me in a cage with a fountain pen, and exhibited me to his classes at Oxford as a literary freak!
VII
PHILIP TO JESSICA
My dear Miss Doane:
I will remember your amused hostility to “hairpin gardeners” and see that no more out-of-door books come to you until I have one with a stimulating odour of burning cornstalks and rotting cabbages. Meanwhile let me assure you that your reviews of Elizabeth, Evelina, Judith, and their sisters have been none the less delightful for a vein of wicked impatience running through them. The books I am now sending. …
You ought not to be amazed at my dismal comments on latter-day literature. The fact is, you have dissected our present book-makers better than I could do it myself, for the reason that I am too amiable (I presume, you see, that I have the wit) to judge my fellow-workers with such merciless veracity.
But I have just read an article in the Popular Science Monthly which throws an unexpected light on the subject. The paper is by Dr. Minot and is a biologist’s comment on “The Problem of Consciousness.” You might not suppose that an argument to show how “the function of consciousness is to dislocate in time the reactions from sensations” (!) would have much to do with the properties of literature, but it has. Let me copy out some of his words, as probably you have not seen the magazine:
“The communication between individuals is especially characteristic of vertebrates, and in the higher members of that subkingdom it plays a very great rôle in aiding the work of consciousness. In man, owing to articulate speech, the factor of communication has acquired a maximum importance. The value of language, our principal medium of communication, lies in its aiding the adjustment of the individual and the race to external reality. Human evolution is the continuation of animal evolution, and in both the dominant factor has been the increase of the resources available for consciousness.”
Now that sounds pretty well for a scientist. It should seem to follow that literature, being, so to speak, the permanent mode of communication—conveying ideas and emotions not merely from man to man, but from generation to generation—is the predominant means by which this development of consciousness is attained. It is a pretty support we derive from the enemy. But mark the serpent in the grass—“the adjustment of the individual and the race to external reality.” The real aim of evolution is purely external, the adjustment of man to environment; consciousness has value in so far as it promotes this adjustment. Flatly, to me, this is pure nonsense, a putting of the cart before the horse, a vulgar hysteron-proteron, none the less execrable because it is the working principle not of a single man, but of the whole of soctety to-day. Consciousness, I hold, is the supremely valuable thing, and progress, evolution, civilisation, etc., are only significant in so far as they afford nourishment to it. Literature is the self-sufficient fruit of this consciousness, I say; the world says it is a mere means of promoting our physical adjustment. You see I take up lightly the huge enmity of the world.
This is wild stuff to put into a journalistic letter, no doubt. If I were writing a treatise I would undertake to show that this difference of view in regard to consciousness and physical adjustment is the oldest and most serious debate of human intelligence. Saint Catharine, Thomas à Kempis, and all those religious fanatics who counted the world well lost, made a god of consciousness and thought very little of physical adjustment. The debate in their day was an equal one. To-day it is all on one side—and væ victis! I cry out—why should I not?—as one of the conquered, and I am charitable enough to advise another not to enter the combat. It is a poor consolation to wrap yourself in your virtue, mount a little pedestal, set your hand on your heart, and spout with Lucan: The winning cause for the gods, but the vanquished for me! Sometimes we begin to wonder whether, after all, the world may not be right, and at that moment the wind begins to blow pretty chill through our virtue.
VIII
PHILIP TO JESSICA
My dear Miss Doane:
Is my suspicion right? Was my last letter to you really a tangle of crude ideas? That has grown to be my way, until I begin to wonder whether the horrid noises of Park Row may not have thrown my mind a little out of balance. For my strength lay in silence and solitude. It is hard for me to establish any sufficient bond between my intellectual life and my personal relationships, and as a consequence my letters, when they cease to be mere journalistic memoranda, float out into a sea of unrestrained revery.
Yet I would ask you to be patient with me in this matter. From the first, even before I saw you here in New York, I felt that somehow you might, by mere patience and indulgence, if you would, re-establish the lost bond in my life; that somehow the shadow of your personality was fitted to move among the shadows of my intellectual world. What a strange compliment to send a young woman!—for compliment it seems in my eyes.
Meanwhile, as some explanation of this intellectual twilight into which I would so generously introduce you, I am sending you a little book I wrote and foolishly printed several years ago on the quiet life of the Hindus. The mood of the book still returns to me at times, though I have cast away its philosophy as impracticable. I look for peace in the way that Plato trod, and some day I shall write my palinode in that spirit. Let me, in this connection, copy out a few verses I wrote last night and the night before. It is my first digression into poetry since I was a boy:
| THE THREE COMMANDS I Out of this meadow-land of teen and dole, Because my heart had harboured in its cell One prophet’s word, an Angel bore my soul Through starry ways to God’s high citadel. There in the shadow of a thousand domes I walked, beyond the echo of earth’s noise; While down the streets between the happy homes Only the murmur passed of infinite joys. Then said my soul: “O fair-engirdled Guide! Show me the mansion where I, too, may won: Here in forgetful peace I would abide, And barter earth for God’s sweet benison.” “Nay,” he replied, “not thine the life Elysian, Live thou the world’s life, holding yet thy vision A hope and memory, till thy course be run.” II Then said my soul: “I faint and seek my rest; The glory of the vision veils mine eyes; These infinite murmurs beating at my breast Turn earthly music into plangent sighs. “Because thou biddest, I will tread the maze With men my brothers, yet my hands withhold From building at the Babel towers they raise, And all my life within my heart infold.” The Angel answered: “Lo, as in a dream Thy feet have passed beyond the gates of flame; And evermore the toils of men must seem But wasteful folly in a path of shame. “Yet I command thee, and vouchsafe no reason, Thou shalt endure the world’s work for a season; Work thou, and leave to others fame and blame.” III I bowed submission, dumb a little while. Then said my soul: “Thy will I dare not balk; I reach my hands to labours that defile, And help to rear a plant of barren stalk. “Yet only I, because in life I bear The vision of that peace, may never feel The spur of keen ambition, never share The dread of loss that makes the world’s work real. “Therefore in scorn I draw my bitter breath, And sorrow cherish as my proudest right, Till scorn and sorrow fade in sweeter death.” The Angel answered, turning as for flight: “The labour sorrow-done is more than sterile, And scorn will change thy vision to soul’s peril: Be glad; thy work is gladness, child of light!” |
IX
JESSICA TO PHILIP
My dear Mr. Towers:
