to man, the definition stands firm ; beauty
is adequate expression of the value of important fact or
feeling. If the expression is not adequate we have no
work of art at all ; if the thing expressed is tiresome
to us we have a work of art without " charm " or power
to grip the attention and satisfy the contemplating
mind.
In any case, however, we may say that to achieve an
all-engrossing interest is the object of all art, and it is
no doubt sometimes due almost wholly to technical
skill. There is a great picture by Watts called The All-
Pervading. Its aim is to express infinity : and it
succeeds. It is not a very large canvas ; it depicts a
single angel or spirit, seated and holding on his knees
i2 4 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
a crystal ball ; above his head his wings are spread in
great curves that almost meet. As one looks at it, it
seems to become vaster and vaster and to spread itself
around one on this side and on that. It is indeed the
All -Pervading, and one recovers with a start to find
that it is just a panel, not three feet across. But after
all we do not find what the All-Pervading is. We have
for the moment felt the immediate presence of Infinity,
and that is all. The achievement is accomplished, as
far as I can tell, through the attraction exercised upon
the eye by two spots of light, the Spirit's eyes and the
crystal ball. Each of these is, as it were, the focus of
great curves the drapery and wings of the spirit
spreading out in all directions at once, so that the eye
feels drawn this way and that while held fixedly in the
centre of the picture ; from this outward strain comes
the sense that the picture itself is gradually encompassing
one as one looks at it.
But there are greater miracles than this. Sometimes
the artist can so charm us with his skill, lulling us into
reverie by melody and rhyme and rhythm, that for the
moment the object presented is all there is. 1
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass !
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass !
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain ;
O listen ! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt
Among Arabian sands :
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
1 Professor Stewart has discussed the reverie of art in The Myths of Plato, pp.
382-395, and Plato's Doctrine of Ideas , Part II.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 125
Will no one tell me what she sings ?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago ;
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day ?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again ?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending ;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending ;
I listened, motionless and still ;
And as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
At the beginning of the poem the Highland Lass is
" single in the field " ; a moment later she is single in
the world. The secret of Arabian sands and of the
farthest Hebrides speaks through her.
But this little masterpiece of Wordsworth is a short
poem ; and if our attention is to be gripped for a
longer period, the theme must be more complex,
Many elements of our nature are quite unsatisfied by
the reaping girl and her song ; they will rebel and
distract us if the poet rivets our attention for too long
upon so small a theme. For a moment, because our
attention is held fast, she seems the Universe in herself ;
the little poem is a microcosm ; but that can only be
for a moment. If lasting satisfaction is to be given,
and perfect Beauty attained, all life must be packed into
one work of art. It is enough only to mention King
Lear and Wagner's cosmic opera Tristan und Isolde.
Where, as in Tragedy, elements that are normally
terrible and horrible appear as constituents of the
general beauty of the whole, we have the sublime.
In the presence of such transcendent Beauty, we
realise the hope of mysticism. In a single impression
we receive what absolutely satisfies us, and in that
perfect satisfaction we ourselves are lost. Duration
126 MENS CREATRIX
vanishes ; the " moment eternal " is come. The great
drama proceeds ; the music surges through us ; we are
not conscious of our own existence. We are simply the
subjects of a mighty experience. We hear and see ; and
when all is done, we consider and bow the head.
That is the Nature of Art. And its significance
surely is twofold. First, it points to a perfect grasp of
the entire Universe in all its extent of space and time
by an Eternal Mind, such as we saw would be the
appropriate culmination of that fabric of Truth which
Intellect constructs* 1 There is no reason to attribute
less validity to the method of Mind in Art than to that
of Mind in Science. It is therefore strictly reasonable to
postulate an Eternal Mind, other than the society of finite
minds, to whom the whole history of that society, with all
the universe beside, is present in the " moment eternal "
of perfect intuition ; there is ground for postulat-
ing this, and a priori no ground for refusing to do so.
But, secondly, the significance of Art is also this
that the perfect expression of any element in being
can for a moment stand for the whole Universe ; and
that the perfect expression of a theme co- extensive
with life can stand permanently for the whole Uni-
verse. It is because of this that a single object
which thus arrests and fixes our attention can cause
a timeless experience in the midst of time. For this
timeless experience, at least in the case of music,
poetry, and drama, is not reached by the exclusion of
time but by inclusion of it and by apprehension of a
whole succession in a single grasp. And it may be
noticed that a great play is more appreciated when well
known, because we understand each scene and every
action not only in the light of its antecedent history,
but also of its consequences. It was a true instinct
which led the Greek dramatists to construct their own
plots for comedies, but to adopt a well-known tale
as the basis of their tragedies. For in the highest
1 Chapter IX. p. 88.
CHAP.X THE NATURE OF ART 127
aesthetic experience a whole stretch of time, future
as well as past, is present to our consciousness at once.
If we could grasp all history in a single apprehension
that would be the culmination alike of science and of
art. That is beyond the reach of finite mind, but if
there is some one perfect expression of that principle of
all history (and by the aesthetic law of unity there
could not be more than one) then the contemplation of
that would equally be the supreme artistic enjoyment
as the fashioning of it would be the supreme artistic
achievement.
Art aims at revealing the value of the world not
at discussion of it but at exhibition of it. And it does
this by taking the fact whose value is to be revealed,
and isolating it from the complex setting in which it is
found in Nature, so that we may understand and
appreciate it. This process of isolation involves unity
both internal and external ; for unless the work of art
be one internally it will only suggest connexions and
values, but will not reveal them ; and unless it is one
also by exclusion of all else from the field of conscious-
ness, our experience as a whole is not purely aesthetic.
The function of art is to reveal values by the creation
of essential symbols if by that phrase we may denote
a symbol which is a perfect instance of what it symbolises.
But in thus concentrating attention upon itself, it
claims to be all-satisfying. In substantiation of that
claim it gathers all the elements of life within its
embrace. Perfect Beauty is thus attained ; but the
work of art is become a Sacrament and the aesthetic
experience is passing into religion.
The Spirit of Art moves with undirected majesty
through the world. Its " pathless march no mortal
may control." From this group and from that it
detaches him who must be its devotee. Royce has
compared the Spirit of Mysticism to Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner 1 ; and beyond doubt the Spirit of
1 The World and the Individual, vol. i. p. 85.
1 2 8 MENS CRE ATRIX BK . i. PT. n
Beauty, mystical and magical, may be compared with
the strange figure who lives for ever in that most
wonderful poem.
It is an ancient Marinere,
And he stoppeth one of three.
" By thy long grey beard and thy glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? "
He holds him with his glittering eye
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child ;
The Marinere hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Marinere.
He on whom Beauty has cast her spell is not his
own master, though in his bondage he finds freedom.
He must listen and gaze till his release is given.
However loud the hubbub of the world or however
enticing its interest he must gaze and listen rapt in a
meditation which is perpetually passing into communion
with God. And we may imagine the Spirit of Art,
mystical and magical, speaking in the words of the
Mariner
I pass like night from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar burst from that door !
The wedding-guests are there :
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are :
And hark the little vesper bell
Which biddeth me to prayer.
CHAPTER XI
THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 1
"Tragedy is the highest expression of the infinite value of human life."
CHESTERTON.
" Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
SHELLEY.
" I form the light and create darkness : I make peace and create evil : I the
Lord do all these things." ISAIAH.
I MAY sum up the result of the former chapter by saying
that the main function of art seems to me to be the
creation of what for lack of better words I may call
essential symbols ; by an essential symbol I mean a
symbol which is itself a perfect case of the principle it
symbolises. Perhaps it is worth while to illustrate this
by contrasting the symbolism of art with other forms
of symbolism. A word is a symbol of its meaning,
but derives all its interest from its meaning, which it
only expresses by a convention. No one seeing the
word Death would know what it means unless' he
happens to know some English ; the symbol here is
quite arbitrary. Similarly, no one would know the
meaning of a picture representing a perfectly ordinary
old man with a scythe and an hour-glass, until he
1 The speculations contained in this chapter are the result of some reflection
stimulated by three works of Professor A. C. Bradley -his Inaugural Lecture on
Poetry for Poetry's Sake, his article in the Hibbert Journal on " Hegel's Theory of
Tragedy," and above all his book on Shakespearean Tragedy, . In the main, I am
endeavouring to take up the problem at the point where he leaves it in that book
and to apply his theory outside tragedy, and I am not at all sure that he would not
regard my whole method as unwarrantable ; in any case he is not to be held
responsible for my conclusions, though I shall borrow from him shamelessly on
the way.
129 K
130 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
looked in his catalogue and saw the word Death ;
though of course we have become so used to scythes
and hour-glasses that the combination of them in the
accoutrement of one old man might suggest the painter's
intention ; to any one not used to our accepted
hieroglyphics it would only suggest his lunacy. But
in contrast with the word and the inartistic allegory
let us put four pictures by G. F. Watts Time^Death,
and Judgment ; Sic Transit; The Court of Death ; and
above all Love and Death. I am far from saying that
those masterpieces would suggest at once the word
Death ; but to me at any rate they do at once suggest
the gloom and mystery that hang over life, and culminate
in Death. In this sense then the word Death is a
formal and arbitrary symbol of a fact more essentially
symbolised by the curve of the back in the chief figure
in Love and Death. The word is a mere sign ; but
that curved back, with its dignity, its calm, its relent-
lessness, and its peace that is, at least more nearly,
Death itself.
But the greatest painter is limited by the fact that
he cannot depict change ; the picture once painted is
the same for ever, unalterably. But all the realities of
life are processes, moving from point to point in an
ordered growth ; and here lies the great advantage of
the poet and the musician. In the symphony we may
have the burden of some great perplexity, the sharp
contrast of sorrow and mirth, the weaving of all threads
together in a single fabric. This is still clearer, though
no more true, in the case of the dramatist. Here life
itself is presented. And I return to my formula that
the function of Art is to create essential symbols. The
characters of a great play are symbols of the spiritual
forces that sway mankind ; but they are not arbitrary
or allegorical symbols ; they are individual cases of
what they symbolise. If they are not individual, they
are mere types ; and our interest in them is ethical and
not dramatic. So it is, for instance, in the morality
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 131
play, Everyman. The hero there has no real personal
character ; he is a mere type. And the interest
with which we watch that play, absorbing as it is,
is not strictly dramatic. On the other hand, if the
characters are merely individuals, and their relations to
each other fortuitous, we have no interest in them at
all or rather should have no interest in them, if there
were any such ; but there cannot be ; a play or novel
must be to some extent life-like, for life is all that the
author has to draw from. But to be life-like is to
represent the principles that actually govern life ; and
the more life-like a play is, and so the more truly
individual its characters, the more light does it throw
on life and its problems. Life itself, that is, human
history as a whole, may be presumed to be the noblest
drama of all ; but it is at once so long and so complex
that most of us can see no real and coherent significance
in it at all, unless some man of genius has isolated some
relatively complete whole and made us see its value.
For, as Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi remarks in
connexion with his pictures :
We're made so that we love
First, when we see them painted, things we've passed
Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see ;
And so they're better painted better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that ;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out.
Just so the dramatist. He takes some phase of life
that we could not extricate from its setting in the
complexities of the real world, and puts it bodily before
our eyes, to see and to appreciate. And it is a symbol
of life precisely by being itself, and because it is life-
like. Othello is not a mere symbol ; but just because
he is a real human being he is a better symbol of
humanity in one of its phases. For this reason there
is no way of saying what the good drama says, except
by acting the whole of it over again. If we can say at
1 3 2 MENS CRE ATRIX
the end, " This play shows us that it is imprudent to
steal " or " that it is a mistake to treat one's wife as a
doll," then it is a bad play. But if any one asks what
Shakespeare meant by King Lear, we can only answer
by reading the play to him and saying " He meant
that." The play is not unmeaning ; but it is the only
possible expression of its meaning. It is an essential
symbol. What we learn from it cannot be adequately
stated, for it gives us, not instruction, but illumination.
This being so, it ought to be possible to gather
from a general consideration of any branch of art some
general suggestions as to the problems of life as a
whole. Now if we make an exception of music, few
people are likely to deny that it is in tragedy that the
artistic consciousness achieves its deepest and surest
apprehension of reality. What, then, in general terms
is Tragedy ? It is not simply a tale of suffering :
sordid horrors, grinding poverty, degraded misery
these do not, of themselves at any rate, constitute
tragedy. Neither failure nor death is intrinsically
tragic. We require a struggle and a conflict. But we
have this in any melodrama, where the hero and the
villain dog each other's steps, and the hero ultimately
justifies righteousness by murdering the villain before
the eyes of the audience. But that is not tragedy ;
nor will it become tragedy if we alter the last scene,
and let the villain complete his damnation by murder-
ing the hero. The mere conflict of good and evil,
embodied each in one character, is not tragic. There
must be a conflict of good with good, and of right
with right. This is, in general terms, the first main
point in Hegel's theory of tragedy ; it may be in-
sufficient, but it is true as far as it goes. Whenever
the recognition of one right involves the violation of
another, we have the material of tragedy. The fact
that the preponderance of right is clearly on one side
may diminish the tragic intensity, but does not destroy
the tragic character.
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 133
Before going farther I should like to guard against
a serious misunderstanding. When one speaks of the
characters in a play as symbols, people are apt to
suppose that one wishes to allegorise the play. I hope
I need not say that I have no such design. Hamlet
and Othello are symbols of humanity as a man's actions
are symbols of his character ; only human history itself
fully embodies and expresses the whole truth of
humanity ; but that expression is of little use to us,
for we cannot contemplate human history as a whole.
English history is symbolic of the English character ;
if we want to understand that character, we read the
history which it has made. But if we would under-
stand humanity as a whole, we cannot set ourselves to
read all human history ; and if we did, we should only
confuse our minds with endless uncorrelated facts ; its
meaning would evade our grasp. We must come to
the great masters whose inspired intuition has caught
now one phase, now another, and set it before us ; and
then, from our understanding of the various phases, we
may construct some conception of the whole. There
is a comic side to life, and even to death, for, as Mr.
Bernard Shaw has reminded us, " Life does not cease to
be funny when men die any more than it ceases to be
serious when men laugh." And there is a serious and
terrible side to death and to life and this in its most
terrible form is given us in tragedy. It is set before
us ; we are not told about it, but we are bidden to
behold it. If we treat Othello as the incarnation of
jealousy, lago as the incarnation of malignity, and
Desdemona as the incarnation of submissiveness, we
degrade the most perfect of all dramas to the level of a
sermon ; it then tells us what Shakespeare thought
about life, but does not exhibit life itself. And it
becomes unreal ; jealous men exist, but jealousy is
an unreal abstraction ; it exists nowhere but in our
analytic heads. Othello is a jealous man with all the
complexities of a man ; and just for this reason he can
1 34 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. n
symbolise human jealousy, or rather jealous humanity,
and show us what it is. I think Hegel does not really
do justice to the individuality of great tragic characters.
He insists on it, of course, but having insisted on it
seems to forget it again. It is only by being them-
selves real and living that the characters can show us
truth. They must be life-like not, of course, in the
sense that they must resemble in their behaviour the
actual men and women in the world ; one can see that
behaviour any day without paying for a ticket or breath-
ing the foul atmosphere of a theatre ; the characters
must be life-like in the sense of showing the real spiritual
tumult which people off the stage so studiously conceal.
If by natural we mean possible in our own experience,
then it is most unnatural for Cleopatra to say :
Give me my robe ; put on my crown ; I have
Immortal longings in me.
But it is most natural if by that we mean that it
genuinely reveals the pride and high-souled greatness of
the speaker.
And this leads me to make an addition to our
former definition. Tragedy, we said, is a conflict
of good with good, and now we must add some-
thing and say, Tragedy is a conflict of good with good,
worked out in characters of heroic mould. It is this
heroic mould which prevents Tragedy from being
merely depressing. In Professor Bradley's words, " No
one ever closes the book with the feeling that man is a
poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may
be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-
rending and mysterious but it is not contemptible.
The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be a cynic
while he reads these plays. And with this greatness of
the tragic hero is connected what I venture to describe
as the centre of tragic impression. This central feeling
is the impression of waste." l The conflict of good with
1 Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 23.
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 135
good must involve waste ; and the heroic stature of the
characters, in whom that waste is exhibited, forces it
upon our attention and makes it terrible as well as pitiable.
Hegel's favourite example of his theory is the
Antigone, where the claims of the State, represented at
the opening of the play by Creon's edict, conflict with
the claims of the family and of the dead, represented
by the unburied body of Polyneices. Antigone must
violate one or other of those claims ; and yet each
claim is in itself right. Hence there is a conflict of
right with right, and that too a conflict of rights more
evenly balanced for the Greeks than it is for us ; we
have kept the Greek reverence for the family, and
added to it, but we have lost their feeling for the State
and ought to remember this if we would appreciate the
conflict of the Antigone. Hegel also works out his
theory in connexion with the Oresteia. He urges that
Clytemnestra represents the cause of vengeance for
Iphigenia, as indeed she herself says in a passage where
she even disclaims personal responsibility for the
murder of Agamemnon ; Orestes, on the other hand,
represents the cause of Agamemnon, and kills his
mother as the murderess of his father. It is not in the
least necessary, as I said, that there should be an equal
amount of right on both sides ; the fact that to fulfil
one the hero must violate another is all that is required.
As a matter of fact, the Oresteia may be far closer to
Hegel's ideal than he himself supposed ; if it is really
connected with the struggle between the matriarchal type
of civilisation, whose religion centred in Demeter, and
the patriarchal type, whose religion centred in Zeus, it is
far more of a conflict between rival claims than if its
interest is entirely confined to the action of the play
itself. Here again I must urge that I am not trying
to treat the play as an allegory ; but if that conflict
of civilisations and religions were still real to the
Athenians, the significance of the play would be very
much increased.
136 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT . n
These two instances are very clear ; but the principle
can be worked out elsewhere. Thus in the Oedipus
Tyrannus we have the claim of the outraged moral code
confronted by the claim of Oedipus' innocence. In
Eacchae we have Dionysus' claim to divine honours
confronted by Pentheus' claim to see to the well-being
of his state. It is easy to give examples ; but one
other play I will mention because in the main it is an
exception the Oedipus Coloneus. Here the only
conflict of claims is, I think, in the scene where
Oedipus curses Polyneices paternal affection and
patriotic justice being the rivals ; but then, too, I think
that is the only part of the play that is strictly tragic ;
for to me at least the death of Oedipus is rather a
solution than a catastrophe, and the prevailing emotion
produced by the play is not pity or terror but a sublime
serenity and calm.
Hegel was inclined to regard Greek tragedy as
tragedy at its purest and the Antigone in particular
was exalted in this way. It is true that the principle
which he treats as the essential principle of tragedy is
more clearly manifested there than, perhaps, anywhere
else at all ; but not, I think, more fully, and it is Hegel
himself who helps us to this correction. If one thing
is certain about his whole philosophy, it is that he
believed in the unity of the Good which none the less
appears on both sides in the tragic conflict. That
conflict is an internal strife, a strife within the Spirit
itself; it is proof of a fatal defect in the world that
the good should thus be divided against itself. Now
in the Antigone the two rival principles are embodied in
two characters ; Antigone has no mental conflict, but
identifies herself with the family as against the State
from the first ; so it is too in the Oresteia. But the
unity of this goodness which thus fights against itself is
more clear when the conflict is altogether within the
soul of the hero, or is at any rate reproduced there, as
in Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes. It is in this respect
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 137
that Shakespeare makes the greatest advance upon the
Greeks ; if we take his four great tragedies we find him
dealing with this conflict in four distinct ways. In
King Lear the conflict is wholly external, and the hero
is not even one of the parties ; the forces of good and
evil fight over him, but he is the passive victim. In
Macbeth the conflict is between Macbeth and his
opponents, but is reproduced within the soul of
Macbeth, who is himself one of the conflicting parties.
In Hamlet the conflict in the hero's soul draws to itself
all the greater part of our attention, and overshadows
the external conflict. In Othello the conflict in the
hero's soul is simply everything. I do not think it a
mere coincidence that Othello, where the whole struggle
is internal, should be also dramatically the most perfect
of the four, and King Lear, where it is external, the
least perfect.
But it may be urged that the struggle here is not
one of good with good but of good with evil. In
King Lear this is true, if we confine our attention to
the conflict itself and ignore its origin. In Macbeth it
is not true at all, for in Lady Macbeth there is at least
one good quality devotion to her husband and
Macbeth himself is noble even in his uttermost degrada-
tion. In Hamlet and Othello the external conflict is
with evil, but the centre of interest is the internal
conflict, and in each case the conflict is a war of good-
ness with itself. This is rather an interesting point.
If we put aside King Lear, which requires separate
treatment on many grounds, we find that in the case
where the main struggle is between one set of characters
and another, the morally inferior characters are endowed
with a greatness and transcendence that are good in
themselves and do something to make up for the
moral inferiority. Macbeth and his wife are wicked ;
Malcolm and MacdufF are good but small. As long
as we maintain the dramatic frame of mind, there can
be no doubt that the wicked pair commands more of
138 MENS CREATRIX
our admiration than the good pair. We can glorify
God for creating a Macbeth, but who could glorify
Him for creating a Malcolm ? In this play, then,
where the important conflict is external, the contending
parties are both endowed with goodness, so that the
death of Macbeth is not a mere relief, as from a fever,
but the passing of a figure which for all its corruption
is still noble. In Othello we find the opposite. Here
the tragic conflict is internal, and the external force
can therefore be represented as almost wholly evil, so
that when lago falls there is no sense of loss, and the
play can conclude with the promise of his torture
without our feeling one touch of sympathy for him.
Between the two stands Hamlet ; here the internal
struggle is far more engrossing than the external, but
the latter is part of the tragedy, and the King is not
wholly vile ; he displays both resource and dignity,
and there is no reason to suppose that his feeling for
Ophelia is hypocritical.
But it will be objected that though we have good on
both sides here, there is no conflict of right with right.
Hamlet's uncle has some good in him, but it is not the
good in him that brings him into conflict with Hamlet.
And this is true. The conflict of good with good,
though not dramatically irrelevant, is none the less
accidental ; it is not a conflict of good with good
arising from the nature of the good on each side, as is
the case in the Antigone. If we are to find such a
conflict it must be in the internal struggle.
In the case of Othello it is easy to detect this. It
is just the intensity of his devotion that makes lago's
insinuations an agony. The more vitally a belief
concerns us, the more sternly do we criticise its grounds
to make doubt impossible. One sometimes hears
people say of Othello, " He ought to have been able to
trust her " ; yes if he had been like most people,
affectionate and entirely sane, but then he would not
have been worthy to be the hero of a tragedy. It is
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 139
not only that his whole being was devoted that is so
in the case of many ordinary good men but that he
was capable of an intensity of devotion that most of us
cannot rival. This is what makes him so entirely
noble and transcendent ; and this is what conditions
his spiritual ruin. The common phrase, " the defects
of his qualities," is a summary of the tragic fact,
as that fact is exhibited by Shakespeare. And
Shakespeare's treatment of the tragic fact is at once
subtler and profounder than that of the Greeks, because
it shows more plainly the unity of the good which
fights against itself.
But, as I said, in Othello the matter is easy : so it is
in Hamlet^ where the sensibility that has caused the
paralysis of will, and so causes seven unnecessary
deaths, is yet good in itself. And it is part of its very
goodness that it should have these appalling conse-
quences. The good fights with itself. So in Macbeth,
it is the hero's courage and splendid imagination that
make the temptations of ambition irresistible.
What of King Lear ? It is dramatically the most
faulty of the sacred four, as I have said. I am con-
vinced that Professor Bradley is right in regarding it
as a play to read rather than to see. The opposing
characters are more nearly types than in the other
plays. The conflict of good and evil is more direct
and more purely moral than elsewhere ; Edgar and
Kent seem faultless, while Goneril, and Regan are more
terrible than lago, and Edmund is more contemptible-
all the characters are very simple, as if each were the
organ of some cosmic force. The entire interest is
transcendent ; we witness the convulsions of a universe.
Dante wrote a Divine Comedy ; this is the Divine
Tragedy. But as a poem it stands at the head of all
achievements of the human spirit, and it is certainly
a tragic poem ; a theory of tragedy which leaves it
out is self-condemned. Yet where is the conflict of
good with good ? Lear is a tragic figure, but in him
140 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. n
there is no conflict. He is passive, and achieves
tragic stature by the immenseness of his sensibility.
Ingratitude is always painful, but few men are capable
of suffering as Lear suffered. Yet in him there is no
conflict. Outside there is a conflict but that is of
good with evil, not of good with good ; and, except
Goneril, the characters do not at first seem to be of
tragic stature Kent and Edgar are the salt of the
earth, but they are not tragic. It seems that our
theory must go. Let us look closer. In this poem,
Hell is loose ; but who loosed it ? And the answer
is Cordelia. Hers is a short part, only just over a
hundred lines, and careful reading is necessary if we
are to grasp its significance. But she is tragic ; she is
own sister to Goneril. Cordelia is not "sweet" ; she
is a woman to the marrow, but a proud strong woman,
with the firmness and the exaltation of Antigone.
Think how, in all the tension of that opening scene,
she meets Burgundy's refusal to marry her without her
dowry :
Peace be with Burgundy !
Since that respects of fortune are his love
I shall not be his wife.
Think how she meets defeat :
For thee, oppressed King, I am cast down,
Myself could else outfrown false fortune's frown.
Think of her last words following at once on those
lines " Shall we not see these daughters and these
sisters ? " Of course she was tender ; but firmness
and tenderness are not incompatible ; it is often the
soft hearts that are cruel. She .had been the Fool's
friend ; when Lear asks for the Fool, a Knight answers,
" Since my young lady's going into France, sir, the
fool hath much pined away." But at the critical
moment she failed. Her virtue rose in rebellion
against her sisters' hypocritical protestations, and she
could show her father no sign of love or demand.
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 141
Some critics have found this unnatural ; but only, I
think, because they assume that she was " sweet." It
is not unnatural, but it is very terrible. If she could
not speak, she might have gone and pressed his hand.
But just because she was the great-souled woman, she
could do nothing at that moment. And her failure is
the source of all the horrors. Lear would never have
been outraged in the houses of his other daughters if
Cordelia could have spoken then, for he would have
lived with her :
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery.
The purely evil forces would have been powerless if
goodness had not failed, and failed by reason of that
quality which was its excellence.
The actuality of the conflict of good with itself as
an element in tragedy may now, I hope, be admitted.
That it is an essential element is seen at once if we try
to remove it. Thus let us take King Lear y where the
failure of goodness is only exhibited at the opening of
the play ; and let us follow Nahum Tate so far as to
write, not a happy ending, but a happy opening ; let
us suppose that Lear himself had shown no wilfulness,
but had abdicated in favour of his two daughters,
Cordelia having gone to France with her husband ;
and then let the whole play stand as at present from
the close of the first scene onwards. It is no longer a
tragedy ; the beauty of the words might cast a spell
on us, but the plot is become revolting a mere tale
of unprovoked outrage ; such things may happen, we
say, but they do not express the real meaning of the
world. For the fact is that in a drama, or any
imaginative work of considerable length, we demand
an exhibition of some kind of justice ; * a long poem
or tale cannot be taken as the expression of a mere
passing mood ; if its object is to call attention to
1 Cf. Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 279.
1 42 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. n
existing facts, as in the case of Mr. Upton Sinclair's
novel, The Jungle , mere horror may be justified, because
the writer's purpose is not artistic ; but in a work of
art we demand a basis of justice ; for its function is to
symbolise reality, and we refuse to regard reality as
unjust. I do not mean, of course, that Lear and
Cordelia deserved their agony ; certainly they received
far more than double for all their sins ; yet the
catastrophe was the recoil upon themselves of the
consequences of their own failures. Even in the case
of Othello the tragedy is the recoil upon himself of
the consequences of the defect inherent in his virtue.
But it is not the case with Antigone ; here the
catastrophe in which she is involved is due to no
failing in herself, and I confess that this seems to me a
fault in this play and in Greek tragedy generally ; if it
were not that Antigone made her decision with her
eyes open and knowing what it would bring upon her,
the catastrophe would be intolerable ; even as it is it
makes me a little rebellious ; and the combination of
innocence and helplessness in the hero of the Oedipus
Tyrannus makes that play, to me, in this respect frankly
disgusting ; I even suspect that Sophocles himself was
dissatisfied and wrote the Oedipus Coloneus to put
matters straight, for taken together the two form a
noble drama. No doubt, when we are in its actual
presence, the Oedipus Tyrannus charms by the beauty
of its language ; but this does not justify it. We
never assent to that catastrophe, and only bear it
because the poet lays us under his anaesthetic spell.
I deeply regret to add that the same must be said
of The Cenci Shelley's "superb achievement" as
Browning rightly called it.
This difference between Greek and Shakespearean
tragedy is rooted in another their difference in the
treatment of the supreme Power, which in Tragedy we
may call Fate. The Greeks recognised the power and
the right of an external Fate, as embodied in the utter-
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 143
ance of an oracle ; and it acts upon the characters from
without. But in Shakespeare Fate acts mainly through
the characters from within. I do not mean that
Shakespeare made no use of opportune accidents ;
Desdemona's dropping of her handkerchief, the meet-
ing of Hamlet's ship with the pirates, the lateness of
Edmund's messenger, are all accidents without which
the catastrophe would be averted. But external fate
never determines everything as in the case of the
Oedipus Tyrannus. Fate brings the characters to-
gether, but once they are brought together.;. they are
their own destiny. Given Othello, Desdemona, and
lago, with their characters, the tragedy ensues as a
logical deduction ; the accident of the handkerchief
determines its course, and perhaps makes the catastrophe
more terrible than it could otherwise have been but
it does not create the tragedy, which springs direct from
the persons and their collocation. Hence the sense of
personal freedom and therefore of responsibility is
stronger and more invariable in Shakespeare than in
the Greek tragedians, and I think we may say that
Shakespeare's apprehension of freedom satisfies^us as
true and sufficient. But this freedom is the freedom
of members of a system, and it is encompassed in the
darkness of almost total ignorance. The men and
women act of their own responsibility and deliberately,
but they do not understand their acts ; think of them
all, Lear and Cordelia, Macbeth and his wife, Hamlet,
his mother and his uncle, Othello and lago each acts
to satisfy some desire, righteous, innocent and guilty,
and his act involves his destruction. The sense of a
fate brooding over the world and luring all to the
appointed end is even stronger, I think, in Shakespeare,
where the Fate works through the free choice of the
characters, than among the Greeks where it works upon
them from without ; for in the latter case it seems
comparatively accidental and arbitrary, but in the former
the people are their own fate, and it is because they are
i 4 4 MENS CREATRIX
they, that the tragedy arises. Fate is thus made less
arbitrary but even more inexorable ; it is the law of
the world of which the men and women are members ;
they both make it and obey it ; they cannot escape it,
for it is themselves ; nor can they modify it, for that
would involve themselves becoming other people. They
are free, for the origin of their actions is themselves ;
they are bound hand and foot, for from themselves
there is no flight.
Such is moral freedom as exhibited in tragedy, not
libertarianism but self-dependence. And what is the
Fate that broods over the whole the law of this tragic
world ? It is precisely the Good, which in the tragedy
fights against itself. This tragic world purges itself of
evil, not by conquest without loss, as Messiah scatters
the rebel hosts in Paradise Lost, but by loss of its very
best. The catastrophe that destroys Goneril and Regan
engulfs also Lear and Cordelia ; Othello's life is wrecked
and cut short in the convulsions by which the Spirit
rids itself of lago.
What then is the light thrown by tragedy upon the
problem of evil ? Evil is the occasion of the whole ;
the conflict of Good with itself is evil. But there is
a positive evil beside this the force which, taking
advantage of the defect in Good, brings havoc on the
world ; the ingratitude of Goneril and Regan ; lago's
joy in the sense of personal power ; the ambition,
hypocrisy, and bestiality of Claudius. This evil is the
real and active enemy of the Good which is the law
of the tragic world ; it breaks up that law and reduces
its world to chaos. It is essentially blind and irrational
and is intelligible only in the sense that we recognise it
as a factor of our real' world and of our own selves. In
the end of the tragedy it is purged out. lago alone of
Shakespeare's villains in these four plays is still alive at
the end of the last act, and the last words of that act
are the decree that he shall die by torture. Evil, then,
is the source of havoc, thus proving its antagonism to
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 145
the order of the tragic world, and hence the goodness
of that order ; and in the end it perishes. Tragedy,
then, is, so far, the triumph of good over the evil to
which it gives occasion by its own defect.
But the triumph is imperfect ; it is won at a terrible
cost. Where, as in Macbeth^ the hero himself is mainly
evil, we feel that the cost is greater than the gain. The
world is indeed rid of a pest ; but if Macbeth was
terrible, he was at least great, and the men who remain
to us are small. This impression is, I think, stronger
in Macbeth than in the other plays, because the union
of wickedness and greatness in the one character forces
it upon our notice. Yet it is quite as real elsewhere ;
Hamlet, Othello, Cordelia all must perish in the
destruction of their enemies. If the impression of waste
is less strong in these plays, I think it is because we see
the impossibility of Hamlet and Claudius continuing
to exist together ; and Hamlet cannot live on when
Claudius is killed, because then the seven violent deaths
caused by his delay would be unavenged ; he let the
evil loose he did not make it evil, but he gave it its
operative power and he must be involved in its doom.
So, too, with Cordelia and Othello. ' But Macbeth
might go on living, the good and bad in him together,
for does not his sheer greatness more than counter-
balance his wickedness ? No ; to ask the question is
to answer it ; but we are prompted to ask it here, and
not, I think, in the other plays. Tragedy is a triumph
spoilt ; Good wins, as we won at Trafalgar, with a
loss that makes victory a defeat.
Yet the total effect is not depressing ; we are at the
end neither crushed nor rebellious. I think this is
mainly due to a vague half-conscious sense that a deep
stern justice governs the whole. This is the second
main point of Hegel's theory ; " above bare Fear and
tragic Sympathy stands the sense of Atonement, which the
tragedy affords by displaying to us the eternal justice." l
1 Aesthetik, p. 532.
L
146 MENS CREATRIX
But I think Hegel is guilty of a very bad over-
statement. He says, 1 " The last impression is, not
unhappiness and suffering, but the satisfaction of
the spirit, only in so far as the necessity of what
happens to the individuals can appear in the end as
absolute reasonableness." This is all of a piece with
his statement 2 that he prefers a happy ending. Of
course he had a thesis to maintain the thesis, namely,
that evil is a moment in the perfection of the Absolute
Idea. But to apply his theory to tragedy he has to
run counter to experience. It is significant that he says
nothing about evil in tragedy except in so far as the
self-opposition of good is evil. But tragedy at its best
contains substantive, positive evil. To put the matter
in Hegel's terminology Tragedy is not nearly so
affirmative as he tried to make out ; his error was forced
upon him by his whole philosophy ; for he could not
deny the deep significance of tragedy. To allow that
significance, while leaving tragedy its apparently negative
conclusion, would have been inconsistent with his type
of Absolutism. So tragedy had to be somewhat
moulded ; it had to exhibit eternal justice. But it
doesn't do all that ; only melodrama does all that.
The deaths of Antigone and Haemon, the deaths of
Lear and Cordelia, do not display the eternal justice ;
the necessity never appears as absolute reasonableness.
But the great artist, in the secret manner of art, forces
us to assent, in spite of our regret and complete failure
to comprehend. There is no direct consciousness of
justice, but a vague half-conscious sense of something
that is not injustice in the Power that rules the world.
Not, of course, that Othello and Cordelia only had
what they deserved the bare conception of desert is
inadmissible in this connexion ; we do not judge we
hear and see, consider and bow the head. But we
bow the head in assent sorrowful, involuntary assent
for the sufferers we think of at the end are not
1 Aesthetik, p. 533, 4. 2 Ibid. p. 574.
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 147
innocent ; it was they that opened the floodgates,
and we cannot be rebellious if the flood is too strong
for them.
Sorrowful, involuntary assent ; yes but subtly
mingled with this there is a sense of exaltation, of
solemn, tremendous joy. I know that here we come
more than ever within the region of personal and, very
likely, idiosyncratic impressions. As far as I can
interpret my own impression, this exaltation is not
prominent, and yet suffuses the tone of the whole.
Perhaps it is largely due to the feeling that no external
calamity really weighs at all in the scale against the
spiritual transcendence of Othello or Cordelia. But I
find the feeling strongest in the case of Hamlet and King
Lear, and weakest in that of Othello ; and it can be no
coincidence that in the two former plays we have close
to the end a suggestion that the hero's story does not
close with his death. Hamlet breaks off his last speech
to murmur " The rest is silence " ; but Horatio does
not accept that :
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet Prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
No doubt Horatio is a commonplace sane person, who
might be expected to believe in immortality ; but the
fact that Shakespeare put the words into the mouth of
a suitable person is no evidence that he regarded them
as unimportant. Of course this passage does not prove
Shakespeare's belief in immortality, or even suggest it ;
my point is that the occurrence of these words colours
the whole conclusion of the play as with the faintest
touch of light in the utter gloom, a glimmer that may
be the herald of a new dawn. Professor Bradley
suggests that this may be permitted here by Shakespeare
because Hamlet alone of all the heroes is in gloom
from the very opening of the play. I should feel this
argument more strongly in the case of the similar
passage in King Lear. After the King is dead, Albany
148 MENS CREATRIX
invites Kent to take a share in the government of the
kingdom, and Kent replies :
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go ;
My master calls me, I must not say No.
Surely this is more than a mere refusal to survive his
master, which is all that Professor Bradley sees in the
lines ; I am clear that to me at any rate the lines have
an immense value not that the light they bring into
the gloom is bright, for it is barely discernible, but they
make all the difference between total and just not total
darkness.
But I cannot accept Professor Bradley's justification
of Horatio's address to the dead Hamlet it seems too
accidental ; there is evidence that Hamlet's early life
was singularly happy not like that of Cordelia, with
Goneril and Regan for elder sisters ; and the mere
accident that the play does not commence i.e. that we
do not happen to come across Hamlet till the gloom
is settled on him could hardly of itself justify the
suggested extension of the interest beyond the limits
of the action. Hamlet is in gloom throughout the
play, but we do not feel that his has been a peculiarly
unhappy life taken on the whole. Yet both Horatio's
speech and Kent's are undeniably justified. I suggest
that the justification is to be found in the cosmic
character of these two plays. In this respect they
differ from Othello. Othello is the most purely human
of the plays. There is something fateful in the advance
of lago, but I can detect little sense of a brooding fate
operating through the characters to reach an end that
none of them dreams of. There is less of mystery in
this play ; less of the sense that the characters, however
real and living, are our points of contact with a reality
vast and solemn which speaks through them but is
more than they. I believe it is this sense strong in
Hamlet and overpowering in King Lear which makes
those faint suggestions of immortality admissible. For
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 149
Macbeth we dare not desire immortality he himself has
jumped the life to come. But for Hamlet and Lear
and Cordelia we may desire it, and its suggestion
is admissible because throughout the play we have been
conscious of great hidden forces ; the interest was never
really confined to the action on the stage, and so no
unity is broken by the suggestion that it continues
after the curtain falls.
I am tempted to support this suggestion by reference
to a modern play of far inferior merit Browning's
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. That play is a true tragedy ;
there is a conflict of rights. Lord Tresham is wholly
governed by his care for the honour of his family ; his
sister Mildred and Lord Mertoun love each other with
deep and pure affection, and are engaged. Tresham
catches Mertoun on his way to a nocturnal visit to
Mildred, challenges' him to fight, and kills him. As
Mertoun dies he bids Tresham take his last message of
love to Mildred. Tresham goes to Mildred to obey,
and this dialogue follows :
TRESH. He bade me tell you . . .
MIL. What I do forbid
Your utterance of! so much that you may tell
And will not, how you murdered him . . . but no !
You'll tell me that he loved me, never more
Than bleeding out his life there : must I say
" Indeed " to that ? Enough ! I pardon you !
TRESH. You cannot, Mildred ! for the harsh words, yes :
Of this last deed Another's Judge whose doom
I wait in doubt, despondency, and fear.
MIL. Oh, true ! There's nought for me to pardon ! True !
You loose my soul of all its cares at once.
Death makes me sure of him for ever ! You
Tell me his last words ? He shall tell me them
And take my answer, not in words, but reading
Himself the heart I had to read him late.
Now this direct appeal to immortality jars on me, and
I am compelled to regard it as a dramatic flaw. And
1 50 MENS CREATRIX
so far as I can discover the nature of the jar here, it
is in the sudden extension of the interest beyond the
limits of the action those limits being otherwise care-
fully respected in this case.
If the function of Tragedy is in any degree what I
take it to be, this point cannot be dismissed as a mere
matter of technical construction. All essential matters
of technique are essential to the work of art which
contains them. If, then, I am right in my suggestion
that the thought of Immortality is aesthetically admissible
in dramas, where the individual characters are through-
out regarded as representatives of a spiritual order which
they symbolise but do not exhaust, it is legitimate to
infer that no man is immortal by right of his individu-
ality, but as he is a member of the whole spiritual
world ; or in Pauline language, that it is not as
ourselves but as sons of God that we are heirs of
eternal life. So Plato represents the Creator as
conferring on finite spirits the immortality which He
alone possesses by necessity and right.
Such, then, seems to me the contribution made by
Tragedy to the problem of immortality ; its contribu-
tion to the problem of evil we have already seen. Evil
is a real and positive force not only a defect of good-
ness ; it gains its opportunity through a defect of good-
ness ; it is in the end purged away from the world, but
in its process it both enhances the value of, and accom-
plishes the partial destruction of, the good. It is worth
while that Goneril should exist, that the full potential
splendours of Cordelia's spirit may be realised ; yet
Goneril remains a monster, and Cordelia perishes in the
general ruin.
We speak of the problem of evil, but not so fre-
quently of the problem of good. Yet there is a
problem of good, and tragedy presents it. For we find
that human good at least is of such a nature that it
may be divided and war against itself, or else may have
some defect, which is of the same stuff with its virtue
CHAP, xi THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY 151
and yet makes it serve the cause of evil at a critical
moment.
As to the relations of good and evil, tragedy reveals
them as utter opposites ; they are not different aspects
of one thing in any intelligible sense only, in fact, so
far as both exist and are thus different aspects of the
total Reality. In their strife good is in this sense
victorious, that it partially survives ; at the end of the
tragedy much good has perished, but all the evil ; and
the good that has perished has fallen a victim to the
forces let loose by its own self-opposition or defect.
In this sense and to this extent the philosophy of
tragedy is ethical and optimistic. Further, we have
seen that precisely when tragedy is most itself, that is,
when it is most clearly an essential symbol of human
life, it may legitimately hint that its hero's career does
not end with death, and that the glorious good whose
destruction we have witnessed is not really lost to the
Cosmos. But this can only be a hint ; for the subject
lies beyond the province of tragedy. It is the function
of art, as we saw, to extricate some single fact from the
complexities in which it is entangled in the real world,
and to set it clearly before us that we may appreciate
its significance and estimate its meaning. Tragedy
does this with the fact I have endeavoured to describe ;
it may hint at other facts, but to do more than hint
would be to desert the tragic function, and destroy the
unity of aim which gives the drama its artistic, that is
its interpretative, value.
This, then, is the philosophy of tragedy. Good by
its self-opposition and essential defect gives occasion to
its enemy, evil ; in the struggle evil is destroyed, but
much glorious good all of good that is glorious
perishes with it. As we behold, we rejoice in the
immeasurable greatness of man ; we feel terror at the
evil and pity for the good ; and we accept without
protest, but not without lament, the destruction of so
much good by the evil to which it gave opportunity.
1 5 2 MENS CRE ATRIX BK . i. FT. n
Man is so great in and through the struggle, and good
so glorious, that we would not have the evil simply
abolished ; for that would be to abolish the struggle,
and with it much of the greatness and the glory. The
world revealed in tragedy is a noble world, and better
than any we can conceive yet it is terrible and pitiable
and sad beyond belief. We would not alter it ; yet we
cannot be content with it. This is the Philosophy of
Tragedy ; and if it is not the last word of human
philosophy, at least we know that no philosophy can by
any possibility be true which does not contain it, or
which diminishes in any degree whatsoever the depths
of its exalted sad solemnity.
CHAPTER XII
INTELLECT, IMAGINATION, AND WILL
Atdpota 5' avTTj ovdtv Ktvei. ARISTOTLE.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds
More strong than all poetic thought.
TENNYSON.
WE have hitherto been regarding the imaginative
function of the mind as something wholly distinct from
the intellectual, but we have now to add that there is
no sharp line between the two, but only a difference of
emphasis. Moreover, the intellect becomes imaginative
when it is itself sufficiently concentrated and intense ;
and (as we shall see) it is through thus becoming
imaginative that it may gain its hold upon Impulse and
so constitute Will.
But this does not mean that we were mistaken in
describing the two phases as almost antithetic to each
other. For the normal life of intellect is abstract 1 and
restless while the normal life of imagination is concrete
and contemplative. To use again the old illustration,
Boy and Man are words with quite distinct meanings,
though there is no moment at which any particular
individual passes from one stage to the other. And in
the case before us the matter is all the more important,
as the imaginative movement of mind will seriously
interfere with the intellectual if it is introduced too
1 In the sense that it is concerned with meaning to the exclusion of fact or image.
153
1 54 MENS CREATRIX
soon, and will also be vain and futile if it is initiated
without intellectual preparation, for then it is valuable
and indeed tolerable only as a graceful relaxation.
Beauty we defined as " the adequate expression of- im-
portant truth or fact " ; and we have now to add that
beauty must always exhibit the logical structure of
Truth totality and internal necessity.
It is of course plain that in a work of art no one
part determines the other parts ; we do not find here
that determination of events by temporal antecedents
which natural science seeks to establish in its causal
laws. No one who has read only the first line of
Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness " When I consider
how my light is spent " can possibly infer that a little
later the poet will say, " His state is kingly " ; but
when he has read the whole sonnet he will see how each
word must be just what it is and where it is. The
meaning, only fully expressed by the whole poem, none
the less controls every syllable of the expression with as
great rigidity as can be found in any geometrical
demonstration. Art is, in structure, Logic in excelsis.
This point has been so well made by Dr. Bosanquet 1
that I must ask leave to quote him at length :
All logical process is the reshaping of a world of content
by its own universal spirit. There is no repetition not so
much as the recurrent application of a word which is devoid
of this creative element ; and in creative production par excellence
we have only the same thing at its fullest.
And as we learn to deal with greater shapes of art, and
as aesthetic insight and experience increase, the penetrative
imagination reveals itself as the higher form of the creative.
And we feel that not the invention of novelty, but the logic
which lays bare the heart and structure of things, and in doing
so purifies and intensifies the feeling which current appearances
are too confused and contradictory to evoke, is the true secret
of art. No doubt we should fail to predict the incarnation
which a painter's or a poet's thought will assume ; if we could
predict it, we should ourself be he. But this is not because we
are too rational, but because we are not rational enough. The
1 The Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 332, 333.
CH.XII INTELLECT, IMAGINATION, WILL 155
"fundamental brainwork " is lacking to us; as is a special
capacity for the infinitely delicate logic x of expression, by which
the passionate thought, already in itself too great for us, is
embodied in a million ramifications of detail, constituting a
tissue of precise determination in which alone the thought in
question with its passion could find utterance could become
itself. If we say that the process is not rational, because it is
largely unconscious, we are committing a serious confusion.
The process itself is an intense and exquisitely adjusted and
organised consciousness to a great extent obviously and plainly
logical. But it is not, of course, another and a different
consciousness watching and analysing the first while it pro-
ceeds. And in this sense, we are apt to forget, all logical
process without exception is unconscious. You cannot make
the working function of a syllogism into its major premiss :
you cannot predict its conclusion ab extra by a watching and
inactive consciousness. The spirit of logic, when at work,
deals with what is before the mind and reshapes it ; but it is
not itself a part of what is before the mind. And in this,
though remote in degree, it shows its kinship with the creative
imagination which at its best and greatest, as we have urged,
turns markedly towards the penetrative. If it is "creative,"
it is so because profound penetration reveals positive treasures
beyond the scope of the average mind ; not because it deviates
into paths of arbitrary fantasy. In short, then, all logical
activity is a world of content reshaping itself by its own spirit
and laws in presence of new suggestions ; a syllogism is in
principle nothing less, and a Parthenon or " Paradise Lost " is
in principle nothing more.
What is thus so eloquently said in insistence upon
the continuity of the scientific and artistic functions of
mind I can only echo, merely repeating that this does
not affect the distinction which we drew ; intellect as a
rule is content with the skeleton and persists in pushing
enquiry further, while imagination clothes the skeleton
with flesh and then contemplates its finished work until
satiety overtakes it. Each would find fulfilment only
in the full apprehension of the structure of the universe
adequately embodied and expressed.
We have now to see how it is through passing out
1 The italics are mine.
156 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. n
of its normal self into imagination that intellect is able
to gain control of impulse and so constitute will. And
here we are at once confronted with one of the supreme
difficulties of philosophical exposition, which arises from
the fact that we are aiming at the apprehension in one
grasp of many interlocking systems, so that to follow
the true order of enquiry will always involve a great
amount of cross-reference, recapitulation, and the like.
Thus, for example, it would be well to determine what
we mean by the will, or by volition, before discussing
how the will is affected by the apprehensions of the
intellect or the intuitions of imagination. But there
is also a convenience in dealing at once with this great
function of imagination while the nature of the opera-
tions called by that name is still fresh in our minds.
This will involve some anticipation now of results only
reached in subsequent discussion, and some recapitula-
tion then of what is suggested here. But we shall be
enabled to keep the whole discussion of imagination
together, and perhaps this gain outweighs the attendant
disadvantages.
The most familiar problem in the practical moral
life is that of carrying out in actual practice what we
know to be right. For the science of ethics more
interest may attach to the occasions when our difficulty
is that of determining what course is right ; but
those occasions are less frequent in the lives of most
men than the times when, knowing what we ought to
do, we shrink from doing it.
Aristotle's celebrated discussion of this problem,
provided it is taken as a kind of diagram rather than
an exact description of the psychical state in question,
contains the clue to its solution. Taking as an instance
a simple desire (the desire for sweet things), which runs
contrary to a general plan (of avoiding unwholesome
things), he shows that any particular sweet object may
be referred to either of two general propositions. The
general plan suggests " Sweet things are unwholesome" ;
CH.XII INTELLECT, IMAGINATION, WILL 157
the desire of the moment suggests " Sweet things are
pleasant." Both of these are true. Everything there-
fore depends on the question to which of these the
particular instance "This is sweet" should be
referred. And inasmuch as " Sweet things are
pleasant " has a direct appeal to appetite while " Sweet
things are unwholesome " has not, the former will
carry the day unless some further step is taken. 1
Now the man who acts from an impulse has not
actually got syllogisms of any kind before his mind ;
but it is quite true that what is before his mind can be
schematised in this way. We have, then, to ask what
determines the reference of the particular instance,
" This is sweet," to one rather than the other of the
two propositions ; or if, as was said, the proposition
which has an inherent appeal to impulse will win if
other things are equal, what is it that makes other
things unequal in the case of the self-controlled man ?
Another passage of Aristotle's comes to our aid. 2
The true end is the good ; and the end for any given
man at a particular time is what seems good to him
TO ai,v6fj,6vov ayaOov, the appearing good. But what
seems good, or what " the appearing good " is, depends
on character, which again depends on nature and train-
ing. But he holds a man responsible for what appears
good, for the 8puwos. ARISTOTLE.
WE have already mentioned the element of Impulse,
whose introduction carries us across the line which
divides the Theoretical from the Practical. It is at
work in the creation of knowledge and beauty, but
only in a highly specialised form. The will to know
contains an impulsive element ; so does artistic creation ;
for impulse is necessary to any activity whatsoever ;
but we have been able to assume the existence of just
that impulse which is relevant in each case. We have
now to consider the psychic life in which all manner of
impulses find their place side by side with Mind, and
which Mind has to organise into a harmonious whole
by its own methods.
We have seen that pure Determinism breaks down
logically ; * we have also seen that individuality, while
discovered by analysis, is determined by function, 2 and,
moreover, that the completest development of individu-
ality coincides with the completest receptivity of
influence. 3 But to that statement something must now
be added.
We have spoken many times of value, and have now
to consider the various kinds of value. The inanimate
Thing is aware of no value ; but the lowest form of
sensitive organism is aware of the value of certain
1 Chapter VI. 2 Chapter VII. 3 Ibid.
165
1 66 MENS CREATRIX
feelings ; and where there is no memory or anticipation
there can be no capacity to appreciate other kinds of
value. But where memory and anticipation exist, it
becomes possible for the consciousness concerned to
compare itself with its actual past and ideal future ;
it becomes possible to have, over and above the
immediate desires, a purpose which may be pursued
though desires have to be suppressed one after another
in its attainment.
This purpose may be wholly unconscious. A man
may live for a long time by principles which he could
not formulate and of which he has never consciously
thought at all. Most of us must at some time
or another have discovered such principles by the
very fact that suggestions made by other people, or
impulses arising in our own nature, have conflicted
with them. Probably a very large proportion of the
real purpose of a man's life remains permanently
unknown to him. Here as elsewhere there is great
danger in trying to live only by that which has come
into explicit consciousness ; to do this is almost inevit-
ably to make life shallow and rob it of its most
profound significance ; and yet it is also true that to
bring into full consciousness what has been subconscious
is always in itself a gain. In that outer region, which
lies beyond our power of observation, there are many
elements, bad as well as good, and to depend upon
it for the direction of our life is to be in a highly
precarious condition. Consequently our aim must be
to try to include within the field of consciousness as
much as is possible of the wealth stored in our sub-
conscious nature, and yet at the same time never to
suppose that our consciousness has grasped the deepest
springs of our action. Here, as in the case of thought,
it is only the conscious purpose with which the
philosopher can deal ; so long as anything lies outside
the range of consciousness it plainly cannot become
the subject-matter of reflection ; and so we are bound
CHAP, xiii WILL AND PURPOSE 167
to deal with the purpose of life so far as it becomes
explicit, only remembering that this is in no case the
whole of it. The relation of the conscious and the
unconscious parts of our purpose must occupy us when
we come to the discussion of education.
Will is not a separate entity ; l the tendency to
regard it as such seems to arise from the failure, not of
intellect but of imagination, to apprehend activity apart
from something which acts ; imagination is, of its very
nature, always materialistic, and has imposed upon
thought an unreal demand for substances which may
support attributes and activities. This demand in
psychology led to a belief in " faculties " as actually
constitutive parts of a substantial soul ; and as Purpose
is certainly different from any one of our chaotic
impulses and ideas, a Will was invented to be the
organ of Purpose. It was then asked how this will
is determined, and whether it is free. The absurdity
of the latter question is sufficiently exposed in Locke's
celebrated chapter on " Power," where he points out
that it is sensible to ask "Is man free?" or "Has
man a will ? " for these mean the same thing ; but to
ask " Is the will free ? " is nonsense, for it only means
" Has the power to choose got power to choose ? "
Locke thus reminds us that the fact before us is
Choice ; it is actual concrete cases of choice that we
are concerned with ; and for the explanation of choice
I believe we cannot improve on Aristotle's account of
Trpoaipea-is as opef;t,s SiavoijriKij or vovs ope/cri/eo? the
union of Appetition and Intellect ; while for a state-
ment of the ideal in this regard we cannot improve
on Plato's eva yevea-dat e/c TroXXwz/ out of many to
become one.
Our actual practice in early education supplies us
with some valuable guidance here. As soon as the
child's physical life is fairly well established we begin
1 Here, and for the next few paragraphs, I am covering the same ground, often in
the same language, as in The Nature of Personality, Lect. III.
1 68 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
to say that for a short time every day the child shall
attend to some one thing. At first the child is a mass
of chaotic interests and impulses whose notice is
attracted and fixed altogether by external occurrences ;
if by Will we mean the capacity to form a Purpose
the child has no will at all ; he may show great
determination in struggling for whatever he wants,
but this is vigorous appetition, not will ; it is the
material out of which strength of will may be made,
but as yet it is not strong will nor even will at all.
The first thing to be done is to create a power of
concentration, of attending to some one thing whatever
it may be. And so we insist that for a period every
day he shall not allow himself to be distracted by
anything. That period is called lessons. It scarcely
matters at this stage what subject is taught. It should
be as attractive as possible, so that attention may be
concentrated easily. The vital matter is that the child
should learn " attention " or " concentration " in
general. Gradually the period is extended, and the
whole system of regulations, called " discipline," is
developed, till " lessons " and " discipline," together
cover nearly the whole of life ; then the external
pressure is relaxed again, and the individual is set free
in the sense that he is now left to the guidance of the
habits which discipline has created in him ; and the
educator may say, " I have created a will in you ; at
first you were a mere mass of impulses ; I have co-
ordinated and systematised those impulses, and I have
developed your power of thought alike in calculating
means to ends and in comparing together the various
ends open to you, so that now you have a real will and
purpose of your own ; I have forced you into freedom ;
now go and exercise that freedom."
These impulses are in themselves neither good nor
bad ; they are the material out of which virtue and
vice are made. But, if left to themselves, they will (as
the doctrine of Original Sin reminds us) issue in a life
CHAP, xni WILL AND PURPOSE 169
which is vicious, at least in the sense of being the
opposite of virtuous ; how far such a life would be
guilty is a further question, and to speak of guilt in
such a connexion would seem to be absurd ; the
savage is not guilty for being uncivilised, and every
man would be uncivilised if society did not civilise him.
The impulses of human nature all have a place in the
economy of the ideal human life, but they can only be
made elements in such a life by much effort. If left
undisciplined they will not make up a single moral life
at all ; the man will remain a chaos of impulses ; and
he cannot himself conduct this discipline at first (though
as it moulds him he becomes able to co-operate with it
and to conduct it altogether at last), because at first
he is just the chaos of impulses. Society educates and
disciplines him. By enforcing concentration of atten-
tion, by restraining through fear or otherwise the
excessive activity of any one impulse, and so on, it co-
ordinates him and makes him for practical purposes one
agent instead of many, or in other words makes him
truly free. Of course when once the process is fairly
begun, the child, as we have said, co-operates with it ;
and from the reaction of certain forms of conduct on
his own self-respect, as this grows under the educative
influences, he is led to take an ever greater share in the
moulding of his own character.
This is the true freedom of man, when his whole
nature controls all its own constituent parts. Its root
is the merely formal freedom which we found to be the
inalienable property of any individual object whatso-
ever. As we rise in the scale of being this freedom or
individuality begins to count for more and more ; in
the case of a purely mechanical object it may be ignored
in practice ; the difference between two billiard balls,
for instance, is negligible ; each will move in the same
way in answer to the same stimulus. But two plants
will respond quite differently to the same environment,
and among the higher animals it becomes impossible to
170 MENS CREATRIX
predict how one of them will behave in any given
circumstance, except on the basis of individual know-
ledge. This process reaches its culmination (so far as
our experience goes) in civilised man, so that a know-
ledge of men in general becomes almost a contradiction.
We all know how disastrously shallow is the insight of
the sort of person who is said to " understand men,"
and how fallacious is his guidance.
This kind of freedom is a fact ; it is not a treasure.
It enables and indeed requires a man to feel with
regard to any action " Something that was mine and
mine alone went to the doing of that act." It thus
carries with it some measure of responsibility, but it is
no particularly excellent possession ; for the man may
feel that just because the source of some evil action is
himself, there is no escape. 1 " O wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? "
Go where he will, into whatever environment, the
impulse to that action goes with him. True freedom
is not only or chiefly a freedom from external control,
but from internal compulsion ; it is found, not when a
man says, " I did it, and no one else," but when a man
says, " I did it, and I am glad I did it, and if oppor-
tunity arises I will do it again." Only such a man is
really free or really directing his own life. The man
who has no purpose in life, or having one yet perpetu-
ally acts in direct opposition to it, is in bondage to a
part of himself. Plato justly compares him to a state
governed by a tyrant, where one member of the com-
munity imposes his will by force on the whole com-
munity, that will not being for the common good. So
in the case of the man we are considering, a single
element in the soul forces upon the whole man an
action not good for the man as a whole. Hence it is
at once apparent that discipline or external restraint,
far from necessarily diminishing freedom, may be the
means of increasing it ; this, of course, applies to wise
1 Cf. The " freedom " of tragic characters remarked upon in Chap. XI. p. 144.
CHAP, xin WILL AND PURPOSE 171
legislation and is one of the tests of the wisdom of
legislation. The goal is that, as in ideal Democracy
all the citizens together constitute the sovereign which
each individually obeys, so in the fully developed
personality all the impulses under the controlling
supervision of Mind constitute a Soul or Self which
all obey ; and the truly free man or the man of strong
will is not the man who may do anything at any
moment, but the man who has some great purpose
which he follows despite all impulses and all obstacles.
But in our experience this ideal of perfect self-
determination does not exist. Not only do we depend
very largely on our environment, but we have not
complete control of ourselves. We have no purpose
in life wide enough to include the satisfaction of all
our impulses and strong enough to "check each from
undue indulgence. Consequently our purpose, so far
as it is active at all, is very often apparent chiefly
in restriction upon appetite. Will, so far, seems to
appear in the inhibition of this or that impulse or
instinct. Since our character is, throughout our lives,
in process of formation, the co-ordination of the
various inherited instincts and impulses remains in-
complete, and any one of them may rush ,us into an
action directly contrary to our general purpose in life,
an action that we regret as soon as it is done, and
sometimes even while we are doing it. We may know
it is wrong, even that it is self-destructive, but rather
than pluck out our right eye, rather even than close it,
we fling our whole body into Hell. Of course we are
responsible for our act, but it is not an act of real
freedom. It may be defiant in manner, but it is not
an act of strength. The man of strong will, as was
said before, is not the man who may do anything, but
precisely the man who can be depended on : in fact
strength of will reveals itself in certain splendid in-
capacities, as when it is said of a man accused of taking
bribes, " He could not do it." People with no will
1 72 MENS CREATRIX
at all like to attribute the variegations of their conduct
to their freedom ; one day a man chooses to be respect-
able, another day he chooses to be dissolute. But such
choice is at best a mere rhythmic occurrence of various
impulses or the mechanical response to various environ-
ments, or both. The man of strong will is the man
who is the same from day to day and in all circum-
stances, not turned from his purpose by outward
obstacles or inward passions. True freedom manifests
itself in constancy and stability of character.
It is clear that the attention of Purpose is fixed upon
the Future, and if Purpose is the chief distinguishing
characteristic of human personality it is clear that for
men the Future is of more importance than the Past.
And indeed this appears to be the case, since occurrences
in the future may change the character of events in
the past, which, as mere facts, are, of course, unalter-
able ; we quite commonly say, " I am glad now of what
seemed at the time to be a terrible misfortune," or
similar words.
The Past is plainly in one sense unalterable ; it has
happened and to all eternity it will have happened.
But the value of the Past is not irrevocably fixed ; it
remains to be determined by the Future. Let me
illustrate this point from that part of our experience
which, as we saw, is deliberately occasioned with a view
to certain effects, namely Art. The Artist, we said,
isolates some relatively independent fact and concentrates
our attention upon it ; when he presents a temporal
succession, as the dramatist and the musician do, he
fixes our attention in this way upon a period of time
which we can grasp in a single experience. Now con-
sider two plays, each in three acts, one proceeding from
a cheerful opening, through a neutral phase, to a gloomy
close ; the other proceeding from a gloomy opening,
through a neutral phase, to a cheerful close. It is by
no means the case that in each play the first and last
acts cancel each other, making a neutral effect on the
CHAP, xni WILL AND PURPOSE 173
whole : on the contrary, the former play is peculiarly
depressing, more so than a play which is gloomy
throughout ; and the latter peculiarly exhilarating,
more so than a play which is cheerful throughout.
Yet this second play would have been depressing if it
had stopped at the end of the first act. The emotional
value, therefore, of that first act is quite different in
isolation from its value when the two latter acts are
added : at its own close it has a quite definite value,
but at the end of the play it has another value ; yet,
though an element in tragedy or comedy, it is still in
itself just what it was. The value, then, of any event in
time is not fixed until the series of which it is a member
is over, perhaps, therefore, not to all eternity. But now
we may pass on to a cognate point. The genius of
the Greeks seems, as we saw, 1 to have led to a rule that
in Comedy, that is where only superficial matters are in
question, or where serious matters are superficially
treated, the dramatist is to make his own plot ; but in
Tragedy the plot was always something well known.
And indeed it is necessary to our appreciation of
Antigone's great action that we should know, as we
watch, not only what consequences she anticipated, but
what consequences would actually ensue. In any great
drama our appreciation is increased by knowledge of
the story, because we see each incident in the light, not
only of the Past, but of Past and Future together.
This gives us some valuable hints as to the nature
of Personality in its relation to the time-process. Those
events in the Past which seem to require obliteration
cannot indeed be made unreal, but their value, though
not their occurrence, can be changed. They may become
the occasions of some spiritual state of great value which
could not have been reached without them. Till the
power is known that can so transform them, they
remain mere blots : and the man, in whose experience
they are, feels the weight of an irremovable burden.
1 Chapter X. p. 126.
1 74 MENS CREATRIX
But if there is known to him some transforming power
his despair vanishes. It is clear that we are here on the
borders of the doctrine of the Atonement : and we
cannot embark on such a topic as a digression. The
point is that they do not cease to be evil, but their very
evil becomes an element in good.
If all this is true, it follows that th more fully
Purposive we are that is, the more complete our
Personality so much the more will the Future pre-
ponderate over the Past in our interest. The later in
time has upon the earlier a far greater influence than the
earlier upon the later. And if we may rightly assume
that in man we have a fuller manifestation of ultimate
Reality than in any of the less developed forms of
existence, it will follow that not only for man, but in
the nature of things, the future has this preponderance
of importance over the past, and that, while only the
whole of Reality contains the full explanation of any
part of it, yet, as Lord Haldane has said, explanation
is to be sought in a system of Ends rather than of
Causes. 1
But so we are brought back into the successiveness
of the temporal. In the higher achievements of the
intellect we had reached a position to which Time was
indifferent; and in the "moment eternal" of the
artistic experience we won a real mastery over Time.
But now, as it seems, we are back in the flux. Is
Conduct, and all the moral effort of men, something
less than Knowledge or Art? Or if Conduct is the
main business of life, is it only in his bye-products that
man reaches his fullest apprehension of the real ?
The answer seems to be in the recollection that we
have passed from the theoretical to the practical. In
the spheres of Knowledge and of Art, while, of course,
the mind is active, its activity consists in concentrated
attention upon what is already there. Man's Knowledge
is indeed in one sense a creation, but it is a creation of
1 The Pathway to Reality, vol. i. pp. 298, 299.
CHAP, xin WILL AND PURPOSE 175
a copy, and its perfection is not something self-contained,
but consists in its relation to the world which is there
independently of it. Similarly in the artistic experience,
a man stands over against a work of art and contem-
plates it. He is active passively, if the phrase may be
allowed. He can contemplate a drama or a symphony
in such a way as to grasp its whole succession in a time-
less and relatively eternal intuition, precisely because he
is himself outside it. But in Conduct he becomes an
actor on the stage himself, and that too not an actor
who has learnt a previously written part, but one who
is working out the plot of an unknown drama by his
own thoughts and deeds. The actor who impersonates
Macbeth in the early scenes of the tragedy must know
that the murder of Duncan will be the death of his own
soul ; but it is vital to the significance of the tragedy
that Macbeth himself knows nothing of the kind. And
in Conduct one is no more the critic in his study
(which is the scientific intellect), nor the spectator in
the auditorium (which is the appreciative imagination),
nor the author of the play (which is the constructive
imagination), but an actor in a play not yet composed,
and of whose leading idea the different actors have
wholly different conceptions. But there is a guiding
idea ; for the Society of Intelligences and Wills cannot
be like an omnibus, full of chance passengers . related
to each other in no way except their momentary juxta-
position, unless the universe is chaotic, which no one
is able to believe.
There must then be a principle of unity in the vast
drama which is called human history ; and by a right
apprehension of this principle of unity a man can make
his life part of an artistic or perfect whole, with relative
completeness and perfection in itself. And some men
in old age seem to be able to regard their own life in
much the same way as the spectator regards the drama,
and to find similar satisfaction, and, indeed, fuller
satisfaction, not because it is their own achievement
176 MENS CREATRIX
which they contemplate (for this stage is in fact only
reached when egoism is dead), but because the life of
history has a fuller reality than the life of drama. To
the onlooker life may be perfect in a few years :
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be ;
Nor standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere :
A lily of the day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see ;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
But it seems unlikely that the person so spoken of
should feel this satisfaction, at least before his death.
It is only the old man, who has followed a course in
harmony with the world's plan through a full period of
human existence, who can speak in his own name :
Grow old along with me !
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made :
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, " A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God ; see all nor be afraid ! "
Such a man seems to be on the point of achieving a
timeless or eternal apprehension even of that succession
which his own life constitutes. But it must at once be
pointed out that it is only when regarded from the end
that it has this quality. A good bio'graphy of a great
man shows us every stage of his life as an element in a
complete whole. The life is one though its episodes
are many. But its unity is of such a kind that the
latter stages are not fixed by the preceding. The unity
is only real when it is complete. The half shown by
Youth does not reveal or determine the remaining half.
There are real choices, not the mere evolution of a
given material. Sub specie temporis cuiusdam regarded
in the light of any time less than the whole there is a
CHAP, xin WILL AND PURPOSE 177
real indeterminism ; sub specie temporis totius, the life is
one and a coherent whole. This is a more complete
conquest of the successive than is represented by science
or art, just because of this real indeterminism which is
overcome, but is only overcome when the process is
complete. A man whose life is given to a purpose
lofty enough to claim the allegiance of all his faculties
and rich enough to exercise them all is the nearest
approach in human experience to the realisation of
eternity.
We have here a principle in virtue of whose presence
any relative Whole is self-explanatory. Such a life as
is suggested above is not merely coherent, but united
by a principle to which the mind assents. Will as thus
exhibited is just such a principle as we saw that Intellect
would welcome as supplying a need which it could by
analysis of its own procedure never supply. But as
seen in man the unity is only apparent when the process
is complete ; if we are to find an explanation of the
world that is really adequate we must have recourse not
only to the thought of an Immanent Will but also, in
the way that our discussion of the significance of Art
has indicated, 1 to the thought of a Mind which in a
perfect intuition grasps that very process which as Will
it is engaged in working out. But this enquiry will
concern us later.
1 Chapter X. p. 126.
N
CHAPTER XIV
GOOD AND MORAL GOOD
Heipartov riJTry ye irapaKafielv avrb rl iror 1 ta-rl ical rlvos ruv
) dwdfj-ecov. 56eie 5' &v rijs KvpiUTdTrjs Kal
' i) iro\iTtKT] (fratveTcu. ARISTOTLE.
VALUE is an wholly irreducible aspect or function of
Reality. The terms that express its various modes-
Good and Bad and what lie between these cannot be
translated into the terms of any other category ; they
are not unintelligible, but they are untranslatable ;
and if any one attaches no meaning to them, no kind
of argument can enlighten him. It is therefore im-
possible to argue a priori to the Goodness of anything
whatever, unless indeed we can show that the Good is
the determining principle of all existence ; for in that
case, of course, we can argue from the mere existence
of a thing to its goodness in its own time and place.
But then we should be compelled to include utility in
our conception of goodness, if only to avoid manifest
absurdity (for who would call the existing phase of
European civilisation, for example, good in itself?) ;
and utility is not really goodness at all. The things
generally called good fall into three obvious classes
those that are good in themselves, those whose results
are good, and those which, being good in themselves,
have good results. 1 Of these only the first class are
genuinely good, and the last so far as it falls within the
first. The second are not good, but a means of
1 Plato, Republic, ii. 357 B-D.
178
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 179
producing what is good. If, for example, we say that
Pain may be good as a discipline, we are not really
attributing any goodness to Pain ; we are asserting
that the results of the discipline may be so good as to
be worth the cost of the pain by which they are reached,
so that the process and result together contain a greater
balance of good over evil than the absence of process
and result ; but in the pain itself there is no Good.
But if we cannot argue a priori to the Goodness of
anything, it follows that we can appreciate the Good
only by direct experience. The intention of the term
Good may be known a priori^ but its extension only by
experience ; we can only tell what things are good by
experience of those things. So far the Empiricists are
right; and Plato too was right, when by way of commend-
ing Justice he merely exhibited it in the life of the State
and the Individual. There can be no argument about
intrinsic value ; one approves or not, and there's an end.
The tastes may be trained and so may the moral sense ;
but the method of such training is always submission
to authority. If I revel in Dore's pictures or Gounod's
music, it is no use for a superior person to tell me I
don't ; but he may say, " You like that now because,
being unused to the language in which artists and
musicians express themselves, you can find no emotion
where it is not crude and obvious ; if, however, you will
look at Fra Angelico or listen to Beethoven you will
come to enjoy them in course of time far more than
you now enjoy Dore and Gounod " ; and then perhaps
I may take his advice ; the great masters seem cold
and uninteresting at first, but slowly one learns their
language, and then, intuitively, appreciates their ex-
cellence. So it is with all forms of Value ; it is known
by intuition alone, though the faculties of intuition may
be trained. Our chief needs in this connexion are
clearness of thought and honesty ; clearness of thought,
to be sure that we do not confuse means with ends,
and honesty to be sure that we do not pretend to find
1 80 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
Goodness where in fact we find none. But an objective
standard is not to be found ; we can get no nearer to
it than a general consent, or the verdict of Aristotle's
p6vijj,o$. And if an individual differs from the world
at large, or from the expert, it is always possible that
he may be right. As Mr. F. H. Bradley has argued
" Our sense of value, and in the end for every man his
own sense of value, is ultimate and final. And, since
there is no court of appeal, it is idle even to inquire if
this sense is fallible." *
Now we have already seen 2 that not all values can
be realised in any single consciousness. Locke's
" Primary Qualities " are the same for all percipients,
but his " Secondary Qualities " are different for different
persons, and this is true of all values. But it does not
follow that values depend on accidents, or that every
man has a right to rest content with his instinctive
value-judgments at any moment. For every man is a
member of the human society, and it may well be that
there is a specific type of character which he ought to
acquire and with it, as a necessary consequence, a
particular set of value-judgments. For what seems
good to us is determined by our own condition ; to the
sick man what is normally a poison becomes a medicine ;
to the vulgar man severe beauty is insipid ; to the
licentious man temperance is contemptible. Yet, while
denying that all men ought at last to realise the same
values, we may still assert that these men are wrong
in the value-judgments which they form. For though
there is no one right experience for all men in these
matters, there is the right experience for each individual
man ; and it is determined by the precise place which
he holds in the general structure of society. As this
member of the Society of Spirits, I have a particular
destiny to fulfil. And just as I may be mistaken on a
question of fact where my peculiarities do not affect
1 Mind, N.S., 66, p. 230 ; Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 132.
2 Chap. VIII. p. 83.
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 181
the nature of the fact so I may be mistaken on a
question of value, where my peculiarities do affect both
the, judgments I pronounce from time to time and the
judgments I ought to pronounce. Now these right-
value judgments are in their own way facts ; but they
are contingent facts contingent upon the perfection of
Society and all its members. And whereas the truths
of the mathematical sciences can, so far as their nature
goes, be all realised by one mind, the full truth about
the world of value can only be realised by the whole
Society of Spirits, each doing his own part. 1 An
Omniscient Mind would of course know what value-
judgments any given person ought to be forming ; but
the value only becomes fully real when the judgment is
formed and thus it is only by the entire Society that
the whole truth of the world of values is apprehensible.
What has been said applies to all Values ; and we
see that even in the general discussion of Value we have
the principle of Society in evidence the principle by
which various co-operating agents constitute a single
whole with a life which, though collective, is one. And
now what is the differentia of Moral Value ? If we
look at the terms peculiar to the moral sphere " Duty,"
" Obligation," " Ought" we find that they always
express a relation between an individual agent or group
of agents and other similar beings. If some catastrophe
swept all conscious beings out of existence with the
exception of a single man, would he still be under any
sort of obligation ? Not to other men, for ex hypothesi
there are none ; nor to God, for He too, as a conscious
being, is excluded by the hypothesis. Can he be under
obligation to himself? The phrases "Duty to self,"
"You owe it to yourself," certainly occur. But under
what circumstances ? Either when a man has earned
some reward, which he is foregoing and then we do
not regard it as his duty to take it, but only as a right
the waiving of which is morally admirable rather than
1 Chap. VIII. pp. 84-85.
1 82 MENS CREATRIX
evil ; or else such a phrase occurs when a man is
contemplating a course of action in some one's interest
by which he will diminish his own usefulness such as
giving up a holiday when it is much needed ; and here
we do regard it as his duty to take the holiday and
maintain his usefulness a duty not to himself but to
Society. Duty is a term never applied strictly to the
isolated individual. Kant, as we all know, tried to
evolve a Categorical Imperative out of the autonomous
will of the individual ; but when it appeared it took
the form " Act at all times from a maxim fit for
universal law," where the word "universal" introduces
the reference to society in unmistakable form. Indeed
Kant's fundamental argument to prove that only the
Good Will is absolutely good rests on a surreptitious
reference to the admitted interests of society. And so
it must always be. The isolated individual may be
wise or foolish ; he cannot be moral or immoral. The
Atheistic Debauchee upon a Desert Island is not liable
to moral censure. It is then our membership in society
that makes us capable of morality, and it is conscious-
ness of that membership that endows us with a moral
sense. This is the condition of the possibility of
obligation of any sense of "ought" and of the
particular form of Good which is distinguished as Moral
Good or Right. And if this is so, it becomes a matter
of quite primary importance for the purpose of ethics
that we should find out what we mean by Society and
by the individual's membership in it.
Let us then consider the general Nature of Society,
and let us begin with the obvious and uncontroversial
facts about it. Plainly a Society is a collection of
persons united by some non-physical bond ; this bond
may be economic as in a Joint Stock Company ; or it
may be scientific, as in the British Association ; or
political, as in the Liberal or Conservative parties ; or
social, in the narrower sense, as in a group of friends.
Or of course it may be united by several such bonds at
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 183
once. But when we look at these more closely it
appears that every one of them is a determination of
the human will. The real bond of union in a Company
or a Trade Union is not any economic fact or facts,
but the purpose of the members that certain economic '
conditions shall continue to exist or cease to exist or
begin to exist. In each case the members are united
by a common purpose, which may be fairly simple, as
in the case of a scientific society, or highly complex,
as in the case of a nation. The essential basis of a
society is community of purpose.
Just as in the individual, the purpose by which his
life is determined may lie outside the field of conscious-
ness, so in an even greater degree may the purpose
which constitutes the nation. It has been remarked
that the Greek City State had already done its practical
work when its significance was drawn out into full
light by Plato and Aristotle, and the great nations
which have attempted the problem of applying on a
vastly greater scale the principles followed by the
Greeks in their various cities have not as yet in any
degree become conscious of the function which they
exist to fulfil. In so far as a nation imagines that it
can formulate its purpose it is almost certain to become
the victim of disastrous illusion. It may become
enormously effective but nearly always in the pursuit
of some object by achieving which it will win dis-
appointment for itself and in all probability secure the
hatred of mankind. We have instances of this in
recent history : France under Napoleon was immensely
self-conscious ; she believed herself to be carrying the
gospel of the Revolution through Europe by armed
force ; so no doubt in a sense she was, but this was
nothing like what the real contribution of France to
civilisation was meant to be, and the glory won in
the great campaigns brought very fleeting satisfaction
to the French and ranged all Europe among their
enemies. Similarly at the present time the German
1 84 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. m
Empire is self-conscious to an almost unique degree.
This is not in itself surprising. There have always
been two causes which have made the sense of
nationality strong ; one is the excitement caused by
national unity when recently won, and the other is the
sense that this unity, and the national life which it
makes possible, are in danger. German unity was
only won in 1870, and that by means of a war which
secured the permanent hostility of France. Con-
sequently in the case of Germany the two causes which
make the members of a nation strongly conscious of
their nationality have been operating together. It is
not surprising that Germany is self-conscious to a
degree without parallel in the history of European
nations ; but while it is not surprising it is none the
less disastrous both to them and to the rest of the
world. This intense self-consciousness leads to the con-
centration of all attention on such objects as a national
consciousness can set before itself. The easiest and
most obvious is power and even world domination.
To this the German nation has given itself; we,
watching from the outside, know perfectly well that
even by achieving this Germany would win no satis-
faction for herself, but would merely 'withhold the
means of full national life from other peoples. She
would be starving, and indeed has been starving, the
vast depths of the German soul for the sake of glutting
a very superficial appetite. Here then once more,
while a nation which has no conscious purpose is likely
to achieve very little and to live a poor kind of life, it is
still true that to allow what falls within consciousness
to be the whole determinant of action is the way to
sure disaster. As with the individual so with the
nation, the wise course is to become conscious so far as
may be of the capacities and aspirations of the soul,
while at the same time remembering that there are vast
depths still unplumbed.
In England we tend, if anything, to be excessively
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 185
unreflective. Certainly we should find ourselves unable
even to begin formulating the purpose which unites
us as Englishmen. But its negative side is plain
enough ; it is a long while now since Englishmen, for
instance, first felt a distinction between themselves and
foreigners, discovering a common purpose at least as
against the latter. In early stages war is the great
consolidator of nations ; and it is so, because it brings
into clear consciousness the unity of purpose in a
nation's citizens by placing it in practical contrast with
a hostile purpose. The unity is still only germinal,
but it is enough to be one term in a distinction a
negative judgment. In all cases the existence of ideas
in our minds is liable to become apparent through
their figuring as the subjects of negative judgments.
Long before we are able to form positive judgments
we are able to exclude various suggestions. Negation
as the form of distinction is no doubt equally funda-
mental with assertion ; but the negative judgment as
conscious act of thought always represents partial
ignorance ; we only say " That is not the way to
London " when some one suggests by word or act that
it is (in which case the ignorance is in his mind) or
because we ourselves know that there is a road to
London but not which road it is, and therefore wish
to exclude as many opportunities of error as we can
so as to narrow the field of enquiry. 1 Thus early
morality consists of negatives ; it is not known what
the ideal life is, but it is known that it cannot include
murder or theft. Just so we may not know what our
national purpose positively is, but we know enough
about it to sing with real conviction that " Britons
never shall be slaves." This, however, can only be
because the term " Briton " is felt to be incompatible
with the term " slave " ; whatever ideal it represents
is one contrary to slavery. But to resist, it must have
some character of its own. What is this character?
1 Chap. V. pp. 60, 6 1.
1 86 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
It is the product of a mass of tradition and sentiment
which permeates all individual citizens. We were born
into a people reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton,
Bunyan, and so on ; into a people who had finally
broken with the feudalism once common to all European
nations by the precise expedient of beheading a king in
a moment of Puritan fervour ; and so with the rest of
the story. We brought some new element ourselves
into being when we were born, but even this was
moulded by a history embodied in institutions and
prejudices and principles ; and even those who are
keenest in criticism of British methods are Britons
themselves as soon as they have to choose between
their own country and another ; and often their
criticism is a kind of patriotism, perhaps even the
best kind. The national purpose in civilised countries
is still only germinal ; it has no clear conscious aim or
accepted methods ; but it is there. It does not as yet
directly influence more than a tithe of our lives ; for
the rest our activities go chaotically on their own way,
just as the impulses and instincts do in a child, before
any conscious purpose is formed by which some are
checked, and others guided, and method is gradually
introduced into life.
Just as the child is guided into freedom by external
influence and control, so the nation must guide itself
and be guided into full freedom and self-government.
For alike in the individual and in the society freedom
and self-government can mean only one thing the
control of the parts by the whole which they constitute.
If a man is to be free, he must have self-direction
as against compulsion by other people ; but also his
self-direction must be direction by his whole self, and
not by passing desires which impel him to act against
his real interest. And if a nation is to be free, it must
have self-government in the sense that it is bound by
no laws except those it makes for itself ; but also its
self-government must be government by its whole self
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 187
in the light of its whole interest and not the mere
supremacy of the most numerous class or of passing
fancies of the mob.
It may well be thought that this line of reflection
would lead to a direct personification of the State.
And indeed the conjunction of this language with
the previous suggestion of a Common Purpose as the
uniting bond of society may seem to lead up to such a
theory as that of Cardinal Newman, who sometimes en-
tertained the idea that a spirit or demon presided over
every nation, on the ground that only so could one
account for the difference between people's individual
and collective action. What is the seat of this Common
Purpose ? Where does it exist ? There is no evidence
whatever for the existence of a social consciousness in
society other than the consciousness of the individuals
that they are members of the social body, and the modi-
fication of their consciousness consequent upon their
being so.
The common purpose therefore appears as a purpose
set upon a single object, but formed by many individuals.
If by will we mean a direction for action then there
is one social will ; if we mean the seat of actual
volition then there are as many social wills as there
are citizens. Perhaps it will be in closest conformity
with the ordinary use of language if we adopt the
formula Many Wills, but One Purpose. Of course
it does not follow that society is any less real than
the citizens, or that they are primary while it is
secondary. All we have said is that, in the fact which
we call society, the citizens, the members, are the organs
of consciousness. But we shall find later on that this
involves serious results.
Let us now see where we stand. We have found that
Value is an irreducible mode of being, to be appre-
hended by intuition alone ; that there is no reason to
suppose that all men ought to realise the same values,
and great reason to the contrary ; that a man's ideal
1 8 8 MENS CREATRIX
character, and with it those values which he ought to
realise, is fixed by his place in the social economy of
the spiritual world. So that in dealing with Value as a
general term we already had to introduce the principle
of Society. Passing on to Moral Value, we found that
the words particularly belonging to the Moral Category
Duty, Obligation, Ought all express a relation of
the individual to his fellow-members in Society ; that
Society itself is a union of individuals whose several
wills are at one in a common purpose ; and that the
aim of society, as of the individual, is freedom and self-
government.
In the light of these considerations we may pass on
to the further question of the relation of Ethics and
Politics, which appear sometimes to lead to conflicting
estimates of duty. It is often held that Aristotle
did an inestimable service to human thought when he
deliberately distinguished Ethics from Politics, and we
are sometimes told that the advance .upon Plato which
he made is mainly to be found precisely in this distinc-
tion. And of course there can be no doubt that the
distinction contributed very greatly to the advance of
the two sciences, for the field which Plato tries to
cover in one comprehensive survey, in the Republic,
is so vast that it- is practically impossible to examine it
minutely without first dividing it into sections. Yet
the distinction should be provisional and transitional
and not regarded as affecting the real subject-matter
under consideration ; and I believe that even in
Aristotle's hands it damaged his view of both Politics
and Ethics, and has been disastrous to both sciences
ever since. Human life is, in fact, too closely knit to
be broken up into sections which can be treated in
isolation. We all know what happened when Political
Economy tried to be an independent science. That is,
no doubt, an extreme case ; but the same difficulties
beset the effort to distinguish Ethics and Politics.
Each of them is given a province whose boundaries
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 189
represent no real distinction in the facts. There is in
reality only one science of human good, as Aristotle, of
course, was perfectly aware. It is easy enough to find
examples of the disaster in question. We may hear a
preacher say, " What is morally wrong cannot be
politically right " ; or a politician may say, " Such an
act was no doubt morally wrong, but the political
circumstances were such as to justify it." In both
these sayings the distinction is implied ; in the former
ethics was taken to impose limits upon politics, and in
the latter not ; but both assume the distinction. Yet
it is quite clear that at any time, when all the con-
siderations called ethical and political have been taken
into account, there is one right thing to be done (or
else a choice between two equivalents, in which case the
choice is morally indifferent). This right thing may
be not easily discoverable ; but if there is one right
thing, it is simply misleading to call it a wrong thing.
We may hear people talk about the " medicinal lie " as
morally wrong, but defensible. What they probably
mean is that lying is nearly always wrong, though in
the special circumstances it was right. But the way in
which this was expressed was bad, in as much as it
suggested that what is morally wrong may be defensible
on the whole ; and this suggestion tends to weaken
the authority of moral rules. The habit, which is
engendered by the separation of Ethics and Politics, of
laying down abstract moral rules, which do not enjoin
the actually best course of action for the special
occasions, on which alone any rule is required, inevitably
suggests to practical people the irrelevance of moral
notions to the real course of life.
The same thing is manifestly true in the case of
religion and the science of it, theology. Here too I
should maintain that we are dealing with the same
subject-matter and that Plato was right, at least in aim,
when he set out to deal with Ethics and Politics
and Theology in a single treatise. All of them are
1 90 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. m
endeavouring to elaborate and articulate the concep-
tion of the Good. So far as they forget that this is
their primary object, they wander aimlessly and suggest
illse ideals, false methods, and false hopes. The con-
ception of Good may be treated from many points of
view, individual, social, or cosmic. But all the time
it is this same concept which is being articulated ; to
exhibit the Idea of Good as the governing principle of
the individual, the state and the universe is the only
aim of these three sciences ; and as Plato's Justice
expands under investigation from an ethical to a
political and at last (as the Idea of Good) to a cosmic
principle, we see in outline the accomplishment of the
aim of all human thought. It would be easy to give
instances of the vagaries of theology and theological
ethics when disjoined from this guiding principle. But
this lies beyond our present subject, and we may leave
the matter with a remembrance of the words, " The
Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
Sabbath."
Theology can, however, be more easily distinguished
from Ethics and Politics than these from one another.
It is impossible that there should be two right relations
for a man to hold towards his fellows one morally
right and the other politically right ; if ethics and
politics thus conflict, there must be some further science
which will tell us which is to be adopted ; and then, of
course, this alone is right. To assert that such a conflict
is possible, adding that morality should prevail, is to
adopt a position which is either quite arbitrary or else
must rest on some deeper ground a metaphysic which
would assign their provinces to each.
Aristotle regarded Ethics as a branch of Politics.
And one result of this was that he had no real test of
the value of a constitution except its capacity for
permanence. Though he never lays it down, I think
it is fair to say that that is his main test. Ethics being
for him a relatively independent branch, it is possible
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 191
for the terms, "good man" and " good citizen," to fall
apart ; and though here too he lays down nothing
explicitly, I think it is fair to say that on those occasions
he prefers the good citizen to the good man. By Ethior
he means the science of the good of the individual
which appears to consist primarily in philosophic
contemplation and secondarily in " action according to
virtue " ; and this latter turns out to be action deter-
mined by the rule by which a reasonable man would
determine it. But who is this reasonable man ? He is
to be appreciated at sight, but we are given no certain
means of detecting him. And the result is that we fall
back in the main on pure Intuitionism. Respectability
holds that some acts are right and some wrong and
that about them, at least, there is no more to be said.
And Aristotle's Ethics is a summary of the moral
judgments of Respectability, illuminated by profound
psychological analysis.
Before discussing whether this is all to which Ethics
can legitimately aspire, it may be worth while to con-
trast Plato's method with Aristotle's. In the points
that now concern us the contrast is complete. In the
first place, as we have seen, Plato combines Ethics,
Politics, and Theology in a single survey. He sets out
to investigate Justice in the individual ; it expands into
the guiding principle of the Ideal State ; and it expands
again to become the supreme principle of the Universe
under the title, c< Idea of .Good." It is, moreover,
quite intelligible, for it is el? ev tcara $vcriv co-operation
according to capacity. But, whereas with Aristotle
Ethics is a branch of Politics, with Plato Politics is
practically a branch of Ethics ; the test of a constitution
with Plato is not its capacity for permanence, nor even
in the first instance its power to make the citizens
happy ; but the test lies in the question, " What type
of individual soul does it represent and tend to repro-
duce ? " That is the meaning of the analogy between
the State and the Individual, and of the long series of
192 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. m
parallel States and Men, in Books VIII. and IX., on which
Plato lavished all the treasures of his literary store. If
a State is aggressive and jingoistic, that can only be so
because of the predominance of the aggressive element
in the souls of the citizens. Jingoism is bad because it
is the product and symptom of a bad state of soul. If
a society is plutocratic, that must be due to the pre-
dominance of avarice in the souls of the citizens ; and
it is to be condemned on that ground. The constitution
expresses by an inevitable law the value-judgments of
the citizens ; it embodies them in its institutions, and
it impresses them again on the minds of the young
citizens. Hence constitutions must submit to an ethical
test, as symptoms and as causes of moral character.
This Platonic treatment has at least one important
point in its favour namely that it supplies as the End
in Politics something certainly good in itself. The one
thing of supreme value to Plato is the Justice of the
individual soul ; the expansion of this in the state is
only iS&)\6v n, rfjs Sucaioavvr)? (iv. 443 c). And when
the Ideal of individual excellence conflicts with the Ideal
of citizenship (as in this very miserable world it is bound
to do), Plato is emphatic that the former is to be chosen,
and the man will cower under a wall as out of a storm
and will be happy if he can escape unspotted to the
other world (vi. 496 E). 1
This introduces the one great flaw in Plato's supreme
achievement : he has no doctrine of development. We
cannot complain that he who anticipated so much failed
to anticipate that also. But the lack of this conception
leads to the two great blots on the book the failure to
appreciate sacrifice (as where he apologises to the
Guardians for bringing them back into the cave to
govern) ; and the practical sacrifice of the individual
(specially in the lower orders) to the State in Book V.
Having no doctrine of progress, he had to look to
revolution alone for the establishment of his state
1 On the whole question, see my Plato and Christianity, Lecture II.
CHAP, xiv GOOD AND MORAL GOOD 193
(the philosopher-king, having obtained power, is to
banish every one over the age of ten and train the rest
in sound citizenship) ; but also he had to make his ideal
such as to fit the assumed permanence of the political
incapacity of the majority. Without a very radical
doctrine of progress democracy is lunatic and such it
appeared to Plato. The rigidity of his system is of
course due to the same cause.
But if progress is either a fact or a real possibility,
the dilemma, " Good man " or " Good citizen," no
longer arises in the old acute form. The old alternatives
were, " Work a rotten system at a moral loss to your-
self" and " Leave the world and save your soul." But
now there is a third, always recognised in practice but
not always in theory " Go and make the world a better
place, even if you do have to dirty your hands in the
process." And if all moral obligation springs from our
membership in society, it is clear that this is not only
permissible but obligatory, and that a "cloistered virtue"
may be exquisite but cannot be moral, except in so far
as it is attempted in order that its influence may benefit
society as a whole.
It is the principle of Society which determines what
values each individual ought to realise ; and therefore
such obligations as are essential to the maintenance of
Society itself take precedence of all others. The
imagination of the artist, for example, may exalt and
purify what was, before he handled it, merely gross ;
but whether or not his work should be made public
must depend on the extent to which its true nature
will, at any given time, be appreciated. Here, as in
most cases, a balance of good and evil has to be struck ;
and at present we can lay down no general rule, except
that whatever is vital to the existence of society itself
must take precedence of all else, because if society perish,
there is no longer any means by which the individual
may realise his own good or even discover what it is.
The art or science of social life is called Ethics when
i 9 4 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
it considers how an individual should act, and Politics
when it considers how a community should act ; but it
is a single science ; and as the great name of Politics
has been so debased by modern usage, it is inevitable to
use the name Ethics for this whole science when its
political and its strictly ethical departments are con-
sidered together.
CHAPTER XV
THE MORAL CRITERION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER
" We are plainly constituted such sort of creatures as to reflect upon our own
nature." BUTLER.
Ou y&p Set oteo-0ai dov\eiav elvat r6 ijv 717)65 ryv iroXireiav, 1 dXXA
. ARISTOTLE.
WE have found that moral good is a particular form of
Good, which is itself an ultimate term ; and the
particular form is differentiated precisely as that of
members in a society, or organised life dominated by a
common purpose. Duty, then, is the obligation to
serve that common purpose and the society which it
sustains and through which alone it can be realised.
But if so, it may be asked whether bees and wolves are
the subjects of duties ; and the answer is that they are
not so, if we are right in denying to them self-conscious-
ness and the capacity to reflect upon their own nature.
Man certainly has this capacity ; he can observe his
own tendencies and impulses ; he can sit in judgment
on them and pronounce whether they conduce to the
maintenance of society and the realisation of its common
purpose or not ; those which tend to this he calls right,
those which tend otherwise he calls wrong.
But it is very seldom that men thus actually reason
out the question of right and wrong ; and it is not at
all often that they are capable of doing it wisely. The
issues involved are nearly always exceedingly subtle and
intricate. To tabulate them is practically impossible.
195
196 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
But this does not mean that we have to choose between
blind instinct and crude reasoning. So far as the greater
part of our conduct is concerned, the reasoning has
been carried on by successive generations of those who
share our civilisation. Gradually under the pressure of
experience certain conventions have grown up ; prob-
ably no one is or ever has been able to state the whole
case for any one of these. Yet they are a rational, and
indeed a strictly scientific, product. Just as a work of
art embodies an infinitely delicate logic, which the
critical intellect can only clumsily draw out, so the great
conventions by which members of civilised societies
regulate their actions represent an immense inductive
process too vast to be adequately traced out. Reason
has been at work in this process, but it is not the reason
of an individual ; it is the collective reason of innumer-
able individuals, who all agree (though it may be
unconsciously) in the major premise that it is desirable
to maintain social life.
Human nature is so constituted that we are all
exceedingly susceptible to influence ; consequently as
we grow up in a society which has long ago learned to
regard some actions with favour and others with dis-
favour, we catch by a kind of infection the same
principles of judgment. There are certain acts which
we instinctively admire and others which we instinctively
condemn because of the effect which this pervading
influence of society has had upon us. Most of our
moral judgments are, as a matter of fact, to ourselves
intuitive. We cannot give the reason for them, though
we say that we perceive more goodness in one course of
action and more evil in another. So far our whole
attitude to moral questions is very like our attitude to
aesthetic questions ; just as in the latter case our sensi-
bility can be trained by following the advice of those
whose artistic experience is richer than our own, and
by deliberately contemplating those works of art which
we are assured are good, though we at first may not
CH.XV THE MORAL CRITERION 197
care about them, so, too, the moral judgment develops
if the man is ready to let himself be guided by those
whose insight into the principles of moral life is deepest.
But in either case the judgment itself may be pro-
nounced independently of reasons which the individual
can offer for it.
Because of this many have regarded the moral faculty
as more analogous to sense than to reason. But, as we
have said, these intuitive judgments, while unreasoned
in the mind of the individual, are in themselves to the
last degree rational. They have an immense basis in
experience, though that experience belongs to the race
rather than to the individual. There is no doubt
some danger in trying to pass behind the intuition
to the reason which underlies it. Men are liable to
weaken the authority of conscience if they look for
rational grounds for its precepts and fail to find any
that are very cogent. But there is also great danger in
acquiescing in the simple moral sense ; for this puts us
in a very high degree at the mercy of our imagination.
The result is seen when people estimate the moral evil
of any action, as they very commonly do, by its power
to disgust them. Some acts make us feel literally and
physically sick, and we are very liable to suppose these to
be the worst acts ; while pride or a cold and calculating
selfishness have no effect at all upon the nervous system,
and consequently are liable to meet with far less severe
condemnation. It is only in obedience to some great
authority, such as that of the New Testament, or else
through reasoning out the relative harm to society in
its deepest interests, that we are able to correct the
balance which our feelings tend to disturb. The only
wise course here seems to be that we should remember
in the first place the immense authority which the
ordinary moral conventions have, simply because they
embody the experience of so many generations, and
then, remembering this, we should seek for the under-
lying ground of the conventions and criticise them in
1 9 8 MENS CRE ATRIX
its light. We are never at liberty to break an accepted
moral rule because we do not see any reason for that
rule ; but we are not only at liberty, we are even bound,
to break an accepted moral rule when we actually
realise that it is defeating its own end, for then we only
repudiate the convention in order more perfectly to
serve the end which it exists to serve.
Yet here, too, plainly a word of warning is needed.
It is very hard, and perhaps impossible, to think out all
the results which will follow from the adoption of a new
moral habit, and the process of thought must therefore
be exceedingly thorough before the authority of the
generations is set aside. The classical instance of
slavery illustrates all these points. There was a great
deal to be said for it in reason ; it had been accepted
by the Church for generations ; but Wilberforce and his
friends criticised it in the light of the fundamental
principles by which it was regarded as being justified. He
convinced men that as a matter of fact those principles
condemned it ; and thus he swept it away. But
it is open to very serious question whether the
suddenness of the abolition did not introduce a number
of evils which might at least have been modified by
a more gradual process. Probably it was impossible,
human nature being as it is, to effect any result at all
by the gradual process ; the enthusiasm necessary for
the work would have had little patience with such
methods ; and yet it is true that while the abolitionists
were plainly right on the main issue, they did incident-
ally a certain amount of harm, because they had
not thought out the whole problem in all its details.
To say this is not to blame them ; very likely it was
impossible to think the matter out ; but the warning
stands and is of value.
The activity or faculty which is usually designated
by the name of conscience is the reaction of character
trained on certain principles to any act or suggestion.
The difference between right and wrong is indeed
CH.XV THE MORAL CRITERION 199
ultimate ; but the judgment with regard to the ques-
tion What acts are right and what acts are wrong ?
is determined for the most part by the tradition of that
civilisation, by which the individual forming the judg-
ment has been moulded. It is the failure to distinguish
between these two points that has led to so great a
confusion in the discussion of moral questions. Some-
times men, who have only late in life realised that
other nations have different standards from their own,
come to the conclusion that all morality including the
fundamental principles of right and wrong is a matter
of convention only. More commonly people who are
convinced that right and wrong are in principle absolutely
distinct proceed to attribute the same absolute character
to the moral conventions which they themselves accept.
The relative isolation of England, due to its insular
position, has made us particularly liable to this latter
error. But man is by nature a social being, and the
moment society exists, the difference between right and
wrong comes into being with it. For all the terms that
go with right, such as " duty," " ought/' " obligation,"
and so forth, have reference to a social context ; there
can be no moral law with regard to an entirely isolated
being, for the moral law regulates the relations between
persons ; and so we may say, without fear of contra-
diction, that the distinction between right and wrong
is itself absolute and ultimate.
It is clear that if the moral sense of the citizens is
itself so largely a product of environment and its
influence, the form of social order becomes invested
with immense importance. As Plato perceived, it is
here that the real importance of constitutional questions
lies ; for the broad outlines of the constitution will
inevitably reproduce the standards of value accepted by
the citizens. Wealth, for example, will only be promi-
nent in the State if the citizens set a high value on it.
But for this very reason the form of the constitution
tends to reproduce in the souls of the citizens the
200 MENS CREATRIX
standards of value from which it springs. There is
here a circle, either virtuous or vicious, and it is im-
possible to separate questions of personal ethics from
the more fundamental of the questions of politics. At
root the two are the same, for their root is the standard
of moral values.
Now, if there is one best way of living for all people,
then there must also be one best code of moral rules ;
if not, the morality of different nations will differ in
detail though not in principle. There are certain
moral requirements without which society can hardly
exist ; one of the most obvious of these is honesty ;
and it may therefore be laid down, at least in
general terms, that honesty is always an absolute
duty. But it is to be noticed that honesty is a quality
of a person, and that when we have said it is a man's
duty to be honest we have still not said what in many
cases he ought to do ; and it is in fact always impossible
to lay down universal moral rules with regard to acts.
The history of the Sixth Commandment is an illustra-
tion of this point. Its original form was " Thou
shalt not kill " ; at the date when that command was
given there was not the slightest possibility of any one
supposing that it forbade the killing of enemies in
battle ; a very meagre knowledge of the Old Testament
would be enough to make that point clear. But as
time went on it became necessary to distinguish one
sort of killing from another, and the modern form of
the Commandment is " Thou shall do no murder."
Murder is always wrong, because murder is killing when
killing is wrong, and it is a familiar fact that juries are
often called upon to determine whether a given case of
killing, where the act itself is not disputed, is or is not
a case of murder. As long, then, as we keep to actions,
we can reach no universal rules ; we can only live by
general rules which admit of exceptions.
Kant holds that it is possible to lay down uni-
versal moral rules of conduct, maintaining, for example,
CH.XV THE MORAL CRITERION 201
that it can never be right to tell a lie, on the
ground that the principle involved in lying is self-
destructive, for if lying becomes universal it also
becomes ineffectual, since no one will believe the lie ;
but plainly this is a very abstract treatment of the topic.
A man seldom thinks with regard to his own conduct
" I lied " ; what he thinks is " Under circumstances
uniquely provocative I said what was perhaps not a
quite exact representation of the facts as I knew them."
No doubt as a general guide we may lay down the
rule that in judging himself a man should always attend
to the general principle at stake, and in judging other
people should attend to the particular circumstances
constituting the temptation or possible justification.
But it is perfectly plain that there are circumstances in
which a man ought to lie. For example, a doctor or
nurse who is concealing bad news from a patient
dangerously ill is by common consent acting rightly.
This instance perhaps gives the clue to determine when
general rules of this nature should be broken. It is of
the utmost importance to society that a man's word in
general should be trusted, and therefore before any one
deliberately tells a lie, he must be quite sure that the
advantage of his act to society, not of course to him-
self, outweighs the damage which may be done by a
general weakening of credit. In the case of the
medicinal lie there is no such weakening of credit at
all. Every one understands the exceptional nature of
the circumstances, and no one is the more disposed to
disbelieve a doctor in the ordinary affairs of life
because he has told such a lie in the course of treating
a patient dangerously ill. He has done some good and
no harm, and has therefore plainly acted rightly.
Now the instinctive consciences of simple people
admit these points quite readily ; the healthy and
unsophisticated man is quite clear that there are certain
instances in which the generally accepted rules should
be set aside, and he regards the attempt to regulate all
202 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. m
details of life by unbending moral principles as the
very essence of priggishness. There is no damage that
can be done to public morals generally so great as what
is involved in the attempt to impose rigid principles at all
cost ; for this attempt suggests to the ordinary practical
man that moral ideals will not work, and that therefore he
may ignore them altogether. In morals, as in knowledge,
" the professor is the enemy of his own subject."
Many of these points are most clearly illustrated
when we watch the working of a conscience that is
developing according to the traditions that have
moulded our own, but is at present immature. For
example, every boy at school knows quite well that to
cheat in order to gain marks is morally much worse
than to cheat to escape punishment. Schoolmasters
very often ignore this distinction ; the result is that
the boy supposes the schoolmaster to have a scheme of
morals wholly different from his own and with which
he need not much concern himself ; but as a matter of
fact the boy's conscience is quite right. Similarly, a
boy knows quite well that a lie told in order to save
another fellow is much less culpable than a lie told
in order to save himself ; and again that a lie which
does not incriminate any one else, whatever its motive,
is much less culpable than a lie which does bring another
into suspicion. Here again the schoolmaster is very
liable to put all of these on a level and vaguely say the
boy is a liar, thereby doing great damage to the boy's
conscience. It would seem, as we may remark in
passing, that the proper principle for the schoolmaster
is to recognise the sound distinctions which the boy
instinctively draws, but to apply them on a higher
plane ; that is, he will regard as really blameworthy a
good number of acts which the boy is disposed to treat
as perfectly innocent, but will recognise the scale of
degrees. Moreover, we may say that of the two the
recognition of this scale of degrees is far more important
than the effort to make the conscience sensitive at those
CH.XV THE MORAL CRITERION 203
points where it is at the moment insensitive. For the
scale of degrees depends upon what is fundamental ;
right and wrong are concerned with our relation to our
fellow-members in society, and therefore to obscure the
sense of degrees in guilt is to undermine the funda-
mental principle of all morals.
The foregoing discussion has made it plain that
there are cases in which conscience may be genuinely
perplexed, and some method of ascertaining the right
course of action is required. A rough and ready
division is sometimes drawn between egoism and
altruism, or in the older language, between self-love
and benevolence ; and it is then suggested that the
right course is always to pursue the good whose
fruition belongs to another, rather than the good whose
fruition is one's own. As a general practical rule this
is indeed very wise. The tendency of human nature, if
left to itself, is that each individual should on the whole
pursue his own good ; and plainly this needs to be
corrected. Aristotle, when he had laid down that
the virtuous action is always a mean between two
extremes which are both vicious, as courage is the
mean between recklessness and cowardice, proceeded
to recommend that we should direct ourselves towards
that extreme to which by nature we are least
prone ; so we should in fact strike the mean. But
this still does not determine the right course ; it
only safeguards us against our own wrong tendencies.
It is no doubt clear that when the greater good is
that of another I ought to pursue it in preference to
my own lesser good ; but what is to be said when the
greater good is my own and the lesser good is the
other's ? How, for example, will rational ethics deter-
mine the moral problem with which Shakespeare
confronts Isabella in Measure for Measure? 1 She is
given by Angelo the opportunity of saving her brother's
life if she will sacrifice her own chastity. Shakespeare,
1 Cf. A. E. Taylor, The Problem of Conduct, pp. 43, 44.
204 MENS CREATRIX
as a matter of fact, simplifies the problem by making
the brother a loathsome creature, who asks his sister to
pay this price, and from that moment we are perfectly
sure that Isabella ought to do nothing of the sort. But
supposing the brother had been a hero, many of us
would have found our sympathies a good deal torn. It
seems clear that the real question at issue is not
whether Isabella is to seek her own good or her
brother's good, but which of two goods is the
greater good, irrespective of the person in whom
either is realised. This again may be very hard to
determine, but at least it delivers us from the mere
personalities of that method which baldly contrasts self-
love and benevolence, and there leaves the matter.
If we adopt this more objective method, our question
with regard to Isabella will take the following form.
Is the preservation of chastity something for which it is
worth while to sacrifice life ? It is of course only
because Angelo is a tyrant that the question ever arose,
and it seems right to answer that, if Isabella truly loves
her brother as she does so that as between equal
goods she would certainly choose his rather than her
own, and if she yet prefers to preserve chastity rather
than to preserve life, she is then setting this high value
not upon her good or his good, or any other person's
good, but upon chastity. As this is one of the
virtues most necessary to the welfare of society, her
choice serves that welfare and is therefore right.
Before leaving this part of the discussion it is
worth while to point out that inasmuch as human
nature is social, self-love and benevolence are not really
antagonistic terms. For my own welfare is bound up
with that of society to a great degree, and an enlightened
self-love may lead me to devote myself very completely
to the service of the community. But in fact it will
nevertheless make all the difference in the world both
to myself and to the service which I render whether I
am thinking of myself all the while or whether I have
CH. xv THE MORAL CRITERION 205
forgotten myself in care for the community. For there
is this nemesis pursuing all self-love however enlight-
ened ; it lacks insight into the needs of others. I may
persuade myself by reasoning that simply and solely for
my own advantage I must give my energies to the public
service ; but as a matter of fact that public service
will be vitiated and my selfish aim frustrated by the
blindness which the selfish aim inevitably brings with it.
While there is no antagonism between true self-
love and benevolence, it must be insisted that the
attempt to reduce benevolence to enlightened selfish-
ness is bound to fail. It is sometimes said that if a
man who could live in cultured ease spends his life
working in the slums of a great city, he does it because
he likes it, and therefore his act is really as selfish as
any one else's. This is the kind of arrant nonsense
that is only talked by rather sophisticated people ; for
it is as clear as daylight that what really distinguishes
the selfish from the unselfish man is precisely what
either likes to do. The selfish man finds his pleasure
in activities which hardly concern other people, or are
even injurious to them. The completely unselfish man
finds pleasure only in what gives pleasure, or in some
other way does service, to other people. The man who,
much against his inclination, forces himself to make
some sacrifice is very likely acting nobly, but still there
is more selfishness in his disposition than in that of a
man who is capable of happiness only in so far as he is
conferring it ; for in this latter case even the inclina-
tions have become moralised. As long as duty is
distasteful our nature is still only imperfectly moral.
The upshot seems to be that there is no possibility
of establishing universal rules, and that in particular
cases of difficulty, while we need wisdom to think out
the real consequences of the possible lines of action so
that we may not do injury while trying to confer
benefit, the primary requisite is simply to love one's
neighbour as oneself. For only this enables a man to
2 o6 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT . m
understand his neighbour and appreciate his true
interest. To " understand " when used of other
human beings always means to " sympathise." When
we say " I cannot understand doing a thing like that,"
we do not mean that we cannot provide the psycho-
logical analysis of the state of mind in which such an
act is done, but that we do not ourselves feel the
motives which might lead to such action. Moreover, it
is only to loving eyes that any human being will reveal
the deepest that is in his character. The cynic always
finds that his experience confirms his cynicism, because
to him no one will display the better side of his nature ;
and the loving man always finds in his experience con-
firmation of his love and trust, because love and trust
create what they believe in. There is only one ultimate
and invariable duty, and its formula is "Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself." How to do this is
another question, but this is the whole of moral duty.
Normally we show love of our neighbour by
genuinely thorough performance of the duties belonging
to our position in life. But Mr. Bradley's phrase,
" My Station and its Duties," does not cover the whole
field. In the first place, it does not help a man who
has the opportunity of choosing his profession to deter-
mine what " station " he shall occupy. But also it
leaves a great deal of conduct unaccounted for, unless
the term " station " is extended to include all human
relationships ; and then the formula is so vague as to
be useless. No formula except the Golden Rule ex-
presses the whole of moral duty.
It appears then that while distinction of right and
wrong is ultimate, being indeed the distinction between
love and selfishness, the judgment what acts are right
and what acts are wrong varies in different times and
places, according to the form of society in which the
individual lives. If there is some ideal form of society
for man as man, then we might say that the acts
appropriate to such a society are in themselves absolutely
CH. xv THE MORAL CRITERION 207
right, and those destructive of such a society are in
themselves absolutely wrong. But such a society is
precisely the great object of desire as yet unachieved,
and all that we can say without qualification is that
such acts as are destructive to all possible society are
always wrong ; while those which are required for the
existence of any possible society are always obligatory.
Duty is service of society. This will only mean the
conservation of existing society as it is, if existing
society is incapable of further improvement ; often he
who tries to improve society is serving it more genuinely
than any one else, though it must be expected that those
who cannot appreciate the value of what he advocates will
regard him as an enemy of society, and therefore a man
whose actions are definitely wicked, even if he himself
is only thought misguided. If all this is true it follows
that Plato was right to a degree not commonly allowed,
when in order to illustrate the moral problem of the
individual he discussed the whole structure of society.
The problem of the origin of society has exercised
thinkers in every age. Plato as usual combines the
leading ideas of all subsequent speculations on the
subject, but for a long while in modern thought his
profoundest intuitions were ignored. In Republic,
Book II., he shows that he is aware of the line of
argument which endeavours to evolve society out of
a pure individualism. Glauco suggests that society
originated as follows : men are by nature selfish, but
as each pursued his selfish aims he found himself at
every point opposed by all the rest. Selfishness there-
fore was unable to secure any of its objects unless it
would forgo some of them. The various members of
society therefore contract with each other to abstain
from inflicting certain injuries upon one another, so
that they might also be exempt from such injuries. It
is plain that this is the argument of Hobbes, and hardly
less plain that it is the conception of Mill, at any rate
when he composed his discussion of Liberty. Hobbes
208 MENS CREATRIX
represents the mental condition resulting from the break-
down of the medieval theory. That theory, whether
in its papal or its imperial form, seemed to give a
coherence to civilisation. The practical failure of
the Empire, and the repudiation, both practical and
theoretical, of the Papacy, left civilisation without any
coherent scheme at all. Hobbes attempts, like Glauco,
to build up such a scheme from the foundation. He
assumes individualism. Men are by nature isolated
individuals, striving with each other, and in this state of
nature the life of man is " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short." So the citizens combine to set up a
society. But whereas Glauco made no provision for
the enforcement of the contract which originates society,
Hobbes regards this contract as at the same moment
establishing government. In his theory the citizens
contract with one another to hand over almost all their
rights to a sovereign. The sovereign himself, not
being a party to the contract, cannot break it ; he is
himself above the law, and the scheme therefore pro-
vides for just such an absolutism as the Empire and
Papacy had aimed at providing. The doctrine of
Hobbes was unpopular with the court of Charles II.,
because they perceived that it gave this absolute
authority to any sovereign who in fact held power
rather than to a king ruling by hereditary or Divine
right ; and in fact the picture of the Leviathan, that
forms the frontispiece of the treatise of that name,
seems at first to have had the features of Oliver
Cromwell. Revolution, according to Hobbes' scheme,
is no doubt wicked, but only until it succeeds. The
moment it has succeeded, the authority against which
it rebelled becomes in fact the rebel ; and so of course
Cromwell must have regarded the adherents of Charles
Stuart. In the hands of Locke the theory of the social
contract has advanced a stage, though the thought is
far less clear. Here the origin of society and the estab-
lishment of government are not regarded as identical.
THE MORAL CRITERION 209
On the contrary, the government is established in order
to maintain a society which it presupposes, and there is
a contract between the sovereign and his subjects. Con-
sequently the sovereign can break the contract, and by
breaking it forfeit his right to rule. This is precisely
what James II. had done according to the Whigs. It
is interesting to remember that when James had already
fled to France, and William of Orange was indisput-
ably in possession, the House of Lords debated for
three days whether they should ask William to occupy
the throne which James had vacated by flight, or
whether they should ask him to occupy a throne which
James had forfeited by breaking the original contract.
The former was of course the Tory doctrine ; the
latter was that of the Whigs.
It is not until we come to Rousseau that the other
and deeper element of Plato's thought again becomes
prominent in philosophy. For Rousseau society is the
embodiment of the general will, and government derives
its authority from the general will. Usually the general
will expresses itself best through democratic forms, but
these are not necessary to it. The dictator who should
carry out the actual will of the people would be govern-
ing in accordance with the general will, and therefore
with absolute right. This general will is not to be
identified with the will of all ; it may be something
lying deeper than the purpose which has become
conscious in the mind of the separate citizens. We
may perhaps illustrate this doctrine by the history of
the two great English parties in the nineteenth century.
If we were to judge from their conduct at elections we
should expect to find the progress of the nation taking
a zigzag course as one party went out and the other
came in ; but in fact it is not so at all. The two parties
no doubt represented different aspects in the whole
purpose of the general will, but each of them is its
servant. The development of the nineteenth century
is upon the whole quite continuous. If we take the
p
210 MENS CREATRIX BK . I.PT.IH
three great Reform Bills we shall find the point
sufficiently illustrated. That of 1832 was passed by
the Whigs and Radicals ; that of 1868 by the Tories and
Conservatives; and that of 1884 by the Liberals.
Again it was the Liberal Government which in 1870
made education universally compulsory ; but it was
Lord Salisbury who in 1891 made it free. One instance
after another could be given of the way in which each
party takes up the work of the other and carries it on.
Certainly at the present moment the general outlook
of Mr. Asquith is far more like that of Mr. Balfour
than the outlook of either is like that of the Duke of
Wellington. The differences between two parties in
the perspective of history become almost unintelligible ;
there is a purpose in the nation carrying forward the
work of progress by means of both.
But all of this is most simply stated in the Platonic
form. It may be true that society would begin even if
men were altogether selfish ; it is also true that society
would rise quite apart from selfishness altogether,
because in the depth of their being men are social and
have need of one another. In fact, the individual is
always a particular variety of the social institution to
which he belongs. I am not first myself and then an
Englishman ; I could not be anything but English any
more than I could be the child of other parents than my
own. My membership in the society called English is
as fundamental as anything else about me ; I am, so to
speak, " the Englishman " expressed and interpreted in
a particular way. Consequently to England I owe all
that I value and every ounce of my energy. I shall
find the fulfilment of my own will precisely in the service
of the country to which I belong, and I can find it no-
where else. This indeed would not be true if I were
a member of a subject nationality. The Pole cannot
feel like this for the alien nations which have mutilated
and oppressed his own nation ; his primary loyalty is to
Poland which does not any longer (or as yet) exist.
CH.XV THE MORAL CRITERION 211
Perhaps this more than anything else shows the supreme
wickedness of subjecting one race to another ; for it
interferes with that proper relation of the individual to
his society which makes it possible for him to find
perfect freedom in its service. But even where the
individual is a member of his own natural society he
will only find this perfect freedom in its service if that
society is such as to correspond with his spiritual nature.
For this it must be so constituted as fully to recognise
his personality. The struggles for freedom of which
history is full derive all their meaning from this. They
are an effort to find a society which shall fully recognise
the true personality of the citizens. But true person-
ality is realised in fellowship and service. Hence there
is an absolute reciprocity between freedom and obliga-
tion. The State must put first the rights of the
citizens ; each citizen must put first his duty to the
State, that is, to the whole body of the citizens. " The
quickening principle of a state is a sense of devotion,
an adequate recognition in the minds of its subjects
that their own interests are subordinate to those of the
State. The bond which unites them and constitutes
them collectively as a state is, to use the words of
Lincoln, in the nature of dedication. Its validity, like
that of the marriage tie, is at root not contractual but
sacramental. Its foundation is not self-interest, but
rather some sense of obligation, however conceived,
which is strong enough to over-master self-interest." 1
It appears then that man's duty results from his
membership in society. What constitutes his duty is
determined by the good of society. Whatever is
necessary to the maintenance of any society whatsoever
is an absolute and unconditional duty of all human
beings. In points affected by the diversities in societies,
it is a general principle that whatever serves the society
of which the individual is a member is a moral duty.
1 Curtis, The Commonwealth of Nations, p. 8. Cf. also p. 319 : " Material interests
may bring men together, but nothing can be trusted to keep them together but the
devotion which enables them to forget their interests and themselves."
2 1 2 MENS CRE ATRIX
But society consists of its members, and its good is not
separable from theirs. If any institution of a given
society in fact militates against the good of the members,
loyalty shows itself in attacking that institution even,
in extreme cases, to the point of rebellion. The social
and political constitution must submit to criticism at
the hands of the conscience which it has helped to
fashion and train.
This whole effort of man as represented in political
history, and in the various theories of politics, is an
effort after human fellowship. The nation, with its
organ the State, is a means of securing some measure of
that fellowship ; but the fact that the State relies, and
must always rely, upon penal measures proves that of itself
it can never lead men to the goal which by its means they
are seeking ; for fellowship is the life of free persons
bound together in mutual love. The State by its
penalties enforces, up to a certain point, such action as
fellowship demands ; but it is clear that penalty is only
called for when the spirit of fellowship fails, nor can
the penalty of itself ever create that spirit. Con-
sequently it would seem that the goal towards which
men are striving in all their political efforts will only be
found in a society based on perfect freedom, but endowed
with a spirit of fellowship which shall take possession of
its members and bind them together in a mutual love,
so that all need to enforce the conduct appropriate to
fellowship is at once removed.
CHAPTER XVI
LIBERTY I INDIVIDUAL AND POLITICAL
Within a cavern of man's trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light
Penetrates their dreamlike frame
Till they become charged with the strength of flame.
SHELLEY.
THE people of Great Britain are as a rule ready enough
to agree that the ideal State will rest upon freedom.
A vast amount of popular sentiment is always available
in support of that cry, but it appears after a very slight
investigation that there are two quite distinct senses in
which people use the word " freedom/' and that while
no doubt these are connected at their root, they lead
to the advocacy of very different forms of social order.
The first and most elementary sense of freedom is
simply the absence of external control. Without this
there can indeed be no freedom at all. So long as a
man's conduct, or the conduct of a State, is literally
imposed by an alien authority freedom does not exist.
In the case of an individual the abrogation of freedom
may be complete. If, for example, I am standing on
the edge of a cliff and somebody pushes me over, my
fall is in no sense my own act. In the case of a State,
on the other hand, freedom can never be entirely given
up or suppressed so long as the State exists at all. No
doubt it may sometimes be said that an action is forced
213
2 1 4 MENS CREATRIX
upon the State, when what is meant is that the
alternative was something which no set of persons
could be expected to endure ; none the less there is
here still some element of choice and therefore of
freedom. It is not possible actually to coerce a State
as one can, by superior physical force, coerce an indi-
vidual literally seizing and carrying him off. But
it is plain that the presence of such choice goes a very
little way towards giving that freedom which men
value. It is an indispensable condition of the kind of
freedom that is precious ; but in itself it may be no
more than a choice between two evils, each so great
that the selection of either is utterly contrary to the
will which chooses. And this remains true, even where
there is no external pressure. The man who is free to
do what he likes, but has no control of the impulses
which constitute his own nature, has not won effective
freedom. The State which is subject to no alien rule,
but which is driven into certain lines of action by the
rebellion of an ungovernable minority is not in the
complete sense free.
Liberty or freedom has no doubt often been regarded
as consisting in this mere absence of control. Legisla-
tion is then regarded as a partial restriction of liberty
for the sake of an increase of liberty on the whole. So,
for example, Mill regards the matter. My effective
liberty to go about my duties and pleasures is secured
to me by the repression of the homicidal and predatory
impulses in others ; and their liberty is secured by the
repression of similar impulses in me. This repression,
being enforced by an external power, is a curtailment
of liberty, but by means of it the greatest amount of
liberty actually obtainable is afforded. This is very
like the Social Contract theory as Glauco and Hobbes
express it. The individual is the unit, and it is for his
selfish interest that any order is constituted at all. The
result of this doctrine in practice is the policy of
laissez faire, and liberty so understood is simply
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 215
anarchism tempered by so much of government as
may make it tolerable. Legislation therefore appears
as a necessary evil, and should be reduced to a
minimum. It seems probable that this position derives
its attractiveness for some moral philosophers from the
fact that they belong to the respectable and leisured
classes. In their natural desire for simple illustrations
they turn to elementary laws, such as the prohibition
of murder and theft ; being conscious of no temptation
in themselves to commit these crimes, they easily
regard the law as directed primarily against other
people. This view derives further plausibility, and
indeed much ground in fact, from a system under
which a small section of the community controls
legislation ; for this section will tend to legislate
against tendencies in the other rather than against its
own. The old laws, and indeed even our existing
laws, with regard to poaching, illustrate this point.
But it is to be observed that this kind of liberty
may be complete in principle and yet negligible in
result. There may, for example, be perfect freedom
of contract in an industrial system ; and yet the men
have no real choice but to accept long hours, low
wages, and bad conditions because the only alternative
is starvation ; the employers, on the other hand, may
feel unable to improve the terms from fear of being
driven from the market by others less scrupulous.
Something like this was the actual state of affairs in
the early part of the nineteenth century in industrial
England. There was perfect freedom of contract but
no effective choice, because of the available alternatives
one was intolerable. For the law to step in and
regulate these matters looks like a curtailment of
liberty ; the Factory Laws were opposed by John
Bright and many others on precisely this ground. But
we know now that the Factory Laws actually increased
effective liberty by widening the area of real choice.
Moreover, quite apart from political and social
216 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. PT. m
problems, mere absence of external control will not
confer true freedom upon the individual in his own
personal life. A licentious man might be free in this
sense of freedom ; of him it would be true to say, as
Plato says of the tyrant, that he never satisfies his real
will precisely because he can at every moment do what
his fancy suggests, and so he gratifies one isolated
impulse after another but never attains to peace and
joy for his soul. This can only be won in a life
which is dedicated to some purpose, wide enough to
afford scope to every faculty in his nature, and lofty
enough to claim the dedication of them all. The man
who aims at being a great scholar or a great artist,
having faculties that fit him to become one or the
other, but who is unable to control appetites and
impulses which blunt these faculties, has no freedom
in any sense in which freedom is valuable. The
freedom that is precious is to be found, not merely
when a man can say of his act, " I did it and no one
compelled me," but when he can say, " I did it, and I
am glad I did it, and if the opportunity comes I will
do it again." The act then not only springs from, but
definitely expresses the man's personality ; it is the
externalisation of his own self; but to secure such
freedom a man must first submit to discipline. 1
A child when he comes into the world consists of
a whole mass of unrelated impulses and interests, and
the purpose of the earliest education is to teach the
faculty of attention, that is to say, of concentrating the
mind upon some one object, however attractive may be
other elements in the surrounding world. The child
who is learning to read, or who is playing with sand
upon a tray, is learning the elements of that power by
which a man pursues a great goal ignoring all seduc-
tions and overcoming all obstacles, by which the hero
dies for his country or a martyr for his faith. This
is the real freedom which is worth having, and it is
1 Cf. Chap. XIII. pp. 169, 170.
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 217
the direct product of discipline. At first indeed the
discipline must be externally imposed. The chaos of
impulses which constitutes our original nature cannot
possibly organise itself; but gradually that faculty of
purpose which we call the will is built up, and in
proportion as this takes place, self-discipline becomes
possible. Through this, advance is made to true self-
control and to that perfect harmony of the soul where
all capacities are used and all instincts satisfied in the
pursuit of a life's purpose. That ideal may never be
actually reached, but where it is reached it clearly
constitutes a real mastery over the successiveness of
Time, such as was described as the culmination of the
development of Will.
In legislation we see the same process at work in
the community. At first, for the sake of that degree
of public order which is essential to an even moderate
prosperity and happiness, a nation submits to a strong
central government which is more or less autocratic.
At this stage the control is mainly external. As the
fundamental principles of social life become more widely
accepted, authority is transferred to a body more and
more representative of the whole community. Legis-
lation then becomes a form of corporate self-discipline.
The essence of legislation, at least in a democratic
community, is that the citizens condemn in advance
any one of themselves who shall at any future time be
guilty of certain acts. The only reason for doing this
is that they know that these acts would be contrary to
their real purpose and yet that they may be tempted to
perform them. The motive for making the law is not
only that it will be bad for each if some one else does
the act, but that it will be bad for the man himself who
does it. Legislation with its penal sanction is like a
resolution which an individual takes, except that it is
more effective because the penalty enacted is more
likely to be inflicted ; and it is simply true in the
ultimate sense that the criminal against whom the law
2 1 8 MENS CREATRIX
is put in motion suffers by the act of his own real will
(though it may be of course contrary to all his conscious
desires), unless he has gone so far in criminality that he
does not desire the maintenance of society at all.
Legislation therefore need not preserve freedom in one
by restricting it in another, but may directly increase
real freedom all round by strengthening the deliberate
purpose of our lives against the impulses as yet un-
disciplined, which would cut across and interfere with
that purpose. For example, it is my deliberate purpose
to be honest in all my dealings ; but in a host of small
ways I am perpetually tempted to dishonesty, and there
can be little doubt that I am often saved from yielding
to that temptation by the law, which, if I yielded, would
involve me in varieties of inconvenience and inflict upon
me the stigma of public censure. The true individual
freedom then is found when the character is fashioned into
so true a unity that in all its acts it expresses itself com-
pletely. Similarly liberty in the State is found when
the citizens combine together in a common purpose
which they are agreed in maintaining against any im-
pulse, not only in others but also in themselves, which
would thwart that purpose. In both individual and
society liberty is control of the parts by the whole which
they constitute.
It is perfectly plain that this formula can only stand
for freedom if the whole is a spiritual unity in which
the parts fully realise their membership. Otherwise a
great deal of substantial tyranny may be carried out in
its name. It is for this reason that the government of
one race by another is always an evil, and may be an
intolerable evil. The Polish subject either of the
Kaiser or of the Czar does not at all feel that in sub-
mitting to the laws which the political government*
imposes upon him, he is realising himself by incorpora-
tion into a larger fellowship. The State for him is an
alien force which so far as it secures good order provides
a certain material benefit, but has no moral claim upon
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 219
him. An Englishman lately said, in the presence of a
number of such Poles, that his country had a claim
upon all that he possessed and all that he was, because in
each case everything was given to him by the country ; he
was not merely an individual, but essentially and funda-
mentally an Englishman. To be English was part of
his essential self. One of the Poles replied that he did
not understand this position at all ; a man paid in taxes
and the like for everything he received from the State,
and he did not see how the State had any further moral
claim. This complete divorce between governmental ad-
ministration and moral loyalty is plainly an evil to which
hardly any in the world is equal. For it strikes at the
root of all real corporate life and tends to make the
individual regard himself as an isolated atom whose
rational course is to pursue his own interest, except so
far as he may forcibly be checked, and whose self-
sacrifice for the community, if his instincts lead that
way, is from his own point of view sheer loss and no
gain at all. Probably the inhabitants of Ireland in very
large numbers feel much the same with regard to the
United Kingdom. The fact that of recent years
English government has at any rate attempted to be
benevolent, may mitigate the bitterness of the feeling,
but will not alter it. It is not the harshness, but the
alien character, of the government which constitutes the
fundamental evil. In certain departments of life organ-
ised Labour has the same feeling towards the existing
English State. The State is in fact so much controlled
by men of a certain class and station that Labour per-
petually feels itself to be in the position of a subject
race. We see the result in the difficulties which the
English Government had in introducing a measure
of compulsory military service, and in their decision
altogether to exempt Ireland from the operation of
that principle.
In order that there may be real freedom the govern-
ment must be the organ of a genuine moral unit, and
220 MENS CREATRIX BK . i. FT. m
for this reason frontiers should so far as possible coincide
with national divisions. 1 Here as elsewhere, when once
sin has been committed, the right condition cannot be
restored without atoning sacrifice. In Hungary and
the Balkan States, for example, the claims of nationality
were for centuries persistently ignored. There are now
many Roumanians under Hungarian rule, but it may not
be possible simply to transfer them to Roumanian
rule because there are patches of Hungarian popula-
tion scattered about in that territory which is pre-
dominantly Roumanian in race, and these will then be
subject to Roumanian domination as the Roumanians
are now to Hungarian. That would perhaps be better
than the present situation, because the number of those
subjected to an alien government would be far smaller ;
but to these Hungarians it will be a real injury none
the less. There is also the permanent difficulty which
besets a government that has ever been guilty of
oppression ; it has stored up against itself a bitterness
of feeling which is very likely to retaliate when it is
given liberty, and the oppression which began from
sheer love of power may be maintained from fear of
that retaliation. There seems to be no way out of this
danger, except that the oppressed should be willing to
wipe out the past, and voluntarily accept its sufferings
without demanding recompense. In one way and an-
other the only means by which sin can be obliterated is
through the suffering of the innocent, and this may
take the form of a voluntary acceptance of past suffer-
ing for the sake of future peace and fellowship. That
government and people which has been guilty of
oppression ought to do everything possible to alleviate
the sufferings, and take their share, but if they are
simply forced to accept a certain amount of retaliation
from those whom they have injured, the evil process
seems likely to be continued ad infinitum. No doubt
the parties can to some extent meet each other half
1 But see Chapter XVIII.
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 221
way. For example it is sometimes said that one difficulty
about Home Rule for Ireland is that Ireland could not
manage its own affairs without financial help from
England ; if that were all, as of course it is not, then let
England give the financial help without demanding any
supervision of its expenditure. That will be an act
that may go far to mitigate the feelings of resentment
still alive in Ireland which result from the bad old times.
This illustration is of course given simply to suggest a
principle ; whether it is politically possible or not is a
question that must be determined by those who have
detailed knowledge of the facts. Anyhow two points
stand out clearly : the right relation of government to
governed is not a matter of administrative expediency,
but of fundamental and spiritual principle, and when
once that principle has been violated there is something
present which can only be removed by the voluntary
suffering of innocent persons.
But if this is all that can be said, we shall be left
with the picture of a human race divided into a
number of moral units, each free in itself but each
attempting to be self-sufficient. This is the ideal of
Nationalism. This attempt is, in the modern world,
doomed to failure if only from economic causes.
Every people upon the face of the earth is in fact
economically dependent upon many others if not
upon all others, and this is only the outward symbol
of the spiritual unity which in fact binds all men
together. Indeed just as the individual finds his
freedom by personally realising his own membership in
a community, so that community will only find its own
self- fulfilment in realising its membership in humanity.
The principle of freedom seems urgently to require
extension in two directions where hitherto it has been
given little scope. So far as ordered freedom goes,
which is very much the same as saying so far as civilisa-
tion goes, the national State has been almost its only
expression. But, as we have seen, the national State
222 , MENS CREATRIX BK. i. PT. m
cannot exist in isolated independence ; and even within
itself it is to be remembered that the national State
does not by means of its regulations come into perpetual
relations with the mass of individual citizens. These
do, however, find their lives actually controlled by the
regulations of the industry in which they work. These
regulations invade their very homes and tell them when
they may get up and when they may go to bed. Yet they
often have no means of affecting these regulations except
by the threat of a strike. Before we can be said to have
a free society it will be essential that the control of
industry shall pass largely into the hands of those
immediately concerned. Here as everywhere else the
extension of liberty is dangerous to material prosperity,
though, if the experiment succeeds, it results in the
increase of material prosperity, inasmuch as the enthusi-
asm of the workers is enlisted. But for the achievement
of the spiritual ideal the extension of liberty is in-
dispensable. The various great movements of recent
times since the French Revolution, or the, less spec-
tacular but equally important industrial revolution in
England at the end of the eighteenth century, have all
had their real source more in the spiritual aspiration
which is the distinguishing mark of man than in
desire for more material goods. Very often the former
has expressed itself in terms of the latter, because it
was economic bondage that fettered the life of the
spirit ; but the inner history of the movements shows
plainly that the real energy came from spiritual dis-
content rather than from material greed. This has
been most emphatically true of the Socialist ajnd
Syndicalist movements. Working men are not as a
rule prone to self-analysis nor highly skilled in it.
They may find great difficulty in stating where the
seat of the trouble lies. But a sympathetic observer
very quickly detects that what really galls is not so
much the small proportion of the results of industry
allotted as the reward of labour, but rather the sense
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 223
that the employees are treated as " hands " and not as
" persons," so far as the industry is concerned. Their
personality apparently is for their leisure time ; only
their productive utility counts in industry itself. But
this is to say that for the greater part of their waking
life they are treated as living chattels, which is Aristotle's
definition of a slave. The economic maxim that
labour is a commodity to be bought as cheap as possible
by those who need it and to be sold as dear as possible
by those who offer it, ignores the fact that a man's
labour is inseparable from himself. I may sell my
coat and another man may buy it without in any way
affecting my personality ; but I cannot thus sell my
labour for my labour is simply myself labouring. The
existing social organism is therefore felt to be unjust at
its root, because it does not recognise the real and
spiritual nature of man. Charity is no remedy. If
all that labour asked were a fairer proportion of this
world's goods, charity would . be a remedy so far as
it went ; but as the demand is for recognition of
the workers as rational and responsible beings, charity,
far from being a remedy, is felt rather as an insult.
As between equals it is only a foolish, and in fact weak,
spirit that can be insulted by charity. A man ought
not to shrink from receiving money or any other
assistance from a friend, for he ought to believe that
the friend is genuinely glad to give it. But when the
relation of friendship is not there, and the charity is a
working off of superfluity to satisfy the impulse of
compassion, or is even the giving away of comforts in
answer to a general arid abstract sense of duty, there is
involved the denial of true freedom to the person
whose necessities can only be met in such a way. In
political life sovereignty has had to be shared ; the
Crown which once governed has devolved its authority,
no doubt under pressure, upon the representatives of
the people. In the evolution of industrial freedom
the private Capitalist and the Company must pass
224 MENS CREATRIX
through the same process. If we are to have real
freedom it must be an extension of our general principle
to this sphere ; the parts must be controlled by the
whole which they constitute, and to that end must truly
constitute the whole by which they are controlled.
It is clear, of course, that the association of Labour
in the control of industry must be accompanied by a
great extension of education ; but that subject, as also
the extension of the principle of freedom beyond
the bounds of the National State, will occupy us in
subsequent chapters. Before passing on, however, it
may be well to remark that Liberty as we have defined
it is bound up with Obedience. The principle requires
both that the authority, governing the parts of the soul
or the several citizens in the State, should be vested
in the whole soul or the whole body of citizens, and
also that the directions issued by this authority should
be accepted and obeyed.
The State must also remember that it exists by no
other right or title than that of all associations of men ;
it is bound therefore to recognise "Personality" equal
in essence to its own in all associations or corporate
bodies within itself, whether they be religious, educa-
tional, economic, or of any other type. It must aim at
their "freedom" as it aims at the freedom of individuals,
only claiming, in this case as in that, to be the supreme
source of order in virtue of its including all other
associations within itself. 1
What then is the place for the individual conscience ?
Is there no duty, or even right, of rebellion against
corporate wickedness ? Unless we can guarantee the
moral perfection of the community and of course that
cannot be guaranteed we must let the individual judge
and act upon his judgment. But he must be sure that
his objection is truly conscientious, or in other words
that it is based on moral principle, which is the same
1 On this point, which is of capital importance in practice, see Maitland Intro-
duction in his translation of Gierke and Figgis' Churches in the Modern State.
CHAP. XVI
LIBERTY 225
as saying based on consideration for the highest attain-
able welfare of society as a whole. Nor must he raise
any objection if the State puts its penalties in force
against him. The State will do wisely to deal tenderly
with the consciences of its citizens ; moreover, if the
position which we shall advance in Book II. is accepted,
the State must remember that its citizens are also
children of God, owing an allegiance to Him which
transcends all earthly loyalties, and having rights as
free citizens in a Commonwealth of greater dignity
than any nation or state. But the law-breaker has
no right to expect exemption from penalty merely
because he can plead conscientious objection to the law.
He must be ready to follow his conscience to the point
of martyrdom. Moreover, both he and the State must
first of all remember that freedom rests upon law ;
frequent law-breaking and the contempt for law result-
ing from it is the way to chaos and the condition
wherein the life of man would be " solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." Frequent breaches of the law,
however conscientious, are therefore disastrous to society,
and if the "objector" is to be truly conscientious he
must have estimated as far as he can the harm which
he does by weakening the authority of law. The true
aim alike of State and individual is that condition
which may be called either free order or ordered free-
dom ; for this is the counterpart of that true fellowship
which we defined as the life of free persons bound
together by mutual love.
CHAPTER XVII
EDUCATION
v ?rp6s rb dia^vcLV rets 7roXire/as, o5 vvv
6\iytopov}/Jia KaTotKTjo'at. ST. PAUL.
IN our consideration of human religion we found that
the aspiration which is its root could only find its goal,
and therefore the human soul only find its rest, in a
God who should be the union of absolute power and
absolute love. It appeared, moreover, that the hypo-
thesis of such a Being's existence was alone adequate
to explain the existence of the world. No principle
known to human experience could offer such an
explanation except that of an all -ruling will. And
such a will would seem to be self-contradictory if it is
not perfectly good, for it would be a will which, having
perfect freedom of choice, none the less chose the
smaller rather than the greater satisfaction. Either,
then, there is a God of Love, or else the universe is in
the last resort inexplicable. But the fact of the world's
evil seemed fatal to this hypothesis ; or, at any rate, it
seemed that the hypothesis could only be maintained if
it could first be shown that evil overcome of good con-
tributes to a greater good than was otherwise attainable,
and further, that the evil of the world is, in fact,
overcome by the goodness of God, who through His
love took upon Himself its burden. At making this
further step reason hesitates until it finds some actual
fact of history which seems to require just that step as
its only possible explanation. The fact of the Life and
352 MENS CREATRIX BOOKH
Death and Resurrection of Christ is just such a fact as
is required. The dogma of the Incarnation, which is
that fact interpreted in the light of its consequences,
gives to the aspiration of all human religion just the
resting-place it seeks.
At an earlier stage of the enquiry we had found that
the moral good for man consisted in the life of love
and the fellowship of which that love is the binding
power. After such a fellowship all . civilisation is
striving ; all legislation has this as its ultimate goal.
But the very methods upon which secular civilisation
relies are proof that this attempt can never by itself be
successful ; for the obstacle to fellowship is self-will,
and self-will cannot be ejected merely by the restraint
which law can exercise. There is needed some power,
akin to the spirit which moves and guides secular
progress, which shall break in alike upon the individual
and upon society from without, capable of effecting not
only change but renovation. There is only one power
known to men which is capable of producing such
results ; it is the power of an entirely self- forgetful
love expressing itself, as love always expresses itself, in
sacrifice, that is to say, in the doing or suffering of
what apart from the love would not be done or suffered.
The hope of progress seemed to lie in a society whose
atmosphere should be permeated by this influence.
The fact of the Life and Death and Resurrection of
Christ again supplies exactly what is needed. The
dogma of the Incarnation, which is that fact interpreted
in the light of its consequences, gives to man's moral
effort alike the impetus and the goal which it requires.
A still earlier stage of the enquiry had shown us that
that effort of Mind to apprehend the world, which goes
under the name of Art, points forward to an ideal
experience in which there should be offered to the con-
templating soul some image truly adequate as an
expression of the whole world's ruling principle, in
gazing upon which the soul would be rapt in that
CHAP, xxvi CHRISTUS CONSUMMATOR 353
meditation which is already worship. But we also
found that unless the full depths of tragedy were
sounded this impulse of the human will would remain
still unsatisfied. Once more the fact of Christ's Life
and Death and Resurrection supplies our need. In
the clash between the claims of the old dispensation
divinely instituted, and the new revelation divinely
given, there is seen tragedy at its very highest. If
the story had ended with the Cross we should have said
that Christ had fallen a victim to His own sublime
idealism, and that His cause had suffered because just
at that moment the very quality of His virtue was
disastrous. We should revere Him as earth's noblest
hero ; but there would have been no Church to carry
on His work. His cause would have perished with
Him in the Death which He voluntarily suffered.
The whole depth of tragedy is plumbed ; and out of it
the light of the Resurrection breaks. Once more the
dogma of the Incarnation gives man the fulfilment of
his hope, for the figure of Christ is the express image
of the Eternal God.
Going back to] the earliest stage of our enquiry, we
remember how the intellect in its purely scientific pro-
cedure led us to the belief that the world is perfectly
coherent and forms a single system, but could not find
what is the actual principle of unity that holds that
system together. And yet we found also that intellect
would welcome as the crown of its own edifice the
revelation or discovery of that principle which the
rest of our enquiry declared must take the form of a
loving will. And though from the point of view of
human science the dogma of the Incarnation is mere
hypothesis, yet it is an hypothesis which explains all the
facts, and there is no other such forthcoming. Reason
cannot prove it ; we live by faith and not by demon-
strative knowledge ; but Reason welcomes it as the
needed completion of its own work.
When we see how Science and Art and Ethics and
2 A
354 MENS CREATR1X BOOKH
the Philosophy of Religion present converging lines
which though converging can never by the human
mind be carried far enough to reach their meeting-point,
but that that meeting-point is offered in the fact of
Christ as Christians have understood it, we have no
longer any reason to hesitate in proclaiming that here
is the pivot of all true human thought ; here is the
belief that can give unity to all the work of mind.
The creative mind in man never attains its goal until
the creative mind of God, in whose image it was made,
reveals its own nature, and completes man's work.
Man's search was divinely guided all the time, but its
completion is only reached by the act of God Himself,
meeting and crowning the effort which He has inspired.
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER XXVII
ALPHA AND OMEGA
" I am the Alpha and the Omega : saith the Lord God, which is, and which was
and which is to come, the Almighty." THE APOCALYPSE.
WE have completed our survey, and the argument of
the book might be left to stand upon such merits as
it may have. But certain questions emerge from the
survey itself, of which it is as well to say something
further. Throughout our argument we have been
trying amongst other things to ascertain in what sense
the world is many and in what sense it is one. We
have tried to reach unity also with regard to the process
of Time, for that which more than everything else seems
to condemn both thought and action to futility is just
the transitoriness of things.
We found that Science reached unity over against
multiplicity by discovering principles which, unchanged
themselves, hold good of many different facts, and
that in regard to Time the principles, which Science
seeks and, so far as it is successful, finds, are the un-
changing principles which govern the processes of
change. But the unity here was felt to be too abstract
for a perfect satisfaction. The mind by its own
scientific method rather grasped that the world is one,
then apprehended it in its unity. This further step
was taken by Art ; here the mind seemed not only to
355
356 MENS CREATRIX BOOKH
be emancipated from Time, but to have achieved a
mastery over it and over all other forms of multiplicity.
The object of aesthetic contemplation is grasped as a
perfect unity, and the experience seemed to become
more and more itself as the object of contemplation
became more and more adequate as a symbol of life.
In contemplation the mind is not only freed from Time,
but is superior to it ; for it can grasp a whole process
in a single apprehension whose value is determined by
the course of the process. This we found to be part
of the meaning of both music and drama. And yet still
the achievement was not finally satisfactory, for the
contemplating mind was left outside the object of con-
templation. The artistic experience occurs in the course
of a life which passes from stage to stage. It does
indeed seem to show the possibility in principle that the
Eternal can be adequately symbolised in a limited period
of time, but in itself the artistic experience is simply an
episode. The conquest of Time and the satisfaction in
perfect orderliness is a passing event in a life that is
transitory and in an experience that is full of chaos.
It is necessary, if satisfaction is to be reached, that the
contemplating mind shall realise itself as a work of art,
which itself forms an element in the great artistic
whole.
The lives of the greatest men, while not reaching
a perfect achievement in the period of earthly life,
yet point unquestionably to the realisation of just this
ideal. There is about them a relative completeness ;
the whole life in all its changing stages is a single whole
which through its devotion to service fits in with the
process of the world around it. Yet just the greatest
and best men are most conscious that the ideal remains
unrealised, that they have in themselves no power to
achieve it, and that if such efforts as theirs are all that
is available for the purpose, there is little hope that
either in the individual or in society will the perfect
harmony be reached.
CHAP, xxvii ALPHA AND OMEGA 357
So Morality points forward to Religion, the supreme
activity of finite Creative Mind. Here we find Morality
combined with Science and with Art ; man postulates an
absolute perfection which he can worship. But to this
the evil in the world presents an obstacle which would
appear insuperable, unless there is some evidence, other
than mere human longing, that the infinite perfection is
indeed a reality, and not only so but the dominating
and governing reality of the universe.
The possibility that this should be so is shown by
the recollection that the value of the past is alterable.
This is proved by every drama that was ever written.
I venture to give once more the illustration of this.
The real value and meaning of the first act of a
play is not known until the play is ended. The
cheerful opening of a tragedy may merely heighten the
gloom of a total effect, or the gloom in which some
tale of triumph opens may heighten the exhilaration
that the story as a whole affords. So it may be
with the evil in the world. Nothing can make it other
than evil, but there may be a stage which we can reach
in which we shall look back upon it and feel that while
it was evil and in itself remains evil, yet it is now good
that there should then have been something evil. Let
us take the extreme instance at once. It is conceivable
that Judas Iscariot should become so wholly delivered
from all self- concern that he may pass through the
shame of his treachery and be able in perfect self-
abnegation to rejoice that he was allowed to play a
part, although a shameful part, in completing the
manifestation of his Lord's glory.
The whole course of our argument points to the
suggestion of an experience that should include in a
single apprehension the whole course of Time, even
though that course be endless in both directions, in the
same way in which the mind of a spectator at a play
grasps in a single apprehension the whole course of the
play. This would be Eternity. To this, as far as we
358 MENS CREATRIX BOOKH
can tell, the finite mind can never rise ; but we achieve
it to some extent with regard to the history of the past,
and we achieve it with regard to selected passages,
whether of history or of fiction, which the dramatist or
the novelist may set before us. Yet to the end and for
ever, man's trust in such an absolute apprehension must
be a belief in a Mind other than his own of which his
own is a finite counterpart. If then he finds upon the
very plane of history, and occurring in the process of
Time itself, an event which seems to him capable of
being regarded as a revelation, though at a moment of
Time, of the eternal principle of things, which is now
conceived as an eternal all-embracing Mind, he will
welcome it as giving him just what his own finite
mind most needs the link between itself and the
infinite Mind. Here is Eternity offered in the midst of
Time in the way that the experience of Art leads us to
believe is possible. But here too is Eternity revealed in
course of Time to the finite mind in a form which the
finite mind itself can fully grasp. The revelation,
moreover, contains just that one essential requirement
which man's mind in Religion, which is its highest flight,
desiderated. For here is shown the evil of the world
not only made an opportunity for greater good, but
becoming the very material out of which the greater
good is furnished.
We are here on the borders of the old problem
about free-will and omnipotence. It would be absurd
to introduce anything that professed to be a serious
discussion of that great problem in the last chapter of
a book, but it may be well to indicate the treatment of
it which would appear to follow from the position to
which we have been led. Man's moral experience we
found to affirm freedom in the sense of real responsi-
bility. A man is in some degree the origin of his own
actions and author of their consequences. We also
found that this responsibility is social quite as much as
individual, inasmuch as the human environment of a
CHAP, xxvn ALPHA AND OMEGA 359
character, and also its material environment, which is
largely the result of human action, play a great part in
determining its development for good or for evil. But
this freedom did not mean an absolute indeterminism.
When 'a life is looked at from the end to which it led,
it is seen to have run a real course, and not to have
moved by a series of disconnected jerks. Moreover, in
just those men who most of all seem to possess moral
freedom and strength of will, the unity of life is greatest.
This is all in harmony with the picture of freedom
given us by Shakespeare in his profoundest artistic
intuitions. Part of the gloom of his tragedies arises
from the fact that while the characters are free, inasmuch
as the origin of their actions is themselves, they are yet
bound hand and foot inasmuch as from themselves there
is no escape. It is not indeterminism, but self-deter-
minism which seems to be supported by the evidence
of the moral consciousness, and that a self-determinism
of real growth and not a mere determination by the past.
The artistic consciousness, with which we found the
moral consciousness to be so fully in accord in principle,
gives us illustrations within an extremely limited sphere
of what we can conceive to be the eternal experience
of God. When we hear a piece of music which we
know, or watch a play whose plot is familiar to us, we
do indeed perceive a real growth from stage to stage
and watch real choices being made by the composer or
by the characters of the play. The theme need not
have been developed in just that manner at that point ;
the hero or the villain need not have made precisely
the decision which he did. By the end of symphony
or play a perfect unity is achieved for the constitution
of which every element is necessary in its place ; but
it is only in the whole that the ground of this necessity
is shown, and therefore at any given moment during
the course of the play there is as yet no necessity. It
would appear that this analogy has some real value for
our understanding of the Divine in its relation to the
360 MENS CREATRIX
world, if we remember one great difference, namely,
that the Divine Author is, so to speak, writing the play
while it is being acted, and therefore we cannot throw
back, or at least have no grounds for throwing back,
the course of history into a previous determination in
the Author's mind. 1 Hamlet on the stage has to do
what he does in the printed book, for Shakespeare
wrote it so long ago ; it is rather the experience, as it
grew in Shakespeare's own mind in the process of
writing, which supplies the real analogy. But even
this is incomplete and to it must be added the analogy
of a father training his children. He may be the
perfect artist leading them step by step to a perfection
of life, but his material is the living will and he has
perpetually to adjust his action to the action of this
living will. His influence may be so great that he can
be perfectly sure of ultimately producing the result that
he wants, and yet it may be that his will is perpetually
thwarted and can only reach its end as the mistakes
of the child work themselves out in their destructive
consequences, and as he takes upon his own heart both
the evil which is represented by those mistakes and the
whole suffering which results from them.
We are now perhaps ready for a statement in set
terms of the relation to the Divine to history. We are
ourselves set in the mid process of Time ; we are actors
in the middle of a drama whose goal we ourselves only
dimly perceive or do not perceive at all. The Author
of the play, who is also the Father of us His children, is
watching at every turn, always countering our mistakes,
and even as each arises making of it the material
through which He more abundantly shows His love,
1 This point is vital. When the human mind tries to conceive the Eternal and
Omniscient God, it always pictures Him as knowing all Time at a moment of Time,
as, for example, knowing noiv all the past and future. But the whole point of the
argument is that while all Time is the object of the Eternal comprehension, the
comprehending Mind is extra-temporal and therefore does not grasp it now or at
any other Time, but precisely Eternally. Thus we turn the flank of Bergson's
argument that Finalism is "only inverted mechanism" (Creative Evolution, p. 41),
and that by means of a treatment of Time which is based on his own.
CHAP.XXVII ALPHA AND OMEGA 361
and therefore calls out from us a better response. Sin
itself is made to turn to blessing ; and yet it remains
sin, purely and utterly evil not to be attributed to
the Divine choice, but to human error and self-will, or
perhaps beyond that to diabolic suggestion. Because a
universe bound together by mutual love is the goal,
therefore all forces which are alien to love are by Divine
law self-destructive. He who hates will call forth hate,
until in the resulting conflict men learn that hate is the
enemy of their own souls. This result may be called
the Divine judgment, for it is the dispensation of the
Divine mercy by which man is enabled to learn out of
his own experience, and therefore to appreciate more
fully than otherwise he could, how evil a thing is hatred,
and how excellent a thing is love. 1 Both sin and the
pain it brings are part of the process by which finite
man learns that only in union with the infinite, and in
the fellowship with all else that is finite resulting from
that union, can anything that is good be reached. And
the process exists because love that has won against
hatred has in it for evermore a nobility which positively
consists in that conquest of hatred, and which is there-
fore otherwise not obtained. The evil remains evil,
but there is promise of a time when it will be good
that the evil should have been ; and Eternally it is good
that there should be evil in the course of Time.
Man is always wanting to imagine for himself a God
who shall exactly suit his need. Some think that they
have found this in an attenuated Christianity. They
are liable to argue that Christianity suits them, but that
perhaps it may not suit Indians or Arabians ; it is not
clear, they say, that Foreign Missions have good results,
and it is better (as it is certainly cheaper) to leave the
unconverted nations alone. But Christianity is not a
1 So the Great War came as God's judgment. And He let it come. Why was
the Emperor of Germany a William II. and not a Frederick I. ? God who inspires
the heart could have stopped the war. But it may have been more merciful to let
Europe learn even thus the true nature of its life of materialism, ambition, and
self-indulgence if it would learn in no other way.
362 MENS CREATRIX BOOKH
drug which suits some complaints and not others. It
is either sheer illusion or else it is the Truth. But if it
is the Truth, if the Universe happens to be constituted
in this way, the question is not whether the God of
Christianity suits us, but whether we suit Him. A
sane man does not say, " The Law of Gravitation does
not suit me, so I can ignore it and walk over the edge
of this cliff in security " ; nor will a sane man say, " A
God who requires me to love my very tiresome neigh-
bour and even my most wicked enemy does not suit
me, so I will pursue my selfish interests in security."
If Godjs love, selfishness is enmity against omnipotence
a foolish enmity. We may reject Him if we like,
but it makes no difference to His achievement of His
purpose. " The stone which the builders rejected, the
same was made the head of the corner. . . . He that
falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces, but on
whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust."
But the Power is also Love. To all that is selfish
the Love of God is infinitely terrible ; to realise that
Love is the law of the Universe, and that, whether we
will or not, we are being used and used up for the good
of the whole society of spirits, must be to the selfish
soul an agony of torture. Pride is offended to utter
misery at the thought of our impotence to change the
issue ; even our utmost assault on the Divine Love
merely enables it to manifest itself more fully. 1 But
Love rejoices in the union with all things living wherein
it finds itself. The realisation of this same truth about
God is Heaven or is Hell according as Love or Pride
is uppermost in the heart.
But the Divine Love cannot be content with using
as puppets of its purpose the souls whom it created to
be worthy of itself. The kind of power that God
exerted in the world before the birth of Christ was not
enough. Not only events, but hearts and wills must
1 Imagine the rage of Caiaphas when he first realised that he had been used to
further the cause of Christ and to heighten His glory.
CHAP, xxvn ALPHA AND OMEGA 363
be ruled. So the Love was made known in an intel-
ligible form through Life and Death, so that omni-
potence should be complete, and, by the responding love
called forth, the free allegiance of hearts and wills be
won. By Power and by Love God would deliver us
from Pride, which is the one poison of the soul, and
bring us into union with Himself.
This union, however, means something more than
the Divine control of our conscious wills and affections.
In such union the whole nature becomes receptive, and
deep in the subconscious nature divinely given thoughts
are planted, even as in the same depths of the selfish
nature other evil spirits, human or diabolic, plant the
thoughts of which it is receptive. We saw at the outset
of our enquiry that all living thought, or almost all,
is subconscious. We hardly ever know the origin of
those thoughts which we call our own, as distinct from
those which other men have given to us by speech or
writing. Probably it is by suggesting thoughts to the
subconscious minds of His servants that God most
normally directs the course of History, even as by
similar suggestion the evil powers try to thwart His
purpose. Probably the good seed and the bad are
sown by the Sowers in all hearts ; but only those grow
to conscious thoughts or plans of action which have
found congenial soil. But the evil device, as we have
seen, always leads to its own defeat and the greater
exaltation of good, while the good will possesses the one
supreme and lasting joy of union with the eternal God.
At every moment God is controlling the results of
human choice and turning them to the fulfilment of
His own purpose ; but the choice is human and the
wrong choice is an evil thing. But if the whole of
history is indeed an ordered system such as the intellect
demands for the satisfaction of its ideal of coherence,
we are led of necessity to believe in an Eternal Know-
ledge to which the whole process, endless though it
may possibly be, is present in a single apprehension.
364 MENS CREATRIX BOOKH
For the Omniscient Mind every episode is grasped as
an element in that glorious whole of which it is a con-
stituent part. " Everlastingly in the life of God death
is swallowed up in victory." * It is in the absolute per-
fection of that eternal experience, in which the whole
process of Time is grasped in a single apprehension, that
the ultimate ground of all that happens in history is to
be found. To those who have seen in the Life and
Death and Resurrection of Christ the manifestation of
the eternal omnipotence, this experience can already be
in a small measure shared through faith. " The Eternal
God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting
arms."
It fortifies my soul to know
That though I perish, Truth is so ;
That howsoe'er I stray or range,
Whate'er I do Thou dost not change ;
I steadier step when I recall
That if I slip, Thou dost not fall.
It is clear that this conception of God requires for
its statement the Doctrine of the Trinity ; indeed,
without that Doctrine the universe is completely un-
intelligible. Many have regarded this Doctrine as an
unfathomable mystery, a sort of revealed enigma ; and
this has led others to regard it as mere word-jugglery.
The unfathomable mystery is the Nature of God ; this
doctrine is merely the furthest that man has gone in the
rational apprehension of that mystery. We have found
ourselves compelled to affirm concerning God proposi-
tions which could not all be true of a single personality
such as ours. He is the Eternal and Omniscient, to
whom all History in its infinite range is present in a
single apprehension the Father of an Infinite Majesty ;
He is that Father self- revealed in the processes of
Nature and of human effort, and above all in Jesus
Christ who is the express image of His Person ; He is
that Father winning the love of His children by the
1 Canon Streeter in Concerning Prayer, p. 39.
CHAP, xxvn ALPHA AND OMEGA 365
guidance of their inmost thoughts, and pre-eminently
the thoughts of those whose hearts have been won to
free allegiance by the knowledge of the revelation which
is in Jesus Christ. But while in all of these activities
there is one God, there must in each be seen a distinct
Person to use the word which, though misleading, 1
is the best that human language affords. In One Person
we see the Eternal Knowledge of the world wherein
Love conquers Pride ; in Another we see the Infinite
cost at which the Victory is won ; in Another the age-
long struggle in which the fruits of the Victory are
secured. These could not be combined in a single
experience such as our experience is. God in Eternity
and God in Time one God ; but not one Person.
For God in Eternity all is perfect in the triumphant
harmony of the whole ; but for the very perfection of
that triumph God in Time must suffer real disappoint-
ment and defeat in order that defeat itself may be
defeated and captivity led captive. God, the Father,
of an Infinite Majesty ; God staggering beneath a load
too great for Him on the way from Jerusalem to
Calvary ; God struggling with many a disappointment
and defeat against the brutality of Nature and the
selfishness of Man : these are the Three Persons of the
One Godhead.
Of necessity the distinction between God in Eternity
and God in Time is clearer than that between the Son
and the Spirit who are both active in Time. 2 Indeed,
the early Church often drew no distinction here at
all. And St. Thomas himself declares that the Spirit
is only distinguishable from the Son because of His pro-
ceeding from Him : Si Spiritus Sanctus non esset a Ft/to,
nullo mo do posset ab eo personaliter distingui" 3 Apart
from the Incarnation the distinction could not be
1 Because Person generally connotes Individual, a thought which is here irrelevant
and whose introduction is heretical because nonsensical.
2 On the whole Doctrine see my lectures on The Nature of Personality, viii.
3 Summa, Pt. I. xxxvi. z. Clearly the Eastern formula " through the Son " means
just the same as the Western " from the Son," while more adequately safeguarding
the primacy of the Father.
366 MENS CREATRIX BOOK n
drawn. To say that the Holy Spirit " spake through
the prophets " and to say that " the Word of the
Lord " came to them is to say the same thing. But by
His self-revelation in the Son God makes our hearts
receptive of His Spirit, who is known to be other than
the Son, while yet one with Him, because being within
us He inspires us with devotion to Christ as One also
without us and above us.
This is not to make the doctrine of the Trinity
merely " economic.'* Unless we regard the Incarnation
as an accident so far as the Being of God is concerned,
the Revelation in the Son, and the consequent activity
of the Spirit uniting the world with God, are the very
means by which God Himself guides to its goal that
process of History which in its entirety is the object of
His Eternal Love, the occasion of His Eternal Joy, the
ground of His Eternal Peace.
But while belief in the Eternal so conceived is the
one thing that can at last give peace beyond all under-
standing to the mind which truly enters into the
miseries of this tormented world, it would seem to be
an untenable faith except for those who have found in
the Cross and Resurrection of the Word Incarnate
the pivot of their thought. 1 We are always trying to
reach the Eternal and Almighty by a leap, and then
to make use of Him for our temporal and finite
purposes. But if we are to enter into the life of God
we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son
of Man, making His human life our own. God in
His eternal omnipotence is only to be found by union
with God in the sacrifice of Gethsemane and Calvary.
We pray, like the sons of Zebedee, " We would that
thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall ask of
thee " ; and to that there is only one answer : " Can
you share my adventure and my sacrifice ? " The
cry of Moses is the cry of "all mankind "I BESEECH
THEE, SHOW ME THY GLORY." The answer to it is not
1 See pp. 291, 292.
CHAP, xxvii ALPHA AND OMEGA 367
that which he himself or any other of mankind would
expect ; but it is the only answer which for a moment
meets the human need or vindicates the omnipotence
of love. "THEY CRUCIFIED HIM, AND THE MALE-
FACTORS, ONE ON THE RIGHT HAND AND THE OTHER
ON THE LEFT/'
HAVING, THEREFORE, BRETHREN, BOLDNESS
For it is a venture^ not a certainty^ to which we are
called;
To ENTER INTO THE HOLY PLACE
The Presence of God, which is Love ;
BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS
In the inspiration of His sacrifice ;
BY THE WAY WHICH HE DEDICATED FOR us
He has trodden the path Himself;
A NEW AND LIVING WAY
None could travel it before He came ; and it is found
by ///?, not by thought alone ;
THROUGH THE VEIL, THAT is TO SAY, His FLESH
His Human Nature conceals His Divinity , until we
share it by living in His strength His sacrificial life ;
AND HAVING A GREAT PRIEST OVER THE HOUSE
OF GOD
In the innermost Presence of Love there is One to
represent us when -we stay away, to welcome us when
we come ;
LET US DRAW NEAR WITH A TRUE HEART IN
FULNESS OF FAITH
Though it is a venture, and faith is not demonstrative
knowledge^ we can live by this faith in unalloyed
confidence.
" MT LORD AND MX GOD."
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
DATE
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
OVERDUE.
LD 21-100
YC 31301
G5600
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY