d
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 

 
 COMMON-SENSE 
 T H EOL O GY
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A Popular Introduction 
 
 By Dr. Wilhelm Windelband 
 Translated by Joseph McCabe 
 
 Cloth. 21i. net. 
 
 " Many of the old philosophic 
 problems are stated in a fresh and 
 illuminating way, and the author has 
 a rare gift for explaining how different 
 schools of philosophic thought arise." 
 Literary Guide. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON
 
 COMMON-SENSE 
 THEOLOGY • By 
 
 C. E. M. JOAD, Author of 
 
 ' Essays in Common-Sense Philosophy^ ' Com- 
 mon-Sense Ethics^ ' The Highbrows^ etc. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN LTD 
 LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE
 
 First published in igii 
 
 [All rights reserved) 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by 
 
 tJNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 BERGSON AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE . . .13 
 
 Chapter II 
 
 THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 40 
 
 Chapter III 
 
 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION . . . . . II8 
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 THE LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART . . .163 
 
 Chapter V 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND FACT IN A WORLD OF CHANGE . . 227 
 
 INDEX 28s 
 
 64S3(i3
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Although the title of this book is Common-sense Theology, 
 it is not about God. God as popularly conceived possesses 
 many attributes, of which the most noteworthy are goodness, 
 omnipotence and creativeness. It is unfortunate that for the 
 existence of these attributes there is no evidence, with the 
 exception of that of creativeness. The world undoubtedly 
 exists, and unless it generated itself, somebody or something 
 created it. But a God who is bowdlerised of all quahties 
 except creativeness is scarcely recognisable, and in order to 
 avoid raising undue hopes, it is better to give Him another 
 name. In this book He is called the Life Force, the justifica- 
 tion of the words used in the title being, that theology is the 
 name we give to discussion about God, and common sense 
 to the attitude towards Him which refuses to credit Him 
 with any quahties beyond those, or rather beyond that one, 
 which He manifestly exhibits. It is to be regretted that no 
 sooner is the term Life Force substituted for the word God, 
 than the tone of the discussion is automatically lowered. 
 Critics have formed the habit of adopting a famihar and 
 patronising tone towards the Life Force, which they would 
 never dream of extending towards the theologians' God. 
 When, for instance, they happen upon it in a book, they 
 welcome it as " our old friend the Life Force," pat it on the 
 back, and gently chaff the author for introducing such a well- 
 worn hack in order to extricate himself from his metaphysical 
 difficulties. Thus the Life Force has come to occupy a position 
 which varies between that of a poor relation and a deus ex 
 machina, and in neither capacity does it receive the respect 
 which is due to antiquity. 
 
 The reasons for this attitude are not far to seek. The 
 Life Force is not omnipotent like God, but Hmited : hence it 
 can neither hit back when we insult it, not reward us when
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 we pay it homage. It is not inevitable like Fate, but pro- 
 visional : it is not necessary therefore either to fear it or to 
 propitiate it. It is not irresponsible like blind chance, but 
 purposive ; and there is therefore neither logic nor comfort 
 in ignoring it. The belief m the Life Force is in fact the only 
 form of belief which is a rationalisation neither of our vanity 
 nor of our fears. There is nothing to inspire us in a conviction 
 of its existence, and there is nothing to distress us in a know- 
 ledge of its power. 
 
 Men have created God in their own image, because the 
 existence of an all-powerful and all-kindly Being, working 
 and watching in their interests, flatters their conceit and 
 invests their existence with purpose and significance. Men 
 have imagined an ineluctable and all-compelling Fate because 
 it shoulders the responsibihty for their actions and removes 
 the intolerable burden of human freedom. But a belief in 
 the Life Force panders to no innate longing and satisfies no 
 deep-seated need. Why, then, should we hold it ? I am 
 afraid that the only argument I can adduce in its favour is 
 that it appears to square with the evidence. To judge from 
 the history of speculation, this has usually been found an 
 unconvincing reason for entertaining a behef ; but I can 
 offer nothing better, and those who prefer behefs, which are 
 dictated by considerations of comfort and cheerfulness to 
 those which are merely true, will find the Life Force as a form 
 of mental diet arid and unsubstantial enough. 
 
 If the Life Force were all-powerful things would not be so 
 bad : the realisation that we are nothing more than weapons 
 in the grasp of something or somebody which has created us 
 for its purpose is humiliating enough ; but it is some com- 
 pensation to know that the something or somebody is bound 
 to win. But a behef in the Life Force does not even give us 
 the certainty of being on the winning side, so that there is 
 little enough to be said for the palatableness of the behef : 
 so much the better then for its truth, seeing that we tend to 
 beheve palatable truths because they are palatable, and 
 unpalatable truths because they are true. 
 
 The famiharity of " our old friend the Life Force " is, 
 however, more easily to be explained than the implied 
 antiquity. Why is the Life Force old, or rather, why is the
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 theory that asserts the Life Force old ? It is true that it has 
 had a considerable vogue, and that since Schopenhauer in- 
 vented " The Will " and Bergson followed it up with the 
 dlan vital, Vitalism in some form or other has been prevalent 
 enough in modern thought. But an antiquity of a hundred 
 years or so is nothing remarkable in philosophy — God himself 
 is considerably older — and as the various forms in which 
 expression has been given to the theory have tended to 
 contradict rather than to elucidate each other, each may 
 claim for itself a considerable measure of novelty. 
 
 There is, of course, a sense in which every metaphysical 
 theory is as old as human speculation, being discovered and 
 ignored in each successive age until such time as the thought 
 of society has moved up to the level necessary for its compre- 
 hension and acceptance. Once this level is reached, the 
 theory is said to be discovered, when all that has happened 
 is that its discovery has for the first time been noticed. In 
 this sense, then, the Life Force theory dates back to Hera- 
 cleitus' aphorism " -navTa pel," if it is not still older. From 
 any other point of view it may venture to make a real claim 
 to novelty. That reality is change has been asserted, as I 
 have already hinted, with varying degrees of confidence and 
 dogmatism from Heracleitus to Bergson. That there is an 
 immanent principle of hfe which expresses itself in all the 
 thrustings and pulsings of the world of sense, of thought, 
 and of matter has been a common-place since Schopenhauer. 
 But the attempt to saddle the immanent principle with the 
 responsibility for some part of reaUty only, leaving the whole 
 realm of matter outside its scope, has been made less fre- 
 quently. Such a view leads to an unfashionable duaUsm, and 
 flouts our incur able tendency to postulate a unity . But the beUef 
 that truth must be a unity has no foundation in necessity ; 
 truth may be a patchwork, and since a unity requires its 
 upholders to account for error, inconsistency, pain and evil 
 as part of the unity, or else to explain them away as delusive 
 appearances, it seems preferable to sacrifice the emotional 
 comfort of the belief that all is One and that the One is good, 
 to the necessity of accounting for the facts as we find them, 
 in the hope that the complications and untidinesses of the 
 resultant behef will be ascribed to the perverseness of the
 
 10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 facts, and not to any inherent cantankerousness on the part 
 of its author. 
 
 A theory which is consistently worked out on these hnes 
 is, comparatively speaking, a new one, and critics who persist 
 in the habit of addressing the Life Force as an old and rather 
 boring acquaintance, because in some form or other they 
 have met it in the works of popular authors ever since they 
 began to read, must remember that the antiquity of philo- 
 sophical theories normally exceeds that of their critics, and 
 that it is possible for the Life Force to be a comparative 
 newcomer on the speculative stage, even though a critic has 
 met it before. We need, then, be disturbed neither by the 
 condescension of the critics, nor by the implied charge of stale - 
 ness. It is only natural that men should condescend to a 
 Force that possesses neither the dignity of God nor the 
 inevitableness of Fate : it is only natural that they should 
 fail to be impressed by the merits of a theory to which they 
 have grown accustomed ; for a truth has only to be repeated 
 sufficiently often to cease to appear true. 
 
 A word may be added on the form in which the theory 
 is presented. The dialogue form practised often since Plato, 
 has been practised rarely with success, and is accordingly 
 unpopular to-day. The reason is not far to seek. Philosopheis 
 have endeavoured to invest their dialogue with dramatic 
 qualities : they have used it as a vehicle for the expression of 
 their wit, and they have sought to make their personages 
 living characters of flesh and blood. But philosophers are not 
 normally endowed with the gift of repartee, nor are they as a 
 rule pre-eminent for the exuberance of creative imagination, a 
 circumstance not to be wondered at, seeing that, if philo- 
 sophers were really gifted with these talents, they would 
 devote them to the more lucrative and pleasing task of pro- 
 ducing fiction proper in the form of plays and novels, 
 instead of spending their time in ploughing the thankless and 
 wearisome sands of metaphysical speculation. 
 
 The result is that the philosopher's jokes have fallen as 
 flat as his characters, and the dialogue form has lapsed into 
 disrepute. If, however, the dialogue is used solely as a device 
 for ensuring brevity and lucidity in the exposition of ideas, 
 and no attempt is made to convert the protagonists from
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 mouthpieces of argument into personages of flesh and blood, 
 it will be found to be not without advantages. In particular 
 it enables the writer to state and to meet objections to theories 
 which he may be propounding, without having continually 
 to resort to such clumsy expressions as, " it may be urged 
 on the other hand," or "a critic might retort in the following 
 terms," or "it is now time to consider what arguments may 
 be adduced against the view we have adopted." The device 
 of employing different characters and affixing to them definite 
 labels so that their general point of view is known and may 
 be assumed to underlie any observations they may make, 
 enables the writer to short-circuit the processes of argument 
 and to state his theories and the objections to them with 
 the minimum of circumlocution. For the dialogue form, 
 then, it is claimed that it makes for clarity in statement and , /-, 
 brevity in exposition, and by this claim it must stand or fall. 
 The scene of the dialogue is laid in an English country 
 mansion. The wealthy manufacturer who has purchased it, 
 finding that country society has perished from inanition, 
 endeavours to relieve the boredom which seems inevitably to 
 attend the declining years of the successful business man by 
 reviving the patron system. The weakness for metaphysical 
 speculation which so often manifests itself in later years in the 
 systems of those who have spent their lives in dealing with 
 hard facts, leads him to select as the objects of his patronage 
 persons whose interests are philosophical rather than artistic. 
 The need of the philosopher and the psychologist for a patron 
 is not less acute, because more rarely satisfied, than that of 
 the poet. This circumstance should cause no surprise. Poetry 
 may at least claim to please, even though it does not sell, 
 but the effect produced by the philosopher is one of annoyance 
 rather than of entertainment. Moreover, philosophy being 
 useless as a means of obtaining a livelihood, is rarely demanded 
 at our universities, where a hmited number of professors 
 lecture to a diminishing quantity of students. Professorial 
 posts being few, the philosopher must possess an independent 
 income, obtain a patron or go to the wall, and unless big 
 business can be induced to take up this most esoteric of 
 hobbies on a generous scale, the Universe will soon fall an 
 unchallenged prey to the scientists.
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the present instance our patron has assured himself 
 of sufficient dividends from speculative business to be able 
 to afford speculative metaphysics, thereby gaining credit for 
 a disinterested love of truth for its own sake, and being enabled 
 to maintain a company of professional critics and philosophers 
 who dispense free wisdom to all comers. John and Anthony 
 are two of the inhabitants of this philosophers' asylum; 
 Mr. Banks and Professor Cameron two of the visitors, of 
 whom Mr. Banks wants to know and Professor Cameron to 
 criticise. For the rest, it is hoped that the dialogue will be 
 found self-explanatory. 
 
 My thanks are due to Professor T. P. Nunn for kindly 
 reading through the manuscript of the last chapter. 
 
 C. E. M. J.
 
 Common-sense Theology 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 BERGSON AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 Object of Discussing Philosophy. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I want to have a talk with you about 
 philosophy. Before doing so, however, I ought perhaps to 
 mention that I am not a philosopher either by temperament, 
 training or profession. I know no technical terms, and such 
 philosophy as I have read seems to me to be largely unin- 
 telligible. 
 
 John. I don't wish to be rude, but may I ask why, if this 
 be the case, you desire to discuss philosophy with me ? From 
 your appearance I take you to be a business man. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I really don't see what that has to do with it. 
 
 John. I am sorry. I am afraid that again you may think 
 me rude, since I have noticed that nobody likes to be taken 
 for what he is, least of all, a business man. Whatever you 
 are, don't look it, is usually regarded as a recipe in a sentence 
 for success in life. I referred to your appearance, however, 
 because it is unusual for business men to have either the 
 desire or the capacity for philosophical pursuits, and indeed, 
 having regard to their occupation, it is not to be expected 
 that they should. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What you say is true on the whole. But I 
 have always had a desire for useless knowledge, or perhaps 
 I should say for understanding, which the mere accumulation 
 of facts, which passes for knowledge among most, does not 
 seem to satisfy. It is for this reason that I have dabbled a 
 
 13
 
 14 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 little in philosophy, which spends its time discussing knowledge 
 without acquiring it. 
 
 My wife too, who is a Methodist, is at times a little trying 
 in her temper, and a little dogmatic, not to say narrow, in her 
 convictions. One wants a refuge . . . 
 
 John. Of course, of course. I quite understand, but 
 need we . . . 
 
 Mr. Banks. Enlarge on my wife ? Not at all ! Quite 
 unnecessary. Well, a few months ago I happened to pick 
 up a book of Bergson's, Creative Evolution. I found him 
 easy to understand, persuasive and convincing. Previously 
 I had been a sort of hazy Idealist, a follower of Hegel and 
 Mr. Bradley, so far at least as I could understand them. But 
 Bergson seemed to prick the bubble of the Absolute and to 
 make philosophy at once simpler and more concrete. Then 
 I got Time and Freewill and Matter and Memory, and I had 
 better say at once that the result is that I am a convinced 
 Bergsonian. Now, what I wish to discover from you is whether 
 there are any grounds upon which his theory may be validly 
 impugned — I don't mean upon points of detail, but upon 
 fundamentals ? 
 
 Bergson is notoriously hostile to the ordinary philosopher 
 and to the ordinary intellectualist methods of philosophy. 
 It is perhaps natural then that his views should not be generally 
 accepted by philosophers ; and indeed I understand that he 
 has lost caste with them as a philosopher, in proportion as he 
 has won favour with the man in the street by popularizing 
 philosophy. Now, what I want to know is whether this 
 attitude to Bergson's work on the part of orthodox philosophers 
 is the natural antagonism of men to a theory which, if true, 
 would render their methods superfluous and turn their salaries 
 into unearned incomes, or whether they have real difficulties 
 to bring against his position ? In a word, is the criticism of 
 Bergson simply that of men whose salaries depend on their 
 not letting him refute them, or is it sincere, and if so on what 
 grounds ? 
 
 John. Well, I am not a Bergsonian, and my salary is 
 independent of the truth of the Bergsonian philosophy and 
 the success of its methods. Perhaps, then, I am in as good 
 a position as any to try to indicate the difficulties which
 
 OBJECT OF DISCUSSING PHILOSOPHY 15 
 
 exist in his philosophy. But first tell me whether, when 
 you say you are a convinced Bergsonian, you are referring 
 to a certain conception prevalent in modern thought, to what 
 Schopenhauer calls the Will to Live, Shaw the Life Force, 
 Wells a Limited Deity, Bergson the elan vital, and the biolo- 
 gists Vitalism, or to the special form which this general view 
 assumes in the philosophy of Bergson. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I meant to refer to Bergson's philosophy 
 only. But I am interested to hear that this philosophy links 
 on to a movement generally prevalent in modern thought, 
 and should be glad to hear more of this general notion when 
 you have discussed more particularly the philosophy of 
 Bergson. 
 
 John. The point is important because to my mind it is 
 possible, and even desirable, to accept at any rate in part that 
 attitude to the Universe as a whole, and to the position of human 
 life within it which is implicit in this general trend of modern 
 thought to which I referred — it is really like a common 
 strand running through the systems of many different thinkers — 
 while refusing to adopt many of the conclusions of M. Bergson. 
 
 However, the important thing in the first place is to 
 consider these conclusions and the methods by which they 
 are reached, and with this object I propose, with your consent, 
 briefly to outline the main position which M. Bergson adopts, 
 so that we may satisfy ourselves that we are in agreement 
 as to what exactly his conclusions are before I venture to 
 criticise them. 
 
 Sketch of Bergson's Position. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, that will be the best procedure. Nor 
 will it, I think, be a long or difficult task to outline the main 
 features of Bergson's position. 
 
 John. No. For his view of the Universe is essentially 
 a simple one. It is characterised by the breadth and uni- 
 formity of its design, rather than by its elaborateness or 
 complexity. Perhaps it is in this very fact of its simplicity 
 that we shall detect a weakness. Truth may prove to be a 
 dull and complex mosaic, rather than a beautiful and rounded 
 whole. However, I must not anticipate.
 
 16 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 Let us consider then, first, Bergson's metaphysics and then 
 his logic. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I had better be quite clear in the first place 
 what you mean by these words. By Bergson's metaphysics 
 I take it you mean his view of the nature and constitution 
 of the Universe, by his logic his view of the nature of the 
 human mind, or at any rate that faculty of the human mind 
 by which the Universe is known. 
 
 John. Yes, that is what I mean. First, then, as to his 
 I metaphysics. Bergson conceives of the Universe as a con- 
 Y stantly changing flux. There is for him only one real thing 
 in the Universe and that is change. It is not even correct 
 to speak of there being a Universe in which change takes 
 place, because there is no Universe that changes ; there is, 
 in fact, nothing except change. In this connection we are 
 expressly warned by Bergson against conceiving him to mean 
 by the Universe, or indeed by any living thing in the Universe, 
 something which changes constantly but which remains the 
 same through change. A thing that lives is a thing that 
 endures not by remaining the same, but by changing unceas- 
 ingly. This characteristic of enduring by changing is a char- 
 acteristic of living things only ; it is not a characteristic of 
 dead material things, as these are commonly conceived : they 
 endure through or in spite of change. But in the case of 
 things that live, their life is change itself. It is a constant, 
 unceasing flow, and the Universe itself is a constant unceasing 
 flow. What, then, is matter ? In order to answer this 
 question we must go on to consider Bergson's logic. What 
 is for him the nature of knowledge, or at any rate, that we may 
 not beg the question, of that faculty that knows the Universe 
 as it really is ? Now for most philosophers this faculty has 
 been the faculty of reason or intellect. For Bergson it is 
 not so. Bearing in mind his statement that life is change, 
 it is clear that the most important thing in life is not thought 
 but activity ; and the intellect has been evolved not, as one 
 might have supposed, for the purposes of thought, but for 
 the purposes of activity. Now it is clear that a vision of the 
 world as a continual, changing flow, without modification or 
 distinction, would not make for effective action. Action in 
 such an environment would be like action in a uniform,
 
 SKETCH OF BERGSON'S POSITION 17 
 
 impenetrable fog, in which no one thing was clearly distin- 
 guished from any other thing, and everything was continually 
 changing into something else. The intellect, therefore, sees 
 the Universe not as it is, but in a form suitable for action, 
 namely, as a collection of solid, static bodies extended in space. 
 These solid, static bodies, which are the things of which the 
 Universe is, according to intellect, composed, are what is 
 called matter. Whether this view of the Universe is imposed 
 upon it by the intellect, or whether the intellect finds matter 
 in the Universe in the form in which it sees it ; whether, in 
 short, this is a false or distorted view, or whether it is a correct 
 though partial one, is a point to which I shall return in a 
 minute. 
 
 It is, however, in any event plain that Bergson regards 
 this view of the Universe, which is taken by the intellect as 
 being unreal or incomplete, in some sense in which the view 
 of it taken by another faculty is both real and complete. 
 ,. This other faculty is intuition. This intuition can be, but is 
 not, I think, correctly described as a combination of intellect 
 and instinct. It is a faculty which Bergson has a difficulty 
 in describing, but is most clearly manifest in the works of 
 great artists and men of genius. These enable man to pene- 
 trate further into reality by disclosing to him their own 
 vision of reality, which is in some way a deeper and truer one 
 than his. This vision they achieve by means of intuition. 
 Reality, mind you, is change, and change is life. Change and 
 life and reality are in the long run identical and synonymous. 
 In order, then, to achieve a true knowledge of reality, intuition 
 has only to concentrate itself on the process of living. The 
 intuition of life is knowledge of reality ; and for this philosophy 
 there is no theory of knowledge other than the consciousness 
 of living, which is also a consciousness of duration. It is by 
 means of intuition or consciousness of life, then, that we 
 arrive at truth, by means of intellect that we equip ourselves 
 for action. 
 
 I think this brief resume of Bergson's main position will 
 be sufficient for my purpose ; but I should be glad to know, 
 before we go on, whether I have described his philosophy 
 more or less as you would have done yourself, or whether you 
 think that I have misrepresented him on any point. 
 
 2
 
 i 
 
 18 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 Mr. Banks. No, I think you have summed up his main 
 position clearly and with admirable frankness. You have not, 
 of course, gone into detail, but you have said enough to show, 
 I think, that we are agreed as to the main essentials of Bergson's 
 philosophy. I just wondered whether you were not perhaps 
 making some confusion for yourself over the question of the 
 view the intellect takes of reality, which I must confess seems 
 to me clear enough. 
 
 Criticism. The Intellect's View of Reality. 
 
 John. That is likely enough ; for the whole philosophy 
 seems to me such a mass of confusions, inconsistencies, in- 
 sufficient premises, unjustifiable conclusions, and following 
 non sequiturs that I am almost driven to account for my 
 failure to accept it coupled with its great popularity, by the 
 supposition that I make difficulties and inconsistencies for 
 myself in what is a perfectly harmonious whole ; just as 
 intellect is supposed to make matter for itself in a perfect 
 flux. However, since you have mentioned this particular 
 point, let me begin my criticism with it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, I should be glad to see what your 
 difficulty is. 
 
 John. The difficulty here really resolves itself into two 
 difficulties. The first is this. Bergson postulates one real 
 thing, and only one, in the Universe : this thing is time or 
 change. The word by which this conception is usually trans- 
 lated in English is " duration." We have to think, to use one 
 of Bergson's metaphors, of a kind of centre from which the 
 whole stream of evolution, that is the world, flows out con- 
 tinually. And yet even the centre is not a concrete thing, a 
 real source : it is a " continuity of the outflow." There is 
 therefore no distinction even between the centre and that 
 which flows from it. The centre and the outflow, in so far 
 as you can speak of them separately, are together reality. 
 Reality is in fact spoken of as a perfect flow without division 
 or individuation of any kind. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that the real character of reality 
 is homogeneous. 
 
 John. Yes, that is what I mean. Now, we are to con- 
 ceive of the intellect as operating upon this perfect, homo-
 
 THE INTELLECT'S VIEW OF REALITY 19 
 
 geneous flow, and carving out of it solid objects extended in 
 space, and concepts sucli as quality, number, blueness, and 
 so forth for the purpose of action. The first question I want 
 to put is, why, if reality is like this, a great blur without dis- 
 tinction or individuation, should intellect carve out of it 
 some objects rather than others ? Why, in short, should it 
 carve out a chair rather than a hippopotamus ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. For the purposes of action, of course, because 
 a chair is convenient for the action of sitting down and a 
 hippopotamus is not. 
 
 John. But if there is no rudimentary distinction of any 
 kind in the real, if there is not some elementary kind of blot 
 or mark which the intellect can, so to speak, work up into a 
 chair, we must assume that the intellect simply carves a chair 
 out of nothing, a piece of matter out of a blank oneness or whole, 
 which has no more the suggestion of a chair about it than 
 the suggestion of a hippopotamus. This interpretation would 
 mean, then, that the intellect created the chair. But Bergson 
 does not call the intellect creative. It is, for him, simply 
 the faculty which takes a certain view of reality, a view which, 
 in virtue, of course, of what it finds there, works up something 
 into a chair which is a concept useful for action. Does it, 
 then, find there after all some rudimentary distinction or 
 articulation, some mark in the real which is the raw material 
 on which intellect works when it presents us with a chair 
 instead of with a hippopotamus ? But if so, reality is not 
 perfect and indivisible change ; nor is it a solid, homogeneous 
 flow as Bergson would have us believe. It contains differences 
 within itself, real differences which can be worked up by 
 intellect into the objects we know. This is my first difficulty. 
 And there is a further point which is really part of the same 
 difficulty. You would agree, would you not, that there is 
 some kind of difference between a chair and a table ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, a kind of difference. Not a real one, 
 I suppose, for reality itself is without differences. The 
 apparent difference is due to our intellectual apprehension 
 of these objects, since our intellect takes a partial or unreal 
 view of reality for the purposes of action. 
 
 John. Well, let us call it an illusory difference, the 
 appearance of a difference only. But tell me this : how out
 
 i 
 
 20 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 of perfect and indivisible oneness can you evolve even the 
 appearance of difference ? How, in fact, if reality is one and 
 the same through and through, do you and I come to think 
 that a chair is different from a table, even if our thought is 
 erroneous ? 
 
 Mr. Banks, But, as I said before, the difierence is not 
 real, it is illusory. 
 
 John. Quite ! But what then ? Do you not see that 
 it is as difficult to conceive how error and illusion can be 
 generated out of perfect being and perfect reality, as to 
 account for the emergence of diversity from perfect oneness ? 
 Whether you say that the difference is real or illusory is 
 immaterial, for we can explain neither the fact nor the illusion 
 of difference if we start with a reality which is entirely one 
 and perfectly homogeneous. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I will consider the point. What is your 
 second difficulty with regard to the intellect's view of reality ? 
 
 The Conception of Matter. 
 
 John. My second difficulty is really a group of difficulties 
 which centre round the Bergsonian conception of matter. 
 H reality is one general flow of movement, whence do you 
 obtain dead matter ? The usual answer is that matter is 
 the result of an interruption of the flow. Matter is the 
 inversion of the general movement, the flow going backwards 
 as it were, this inversion being brought about by an inter- 
 ruption. Now what is this interruption ? It cannot be 
 matter itself, for matter is caused by the fact of there being 
 an interruption : matter is, in fact, the result of the inter- 
 ruption, not the cause. Are we to assume, then, that reality 
 is twofold : first a general flow or movement ; second, something 
 other than the flow or movement which interrupts the flow 
 and so causes matter, but which is not matter ? What then 
 becomes of the homogeneous character of reality ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I think you are under some misapprehen- 
 sion here. Matter is not the result of the interruption : it is 
 the interruption, the detension of the tension I think Bergson 
 calls it. 
 
 John. You are right. He does sometimes speak of it 
 as the interruption itself, and I will deal with this conception
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF MATTER 21 
 
 in a moment. Before doing so, however, I want to insist 
 that he does also speak of it as the result of an interruption 
 which is other than itself. There are at least two of the 
 famous Bergson metaphors — or, if they are not Bergson's, 
 they are from his follower Le Roy, who has caught his master's 
 trick of metaphor — which bear out this conception. One is 
 the conception of life or of the vital surge as a rocket whose 
 burnt-out stick, which is matter, falls to the gound after the 
 rocket has spent its force. The other is of life as the jet of 
 a fountain and matter as the drops that fall back as the 
 creative movement, which is the fountain, ascends. Matter 
 is in each case, you see, likened to a reverse or downward 
 movement brought about by an interruption or a spending 
 of a forward or upward movement. And in speaking of 
 matter in this way Bergson destroys the conception of the 
 single and imiform character of reality. 
 
 Let us, however, suppose that matter is, as you say, itself 
 an interruption of the flow and not the result of an inter- 
 ruption. We are here asked to conceive of something which 
 is not the general flow or movement, which is, however, 
 co-existent with it, which is equally real with it, and which 
 interrupts it. It is clear, then, that we are again driven to 
 depart from our conception of reality as one and simple, aud 
 to suppose it twofold in character : it is the nature of reality 
 to be, first a general flow or movement ; second, something 
 which interrupts this flow or movement, and is called matter. 
 Matter, then, is not something illusory carved out of the real 
 by intellect for the purpose of action. SoHd matter extended 
 in space is real and fundamental : it is the interruption of 
 the flow. We have thus in two respects already departed 
 from the conception of a uniform real, namely, a homogeneous 
 flow from which we started. But two further difficulties 
 have now come into view. 
 
 You will remember that Bergson often describes matter \ 
 as action unmaking itself, or as a reverse movement. But a ^ 
 reverse movement is not the same as a mere interruption. 
 The phrase " a reverse movement " implies that matter, 
 instead of being a mere inert, solid thing extended in space, 
 as it appears to us, partakes itself of the quality of life. It 
 moves, it flows, it changes only in a different direction from
 
 22 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 the movement of life itself. The metaphors I referred to a 
 moment ago support this idea. Matter is the counter-current, 
 the same current, it might almost seem, as that which is life, 
 turned back upon itself. Why, then, does the intellect always 
 select this particular reverse movement for the view of reality 
 which presents us with an inert matter, and never the 
 movement called hfe ? Why, in fact, if matter and hfe are 
 both movements, do we call matter " matter " and not " life " ? 
 If life changes and matter also changes, in virtue of what 
 principle does the intellect dub the one static and inert, 
 and not the other ? 
 
 I think, however, that this difficulty is only one of many 
 that spring from a confusion with regard to matter that is 
 fundamental, and it is the recognition and establishment of 
 the fact of this confusion which constitutes the second of the 
 two further difficulties to which I referred a moment ago. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You are being terribly precise. Does it 
 really matter whether this difficulty is a first or a further, 
 or the first or second of two furthers, or not, so long as it is 
 a real difficulty ? 
 
 John. Very much. If philosophers would only preface 
 their arguments with a statement of what it is precisely they 
 are endeavouring to prove or to disprove, and what is the pre- 
 cise character of the particular argument in question as distinct 
 from and in relation to their other arguments, there would be 
 much less confusion in philosophy. The main difficulty in 
 finding out what a philosopher means is that he will not tell 
 you what he is going to talk about and why, before he talks 
 about it. 
 
 I do hope, though, that I am not confusing you by these 
 divisions and subdivisions of difficulties, reasons, and so 
 forth. I find, on the whole, as I say, that it conduces to 
 clearness to divide up in this way, even at the cost of a little 
 repetition. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that the method sometimes 
 involves considering the same point twice over, though in 
 different connections and from different angles. I suspect, 
 for instance, that you are now going back to the point that 
 matter is unreal because it is the view that the intellect takes 
 of reality.
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF MATTER 23 
 
 John. Yes, that is so. But first tell me whether you 
 find the method confusing ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. No. I agree with you that it makes for 
 clearness. But it wants concentration to follow it. You can 
 only concentrate to the necessary extent in a retreat like this. 
 In London it would be impossible. 
 
 John. London provides a continual series of stimuli 
 without giving time to concentrate on any of them. The mind 
 is for ever jogged, never at rest with itself. However, we 
 must not digress so early in our enquiry ; so let us return 
 to the confusion about matter which I regard as fundamental. 
 It is this : Is matter, that is, the collection of solid, inert 
 bodies extended in space, unreal or is it real ? Is it an illusion 
 due to the kind of view that the intellect takes of reality, or 
 does it exist in its own right, in the form in which it un- 
 doubtedly appears to exist ? I ask this question because it 
 seems to me that Bergson's philosophy supplies us with two 
 contradictory answers. 
 
 Why Matter is Unreal. 
 
 The first of these is the answer I have already partially 
 considered, the answer that matter is unreal. It is unreal 
 for a number of reasons, of which these two are, I think, the 
 most important. 
 
 The first reason for the unreality of matter which Bergson 
 gives is that it is the view of reality taken by the intellect. 
 The intellect, we are told, makes " cuts across the living flow " 
 for the purposes of action. It puts in, as it were, stops and 
 checks which are not there, just as the cinematograph 
 takes a series of momentary static pictures of the movement 
 which is life, which can only be restored to a semblance of 
 life by restoring the original movement, this being done in 
 the case of the cinematograph by turning the machine. The 
 momentary static pictures are like the chairs and tables of 
 life, bodies of inert matter into which the intellect cuts up 
 the flow. Chairs and tables are in fact the moulds into which 
 intellect presses the living, moving stuff of which reality is 
 made. Now, if movement or change is the only reality, it 
 is clear that intellect, which represents this motion as static 
 
 i
 
 i 
 
 24 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 matter extended in space, is falsifying the real. The reality 
 which is viewed by the intellect is therefore an illusion. 
 
 In the second place matter is unreal because it only comes 
 into existence at an unreal point of time, that is, in the present. 
 You will be aware that on Bergson's view time is an indi- 
 visible movement. The past, the present and the future are 
 one. The present is simply the point at which the past 
 merges into the future and at which the future presses forwards 
 to meet the past. Now our own duration is one with the 
 whole reality and duration of the Universe : try to seize the 
 present and it has gone ; it has become the past before you 
 can seize it ; and that is because our duration is a continuous 
 flow, part of the flow of the Universe, in which attempts to 
 create divisions, such as those between past, present and future, 
 must necessarily be futile, since it is incapable of division. 
 The so-called present is, in fact, the result of the cutting-up 
 process applied by our intellect to our own duration, just as 
 matter is the result of the same process as applied to the 
 Universe. It is not surprising therefore that the appearance 
 reality presents to us at an unreal point of time is an unreal 
 appearance. " Matter exists only at that sharp cutting point 
 at which the past is entering the future, a point which in 
 abstraction from memory and will had no existence." " And 
 so," we are told, " the whole seeming dead weight of matter 
 is a view only of universal life." So Professor Wildon Carr, 
 the leading British exponent of Bergson ! 
 
 So-called matter, then, is movement just as everything 
 else is movement, and when it appears to us as static objects 
 extended in space it is a delusive appearance. 
 
 So much for the first answer that Bergson gives to the 
 question. Is matter unreal ? 
 
 Why Matter is Real. 
 
 It is rather startling, then, to find this philosophy in other 
 places insisting on the reality of matter. It insists on this 
 reality mainly as a result of its strenuous denial of the con- 
 ception of the intellectual view of the world described above, 
 the conception in which the intellect is thought of as imposing 
 its view upon a reality which is somehow different. When 
 we said that the intellect falsifies matter by cutting it up, we
 
 WHY MATTER IS REAL 25 
 
 said something which the Bergsonian would deny explicitly, 
 though implicitly, I think, he would have to admit that it 
 follows from his conception of the intellect and of matter. 
 Explicitly he asserts that the order that the intellect shows 
 us in nature is a real order, and chairs and tables therefore 
 do exist, as they appear to us to exist, in reahty, instead of 
 being subjective impressions in our minds caused by the 
 pecuharities of our intellectual apparatus. The order of 
 chairs and tables, of solid material objects extended in space, 
 is found by the intellect to be existing apparently indepen- 
 dently of it, and is not imposed by the intellect upon a 
 reality which is fundamentally different. 
 
 This, I must confess, seems to me simply a flat contra- 
 diction of the arguments already considered for the unreality 
 of matter. I do not see how this contradiction is to be resolved. 
 And the Bergsonian supports his assertion of the reality of the 
 material order in the face of his own arguments by reasoning 
 which seems to me as fallacious as the position it supports. 
 
 This reasoning is as follows. Why do we imagine that 
 the order the intellect shows us in reality is imposed and not 
 found ? Because there is a natural tendency of the human 
 mind to suppose that without an imposed order there would 
 be disorder. This tendency is, however, delusive. Take 
 away the imposed order, and you would have not disorder, 
 but just the absence of that particular order, that is, another 
 kind of order. There is no such thing as unreality or disorder : 
 what there is, is the absence of a particular kind of reality 
 or a particular kind of order. Therefore the argument that 
 the intellect nmst impose the order it really finds, because 
 the absence of this order would be chaos, is a fallacious argu- 
 ment. Thus the Bergsonian reasons in support of his assertion 
 of the reality of the material order. 
 
 But the reasoning is incorrect. There is no illusion on 
 the part of the human mind such that, if it existed, it would 
 make us believe that the absence of a particular order would 
 be disorder, or if there is, it is not an illusion to which anyone 
 reading Bergson's philosophy would be likely to fall a victim. 
 Clearly the absence of the intellectual order of reality would 
 suggest to a student of Bergson not disorder, but the order 
 of reality known to intuition, that is, the real order of reality
 
 26 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 which is a moving indivisible flux. Thus we are justified, and 
 justified on Bergson's own premises, in assuming that the 
 intellectual order which presents us with solid matter is 
 imposed and not found, unreal and not real, since he has 
 already told us that the real order of reality is something 
 different from solid matter, namely, movement pure and 
 simple. You cannot have it both ways. Matter cannot at 
 one and the same time be part of the general flow and move- 
 ment — or, if you prefer it, of a reverse flow and movement — 
 and also soHd, static objects extended in space. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Bergson does not believe matter to 
 be solid, static objects extended in space, but does believe it 
 to be a general movement opposed to the movement which 
 he calls life. But if inteflect is the faculty of knowing matter 
 as extension in space, it is clear in this event that intellect is 
 taking of an entity which is one thing, a view which represents 
 it as something else, and is therefore imposing its view upon 
 that entity and not representing it as it finds it. It is also 
 clear that the reply which consists in saying, " You only think 
 intellect imposes its view of a static order because you are under 
 the illusion that without that order there would be chaos," is 
 no reply at all, since the alternative to the false order of static 
 objects in space imposed by the intellect is not chaos or 
 anything of the kind, but is, on Bergson's own premises, a 
 general flow of movement which is in point of fact the real order. 
 
 I am afraid this has been rather complicated. What do 
 you make of it ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I think I have followed you. You assert, 
 do you not, that Bergson's real view of matter is that it is a 
 form of movement ? 
 
 John. Yes. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You also point out that intellect represents 
 it as extension in space ? 
 
 John. Yes. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You then proceed to ask how, in virtue of 
 these two statements, intellect can be represented as finding 
 and not imposing the order of reality it shows us. 
 
 John. That is the point, or rather that is one of the 
 points, I was trying to make. Does it convince you, or, if it 
 does not, how do you get round it ?
 
 WHY MATTER IS REAL 27 
 
 Mr. Banks. I confess I do not quite see my way at the 
 moment ; but I did not expect to be able to answer you on 
 the spot when I came to you for criticism of Bergson. I 
 must give the matter consideration. There is only one thing 
 I wish to ask now. You said matter could not be at the 
 same time part of the general movement, or, if I preferred it, 
 of the reverse movement, and also static extension in space. 
 Why if I prefer it ? Waiving for a moment your point about 
 matter being either an interruption or the result of the inter- 
 ruption, surely there is no doubt that Bergson does conceive 
 of it as the reverse movement of the general movement, and 
 not as part of it. It is not a case of any preference of mine. 
 
 John. Yes, I think you are right in saying that he does 
 so conceive of it. I only slipped that in because there are 
 passages which suggest, so ambiguous is the general con- 
 ception of matter, that matter is part of the universal flow, 
 and not a flow in an opposite direction. One of Bergson's 
 similes in particular lends colour to this view. You know 
 how Bergson is celebrated because of the appositeness and 
 ingenuity of his similes, and I admit that, generally speaking, 
 they help him to bring out his points in a clear and vivid way. 
 Sometimes, though, they prove on examination to be 
 ambiguous if not misleading. The one to which I refer is 
 an instance of this kind. When accounting for the fact that 
 matter, which is really movement, appears to us to be static, 
 recourse is had to the simile of two trains running in 
 the same direction and at the same speed, or at slightly different 
 speeds on parallel railway Hues. Now if the trains are really 
 going at the same rate each will appear to an observer in 
 the other to be stationary. Similarly matter appears to us 
 who are moving to be stationary, just because matter is moving 
 too. This appearance of immobility to the observer in the 
 train will still be produced in a less degree if one train is 
 moving shghtly faster than the other, though I am not clear 
 why the conception of different rates of motion need be 
 introduced at all. Is it suggested that matter moves faster 
 or slower than life ? . . . 
 
 But you will, I am sure, agree in any event that the 
 appearance of immobility is obviously dependent on the trains 
 moving in the same direction. If they are going in different
 
 28 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 directions, each will appear to the other to be travelling at 
 something like double its real speed. This simile, then, is 
 only appropriate, and can only be used to explain the apparent 
 immobihty of matter, if we assume matter to be part of the 
 general flow, travelHng in the same direction as life. Either 
 there is one more inconsistency here in the conception of 
 matter, or the simile is hopelessly misleading. But I have 
 already said enough about matter. As for Bergson's meta- 
 physics in general, 1 have little to add. They seem to me to 
 be vitiated because of the failure to account for the appearance 
 of matter on premises which assume the existence of one 
 general movement. If, in short, the elan vital is real and 
 universal, then matter is inexplicable whether you treat it 
 as appearance or reality. Mind, I am not impugning the 
 existence of the elan vital. I am only denying its capacity 
 to account for matter. Personally, I prefer to keep the reahty 
 of matter intact, while accepting the elan vital with such 
 modifications as the real existence of matter may demand. 
 But this is by the way. You did not come, I take it, to hear 
 my views, and . . . 
 
 Mr. Banks. You quite mistake me ; I should be only 
 too interested. 
 
 Bergson's Logic. 
 
 John. Excuse me, but I don't think you would. You 
 would be more interested in collecting further criticisms of 
 your favourite philosopher that you may have the pleasure 
 and the honour of defending him later at your leisure. So 
 let us proceed to a brief survey of his logic. About this I 
 have comparatively little to say. But I should like in par- 
 ticular to draw your attention to what I suspect has always 
 given the enemy some cause to blaspheme, that is, Bergson's 
 faculty of intuition. It is upon this faculty that his whole 
 theory of knowledge, ^in so far as he has one at all, depends, 
 yet its nature and powers are almost as obscure as those of 
 matter. 
 
 You can see the importance of this faculty by comparing 
 Bergson's position with that, for instance, of such a man as 
 Kant. You know Kant's position, of course ? 
 
 Mr Banks. What are you thinking of in particular ?
 
 BERGSON'S LOGIC 29 
 
 John. Well, for Kant there could be no theory of know- 
 ledge. There were two worlds : the world of things as they 
 are and the world of appearances, which are the forms in 
 which the things as they are are known by mind. By the j 
 mere fact of knowing a thing mind changes it, or, if you prefer 
 it, imposes its own interpretation of it upon it, the result 
 being that mind knows always its own interpretation of the 
 thing and never knows the thing as it is. There is thus for i 
 Kant no theory of knowledge, for knowledge is always of 
 appearances to mind, never of reality. 
 
 Now Bergson postulates the same division of the Universe . 
 into two worlds, the world of reahty as it is, that is, a constant ^ 
 flow or change, and the world of appearances that consists 
 of sohd objects extended in space. Unhke Kant, however, 
 he does not deny the possibihty of knowing the world as it 
 really is : we do have knowledge of this world, but it is 
 through the faculty of intuition, and not of the intellect, that 
 we have it. Intellect is set over against the world of appear- 
 ances, the world of solid objects extended in space, intuition 
 against the world of reahty which is constant and unceasing 
 change. Intuition therefore is of enormous importance. 
 It is the faculty par excellence whereby we became acquainted 
 with reahty, and incidentally it is the faculty by means of 
 which we reahse the truth of Bergson's philosophy. It is 
 Bergson's philosophy that asserts reahty to be an unceasing 
 flow : it is by means of intuition that we become aware of the 
 flow. 
 
 What, then, is intuition ? Bergson finds some difficulty 
 in telhng us. Roughly, perhaps, it may be described as 
 glorified instinct. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What do you mean by glorified ? You are, 
 of course, aware that Bergson expressly warns us against 
 identifying intuition with instinct. 
 
 The Faculty of Intuition. 
 
 John. By glorified instinct I mean instinct ennobled by 
 reason, and that is, I think, what Bergson's description of 
 intuition comes to. But let us consider more precisely what 
 instinct ennobled by reason means. 
 
 The elan vital in the course of that outward surge from
 
 30 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 the centre which is evohition, divides itself, as it were, along 
 three divergent channels : vegetable hfe, animal hfe and 
 human hfe. The difference between these three forms of hfe 
 is, you will remember, one of kind and not of degree, and the 
 principal difference of kind between the animals and man 
 consists in the fact that while man has developed intelhgence, 
 animals have developed instinct, intelligence and instinct 
 being the characteristic features of the two essentially different 
 attitudes men and animals bring to life. But having at one 
 time interpenetrated each other, both instinct and intelhgence 
 retain something of the common origin from which both have 
 sprung, namely the vital force itself, and the consequence 
 is that all instinct has a trace of intelligence and all intelligence 
 a fringe of instinct. 
 
 Man therefore does have instinct as well as intelhgence, 
 and it is possible for the two to fuse, or rather for instinct 
 to absorb intelligence into itself. When this process happens 
 we have an instinct which, instead of being bhnd as was 
 formerly the case, is now conscious of itself and able to con- 
 sider its purpose and to enlarge it. " The proper task of 
 philosophy " — I am quoting from Bergson's follower Le Roy 
 — " is to absorb reason into instinct, or rather to reintegrate 
 instinct in intelligence." The result is intuition, and intuition 
 is therefore pre-eminently the faculty by which philosophy 
 is to be pursued and truth achieved. 
 
 I hope that in this brief outhne I have not travestied 
 the Bergsonian conception of intuition ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I think you have been fair ; but you left 
 out what Bergson says about the intuitional character of all 
 the higher manifestations of the human spirit, as they appear 
 in the genius or the artist for example. 
 
 John. Oh well, that is supplementary and follows from 
 the main conception. Art penetrates through to truth, or to 
 a kind of truth : intuition is the faculty by which we arrive 
 at truth ; it is to be expected therefore that the artist should 
 work by intuition. Intuition is often spoken of as if it were 
 a kind of instinctive inspiration plus introspection ; that is, 
 an inspiration conscious of itself, and as such the term would 
 apply equally to the lucky guess of the great scientist which 
 is the origin of the new hypothesis subsequently verified by
 
 THE FACULTY OF INTUITION SI 
 
 experiment, to the insight of the prophet or poet, and to 
 the vision of the artist. Bergson incidentally and somewhat 
 arbitrarily denies it to the scientist, whose activities he 
 regards as confined entirely within the circle of known fact ; 
 but this is by the way. 
 
 Is there anything else that I must needs include in my 
 account of Bergson's intuition, or do you agree that what I 
 have said will suffice as a brief and fairly accurate account ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I don't much like it. You have divested 
 the concept of much of the nobihty of thought and poetry 
 of language in which Bergson clothes it, but I don't know 
 that there is anything I can actually quarrel with. 
 
 Biological Difficulties in Conception of Intuition. 
 
 John. That is the penalty of the analytical method. I 
 am trying to take Bergson's philosophy to pieces and see 
 what it is made of. The process is not conducive to the 
 retention of beauty. If you had taken your wife to bits on 
 the day you first fell in love with her, I doubt if even you 
 would have been enamoured of the parts ; but they would 
 at least have cohered together, fitted into a whole. Some of 
 Bergson's, I am afraid, do not, and this is particularly the 
 case with regard to the conception of intuition : it is full of 
 contradictions. Consider this one in the first place. Man is, 
 according to Bergson, the one success of creative evolution : 
 in man alone is consciousness freed. The animal and the veget- 
 able worlds are residues which man has so to speak left behind 
 on the evolutionary path. Now the animals have instinct, 
 man has intelligence ; but truth is achieved by instinct dashed 
 with intelligence, that is by intuition : it is not grasped by 
 intelhgence. What has happened, therefore, is that man, the 
 privileged creature, the succcess of evolution, can only know 
 truth by a faculty which survives in him from the animal 
 world as a kind of haphazard deposit, Hke the human appendix, 
 a superfluous residue that will one day in all probabihty 
 disappear, a faculty, moreover, which is only possessed in a 
 highly-developed degree by beings who are professedly the 
 failures of evolution, the tentative experiments left behind by 
 evolution in its attempt to achieve man. 
 
 Are we to suppose that the animals alone have the pre-
 
 82 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 rogative of knowing truth because they have instinct, while 
 man has only this misleading faculty of intelligence ? And 
 if the animals go the way of all evolution's failures, and are 
 finally used up and thrown on the scrap-heap, are we to 
 assume that the realisation of the nature of reahty will dis- 
 appear from the world, and that therefore the truth of 
 Bergson's philosophy, together with all other kinds of truth, 
 will be as a memory lost to man, while its last remaining 
 subscribers among the animals and insects, who alone pos- 
 sessed to its full degree the faculty of intuition by which truth 
 could be apprehended, will perish from the earth in pursuance 
 of the sad fate of all beings who are to be written down as 
 failures through their unfortunate power of knowing truth ? 
 
 Consider this second point : Bergson, despite his denial 
 of fully-developed instinct to man, is nevertheless bound, in 
 spite of the conclusion at which we have just arrived, to 
 admit the possibihty of man arriving at truth. Has he not 
 done so himself ? What, then, is the process ? It is a 
 process whereby intellect absorbed into instinct goes out 
 beyond the facts as known to science, and constructs, as it 
 were, an inspired hypothesis. 
 
 It is this composite faculty, the faculty of instinct con- 
 trolled by intelligence, which is the faculty par excellence for 
 the apprehension of truth. Instinct controlled by intelhgence 
 is in fact the criterion of truth. But the intelhgence which is 
 privileged to control instinct or intuition is not the ordinary 
 intelligence which has been evolved for the purposes of hfe. 
 It is a kind of super-intelhgence which has, as it were, absorbed 
 instinct, and which, by adapting itself to the needs of instinct, 
 is enabled to break through " the inviolable circle " of the 
 intellectual view of reahty. It is all very complicated ; but 
 the upshot of it is to make intuition both judge and jury in 
 its own cause. Instinct controlled by intelhgence is the 
 criterion of truth, but the very intelhgence which controls 
 instinct is only elevated to the controlhng position because 
 of its infusion of instinct. So we traverse the full circumfer- 
 ence of a vicious circle. In effect it is intuition which both 
 apprehends the truth and guarantees the accuracy of its 
 own apprehension. 
 
 These are a priori points, and they are mainly concerned
 
 BIOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES 33 
 
 with inexactitudes and contradictions in the account of 
 intuition and its relation to intellect. But consider the 
 matter empirically. Are the psychology and the biology upon 
 which the notion of intuition is based correct ? As regards 
 the latter there is, I understand, an almost unanimous refusal 
 among biologists to accept the difference in kind between 
 human, animal and vegetable Ufe postulated by Bergson. 
 They insist on the unity of all organic substance, and regard 
 each form of life as a modification at different levels of a 
 development which is fundamentally homogeneous throughout. 
 Instead, therefore, of a rigid distinction of faculties such as 
 that postulated by Bergson, whereby instinct is allocated to 
 animals and intelHgence to man, they expect to find, and do 
 find, the same faculties in every form of hfe in different stages 
 of development. Instead of animal instinct retaining " traces 
 of intelligence " and human intelHgence retaining a fringe 
 of instinct, biologists find a fundamental identity of nature 
 between the animals and man. This general view is supported 
 in a very marked degree by recent investigations of psycholo- 
 gists into the nature of the sub-conscious. These investiga- 
 tions tend to prove the basic similarity between the human 
 and the higher animal sub-conscious. What is more, they 
 show that animal instinct is but an inferior manifestation of 
 a more highly-developed intuitive faculty which is the salient 
 characteristic of the human unconscious as revealed by the 
 psychoanalysts. When a cat removed from its own home 
 cHmbs houses, swims rivers, threads its way through towns, 
 and performs all manner of miraculous feats in the endeavour 
 to return by the most direct route to the home which it has 
 left, the instinct by which it acts is precisely the same as 
 that which guides human beings in, for example, somnam- 
 buHsm. In somnambuhsm the human unconsciousness is 
 released from the control of the conscious, and its manifesta- 
 tions have all the characteristics of blind certainty and directness 
 which are the marks of animal instinct. Take any of the 
 recent work which has been done on the unconscious ; take, for 
 instance, M. Geley's book. From the Unconscious to the Con- 
 scious, of which I should have Hked to say more if it would 
 not take us too far from our subject, and you will find it full of 
 evidence for the continuity of instinct between animals and 
 
 3
 
 84 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 man, a continuity which eludes superficial observation owing to 
 the fact that the seat of instinct in man is in the unconscious 
 and not in the conscious. This does not mean that instinct 
 is not located in the unconscious in animals as well as in 
 human beings, but with animals consciousness has less control, 
 and the unconscious is therefore more directly manifested 
 in action, although in the higher types the control generally 
 increases until the area of action inspired directly by con- 
 sciousness approximates to the human. The upshot of all this 
 is that the allocation of instinct and intelligence as between 
 animals and men is graded on a sort of sliding scale ; the 
 two faculties are, in fact, apportioned in different degrees at 
 different levels, there being no clear-cut division such as 
 Bergson postulates. M. Geley carries this point even further, 
 and, entering the domain of supernormal psychology, shows 
 fairly con\dncingly that the phenomena of what are called 
 spirituahsm, clairvoyance and telepathy are manifestations 
 and products of the subconscious which are not different in 
 character from the instinctive behaviour of animals. The 
 whole question of the hght thrown upon instinct by the 
 researches of psychoanalysts and others is full of interest, 
 though it would take us too far from our present discussion 
 to pursue it further now. Perhaps we may go into it 
 together on a future occasion. 
 
 Mr. Banks. There is nothing I should Hke better ; the 
 subject interests me profoundly, and seems capable of indefinite 
 development. But tell me, who is this M. Geley of whom 
 you speak. Is he a bitter antagonist of Bergson ? 
 
 John. Far from it. M. Geley is the Director of the 
 International Metapsychical Institute at Paris. He is a 
 VitaHst, and wages war on mechanism in all its forms. As 
 an opponent of the classical theories of evolution, the theories 
 of Darwin and Lamarck, he is of course a close ally of Bergson's, 
 and pays an ungrudging tribute to the latter's unrivalled 
 exposition of the failure of the ordinary mechanistic 
 theories to account for the facts of evolution. Like Bergson, 
 he postulates a creative force or urge continuously operative, 
 which alone is able to account for the multifarious manifesta- 
 tions of developing life. But he quarrels with Bergson's 
 Intuition whole-heartedly : I think he is right in this.
 
 BIOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES 35 
 
 The conception of Intuition is vague, self-contradictory and 
 inimical to careful philosophic study, encouraging short-cuts 
 and happy guesses rather than painstaking investigation of 
 evidence ; most important of all, it does not square with 
 the facts. Bergson's Intuition, you know, has been stigma- 
 tised, and not, I think, without justice, as merely a device 
 to avoid hard thinking. 
 
 How Bergson's Conclusions Falsify his Philosophy. 
 
 One more point, and I have finished with Bergson's logic. 
 I say one more point, but it is to my mind so formidable 
 that, even if it stood alone, it would dispose once and for 
 all of the Bergsonian system. It is a final point about 
 intuition. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Have you not said enough about intuition ? 
 I shall be driven to think if you concentrate on it in this way 
 that there is nothing else in Bergson's logic which is open 
 to attack. 
 
 John. There is nothing else, for Bergson's logic, in the 
 ordinary sense of the word logic, does not exist. It is simply 
 a statement of the relation between intellect and intuition, 
 and the selection of the latter as the faculty for the com- 
 prehension of truth. 
 
 Now let me again put the question. What is that relation ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Intellect is the faculty which has been 
 evolved for the purposes of life and action. In that capacity 
 it presents us with a view of reality as a collection of soHd 
 objects extended in space. Intuition is the faculty whereby 
 we become conscious of the real character of reahty ; through 
 intuition we realise ourselves to be part of the one stream 
 of hfe which is reality : we Hve reality, as it were, and in 
 Hving it we are conscious of the nature of reality which is 
 duration. 
 
 John. Exactly ! Now what would you call Bergson's 
 philosophy ? Is it a product of the intellect, or is it not ? 
 
 Mr.^ Banks. Certainly it is, at any rate in method. Its 
 inspiration is intuitional. 
 
 John. That won't do, I am afraid. If Bergson's con- 
 ception of the intellect as falsifying matter, or at any rate as 
 presenting an unreal view of it for the purposes of action is
 
 i' 
 
 86 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 correct, it is clear that all reasoning about matter by the 
 intellect can only have the effect of intensifying the error. 
 The more we think and reason about mattei instead of 
 experiencing it, the further we drift from truth. But when 
 Beigson constructs the elaborate edifice of his system, sup- 
 ports it by argument, inference and syllogism, explains and 
 adorns it by the happy similes and metaphors whose ingenuity 
 compels our admiration, when in fact he sets his reason to work 
 to extend his system to cover ever more and more facts, he is 
 using his intellect, and nothing but his intellect. And in 
 proportion as it is a remarkably fine intellect, he has, on his 
 own showing, achieved a greater falsification of reahty than 
 would be within the compass of smaller minds hke yours or 
 mine. If it be true that the intellect is not the faculty with 
 which we arrive at truth, then Bergson's philosophy is false, 
 for it is by intellect that he has constructed it. If his premises 
 are correct, if intuition is for truth and intellect for hfe, then 
 his conclusions which are intellectual are not. If, however, 
 his conclusions are true, then by their very nature they 
 convict the premises on which they are built of falsity. Just 
 in so far as Bergson proves his point that intellect cannot 
 know the real, his proof is invahdated by the very success of 
 its demonstration. For is not proof intellectual ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. This is all very neat and clever. It is a 
 good example of the kind of logical quibbhng about reahty 
 against which Bergson's philosophy warns us. But it is 
 invahdated by a very important fact, and that is that the 
 truth of Bergson's system is grasped, as I said before, by 
 intuition, and not by intellect. 
 
 Dangers of Discrediting Intellect. 
 
 John. Then his arguments are clearly superfluous. Truth 
 becomes a mystical possession not to be explained or com- 
 municated to others, and the whole Bergsonian philosophy 
 becomes irrelevant. Why, in fact, write a philosophy at all 
 when every argument you construct about the real must be 
 at best beside the point, and at worst definitely misleading ? 
 You overlook the real character of the method Bergson 
 pursues : it is intellectual throughout. Take any example 
 at random.
 
 DANGERS OF DISCREDITING INTELLECT 37 
 
 We are warned against the common illusion of the intellect 
 which, unable to grasp the real nature of change or movement, 
 thinks of change as a succession of changing states. We 
 are warned again against the illusion of the intellect 
 which insists on regarding the absence of any particular order 
 as disorder, instead of discerning what it necessarily is — the 
 presence of another order. But how are these illusions 
 detected ? How does Bergson detect them ? By his intellect. 
 Reasoning with his intellect, he says, " These habits of the 
 intellect are an illusion." Wh3^ then, is the habit of the 
 intellect by which he detects the illusion not an illusion too ? 
 Why single out just those operations of the intellect which 
 support the Bergsonian theory as trustworthy, and stigmatise 
 all others as illusory ? You are involved here in an infinite 
 regress. Once you begin to doubt the validity of intellect 
 you have cut the ground from under your feet. Even your 
 very doubts are intellectual, and therefore tainted with the 
 same uncertainty as the intellectual propositions they doubt. 
 You cannot affirm that intellectual affirmation does not give 
 us truth : for your very affirmation claims for itself the truth 
 which it denies to intellectual affirmation. These are old 
 points : they were made by the Greeks. Yet Bergson in his 
 distrust of intellectualism has inexplicably overlooked them. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I must confess that the last point had not 
 before occurred to me ; nor at the moment do I see my way 
 round it. It is indeed so obvious that one is tempted to 
 wonder how it has been overlooked, if indeed it has been 
 overlooked. Can you tell me whether it is an objection which 
 is commonly brought against Bergson's philosophy ? 
 
 John. It has been brought forward by others, though I 
 am not sure whether it has been made in quite this form 
 against Bergson specifically. But it is an objection to which 
 all philosophies that seek to discredit the sovereignty of 
 reason seem to me to be exposed. It is an objection which 
 applies in a measure to Pragmatism, to the Empiricism of 
 WilUam James, and to most forms of mysticism. Reason 
 may be a poor instrument with which to conduct our search 
 after truth. It is clumsy and roundabout and subject to 
 error, but in my view it is the only instrument we possess. 
 Try to discredit it and you will find you can only discredit
 
 i- 
 
 38 BERGSON AND PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE 
 
 reason by means of reason itself, and the arguments on 
 which your disparagement of reason and glorification of some 
 other faculty, be it insight, intuition, instinct, feeling or what 
 not, are based, are found themselves to be rational argu- 
 ments. In proportion, therefore, as they prove their case 
 against reason, they necessarily discredit themselves. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Perhaps it is for this very reason that 
 Bergson displays such keen antipathy to what he calls the 
 intellectualist tendencies of philosophers. But if your point 
 is a sound one he has behttled them at his peril ; for his 
 whole position seems to be undermined by the most obvious 
 logical reasoning. But I am not yet convinced that he can 
 be disposed of as lightly as you seem to suggest. 
 
 John. That, I must submit, is because, like so many, 
 you are carried away by the charm of Bergson's matter, the 
 lucidity of his reasoning and the ingenuity of his arguments. 
 Bergson has a touch of real genius. There has been no 
 philosopher since Plato who has such power to charm a 
 man's reason by his speech. As you read him you are so 
 carried away by the arguments, so dazzled by the luminous- 
 ness of the method, that the voice of criticism is stilled within 
 you. It is only later reflection that reveals, almost against 
 the will, the inconsistencies and difficulties, some of which 
 I have tried to point out. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You do not then deny all value to his 
 work ? 
 
 Summary of Bergson's Contributions. 
 
 John. On the contrary, I think much of it extremely 
 valuable. He has finally demonstrated the inadequacy of the 
 materialist and mechanist theories, which regard the Universe 
 som.ewhat after the nature of a vast machine which, once 
 started, proceeds automatically by the mere interaction of its 
 parts. Under the influence of Darwin, Huxley, Lamarck and 
 their followers, these theories were predominant until a few- 
 years ago in the field of biology, just as their counterpart 
 theories, which regarded the mind as a mere phosphorescent 
 glow attendant upon the body were triumphant in psychology. 
 Bergson has vindicated the uniqueness of mind in the 
 Universe ; he has estabhshed the necessity of a driving force
 
 SUMMARY OF BERGSON'S CONTRIBUTIONS 39 
 
 and shown the impossibility of explaining the phenomena 
 of Ufe and consciousness as the result of the interplay of 
 material forces. 
 
 So far so good. Where, to my mind, he goes too far is in 
 extending his Vitahst hypothesis to the world of matter, and 
 explaining away matter in terms of Ufe, or rather explaining 
 both matter and consciousness as modifications of one homo- 
 geneous flow, which he calls Duration. The establishment of 
 the uniqueness and independence of Ufe is not a necessary 
 preliminary to the destruction of the uniqueness and inde- 
 pendence of matter. 
 
 Personally, I am unable to accept Monism, or the doctrine 
 that there is only one thing in the Universe, in any of its 
 forms, whether you identify this one thing with mind or 
 life or duration or matter. The distinction between Hfe and 
 matter seems to me fundamental and to involve what for 
 the moment I shall be content to call a fundamental duaHsm. 
 But that does not mean that I would not define life much 
 as Bergson defines it, regarding it, however, as a unique 
 principle, a kind of living force appearing in a dead world 
 of matter which is hostile to it. Read Schopenhauer, Von 
 Hartmann, or Bernard Shaw for this theory of the Life 
 Force, as Shaw calls it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I would prefer to hear of it from yourself, 
 so that I can question you on points that seem obscure. There 
 is much to be gained by verbal discussion. 
 
 John. Very well, then ; we will fix another time for a 
 discussion of the philosophy of the Life Force.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE THEORY OF THE 
 LIFE FORCE 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 John. I am glad to see you again, Mr, Banks. Have 
 you thought over our talk about Bergson ? I have no doubt 
 that you have found on reflection much to dissatisfy you in 
 what I said, and have returned with a quiverful of arguments 
 in his defence. 
 
 Mr. Banks. To be frank, I am afraid I have not given 
 to your criticisms the reflection they deserved. As a matter 
 of fact, my mind has been occupied with different subjects. 
 
 John. Perhaps, then, you have come for that discussion 
 of the Life Force, which, as you may remember, we promised 
 ourselves the last time you were here. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, indeed. I should hke to hear about 
 that ; but, as a matter of fact, that is not what I came for. 
 I want to hear your views on a subject that has interested 
 me profoundly, that to my mind holds the key to all the puzzles 
 that have baffled students of human consciousness, that is 
 fraught with infinite possibilities for good or ill, and convicts 
 most psychology and philosophy of being obsolete nonsense. 
 
 John. Good Lord ! What in the name of goodness can 
 this thing be ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I refer to psychoanalysis. 
 
 John. Of course ; how stupid of me ! That's all the go 
 just now, I understand. Have you yourself been subjected 
 to the treatment ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. No. But my wife's sister has, and with 
 the most gratifying results. It rather shocked her at first 
 to find out what her unconscious was hke ; but now she is 
 rather proud of it : looks upon herself as quite a devil of a
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 41 
 
 iellow, so to speak. It has been a real and gratifying revela- 
 tion to her of latent capacity, and the treatment has done her 
 a world of good : she sleeps better, her nerves are stronger, 
 and her temper improved out of all knowledge. She is quite 
 tolerable to live with now. 
 
 John. Your wife's sister, I take it, is unmarried ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes. 
 
 John. She would be ! Psychoanalysis is rivalHng rehgion 
 in its vogue among women, especially unmarried women. 
 Like God, it only gets the women men don't want : hke 
 religion, it invests their emotional states with immense 
 importance, and so ministers to a self-respect impaired by 
 the neglect of the other sex. Imagination has always been a 
 substitute for action, but what was the good of leading in 
 imagination the life you would have liked to lead in action, 
 if the censor did not allow the knowledge of it to penetrate 
 into consciousness ? But now, when our imaginations have 
 perforce to do duty for our sensations, psychoanalysis can 
 at least give us the pleasure of knowing it ; and though our 
 knowledge reveals something surprisingly Hke a dustbin for 
 sexual refuse, we are all secretly proud of being gay dogs at 
 heart, even if that romantic organ has to be rationaUsed 
 away under the scientific name of the unconscious. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You are pleased to be satirical. But this is 
 a subject on which I feel deeply, and I must ask you not to 
 be flippant. 
 
 John. I am sorry to appear flippant, but some of it is 
 such awful nonsense ; eroticism dashed with science mas- 
 querading as psychology, and served up in the language of 
 divine flapdoodle. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You can't expect me to take such a verdict 
 seriously, nor can I believe that you as a philosopher would 
 have no words for a subject of such immense importance but 
 those of vulgar abuse. If this is your considered opinion, I 
 must at least ask you to be good enough to let me know your 
 reasons for it. 
 
 Criticism of Psychoanalysis. 
 
 John. By all means. But I would not have you take 
 my preceding remarks too seriously. There is much that is
 
 42 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 of value in psychoanalysis. Its masters, Freud and Jung, 
 are great men. It is only the extravagances of some of their 
 followers, who treat the subject as if it were sacred, conceivmg 
 of Freud as a god and themselves as his high priests, that 
 arouse the laughter of the ribald. Once we are freed from the 
 necessity of accepting every word of Freud as though it were 
 inspired, we shall find much that is both new and valuable 
 and shall be duly grateful for it. And as the subject is not 
 in its wider bearing so far removed from that which I had 
 in mind to discuss with you, we may perhaps extend our 
 treatment of it to include a brief consideration of the Life 
 Force which I feel to be necessary to complete our survey 
 of Bergson. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am anxious to hear what you will say on 
 that subject, and shall certainly not object if you can tack 
 it on to psychoanalysis. 
 
 John. There is one more preliminary observation I want 
 to make, and I think it desirable that I should do so in self- 
 protection, seeing how numerous are the converts to psycho- 
 analysis and how formidable the reputation it has made for 
 itself. I understand and am ready to beheve that the psycho- 
 analytic method has wrought wonderful cures in the case of 
 disorders impervious to any other method. I beheve it has 
 even greater successes before it, and has done and will do in 
 the world a power of good. I do not quarrel with its assump- 
 tion of the truth of unproved hypotheses for the purposes of 
 experiment, this being, as I conceive, the proper scientific 
 method, nor do I regard it as any defect in it as a science 
 that it is unable to give a coherent account of the make-up 
 of the human ego. No criticism of mine therefore can touch 
 psychoanalysis on its proper ground as a special science. 
 It is only when it assumes the guise of a theory of knowledge 
 and imposes itself upon us as a convincing and consistent 
 account of the whole field of human psychology, both known 
 and unknown, that it goes beyond its proper sphere and lays 
 itself open to attack. It is only therefore as a so-called 
 philosophy of human consciousness and unconsciousness that 
 I wish to consider and to criticise it. 
 
 In the first place I should like to draw your attention to 
 the conception of the unconscious itself.
 
 CRITICISM OP PSYCHOANALYSIS 43 
 
 This conception of the unconscious occupies, I think you 
 will admit, the place of honour in psychoanalysis ; the uncon- 
 scious is the keystone of the whole edifice ; and its main charac- 
 teristic, the characteristic that distinguishes it from the 
 conscious, is that we don't know what is going on in it : we 
 don't, in fact, know it at all. 
 
 Mr, Banks. Yes, but we know all sorts of things about 
 it, or at any rate we can find them out. 
 
 John. Not so fast ! We are coming to that in a moment. 
 The first thing I want to estabhsh is that the real, inner essence 
 of the unconscious, the unconscious, that is to say, in so far as 
 it is really unconscious and not a kind of dim-lit consciousness, 
 is unknown. Freud himself says so ; these are, in fact, so 
 far as I can remember, his exact words : " The inner nature 
 of the unconscious is just as unknown to us as the reality of 
 the external world." 
 
 Now let us come to your point. Having established 
 ignorance of the unconscious as a sort of basic axiom, the 
 psychoanalyst then goes on to enumerate quite a number of 
 things that he does know about it. He knows, for example, 
 that it conditions and causes what happens in the conscious ; 
 we are told that every thing that appears in the conscious 
 has its prehminary stage in the unconscious ; he knows, too, 
 that it is predominantly sexual ; he tells us, for instance, that 
 all the peculiar trends of the unconscious are " sexual in origin." 
 
 Surely there is a fundamental contradiction here. If it is 
 true that we do not know the unconscious, we cannot know 
 anything about it ; we cannot know, for instance, that it is 
 sexual, that it is the cause of what appears in the conscious, 
 or even that it exists. You cannot have the unconscious 
 both ways : you cannot say first, " Its inner nature is unknown 
 to us," and second, " We know it to be a characteristic of its 
 inner nature to manifest itself in various ways in the con- 
 scious." 
 
 Mr, Banks. Surely you are making difficulties for your- 
 self here. I admit that we do not know the unconscious 
 directly, but we do know it indirectly through the manifesta- 
 tions in consciousness which we recognise as having their 
 origin in the unconscious. 
 
 John, But you cannot recognise these manifestations as
 
 44 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 proceeding from the unconscious, unless you are directly 
 acquainted with the unconscious to begin with, so that, in 
 virtue of your previous acquaintance, you can recognise 
 manifestations from the unconscious as being like what you 
 already know. All recognition involves a process of identifica- 
 tion ; but you cannot identify A as being like B or as being 
 a part of B unless you first know B in order to make out the 
 identification. Thus the exclamation, " Hullo ! That comes 
 from the unconscious ! " presupposes a direct knowledge of 
 the unconscious to begin with. You can't, in fact, recognise 
 a thing as coming from tliis or that or as being like this or 
 that unless you know what this or that is like first ; and in 
 the case of the unconscious you don't. What you do know 
 are manifestations that appear in the conscious ; but these 
 manifestations, from the very fact that they appear in the 
 conscious, cannot at the same time as they appear, that is at 
 the time when you know them, be still in the unconscious ; nor 
 does the knowledge of them confer knowledge of the uncon- 
 scious, but always knowledge of something in the conscious. 
 
 You can say, of couse, that these manifestations originate 
 in the unconscious, but that is merely another way of 
 saying you believe something unknown in the unconscious 
 to be the cause of certain known phenomena in the conscious. 
 Now, if you are in the habit of supplying the place of know- 
 ledge by converting your conjectures into dogmas, you can 
 assert, of course, that this belief proves that there is an 
 unconscious : if you are not, you must be content to regard 
 it as merely a belief which will seem to you to be probable 
 and inteUigent just in so far as you hold independently that 
 there is an unconscious, but it is certainly not knowledge, 
 and cannot be used to prove or even to support the existence 
 of the unconscious. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Why not, if the behef is well grounded ? 
 
 John. Because a belief whose probabihty depends on the 
 assumption that there is an unconscious to make it probable 
 cannot itself be adduced in support of that assumption. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Do I understand you then to deny the 
 existence of the unconscious ? 
 
 John. Not at all. What I am asserting is that it is not 
 logically possible either to assert or to deny it, at any rate
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 45 
 
 as the psychoanalysts conceive it. You cannot say, first, 
 that you never know a thing, and then that you know that 
 it exists ; but you may of course believe it exists. 
 
 Let me put the point briefly in the shape of a formula : 
 
 You have three things : first, the knowing self, a mind, 
 which we will call (A). There are, of course, all sorts of 
 difficulties about the assumption of a bare act of consciousness 
 which is independent of and apart from the content of the 
 conscious which it knows, but we will pass them by. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What sort of difficulties ? 
 
 John. Oh, that is a long story. Read Bertrand Russell, 
 or the Behaviourists, or the New MateriaHsts. For them 
 there is no conscious, knowing ego : in fact, there is neither 
 conscious nor ego ; but that enquiry would take us a long 
 way from psychoanalysis. As I was saying, then, we have 
 the knowing mind (A), the consciousness which it knows, 
 which we will call (B), and the unconscious which it does 
 not know, but which it assumes to be the cause of the 
 conscious which it does know ; this unconscious we will 
 call (C). 
 
 Now if (A) always and on all occasions knows only (B) 
 and never (C), it cannot know either that (C) exists or that 
 it is the cause of (B). It can observe certain phenomena in 
 (B) which it may call manifestations of (C), but unless it 
 knows (C) directly it cannot, in fact, know whether these 
 phenomena are manifestations of (C) or not. Do you see the 
 point now ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I think so, but it is very abstract and 
 logical. Do you think it of great importance ? 
 
 John. Only in so far as psychoanalysis claims to present 
 us with a reasoned psychology. Personally, I think there is 
 every reason to suppose that the unconscious exists ; all I 
 want to do is to point out that you cannot ghbly assume it 
 as the psychoanalysts do. However, I will return to the 
 unconscious later. 
 
 Now let us consider one or two other features in this 
 picture of our psychical interior which the psychoanalysts 
 have painted for us. 
 
 Take some of his betes noires. One, of course, is the 
 censor ; another is civihsation. But that I may not misrepre-
 
 46 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 sent the theories we are discussing, perhaps you, as a person 
 who holds them, will be good enough just to run over the 
 ordinary view of the censor. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I will do my best, but I am afraid it will 
 be rather a crude affair, 
 
 John. You need not elaborate. It will be sufficient if 
 you say enough to show that we mean the same things when 
 we talk of the censor, civilisation, taboos, and the rest. 
 
 Mr. Banks, The censor has been evolved by civilisation 
 as the jailer in the individual of those instincts, impulses and 
 feelings whose unfettered expression would prove dangerous 
 to civilisation. The influence of civilisation acting upon us 
 through our environment, and chiefly embodied in public 
 opinion, erects a series of taboos which assert categorically 
 that certain feelings are wrong, certain impulses disreputable ; 
 society intimates, therefore, that no self-respecting person 
 would harbour them. The result is that we don't harbour 
 them, at any rate consciously. We may harbour them 
 unconsciously, but it is the business of the censor not to 
 let us know it by keeping them out of consciousness. In 
 order to effect this the censor acts as a kind of filter, only 
 letting through from the unconscious into the conscious those 
 emotions, thoughts and impulses which are acceptable to 
 civilisation. By this means the individual is saved the dis- 
 comfort attendant upon a true knowledge of his primitive, 
 natural self, and escapes the importunities of his conscience, 
 eager to chastise him for harbouring thoughts which offend 
 against society's taboos. 
 
 John. Very concisely put. And then, of course, there is 
 sublimation. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Of course ! The censor is not only a filter 
 but a moral purifier. It is not true to say that it suppresses 
 all disreputable instincts. It lets some of them through at 
 the cost of changing them in mid-passage as it were. The 
 change is always a highly respectable one, so that a sexual 
 desire for one's own mother is transformed by the censor 
 into a pious wish to collect photographs of her from her 
 babyhood upwards. And it is only under this guise that such 
 a sexual desire appears in consciousness. 
 
 John. Now the psychoanalysts deplore, do they not.
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 47 
 
 this damming up of the stream of impulses and their trans- 
 formation by the censor, in the interests of propriety, into a 
 sort of nonconformist edition of the original ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, certainly ! By turning the conscious 
 into a kind of Sunday school, and refusing admission to all 
 candidates who do not wear uniform dress, behave themselves 
 in a respectable manner, and conform to the accepted pro- 
 prieties, the censor starves, strangles and distorts the most 
 precious manifestations of the self. It dams up the natural 
 stream of impulses which, driven underground, overflow into 
 a kind of swamp. This swamp is the complex which the 
 analyst seeks to resolve by dragging up into consciousness 
 the impulses and thoughts which have been suppressed, and 
 thus, if I may complete the metaphor, drawing off the accu- 
 mulation below, which, like most stagnant water, grows 
 foetid through need of an outlet. 
 
 John, You grow quite poetical, Mr. Banks ! And the 
 complexes, when unresolved, produce in turn the neuroses, 
 the bad dreams, the morbid states, the obsessions and the 
 hallucinations which first drive the patient to have recourse 
 to the analyst. Is not that so ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. It is. And the analyst, by setting free the 
 suppressed impulses, by breaking through the repressive 
 barrier of the censor, restores the self to free development. 
 The result is to increase both happiness and efficiency. It is 
 repression that is bad, repression dictated by convention and 
 taboos in the interests of so-called civilisation. Repression, 
 in fact, is the constant enemy of the analyst whenever and 
 wherever it is found. 
 
 John. I think that is a very fair account of the general 
 theory. Now I want to go back a moment to what we said 
 about the unconscious. Its all-pervading character was, you 
 will remember, one of the things much insisted on : in it 
 was to be found the germ of everything that subsequently 
 appeared in the conscious. Is that not so ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, that is right. 
 
 John. In the unconscious, therefore, is to be found the 
 preliminary source of the censor and those repressive influences 
 you have just been describing, for these certainly appear in 
 consciousness ?
 
 48 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 Mr. Banks. I suppose so. 
 
 John. Then any attempt to interfere with or to suppress 
 the censor, and the repressive influences of our prudish and 
 conventional consciousness, would, in effect, be a repression 
 of something which owes its origin to the all-pervading uncon- 
 scious. If the suppression of the unconscious is wrong, and its 
 thwarting by the censor when it tries to get through into 
 consciousness is regrettable, it follows that any attempt to 
 thwart the censor, or to suspend or suppress his activities, 
 would itself constitute a repression of the unconscious of the 
 kind we have been deploring. Or are we to allow all the 
 manifestations of the unconscious in the conscious to have 
 free play, except only those manifestations which express 
 themselves in the censor and in inhibitory impulses generally ? 
 If so, what of the complexes that will arise from the sup- 
 pression of oui inhibitions ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Surely these questions are a little academic. 
 It is only to our natural impulses that we are bidden to give 
 free play, not to artificial elements such as inhibitions. 
 
 John, But in what sense are these elements artificial ? 
 If civiHsation and the taboos which civihsation engenders 
 do not spring from certain promptings and impulses in human 
 nature, whence come they ? If, in fact, civilisation is not 
 natural in the sense that it is a natural development of human 
 beings when gathered together in society, how does it arise ? 
 Is there any sense in calhng anything made by man to meet 
 the needs of his nature artificial ? Psychoanalysts make an 
 unfair discrimination against the gregarious instincts that 
 have produced civiHsation with its necessary taboos and 
 restraints. They speak as though it were something artificial 
 which has been forcibly imposed upon our other instincts, 
 with lamentable results to the individual as a whole, our other 
 instincts, especially if they happen to be sexual or selfish, 
 being regarded as natural in some sense in which civiHsation 
 is not natural. 
 
 But if in the unconscious is to be found the origin of 
 everything, it contains the origin of civilisation and taboos, 
 which should not therefore be suppressed in the interests of 
 our sex and selfishness, on the ground that sex and selfishness 
 are natural while civiHsation is not. What you have, in fact
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 49 
 
 is the conflict between two equally deep-seated natural 
 impulses : the impulse that makes for society and the purely 
 self-regarding impulse. Admitting that the conflict is regret- 
 table, it is idle to express your regret for the harm done by 
 the victory of the one set of impulses by simply transferring 
 it to the other. Yet this is what the cry, " Suppress the 
 censor and his inhibitions in the interests of the unconscious," 
 really means. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I admit your point in theory ; but it seems 
 to me to have little practical importance. In practice the 
 analyst scarcely ever, if at all, discovers complexes caused by 
 the repression of the inhibitory elements in our nature. What 
 he does find is repression of the other elements, especially 
 sexual elements, owing to the complete despotism exercised 
 by the censor. 
 
 John. But tell me, how does he know the real cause 
 of any complex in the patient ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. By interpreting the patient's dreams, by 
 observing his reactions to certain words, and by other pro- 
 cesses, free association, suggestion, and so on, with which I 
 expect you are as familiar as I am. 
 
 John. And in interpreting these dreams, in observing 
 these reactions, and in collecting all the other evidence upon 
 which he bases his diagnosis of the patient's complexes, does 
 it not ever happen that the analyst is himself the victim of 
 delusion, a delusion based upon the existence of complexes 
 of his own, which express themselves in a persistent refusal 
 on the part of his censor to allow the appearance in his own 
 consciousness of any interpretation of the patient's condition 
 unpleasant to himself personally ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I suppose that is possible, but it is most 
 unlikely. Every accredited psychoanalytic operator is him- 
 self subjected to a rigorous examination by other analysts, 
 with a view to the resolving of any complexes of his own 
 before he may aspire to examine and interpret the psyche 
 of others. 
 
 John. Yes, but consider a moment how numerous and 
 subtle are the devices of the censor for distorting and sup- 
 pressing the real content of the unconscious. There is 
 symbolism, whereby the desire to caress a woman's breast 
 
 4
 
 50 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 is represented, for example, as the love of climbing of moun- 
 tains : displacement, whereby love foi one person is repre- 
 sented as love for an entirely different person : sublimation, 
 or the moral purification of disreputable elements in the uncon- 
 scious : and repression pure and simple. 
 
 Any or all of these processes may, for example, affect a 
 patient's description of one of his own dreams, so that the 
 analyst must in interpretation penetrate through to the 
 dream as it was before these distorting processes got to work. 
 In the ordinary psychoanalitic phraseology, the manifest 
 content of the dream which appears in consciousness is a 
 distorted version of the latent content : it is the business of 
 the analyst to strip away the distortion and reveal the latent 
 content. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, that is his function, and I do not see 
 why he should not perform it correctly. In the majority of 
 cases the evidence shows that he does perform it correctly. 
 
 John. Possibly. But how is he to tell ? It is always 
 possible that precisely those influences which distort the 
 patient's description of his dream may also be at work upon 
 the analyst's interpretation of the description, so that instead 
 of revealing the latent content he is merely overlaying the 
 first distortion of the manifest content with a second dis- 
 tortion of his own. Why, in fact, are we to assume the 
 proneness of all human beings as potential patients to the 
 habits of displacement, symboHsm, repression, and the other 
 devices of the censor, and then to claim a special exemption 
 from these influences and habits for the analyst ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. But the analyst has not the same special 
 interest as the patient in repressing the content of the uncon- 
 scious. His interests are all the other way. 
 
 John. Yes, but they are nevertheless special interests. 
 His interests prompt him, first, to find some interpretation 
 of the dream, and, secondly, to find an interpretation generally 
 in accord with the psychoanalytic conception of the uncon- 
 scious — that is to say an interpretation of a predominantly 
 sexual character. The importance of the analyst's own special 
 interest is illustrated by the significant frequency with which 
 patients' dreams of the most diverse types are claimed by 
 analysts to be susceptible to one particular interpretation.
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 51 
 
 It is, you must confess, rather startling to find how often in 
 the works of writers on psychoanalysis, especially in the 
 works of lady analysts, a dream of which the manifest content 
 appears in the narrative of the patient to be spiritual affection 
 for A, is shown by the analyst to be a distortion of a latent 
 content which is sexual love for B, B being shown on further 
 analysis to be the analyst herself. I leave you to infer how 
 far the significant frequency of this particular interpretation 
 indicates the need for psychoanalysis on the part of the 
 operator, especially when the latter is a lady and unmarried. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Of course what you say is possible in some 
 cases, but I am convinced that they are rare ones. 
 
 John. I am inclined to agree, but the point is that the 
 analyst can never tell whether these distorting influences are 
 at work in himself or not. We are told that the censor is 
 incredibly subtle in his devices for distorting the unconscious. 
 May not the subtlest of his devices be just this, that he pro- 
 duces in operators the impression that they are interpreting 
 without bias on an impartial examination of the evidence, 
 when they are, in point of fact, moulding their interpretation 
 along lines convenient or gratifying to themselves ; — the 
 impression, in short, that he is quiescent when in reality he 
 is most active ? And how can the operator detect his activity ? 
 How indeed, when all the apparent evidence of the censor's 
 quiescence and his own impartiality may be just so much 
 clever scene-setting of the mental stage by the censor. 
 
 All psychoanalytic interpretations are tainted with this 
 doubt — the doubt lest they be in part distorted products of 
 the unconscious of the analyst, instead of being, what they 
 purport to be, a light thrown on the unconscious of the patient. 
 And this doubt, from the nature of the case, can never be 
 removed. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Well, I must once again admit the logical 
 validity of your argument, but I can do that while doubting 
 its practical application. It seems to me that, though what 
 you suggest always may in theory happen, in practice it 
 happens to a neghgible extent. 
 
 John. What you say is again probable. But you must 
 remember that where not a single one of the methods of the 
 psychoanalyst is free from this suspicion, the result is to
 
 52 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 undermine one's confidence in the efficacy of the whole business. 
 I have spoken of the interpretation of dreams ; but take any 
 other psychoanalytic process you please, and you will find 
 the same difficulty to exist. Take, for instance, the question 
 of free association. But you are, I see, getting so suspicious 
 of my reasoning, that perhaps it would be better if you would 
 yourself briefly outline what you take to be meant by free 
 association. Then, at least, you will not be able to charge me 
 with dressing up my material in such a way as to facilitate 
 the logical conjuring tricks which I know you think I play 
 with it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Very well ! Free association, I take it, is 
 the name given to the process by which the patient is urged 
 to abrogate all conscious control of his mind, and then to 
 relate to the analyst in the order of their appearance all the 
 thoughts, feelings, reflections and images which travel through 
 it. If the processes of selection, suppression and distortion 
 are kept in abeyance, the analyst obtains by means of these 
 thoughts and images a glimpse of the patient's unconscious. 
 
 John. The trustworthiness of that glimpse depends, of 
 course, upon the association being really free, upon the patient 
 not keeping back anytliing which occurs to him. 
 Mr. Banks. Of course, that is essential. 
 John. But how is the patient to know whether the 
 association is free or not. How is he to tell whether the 
 thoughts, images, and so on which appear, instead of being 
 freely suggested by the unconscious, are not fabricated by the 
 censor, with the deliberate intention of covering up the uncon- 
 scious and preventing its real nature from being seen ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Oh ! But the analyst will be able to 
 recognise the distorting influences when they appear. If the 
 patient is consciously or unconsciously suppressing some 
 association, the fact will be readily observed. The analyst is 
 always on his guard in case the censor should be up to his 
 usual tricks. 
 
 John. But how can he detect them unless he knows 
 what to look for to begin with ? It is clear that he can only 
 recognise bona fide manifestations of the unconscious if he 
 possesses first of all a knowledge of the unconscious ; it is 
 only in virtue of that knowledge that he can detect the dis-
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 53 
 
 tortious and suppressions of the censor. But it is on free 
 association that he is relying to get that knowledge : it is, 
 in fact, just because he has not got it to begin with that he 
 resorts to the method of free association. Now you cannot 
 obtain accurate knowledge of a thing by methods which are 
 only vahd on the assumption that you have the knowledge 
 to begin with. 
 
 The method of free association appears, then, to be subject 
 to the same difficulty as the interpretation of dreams, and 
 indeed any other of the methods pursued by psychoanalysts. 
 The trouble is that you can never tell whether the evidence 
 on which you base your knowledge of the patient's unconscious 
 has not been faked by the censor, the most irritating and 
 baffling complication being that all the evidence which may 
 exist in favour of its not being faked may, on a deeper view, 
 be just so much the more, and the more subtle evidence 
 that it is. 
 
 These are some of the logical difficulties of which ordinary 
 psychoanalytical theory does not seem to me to take adequate 
 account, and they are all of a basic character, relating, as they 
 do, to the fundamental postulates upon which psychoanalytic 
 knowledge and method are based. I have devoted myself 
 mainly to these fundamental matters because it hardly seems 
 worth our while to waste powder and shot upon some of the 
 more palpably absurd methods of these so-called scientists. 
 
 Mr. Banks. As, for instance ? 
 
 John. As for instance the obvious retort which would 
 occur to the ordinary practitioner, that these very criticisms 
 of mine were evidence of a suspicious hostility to psycho- 
 analysis ; suspicious because it could not but be sprung from 
 repressed complexes and unresolved neuroses on my own part, 
 which irresistibly demand my immediate subjection to psycho- 
 analytic treatment. The implication is, of course, that 
 opposition to psychoanalysis can never be rational or whole- 
 hearted, but must be dictated by some sinister fear prompted 
 by the critic's censor, a fear based on a disinclination to have 
 his own unconscious revealed by analytic methods. An 
 unsurpassable method of meeting criticism this ! You turn 
 the tables on your critic by proving that his very wish to 
 criticise springs from his crying need of that which he criti-
 
 54 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 cises. Yet to this, and to any other convenient absurdity, 
 the psychoanalyst may always have resort. When your 
 theory is based on the assumption of the existence of some- 
 thing which is by hypothesis unknown, you can always assert 
 precisely what you please about it without fear of contradic- 
 tion. Thus in argument you can always have it both ways, 
 thereby arriving at any conclusion you Mke. If necessary 
 and convenient, you can base the opposite conclusions on 
 the same premises, as, for instance, the two conclusions, first, 
 that hate of a father is a subHmation of an unconscious 
 primitive impulse of sexual love for a father, or, in other 
 words, incest, and second, that ordinary affection for a father 
 is the subhmated form of precisely the same primitive 
 impulse. (You have heard, I doubt not, of the famous 
 CEdipus complex ?) 
 
 What, in the name of clear thinking, are we to make of a 
 theory which asserts that subHmation may produce in the 
 conscious either the exact reverse of what you want in the 
 unconscious, or precisely the same thing in a more presentable 
 form, with the convenient corollary that no possible conscious 
 phenomenon can ever be incompatible with the theory of the 
 unconscious ? 
 
 These, of course, are some of the things which give the 
 enemy cause to blaspheme. And yet I for one would be reluc- 
 tant to number myself among the enemy. 
 
 Mr. Banks. That is an admission which appears as sur- 
 prising as it is generous, coming on top of your rather 
 unsympathetic criticism. 
 
 John. There is no generosity about it, I assure you. 
 Reflect who the enemy are, and consider whether any man 
 who prides himself on his accessibility to new ideas would 
 care to enrol himself in their ranks. A new science inevitably 
 meets with opposition from the old ones it supersedes. There 
 is a vested interest in all knowledge, and the appearance of 
 new ideas places the upholders of that vested interest under 
 the necessity either of accepting them and thereby re-orienta- 
 ting their philosophy, a process which involves time, trouble 
 and the sacrifice of cherished views, or of producing reasons 
 for their rejection. As the upholders of vested knowledge are 
 almost invariably old men, they usually adopt the latter
 
 CRITICISM OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 55 
 
 course on principle, except when they grow too old to under- 
 stand even the little of what is new which is necessary for its 
 rebuttal, in which case they blandly and tacitly ignore it. 
 This is what has largely happened in the case of psycho- 
 analysis. Our university professors just don't lecture about 
 it. But apart from this natural opposition on the part of the 
 old to what threatens to supersede them, psychoanalysis 
 raises up a host of enemies both among the nerve specialists, 
 whose income it promises to undermine, and among the vulgar 
 upon whose moral corns it treads. Few of us really like to 
 be told that our innermost essence is a weltering mass of 
 unbridled, sexual license. It is the bitterness of this opposition 
 which has provoked supporters of psychoanalysis into an 
 attitude proportionately dogmatic and extreme. With apostolic 
 zeal they proffer their ready-made key which is to unlock all 
 the secret chambers of the mind, and, with the bludgeon of 
 the unconscious in their hand, convict of disreputable, repressed 
 complexes all who venture to dispute their claim to omnis- 
 cience. 
 
 This is the more unfortunate since the theory contains 
 elements of real value, which it possesses in common with 
 the general trend of all that appears to me of special significance 
 in modern thought. It has, I think, helped finally to disprove 
 the old mechanist and parallelist theories which I now want 
 to consider. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that, even granting the validity 
 of your criticisms, there are things in psychoanalysis which 
 they fail to touch. 
 
 John, That is so ; and in thinking over these objections 
 that I have tried to lay before you, it is important that you 
 should reaUse what it is exactly that they discredit, in so far 
 as they appear to you sufficiently vaHd to discredit anything. 
 They are valid, not against the practical methods and 
 results achieved by the psychoanalysts which they could not 
 in any event impugn, but only against the alleged structure 
 of the human mind and personahty with which the psycho- 
 analysts have presented us. They are valid not against 
 psychoanalysis as a branch of physiology or even of 
 psychology, but against psychoanalysis as a philosophy : 
 not against the unconscious as such, but against the particular
 
 56 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 picture of it and of its relations to the conscious painted for 
 us by the psychoanalysts. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that you are now prepared to 
 accept the unconscious, although you sought a little while ago 
 to prove that it was logically non-existent. 
 
 John. Certainly I am prepared to accept it. I only 
 tried to show that you could not by logic demonstrate its 
 existence if it were conceived on the lines of psychoanalysis. 
 But I believe that you can, as a matter of fact, demonstrate 
 it in a number of other ways, although the resulting conception 
 is a very different affair from the average psychoanalyst's 
 unconscious. And I think we may take this question 
 of the unconscious, which forms, as it were, a link between 
 our two enquiries, as a starting point for our second 
 enquiry, 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that we can use it as a jumping-off 
 point, as it were, for our discussion of the Life Force. 
 
 John, Scarcely that, for we have a little preliminary 
 ground to cover before we come back to the unconscious, 
 though when we do come back to it, it will land us right into 
 the middle of our discussion of the Life Force. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What is this preliminary ground that we 
 must first traverse ? 
 
 The Classical Conceptions of Evolution. 
 
 John. I want to take a brief glance at biology, and in 
 considering the orthodox theories of evolution to show in 
 what respect they call, by their failure to account for the 
 facts, for a new conception of the Universe in which the uncon- 
 scious will play a necessary and significant part. 
 
 Mr. Banks. We are going to take a long journey, it 
 seems. 
 
 John. Yes, we shall traverse a considerable tract of 
 country ; but don't be alarmed, we shall move quickly. Now, 
 in the first place, do you know what the ordinary, classical 
 theories of evolution are ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. The theories of Darwin and Huxley, I 
 suppose. 
 
 John. Well, and what are they ? What do they assert ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Something to the effect that, as a result of 
 
 i
 
 CLASSICAL CONCEPTIONS OF EVOLUTION 57 
 
 the operations of natural selection, those species survived 
 which were most fitted to their environment. 
 
 John. And how were new species produced ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Because they were suited to their environ- 
 ment, or rather those were produced and ultimately survived 
 which were so suited. 
 
 John. But how could they be suited before they existed ? 
 Or did some latent intuition occur in vacuo and whisper in 
 the ear of a non-existent species, " If you suddenly appear 
 with such-and-such characteristics developed, you will find an 
 environment suitable to you " ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Perhaps it was just chance that produced 
 them, although Bergson would not Hke that. 
 
 John. Come, we must be more precise than that. There 
 are two classical conceptions of evolution. The first is 
 Darwin's, the second Lamarck's. Darwin held roughly that 
 variations in species occur purely fortuitously, and fortuitous 
 developments which happened to be adapted to their environ- 
 ment, and therefore to have survival value, did survive, while 
 others died out. The origin of the whole process, as you 
 observe, is a sheer fluke, expressed by saying " Fortuitous 
 variations occur." 
 
 Lamarck held that adaptation to environment was the 
 only factor of importance, and that the influence of the 
 environment could in itself account for the development of 
 new species that were suited to it. Thus, if you were a beast 
 living in the Sahara, and if the Sahara, owing to some atmo- 
 spheric revolution, suddenly metamorphosed its chmate and 
 became subject to the heaviest rainfall on the globe, you 
 might, if you were a good Lamarckian, expect to see your 
 offspring born with the rudiments of umbrellas. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean that the influence of the rain 
 would in itself cause the development of creatures with charac- 
 teristics suitable to a rainy climate. 
 
 John. That is the theory. Now, these two theories, 
 Darwin's and Lamarck's, have been developed and combined 
 in all sorts of ways ; but both the theories, and the com- 
 binations of them and the developments from them, have 
 this important feature in common; they are all, with the 
 possible exception of what is called neo-Lamarckianism,
 
 58 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 mechanistic. I mean by the word " mechanistic " that they 
 conceive of the Universe as if it were a kind of gigantic clock : 
 wind the clock up and it functions thereafter by the automatic 
 interaction of its parts, each one of which determines the 
 activity of the others and is itself determined by them. 
 
 Now the ordinary evolutionist cannot explain to you 
 how the clock came to be wound up ; but that omission in 
 itself is no objection to his general view. To ask him to 
 explain this would be tantamount to demanding an explanation 
 of the origin of the Universe itself, of how it came to exist 
 and why, a problem which philosophers and scientists of all 
 schools can only leave on one side as an insoluble mystery. 
 If you believe that everything proceeds as the result of the 
 law of cause and effect, it is obviously absurd to ask what 
 is the first cause. But once the initial kick that set the 
 Universe going be assumed, it can and does proceed for the 
 rest of time, on the mechanist view, without the interposition 
 of any extraneous force, agency, god, or creative power of any 
 kind, just as a clock once wound up proceeds to work without 
 the need of any assistance from outside. The advantage of 
 this view is obvious : given the one great mystery of the 
 existence of the Universe, it involves, or is alleged to involve, 
 no unexplained factor at any stage to account for the evolution 
 of the Universe to its present stage of development. The 
 hypothesis therefore has the advantage of complying with 
 the scientific demand for economy of mystery ; whereas the 
 Vitalist hypothesis, the view of Bergson, for instance, which 
 assumes the existence and constant operation of a creative 
 force, which is independent of and superior to matter, and 
 which requires that a fresh act of inexplicable creation should 
 take place every time we think or act, involves the constant 
 interposition of the mysterious, the mysterious being, on the 
 mechanist hypothesis, any phenomenon which cannot be 
 interpreted as the result of the laws which govern the 
 workings of matter. 
 
 The Parallelist Hypothesis. 
 
 The mechanist conception of evolution as the functioning 
 of an automatic machine has its counterpart and corollary in 
 the so-called parallelist hypothesis in psychology.
 
 THE PARALLELIST HYPOTHESIS 59 
 
 If mind or spirit has no necessary part to play in the 
 evolution of the world, it is not to be expected that we shall 
 find it of supreme importance in the constitution of the 
 individual. We shall not regard it as the key to his person- 
 ality, nor, like the VitaHsts, as the essence of his being. As 
 for the body we shall refuse to assign to it the unimportant 
 position of a mere corporeal integument for the spirit, a tem- 
 porary and incidental resting-place, a sort of inn in which the 
 soul may pass a brief space on its unresting march to some ulti- 
 mate and ideal goal. We shall deny the probabihty of the sur- 
 vival of the individual or of the individual's soul after death, 
 and the soul itself we shall regard as a mere metaphysical or 
 mystical figment, the product of man's incorrigible hope in the 
 indefinite prolongation of his own personahty, a hope born of 
 human vanity and fear of extinction, but owning no founda- 
 tion in the data suppHed by an impartial and scientific investi- 
 gation of the facts of human physiology and psychology. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What, then, is mind or spirit on this view ? 
 How explain it ? for we have no alternative but to admit its 
 existence, at any rate in the present. 
 
 John. Mind is most plausibly explained on this view by 
 one of the forms of the theory to which I have referred above 
 as Parallelism. It is thought that matter, by a continual 
 process of refinement and purification, has taken a form so 
 tenuous and etiolated that it almost ceases to possess the 
 material characteristics of weight, density, shape, colour -and 
 the rest, and becoming conscious of itself can even delude 
 itself into the belief that it is not matter at all, but something 
 other than matter. It calls itself, in fact, mind. But this 
 supposed difference from matter is an illusion. What we 
 have to deal with is first of all the brain, which is, of course, 
 obviously material, a collection of nerves, grey matter and 
 so forth, and secondly this alleged entity which is called 
 mind, but is really only a form of matter. This so-called 
 mind is hke a mist attendant on the brain, part of it and 
 sprung from it, yet compounded of matter of a different 
 order, Hke the halo round the head of a saint, or, if I may 
 use a more accurate though sordid metaphor, hke the phos- 
 phorescent glow that surrounds a decayed lobster. 
 
 Two important points are involved in this conception
 
 60 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 First, the mind is entirely dependent on the brain, and there- 
 fore upon the rest of the body, for its existence : destroy the 
 body and you destroy the mind ; the halo, in other words, 
 goes out. Secondly, every modification in the mind is the 
 counterpart of some modification in the brain, that is, of some 
 modification in the body : everything that happens in the 
 mind, every mental occurrence, is preceded and conditioned 
 by something that first happens in the body, and every 
 thought that occurs to us, instead of being a new thing in 
 the world, a new creation as it were, is simply the result of 
 some disturbance in the nerve centres. The material therefore 
 precedes, moulds, conditions, governs, causes — use any word 
 you like to denote precedence and dominance — ^the mental. 
 
 And this, of course, is in accord with the general theory 
 of mechanism which I have just outlined. If the world works 
 mechanically, so does the human being. Mind is not creative : 
 it is an offshoot of matter, and subject like matter to the laws 
 of cause and effect. It follows that free will is a delusion. 
 Every apparent act of choice, every so-called spontaneous 
 feeling or original thought, is the automatic result of some 
 modification in the intertidal scum out of which life is first 
 supposed to have arisen millions of years ago. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Do I understand that you accept this 
 view ? 
 
 Tough- and Tender -minded Attitudes. 
 
 John. I accepted it, or at any rate I identified myself 
 with the spirit of it until recently. I held that one's views 
 on these matters, where positive proof one way or the other 
 was out of the question, were mainly determined by one's 
 temperament, and I accepted William James' rough definition 
 of temperaments into tough and tender. 
 
 Tough-minded people regard the conscious as a mere 
 incidental phenomenon, a sort of alien, an outside and tem- 
 porary passenger in an environment fundamentally hostile or 
 indifferent, a passenger, moreover, who is travelling on a futile 
 journey that has no goal and knows no purpose ; a journey 
 which, for all the difference it makes to the Universe at large, 
 might never have been begun. Life is to them a mere eddy in 
 the primeval sHme, a tiny glow, as Wells puts it, in the vast
 
 TOUGH- AND TENDER-MINDED ATTITUDES 61 
 
 immensities of space and time, which will one day flicker 
 and go out with as little fuss and significance as heralded its 
 appearance. Consciousness, in so far as it can be regarded 
 as being in any way different from matter, is at best its 
 servant, bounded and confined by its environment, and 
 tied hand and foot by the inexorable law of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 To tender-minded people such a view is intolerable. They 
 hold that the intimate, the human and the spiritual must in 
 some fundamental way underlie and outlast the material 
 and brutal, and instead of thinking of matter as moulding 
 spirit, they hope and believe that spirit will come to mould 
 matter, even if it does not do so now. 
 
 Now I held, as I have said, that one's choice between 
 these two fundamental attitudes to the Universe, and one's 
 view of the position of spirit within the Universe, was a matter 
 of temperament, and I believed my own temperament to be 
 tough. I incUned naturally to the mechanist view. I still 
 believe my temperament to be tough, but I hope it is not 
 impervious to evidence ; and the new evidence brought to 
 our notice by psychical research, psychoanalysis, and the 
 theory of the unconscious, seems to be to make the old 
 mechanist view of evolution and the parallelist view of 
 psychology no longer tenable. 
 
 It is to this evidence I now want to turn. 
 
 It is a curious thing that the sort of view I want to suggest 
 borrows each of its two leading features from one of the two 
 theories that we have discussed, and which for my part I 
 have somewhat adversely criticised. 
 
 I have found fault with Bergson and quarrelled with 
 psychoanalysis, but I now want to borrow from Bergson his 
 notion of a creative force behind evolution, and from psycho- 
 analysis the notion of the unconscious. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Isn't that rather cavalier treatment on your 
 part ? You first of all plunder these theories of all you think 
 worth having, and then take the credit for it as if it were 
 your own. 
 
 John. I admit taking the plunder, but not the credit. 
 In fact, I am just going to give the greater part of the credit 
 to that M. Geley, Director of the International Metapsychical
 
 62 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 Institute at Paris, of whom I spoke last time we met, and 
 whose general view I propose to lay before you. With much 
 of what he says I entirely agree. Where I think Geley is 
 wrong I shall make a point of saying, " Here I begin to dis- 
 agree with M. Geley," and shall substitute certain ideas of 
 my own. If it turns out in the end that I am right in 
 those matters in which I think him wrong, then I shall be 
 glad enough to take the credit for that. 
 
 Mr. Banks, Very well ! But who is this M. Geley ? I 
 remember you mentioned him before, but I don't recollect 
 what you said about him. I am afraid I had never heard of 
 him before you spoke of him last time. 
 
 The System of M. Geley. 
 
 John, You would if you had been a Frenchman, He is 
 the Director of the International Metapsychical Institute at 
 Paris, as I told you, and has conducted, as you might expect, 
 extensive researches into supernormal physiology and 
 psychology — spiritualism, you know, and all that. The 
 results have led him to a theory which is set forth with great 
 clearness in his book, From the Unconscious to the Conscious, 
 recently translated into English. Beyond that I know prac- 
 tically nothing of him. His book shows him to be mainly a 
 scientist, partly a biologist, partly a psychologist, and only 
 a very little of a philosopher ; and it is, in its own department, 
 the most important and revolutionary work that has appeared 
 since the Origin of Species. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I must get it. 
 
 John. Do ! Now Geley subjects the mechanist concep- 
 tion of the Universe and of the individual, which I outlined 
 a few minutes ago, to an examination, of which the results 
 must for him fulfil two primary requisites, which are, as it 
 were, laid down in advance. The first is that of explaining 
 the phenomena usually known as spirituaHsm, in which, of 
 course, Geley is specially interested ; the second is that of 
 squaring with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, by whom he 
 is particularly impressed. Are you acquainted with that 
 philosophy ? 
 
 Mr. Banks, Not much, I fear. 
 
 John. It doesn't matter. I will explain as much of
 
 THE SYSTEM OF M. GELEY 63 
 
 it as is necessary for our purpose when we come to it. Bearing 
 in mind the results to be arrived at, the mechanist conception 
 is shown to stand the test of Geley's examination very poorly ; 
 he has, in fact, no difficulty in convicting it of complete 
 inability to account for the phenomena of hfe and evolution 
 as we know them. The classical mechanist concept, which 
 regards evolution as proceeding entirely from the operation 
 of the laws of cause and effect in the world of matter, is, 
 according to Geley, unable, among other things, to explain 
 the origin of species, the origin of instincts, the transformation 
 of species, whereby a species suddenly throws off what is 
 known as a sport which gives rise to a new species, the evolu- 
 tion and changes undergone by the insect, the growth of the 
 human body, the maintenance of the form of the human body, 
 and the repair of organic tissue which has been damaged. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Ye gods ! What a Hst ! 
 
 John. Yes, and I am not going into it in any detail. A 
 word or two will suffice to show the sort of thing that Geley 
 is after. 
 
 Take the question of sports. It is now generally agreed, 
 as the result of the experiments of a Dutchman called De 
 Vries, that evolution, instead of proceeding, as was generally 
 supposed, by a gradual modification of species due to a more 
 and more complete adaptation to environment, does in fact 
 proceed by the quite sudden appearance of entirely new 
 developments in a species called sports, which nothing in 
 the previous development or character of the species has in 
 any way foreshadowed. The evening primrose is, I behevs, 
 about to exfoliate, or is in process of exfoliating a sport of this 
 kind, and this sport may become the origin of an entirely 
 new species of primrose. Once the sport appears, the ordinary 
 factors of selection and adaptation to environment account 
 for its future development, determining whether it will survive 
 and develop or whether it will die out ; but these factors are 
 quite unable to account for its sudden appearance. If it is 
 environment that conditions variation, it would require a 
 complete and sudden change of environment to account for 
 a sport. But no such change is in fact necessary. 
 
 Or take the case of the insect. The insect, as you know, 
 goes through a series of astounding changes in its hfe, than
 
 64 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 which none are more remarkable than the changes that take 
 place when the grub goes into the chrysalis, a stage at which, 
 I would have you note, it is almost completely isolated from 
 the influence of external agencies. In the chrysahs there 
 takes place what is called the histolysis of the grub, whereby 
 all its organs are destroyed and reduced to an amorphous 
 pulp preparatory to the coming transformation into the insect. 
 These complete changes cannot be accounted for by the 
 interplay of mechanical factors. There must be something 
 in control, something with a purpose, some directive idea, caU 
 it what you will, according to whose plan the various trans- 
 formations take place. 
 
 Take one more instance, this time from the human 
 organism. The parallelist conception of psychology, to which 
 I referred some time back, presupposes the view that the human 
 body is a collection of cells each having a kind of real, inde- 
 pendent existence of its own, which, by coming together into 
 a certain kind of grouping, constitute the organism called 
 the body, much as a collection of persons coming together 
 constitute a city. There is, however, no centralised direction 
 of the group, for that would involve some kind of independent 
 consciousness or mind controlhng and conditioning matter, 
 whereas, as we saw, consciousness is, on this view, an inci- 
 dental and unimportant product of matter and is conditioned 
 by it. 
 
 But if the cells are just loosely grouped, if they are not 
 bound by any necessary tie and do not owe allegiance to any 
 single authority, how do they invariably maintain that one 
 grouping which gives to each individual its specific form ? 
 How, short of a controlling and purposive consciousness, do 
 they create out of themselves new cells for the express purpose, 
 let us say, of forming a new leg in place of the old one lost 
 by a living crab, seeing that there is no change in the outer 
 environment necessitating the sudden growth of an extra leg ? 
 
 One more consideration and I will leave this part of the 
 argument, since the details of the discomfiture of the 
 mechanists are for the biologists to elaborate, our interest 
 being mainly in the conclusions that follow on their discom- 
 fiture. There is a convincing argument, and, if I mistake not, 
 one used by Bergson, which consists in putting the following
 
 THE SYSTEM OF M. GELEY 65 
 
 question to the mechanists : Why, if evolution is, as you 
 say, simply the process of progressive adaptation to environ- 
 ment, did it not stop long ago ? Many species evolved at a 
 comparatively early stage in the world's history are, if not 
 perfectly adapted to environment, at least as well as or better 
 adapted to it than human beings. The amoeba and the jelly- 
 fish are subject to fewer diseases, the tortoise has an enor- 
 mously longer life, while the offspring of almost any creature 
 you like to name is more self-reliant and less helpless in 
 face of the forces of nature than the human infant. And 
 nature, recognising this fact, has permitted many species 
 which have arrived at a stage of adequate adaptation to 
 remain constant : they cease to develop or vary ; evolution 
 has, in fact, stopped along that particular line. Why then, if 
 adaptation to environment is the only motive force behind 
 evolution, did not evolution stop everywhere ? Why indeed, 
 unless it is that adaptation to environment, natural selection, 
 and the rest, are not the motive forces behind evolution, which 
 must be interpreted on other hnes ? Does not tliis continual 
 evolution of new species, even after the supposed goal of 
 adaptation to environment has been reached, suggest that 
 evolution is impelled, as it were, by a constant push from 
 behind, a force which insists on expressing itself in constantly 
 new forms and producing continually new types in pursuit 
 of some purpose of its own ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean Bergson's elan vital, his constant 
 change or flux ? 
 
 John. Bergson, I think, uses this as an argument for the 
 elan vital, but you will remember that we found his view to 
 be not without its difficulties. All that I want to do now is 
 to point out that his argument does seem to be vahd against 
 any mechanist conception of the Universe, and as such may 
 be added to the considerations brought forward by M. Geley, 
 of which I have given a few instances, to convict the mechanist 
 hypothesis of failure to fit the facts. But you will understand 
 that through all this Geley is only dealing with preliminary 
 considerations : he is roughly surveying ground that has been 
 covered by others ; he has still to play his trump card, and 
 his trump card is the phenomena of supernormal personahty : 
 all that group of manifestations and appearances known 
 popularly as spiritualism. 
 
 5
 
 66 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 Mr. Banks. But is there one feature common to them 
 all ? Can there indeed be one common feature which charac- 
 terises spirit appearances, ghosts, telepathy, table rapping, 
 automatic writing, hypnotism, clairvoyance, lucidity, thought- 
 reading, and all the rest of them ? 
 
 Supernormal Psychology. 
 
 John. They may not have any common feature, except 
 in so far as they all unite in demanding a very special kind 
 of hypothesis to account for them. What is more, they are 
 absolutely unaccountable on the ordinary hypothesis by which 
 the mechanists have explained evolution. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But why account for them at all ? There 
 is no necessity to account for what does not exist, and you 
 are not seriously going to tell me that a man with a critical, 
 sceptical kind of brain like yours not only believes in the 
 quackery, charlatanry, hypocrisy and divine flapdoodle gener- 
 ally, which, under the name of spirituahsm, imposes itself 
 upon idle and well-to-do old women who find the afternoons 
 hang heavily on their hands, but pays it the comphment of 
 allowing it to influence his philosophy to the extent of holding 
 the scientists accountable for their failure to give an account 
 of it? 
 
 John. Very eloquent of you, Mr. Banks ! I must say I 
 should have expected the believer in the elan vital and the 
 glorified lavatory of the Freudian unconscious to be sceptical 
 about spirituahstic phenomena. It requires a very special 
 kind of credulousness to be sceptical about spirituahsm. 
 
 Mr. Banks. A special kind of credulousness ! What do 
 you mean ? 
 
 John. I mean a very extreme kind. You see you are 
 required to beheve that many of the most sincere and most 
 eminent investigators of our age, together with numberless 
 witnesses, both wise and foohsh of all the ages that are recorded 
 in history, are and were either dehberate hars and cheats — 
 and Hars too where the lying, even when extending over 
 hundreds of years, is characterised by remarkable unanimity — 
 or else victims of self-deception of the simplest and most 
 obvious kind. To believe that seems to me to demand a 
 credulity before which the act of faith involved in the adoption
 
 SUPERNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 67 
 
 of a favourable attitude towards phenomena whose existence 
 there is no theoretical reason whatever to doubt, but which, 
 on the contrary, are supported by practical evidence of the 
 most elaborate and well-attested character, pales into insig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But surely you admit that cheating and 
 deception are rampant. All the rogues and charlatans who 
 are too lazy to do a decent hand's turn of work make them- 
 selves out to be mediums in direct communication with the 
 unseen world, and play upon the affections of credulous people 
 by pretending to give them messages from their dead relatives, 
 to call up visions from the spirit world, and to perpetrate all 
 manner of similar imbecilities. 
 
 John. Yes, I know : the Rev. Vale Owen and all that ! 
 Such people make me as indignant as they do you. But I 
 can admit all that ; I can admit, if you Uke, that three-fourths 
 of what passes as spirituaHsm is trickery, without in the least 
 admitting that all spiritualism is trickery. And just as 
 strongly as I do beHeve that most of it is trickery do I also 
 beHeve that the remainder is not trickery. The evidence is 
 too voluminous and too conclusive. It can't all be explained 
 away, and there is, after all, no reason why it should. For 
 though, as I say, such phenomena are inexphcable on the 
 ordinary mechanist hypothesis of the Universe and parallelist 
 hypothesis of the Self, there are other hypotheses wliich not 
 only explain how these occurrences take place, but actually 
 demand that they should take place. One of these hypotheses 
 is M. Geley's, and if you will allow me I should hke to get 
 back to him as soon as possible. 
 
 Mr. Banks. By all means. But I am afraid that, as I 
 have not studied the subject, you ought briefly to explain 
 to me what these phenomena are which are incomprehensible 
 on the ordinary, classical conception of the Self, 
 
 John. Well, let me take the most important. You know 
 that in a mediumistic seance a form commonly appears, or, to 
 use the customary expression, is materialised, frequently at 
 some distance from the medium, which purports to be a dis- 
 embodied spirit. Careful investigation has shown that the 
 actual substance of which the materialisation is formed is a 
 portion of the substance of the medium's body exteriorised.
 
 68 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 What usually happens apparently is that a kind of formless 
 substance like a membrane issues from the medium's body 
 — sometimes it is in the form of a mist, sometimes it is sheer, 
 indeterminate, membranous tissue — and then moulds itself 
 into definite, though rapidly changing shapes. Sometimes 
 these shapes separate themselves entirely from the body of 
 the medium, so that a separate and distinct bodily organism 
 is formed ; but in all cases the shape seems to be reabsorbed 
 sooner or later into the body of the medium. Now, whether 
 these shapes, which talk and move, are the temporary lodging- 
 places of disembodied spirits, or whether they are only some 
 aspect of the medium's personality — an emanation of the 
 unconscious, if you Uke — ^which guides their movements and 
 speaks through them, need not detain us here. The impor- 
 tant point is that the sudden exteriorisation of a portion of a 
 person's body, its reduction to formless matter and subsequent 
 appearance under another shape, cannot be explained in 
 terms of adaptation to environment, or as the result of the 
 interplay of material forces. If the material directs and 
 moulds the mental, if there is no creative will or purpose in 
 the world, if the Universe proceeds as the result of the selection 
 of chance variations, then it is impossible to explain why 
 these phenomena should take place. Granting their existence, 
 granting, in fact, our superiority to that creduHty I referred 
 to above, then we must necessarily explain them in terms of 
 a theory which admits the control by mind of matter, or, not 
 to beg the question by the use of the word mind, admits 
 the existence of some non-material force which uses matter 
 for its own purposes and in its own way, and so moulds it 
 into the shape it requires. 
 
 This, indeed, is the kind of conclusion to which the various 
 lines of facts to which Geley draws our attention infaUibly 
 point, the conclusion that there is a directing idea, controlhng 
 force — call it what you will — which expresses itself in aU the 
 phenomena of evolution, and continually pushes forward 
 evolution by means of ever-changing manifestations in matter 
 in fulfilment of some purpose of its own. What we have now 
 to do is to formulate the theory in terms of which the existence 
 of such a force and all that it means can be most adequately 
 expressed.
 
 SUPERNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 69 
 
 Mr. Banks. Is that what you mean by the Vitalist 
 conclusion ? 
 
 John. Yes. It is the only alternative to mechanism, 
 and is a theory which, in some one or other of the numerous 
 forms in which it has found expression, is as old as the hills. 
 The commonest form of it postulates the existence of an 
 omnipotent, benevolent deity, who, having created the Uni- 
 verse for some purpose of his own, continually guides evolution 
 to its predestined end. That he permits the appearance or 
 reaUty of free will to the creatures he evolves is accepted as 
 part of his omnipotence, the omnipotent conception being 
 invoked as a kind of deus ex machina to solve all the insoluble 
 difficulties and contradictions to which the theory gives rise. 
 
 But this conception need not detain us here. Nobody of 
 intelUgence outside the church believes in it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You might as well add, " or inside the 
 church," for it is not to be expected that intelligence should 
 be found there. 
 
 John. On the contrary, it requires intelligence of a very 
 high order to explain or explain away pain and evil ; and 
 this is what those who believe in God must needs do. How- 
 ever, we are not here to talk theology. Another form of the 
 Vitalist conclusion is to be found in the philosophy of Bergson, 
 but we have already discussed and found occasion for stumbhng 
 in that philosophy. 
 
 So let us turn to Schopenhauer, from whom, as I said 
 above, Geley may in a manner be said to start, and see what 
 he has to offer towards the explanation of the facts Geley has 
 collected. I think you said you were not acquainted with 
 his philosophy ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I have some knowledge of it — not much, I 
 am afraid ; and I have read his Essay on Women. 
 
 John. Of course ! Everybody reads that. It so thor- 
 oughly and comfortably justifies one in any httle irritation 
 one may from time to time feel with members of the sex : 
 married men find it a constant source of consolation. But I 
 was, of course, speaking of his metaphysics. Shall I just 
 briefly run over as much of it as is relevant to our purpose ? 
 It can be done in a few sentences. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Please do.
 
 70 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 The Metaphysic of Schopenhauer. 
 
 John. Schopenhauer held that there was only one thing 
 which was ultimately real in the Universe. This reality was 
 an irrational, non-logical principle which he called the Will. 
 The Will is not thought, and it is not spirit ; it is best described 
 as a sort of effort, a wanting or striving of any and every 
 kind. The Will manifests itself in various representations; 
 one of these representations is human consciousness, another 
 is the collection of apparently real and solid objects which 
 we call matter. The relation between the Will and its various 
 representations is the same as the relation between Kant's 
 thing m itself and the various appearances of the thing in 
 itself which are known to mind — you will remember that 
 we mentioned Kant's view when discussing Bergson — it is, 
 in fact, the relation between reality and appearance. All 
 appearances are temporary, and are duly reabsorbed into the 
 Will. The Will, which is real and permanent, cannot there- 
 fore be known by mind, which is a temporary representation 
 of it. It follows that consciousness, being temporary, ceases 
 at death, while that part of the individual which is the Will, 
 apart from its temporary representation in consciousness, 
 persists but persists only to be merged again in the 
 universal Will. 
 
 It is the nature of the Will to be a vast, omnipresent 
 unconsciousness without motive and without purpose ; and 
 the seat of the Will in the individual is therefore to be found 
 in the unconscious. The functioning of our bodies, of which 
 we are normally unconscious, as, for instance, the processes 
 of digestion, together with those factors in our psychology 
 of whose origin we are ignorant and whose manifestations in 
 consciousness we are unable to control, spring direct from 
 the Will ; that is to say, they really belong to the Will itself 
 and are of the world of reahty, whereas consciousness is only 
 a temporary representation of the Will and belongs to the 
 world of appearance. It follows therefore that we are to 
 place the origin of desire, together with genius, inspiration and 
 creative power, all of which escape our control, in the uncon- 
 scious ; while everything that happens in consciousness is to 
 be interpreted as a representation of some directive, controlling 
 principle which is itself outside consciousness.
 
 THE METAPHYSIC OF SCHOPENHAUER 71 
 
 With Schopenhauer's pessimism I need not trouble you 
 here. It arises from the fact that as the Will to live in the 
 individual manifests itself in a series of wants, and as wanting 
 implies pain, while momentary satisfaction only prepares the 
 way for a new want, the pains in the individual's life must 
 inevitably predominate over the pleasures. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Do you beheve that this conclusion follows 
 from Schopenhauer's premises ? 
 
 John. Personally I do not, and I shall indicate in a 
 moment how Geley tries to prove that the conclusion is 
 inadmissible. But the question is really an ethical one and is 
 outside the scope of our present enquiry. We have still 
 some way to go, you know, before we come to the Life Force, 
 so I must refer you for a further discussion of Schopenhauer's 
 pessimism to works on ethics. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Well, the sketch of Schopenhauer's meta- 
 physics has not been without interest, but it seems to have 
 carried us a long way from psychoanalysis and from M. Geley 
 with whom we started, and to have brought us no nearer to 
 the Life Force, where I understand we are to end. How is it 
 to our purpose after all ? 
 
 Geley's Adaptation of Schopenhauer. 
 
 John. It is very much to our purpose. So much so that 
 we can now take it as our starting point and retrace our steps 
 to M. Geley, picking up the scattered threads that we have 
 left in the air, so to speak, on our way. You will remember 
 that we left Geley looking round for a sort of general, directing 
 idea, a force or principle, thought of by Geley as purposive, m 
 terms of which to explain the phenomena of normal and super- 
 normal psychology, for which the ordinary conceptions of 
 evolution and psychology fail to account. 
 
 Well, he finds this principle in Schopenhauer's Will, to 
 which he gives the somewhat forbidding name of a " dynamo- 
 psychism." This dynamo-psychism, which is conceived of as 
 a sort of concrete energy or dynamic force, is the motive power 
 behind evolution. The Universe and everything within it, 
 including both matter and consciousness, are simply the 
 various representations of this dynamo-psychism. The
 
 72 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 dynamo-psychism is eternally one and the same : its repre- 
 sentations are innumerable and ever changing. 
 
 Now, starting from the conception that matter is just one 
 among a number of representations of the dynamo-psychism 
 and subject to other representations such as mind or con- 
 sciousness, which occupy a higher place in the hierarchy of 
 representations, we can see how it is that mind or spirit is 
 essential and conditions matter, instead of matter being 
 essential, as the mechanists taught, and conditioning mind 
 or spirit. 
 
 Problems of supernormal psychology and physiology, 
 spirit manifestations, and so forth are therefore to be 
 interpreted on precisely the same lines as the phenomena of 
 normal psychology. The appearance of a new form from the 
 side of the medium is exactly on all fours with the formation 
 of the body of the embryo in the womb of the mother : it is 
 an expression of the power of the dynamo-psychism in forming 
 and conditioning matter. All that has happened in the case 
 of supernormal physiology is that a portion of the medium's 
 personahty has escaped, as it were, from the control of the 
 normally centrahsed self, and is playing pranks with the 
 medium's body on its own. Secondary personaHties are thus 
 like rebelhous schoolboys who have escaped from the rule of 
 the controlling dynamo-psychism centrahsed in the Self. 
 
 Starting again from Schopenhauer's view that the Will or 
 dynamo-psychism is primarily unconscious, we shall expect to 
 find its essential residence in the individual to he in the uncon- 
 scious, and we shall conclude, as Schopenhauer does, that, 
 though each representation of the dynamo-psychism in con- 
 sciousness is temporary and disappears with the dissolution 
 of the body and brain at death, the unconscious in the indi- 
 vidual is eternal and part of the all-pervading dynamo- 
 psychism. 
 
 Strictly speaking, however, it is not the whole of the 
 unconscious which survives, but part of it only. We must, 
 in fact, make a subdivision in the unconscious itself. The 
 first category of the unconscious has no counterpart in con- 
 scious faculty and knowledge. It is the mysterious essence of 
 the individual, his permanent and unchangeable self, the true 
 dynamo-psychism through which he is in touch with and
 
 GELEY'S ADAPTATION OF SCHOPENHAUER 73 
 
 part of what is real and divine in the Universe. It is the 
 source of genius, creative power and inspiration. This is the 
 category which survives. 
 
 The second category is more like the unconscious as the 
 psychoanalysts conceive it, namely, that which conditions 
 and accounts for all modifications which appear in conscious- 
 ness. This second category is itself only a transitory repre- 
 sentation of the dynamo-psychism, and in all probabihty does 
 not survive. 
 
 I say it is like the unconscious of the psychoanalysts in ; 
 function, and yet in nature it is totally dissimilar. Geley ^ 
 regularises the unconscious and makes it respectable. Instead 
 of being a sort of dust-bin into which we shoot our refuse 
 emotions, an unlicensed welter of all the primitive sexuality 
 which civiHsation shames us into shutting out of our conscious, 
 it is for Geley the most valuable and important part of our 
 personaUty, the source of all the faculties in which we take 
 pride, the casket in which is locked the pecuHar secret of our 
 own individuality. It is in the unconscious that the artist 
 finds his inspiration ; it is from the unconscious that the 
 genius draws his creative power. And the explanation of the 
 paradox that it is only when we abandon conscious effort that 
 we can do our best work, that we must let our brains lie fallow 
 before we can create, that inspiration comes only in reverie 
 and day-dream, and that the sleeper who goes to bed with 
 a brain teeming with unsolved problems, harassing indecisions 
 and competing courses, wakes to find his problems solved, his 
 indecisions decided, and his way of action plain, Hes in the 
 fact that the unconscious can only be induced to function 
 when the conscious is in abeyance. And this conclusion is, 
 I think, fully in accord with the facts. It is a commonplace 
 that men of highly-developed reasoning powers are lamentably 
 unable to make the smallest, practical decision without pain- 
 ful hesitation and vacillation. Why ? Because they have 
 developed their conscious at the expense of their unconscious : 
 because they insist on marshalling and balancing the reasons 
 for and against a course of action, instead of leaving the 
 decision to the sure but unreasoning impulse that comes from 
 the unconscious. 
 
 Why does the expert always fail in business ? Because
 
 I 
 
 74 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 he accumulates and remembers details, and tries to decide 
 rationally on the balance of the evidence : he cannot see the 
 wood for the trees : he has not, in fact, trained his unconscious 
 by forgetting enough. 
 
 The successful business man and the great commander, on 
 the other hand, are accustomed to give rapid decisions which 
 they are totally unable to justify. Doctors give by instinct 
 correct diagnoses which they are unable to explain. 
 Juries give the correct verdict without appreciating the 
 arguments of the K.C.'s or the summing-up of the judge. 
 Decide according to the notions of common sense is the recipe 
 for practical success in life, and never give reasons for your 
 decisions, for, as Lord Mansfield said : " Your judgments will 
 probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be 
 wrong." 
 
 It seems a comforting doctrine, does it not, for it teaches 
 that if we will only slacken effort the unconscious will do our 
 work for us. That does not mean, of course, that conscious 
 effort is unnecessary. Conscious effort is essential for making 
 actual in the world of concrete fact the suggestions and 
 inspirations that spring from the unconscious Self. But the 
 origin of desire, thought, emotion and initiative must in each 
 case be sought outside the bounds of consciousness. 
 
 It is, I think, to the lasting credit of Geley that he has 
 rescued the unconscious from the stigma of disreputability 
 placed upon it by the psychoanalysts, and made it fit for 
 decent society. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Please stop a moment. You are running on 
 so fast, and so much of this is new to me, besides being very 
 difficult, that I doubt if I have succeeded in following 
 you very closely. Geley seems terribly difficult, or at 
 least . . . 
 
 John. He isn't really ; he is, in fact, peculiarly easy to 
 read. But I am afraid I have made him seem so by the 
 necessity I have been under of condensing great tracts of 
 argument in order to give you a brief outline of his theory, 
 an outline wliich should be at the same time comprehensive 
 and of manageable dimensions, before passing on to my own. 
 And you understand, of course, that I have simply stated 
 some of his main conclusions without touching upon the
 
 GELEY'S ADAPTATION OF SCHOPENHAUER 75 
 
 wealth of argument and evidence, mainly of a scientific char- 
 acter, with which he supports them. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, I understand that ; but that is not 
 what I meant at all. What I did mean to say before you 
 interrupted me was that, although I may not have followed 
 all the arguments of M. Geley, I have at least detected an 
 inconsistency in your own, 
 
 John. And where, pray ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Why, about the unconscious. First of all 
 you roundly criticise the psychoanalysts for asserting all 
 manner of things about the unconscious, which, on their own 
 premises, must necessarily remain unknown, and then you 
 proceed to state, with every appearance of approval, a number 
 of characteristics of M. Geley 's unconscious, which must be 
 equally unknown. How, pray, on your own showing, can you 
 know that the unconscious is the source of genius if its uncon- 
 sciousness places it outside your possible knowledge ? 
 
 Interpenetration of Conscious and Unconscious. 
 
 John. Good ! I am glad you appreciated my argument 
 against the psychoanalysts so thoroughly ; but it won't work 
 with M. Geley. I was just coming to that when you inter- 
 rupted me. One of his cardinal points is this : instead of there 
 being fixed an impassable gulf between the unconscious and 
 the conscious, as the psychoanalysts suppose, or between the 
 Will or Thing in Itself and its various representations as 
 Schopenhauer supposed, the two shade into each other by 
 imperceptible degrees, continuously interpenetrate, and con- 
 tinuously transfer possessions and faculties from one to the 
 other. 
 
 Let me give some instances : again you will understand 
 I am only stating dogmatically what I beheve to be estab- 
 lished facts, and leaving you to turn to M. Geley for the 
 evidence which he adduces in support of these facts. First, 
 the unconscious is continually passing into consciousness 
 (e.g. in the phenomena of inspiration and sudden decision) 
 on the lines I have just indicated : it rises daily into con- 
 sciousness, controls it and directs it. All the so-called innate 
 characteristics of which we are conscious, fits of temper, 
 personal idiosyncrasies, disUke of cats, mental twists and 
 
 \
 
 I 
 
 76 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 habits, whatever, in short, it is that makes of us unique 
 individuaUties with differences from others, are characteristics 
 which appear in the conscious direct from the unconscious. 
 But the reverse process is also at work. The passage from 
 the conscious to the unconscious is equally well established. 
 The memory of every thought, desire or experience that has 
 ever been ours, on passing out of consciousness, passes into 
 the unconscious and remains latent there. Our conscious hfe 
 is really a succession of lives. The conscious child of five is 
 just a different person so far as his conscious is concerned 
 from the conscious youth of twenty and the conscious old 
 man of eighty. But the continuity of personality is neverthe- 
 less maintained by the transference to the unconscious of 
 all the memories appertaining to each successive state, so 
 that the unconscious registers, as it were, a complete record 
 of the development and wane of the conscious individual. 
 
 These statements I believe to be facts and to be supported 
 by detailed evidence. What follows is a conjecture of 
 Geley's. 
 
 All the acquisitions of consciousness during a lifetime, on 
 being transferred to the unconscious, are transmuted into 
 faculties. The unconscious being develops, therefore, as the 
 result of the continual enriching of the unconscious by the 
 conscious. This enriching and development of the uncon- 
 scious is the source of new faculties which appear in con- 
 sciousness not in this life, but in a succeeding life, in the 
 shape of innate aptitudes and capacities. The unconscious, 
 or that part of it which is the essential dynamo-psychism, has 
 a permanent existence unaffected by the dissolution at death 
 of the conscious and the bodily organism which are merely 
 its representations ; and being enriched during each successive 
 life by the acquisitions of each successive consciousness, it 
 represents itself in the succeeding life in a more developed 
 and more highly conscious being. Thus the acquired treasures 
 of the unconscious during life number one become the con- 
 scious faculties of the individual during life number two ; 
 and thus it is that the area of consciousness continually 
 enlarges as that of the unconscious continually diminishes. 
 This process, according to Geley, is the object and aim of 
 evolution. 

 
 GELEY'S CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION 77 
 
 Geley's Conception of Evolution. 
 
 What, then, is the Universe and the place and signifi- 
 cance of the individual within it, as Geley conceives 
 them ? 
 
 The Universe is one dynamo-psychism and its representa- 
 tions. There is nothing, not even matter, which is not a 
 representation of the dynamo-psychism, and since each 
 existing thing is merely a phenomenal representation of 
 something which is at the same time its own inmost nature 
 it is reasonable to suppose that it will one day be reabsorbed 
 again into that from which it has sprung. This dynamo- 
 psychism is originally unconscious, and is still largely so 
 to-day ; it is a blind impulse, as Schopenhauer conceived 
 the Will, an unconscious effort in inorganic nature. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But what is inorganic nature if it is not 
 dynamo-psychism ? 
 
 John. Thereby hangs a tale, which I shall come to in a 
 minute. Meanwhile we have a dynamo-psychism which is 
 unconscious : sooner or later, however, a rudiment of con- 
 sciousness appears. 
 
 Mr. Banks. How ? 
 
 John. I don't know, nor does anybody else ; but to this 
 point also I will return in a minute. This rudiment, according 
 to Geley, is indestructible, and once it has appeared it 
 increases. Consciousness is thought of as making its appear- 
 ance in the form of a series of conscious monads, atoms, 
 particles, call them what you will. These monads are distinct, 
 but have the power of grouping themselves into collections. 
 Each collection forms a separate individuahty ; but in each 
 collection one of the monads is in some unexplained way 
 central. This central monad is the real Self. At death the 
 collection of monads which forms the individual is dispersed 
 and reabsorbed into the all-embracing dynamo-psychism. 
 The constituent monads are not, however, annihilated on 
 dispersion, and they retain, or at least the central monad 
 retains, the memory of all the experiences that have occurred 
 to the group of monads which formed the individual during 
 the Ufe just ended. The acquisitions which these memories 
 involve are brought by the monads to the enrichment of the 
 
 i
 
 I 
 
 78 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 new grouping in which they will presently again individuahse 
 themselves. 
 
 The Self is, therefore, just an individualised portion of 
 the universal dynamo-psychism. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What is the object of the process ? Why 
 was it ever begun ? Why should this dynamo-psychism 
 individualise itself into temporary representations ? 
 
 John. In order to further the object of evolution which 
 is the transformation of the dynamo-psychism from uncon- 
 sciousness into consciousness. The temporary representa- 
 tions of the dynamo-psychism which make up each individual 
 involve a rigid hmitation of the power latent in the psychism. 
 For the real psychism each incarnation in a body is a restric- 
 tion, as it were, of its powers, these powers remaining latent 
 in the unconscious, which, as I have said, is the most direct 
 representation of the dynamo-psychism in the individual. 
 As a result of this restriction the individual is compelled to 
 conscious effort and endeavour, and the result of effort and 
 endeavour is not only to enrich the unconscious, but to 
 establish the status and importance of that amount of con- 
 sciousness which has been gained, to refine its quahty, to and 
 intensify its awareness of Self. That is why the supernormal 
 faculties such as lucidity, clairvoyance, power over matter, 
 and so forth, together with inspiration and creative power, 
 are rarely accessible to consciousness. If they were accessible, 
 the incentive to conscious effort would be removed. That is 
 why memory, which in the unconscious is complete, remains 
 latent, and the individual must manage with the comparatively 
 limited cerebral memory of consciousness as best he can — 
 memory of past lives and experiences, you see, would lead 
 to undue specialisation along the lines on which the individual 
 developed in previous hves. It is also necessary that the 
 Self should develop without being harassed by memories of 
 previous failures, which might succeed in turning it aside 
 from its aim. 
 
 It is urged, then, that as a result of these very restrictions 
 the conscious will continually enlarge its territory, drawing 
 from the unconscious the acquisitions of previous hves in the 
 shape of new faculties, and, as evolution proceeds and the 
 necessity for restriction diminishes, drawing more readily
 
 GELEY'S CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION 79 
 
 upon the unconscious for the supernormal powers latent 
 therein. At the summit of evolution the apparent distinction 
 between unconscious and conscious will vanish, for all un- 
 consciousness will disappear in the victory of the conscious. 
 As a final stage in the process the distinction between different 
 individuals will also vanish, for the dynamo-psychism having 
 achieved its purpose of becoming completely conscious through 
 representation in temporary individuals, will have no further 
 necessity for the voluntary limitation which individuaUsation 
 involves. Thus the end of evolution is not complete individual 
 consciousness, but complete Consciousness. The individual 
 will be merged in the Absolute. 
 
 Mr. Banks. This is all very interesting. I should say 
 that the conclusion is almost identical with that of the old 
 intellectual IdeaHsts, Hegel and Bradley and T. H. Green, 
 who believed in the ultimate merging of differences in the 
 Absolute. Isn't that rather an odd conclusion for a thinker 
 starting from Schopenhauer, who was, I understand, Hegel's 
 greatest antagonist ? 
 
 John. It is, and it is only fair to mention that it is Uttle 
 more than a conjecture of Geley's, a conjecture which, I may 
 say, is open to precisely the same difficulties touching the 
 impossibility of accounting for the emergence of difference, or 
 even of the appearance of difference, out of absolute oneness 
 that I had occasion to point out in criticising Bergson. But 
 then I think many of Geley's conclusions are untenable. His 
 method is admirable, and while he confines himself to mar- 
 shalling psychological facts about the unconscious and its 
 gradual and increasing absorption into consciousness, we can 
 only acclaim the value and suggestiveness of his work. I 
 think, for instance, that his emphasis upon the significance 
 of certain biological facts has discredited mechanism once and 
 for all, but where he indulges in metaphysical speculation 
 on the basis of the facts he has observed and collected, he 
 goes somewhat astray. 
 
 Mr. Banks. How, exactly ? 
 
 John, I am going to indicate one or two possible objec- 
 tions, and then proceed to suggest certain views of my own 
 which follow, I think, from the acceptance of those modifi- 
 cations in Geley, Bergson, Schopenhauer and psychoanalysis,
 
 80 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 which the various difficulties I have pointed out seem impera- 
 tively to call for. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Will those views take us to the Life Force 
 discussion at last ? 
 
 John. They will. 
 
 Criticism of Geley's Views. 
 
 Now, take first of all Geley's conception of the Universe 
 and the purpose of evolution. Quite briefly it is this : the 
 universal dynamo - psychism is originally unconscious ; 
 elements of consciousness presently appear ; it is the purpose 
 of the dynamo-psychism through objectification in indi- 
 viduals to evolve from complete unconsciousness to complete 
 consciousness. 
 
 But, first of all, how do elements of consciousness appear ? 
 Can we, when endeavouring to explain the ultimate constitu- 
 tion of the Universe, blandly accept the appearance of an 
 entirely new element for which nothing that has gone before 
 has prepared us, as if such events were as common as the 
 appearance of a new actor on the stage ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. But surely the appearance of consciousness 
 is a mystery which nobody can explain ? 
 
 John. Possibly, but that is no reason for shpping an 
 event of such tremendous importance into your scheme of 
 things as if it did not want explaining. We ought to be 
 frank about our mysteries, instead of suggesting that they 
 are every-day occurrences. Secondly, if we start with a 
 completely unconscious dynamo-psychism, how can we go on 
 to endow it with a purpose, the purpose, namely, of becoming 
 conscious ? Purpose impUes recognition of a goal or end, 
 and recognition of a goal or end impHes consciousness. You 
 cannot say first, " My dynamo-psychism is to begin with 
 completely unconscious," and second, " My dynamo-psychism 
 has to begin with that amount of consciousness which the 
 purpose to increase that amount, until there is no more uncon- 
 sciousness left, implies." 
 
 Now, consider the conception of the individual Self. 
 
 We have to think of the dynamo-psychism, or rather of 
 an individual monad of the psychism organising itself into a 
 hierarchy of representations, the tissues of the body, the
 
 CRITICISM OF GELEY'S VIEWS 81 
 
 vital organism, and the brain, which though not unreal are both 
 temporary and unessential and are dispersed at death. 
 
 I say that these representations are not unreal. But are 
 they real ? Let us suppose, in the first place, that they are 
 real. Now, the only real thing in the Universe is the dynamo- 
 psychism, the Will of Schopenhauer, the elan vital of Bergson. 
 If, then, the representations are really real, they must be 
 of the same nature as the dynamo-psychism. What is the 
 sense, then, in which, though real, they yet exhibit this 
 property of impermanence, and are spoken of as being the 
 unessential part of the individual Self ? How can they be 
 at once as real as the dynamo-psychic monad which is the 
 essence of the individual and at the same time unessential 
 and temporary, in some sense in which the monad (or group 
 of monads) which is the real Self is essential and permanent ? 
 Suppose, on the other hand, that we regard these repre- 
 sentations which form the body and brain as less real than 
 the dynamo-psychism, and conceive them as merely the repre- 
 sentative and transitory appearance of an underlying reahty. 
 An equally difficult question presents itself. How are we 
 to conceive of the dynamo-psychism which is reality objecti- 
 fying itself in something which is not reality ? How, in fact, 
 can reality become less real than itself ? 
 
 Remember that we are asked to think of the individual 
 not merely as a hierarchy of representations of the dynamo- 
 psychism, vaguely connected with the dynamo-psychism by a 
 sort of distant relationship, but as an entity of which the 
 dynamo-psychism is the inmost essence. Yet this surely is 
 unthinkable, that that which is real and eternal should be able 
 not only to enter into connection with, but to be the cause of, 
 the being of that which is unreal and temporary ! 
 
 And here is another point. Although we may state as a 
 matter of theory that the real Self is the dynamo-psychism, 
 we never do as a matter of fact penetrate through to it. We 
 are told that the most profound part of the unconscious is in 
 touch with what is divine in the Universe, and this part is 
 presumably to be identified with the central dynamo-psychic 
 monad, which is the individual Self. But we never know this 
 part directly. All that we can have knowledge of is the 
 second subdivision of the unconscious, which is the source 
 
 6
 
 82 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 of inspiration and creative power in the conscious, the ordinary 
 psychoanalytic unconscious, the seat of latent memory and 
 cryptic powers, with the capacity for interpenetration tacked on. 
 But we are distinctly told that this part of the unconscious 
 is only a representation of the dynamo-psychism like the 
 rest. How then, we may ask, is the gradual emergence of 
 the dynamo-psychism into consciousness to be assisted by 
 the increasing surrender of the unconscious to the conscious 
 in the individual, seeing that the unconscious which diminishes 
 in area by passing into consciousness in the developing indi- 
 vidual, is not the dynamo-psychism itself, or at least is only 
 to be regarded as the dynamo-psychism if we give up the repre- 
 sentation theory and regard all the items in the individual's 
 make-up as equally real ? 
 
 One more difficulty over the Self, and then we may leave 
 M. Geley, having first impounded such of his views as we 
 may want for the building up of our own. 
 
 The Self is formed by the grouping of a number of monads, 
 which are individual portions of the dynamo-psychism, into 
 a temporary unit. As soon as the group is formed one of the 
 monads apparently assumes a central or directive position, 
 and it is this monad which constitutes the real controlhng 
 Self. 
 
 But did this central monad possess individualised charac- 
 teristics inherent in itself which marked it off to begin with 
 from the others ? 
 
 If it did, you have the principle of difference and indi- 
 viduality occurring in the universal dynamo-psychism itself. 
 Whence did this principle arise unless the individual was at 
 least contemporary with, if not prior to, the psychism ? But 
 if that is the case, it is not possible to explam the individual 
 by an initial dynamo-psychism individualising itself into 
 monads. 
 
 If it did not, then the individual only comes into existence 
 as a result of the association of the monads. There is, in 
 fact, no individuahty other than that which consists in the 
 association of the monads : there is therefore nothing central 
 or directive in the Self, no one part in which more than in 
 another the principle of individuahty may be said to reside. 
 The individual therefore is merely a collection of monads.
 
 CRITICISM OF GELEY'S VIEWS 83 
 
 Now, this is precisely that mechanist conception of the indi- 
 vidual upon which Geley is so severe, the conception, that is, 
 of mind, the conscious Self, and the rest being simply the 
 result of the association and interaction of a group of cells, 
 instead of being the expression of a directive controlling idea 
 behind the cells. Our difficulty, then, is briefly as follows : If 
 the individual is just a collection of monads, the whole 
 Vitalist hypothesis must be surrendered ; yet any attempt to 
 disentangle the real Self from its associated monads on the one 
 hand, or from its various representations on the other, seems 
 doomed to failure. You may penetrate further into the un- 
 conscious, you may more carefully study the structure and 
 arrangement of the monads, but the Self behind the uncon- 
 scious, the real centre of the monads, eludes you. 
 
 So much in criticism of M. Geley. His destructive work 
 is admirable ; much of his constructive work is admirable, 
 especially when he keeps within his own province of 
 psychology ; but when he leaves it to indulge in metaphysical 
 speculation there is, as you see, real difficulty in following 
 him. Be it said, however, in his defence that he is as modest 
 and tentative about his metaphysics as he is trenchant and 
 crushing where the mechanists are concerned. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Can we not get on a Uttle ? I am impatient 
 to hear the conclusion of your reasoning, and I have not much 
 longer to spare. You have spent so long in expounding and 
 then in criticising others, that for your own view we have but 
 a hurried half hour. 
 
 John. Philosophy is like that. It must be destructive 
 before it can begin to construct. Any philosophical theory 
 can only be properly understood in relation to the background 
 against which it is mainly a reaction. It is necessary to 
 consider allied and opposing views before giving your own, 
 because they provide the perspective in which alone yours 
 can be truly seen. It is by discovering differences from the 
 old that you detect what is significant in the new. 
 
 Still keeping to the old then let us see what we want to 
 retain and what to discard. 
 
 Contributions to the Theory of the Life Force. 
 
 In Bergson we were impressed with the general truth of
 
 84 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 the conception of the elan vital as a vital surge ceaselessly 
 pushing evolution forward. We should, I think, accept those 
 of his arguments which tend to show that mind conditions 
 matter (supposing that we assume for the moment that the 
 two are di^erent), and that mental activity overflows cerebral 
 activity to which it does not necessarily owe its source ; and 
 we should consequently reject the contrary hypothesis which 
 asserts that mental activity is always a function of cerebral 
 activity and that the mind is really an attenuated form of 
 matter. 
 
 All our difficulties in regard to Bergson centred round 
 two conceptions, the conception of matter and the conception 
 of Intuition. We failed to see how the elan vital could account 
 for matter, and we failed to appreciate the function of 
 Intuition, if indeed we could allow that there was such a 
 faculty, in grasping truth and becoming aware of the nature 
 of the Real. 
 
 Let us keep matter then as something distinct from the 
 elan vital, as something, that is to say, which is outside the 
 flow of evolution and let us forget the faculty of Intuition. 
 
 Taking Geley next, his destruction of the mechanist theory 
 may, I think, be considered convincing, and also his appre- 
 ciation of the importance of the unconscious. Geley's uncon- 
 scious will, in fact, do for us practically all the work which 
 Bergson claimed for his Intuition, and it possesses the added 
 advantage of being in accordance with the evidence. 
 
 In our review of the psychoanalysts we admitted the 
 indubitable uses of the unconscious, but failed to see how, if 
 it were separated by the impassable gulf of difference in kind 
 from the conscious, it was possible for the psychoanalyst to 
 know that it possessed those uses. " Provide us," we said, 
 " with a method of knowing your unconscious, and do a 
 Uttle moral spring-cleaning there before we are introduced, 
 and we are very glad to accept it and all that it implies." 
 This invitation from ourselves to the psychoanalysts meets 
 with httle response in that quarter, especially as regards the 
 moral spring-cleaning ; but Geley is more accommodating, 
 and removes our scruples about knowing the unconscious 
 by the device, first, of making it accessible to consciousness, 
 and then of exhibiting it with its powers of genius, infallible
 
 THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 85 
 
 memory and inspiration as an acquaintance which anyone 
 would be proud to acknowledge. 
 
 Let us take over, then, from Geley and the psychoanalysts 
 the notion of an immensely important unconscious, which is 
 responsible for giving a special twist to our temperaments, 
 providing the basis of our beliefs, colouring the bulk of our 
 thoughts, and giving birth to conscious impulses and desires. 
 And let us also assume with Geley that the unconscious inter- 
 penetrates the conscious, and is in some way more directly 
 connected with that vital force, which we have already got 
 from Bergson, than is the conscious. 
 
 Where we found it difficult to follow Geley was in his 
 adoption of the view that the individual himself was a part 
 of or a representation of the dynamo-psychism. The impUca- 
 tions of this view, the view, namely, that the dynamo- 
 psychism was somehow resident in the individual, in some 
 deep-seated part of the unconscious, where was throned the 
 central, directive principle of the Self, landed us in the difficulty 
 of accounting for how the real and indivisible could be the 
 inmost essence of the temporary and the divided. A repre- 
 sentation cannot owe the fact of its being to the presence in 
 it of what is real without being as real as that wliich gives 
 it life. And then Geley gave no adequate account of matter. 
 Is that, too, a representation of the dynamo-psychism ? Is 
 all that sea trying to evolve from unconsciousness to con- 
 sciousness ? I doubt it. But if it is to be so regarded, the 
 fundamental distinction between mind and matter, the import- 
 ance of maintaining which I tried to point out when criticising 
 Bergson, goes by the board. It is as difficult to regard mind 
 and matter as both of them representations of an all-pervading 
 dynamo-psychism, as it is to think of them as different forms 
 of change, or as action making and unmaking itself. 
 
 Let us, then, keep matter distinct from the dynamo- 
 psychism, and let us get rid of the notion of the individual 
 as a mere temporary representation of a real force or principle, 
 a representation which is nevertheless part of the real force 
 which it unreally represents. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What have we left ? You have bowdlerised 
 both Bergson and Geley of their most characteristic features. 
 What have you to put in their place ?
 
 86 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 Relationship of the Life Force to Individuals. 
 
 John. We are left with a creative force which is the 
 mainspring of evokition. It is Hke Bergson's elan vital and 
 Geley's dynamo-psychism in its continual and ceaseless 
 activity ; but it is unlike these conceptions in two important 
 respects. First, it did not and does not create matter. 
 Matter exists independently, and is in its nature different 
 and ah en from this force. 
 
 Secondly, it does not constitute the being of the indi- 
 vidual, nor does it reside in the individual, nor is the indi- 
 vidual merely a representation or appearance or expression 
 of it. It is behind the individual, as it were, and it is con- 
 stantly pushing him forward : it may be said, indeed, to be 
 the driving force behind most, if not all, of his activity, but 
 the individual is not it. He is continually subject to it, and 
 it is other than he. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Surely you are contradicting yourself here. 
 How can the individual be continually subject to it unless he 
 is an expression of it, in such a way that there is continuity 
 of substance between the two ? 
 
 John. I don't appreciate the difficulty. You and I, for 
 example, are continually subject to a force which ceaselessly 
 operates upon us. We cannot act except under the influence 
 of this force, and we can never escape its influence. This 
 force is gravitation. But this necessary relationship be- 
 tween ourselves and the force of gravitation does not 
 in the least mean that we are the force of gravitation. 
 Similarly a cork carried down-stream is continually subject 
 to the modifications of the river that carries it, and in a 
 very real sense may be said always and of necessity to 
 represent or express that river, since every change in the 
 movement of the stream involves a corresponding change in 
 the movement of the cork. But this, again, does not mean 
 that the cork could not exist without the stream, nor 
 does it mean that the cork is the stream. Furthermore, 
 changes may occur in the cork which are not due to changes 
 in the stream. Now it is this kind of relationship that I 
 want to assert as existing between the individual and the 
 Life Force. The individual is constantly subject to the
 
 RELATIONSHIP OF THE LIFE FORCE 87 
 
 Force and constantly moulded and modified by it ; but he 
 is not it, nor, so far as his mind and his Self, conscious and 
 unconscious, are concerned, is he matter. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You have, then, at our present stage, three 
 quite distinct and fundamental things in your Universe : the 
 Life Force, mind, which exists in individuals, and matter, and 
 no one of these can apparently be resolved into another. 
 
 John. At least three, and how many hundreds more 
 God only knows. Wliat about the fraction ^|, for instance ? 
 That seems to me to be neither Life Force, nor mind nor 
 matter, and yet it is real enough. However, we can't go into 
 the reality of mathematical entities now. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Well, how do you conceive of the Universe 
 and the process of evolution if you have all this complication 
 of ultimates ? 
 
 Evolution as an Expression of the Life Force. 
 
 John. I conceive of the Universe at first as being simply 
 material. It is chaos and deadness and blankness, devoid 
 of force and purpose, and possessed of no energy save material 
 energy, if there be such a thing. Into this Universe at some 
 time or other, and for some purpose which I am unable with 
 certainty to define, there appears a force which I call the 
 Life Force. This is a principle of energy and action. It is 
 creative, too, and, working in the medium of the matter 
 which it finds, it can create beings who have the spark of the 
 vital principle in them and are nevertheless constructed of 
 matter. 
 
 Let us further conceive of this Life Force as having a 
 function to perform, a function which, if you like, you may 
 identify with purpose, the function of converting this world of 
 dead matter into a living world of conscious life. How will it 
 go to work ? It is clear that it will become at once involved 
 in effort and struggle, a struggle with deadness and blankness 
 and chaos, a struggle which seeks to impose order on disorder, 
 to introduce variety and beauty in the midst of homogeneous 
 nothingness, and to infuse energy and motion into the deadness 
 and inertness of matter. For the purpose of carrying on this 
 struggle the Force must obtain weapons ; but weapons it has 
 
 I
 
 88 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 none, nor can find any save those it can make for itself. It 
 therefore creates various forms of life, with the sole object 
 of enlisting their assistance in carrying out the purpose which 
 it has in view. How to define that purpose more precisely 
 than to say that it is the overcoming of chaos and deadness 
 I do not know, since, for the reason I shall suggest in a 
 moment, we who are the instruments of the purpose are 
 necessarily prevented from knowing what the purpose is. 
 
 This much, however, is in my own mind clear, that we are 
 here for the fulfilment of purposes other than our own, or 
 perhaps I should say other than those we consciously set 
 before ourselves, and that if we are remiss in the performance 
 of our function, if, for example, the Life Force can to-day in 
 the light of its past experience of human beings evolve creatures 
 more perfectly fitted for carrying out its purpose, or if we 
 have already played our part on the stage of evolution, and the 
 Force has no further use for that particular weapon which 
 is human will and intelHgence, it will supersede us by some 
 more developed and less self-willed being, with as little com- 
 punction as the modern soldier scrapped the Mauser rifle 
 when the Lee-Metford appeared upon the scene. The story 
 of evolution is full of the ehmination of the failures of the 
 Life Force, and I see no reason to assume either that man 
 is the one unique success or that he will not ultimately go to 
 join the Mesozoic reptiles, the missing link, and all other 
 abortive experiments on the evolutionary scrap-heap. 
 
 The Life Force you see is heartless ; it has no tender 
 spot for its latest creation. Why should it have ? A weapon 
 is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and the only virtue 
 in a " means " is that it should further the end to which it is 
 a means. 
 
 The Life Force, moreover, is not all-powerful, nor is it 
 all-knowing. It is not an omniscient, benevolent god who 
 knows the predestined end of evolution, and must be neces- 
 sarily assured of victory over all opponents, even if his 
 omnipotent all-sufficingness did not preclude the possibility 
 of opponents. The Life Force is limited : it proceeds tenta- 
 tively by the method of trial and error, and we may assume 
 — we must indeed assume from the history of evolution — that 
 many of its experiments have been failures.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE LIFE FORCE 89 
 
 Limitations of the Life Force. 
 
 I conceive of the Life Force as limited and liable to failure 
 in two respects. 
 
 First, it may suffer set-backs in its struggle with matter. 
 Such a set-back would tend to threaten the extinction of life 
 itself and the reversion of the whole Universe to the dead 
 inertia of matter. In that event the effort of the Life Force 
 to vitalise the Universe, an effort that seeks to infuse into 
 matter the Force's activity, so that the very primary rocks 
 become pregnant with life, would have failed. Perhaps it is 
 fanciful, but I cannot help thinking of the recent European 
 war as such a set-back. 
 
 Secondly, the Life Force, through lack of knowledge and 
 foresight, may go astray in the matter of the weapons it 
 forges : it may, in short, create forms of life which are ill- 
 adapted to its purpose. Not only so, but through the necessity 
 which it is under of using matter as a medium for its creative 
 power, a medium which must both limit and distort — limiting 
 capacity and distorting intention — it cannot even create the 
 weapons it would. 
 
 Human life is probably inadequate both in respect of its 
 limited capacity and in respect of its freedom of wiU. There 
 is, I think, no reason to suppose that we are all of us for all 
 our time fulfilling the purpose for which the Life Force created 
 us. Free Will must, I think, be accepted as a reality, and in 
 virtue of our possession of it we are enabled to go astray 
 along by-paths that lead to some subsidiary goal of our own, 
 instead of along the path leading to the goal which the Life 
 Force has appointed. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You speak of Free Will, but how can this be ? 
 If all our activity is derived from the Life Force, if our mind 
 is a creation of the Life Force, if our will is implanted by the 
 Life Force, in what sense can we be free to follow our own 
 purposes ? 
 
 Origin of Free WilL 
 
 John. That is a difficult question, and of course a per- 
 tinent one. But I think a hint of the answer may be found 
 in the consideration I have just mentioned, and that is the 
 
 \
 
 90 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 necessity the Life Force is under of working only in and 
 through the medium of matter ; matter, however we define it, 
 being the stuff of which the Universe is composed. 
 
 Now we have spoken metaphorically of matter as, in a 
 sense, the enemy against which the Life Force is engaged. 
 Continuing the metaphor, I would suggest the possibility 
 that the enemy, although unable to resist the humiliation of 
 being used for its opponent's purposes, can at least distort 
 and pervert the instrument into which it is welded, so that 
 even when compelled to serve as an instrument it may continue 
 to play its proper part of obstructing the fulfilment of the 
 purposes of the Life Force, The Life Force in short uses matter, 
 but it does so at a price. And the price it has to pay is that 
 the matter it employs is enabled to insulate the current of the 
 Force that animates it, so that the current becomes, in a sense, 
 its own master. In other words, the Life Force can only 
 create beings in a material mould at the cost of surrendering 
 to them the right to use that mould as they please, the right, 
 that is, of Freedom of Will. (See note, page 117.) 
 
 Mr. Banks. It is a paradox indeed if you are to attribute 
 to matter the appearance of free will in the Universe. The 
 upholders of free will have usually maintained their principle 
 in spite of the existence of matter, or have even gone to the 
 length of declaring matter illusory. 
 
 John. I know. Nevertheless all the evidence seems to 
 be in favour of the possession by the individual of the power 
 to ignore the purposes for which the Life Force has created 
 him, and to act freely along self-chosen lines which may lead 
 in a direction exactly opposite to that in which the Life Force 
 is tending. We have, in fact, to account for the existence 
 of retrogression. Women, to take an obvious example, may 
 defeat the purpose for which the Life Force created them by 
 artificially sterilising themselves by the use of preventatives. 
 The artist who consents to do the work which the world 
 offers him, by succumbing to the temptation of a big, business 
 salary, instead of insisting on doing the work to which the Life 
 Force prompts him, at the cost of starving in a garret in the 
 usual way, is equally clearly betraying the purposes of the Force. 
 Now it is only in virtue of our possessing something like Free 
 Will that we are enabled to act in this recalcitrant manner.
 
 ORIGIN OF FREE WILL 91 
 
 and, since the desires which we oppose to the life Force, 
 though obviously owing their origin and the fact of their 
 being to our creation by the Life Force, cannot be the desires 
 of the Life Force in the sense of the desires to which the 
 Life Force would have us give effect, I can only assume 
 that this capacity for waywardness and independence is 
 bestowed upon human will in virtue of its objectification in 
 matter. Matter, as it were, interposes itself between the 
 creative Force and the mind or will which the Force has 
 created, and the interposition of the barrier confers upon the 
 created being a measure of independence. 
 
 Mind, I don't lay too much stress on this. It is a pure 
 guess, and by it? very nature must stand without evidence 
 in its support, since It as a hypothesis which goes out beyond 
 the available evidence — I mean the evidence for freedom — 
 and endeavours to account for it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But if we possess this measure of indepen- 
 dence, whereby we are enabled to pursue ends of our own 
 instead of carrying out our function as instruments for the 
 fumiment of the purposes of the Life Force, what guarantee 
 is there that we shall ever perform our supposed function ? 
 Surely it would be both more natural and more pleasant to 
 do what we want to do, instead of obeying the promptings of 
 some bUnd, impersonal force, which cares nothing for us and 
 whose business, after all, is no business of ours. 
 
 John. There is no guarantee, but there is a fair measure 
 of probabiUty. You see, the Life Force has evolved all 
 manner of devices for ensuring that, though possessed of 
 freedom, we do nevertheless spend most of our hves in doing 
 its will. 
 
 Devices of the Life Force to Ensure Subservience. 
 
 (i) Genius. 
 Take, for example, the phenomenon of genius. Now it 
 is, of course, a notorious fact that society as a whole tends to 
 conservatism. It is static and inert, and remains so without 
 a series of continual pushes to help it forward. So true is this 
 that the rule of an energetic and capable minority is necessary 
 not only for moving society forward but for keeping it alive 
 
 ^
 
 92 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 where it stands. You have not only, in fact, to put things 
 right, but to hold them there continually, or else they will 
 slip back. 
 
 This, of couise, constitutes the ultimate and irrefutable 
 argument against democracy, the argument that if you wait 
 long enough for everybody to be converted to the desirability 
 of a necessary reform the need for the reform will have passed 
 away. People are too stupid and too static to be entrusted 
 with the destinies of society, for the simple reason that the 
 achievement of destiny implies movement, and if people 
 were left to themselves they would relapse politically and 
 socially into complete immobihty. That is why all the great 
 changes in the world have been advocated by a few energetic 
 men, animated by the conviction that the full drive of the 
 Life Force behind them can alone bestow, and carried out in 
 the teeth of the opposition of the vast mass of society, who, 
 once the change has established itself, cUng to it with all the 
 vigour of the lazy conservatism which prompted them to 
 withstand its introduction. 
 
 What is true of communities politically is true of them 
 morally and aesthetically. Advances in morals are always 
 due to the spiritual insight of a few individuals, and are 
 strenuously resisted by the mass of common men, who continue 
 to denounce any innovation in the accepted code as out- 
 rageous immorality, which will, unless ruthlessly stamped out, 
 bring society to ruin after a period of decadence such as that 
 which undermined the ancient manhood of Babylon or of 
 Rome. New religions are stigmatised as blasphemy, or at best 
 as quackery, and get themselves accepted only after a brutal 
 persecution of their followers. As for art, it is a common- 
 place that the Bachs, Mozarts and Beethovens have only 
 become the classics of our day at the expense of being denounced 
 as impudent charlatans and iconoclasts by the critics and 
 academicians of their own, for openly flouting all the canons 
 of orthodox harmonics, which cramp the musical inspiration 
 of those composers who are not driven by the urge of the Life 
 Force to disregard them. 
 
 Mr. Banks. That is true enough. I believe that even 
 Mozart, who is now regarded as a model for the orderly 
 weaving of regular and melodious pattern-music, was attacked
 
 DEVICES OF THE LIFE FORCE 98 
 
 by contemporary critics of the Haydn school for his indifferent 
 harmony, absence of melody, formlessness and lack of dignity. 
 It has been the same with every great composer since Mozart. 
 
 John. Exactly, and it is the same with all the other 
 arts. Every art form which is to-day regarded as the embodi- 
 ment of orthodox good taste was yesterday denounced as 
 vulgar and self-assertive sentimentaHsm. All the evidence 
 bears witness to the same truth : every change in poUtics, 
 morals, art, or any other department of human activity, only 
 establishes itself in the teeth of the vested interests it dis- 
 places and the deep-rooted prejudices it disturbs. 
 
 Were it not for the great artists, thinkers and reformers 
 the world would stand still. Now a world which was stationary 
 in respect of its mental, social or aesthetic life would be as 
 obstructive to the purposes of the Life Force as a world which 
 was stationary in respect of evolution. Mental, moral and 
 aesthetic progress are, in fact, only special departments of 
 the general evolution behind which the Life Force is driving 
 Given, then, the natural tendency of human beings to stagnate. 
 and their determination to put up with the present under 
 cover of the names of orthodoxy and respectability, rather than 
 go to the trouble and disturbance which the carrying out of 
 the purposes of the Life Force would involve, what does the 
 Life Force do ? It creates a genius, and sends him into the 
 world to give conscious expression to its own instinctive 
 purpose. That is why a genius is always in advance of his 
 times, is always unpopular, is often persecuted during his Ufe, 
 and is invariably ennobled by posterity after his death. Pos- 
 terity applauds him and stigmatises his contemporaries as blind 
 reactionaries, because by the time posterity has appeared on the 
 scene, society has moved up to the level to which the ridiculed 
 and persecuted genius of fifty years before was pointing the 
 way, the unpractical idealism, which in the genius seemed 
 to his contemporaries Httle short of madness, being calmly 
 accepted by posterity as the most obvious common sense. 
 
 The production of a genius, then, in the shape of a great 
 preacher, teacher, thinker, artist, prophet or reformer is one 
 of the devices of the Life Force for urging mankind in the 
 right direction, the direction, that is, which furthers its own 
 purpose. And, of course, it is of a piece with the entirely
 
 I 
 
 94 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 impersonal heartlessness of the Life Force that it should 
 condemn its most serviceable weapon to the most arduous 
 and thankless of lives. The knowledge that he is serving the 
 purposes of the Force that guides the Universe may be, and 
 doubtless is, a source of inward satisfaction to a Christ or a 
 Beethoven, but it does not alter the fact that from the external 
 point of view their Hves involve one unceasing struggle against 
 an incredulous and unsympathetic world. It is only the 
 overpowering energy and conviction derived from a direct 
 infusion of the Life Force that enables them to carry through 
 their work. It is this direct and special inheritance from 
 the Force itself that incidentally makes of artists and reformers 
 such incorrigibly bad husbands and family men. They have 
 no compunction whatever in seeing their wives and children 
 endure the starvation which they are cheerfully prepared to 
 accept for themselves, rather than betray the hght which is in 
 them by accepting the work which the world offers them. The 
 great artist always insists on doing his own work, for which 
 the world will not pay because it is not ready ; and his 
 indifference to the consequent sufferings of his wife and children 
 procures for him the reputation of gross selfishness in pro- 
 portion as he is in reality more selfless even than the woman 
 herself. Both the genius and his wife are direct instruments 
 of the Force. The woman serves through her children, the 
 genius through his work ; yet when the inevitable struggle 
 comes between the two it is the genius who usually wins, 
 for the simple reason that the Life Force can accomplish its 
 purpose through almost any woman, whereas the genius is 
 rarely pioduced and may not be turned aside from his 
 appointed end. 
 
 (2) The Function of the Unconscious. 
 
 Anothei device of the Life Force for ensuring that 
 humanity shall fulfil its function is the evolution of the 
 unconscious. 
 
 Mr. Banks. At last ! I wondered when you were coming 
 to that. You appeared to be forgetting it altogether, so that 
 I could not help feeling that ah tne time we have devoted to 
 considering and criticising psychoanalysis and M. Geley was 
 so much time wasted, while the careful precison with which
 
 DEVICES OF THE LIFE FORCE 95 
 
 you enumerated exactly what things you proposed to take 
 over from them, and exactly what things you were compelled 
 to reject as untenable, was coming to seem a meie bhnd, hke 
 a cheque that never is and never will be cashed. 
 
 Now what sort of unconscious is it that you are going 
 to assume ? 
 
 John. The unconscious of Geley. I said, did I not, 
 that Geley's conception of the unconscious as the source of 
 genius, inspiration, impulse, desire and so on, an unconscious 
 which, you will remember, passed imperceptibly over into 
 the conscious by a constant interchange of contents, was 
 one which seemed not only hkely on a priori grounds, but one 
 which was supported by a wealth of evidence. That is the 
 kind of unconscious I want to speak of now, with the proviso 
 that we are to think of it neither as an integral part of the 
 Life Force, nor as a mere representation of the Force in which 
 the Force is in some unexplained way expressed, but as a 
 thing apart from but created by the Life Force for some 
 purpose of its own. 
 
 Mr Banks. Why should it create the unconscious ? If 
 it is true that the Force creates us to fulfil purposes of its own, 
 what is the point of endowing us with such a very impoi-tant 
 faculty, which, from its very nature, must remam unconscious 
 of these purposes ? 
 
 John. That is just the point to which I want to draw 
 your attention. Why was the unconscious created ? 
 
 Remembering and assuming for the sake of discussion the 
 validity of the sketch of the Life Force I have already given, 
 we may conceive of the matter in this way. We have a 
 Force which has a battle to wage and an object to achieve. 
 To fight its battle and achieve its object it creates Hfe. In 
 particular it creates human hfe ; but owing to the necessity 
 of breathing its creative force into a framework which is 
 material and therefore obstructive, a framework which, as it 
 were, interposes itself between the Force and the being it 
 has created, it is driven, whether it will or not, to permit 
 the created being a measure of free will. As a result the 
 creature may have desires and purposes of his own not only 
 independent of the purposes of the Force, but even opposed 
 to them. It is at first sight natural that it should follow
 
 i 
 
 96 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 those desires and pursue those purposes, and it is scarcely 
 to be expected that it should pursue a remote goal which is 
 not its own and which it has no interest in achieving. 
 
 Why, after all, should man descend to the role of in- 
 strument, when he might in his own right be principal ? 
 Why, when he might be maker of his own fate, should he 
 wiUingly surrender his independence to serve an impersonal 
 force ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Why, indeed ? 
 
 John. It is evident, then, that if man is to be of any 
 service at all to the Force which created him, it is essential 
 that he should be kept in ignorance of the true facts of the 
 case. He must never know that he is being used as a mere 
 instrument by a soulless Force. If he did know, it is clear 
 that he would rebel : he would fail to do the Force's business ; 
 he would claim his right of free will and go about his own. 
 Besides, such service would be lowering to his dignity as a 
 lord of creation ; it would demean him to the position 
 of a tool. Nevertheless it is essential that while he retains 
 his free will he should use it on the whole conformably with 
 the Force's purposes. How is this conformability to be 
 secured ? Obviously by inducing him to believe himself a 
 free agent when he is really obeying the promptings of the 
 Force. And how is this deception to be achieved ? How is 
 the individual to be kidded into the belief that his desires are 
 his own when they are really the promptings of the Force ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. The unconscious, I suppose. 
 
 John. Exactly ! The unconscious. As we know, the 
 origin of all our desires and impulses is to be found in the 
 unconscious. So true is this that most of our desires remain 
 unconscious desires, the behef that they were at any time 
 conscious desires for a consciously conceived end being the 
 result of later rationalisation. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am afraid I don't quite understand that. 
 
 John. I suppose it does sound a little difficult when put 
 as shortly as that ; but it would take us too far to go more 
 deeply into it now. Look up any book on Behaviourism for 
 more on the subject, or come to me again and we will discuss 
 it fully then. I The upshot of it is that whatever desires and 
 ' See chapter v, pp. 273-281, for this discussion.
 
 DEVICES OF THE LIFE FORCE 97 
 
 impulses do appear in consciousness have their origin in the 
 unconscious. This is not, I think, denied. 
 
 Now the important point is this : since the origin of the 
 desires and impulses which supply the motive force for action 
 is in the unconscious, we cannot know what that origin is — 
 all the arguments already used with regard to the impossi- 
 bility of knowing the unconscious of the psychoanalysts 
 apply here ; — hence it is quite possible for a desire or impulse 
 to be prompted by the Life Force without our being in the 
 least aware of it. What we are aware of is a desire or impulse 
 which suddenly appears in consciousness, which we take to 
 be our own and incontinently pursue forthwith. 
 
 And this is, in point of fact, what I believe is continually 
 happening. The Life Force acts on us through the uncon- 
 scious ; its continual spurring and urging is directed upon 
 the unconscious ; it is, in fact, like a battery infusing the un- 
 conscious with a series of electrical charges. The modification 
 produced thereby in the unconscious produces a corresponding 
 modification in the conscious, which we, in ignorance of its 
 true source, accept as self-generated and express in action. 
 Thus the promptings of the Life Force masquerade as desires 
 of our own and we, being helpless to detect the deception, can 
 only register our admiration for this further device of the 
 Life Force for setting us about its business. 
 
 Mr. Banks. That sounds quite plausible, but you must 
 admit that it is the merest conjecture, entirely unsupported 
 by the evidence. 
 
 John. I do admit it to be conjecture, but I would not 
 admit that it is unsupported by the evidence. You and I 
 agreed more or less to accept provisionally the conception of 
 the unconscious held by Geley, and you took my word for it 
 that this conception was based on very suggestive and impor- 
 tant evidence contained in his book. Now I maintain that 
 the guess as to the function of the unconscious which I have 
 just put forward, is not only fully in accord with that evidence, 
 but enables us to answer the question which up to the present 
 has remained unanswered, or would have done so had it 
 occurred to anyone to put it : that question is. Why should 
 the unconscious have been evolved at all ? What purpose 
 does it serve except that of unduly complicating our psychology, 
 
 7
 
 t 
 
 98 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 and enabling us moderns to transfer to the unconscious all 
 the problems that baffled the ancients in the conscious ? So 
 far as I am aware this question has never been tackled, the 
 philosophy of the unconscious having consisted hitherto in 
 enumerating " the what " of it, and not in explaining the 
 " why " of it ; and yet, if we hold that there is a purpose 
 in evolution, we must fit our unconscious into it by some 
 means or other. Now if you conceive of evolution after the 
 manner of the mechanists, you cannot account for the uncon- 
 scious at all : certainly it has nothing to do with adaptation 
 to environment. But once you assume the validity of the 
 conception of the Life Force, and take on trust my guess at 
 the difficulty in which it finds itself owing to our endowment 
 of free will, the evolution of the unconscious presents itself 
 as the obvious solution to that difficulty. 
 
 And the unconscious conceived of in this way throws 
 light on other problems which have puzzled philosophers. It 
 explains, for instance, why, though most of us believe in 
 purpose and progress in the Universe, we have no conception 
 of the nature of the purpose or the goal of the progress. 
 
 (3) Our Ignorance of the Purposes of the Force. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Surely that is exaggerating a Httle. Not 
 only have you been talking for the last half hour about the 
 purposes of the Life Force, but I myself have quite a definite 
 idea of what it is that constitutes progress, and so have most 
 other men who have given thought to the subject. 
 
 John. Oh, well, if you prefer it, we all have different 
 ideas as to what it is that constitutes progress. It comes to 
 the same thing in the end, for all our different ideas cancel 
 out. As Chesterton pointed out years ago, progress implies 
 direction as well as motion, and direction implies a goal. 
 Yet it is precisely about the most fundamental things, which 
 are the goals, that people differ most. Whether our goal is 
 more law or less law, more liberty or less liberty, an unrestrained 
 licence of sexual desire, or a virgin intellectuality involving 
 the generation of new life by chemical processes, these are 
 just the things about which we differ most. Take the most 
 ultimate question of all : Is life a spirit ultimate and inde- 
 structible, or is it a mere incidental and accidental function
 
 DEVICES OF THE LIFE FORCE 99 
 
 of matter ? This is the very question that we have been 
 canvassing for the last hour, and we have at least not been 
 embarrassed by any striking unanimity of opinion among the 
 views we have considered. Read Bury's Idea of Progress and 
 you will find the same thing. Every variety of opinion has 
 been held, both in different ages and by different men in the 
 same age, as to the purpose of the Universe and as to the 
 significance of human life within it. 
 
 You say that I myself have been talking about the purposes 
 of the Life Force. I have, but I have never said what they 
 were. I could not, for the very simple reason that if my 
 conception of the unconscious as a sort of barrier between 
 our conscious and the direct promptings of the Life Force 
 is correct, we can never know what the purposes are to which 
 we are prompted : we can only guess them. Just as we do 
 not directly know those promptings of the Life Force which 
 I regard as the origin of the desires and impulses, which appear 
 in consciousness as our own, so are we ignorant of the direction 
 in which those promptings are tending. If our unconscious 
 were conscious, if, in other words, our conscious were directly 
 subject to the current of energy emanating from the Force, 
 then we should know, or might at least surmise, the nature 
 of the goal to which we are being pushed and directed ; only 
 then we might not hke it, and might decide to go our own 
 way. The Life Force prefers not to take the risk and com- 
 municates through the unconscious, with the result that we 
 all differ both as to where we are and as to where we are 
 going. As a consequence we indulge in philosophy, which 
 arises from the necessity of speculating on what we do not 
 and cannot know : if we were conscious of the purpose and 
 goal of existence, we could substitute for the speculation of 
 philosophy the knowledge of facts. 
 
 Mr. Banks. That sounds plausible again ; but I want to 
 ask a question here. It seems to me that you are resting these 
 hypotheses of yours, as to our ignorance of the origin of our 
 own desires and our ignorance of the purpose of the Universe, 
 upon the assumption that there is a complete breach or gap 
 between the unconscious and the conscious. The unconscious 
 receives communications from the Life Force, the conscious 
 does not : hence the conscious does not know the origin of
 
 100 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 desire or the purpose of life, so runs the argument. Now is 
 not all this rather inconsistent with the arguments of Geley 
 in favour of the continual interpenetration and interchange- 
 ability of the conscious and the unconscious, arguments to 
 which, if I remember, you attached considerable weight ? 
 What I mean is, that I gathered at the time that you accepted 
 Geley 's view as to this interpenetration ; if you do accept 
 it, it seems to me somewhat to weaken the hypothesis in 
 which you have just indulged. 
 
 You seem, in fact, to be reducing the relationship between 
 the unconscious and the conscious to that which existed 
 between Schopenhauer's Thing in Itself and its appearances, 
 between which there cannot, as you said just now, be identity 
 of substance, nor can there be reality of intercommunication. 
 
 John. I admit the justice of your criticism, and I can 
 well beUeve that in my anxiety to emphasise the ignorance 
 on the part of the conscious of the origin of phenomena in the 
 unconscious, I have insisted too much on the gap between them. 
 
 Now, as I said before, I agree with Geley's demonstration 
 that there is constant interchangeabihty between the two, 
 and that being so I should expect to find in my conscious, 
 not a complete ignorance of the purposes and operations of 
 the Life Force, as my previous remarks have perhaps suggested, 
 but a kind of vague awareness, a conscious recognition which 
 is more a matter of feeling than of reason, that there is such 
 a Force and that it has a purpose. And that is exactly what 
 I do find. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I can't say that I have ever noticed it in 
 myself. 
 
 John. What, don't you believe in progress like all the 
 rest ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, I suppose so. 
 
 The Belief in Progress. 
 
 John. And have you any evidence at all for that belief ? 
 Have you, for example, one scrap of evidence for supposing 
 that the process by which the amoeba has evolved into the man 
 is also a progress ? Human conceit and the feeling of what 
 is due to your self-respect are, I know, too insistent in their 
 claims to allow you to regard this process as anything but
 
 THE BELIEF IN PROGRESS 101 
 
 progress ; but the necessity we are under of evolving a theory 
 which is gratifying to our natural vanity is not in itself 
 evidence for the theory, and for all you know the amoeba, 
 were the question put to him, might regard the matter in a very 
 different and equally biassed light. 
 
 The monkey, for instance, who is comparatively immune 
 from disease, who can clothe and feed himself, who can climb 
 trees and does not get out of condition from over-eating, 
 who lives out of doors himself and lets the other monkeys do 
 the same instead of forcing them to spend the hours of sun- 
 light in a tube or down a coal-mine, who does not depress 
 himself by thinking or complicate himself by civilisation, and 
 who knows nothing of psychoanalysis because he has no 
 need of it, might justly claim that the latest product of 
 evolution (excuse my unscientific way of speaking of man 
 as latest), instead of being a step forward, is a step backward, 
 a claim which, in an intelligent monkey, the spectacle of the 
 recent European war would only have reinforced. 
 
 As a matter of fact, of course the evidence tells both ways, 
 that is, both for and against progress, and you can by a 
 judicious selection prove what you like with it. And yet in 
 spite of this we are as certain of progress as if the evidence 
 only told one way : and we are certain of it just because our 
 belief in it does not depend upon the evidence. Further, 
 our belief is of a kind which, as I tried to show a moment 
 ago, remains unshaken by the absence of any specifiable or 
 recognisable goal. Whence, then, comes it ? We all have it : 
 cynics and pessimists as much as optimists and enthusiasts, 
 seeing that they affirm it even in denying it. Whence, I say, 
 comes it ? 
 
 I can only think that the universality of this belief among 
 men springs from a dim awareness filtering through into 
 consciousness from the unconscious, that they are being used 
 as the instruments of something which progresses to the 
 achievement of its goal through them. Although not directly 
 conscious of the promptings of the Force, we may nevertheless 
 have a vague notion that we are in general prompted, and that 
 so much is gained each time one of us expresses this prompting 
 in action. And just as each man believes in the possibility 
 of progress for himself so is there in all men a universal belief 
 
 I
 
 I 
 
 102 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 in progress for the race. Ambition which urges the individual 
 to salvation for himself, religion which urges the race to 
 salvation for everyone, are alike universal. What is not 
 generally recognised is that ambition is merely religion 
 individuaUsed ; that piety is merely that reverence which 
 we have towards the Almighty because of his supposed 
 resemblance to ourselves ; that both rehgion and ambition 
 spring from the universal urge to fulfil a purpose whose origin 
 is outside ourselves ; and that both foster the appiopriate 
 beUef in progress which the possibihty of achieving that 
 purpose implies. 
 
 And I would be prepared to go even further than this. 
 Not only is there this universal behef in the progress of 
 mankind to some definite goal, but some, if not most, of us 
 have an inkling from time to time of the nature of that goal. 
 I am afraid that what I am going to say here may seem 
 unnecessarily mystical, and I hope that it will not set you 
 against me. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You need not fear that. You have not erred 
 on the side of tender-mindedness so far. 
 
 John. I am not going to now. When I suggest, as I do 
 suggest, that the behef in the peculiar status and value of 
 certain concepts such as truth, goodness and beauty, which 
 have haunted philosophers ever since Plato, springs from 
 a dim foreshadowing on the part of the unconscious of the 
 character of the goal to which we are continually being 
 impelled, I am actuated less by any personal feeling of mystic 
 union with or rapturous contemplation of these entities, than 
 by a complete inability to account for this phenomenon in 
 any other way. 
 
 Our Concepts of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. 
 
 Mr. Banks. You mean by the phenomenon the almost 
 universal attitude of thinkers towards these Forms as being 
 in some unexplained way peculiar and unique. 
 
 John. Yes. You are acquainted, I suppose, with the 
 ordinary Platonic doctrine of Forms ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Yes, I have read The Republic, and also one 
 or two commentators on it. I think I may say that I am 
 fairly familiar with the main features of the theory.
 
 OUR CONCEPTS OF TRUTH 103 
 
 John. Well as you know, Plato was primarily led to it 
 by the logical difficulty ot reconciling The One with The 
 Many. How identify the object of thought, which must, he con- 
 sidered, be in some way stable and real, with the multifarious 
 and changing contents of the visible world known to us by 
 means of the senses ? Plato found his answer, of course, in 
 asserting that the objects known to the senses were not real, 
 but were only lilcenesses or representations of a permanent 
 reality behind them to which they owed their existence. As 
 types of this permanent reahty he used chiefly to consider 
 the Forms of Goodness, Beauty and Truth. I mention all 
 this becc-use the logical argument is the only proper method 
 of appro£.ch to the Forms. But it is not so much to this side 
 of the qi:estion that I wish to draw your attention now. I 
 am concerned rather with that aspect of the Forms under 
 which they are presented as a refuge and escape from the 
 exasperating inadequacy of material things. 
 
 You are acquainted with the way in which any ordinary 
 object of sense, hot water let us say, points us forward to 
 some continually hotter water, as if there were no satisfaction 
 to be gained in the imperfect example short of the perfect 
 concept of hot water which is thereby suggested. The same 
 characteristic is even more noticeable in things that are good 
 or beautiful, especially in beautiful things. There is no sky 
 in June so blue that it does not point us forward to a bluer, 
 no sunset so beautiful that it does not immediately suggest 
 a greater beauty, giving the soul a tantalising glimpse of 
 something behind and beyond which passes even before it 
 is truly felt, and which in passing leaves a feeling of indefinable 
 longing and regret. 
 
 Is it perhaps, that in these visible representations of what 
 Plato called the Forms, a vision of that goal to which the 
 Universe is being moved is vouchsafed to us ? We cannot, 
 as I have said, know the purpose of the Life Force : if we did 
 we might take advantage of our free will to thwart it. But 
 we may beheve — in fact, we do believe, in spite of all the 
 evidence to the contrary — that the Universe has a purpose, 
 and we may, if we are that way inclined, beheve it to be a good 
 one. And it is in these queer intimations of a special and 
 more perfect goodness, beauty and truth, to which the good 
 
 I
 
 i 
 
 104 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 things, the beautiful things and the true things we know, 
 point forward without reveahng, that we get obscurely through 
 the medium of the unconscious a foreshadowing of the nature 
 of the purpose the Life Force is impelling us to fulfil. These 
 intimations have been the special privilege and possession of 
 mystics in all places and at all times ; and it is through such 
 foreshadowing that they have seemed to themselves to come 
 most closely into touch with the underlying reality or spirit 
 that animates the Universe. 
 
 Plato, you will remember, regarded this recognition of 
 beauty and goodness in the material world, and the suggestion 
 they have for us of a something behind with which the mind 
 contemplating them is already familiar, as evidence for the 
 transmigration of souls. It was in the interval between two 
 bodily incarnations that the soul dwelling in some heavenly 
 place had direct and untrammelled vision of the Forms in all 
 their fulness and purity. Thus it is that, when brought 
 into contact with the manifestations of the Forms in things 
 of beauty and acts of goodness during earthly Hfe, the soul 
 dimly recognises the divine essences therein obscurely repre- 
 sented. 
 
 Now all this is very fanciful, I admit, too fanciful to be 
 made the subject of philosophic argument and discussion, 
 but it is nevertheless pertinent to point out how closely such 
 a conception approximates to the kind of view I have been 
 trying to put forward, 
 
 Geley, as I have already pointed out, has adduced a con- 
 siderable body of evidence in support of the hypothesis that 
 the Self or some part of it does in fact survive the bodily 
 disintegration which we call death. Bergson takes the same 
 view. It is indeed a hypothesis which any form of Vitalism, 
 Bergson's as well as Geley 's, renders on a priori grounds 
 probable. If mental activity overflows cerebral activity ; if 
 we cannot find in the brain even the genesis of all that passes 
 in the mind ; if the centre and citadel of the individual's 
 personality is to be located in the unconscious, then it is 
 reasonable to infer that the destruction of the brain, as known 
 to physiology, does not necessarily involve the destruction of 
 the mind as known to psychology, and that the cessation of con- 
 sciousness does not necessarily involve the eUmination of the
 
 OUR CONCEPTS OF TRUTH 105 
 
 unconscious. I think I mentioned before, but if I did not I 
 should like to point out now, how strongly this view of the 
 permanence of the unconscious is borne out by the facts of 
 supernormal psychology, for which again I must refer you 
 to M. Geley. 
 
 The interesting point is that the modern investigation 
 of psychology, and especially of supernormal psychology, 
 tends to suggest a hypothesis not unlike Plato's. It seems 
 not improbable that the soul, or if you Hke the unconscious, 
 survives death, and if it does survive, we may, if we like, 
 suppose that during the intervals between successive incarna- 
 tions the surviving individual essence, perhaps wholly uncon- 
 scious, attains, if not to a direct knowledge of the reality 
 of the Life Force and the purpose at which it aims, at least 
 to an acquaintance sufficiently real and to an apprehension 
 sufficiently vivid, both of the purpose of the Universe and of 
 the function of the individual in assisting its realisation, to 
 account for the moving and intimate character of those hints 
 of a reality behind and beyond which we get from intercourse 
 with good and beautiful things. 
 
 One further point before I leave this aspect of the subject. 
 We have already noticed in our consideration of Geley 's 
 views that the unconscious comes mainly into play when 
 the conscious is in abeyance. The typical instance, of course, 
 is the manifestation of the unconscious in dreams wliile the 
 conscious is asleep. But in reverie also and in day-dreams, 
 when the conscious is temporarily lulled into a kind of coma 
 which is yet not quite unconsciousness, the control of the 
 individual is handed over, as it were, to his unconscious, so 
 that things hidden in the depths of his unconscious rise up 
 and struggle to the light and become dimly known to con- 
 sciousness, that is, of course, to the lulled consciousness. 
 
 Now it is a significant fact that the times when we are 
 most aware, not so much of actual beauty as of the vague 
 longings and regrets for something yet more beautiful that 
 the sight of beauty excites, are just such times of reverie and 
 day-dream, when the unconscious, which on my theory is 
 in some dim way aware of the purpose of the Life Force, is 
 also most active. 
 
 It is the unconscious, then, which feels that there is a
 
 106 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 hidden meaning, a something " more " about beauty — though 
 it cannot tell what that meaning or that " more " is — and it 
 is the unconscious which is most directly in touch with the 
 Life Force, both in virtue of its role as the filter or medium 
 through which the promptings of the Force pass into con- 
 sciousness, and because, on my supposition, it has in the 
 intervals between bodily incarnations been more closely 
 connected with the essence of Reahty which I call the Life 
 Force, and, as it were, impregnated with its designs. 
 
 Thus mystics who desire the more fully to know beauty, 
 or try dimly to apprehend the purpose of the Universe, culti- 
 vate a sort of trance and coma, in which their consciousness 
 is as far as possible withdrawn from contact with the external 
 world, in an endeavour to set free the unconscious. This is 
 the secret of the Indian Yogi, who starves and strangles his 
 conscious, feehng instinctively that it is upon his unconscious 
 that he must rely for that knowledge which is in truth for- 
 bidden to us, the knowledge of the purposes of the Life 
 Force. 
 
 Apprehension of beauty is on this view, then, as it is for 
 Plato, a process of recognition, a recognition by the uncon- 
 scious of purposes and ideals not yet realised, of which the 
 unconscious has been given an inkling in the pre-natal condition 
 of the individual. 
 
 Yet, as I began by saying — and it was, I think, this remark 
 which has, I am afraid, led me into a considerable digression — 
 there is no impassable abyss between the conscious and the 
 unconscious. It follows therefore that in this process of recog- 
 nition by the unconscious, which I have been trying to 
 describe, consciousness itself has its share, nor is it possible 
 to say where the part of consciousness begins and that of 
 unconsciousness ends. Though it is to the unconscious that, 
 as I feel convinced, the element of recognition in aesthetic 
 experiences is due, consciousness nevertheless plays its part 
 in the process. This it does in two ways : we are conscious 
 of the beautiful object which initiates the process, and we 
 are at the same time conscious both of the feelings of recogni- 
 tion, and also of those of sadness and regret, with which the 
 recognition is accompanied. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I must think over all this. It is certainly
 
 OUR CONCEPTS OF TRUTH 107 
 
 very interesting bringing in Plato and the Theory of Ideas, 
 but I wonder if you are not trying to collect too many dwellers 
 under one roof. You have harnessed a rather startling variety 
 of thinkers to draw the triumphal chariot of your Life Force. 
 Plato and the psychoanalysts, for instance, are strange yoke- 
 fellows — and I am rather afraid that some of them may evince 
 antipathies. If quarrelhng breaks out, and parts of the 
 theory refuse to cohere with other parts, how are you going 
 to reconcile them ? 
 
 John. Well, can you personally point out any incon- 
 sistencies ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. No. But that does not by any means 
 prove that none can be found. I am getting rather muddled 
 I must confess. You see, we have been talking, or rather I 
 have been sustaining your exposition, for a good two hours 
 already, and I am not really in a fit state to detect incon- 
 sistencies. 
 
 I have even forgotten from what all this Plato business is 
 a digression, although I am conscious that it is a digression. 
 
 John. I am so sorry to have tired you. Shall we finish 
 another time ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. Not at all. You may as well finish now. 
 Is there much more ? 
 
 John. No. I have nearly finished. I have only quite 
 generally to glance at the empirical evidence for the workings 
 of the Life Force, evidence which seems to me to be afforded 
 by almost every moment of existence, and I have done. 
 
 You will remember that, before I digressed, we were con- 
 sidering the various devices by which the Life Force induced 
 individuals to go about its business instead of about their 
 own. One device consisted in the production of the genius to 
 awaken in humanity a consciousness of the direction in which 
 movement should proceed. Another was the device of the 
 unconscious, whereby the Force presented to the individual 
 its promptings and urgings under the guise of impulses and 
 desires of his own. I was then led astray to explain how 
 this conception of the role and function of the unconscious 
 accounted at once for our general belief in a purpose in the 
 Universe, for our general ignorance of that purpose, and for the 
 strange glimmerings and hints of a reality and a purpose
 
 108 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 behind the seeming of the material world that we get in 
 moments of aesthetic contemplation. 
 
 I have now to indicate one more device on the part of the 
 Life Force to ensure our assistance in the achievement of its 
 purpose, and that is the phenomenon of joy. 
 
 (4) The Phenonemon of Joy. 
 
 Joy has been sent to attend our activities when they are 
 
 consonant with the purposes of the Force : it is a signpost 
 
 \f which shows travellers that their steps are set in the right path. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Now I come to think of it, I think Bergson 
 says something of the same sort. 
 
 John. Yes. And his remarks on the subject are so 
 appropriate that, with your leave, I will quote a passage or 
 two. The following are passages from a lecture of Bergson's 
 called " Life and Consciousness": — " Philosophers . . . have 
 failed to take sufficient notice of an indication which nature 
 itself has given us. Nature warns by a clear sign that our 
 destination is attained. That sign is joy. I mean joy, not 
 pleasure. Pleasure is only a contrivance devised by nature 
 to obtain for the creature the preservation of its life ; it does 
 not indicate the direction in which life is thrusting." 
 
 By the way, I should say that pleasure as well as joy, if 
 we are to admit the distinction, is an obvious Life Force 
 contrivance. Sexual pleasure, for example, is a device for 
 securing the propagation of the species, the mechanism by 
 means of which the Life Force accomplishes the creation of new 
 beings, or the reincarnation of old ones, for the purpose of 
 carrying on the struggle. If sexual intercourse were not 
 pleasant, sexual intercourse would not be so frequent. How- 
 ever, this is by the way ; let us continue our Bergson : " Joy 
 always announces that life has succeeded, gained ground, 
 conquered. All great joy has a triumphant note." Bergson 
 then proceeds to show that the deepest joy is the joy of 
 creation. All joy is in fact only joyous in so far as it approxi- 
 mates to this special kind of joy, the joy of creation. The 
 mother, the artist, even the merchant experience this joy 
 of creation, the joy of having started an enterprise which 
 goes, of having brought something to life. The artist does 
 not create for praise and honour, the merchant does not work
 
 THE PHENOMENON OF JOY 109 
 
 for money, for, says Bergson, " we cling to praise and honour 
 in the exact degree in which we are not sure of having suc- 
 ceeded. There is a touch of modesty in vanity. It is to 
 reassure ourselves that we seek approbation ; and just as we 
 wrap the prematurely-born child in cotton-wool, so we gather 
 round our work the warm admiration of mankind, in case 
 there should be insufficient vitality. But he who is sure, 
 absolutely sure, of having produced a work which will endure 
 and live cares no more for praise and feels above glory, because 
 he is a creator, because he knows it, because the ioy he feels 
 is the joy of a god." 
 
 And there is a further very significant fact about joy to 
 which I should like to draw your attention. Joy always 
 comes unexpectedly. Pursued directly, it eludes the pursuer ; 
 but it occurs incidentally when we are actively engaged in the 
 pursuit of something else. This fact is attested by the wisdom 
 of all the great teachers who have been thrown up by the 
 Life Force for the illumination of mankind. From Buddha and 
 Christ, to Shaw and Wells, they have all insisted that the, 
 ro ad to joy and happiness is not the direct road, but the i 
 ro undabout roa d which leads t hrough hard work and al l- 
 absorbing effort. 
 
 This I take to be the meaning of Christ's " For whosoever 
 will save his life shall lose it. But whosoever shall lose his 
 life for my sake ... the same shall save it" ; and this the 
 meaning of Shaw's remark to the effect that the only way to 
 escape being miserable is not to have leisure enough to wonder 
 whether you are happy or not. 
 
 Lose your self in som ething greater than yourself, ^ye all 
 your energies and enth u siasm to a cause or an ideal, submit 
 to th^restraint^ajidjinre mitting ende avour that creative efiort 
 demands, forget yours elf in toil u ntil you are used up, and 
 tlienac^iescejwjth^iL^ regret in being rele gated t o the scrap- 
 hea£^_and you_ will, on_looking b ack, find that your life has 
 been a happy one . P ursue you r own pleasure, live the lif e 
 ofdirect self-s atisfaction, and ^ou will fin d that s atisfaction 
 es capes you Tan d that pleasure t urns to dust and ashes beneath 
 your grasp . 
 
 ^Mr. Banks. My dear sir. you grow positively eloquent. 
 Is this the restrained and reasoned discourse of philosophy ?
 
 110 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 John. Even philosophers may grow eloquent, especially 
 when they have done with argument. Let them first state 
 their position, and they may then illustrate .their arguments 
 and embroider their position to their heart's content. 
 
 But I am insisting on this phenomenon of joy not only 
 because of its significance for my theory of the Life Force, 
 but because of the remarkable illustration which this view 
 of joy has received from the current theories of conduct and 
 from the application of those theories during the last thirty 
 years. 
 
 Mr. Banks. How so ? 
 
 The Direct Pursuit of Pleasure. 
 
 John. It is a commonplace, is it not, that the last thirty 
 I years have witnessed the break-up of what is known as the 
 ^' Victorian morality. This has not been a matter for unmixed 
 regret. Victorian morality was dull, uncompromising and 
 narrow : it consisted mainly of a catalogue of " dont's," and 
 insisted not upon what people should do to achieve the good 
 life, but upon what they should not do if they wished to avoid 
 Hell-fire. It tended to substitute the ideal of duty for the 
 ideal of happiness, and to deplore all indulgence save indulgence 
 in self-restraint. 
 
 Towards the end of the nineteenth century this attitude 
 to life produced its inevitable reaction, a reaction which, as 
 might be expected, found its first expression in literature. 
 
 A long line of writers, culminating in Oscar Wilde, 
 throwing morality to the winds, preached the doctrine of 
 complete self-expression. Moderation was undesirable, or, if 
 it were desirable, could only be attained through a course 
 of preHminary excess. Duty was an empty word, or, if it 
 had meaning, the only duty that was recognised was the 
 duty of the individual to obtain the greatest possible amount 
 of happiness for himself, I need not dilate upon this literary 
 attitude that heralded the break-up of Victorian morality. 
 It expressed itself mainly in aphorism, and one or two examples 
 of the kind of things that were said, believed and acted on 
 will serve our purpose. 
 
 ' The palace of wisdom lies through the gateway of 
 excess.' ' The only way to get rid of a temptation is to
 
 THE DIRECT PURSUIT OF PLEASURE 111 
 
 yield to it.' 'It is an absurd attitude to take up towards 
 life to go about the world approving and disapproving of 
 things ; we wer^e not sent into the world to air our moral 
 prejudices.' ' Success__iiL_life_ cqnsistsjn_k^ 
 stop, and going ^ HtUe_,biL|urther,' 'We should not let 
 our little wisdoms stifle our big instincts.' ' The aim and 
 object of knowledge is to intensify our pleasures,' and so on. 
 Probably you would find no better expression of this general 
 view of life than its crystallisation into the few pages with 
 which Walter Pater concludes his Renaissance. 
 
 In a few words, then, their view was this. Substitute 
 personal satisfaction for duty, restrain nothing but self-restraint, 
 and you will hve the full, rich and varied Ufe which is permitted 
 only to the man who has the courage to be life's master. Now, 
 considered as the technique of the art of life, this doctrine, 
 theoretically so attractive, was found in practice to have one 
 serious drawback. The enthusiast for experiences would cast 
 scruples to the wind, and go about realising himself with a 
 good conscience ; and in due course he would experience 
 the pleasures he desired and attain the satisfactions he sought ; 
 but he would experience and attain them only to find the 
 pleasures were not pleasant, and that the satisfactions failed to 
 satisfy. Hence the boredom, the weariness and the lassitude 
 that overtook the theorists and the practitioners of the fin de 
 siecle doctrines. Forbid yourself n o thing, and you find that 
 y ou desire nothiji£T~nigJSg--„^g-JMgj?MQi^ of sel f ymui only 
 aiin and you will find the self impossible^jto_satisfy ; regard 
 life^only^as an opportunity for amusernent. and you will come 
 to echo the cynicVcfy^ffiatJife would J)ejtolerable birLlor 
 its amusements. ItTsthe old story : pleasure pursued directl y 
 tun^~ont not to be pleasure_when it is a chieve d, 
 -^ It was a strange Tiemesis that attended these writers, who 
 thought the business of life was to be pleasant and the business 
 of writing to be beautiful, when they presently found them- 
 selves supplanted, even as writers, by men who devoted their 
 lives to the service of municipal councils and a glorified civil 
 service, and their books to statistics about housing and 
 drainage. Yet this, in a nutshell, is the history of what 
 happened in English literature during the early years of the 
 twentieth century. Shaw preaching Socialism eclipsed the
 
 112 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 waning star of Wilde preaching beauty, and a philosophy of 
 strenuous action in devotion to a cause ousted the philosophy 
 of satisfaction of self. And the fact that no one was 
 particularly surprised when it turned out that the Fabians 
 and reformers were happy men, while the artists and 
 roues remained morbid little clods of lust and nervous 
 disease, only showed that we most of us in our heart 
 realise the truth that I have been trying to drive 
 home, the truth t hat joy , w hich is difficult of access 
 
 and__sterile__as _an ._eM c omes easily and olten a s "an 
 acddent. 
 
 This, then, I take to be another of the ordinances of the Life 
 Force, that those who consistently pursue those self-regarding 
 activities, which we must believe to be irrelevant to its pur- 
 poses, fail in that very happiness which they seek, while those 
 who throw themselves heart and soul into some work or cause 
 disinterestedly pursued arerewarded by that happiness which 
 the Life Force reserves for its helpers and allies, Joy, then, 
 is a device of the Life Force to ensure that we shall turn our 
 energies outwards into the external world of action and effort, 
 not inwards into the Hfe of introspection and indulgence. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I don't quite appreciate the significance of 
 your slipping in the word introspection. Is that, too, to be 
 deprecated ? 
 
 John. I think it rarely leads to happiness. We are 
 rarely sufficiently valuable as objects to repay the contem- 
 plation of ourselves by ourselves. But apart from this, the 
 introspective life involves a diversion to ourselves of the 
 activities of thought and feeling which should be busied with 
 the outside world, just as the so-called life of pleasure involves 
 a diversion of energies that should be busied with the outside 
 world. I conjecture that both types of life are useless for 
 the purposes of the Life Force. They involve no thrust 
 forward ; rather their movement is circular like that of the 
 snake eating its own tail. And they bring nothing new into 
 the world. 
 
 The Significance of Birth, Love and Death. 
 
 I have spent so long in describing the various devices by 
 which the Life Force seeks to ensure our conformity to its
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIRTH 113 
 
 purposes that I have unwittingly been led to include in my 
 description an account of the various characteristics of the 
 Force itself. I find I have dealt with its general nature, with 
 the question of its purpose, if it has a purpose, and our know- 
 ledge of it, with its influence upon individuals, and with its 
 method of actuating them through the unconscious. There 
 remains little to say, except to draw attention to one or two 
 significant facts about human existence which seem to me to 
 support the general view I have been trying to put forward, 
 while remaining themselves difficult -if not impossible to 
 account for on any other view. 
 
 The significant facts seem to me to be these. In all the 
 important events of our lives we are not free agents, but 
 are determined by something which is outside our control. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But you said we had free will ? How, then, 
 can we not be free agents ? 
 
 John. In most things I agree that we have free will. 
 But these particular events of which I am speaking seem to 
 be not within our control. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What are they ? 
 
 John. Well, what would you call the most important 
 events in a human being's life ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. I don't really know : getting a job, choosing 
 a career or a wife, and so forth ? 
 
 John. There are things more important than that. There 
 is birth that begins life, death that ends it, and love that 
 seeks to continue it in others. Yet none of these things do 
 we of our own free will. 
 
 Birth ! It is a significant fact that the most important 
 question in our life, the question of whether we shall live 
 at all, is the one question upon which we are never consulted. 
 If we were, I feel sure that most of us would never consent 
 to be born. Certainly we would choose our parents differently. 
 Do you remember that passage at the beginning of Tess of the 
 D'Urbervilles about the Durbeyfield children? "All these 
 young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship, entirely 
 dependent on the judgment of the two Durbeyfield adults 
 for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their 
 existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose 
 to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, 
 
 8
 
 114 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCE 
 
 death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under 
 hatches compelled to sail with them. Six helpless creatures, 
 who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, 
 much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were 
 involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield." 
 Children are not asked : they are pitchforked into life by the 
 Life Force, which uses as its mechanism the pleasure which 
 their parents derive from sexual intercourse ; and once alive 
 they have to put up with it. 
 
 Life, then, is not a free choice : it is the cost of the parents' 
 pleasure defrayed by the child. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But you talk as if life were necessarily a 
 bad thing. I am not sure that I don't enjoy it. Certainly 
 I doubt if I should choose not to be born at all, were the choice 
 presented to me. In any case, if your estimate of the value 
 we place upon life is correct, why don't we all commit suicide ? 
 
 John. I am coming to that in a moment. Meanwhile, 
 let me point out that your remarks are prompted by your 
 inability to view life except from the standpoint of the 
 participation of you yourself, George Alastair Banks, merchant, 
 aged forty-three, in it ; they are also influenced by the horror 
 engendered at the mere suggestion of your quitting it. 
 Naturally you, George Alastair Banks, do not want to commit 
 suicide, but that is because your self-respect won't allow you 
 to contemplate the extinction of your personality with 
 equanimity, and not because you have definitely adjudged 
 life to be better than not-life. 
 
 But let us put a hypothetical question to you before you 
 were born. Assume that you are not yet born, but that you are 
 nevertheless in possession of all the knowledge and experience 
 of life that your forty-three years have brought you, and that, 
 possessing such knowledge, you are faced with the prospect 
 of passing just such a life as you have passed. Are you sure 
 that under these conditions you would choose the gift of life ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. No, I am not sure. 
 
 John. But many of the wisest of earth's sons have been 
 sure, and have pronounced against life in no uncertain terms. 
 With Sophocles they have held that the best thing of all is 
 not to be born, and that, being born, the next best thing is 
 to escape from life as soon as may be. What of the regret
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIRTH 115 
 
 for the peace of the night's oblivion when you wake in the 
 morning and face again the prospect of taking up the threads 
 of life ? No, Schopenhauer was right ! The conditions of 
 human life are such that the pains must preponderate over 
 the pleasures, and, valued in terms of a purely commercial 
 speculation with pleasure as profit and pain as loss, life is 
 bound to be a failure. 
 
 The fact that we nevertheless not only get ourselves born, 
 but persistently refuse to commit suicide, seems inevitably to 
 point to the conclusion that our appearance and our con- 
 tinuance upon the world's stage are alike matters outside our 
 control, and that the question at issue is, not whether we want 
 life, but whether life wants us. 
 
 And it is because life does want us for its own purposes 
 that, when it has created us and thrust us into the world 
 whether we like it or no, it refuses to let us go until it has 
 had its way with us, that is, until it has extracted from us 
 that quota of service in its cause that our capacities enable 
 us to give. The facts of birth and death, then, and our 
 disconcerting impotence in respect of both of them, seem to 
 me to afford the clearest evidence that we are not free agents 
 but merely the instruments of some force outside ourselves. 
 
 Mr. Banks. And love ? Surely love and marriage, the 
 mechanism by which the Life Force secures the propagation 
 of the species, as you so elegantly put it, surely these are 
 within our control. A man need not marry and have children 
 unless he likes, 
 
 John. Are you sure ? Could we really account for the 
 fact of marriage at all in view of the almost universal evidence 
 for the unhappiness of marriage, if the parties were really 
 free agents ? Love is, properly speaking, a disease, in which 
 the rational faculties, the power of judgment, the freedom of 
 choice, are all surrendered to an overpowering instinct, the 
 instinct which prompts us, whether we like it or not, to mate 
 and to produce children. But if love is a disease, marriage 
 is a sanatorium for the cure of it. Marriage was invented by 
 the Life Force to ensure that a man should be set free at the 
 earliest possible moment from the disabling business of loving 
 and mating, and be restored to the community to lend a hand 
 with the work of the world. It requires no virtue, no talent,
 
 116 THE THEORY OF THE LIFE FORCP: 
 
 no cleverness to fall in love : any fool can do it, and any 
 fool can do it because it is really done for him. Men talk of 
 a " genius for love " : but the genius for love consists not in 
 getting into it, but in getting out of it, that is, in thwarting, 
 at least temporarily, the intentions of the Force. 
 
 Short of this genius, falling in love can only be regarded 
 as temporary abeyance of the powers of reason and free will, 
 a surrender of the sense of value and proportion to an over- 
 mastering and direct thrust from the Life Force. 
 
 Shaw puts it perfectly, as usual, when he makes Valentine 
 say of this phenomenon in Yoit Never Can Tell, that it is " As if 
 Nature, after allowing us to belong to ourselves and do what 
 we judged right and proper for all these years, were suddenly 
 lifting her great hand to take us — her two little children — 
 by the scruff of our Httle necks, and use us, in spite of our- 
 selves, for her own purposes in her own way." 
 
 It is just because at such times the considerations 
 which commonly actuate a man's conduct, considerations of 
 pocket and of comfort, of friendship and of ambition, all go 
 by the board that one is driven to interpret the phenomenon 
 of love as a tremendous drive on the part of the Life Force, 
 determined that once at least in the life of every man he 
 shall cease to take advantage of his gift of free will to rebel, 
 and shall consent to be used as an instrument for the creation 
 of beings, who will perhaps more surely carry out the purposes 
 of the Force than he has done or can do himself. 
 
 And if this is true of men, it is ten times over true of 
 women. A woman may educate and cultivate herself ; she 
 may pursue apparently disinterested studies ; she may acquire 
 knowledge, learning, scholarship and culture ; she may even 
 exfoliate a passable imitation of a sense of beauty ; she may 
 do all and be all these things for a time, and that time ends 
 once and for all when she meets her man : once that happens 
 all these pursuits and acquisitions are revealed as what they 
 are, mere make-weights and substitutes, second strings acquired 
 at best as a kind of protective colouring because men find a 
 sense of beauty in woman attractive, to be ruthlessly jettisoned 
 as worthless frippery once the woman sees her opportunity of 
 performing the function for which the Life Force created her. 
 How many married women, after all, do you know with
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIRTH 117 
 
 that objective interest in impersonal things which characterises 
 the man and sometimes the unmarried woman student ? . 
 
 And so I would rank falling in love together with birth 
 and death as a happening outside our control. It is in these 
 three things that the drive of the Life Force is most potently 
 revealed, and we ourselves are shown to be mere puppets 
 twitched into life, love, and ultimately death, by an invisible 
 showman that pulls the strings for his own ends. 
 
 But the showman, mind you, is no glorified person made 
 in our own image. He is impersonal and heartless ; he cares 
 no more for you and me than the golfer cares for his golf 
 clubs, and one day, I surmise, becoming convinced of our 
 insufficiency, he will replace us by something better. 
 
 And that, sir, is all I have to say about the Life Force. 
 
 Mr. Banks. And I can only tender my gratitude for the 
 trouble you have taken with your exposition. I only wish 
 that more could hear you. Why don't you lecture on the 
 subject ? 
 
 John. Unfortunately, no place is open to me. I can't 
 do it in a church because it is not religion, nor in a University 
 because it is not philosophy, nor yet as a secularist because 
 it does not abuse God. But then, you see, it was for just this 
 very purpose, that men might have an opportunity to study 
 and expound recalcitrant doctrines, which refuse to fit into 
 any accepted pigeon-hole of learning, or to label themselves 
 with any title known to the examination schools at the 
 Universities, that this estimable institution was founded. 
 
 NOTE. See page 90. 
 
 The use of a simile may serve to illustrate this rather difficult 
 conception. Let us suppose that a river meets an obstacle in its 
 course which diverts a portion of the main river into a side stream. 
 The flow and current of the side stream will be derived from the 
 main river, just as its life and energy will be that of the main 
 river, but its direction will be different, and will be different as a 
 result of the interposition of the material obstacle which has diverted 
 it. Its course will, in fact, now be dictated by its own reaction to the 
 conformation of its banks, that is, by its environment. In the same 
 way the life and energy of the individual is derived from the Life 
 Force, but as the result of the interposition of matter he can pursue 
 his own separate course.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Good afternoon ! You did not, I think, 
 expect to see me again so soon. I hope I am not becoming 
 too frequent a visitor ? 
 
 John. Not at all ! I am always glad to discuss any 
 questions that you may wish to raise ; in fact that is what 
 I am here for. But I exhausted most of my ideas the last 
 time we talked : I hardly know, in fact, that I can add to 
 what I said then — that is if you want ideas of mine, and not 
 criticism of other people's. Are you sure you would not be 
 better advised to go this time to one of my colleagues ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. But it is on the same subject as that we 
 discussed last time that I wish to speak. I suspect that 
 much remains to be said in amplification and illustration of 
 the doctrine you sketched for me then. You constructed 
 a skeleton, and I would have you clothe it with flesh. I 
 want you, in short, to apply your Life Force metaphysic to 
 certain concrete questions that I wish to place before you. 
 
 John. And this gentleman ? 
 
 Mr. Banks. This is Professor Cameron of X University : 
 allow me to introduce you. He was much interested in the 
 account I gave of our last conversation, inadequate though 
 I fear it must have been, and he would, I think, like to pro- 
 pound certain difficulties that have occurred to him, more 
 particularly as touching the application of your theory. You 
 see you get round me so easily. 
 
 Professor Cameron. That is so, sir ! All this Vitalism 
 stuff ; I've heard it before, of course — the elan vital and so 
 on, but . . . 
 
 118
 
 INTRODUCTION 119 
 
 John. Excuse me one moment ! I am afraid I am not 
 the man you want after all. You are interested, I under- 
 stand, in the application of the Life Force doctrine. Well, 
 I set up to be a philosopher, and it is useless to expect a philo- 
 sopher to apply his theories : it is not his job, He is con- 
 cerned to discover truth and not to propagate it : if his theory 
 is logical and consistent, that is enough for him. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But should he not make trial to see whether 
 his logic fits the facts ? 
 
 John. Not at all ! It is illogical to try to apply logic 
 to hfe. But that does not necessarily mean that it cannot 
 be appHed. Now, my friend Anthony . . . 
 
 Mr. Banks. But surely this is running away : if your 
 theory will not stand the test of experience, can you expect 
 us to credit it ? If it will not apply, in what sense can it be 
 true ? 
 
 John. I did not say that it would not apply. I said 
 that I was not the man to apply it. 
 
 The Application of Philosophical Theory. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But surely if you take it seri- 
 ously . . . 
 
 John. I should apply it ? Not at all. Do you not 
 admit the distinction between theory and practice, or, to be 
 accurate, between the construction of a theory and its practical 
 apphcation ? Schopenhauer, who preached complete asce- 
 ticism, was unable to control his temper or his appetites, 
 loved comfort above all things and wine next to comfort. 
 He was reproached for inconsistency, but wrongly. As a 
 philosopher, I may grasp intellectually the hidden meaning 
 of the Universe, and portray the kind of Hfe its comprehension 
 demands ; but that does not put me under a greater obli- 
 gation to hve that hfe in my own person than in the case of 
 another. He who drives black sheep need not himself be 
 black, and nobody expects a geometrician to look hke a 
 triangle. Nor, if you insist on the word, is the philosopher 
 alone in his inconsistency. Christianity is the official religion 
 of all Western States, yet no State has yet had the courage 
 to shut up its prisons, root out its lawyers, aboHsh its armies 
 and navies, or perform any of the eminently salutary and
 
 120 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 sensible measures which a practical application of the doctrines 
 of Christianity requires. Why, then, must the philosopher 
 practise what he preaches ? Philosophers were never adepts 
 at life : that is why they are of such small account in the 
 world. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But we are not asking you to 
 practise, only to demonstrate the application of your theories 
 to some facts of experience and aspects of thought. 
 
 John. The distinction is one of degree, not of kind. 
 You want me to define the special Life Force attitude to 
 certain phases of existence. What, for instance, would a 
 supporter of my theory have to say of education, what of 
 morals ? What view of art, what canons of literary taste, 
 would he be required to adopt ? These are the questions 
 you would ask, and these questions I cannot answer ; for 
 one thing I do not know enough about art and education ; 
 for another, as I have already said, I am a philosopher and I 
 am not concerned with practical application. 
 
 Mr. Banks. It seems I have brought you on a fruitless 
 journey. Professor. 
 
 John. Not at all. My friend and colleague, Anthony, 
 as I was trying to tell you some moments ago, would be glad 
 to discuss with you the questions you wish to raise. Not 
 only is he more fitted to do so than I am, but it so happens 
 that he shares my views on metaphysics and might perhaps 
 be able to deduce from them the Life Force view of art, morals, 
 education and so forth, if such a view can be said to exist. 
 If you will excuse me for a moment, I will fetch him. 
 
 {Exit John, to return with Anthony.) 
 
 Anthony. Good afternoon, gentlemen ! I understand 
 that you wish to discuss the practical appUcation of some of 
 my friend's Vitalistic theories. The subject is not an easy 
 one, nor has it been systematically studied ; but I shall be 
 glad to put any ideas of mine at your service. 
 
 Professor Cameron. We shall be most interested to hear 
 them. Up to the present, however, we have only talked in 
 generalities with your friend here. Perhaps, then, it wiU be 
 as well if I indicate at once the kind of question to which the 
 application of his views seems to me to involve the greatest 
 difhculty. Such a procedure will provide a starting point
 
 APPLICATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 121 
 
 for our discussion, besides giving you an opportunity of 
 throwing light upon matters which are at present obscure. 
 Anthony. Pray do so. 
 
 Statement of Objections to Life Force Theory. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Let me take then, to illustrate 
 my difficulties, the department of thought itself, the realm 
 of pure reasoning, of which perhaps the most striking example 
 is the field covered by mathematics. Now as I understand 
 your friend's position, it is this — ^please correct me if I am 
 wrong. The Life Force has created man for purposes of its 
 own : it uses him as a weapon for the achievement of those 
 purposes, and endows him accordingly with powers and 
 facuhies which he may use in its service. One of these faculties 
 we may suppose is the faculty of reason. Now reason, working 
 in accordance with laws which it prescribes for itself, discovers 
 certain facts about the Universe : it discovers, for example, 
 that seven times seven make forty-nine, that water becomes 
 steam at a certain temperature, that it is impossible for a 
 tree to be at the same time both a beech and not a 
 beech. 
 
 Now reason regards these facts, so far at any rate as the 
 facts of mathematics and the laws of logic are concerned, as 
 unalterable and permanent : in no Universe, however con- 
 stituted, says reason, would it be possible for seven times 
 seven to make fifty-one, or for a tree both to be and not to 
 be a beech at the same moment. These facts, then, reason 
 asserts to be independent of time, place and thought, and 
 the knowledge of these facts reason calls truth. This then 
 is the nature of reason : to endeavour to establish truths 
 about the Universe which are eternally and universally true, 
 and to regard the accumulation of such truths with satis- 
 faction as constituting an increase in knowledge. Now 
 increased knowledge is a possession, a heritage which suc- 
 cessive generations seek to increase and to hand on, enriched, 
 to their descendants. Thus we have a growing body of truths 
 which are absolutely and entirely true, and we tend to invest 
 them with some sentiment of value. Knowledge, then, is 
 good just because it is permanent, is eternally the same and 
 can never be impugned. Now what Hght does the view of 
 
 i
 
 I 
 
 122 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 reason, required by your Life Force hypothesis throw upon 
 all this ? 
 
 Will the Life Force theory apply to the realm of thought, 
 to the activity and achievements of reason, the same analysis 
 as that vi^hich it applies, let us say, to morality, to reUgion, 
 or to political institutions ? Will it insist on judging these 
 achievements by the same standard ? 
 
 Anthony. I am afraid I don't quite follow. What is 
 this analysis, what is this standard ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Well, your friend, Mr. John, as 
 far as I can gather, insists that the Life Force, having created 
 us for purposes of its own, and having devised the machinery 
 of the unconscious to apprise us of the direction in which it 
 would have us travel, spurs us incessantly to new activities 
 through the promptings of the host of impulses and instincts 
 that spring from the unconscious. These impulses find them- 
 selves in continual conflict with the moral standards estab- 
 lished by the community in matters of conduct, and with the 
 accepted dogmas that pass for the religion of the community 
 in matters of belief. The impulses both to new modes of 
 action and to new ways of thought endeavour, as it were, 
 to break through this crust of dogma and moral code, which 
 seeks to confine them within the rigid framework of what has 
 been approved in the past. When they do succeed in breaking 
 through, the result is progress in morals and insight in religion ; 
 there is, in fact, a general advance — the Life Force has gained 
 ground. But it has only gained ground at the cost of the 
 disruption of existing standards of conduct and structures 
 of belief which, just in so far as the Life Force has succeeded 
 in its new thrust forward, are thrown aside and consigned to 
 the scrap heap of evolution. 
 
 We have, then, a constant opposition between the new 
 and the old, between the dynamic and the static, between 
 the continual promptings and thrustings of the Life Force 
 and the laws, religion, morality, social observances, traditions, 
 dogmas and prohibitions of society, which obstruct these 
 promptings and endeavour to confine their manifestations 
 in thought and action within the limits of the cast iron mould 
 of what exists. 
 
 And just as this cast iron mould is itself the crystalHsed
 
 OBJECTIONS TO LIFE FORCE THEORY 123 
 
 form which the promptings and thrustings of the past have 
 assumed in the present, so will the dynamic urge of to-day, 
 which is now seeking through the medium of a few men of 
 genius to break the mould, become subject to a like fate, 
 should it succeed in imposing itself upon the society of to- 
 morrow. Just as red-hot lava cools and sohdifies when once 
 it has ceased to move, so does new thought which comes 
 into the world like molten fluid grow hard and static when 
 it ceases to be new : as it wins acceptance from the world 
 which once sought to suppress it, it solidifies and forms a crust. 
 Rigidity is the penalty imposed by respectabiUty, and the 
 heresy which becomes the accepted standard for behef and 
 conduct in the community loses both tolerance and elasticity 
 as the price of success. Thus, the living beliefs of yesterday 
 are petrified in the Church prayer books of to-day ; the im- 
 moralities of to-day are enshrined in the Family Heralds of 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Now through all this process it is perfectly clear that a 
 definite scale of values is being erected. The achievements 
 of the past are pilloried as the lumber of the future : what- 
 ever ordinance exists, whether it be a creed, a political con- 
 stitution, a social prohibition or a law against unnatural 
 vice, is regarded with an unfavourable eye as something which 
 confuses, trammels and perverts the fresh and spontaneous 
 thrustings of the Life Force. It appears that no institution, 
 no belief, no social ordinance possesses absolute and permanent 
 merit in its own right : it is at best useful as a milestone 
 upon the road which humanity has to travel, and its useful- 
 ness is outlived so soon as the milestone is passed. 
 
 Is Truth immutable and Value constant? 
 
 Now the question which I wish this somewhat tedious 
 exposition of your friend's views to bring out is this : Are 
 we to extend this critical analysis, which amounts to a general 
 defamation of the old and the existing in art and society, 
 in morals and belief, to cover the more specifically rational 
 activities of thought ? Bearing in mind my preHminary 
 remarks with regard to the positive achievements of thought 
 in the past and the slow accumulation of that priceless posses- 
 sion which is human knowledge, are we to regard these too as
 
 124 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 so much obstructive lumber, whose only function is to block 
 the pathway to new discoveries and to impede the course 
 of evolution ? Are the absolute truths of logic and mathe- 
 matics not absolutely, but only relatively, true, or, worse still, 
 are they not true at all, or if indeed they be still true, are 
 they impediments to the vision of greater and deeper truths ? 
 Are the standards of artistic taste laid down by the Greeks 
 to be deemed inimical to art, or the principles of jurisprudence 
 established by the Romans injurious to justice, just because 
 their intrinsic merit has forced all succeeding ages to accept 
 them ? Or, to put a more extreme case, does the merit of 
 such a writer as Shakespeare diminish by the mere lapse of 
 time, simply because his work has caught and crystallised 
 the aesthetic impulses of the past instead of embodying those 
 of the present ? And is Shakespeare then to be forbidden 
 to our young, on the ground that the admiration which he 
 cannot but extort from them will cramp and repress their 
 own creative impulses ? 
 
 This last is surely absurd. And yet if the doctrine of the 
 Life Force does not force us to such a lamentable conclusion, 
 if it does not compel us to write down the truth that two 
 and two make four as relative and the merit of Shakespeare 
 as ephemeral, on what principle, may I ask, are we to dis- 
 tinguish some of the conclusions of reason and to accept 
 some of the achievements of knowledge as endowed with 
 absolute validity and truth, while impugning others as pos- 
 sessing value which endures only for a time and is relative 
 to a specific purpose ? Useful, it is admitted, these latter 
 may once have been, and yet, according to your friend 
 Mr. John, if they be allowed to claim human allegiance and 
 respect beyond their allotted period, they will come to render 
 greater disservice to the progress of evolution in the future 
 than the service they rendered in the days when they 
 enshrined the latest promptings of the Force. 
 
 Anthony. These are difficult questions you have asked 
 me, and they go to the heart of the whole VitaHst hypothesis. 
 In so far as they raise such questions as the validity of reason- 
 ing, the nature of truth and so forth, their import is primarily 
 philosophical, and my friend John would be more competent 
 to tackle them than I. But I understood that the matters
 
 IS TRUTH IMMUTABLE AND VALUE CONSTANT 125 
 
 you wished to discuss related mainly to the application of 
 the Life Force metaphysic to certain specific problems. And 
 it is from this point of view that I think I can most appro- 
 priately deal with the chief question you have raised. That 
 question I understand to be as follows : What is the bearing 
 of the Life Force hypothesis upon the value men attribute 
 to mental achievement and the behef they have in the exist- 
 ence of definite knowledge ? Is there, you ask, absolute 
 value in Plato's RepubHc, or absolute truth in Newton's law 
 of gravitation ? If there is not, isn't it rather shocking ? 
 If there is, how are we to reconcile such a conception with 
 our notion of the Life Force as proceeding by the method of 
 trial and error, and throwing up geniuses whose most remark- 
 able pioducts have relative value only, the value, that is, of 
 means, or stepping stones to an end whose realisation will 
 render them superfluous ? 
 
 That I think is one of the forms in which your question 
 presents itself. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly it does ! 
 
 The Academic Mind. 
 
 Anthony. I think I shall succeed best in my attempt 
 to indicate the view I should wish to take of this matter by 
 describing a certain attitude of mind which seems to me to 
 embody a wrong conception of thought and of its achieve- 
 ments. For brevity's sake I will call this attitude of mind 
 " academic," and the mind which possesses it "the academic 
 mind." I choose this particular example because it will, I 
 hope, serve to illustrate my thesis in two different ways. 
 In the first place the academic mind takes an erroneous view 
 of the purpose and function of thought ; and in the second 
 place, by so doing, it makes of itself an obstruction to the 
 Life Force and tends to impede the accomphshment of its 
 purpose. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But surely the phrase " academic 
 mind " is merely a term of popular contempt. It is used of 
 scholars and pedants, who, lost in the dust and dry bones 
 of the theories of the past, take no heed of the world of the 
 present. I don't know that the term has ever meant very 
 much, just because the senses in which it is used are so many ;
 
 126 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 certainly it has often been undeservedly applied. I fail to 
 see, therefore, how you can regard the term and the hazy 
 conception for which it stands as significant for the exposition 
 of your theory. 
 
 Anthony. I hope to make my use of the term plainer 
 as I proceed, and its importance for my theory may then 
 become more manifest. May I ask, did you ever in your 
 University days read Aristotle's Poetics ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, I did certainly. 
 
 Anthony. You will remember, then, a theory of Aris- 
 totle's as to the function of tragedy. Tragedy purges our 
 souls of pity and terror by exciting these emotions over the 
 misfortunes of fictitious personages presented on the stage : 
 hence the pleasure afforded by tragedy provides, as it 
 were, a safety valve for surplus emotions which would 
 become inconvenient if unable to find such outlets. 
 
 The theory is an intrigumg one, and at once suggests the 
 question, " Is it true ? " You will not, I suspect, be surprised 
 when I remind you that that was the one question that at 
 Oxford was never raised. Undergraduates have written 
 innumerable essays, dons have delivered innumerable lectures 
 on this theory of Aristotle's, but whether it is true or not 
 is the last thing that it occurs to anyone to discuss. There 
 were, however, a number of rival hypotheses, each supported 
 by a wealth of scholarship, including references to other works 
 by Aristotle, comparisons out of other authors and so forth, 
 as to what it was precisely that Aristotle meant to convey 
 by his theory. Did he, for example, conceive of the purgation 
 effected by tragedy as a purely physiological process, the 
 drawing off, as it were, of black bile which, if allowed to 
 accumulate, causes melanchoha, or was his theory to be 
 interpreted as a metaphor by analogy from the physical 
 process ? Or again, were both these interpretations too 
 obvious, a moral uplifting and purification of the emotions — 
 what the psychoanalysts would call a subHmation — being 
 really intended ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, I do remember sometliing of 
 the sort. I was always a black bile man myself. 
 
 Anthony. Well, what does this subordination of the real 
 interest of the theory to a secondary, fictitious and literary
 
 THE ACADEMIC MIND 127 
 
 interest portend ? Why all this trouble to discover, not what 
 you or I thought or ought to think about the theory, but 
 what Aristotle thought ? It is, is it not, a sacrifice of sub- 
 stance to form a postponing of the question of fact for the 
 question of scholarship. And it is just this sacrifice of sub- 
 stance to form that seems to me to be typical of the academic 
 mind throughout. The academic mind takes the thoughts 
 of the great men of the past, and instead of sifting the gold 
 from the dross, testing them in the hght of modern research 
 and weighing them in the scales of modern discovery, swallows 
 them whole, takes their unchanging value for granted, and 
 devotes an infinity of patience, erudition and scholarship, to 
 the work of textual emendation and criticism, with a view to 
 discovering not whether the substance is sound, but whether 
 the form is intact. 
 
 Thus you can never obtain from the average don his 
 own opinion on any controversial question in the classics : 
 he will tell you what Aristotle thought, or what Butcher thinks 
 Aristotle thought, or what Bywater proves that he must have 
 thought, and give exceUent reasons for his view on each point ; 
 but to the question, " What do you think yourself ? " he 
 has no answer : he brushes it aside as irrelevant. 
 
 The meaning, the content of the theory, all that was once 
 living and vital in it have become subordinated to the form ; 
 the inspiration of the Life Force has become smothered by 
 the vehicle by which that inspiration was conveyed. It is 
 as if men were to treasure and to hand down to posterity a 
 nut containing a kernel beyond price, and posterity repaid 
 them by going into ecstasies of admiration over the husk. 
 
 This characteristic of the academic mind, its subordination 
 of substance to form, which now begins to emerge, may be 
 traced through endless ramifications. Let me take another 
 example of a rather different kind. 
 
 Its View of the State. 
 
 Primitive man, we are told, finding a state of lawless freedom 
 intolerably insecure, formed society for his own protection ; 
 he preferred, as Plato puts it, to surrender his own power 
 of doing injustice to others on condition that they should 
 be made to exercise a similar forbearance towards himself.
 
 \ 
 
 128 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 Thus, instead of personal violence and the right of the stronger 
 which had hitherto reigned supreme, law, which was based 
 upon the corporate force of society, became the arbiter in affairs 
 between man and man. Society then, or the State, was 
 made by man to serve his own interests because society suited 
 him. 
 
 Now observe the steps by which the State which was 
 made for man grew to dominate him who made it, the steps 
 by which form came to triumph over substance, Greek 
 pliilosophers, observing that it was only by contact with his 
 fellowmen that a man could develop his full nature, only by 
 living in society that he could realise all that he had it in 
 him to be, came to regard the individual as owing a permanent 
 debt or obligation to society, arising from the mere circumstance 
 of his being a member of it, German philosophers carried 
 the notion a stage further, until in Hegel the State takes on 
 a real being or substance of its own, becoming a sort of super- 
 individual with a General Will and attributes which Hegel 
 does not hesitate to call divine. The State is representative 
 of the wills of all the contracting individuals who compose it ; 
 therefore it can never act contrary to those wills, which is 
 to say that it can never be unjust or tyrannical. The State 
 is the source of all that is highest and noblest in the individual's 
 nature ; it may, therefore, unhesitatingly call for the exercise 
 of that capacity for self-sacrifice which it has itself implanted 
 in the individual's breast. The ideal of the individual should 
 be to merge his will in that of the State ; his virtue to throw 
 aside all considerations of self and place himself unhesitat- 
 ingly at the State's service whenever, in the State's view, 
 occasion for such sacrifice arises. For is not the State after 
 all simply the individual in another form, or rather, a glorified 
 edition of all that is unselfish and noble in the individual's 
 nature ? Thus we arrive at the conclusion that the well- 
 being of the State is of greater importance than that of the 
 individuals who compose it, that in fact man was made for 
 the State instead of the State, as we had fondly supposed, 
 being made for man. Thus the fresh and vital doctrine that 
 individuals cannot live alone but must come together into 
 a community, a doctrine sprung direct from some prompting 
 of the Life Force which saw that its purpose could only be
 
 ITS VIEW OF THE STATE 129 
 
 achieved by the co-operation of individuals in society, is 
 transformed into the dogma that society alone has absolute 
 value, and that man exists only for the purpose of rendering 
 it service : another instance, you perceive, of the triumph 
 of form over substance, of the institution, which was the 
 form in which the living idea expressed itself, over the indi- 
 viduals who conceived the idea and created the institution. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am sure this is all very interesting, 
 Mr. Anthony, but I fail to see its connection with the ques- 
 tions which my friend Professor Cameron put to you. I hope 
 you are proposing to answer those questions. 
 
 Anthony. Please bear with me just a little longer, and 
 the drift of these apparently discursive remarks will, I hope, 
 begin to reveal itself. Professor Cameron's questions do not 
 admit of a direct answer, at any rate not immediately. I 
 must pursue the method of the impressionists, and sketch 
 in vague and general outline the position I wish to take up, 
 with a view to filling in the details afterwards. It is only when 
 the details are filled in that you will discover the relevance 
 and catch the meaning of the whole. I hope. Professor 
 Cameron, you will pardon the method for all its seeming 
 irrelevance ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. By all means. Please continue. 
 
 Anthony. In resuming then, let me repeat that the 
 attitude of the academic mind is harmful in two respects. In 
 the first place it maintains an attitude of hostility to each new 
 development in thought that springs from the Life Force ; 
 in the second, it constitutes in itself an obstruction to the 
 purposes of the Force by freezing its living experiments into 
 static immobiUty. 
 
 Now these attributes of the academic mind may be observed 
 throughout the whole field of human intellectual activity. 
 
 Its Effect upon the Professions. 
 
 The academic mind is, for example, rampant in the pro 
 fessions. Some particular department of human knowledge 
 knowledge of the law for example, or of the diseases of the 
 human body and the ways of curing them, is cornered by 
 a small body of men, whose livelihood depends not only 
 upon their own ability for adjusting disputes and healing 
 
 9 
 
 :i
 
 130 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 infirmities, but also upon the admitted inability of anyone 
 not possessing the peculiar training and outlook which is 
 characteristic of the profession in question to do the same. 
 It is important that the doctor should be able to cure 
 the sick man ; but it is even more important that another 
 should not cure him where the doctor has failed. In fact, 
 if the choice could be presented to him, the average practitioner 
 would in his heart prefer that the patient should die under 
 his treatment, rather than that he should recover under the 
 unauthorised treatment of an unqualified person. 
 
 The substance of medicine is the healing of the sick ; the 
 form of medicine is the code of prescribed rules and methods, 
 by means of which the wisdom of the past has shown that 
 the sick can normally be healed. But where the form triumphs 
 over the substance, the importance of following prescribed 
 rule and method comes to overshadow the importance of 
 healing. "It is better to die through following the rules 
 than to recover through violating them," says Doctor Bahis 
 in L' Amour medecin. That the remark was sufficiently 
 near the truth to be greeted as a caricature and not as a libel 
 is the measure of the prevalence of the academic mind, with 
 its triumph of form over matter in the medical profession. 
 And when Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bennington, in the " Doctor's 
 Dilemma," is shocked to have to report that he has " actually 
 known a man die of a disease from which he was, scientifically 
 speaking, immune," it is at once recognised that he is more 
 concerned at the inconsiderateness of fact in putting form 
 out of countenance, than at the unexpected death of a patient 
 whom it was his business to keep alive. 
 ■ The encroachment of form upon substance in the legal 
 
 I profession is too notorious to require illustration. The sub- 
 ^ stance of law is to see justice done ; the form of law is to secure 
 the victory of that particular party which happens to have 
 employed your services. It is perhaps natural that the lawyer 
 should wish to enhance his reputation by restoring to their 
 relations thieves who can afford his fees, but such a perform- 
 ance implies, in the case at least of those whose guilt is known 
 to him, just that sacrifice of justice to personal advantage 
 which the establishment of law was designed to preclude. 
 Professor Cameron. I hardly think you should press
 
 ITS EFFECT UPON THE PROFESSIONS 131 
 
 these instances too strongly. I am not, of course, aware 
 as yet of the conclusions you are proposing to draw, though 
 I begin to see the direction in which your instances are tending. 
 But this professionalism among doctors and lawyers is rather 
 economic in tendency than symptomatic of any fundamental 
 attitude of mind. Both doctors and lawyers depend upon 
 their technical knowledge for their livelihood, and like all 
 bodies of skilled practitioners, whether workers by brain or 
 by hand, form a trade union which must resist to the utter- 
 most blacklegging by persons outside the charmed circle. 
 If persons who do not possess the necessary diplomas and 
 credentials of the profession aspire, and aspire successfully, 
 to do what the professional does, the latter's special knowledge 
 will lose its market value, and, as a result, the professional 
 himself will lose his livelihood. Hence the opposition of the 
 medical profession to such a man as Barker, the bonesetter. 
 It was not that the profession denied the efficacy of his 
 methods or regretted their success, but they did deprecate 
 the performance by an outsider of mysteries to which only 
 the initiated should aspire. Where an outsider can do well 
 what the insider can do badly, the result not only reflects 
 badly upon the insider, but diminishes the value and im- 
 portance of being an insider at all. 
 
 And as the insider is normally too overworked at curing 
 the sick by methods which were up to date in his day to 
 keep up to date himself, he either fails to realise that his own 
 methods are superseded, or if he does realise it, his knowledge 
 that he has neither the time nor the opportunity to master 
 new developments, which bid fair to supersede him, makes him 
 naturally conservative and suspicious of innovation. 
 
 It is to this feeling, then, that I attribute the conservatism 
 of the professions. Their hostility to what is unorthodox, 
 their slavish adherence to rules involving even, in extreme 
 cases, an admission that it is better to kill by authorised 
 methods than to cure by unauthorised ones, is due, I think, 
 not so much to a natural tendency to subordinate substance to 
 form, as to a refusal to countenance any innovation which 
 might threaten their own economic position. 
 
 Mr, Banks. Hear, hear ! It's all a question of trusts 
 and monopolies. Doctors have a monopoly of medicine just
 
 I 
 
 132 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 as parsons have of God. You can't get a parson to admit 
 the arguments of an agnostic, because his salary depends 
 on his not letting the agnostic refute him ; and you can't 
 get an ordinary doctor to look kindly on psychoanalysis 
 or autosuggestion because their success would make him 
 superfluous. All this is not a question of the Life Force at 
 all ; it is a question of bread and butter. 
 
 Anthony. But is it ? I agree that your explanation 
 covers many of the facts. I might agree that it covered all 
 of them, were it not that precisely the same tendency can 
 be discerned in other fields which are unaffected by the in- 
 fluence of economics. If you will allow me, then, I will carry 
 my analysis of what I have called the academic mind a stage 
 further. 
 
 We have considered the professions ; let us take a glance 
 at education. Now what do you take the object of education 
 to be? 
 
 Education. Its Object according to the Academic 
 View. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Education has many objects, but 
 this I take to be the most important : so to train the mind 
 and faculties of the child that he may leave his school equipped 
 at all points to face the world, and to take his place therein 
 as a man and a citizen. 
 
 Anthony. This training of mind and faculties will not 
 necessarily involve, will it, the assimilation of knowledge 
 for its own sake ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Oh, yes ! There are certain things 
 that a child must know. 
 
 Anthony. His ABC, reading, writing and the multi- 
 plication table, for instance ? I agree, of course ! But these 
 things are not so much education as instruments for the 
 acquisition of education, the things without which education 
 cannot be obtained. But as to education itself, we shall 
 insist, I take it, on a child learning things only in so far as 
 the process of learning, and it may be of thinking, trains the 
 child's mind for the performance of those functions you 
 referred to just now, and not primarily for the sake of the 
 knowledge which the learning brings.
 
 OBJECTS OF EDUCATION 188 
 
 Professor Cameron. Some knowledge is valuable to the 
 child in itself. It should be in part the business of education 
 to transmit the inherited culture of the race, in order that 
 each generation, instead of starting with a clean slate, may- 
 begin the pursuit of knowledge and the journey of evolution 
 where its predecessors left off. If it were not so, if parents 
 and teachers deliberately forewent the knowledge of the 
 past, and insisted on presenting every subject as an open 
 question upon which the child might make up its mind one 
 way or the other, irrespective of the facts gleaned by its 
 predecessors, education would degenerate into a wearisome 
 repetition of the same process generation after generation, 
 and the possibility of progress, which must surely consist 
 in building upon the foundations which have already been 
 laid, would be put out of court. 
 
 In my view the present can only rise upon the shoulders 
 of the past, the future upon the shoulders of the present. 
 In order that this may be accomplished, it is necessary that 
 the teacher should impart definite information to the child 
 under the name of knowledge, and should use his influence 
 to mould the child's mind along lines that have been approved 
 by the wisdom of antiquity. After all, our parents were not 
 always wrong ; why then should we forego the knowledge 
 which their experience taught them in teaching our children ? 
 
 Anthony. I expected that you would take that view. 
 It is characteristic of the academic mind. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Surely you are not imputing to 
 me this mental attitude which you regard as so obstructive 
 to the purposes of the Life Force ? My mind moves ; it is 
 not static. 
 
 Anthony. Nevertheless, I hold that the attitude to 
 education which you have just expressed is one of the most 
 unmistakable characteristics of the academic mind, and 
 that it expresses itself in a vicious subordination of substance 
 to form. 
 
 To excuse myself from the charge of dogmatic rudeness, 
 I had better indicate the reasons why, to my mind, this view 
 of education is erroneous These reasons will, at the same time, 
 serve to give a general idea of the connection which I wish 
 to establish between the academic mind and the theory of
 
 i 
 
 134 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 the Life Force : for my objection to your view is briefly this : 
 that, by perpetuating and exhibiting as an object of admiration 
 what is old, it suppresses what is creative and new in the 
 mind of the child, and encourages what is possessive and 
 conservative. 
 
 I. What is the Acquired Culture which Education 
 Transmits ? 
 
 I think that three rather different objections may be 
 brought against your theory of education, and the first objection 
 is this. You said that it is the purpose of education, at any 
 rate in part, to transmit to posterity the acquired culture 
 of the race. But what is the acquired culture of the race ? 
 Your theory assumes that there are in existence a definite 
 body of established knowledge in the special sciences, an 
 agreed and authoritative view of the history of the world, 
 and certain criteria of artistic and literary value which are 
 constant and unchallenged. 
 
 Nothing of the sort appears to me to exist. I hope to 
 enlarge upon this point later when I return to your main 
 contention that the Life Force theory precludes the possi- 
 bility of a permanent standard of value, and rejects the notion 
 of absolute and ascertained truth. For the moment, how- 
 ever, it is sufficient for me to demonstrate to what, in the 
 absence of any definite and accepted body of knowledge, 
 this business of transmitting the acquired culture of the race 
 in practice reduces itself. 
 
 Education in History. 
 
 {a) In the first place, take history. It is a notorious fact, 
 upon which it is unnecessary to enlarge, that each nation 
 selects those historical events which redound to its own credit, 
 and omits or glosses over those which present it in a less 
 favourable light. English histories, for example, while ex- 
 patiating upon the glories of the campaigns of Henry V, 
 dismiss almost in a paragraph the series of discreditable re- 
 verses which led to the all but complete loss of France by the 
 English in the reign of Henry VI. 
 
 The various extant accounts of the battle of Waterloo 
 typify a tendency which they may almost be said to
 
 EDUCATION IN HISTORY 135 
 
 burlesque. The facts about the battle of Waterloo are known 
 with minute accuracy ; yet careful arrangement and selection 
 succeed in presenting them in an entirely different light to 
 the children of England, of France and of Germany. The 
 ordinary English boy believes that the Prussians played 
 hardly any part in the victory, the ordinary German boy 
 that the British were on the point of defeat when they were 
 saved by the heroism of Blucher. The French are taught 
 that only a series of misfortunes so incredibly prolonged as 
 to savour of the supernatural, and in any event totally beyond 
 the range of human foresight, could have turned a victory 
 otherwise inevitable, and even as it was all but realised, into 
 defeat. 
 
 This subjective interpretation of history colours all our 
 teaching, and the importance of history is insisted upon, 
 not because it is desired to inculcate a knowledge of the 
 facts, but because a sagacious selection of historical truth 
 makes excellent propaganda from the point of view of the 
 State. A proper acquaintance with the glories of his own 
 country and the corresponding defects of every other, a 
 rendering of the past which portrays in glowing colours the 
 achievements of the fatherland and dwells upon the defeats 
 and humiliations of nations which were venturesome enough 
 to cross its path, which presents every quarrel between 
 States as one in which justice was permanently embodied 
 in the cause of the favoured country, while its enemies were 
 permanently actuated by the meanest motives of cupidity, 
 arrogance or revenge, transform these children of yours, 
 who are to face the future enriched by the priceless knowledge 
 of the past, into little nationalised Jingoes who are ready 
 enough to adopt any parrot cry such as " The White Man's 
 Burden," or " The Kultur of the Fatherland," as an excuse 
 for extending the power of their own land over so-called 
 backward peoples, and conscientiously pocketing the proceeds 
 of their enterprise. It is a knowledge of history which enables 
 them to defend such activities on the best possible grounds, 
 and to plead national aims as a cloak for personal aggrandise- 
 ment. 
 
 On analysis, then, we find that this inherited culture of 
 the race, which it is the business of education to transmit
 
 136 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 to the child, varies considerably according to the country 
 to which the child happens to belong, and instead of presenting 
 him with an agreed body of knowledge, aims at inculcating 
 that peculiar set of facts and ideas whose dissemination among 
 the young is advantageous to the government of the country 
 and of the day. The result is that a man's view of the past 
 comes to depend upon the bedroom in which he happens to 
 have been born, and has the limited and partial characteristics 
 which such a circumscribed environment might be expected 
 to bestow. 
 
 In Politics, Economics and Religion. 
 
 (b) What is true of the teaching of history is true also 
 of the teaching of economics, of political science, of religion, 
 of morals, and indeed of all branches of education which 
 involve more than a simple recital of brute fact. 
 
 If history inculcates ideas which are convenient to the 
 Government in relation to other Governments, economics 
 and political science are devoted to producing a mentality 
 which is convenient to the Government in relation to its own 
 working classes. 
 
 The comparative merits of democracy and aristocracy 
 are urged ad nauseam in the essays of our public schoolboys, 
 but they are not asked to write on Communism or to consider 
 possible alternatives to Capitalism. The syllabus at our 
 Universities significantly fails to provide lectures on Karl Marx, 
 and though the French Revolution — the effects of which have 
 been rendered innocuous by lapse of time — is seriously studied 
 in our history schools, the Russian Revolution, which is still 
 alive and therefore menacing, is not thought worthy of 
 attention. Writers on political theory whose views were 
 revolutionary a hundred years ago, like those of Rousseau or 
 Tom Paine, are admitted ; but men like Sorel or Bertrand 
 Russell, who have a disintegrating tendency to-day, and seek 
 to undermine the basis of society as at present constituted, 
 are eschewed. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of embarking upon an impartial study 
 of politics and economics, what posterity in practice absorbs 
 under the name of education are certain theories of economics 
 and certain aspects of politics, namely, those theories and
 
 IN POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND RELIGION 137 
 
 aspects which make out a case for the maintenance of society 
 on its estabhshed basis, and seek to console instead of to 
 inflame the working classes. 
 
 Take one more department of education : education in i 
 religion, which is called divinity. Now religion is in the I 
 last resort one of a number of metaphysical theories. Meta- ^ 
 physics considers the ultimate constitution of the Universe : 
 it asks whether any fundamental underlying unity can be 
 detected or inferred behind the manifold appearances of 
 apparently disconnected things. It may come to the con- 
 clusion, at which Kant arrived, that it is not possible for 
 us to have knowledge of what it is that underlies the world 
 of appearances, and that if a unity does exist, it tran- 
 scends the possibilities of experience : its nature must there- 
 fore remain unknown. Or it may decide that it is possible 
 to have such knowledge, but that the knowledge reveals 
 not the presence but the absence of unity : that there is, 
 in fact, nothing in the Universe except those entities which 
 are known to science and psychology, whose existence the 
 Universe may be made to reveal on analysis, and that any 
 attempt to endow the Universe with unity, purpose or design, 
 can result only in a convenient fiction founded not upon the 
 evidence, but upon the promptings of our own desires. On 
 this hypothesis events will proceed mechanically as a result 
 of the operations of the law of cause and effect, or their 
 occurrence may be a series of coincidences, the outcome of 
 pure chance ; in either event there is no meaning in the 
 question why anything happens, since there is no reason for 
 its happening. Or yet again, metaphysics may hold that a 
 unity may be discerned, but only to provide us with diverse 
 conjectures as to the nature of that unity. It may be 
 impersonal like Bergson's elan vital, or personal and 
 malignant like Goethe's god, or personal and well intentioned 
 but limited like the god of Mr. H. G. Wells, or personal and 
 omnipotent like the god of the theologians. 
 
 Now, where metaphysics supplies us with a multiplicity 
 of views as to the real nature and purpose of the Universe, 
 each of which can adduce in its support evidence which has 
 appealed to many as convincing and to some as conclusive, 
 what does religion do ? It seizes upon one of these hypo-
 
 138 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 theses, the hypothesis of an omnipotent, benevolent deity, 
 and under the name of divinity instils it into the minds of 
 the young as ascertained and unquestioned truth. The 
 numerous other views, to some of which I have briefly referred, 
 are either not mentioned, or are mentioned only to be treated 
 with contempt and loathing, so that in the process of receiving 
 the inherited culture of the race, the young mind is brought 
 to believe that to hold any view other than the one that has 
 been imposed upon it under the name of religion, is a heresy, 
 a blasphemy, and a crime, of which those who are guilty 
 are outside the pale of decent society in this world and con- 
 demned to eternal damnation in the next. Thus do our 
 teachers supply the place of ignorance by converting the 
 conjectures of the sages into dogmas of their own, dogmas 
 which are used to cramp, not to enrich, the minds of their 
 charges under the sounding title of inherited knowledge and 
 culture. 
 
 I speak of religion as though there were but one, but 
 how infinite are the creeds that go by that name ! If the 
 teaching of religion involves the arbitrary selection of one 
 from a number of metaphysical hypotheses, and its erection 
 into a dogma ready chewed for digestion by weak mental 
 stomachs, is not the selection of one from a number of different 
 religions equally arbitrary ? Does it not involve an equally 
 illegitimate departure from that strictly impartial com- 
 munication of the inherited culture of the race which you 
 believe it to be the object of education to undertake ? 
 
 Where the wisest have doubted the existence of God, 
 education insists that there is a God ; where the most devout 
 have disputed about His nature, quarrelled about His at- 
 tributes and entertained different opinions with regard to 
 His relations to the world and to the children, if any. He 
 has begotten, the teaching of divinitj' in this and in every 
 other civilised country asserts His character in definite terms, 
 catalogues His attributes, and does not hesitate to affirm 
 precise details as to His paternity and the motives with which 
 He undertook it. 
 
 Thus the inherited culture of the race, which is trans- 
 mitted under the name of divinity, assumes various and 
 arbitrary forms, which are again found to depend upon topo-
 
 IN POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND RELIGION 139 
 
 graphical considerations. If a child is born in India, he is 
 inoculated with the priceless heritage of the metaphysical 
 wisdom of the past in the form of Brahminism, if in Arabia 
 he learns Mohammedanism, if in Germany Christianity, if 
 in China Confucianism. Nowhere is he presented with an 
 unbiassed survey of this realm of bitter controversy, informed 
 of the various alternatives that may be entertained, furnished 
 with the main arguments for and against possible hypotheses, 
 and allowed to make a free choice according to the dictates 
 of his temperament and the weight of the evidence. 
 
 The consequence is that he holds certain creeds to be superior 
 to others, not because he has compared them on merits, but 
 simply because he happens to hold them, just as he regards 
 his own nation and family as better than those of his neighbour 
 simply because he happens to belong to them ; the natural 
 result being that the world is rent with the feuds and dis- 
 sensions of those who clamorously urge the paramount superi- 
 ority of the opinions they have been taught, the nation into 
 which they have been born, the ready-made customs and 
 codes they have assimilated, and the god they have invented. 
 Thus, what you call the inherited culture of the past is 
 nationalised and sectionalised to suit the private interests 
 of parents, priests and Governments. 
 
 Mr. Banks. What would you have men taught if they 
 are to be denied history and economics, political science and 
 morals, and are to eschew religion like the devil ? 
 
 The Teaching of Philosophy. 
 
 Anthony. \Vliy, philosophy of course ! Philosophy in- 
 vites us to consider as open questions what religion crams ^ 
 down our throats as dogmas. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Then, if I have followed you 
 correctly, you would look to the teaching of philosophy to 
 transmit the culture of the race and to hand on the wisdom 
 of the past, since you deny this function to other branches 
 of education ? 
 
 Anthony. Not at all. Your question implies a complete 
 misunderstanding of my position. I do not believe that it 
 is the business of education to do any of these things, and 
 philosophy most certainly does not do them. I said above
 
 140 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 that I entirely differ from this view of the function of 
 education, and I am just about to indicate the second of 
 my reasons for disagreement. 
 
 Mr, Banks. But you were saying about philosophy . . . 
 
 Anthony. That it transmits nothing whatever. Philo- 
 soph}' opens the mind ; it does not fill it. It cannot be called 
 education in the sense which Professor Cameron imparts to 
 that word, since it tells us nothing. It does not even enrich 
 the mind, for it conveys not the knowledge but the speculations 
 of the past ; speculations which are uniformly contradicted 
 by those which succeed them. Philosophy is like a harrow 
 that ploughs up the surface of the mind, and opens it to the 
 chance of seeds that may fall from other minds and to the 
 inspiration of its own unconscious. Philosophy does not 
 educate us, but enables us to educate ourselves ; it does not 
 hand on the torch of others' learning, but it is a spark to 
 set our minds ablaze. That is why philosophy, unlike many 
 forms of study, is helpful and not obstructive to the purposes 
 of the Life Force. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I cannot say that I agree with 
 you, but I should like to follow this up. Surely a knowledge 
 of the great systems of the past, such as those of Plato and 
 Kant, is essential to the student of philosophy ; and such 
 knowledge enriches the mind. 
 
 Anthony. It is not essential, but it may be useful ; not 
 for itself, you understand, but to orientate our minds, to 
 give us our bearings as it were. 
 
 But I am not here to discuss the nature and function 
 of philosophy, especially in the presence of my friend John, 
 whose special province it is. I came to discuss the appli- 
 cation of his views of the Universe to special problems. We 
 have already digressed considerably ; had I not better return 
 to the question of education ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Perhaps you are right, and I am 
 anxious to hear your second argument against my theory 
 of the function of education. But that was an interesting 
 question you raised touching the nature of philosophy, and 
 I should be glad to have an opportunity of discussing it further. 
 What does your friend say ? 
 
 John. I am at your service at any time. Perhaps if
 
 THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 141 
 
 you and Mr. Banks are sta3dng overnight we might go into 
 the matter to-morrow. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Certainly we will stay ; and that may be 
 considered as settled. Perhaps Mr. Anthony will now con- 
 tinue what he has to say about education. 
 
 Anthony. I am glad that you are staying, for I suspect 
 that I shall not come to the end of what I have to say in 
 working out the application of the Life Force theory to-day. 
 We have literature and art still to consider. 
 
 Mr. Banks. We can take them in our stride to-morrow 
 if necessary, but let us return to education. 
 
 Antpiony. Before proceeding to my second argument, 
 I had, perhaps, better summarise briefly the position I have 
 taken up in my first, which has, I fear, been somewhat discursive. 
 
 Summary of Preceding Arguments. i 
 
 My first contention is then, that education, instead of being, I 
 as Professor Cameron would have us believe, a method of 
 handing on to the young the inherited culture of the race and 
 the accumulated wisdom of the past, degenerates in practice 
 into the deliberate casting of the child's mind into a mould 
 which is formed for the manufacture of good citizens. By a 
 good citizen is meant, among other things, a trustworthy 
 supporter of the State, society and the Church. I maintain 
 that this contention is true whatever department of learning 
 you choose to consider, whether it be history, or economics, 
 or pontics, or divinity, and that education in these subjects 
 consists in the presentation to the child of certain dogmas 
 with regard to God, democracy, representative government or 
 whatever the subject may be, in the guise of established truths. 
 With regard to these dogmas I assert two things. In the first 
 place they are hypotheses masquerading is truths ; in the second 
 place those hypotheses only are selected, which tend to produce 
 in the child a mental complexion convenient from the point of 
 view of the State, conventional from that of society and orthodox 
 from that of rehgion. As a consequence the teacher distorts 
 the child's mind by presenting a partial aspect of the truth 
 as the whole of truth, and designedly gives it a twist which 
 will influence its outlook for the remainder of its fife. I say 
 that the teacher imposes a partial aspect of truth as a sub-
 
 142 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 stitute for the whole of truth, but even that statement is rating 
 the business of education too highly : it is true certainly 
 that what you teach is partial, but equally is it true that it 
 is not truth. 
 
 It is hypothesis hypostatised into dogma ; it only pretends 
 to be knowledge. You call this pretended knowledge the 
 heritage of the past, when it consists of little more than the 
 errors and speculations of the past. And here I wish to make 
 a further point which constitutes my second main argument 
 against your theory of education, 
 
 II. Does Agreed Knowledge Exist ? 
 
 I have criticised the teaching of history, of economics, 
 and of religion on the ground that it does not convey to the 
 young that body of agreed knowledge, that accumulation of 
 the wisdom of mankind's past, which, according to your view, 
 education should convey. And I quarrel with your view of 
 education not so much because I think it can or ought to do 
 these things, but just in so far as I deny that such an accumu- 
 lation of agreed knowledge exists. If then it does not exist, 
 it cannot be handed on. It is, in fact, just this imposition 
 upon mankind of the speculations of the past, as the constant, 
 immutable and unchallenged truths of the present, which is 
 obstructive to the purposes of the Life Force, since it leads 
 men to accept the so-called knowledge discovered by others, 
 instead of setting them to work to discover knowledge for 
 themselves. Present a man with his mental furniture ready 
 made, and he will be content to sit on it : put a man in an 
 empty house, and he will set his wits to work to construct 
 furniture to make it habitable, an arrangement which is 
 superior not only because what he makes for himself is likely 
 to suit him better than what he takes ready made from others, 
 but because the need for continual effort and experiment 
 will lead to an improvement in the furniture. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But surely you are not going to 
 maintain that there are no universally accepted truths which 
 may be safely presented to the young as truths ; there is no 
 end to the stock of human knowledge. What about Newton's 
 law of gravitation for instance, or the date of the batile of 
 Waterloo ?
 
 DOES AGREED KNOWLEDGE EXIST? 143 
 
 Anthony. Oh, if you mean facts, of course I agree ; 
 but I thought that the mere recital of brute fact had been 
 abandoned as a theory of education long ago. I understand 
 that we now try to form minds, not to fill them. And as for 
 Newton and gravitation, what about Einstein and relativity ? 
 
 Newton is indeed a case in point. He illustrates my 
 position, by showing that even so called laws, which have 
 passed for centuries unchallenged by mankind, become sooner 
 or later open to question. But leave the world of fact and 
 consider the world of ideas : for it is ideas which give a man 
 his outlook on life, form his mind, mould his character and 
 supply the content of his culture. Is there any single idea 
 which has come down to us from the past which may pass 
 unchallenged ? Is war a good in itself, or is it good only 
 because it imparts a bracing influence to nations enervated 
 by excess of peace ; or is perpetual peace an unqualified 
 blessing ? Is democracy the only suitable form of govern- 
 ment for states, or does its loss in efficiency more than counter- 
 balance its gain in political experience and expression ? Is 
 the loss of efficiency inevitable ? 
 
 Or take morals. Is there an absolute standard of right 
 and wrong ? Is it sometimes right to punish, or is punishment 
 simply a pretentious name given by spiteful people to their 
 vengeance ? Is virtue unique and valuable, or is it simply 
 an offshoot of vanity, the habit of acting in a manner which 
 others will praise ? Is a man free to pursue his own happiness, 
 or ought he sometimes to sacrifice it to the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest number ? Ought he always to desire this 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number ? 
 
 Or take economics. Is capitalism the only possible form 
 of organisation for a civilised country, or can it be efiectively 
 replaced by State Socialism or even by Communism ? Is 
 the motive of social service a sufficiently powerful driving force 
 to get the work of the world done, or must it be strengthened 
 by the incentive of personal gain ? Could people be induced 
 to share equally, or will those of greater capacity insist on 
 acquiring greater possessions ? Should land be nationahsed 
 under the State or become parcelled out in small holdings ? 
 
 These, you will agree, are fundamental questions. They 
 are just the questions, to which the answers would naturally
 
 144 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 form the bulk of that stock of humanity's knowledge which 
 education should hand on to posterity, if such a stock of know- 
 ledge existed. It does not exist, and it is because it does not 
 that education can never fulfil this function which you regard 
 as its raison d'etre. 
 
 Professor Cameron. You have chosen your examples 
 well ; but you have chosen them well only in the sense that 
 they support your position : in other words, you have chosen 
 them unfairly. Clearly religion and politics belong to the 
 realm of opinion and of controversy ; they are not subjects 
 on which it is possible to have certain knowledge. It is 
 equally clear that on many subjects such knowledge is possible. 
 You mentioned history some little time back, and historical 
 knowledge, the knowledge, for example, of the rise and fall 
 of the Roman Empire clearly exists. Education can instil 
 such knowledge into the minds of the young, and familiarity 
 with the errors of the past will assist them to avoid those errors 
 in conducting the affairs of the future. 
 
 What is Historical Truth ? 
 
 Anthony. I disagree again. There is no such thing as 
 agreed, historical truth. I referred just now to the form 
 which the teaching of history assumes in our schools, and 
 pointed out that a partial and biassed view was presented 
 to the children, with the object of imparting to their minds 
 a healthy, nationalist complexion, varying in tone with the 
 sympathies of the State to which they happen to belong. 
 
 I think you agreed with me then, that the teaching of 
 history as I described it consisted in a subjective interpretation 
 of fact, an interpretation of a special kind conditioned by 
 special interests, and not in an impartial record of objective 
 fact. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I agreed that the teaching of 
 history was, as a matter of practice, often of this kind, not 
 that it must necessarily be so. What you described is a per- 
 version of education, not education. 
 
 Anthony. I understand your qualification, but cannot 
 accept it. What I now want to maintain is that the teaching 
 of history must always and necessarily be as I described it, 
 simply because there is no objective body of historical truth
 
 WHAT IS HISTORICAL TRUTH? 145 
 
 to transmit. I am arguing, in fact, that history as education 
 can never be radically different from history as it is taught 
 to-day. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment of what the record of history 
 consists. I think that on analysis what is commonly called 
 historical truth may be found to consist of two rather different ^ 
 things. 
 
 {a) In the first place there is what we may call the his- 
 torian's general impression. This general impression may 
 be of a period, a people, an outstanding personaHty or an 
 important historical event. It will be composed of a number 
 of different factors, and will vary according to the degree of 
 weight assigned to each of these varying factors. 
 
 In any given series of events, one historian, or it may be 
 a school of historians, will look for the determining factor 
 in the interplay of economic motives, the desire to obtain 
 command of a trade route, or to acquire preferential rights 
 in undeveloped territories, the necessity for finding fresh 
 markets for exports, or obtaining an outlet on the sea. This 
 kind of interpretation is very fashionable among historians 
 to-day. Another will emphasise the element of court intrigue ; 
 the king decides on an expedition because he desires a certain 
 mistress ; Aspasia instigates Pericles to go to war with Sparta 
 because the Megarians have carried off one of her favourite 
 women. Dark forces working in the background determine 
 the policy of the court and hence of the nation ; historians 
 delight to pry into the darkness, and to emerge therefrom 
 triumphant with intelligent conjecture. 
 
 Others again have a penchant for explaining foreign policy 
 in terms of internal affairs. The Government makes war 
 to distract men's attention from mismanagement at home ; 
 Athens is full of unemployed seamen with revolutionary 
 tendencies : go to war with Sparta and you will find a con- 
 venient outlet for their energies ! 
 
 These and many other strands go to the making of his- 
 torical truth, and the truth will vary according as one or 
 another is judged to be of greater importance. And in giving 
 weight to these various factors the historian will be guided 
 by the peculiarities of his temperament and the direction 
 of his bias. It is a commonplace that the personal 
 
 10
 
 146 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 factor counts in the historian, but this commonplace is only 
 half the truth : the truth is that the character of written 
 history depends entirely upon the nature of the man who 
 writes it. Instead of being a record of events, it is a record 
 of the attitude of a man's mind to events, and that mind will 
 select, omit, give emphasis here, belittle importance there, 
 will even on occasions unconsciously distort, in order to present 
 a picture which will harmonise with the writer's conception 
 of the Universe and of man. It is not the perspective of 
 history that provides our conception of human nature ; it 
 is our conception of human nature that makes our perspective 
 of history. 
 
 So far I have taken as my instance a writer's general 
 impression of a period. With regard to the character of 
 prominent personalities, the point is too obvious to require 
 stressing. There is no historical portrait of Julius Csesar 
 or of Napoleon ; there is only bitter controversy, involving 
 estimates so different that Caesar may be represented with 
 equal plausibility as a seer or an adventurer. Napoleon as a 
 god or a mountebank. 
 
 This part of history then is riddled with subjectivity, and 
 it is the major part. Strip history of its element of sub- 
 jectivity and it becomes a bare record of brute fact ; the 
 second part of written history is nothing but a catalogue of 
 names and dates. And this brings me at last to my third 
 argument against Professor Cameron. Education, when it 
 is not busy erecting hypotheses into dogmas, is simply a bare 
 recital of fact. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am sorry, but I am not sure that I follow 
 you here. I thought that, according to your view, all education 
 consisted of a deliberate casting of the minds of the young 
 into a certain mould, in the interests of the various powers 
 that be. If your account is correct, and do not please for 
 one moment imagine that I agree with you in this, it is clearly 
 impossible for education to consist at the same time in the 
 transmission of brute fact. Fact does not cast a mind in 
 any mould ; it may dry it up of course, that is another thing ; 
 but to assert that in conveying to a child the information that 
 seven times seven is forty-nine you are striving to imbue its mind 
 with a complexion convenient to yourself, is palpably absurd.
 
 WHAT IS HISTORICAL TRUTH? 147 
 
 Anthony. I am sorry not to have made myself clearer, j 
 for, believe me, you have not quite grasped my position, y^ 
 Professor Cameron asked me to apply my friend's Life 
 Force theory to various departments of human intellectual 
 activity. In endeavouring to do so, I ventured to define a 
 certain type of mental activity — what I have called the 
 academic mind — ^which appears to me to embody and repre- 
 sent all that is wrong in the attitude of savants towards reason 
 and knowledge. The academic mind, besides typifying an 
 erroneous attitude to the developments of the Life Force, 
 is in itself obstructive to those developments. I then en- 
 deavoured to give illustrations of what I regarded as this 
 erroneous attitude of the academic mind to various branches 
 of intellectual activity, and in due course I touched on educa- 
 tion. At this point Professor Cameron enunciated his view 
 of the function and object of education, which was, he con- 
 sidered, the transmission for the beneiit of the coming genera- 
 tion of the general body of culture and learning inherited 
 by the race. I immediately disputed this conception which 
 I asserted to be typical of the attitude of the academic mind, 
 and therefore a conception peculiarly relevant to the discussion 
 we had undertaken, and I said that I desired in particular to 
 bring three arguments against this conception of education. 
 My first and second arguments consisted in pointing to 
 the complete absence of any such body of authorised and 
 agreed knowledge as Professor Cameron's conception of 
 education required : in its absence all that is fundamental 
 and important for a man's outlook upon the world is inculcated 
 in the young in the shape of half truths and dogmatised 
 hypotheses. But this is clearly not the whole of what passes 
 as education in a civilised community. In addition to legends 
 about the divine birth of Christ, myths about the White 
 Man's Burden, prepossessions in favour of the transcendent 
 poetry of Milton and prejudices against the bawdy mirth of 
 Congreve, there is all that branch of education which is con- 
 cerned simply with the communication of fact. 
 
 III. Education is the Inculcation of Fact. 
 
 And my third argument against Professor Cameron is 
 simply this : that the inculcation of brute fact is no more
 
 148 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 truly a transmission of the inherited culture and knowledge 
 of the race than the hypostatisation of half-baked theories. 
 
 I hope to deal later, or to get John to deal later (though 
 I am afraid my inordinate prolixity will postpone the discussion 
 to another occasion), with the question that Professor Cameron 
 raised in his opening remarks, the question of whether there 
 does exist in the Universe such a thing as permanent, static 
 fact, such that our awareness of that fact may be termed 
 absolute knowledge ; whether, in short, there is any absolute 
 reality except the reality of the Life Force, whose function 
 it is continually to change. 
 
 That I think was one of the questions that you raised ? 
 Professor Cameron. It was, and I hope that we may 
 yet have an opportunity of going into it, although, as the 
 question is one of philosophy, it will be, I presume, for your 
 friend Mr. John to expound. Meanwhile you were saying 
 about fact . . . ? 
 
 Anthony. That without prejudice to anything my friend 
 may wish to say when he considers the metaphysical impli- 
 cations of his theory, I would assert that if absolute fact exists, 
 such that our knowledge of it may be said to be absolutely 
 and not relatively or pragmatically true, then that fact is 
 of a trivial and irrelevant character. 
 
 It is like a skeleton which waits to be clothed with living 
 flesh : and the living flesh that is built round the framework 
 of fact is all that is vital, and pulsing, and thrusting, and 
 changmg. What is important and valuable can never be 
 known to be absolutely true, just because it can never be said 
 absolutely to exist. However, that is a long story : also it 
 is another one. 
 
 (b) In considering historical truth a few moments ago, 
 I said that it consisted of two different elements. The first 
 I described as the historian's general impression of a period 
 or a personage ; the second, of which alone the word truth 
 can legitimately, if at all, be predicated, is just that collection 
 of facts of which I am now speaking. Of such facts I grant 
 you there may, I do not say must, be knowledge. But 
 I want now to estabHsh the point that true knowledge, 
 or knowledge of fact in the sense in which I have described 
 fact, is always trivial and unimportant : it informs you,
 
 THE INCULCATION OF FACT 149 
 
 for example, that seven multiplied by seven makes forty- 
 nine, or that all numbers which are so large that nobody 
 has ever thought or can ever think of them are either odd 
 or even, or that Nelson was shot in the breast and not in 
 the leg, or that Henry VIII had roast beef and bnissels sprouts 
 for his dinner and sack to drink with his dinner on his forty- 
 third birthday. 
 
 A knowledge of fact is composed of an accumulation of 
 isolated and irrelevant truths of this kind. One knows the 
 bare fact : of its import, of its significance, of all that gives 
 it life and places it as it were in the scheme of history, one 
 knows nothing and can know nothing, seeing that of signifi- 
 cance and import one can have ideas only. Hence this world 
 of significance is the world of controversy. Now that one 
 has knowledge of facts of this isolated and trivial character 
 I am not prepared to deny ; and it may be that this knowledge 
 is immutable as it is certainly partial. What I do deny 
 is that the record of this sort of fact constitutes the inherited 
 culture of the race, the possession of which will place the 
 starting point of each generation in the march of progress 
 ahead of that of its predecessor. 
 
 And this is reaHsed, I understand, even by educationists, 
 or at least by the more enlightened of them. It is, I believe, 
 recognised that the mere giving of information is not educa- 
 tion, and that a child's head is not a sort of receptacle to 
 be stuffed with facts as we stuff a jar with jam. In my day 
 of course it was different : the acquisition of mere knowledge 
 was in itself an achievement, and the ability in an examina- 
 tion to give a correct description of the menu of Henry VIII's 
 birthday dinner, or of the lineage of his fourth wife, was re- 
 garded as the highwater-mark test of the efficiency of the 
 education which the promising pupil had received. 
 
 But this idea is now, I hear, discarded. While we grew 
 up amid a ceaseless round of paradigms, syntactical exercises, 
 dates, lists of bays and products, and genealogical tables, the 
 modern way is, I understand, to teach children to think and 
 not merely to know. To teach them to think ? Yes, but 
 to teach them what to think, or how to think ? You would 
 hold the former view, Professor. " To teach them what to 
 think " is the theory of education, in terms of which the
 
 150 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 academic mind has thought, and taught, and formed, and 
 warped and distorted these minds of the young, which are 
 the most promising experiments of the Life Force, since the 
 beginning of time. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, I must admit that I do 
 beUeve that education should at any rate in part teach the 
 young what to think ! But it should not teach them all to 
 think ahke. Just as we endeavour to form a boy's character, 
 not with the object of reducing all men to one common mould, 
 but in order to estabHsh for him those elementary notions 
 of decency and good taste which he may afterwards develop 
 in his own way in contact with the world, so there is a certain 
 indispensable, mental equipment with which we should try 
 to arm him for the struggle which is life. A respect for his 
 country founded on knowledge of its history and institutions, 
 a respect for the past based on acquaintance with its language 
 and literature, a reverence for his own mind and body bom 
 of a study of the elementary facts of psychology and physi- 
 ology, these are some of the things which education should 
 teach. They are part of that common stock of racial know- 
 ledge to which you have so often and so contemptuously 
 referred. You, I understand, deny that such knowledge 
 exists : for you there are no truths that pass unchallenged, or 
 only truths about trivial points of fact ; and in passing off 
 what you call opinion as truth you say we are cheating 
 the young. But if there is no definite body of knowledge 
 to be inculcated, I fail to see on what ground you criticize 
 education for inculcating it. You cannot, in fact, have it 
 both ways : you cannot first deny the existence of that 
 knowledge we inherit from the past, and then deplore the 
 attempt of education to transmit a knowledge that is non- 
 existent, on the ground that it teaches what to think and 
 not how to think. 
 
 Anthony. But don't you see that that is just my point ? 
 That is just the dilemma in which the academic mind is 
 placed. The don seeks to instruct the undergraduate in the 
 living truth of the past, and feels the living truth dead beneath 
 his touch. That is the very fact that convicts the academic 
 mind of barrenness and its achievements of futility, 
 while serving at the same time to explain the otherwise
 
 THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE 151 
 
 incomprehensible methods of study pursued at our Uni- 
 versities. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I am afraid I don't quite follow. 
 
 The Subordination of Substance to Form. 
 
 Anthony. You will remember that at the beginning of 
 our discussion I quoted in illustration of the workings of 
 the academic mind, its treatment of Aristotle's theory of the 
 function of tragedy as the purgation of pity and terror. The 
 University teacher refused to discuss the truth of this theory : 
 he was concerned only to indicate the views of different 
 commentators as to Aristotle's precise meaning, the develop- 
 ment of the theory in the writings of his followers, and the 
 criticisms urged against it by his contemporaries and his 
 successors. 
 
 It is an exaggeration, but an exaggeration almost pardon- 
 able, to assert that much, if not most. University teaching is 
 of this type. 
 
 Take, for example, the treatment of English literature 
 at the Universities. It is probable that literature cannot 
 be taught at all. Literature was written to be enjoyed, not 
 to be learnt. You cannot manufacture good taste, nor 
 can you take the kingdom of beauty by storm. 
 
 But what passes for the teaching of literature is analogous 
 to what passes for the teaching of philosophy : we learn 
 not literature, but the history of literature, which is about 
 as irrelevant to literature itself as the knowledge of the origin 
 of your breakfast sausage is irrelevant or even detrimental 
 to its enjoyment. 
 
 Just as our instinctive question about a philosophy, " Is 
 it true ? " is answered by the information that Spinoza adopted 
 it with modifications from Descartes, so does our natural 
 question about literature, "Is it a great play ? " provoke 
 the news that Shakespeare obtained the plot from Webster, 
 four of the characters from Lyly or was it Kyd, and the 
 setting from Peele or was it Greene ? The teaching of litera- 
 ture is dogged from first to last with this chatter about sources 
 and origins : with conjectures as to whether A borrowed 
 X from B or from C ; with estimates of the possible influence 
 of P over Q, and a careful examination of M's text with a
 
 152 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 microscope with a view to discovering possible debts to N. 
 All this is embedded in a mass of gossip about the lives and 
 personalities of writers. We are informed of the public 
 appointments held by Fielding, the financial operations of 
 Peacock, the love affairs of George Sand, as if a knowledge 
 of the episodes in the life of a genius were essential to an 
 appreciation of his work, or as if the genius himself were 
 anything more than a sort of glorified fountain pen for trans- 
 mitting the inspiration of the Life Force to humanity. Nobody 
 cares to know the make of the fountain pen with which Shaw 
 wrote " Candida " ! 
 
 And the result of this concentration on the part of our 
 lecturers on the mechanism of literature, this unhealthy 
 insistence by examiners that students should be able to take 
 the machine to pieces and to demonstrate how the wheels 
 go round, is not only to create a fictitious interest in the 
 machinery, but to cause this fictitious interest to usurp the 
 rightful interest in literature as such. 
 
 It is a commonplace that excess of divinity and church- 
 going in youth poisons the Bible for us in manhood ; yet 
 the number of those for whom the plays of Shakespeare have 
 been ruined by the geological investigations they were com- 
 pelled to make at school into the strata of their texts, can 
 scarcely be less. For to many of us have the great names 
 of English literature come to symbolise tedium and dulness, 
 not because of any intrinsic defect in our own taste, but 
 because of the improper treatment to which we were compelled 
 to subject these writers when we were young. 
 
 Take a thing of beauty to pieces and examine its works, 
 and you destroy the beauty. Vivisect the works of genius 
 in the interest of sources and influences, and the genius will 
 escape you. You must not go behind the scenes of greatness. 
 No wise man is a valet to his hero. Thank heaven I was saved 
 from this. I can appreciate Shakespeare and George Elliot 
 because I was allowed to read them at my own time, in my 
 own way and for my own purposes. Those who have not 
 had a classical training are less fortunate. For this indeed 
 is the greatest though the least recognised advantage of a 
 classical education, that by concentrating your attention 
 in youth upon literature of little importance, it gives you
 
 SUBORDINATION OF SUBSTANCE TO FORM 153 
 
 no chance of ruining your taste for the masterpieces of great 
 literature by attacking them before you are ready for them ; 
 the classics, in fact, prevent premature consumption from 
 spoihng your appetite for the best, by the device of feeding 
 your immature stomach on the second best. 
 
 But I digress. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am afraid you do. I fail to see the relevance 
 of this diatribe on the classics. 
 
 Anthony. In introducing the classics I was perhaps 
 going a little beyond my brief. But my reference to the 
 teaching of the history of philosophy and literature was 
 deliberate. For do you not see that these lectures on sources 
 and influences and continuity are instances of the most 
 striking character of that subordination of substance to form, 
 which I began by citing as the chief characteristic of the 
 academic mind ? The poems of Wordsworth, we are agreed, 
 were meant to be read as a whole and enjoyed as a work of 
 art : analyse them for the pleasure of spotting the influence 
 of the Graveyard school, and what you have done is to lose 
 your pleasure in the substance because of your interest in 
 the form. 
 
 And why does the academic mind instinctively act like 
 this ? Why does it display this indifference to the substance 
 of truth, while it concentrates upon the forms which truth 
 happens to have assumed ? Because the very process of 
 trying to capture and preserve a vital thought or a living 
 work of art, of embalming it, as it were, to treasure as a posses- 
 sion for all time, kills the life that is in it ; so that for the 
 conscientious transmitter to posterity there remains only the 
 empty vessel that held the vital essence. The vitality that 
 gave it value has passed elsewhere. 
 
 Value is Derived from the Life Force and is Relative. 
 
 Mr. Banks. There is left, in fact, the form and nothing 
 else. 
 
 Anthony, Exactly, you have caught my idea at last. 
 The form is transmitted because the substance has gone. 
 And why has the substance gone ? Because the value of a 
 thought or a work of art, being derived from the Life Force, 
 is relative to the immediate purpose which the Force has
 
 y 
 
 154 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 in view, and perishes when that purpose is served. Thus, 
 in treasuring and transmitting the thought of the past, we 
 treasure and transmit what is no longer alive. 
 
 I am afraid I have travelled a long way round in the en- 
 deavour to present this conclusion. I have done so because 
 it did not exist ready made in my own mind, and when Pro- 
 fessor Cameron asked me to apply the Life Force theory to 
 the various departments of human activity, I had to grope 
 my way as I went, and starting at haphazard with education, 
 to travel the path that led from it back to the Life Force. 
 But now that the journey has been accomplished and the 
 chain of reasoning, after many stragglings and turnings, 
 has been linked up at both ends, I wish, if you will allow me, 
 to draw attention to two links in particular, and by putting 
 upon them the strain of further examination to test their 
 strength. 
 
 The Genesis and Purpose of New Thought. 
 
 (i) In the first place let us consider the initial link in this 
 chain of connection ; initial, that is, from the Life Force end. 
 The Life Force, we say, manifests itself primarily in the in- 
 spiration of genius, in the works of great writers and in the 
 creations of great artists, which are thrown up from time to 
 time by the Force to act as signposts pointing the road along 
 which humanity is required to travel. The value then of 
 any work of art, which we call great, or of any thought or 
 system of which mankind says that it is true, is relative. 
 Don't express your disapproval, now I beg of you, Professor. 
 Of the special sense in which truth and beauty are relative 
 we are to speak more fully at our next meeting. For the 
 moment let me assume the strength of this particular link 
 which belongs after all to quite another chain. 
 
 This value, then, is relative in the sense that it is dependent 
 upon the extent to which the work of art, system of philosophy, 
 or discovery of science does or does not achieve for mankind 
 a step forward in its evolution to the goal, which marks the 
 fulfilment of the purposes of the Life Force. When that step 
 has been taken, the particular work of genius in question 
 has accompKshed the purpose for which it was created. The 
 Life Force has no further use for it, and it may sink into
 
 GENESIS AND PURPOSE OF NEW THOUGHT 155 
 
 oblivion. In a sense, of course, the thought is still true, 
 just as in a sense the beauty is still there ; but, once their 
 part has been played, the truth has lost its value, the beauty 
 its significance. 
 
 Now, the whole course of human evolution, since first 
 humanity learned to read and write and the arts came to be 
 developed, is strewn with the debris of these disused ideas. 
 The products of past genius are like suits of clothes which 
 humanity has discarded because it has outgrown them. And 
 because their beauty has lost its utility and their thought 
 its message, the Life Force has left them behind. Mankind 
 has learnt, or has refused to learn what there was to learn, 
 in the words of Christ, in the thought of Plato, in the music 
 of Beethoven, and from the point of view of the Life Force 
 these things have no longer significance. 
 
 Mr. Banks. One moment, please : has Christ no message 
 for the world to-day ? 
 
 Anthony. No ! For the world will not listen to it : 
 it never would. Christ is an experiment that failed. The 
 Life Force threw Him up too early, that is to say, before the 
 world was ready for Him. And the world which rejected 
 His teaching when it was living now uses it as lumber to block 
 the way to the acceptance of new truth. All greatness endures 
 only for a space. The unresting power which ceaselessly 
 urges forward the wheels of evolution throws up new men 
 of genius, new artists, new writers and new thinkers, whose 
 business it is to reveal to humanity a further stage of the 
 journey that lies before it, and to direct a new attack 
 upon the passive resistance of nothingness and chaos. For 
 a time the words of these men will have value and signifi- 
 cance, which are what men call greatness. That time will 
 endure so long as their work has a message for mankind, 
 which expresses the will and purpose of the Force ; when 
 that message has been delivered their time will be past, their 
 greacness will fade, and though men still call them great the 
 name will be a convention and not a reality. 
 
 Its Reception by the Academic Mind. 
 
 Now it will be obvious that anything which distracts men's 
 attention from the emergence of new thought, thought which
 
 156 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 contains, as it were, a further instalment of the Life Force's 
 message, will be retarding its comprehension and acceptance 
 by mankind and delaying the progress of evolution. Equally 
 obstructive will be an attitude of mind which insists on re- 
 garding the works which humanity has outgrown as vital 
 and significant, and diverts the attention of the young from 
 what is new and living to what is old and disused, on the 
 ground that the inherited culture of the race must be trans- 
 mitted. For the inherited culture of the race is nothing 
 but the accumulated refuse of the past, a sort of permanent , 
 second-hand clothes shop, in which are stored all the mental 
 garments which humanity has outgrown. And it is the 
 academic mind which, poking among this flotsam and jetsam 
 of the past, picks out this or that suit, furbishes it up and 
 insists on pressing it upon our notice, on the ground that 
 works of art possess a glory which is immutable and trans- 
 cendent, and are therefore as worthy of the admiration of 
 mankind to-day as on the day which gave them birth. 
 
 (2) And it is here that I am seeking to test the second 
 important link in my chain, by demonstrating that the 
 character and methods which education has assumed to-day 
 are directly derivable from a fundamental misunderstanding 
 of the nature of the Life Force and of its purpose. 
 
 Let me briefly summarise my reasons for asserting that 
 education, as you conceive it, cannot be other than it is. I 
 spoke just now of the tendency of lecturers and teachers to 
 direct attention not to the intrinsic merits of the system under 
 discussion, but to its relations with other systems, its origins, 
 and its subsequent modifications. 
 
 Why this tendency ? Because these great systems of the 
 past, having by the mere progress of evolution fulfilled their 
 mission, have lost both driving power and significance. They 
 are not living but dead, and any attempt to infuse life into 
 the corpse by conjuring up interest in the ideas that once 
 held the world is doomed to failure. We are left then with 
 two things : with the recital of mere fact, and with the external 
 form which the thought when living assumed. 
 
 The recital of mere fact constitutes the bulk of history ; 
 it furnishes us also with lectures of the type which informs us 
 that Plato divided the soul into three different parts, and
 
 ITS RECEPTION BY THE ACADEMIC MIND 157 
 
 asserted that education should consist both of music and 
 gymnastics. 
 
 The insistence on form is the starting point of those inter- 
 minable discussions as to what A thought of B, what were 
 the sources of A's thought, and how A was criticised by C, 
 so that for the enquiry which was once alive, namely, how 
 far are Aristotle's teachings true, we are asked to consider 
 what is the relation of Aristotle's teachings to his age, to Plato 
 or to humanity. This enquiry is beside the point. The 
 Life Force produced Aristotle in order that he might convey 
 its promptings to humanity, and to his contemporaries it 
 was a matter of burning moment to ask, " What has this 
 fellow got to say to me ? " But that question is meaningless 
 now. To the twentieth century student Aristotle has nothing 
 to say, and for that very reason his lecturer has to content 
 himself with conveying information as to the sources from 
 which he obtained his remarks. He has, in fact, to con- 
 centrate on the form of Aristotle, because the substance of 
 Aristotle has fled. 
 
 The Effect upon the Teacher and the Race. 
 
 But this is not the end of the story. This perverted 
 attitude into which the teacher is driven towards the giants of 
 the past reacts unfavourably upon the teacher himself. If you 
 systematically assert that what is dead and meaningless has 
 value and significance, your self-respect will sooner or later 
 impose upon you the belief that it has value and significance. 
 Concentrate perforce upon form when substance is lacking, 
 and form will come to you to seem more important than 
 substance wherever it is found. Spend your days among 
 mummies, and something of the mummy will enter into 
 yourself. In other words, your mind will inevitably become 
 academic from the character of the material with which it 
 deals. 
 
 Thus the habit of teaching and lecturing on the things 
 of the past, which are things of no significance, will affect 
 your attitude to the things of the present. You will lose 
 your grip on life : existence will have no meaning for you, 
 or it will have at best a second-hand meaning of the kind
 
 158 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 provided for inert minds, by the numerous associations and 
 societies for the preservation of ancient hypotheses as valuable 
 truths. 
 
 For these systems and theories, which you know so well 
 and which you have erected into such tremendous importance, 
 will stand between you and the ready reception of what is 
 new. This knowledge of the past, this culture of the race 
 that you seek to transmit to others, will, like a pair of coloured, 
 mental spectacles, darken your view of life, blind you to the 
 purposes for which the Life Force created you, and distort 
 the impulses by which it prompts you. Ideas about the world 
 will come to you ready-made, culled from the museum of 
 the past. The wealth of knowledge and culture which you 
 have made your own, like an intellectual big store, a sort of 
 Selfridge's of ideas, will provide you with a ready-made, 
 intellectual equipment to suit your temperament and your 
 interests. But the man whose training and education has 
 presented him with his mental outfit ready-made, will not 
 find it necessary to set his mind to work to discover a meaning 
 in life for himself. 
 
 You spoke of education at the beginning of our discussion, 
 as enabling each generation to begin the pursuit of knowledge 
 and the journey of evolution where its predecessor left off. 
 It was to build upon foundations already laid and by so 
 doing to render progress possible. Yet if my view may claim 
 to be more than the vapourings of a disgruntled outsider, 
 it would seem that the effect of education is almost exactly 
 the contrary. 
 
 By substituting a knowledge of the past for an interest 
 in the present it leads to mental incuriosity and stagnation : 
 by instilling an exaggerated respect for the achievements of 
 our predecessors, it creates a prejudicial attitude to the ex- 
 periments of our contemporaries ; by providing us with a 
 ready-made attitude to the world, it saves us the trouble 
 of defining one for ourselves. Hence the academic mind is 
 incurious, unprogressive and reactionary ; every new branch 
 of study, every new science, can only establish itself in the 
 teeth of its opposition. Look at the past struggle of psy- 
 chology, look at the present struggle of investigators into 
 the unconscious to obtain any foothold at our seats of learning.
 
 THE EJTECT UPON THE TEACHER 159 
 
 Why experiment, why trouble to open up new avenues 
 of study ? Is it not all to be found in Plato ? 
 
 Such is the attitude of the academic mind to those con- 
 tinual thrustings of the Life Force which impel men to question, 
 to criticise and finally to reject, the standards and knowledge 
 of the past, that they may themselves point the way to the 
 vision of the future ; such is the attitude of hostility to what 
 is new and the undue veneration for what is old, which make 
 of this type of mind the chief obstruction to the purposes 
 of the Force, as they are expressed in the sphere of intellect. 
 
 Professor Cameron. And does this conclude your appli- 
 cation of the Life Force theory to the principles of education ? 
 
 Anthony. It does. I have indicated in what way the 
 leading ideas of education, as education is conceived to-day, 
 are antagonistic to the purposes of evolution, and how the 
 academic mind, which is for me the epitome of the attitude 
 of the educational world, has set its face definitely in the 
 wrong direction ! 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, you have indicted education 
 as it is, and demonstrated in what way it falls short of some 
 ideal to which your metaphysical views direct you. You 
 have endeavoured to shatter my conception of the function 
 of education, and I have to thank you for an interesting 
 exposition by which I have nevertheless been not altogether 
 convinced. In short, you have told me what education ought 
 not to be. You have not even hinted at what it should be. 
 
 Education as a Process of Self -revelation. 
 
 Anthony. That, of course, is another story And it is 
 one on which I have surprisingl}^ little to say. 
 
 You will remember that I summarised the opposition 
 between your view of education and mine by the remark 
 that you held that education should teach what to think, 
 while I, on the contrary, believed that it should teach how 
 to think. But there are no rules for teaching how to think : 
 such teaching must, in fact, be different in each case. A 
 child's mind is an experiment, an experiment on the part 
 of the Life Force, and it should be allowed to claim the right 
 of every experiment, the right of developing on its own lines. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But you must teach it something ;
 
 160 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 if you do not, each generation of children will start where 
 its predecessors started : the civilised child will have no 
 advantage over the savage. Why perpetuate the repetition 
 of the errors of the past, when a little instruction will enable 
 the child to avoid them ? Surely a child should reap the 
 benefits won by the experience of its ancestors. 
 
 John. But has it not those benefits already, Professor 
 Cameron, even without the advantages of an academic educa- 
 tion ? Does it not possess the benefits not only of the lives 
 of the past but of its own past lives ? I am afraid, Mr. Banks, 
 that you cannot have recounted to Professor Cameron the 
 full tale of M. Geley's heresies, some of which, you will 
 remember, I adopted as my own. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I thought I had omitted nothing. I took 
 full notes, and I told Professor Cameron of M. Geley's belief 
 that each of us lives a number of successive lives. 
 
 John. Ah, but there is more in it than that ! M. Geley, 
 you will remember, insisted on the complete interpenetration 
 of the conscious and the unconscious as a cardinal point in 
 his system. There is constant interchange and communi- 
 cation between the two, so that, while the unconscious on 
 the one hand influences the conscious in reverie and day- 
 dream after the manner known to psychoanalysts, the con- 
 scious is continually engaged in transmitting its own acquisi- 
 tions to the unconscious. All conscious memories and im- 
 pressions are stored away in the unconscious ; all acquisitions 
 of knowledge, of power, or of special skill are transmitted 
 from the conscious to the unconscious. 
 
 Thus, not only does the unconscious contain a complete 
 record of the development of each single Hfe, but it is enriched 
 with the various, conscious acquisitions of each successive 
 life. The acquisitions of the one life become the innate 
 faculties of the next, and the unconscious, which remains 
 unaffected by death, and is continuous through a number of 
 successive lives, advances in each to a higher stage of develop- 
 ment, and enriches each successive conscious with more and 
 more well-developed faculties from its constantly increasing 
 store of acquisitions from the last conscious. 
 
 Now bearing in mind this theory of M. Geley's, a theory 
 by no means unsupported by evidence, and assuming for
 
 A PROCESS OF SELF-REVELATION ICl 
 
 the moment that it is correct in what it asserts, 
 consider whether it will not profoundly affect our view of 
 education. 
 
 Mr. Banks. How does it do that, pray ? 
 Anthony. Because it reduces education very largely to 
 a question of self- revelation. If all the acquisitions of your 
 previous lives are stored in your unconscious, it is enough 
 for your conscious to become aware of them. Professor 
 Cameron, anxious that each generation should not lose the 
 advantage over its predecessors which a knowledge of the 
 accumulated learning of the past would bestow, regards 
 education primarily as a means for conveying that knowledge. 
 But, if M. Geley is right, that knowledge is, in a sense, already 
 stored within us. So far from starting with a clean slate, 
 we possess in our unconscious a tablet covered with the writings 
 that our past experiences have inscribed ; and if we would 
 put ourselves in possession of the knowledge of the past, we 
 should read it not in books but within ourselves. 
 
 The Greeks, with their usual uncanny prescience of future 
 developments, hinted at this conclusion. They insisted that 
 man's chief object in life was " to know himself," and " yvaiOi 
 aeavTov" might perhaps be accounted the watchword of educa- 
 tion, as the theory of the Life Force requires us to conceive it. 
 Professor Cameron. Education is then for you simply 
 a branch of psychology. We have to learn to know ourselves, 
 or rather our own unconscious selves, and no other key is 
 necessary to unlock for us all the doors of the treasure 
 house of the past. 
 
 Anthony. I do not say that no other key is necessary. 
 I think that my friend John only introduced this reference 
 to M. Geley and to his conception of the unconscious, because 
 he wished to show that, even were education, as popularly 
 conceived, to be entirely eliminated, it would nevertheless 
 be unnecessary for each generation to traverse again the 
 steps taken by its predecessors. 
 
 But it does not necessarily follow that we should disdain 
 such assistance as education may proffer. Reading, writing, 
 arithmetic and certain elementary facts, are the necessary 
 instruments for the acquisition of new knowledge, and should 
 be insisted upon. The purpose of literature, for instance, 
 
 11
 
 162 THE LIFE FORCE IN EDUCATION 
 
 is to reveal us to ourselves ; but we must learn to read before 
 we can enjoy literature. 
 
 For the rest, let us present ideas as hypotheses and not 
 as dogmas ; history as interpretation and not as fact ; political 
 science and economics as political propaganda and not as 
 ascertained truth ; religion as mysticism and not as sense ; 
 and let us suffer the mind of the young man to find its way 
 among the intellectual tangle that humanity pretentiously 
 calls its knowledge as best it may. This is what education 
 might do ! 
 
 It is not much, you think ? It is better, at any rate, 
 than that choice of mental outlook arbitrarily imposed by 
 others from without, which masquerades under the title of 
 education to-day. Such a choice, just because it is not self- 
 made, warps the mind, and turns it from the course it was 
 created to pursue.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE LIFE FORGE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I find you on the whole an enter- 
 taining talker, Mr. Anthony, and although your application 
 of your friend's theories is at times a little strained and crude, 
 it makes up, I find, in verve what it lacks in perspective. 
 I am hoping to-day that you will continue to apply. 
 
 Anthony. I am at your service, but I am not a phono- 
 graph to play to order. The subject you propose may not 
 interest me, or it may be outside my compass, or again I 
 may not be in a mood for talk. What would you have me 
 discuss, or apply as you call it ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. The subject is your own, for it is 
 the same subject as that which we discussed last time. You 
 then sought to demonstrate the somewhat peculiar view of 
 education which the Life Force metaphysic apparently 
 requires. I now want you to apply that same metaphysic 
 to Uterature and to art. Does not the subject interest you ? 
 
 Anthony. It does, but I may not be in the mood ; words 
 may be wanting. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Our previous conversation leads 
 me to regard such a contingency as unHkely. Most of us 
 have to whistle for the breath of utterance ; but you. I should 
 say, must be more concerned to get out of the draught. 
 
 Anthony. I thank you for the compHment. Where shall 
 we begin ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. You will remember that we began 
 to discuss yesterday the nature of knowledge and learning. 
 I held that it was permanent and changeless ; you sought to 
 show that the knowledge of each age was relative to the 
 purposes of that age, valuable, that is, only for a time. In 
 
 163
 
 164 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 the course of a few remarks in which I stated my view, I 
 suggested that your Life Force hypothesis appeared to involve 
 the belief that the value of Shakespeare's work diminished 
 as our distance from Shakespeare increased. I enquired 
 whether you really took this view ; but though you did 
 indeed afhrm it as regards our knowledge of ideas, you avoided 
 giving a definite answer with regard to our appreciation of 
 the products of the imagination. Do you then hold that 
 art and beauty, that music, poetry and the drama are also 
 relative and ephemeral, and that their value passes as their 
 message, if message they have, wins home ? If this is the 
 case, art is reduced to the level of journalism : Christ, who 
 taught us much, is an artist instead of a preacher, while Jane 
 Austen, who taught us nothing, is not an artist at all. Is 
 this really your view ? If it is, how do you propose to support 
 so outrageous an attitude ; if it is not, the theory of the Life 
 Force must be held to fail to give a consistent account of 
 the phenomena of art and literature 
 
 Anthony. That is an awkward dilemma you propound : 
 either the value of Shakespeare diminishes as time proceeds, 
 or, you say, my theory fails to account for Shakespeare. 
 Well, if I must choose, I must confess I choose the former 
 alternative ; but I agree that the assertion of the progressive 
 decline of Shakespeare's greatness is a little startling. It 
 wants support. And so I think I had better set to work 
 and explain the theory of art, which seems to me to follow 
 from the Life Force metaphysic, without more ado. 
 
 And to-day I shall propose to follow a somewhat different 
 method from that adopted in yesterday's rather wandering 
 discussion. You will remember that my own theory of 
 education emerged late ; I felt my way to it, as it were, through 
 many digressions, and I described at length the prevalent 
 contrasting view, the view of the academic mind, to throw 
 my own into rehef. In the course of the digressions I touched 
 frequently upon the nature of genius, including hterary 
 greatness, as I conceived it, and you will already be familiar 
 with my general point of view. I can therefore begin to-day 
 with an immediate statement of my own conception of the 
 purpose and function of the artist, and proceed to amplify 
 and defend it later in the Hght of such criticisms as you may
 
 INTRODUCTION 165 
 
 wish to bring. Needless to say my view is once again in 
 opposition to that of the academic mind ; but as regards 
 the latter, even if you do not chance to state it yourself, I 
 have no doubt that I shall have occasion to enlarge on the 
 wrong attitude to art and Uterature in order the more clearly 
 to bring out my own. 
 
 Does the method I propose recommend itself to you ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. By all means ! State your theory, 
 and I shall no doubt find cause for disagreement. But my 
 views are not startling, and, as it is difficult to make orthodoxy 
 interesting, I should prefer correcting you to being correct 
 myself. 
 
 Anthony. I have one more preliminary observation to 
 make. I have referred somewhat indiscriminately to art and 
 to literature, to the artist and to the writer, and in the last 
 resort I beheve that what I shall say of the one will hold 
 true of the other. If all great men are primarily teachers, 
 it matters little whether they convey their message through 
 words, music or paint. But I have little knowledge of the 
 arts, and the examples I take will be drawn primarily from 
 the realm of literature, just as my theory will appear more 
 readily applicable to literature. 
 
 But please understand that when I speak indiscriminately 
 of the artist, the thinker, the writer, the prophet, the man 
 of genius, and so forth, I do mean one and the same person : 
 a person thrown up by the Life Force in order to reveal 
 to man the purposes of the Force, and to increase man's 
 consciousness of himself. 
 
 The Life Force Theory of Art. 
 
 This remark brings me at once to the statement of my 
 theory. 
 
 The artist, as I say, is created by the Life Force for a 
 special purpose. This purpose is to bring new ideas into 
 the world. These ideas have a threefold function, each 
 function being part of the same purpose. In the first place 
 they indicate to mankind the direction in which the Life 
 Force desires evolution to proceed. In the second they 
 enrich and develop the intellect which grasps them. On 
 this point I may say at once that the object of developing 
 
 4
 
 166 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 man's intellect is to improve his efficiency as an instrument, 
 by making him quicker to grasp and readier to achieve those 
 purposes of Life which, at his present stage of evolution, 
 he so often thwarts in virtue of his possession of Free Will. 
 In the third place they increase man's consciousness of him- 
 self by reveaUng to him his own nature : in so doing they 
 diminish the area of unconsciousness in the Universe, and 
 help forward that complete merging of the unconscious into 
 consciousness which M. Geley, you will remember, regarded 
 as the ultimate aim of his universal dynamo-psychism. 
 
 The artist then is in essence a purveyor of ideas. The 
 germ of these ideas is communicated to his unconscious by 
 the Life Force in the form of what is called inspiration. The 
 artist is unaware of the source of this inspiration because he 
 does not know what is taking place in his unconscious ; what 
 he is aware of are certain ideas, accompanied by a desire to 
 express them, which appear in consciousness. To these ideas 
 he immediately seeks to give concrete form in the medium 
 which he finds most suitable to himself. Through all this 
 process the artist is little more than an instrument. He is 
 in the grip of something greater than himself, and he must 
 do its will whether he likes it or not. He knows not what 
 he will create, and he knows not why he creates it : he is 
 in fact impelled by a push from behind, not drawn from in 
 front by the pull of some consciously conceived object or 
 ideal. The artist then may, if you will pardon the expression, 
 be defined as, "a person to whose hind-quarters the boot 
 of the Life Force is permanently applied." 
 
 Professor Cameron. I pardon the expression, but surely 
 it should be amended to read " spasmodically " ; the artist is 
 not always creating, 
 
 Anthony. I accept the emendation. Having estabHshed 
 the maxim that art is essentially didactic and propagandist, 
 I have now to account for the phenomenon of what is known 
 as beauty, I understand that my friend John indulged in 
 some highly metaphysical speculations on the subject of 
 beauty when discoursing alone with Mr. Banks, He places 
 it, I beheve, in the heaven of complete consciousness to which 
 the Life Force aspires, with truth and goodness somewhere 
 in attendance. For the present I propose to leave such
 
 THE LIFE FORCE THEORY OF ART 167 
 
 inviting speculations out of account, and to consider the 
 place and purpose of the beauty of works of art. 
 
 There is, as you know, an age-long controversy between 
 those who believe in art for art's sake and those who do not. 
 The former hold that the beauty of a work of art is its sole 
 raison d'etre, the only factor of which an appraisement of 
 the value of that work should take account. As for meaning, 
 it is only valuable as being in some way an integral part of 
 the beauty of the whole. The latter beUeve that other factors 
 besides beauty contribute value ; but I am not clear that 
 they would all agree with me in holding that the real alternative 
 to art for art's sake is art for propaganda's sake. Beauty 
 in fact is for me nothing more than a contrivance of the Life 
 Force for securing that its ideas shall win acceptance. It 
 is the sugar on the pill ; suck the sugar, and you swallow 
 the pill : yield to the glamour of the lyric, and your mind 
 will absorb the thought behind it. Taste, to continue the 
 metaphor, is the appreciation of the sugar by the person 
 swallowing the pill. 
 
 The element of beauty will, of course, vary with the nature 
 of the work that it enshrines. Great works may be composed 
 of the ingredients of beauty and propaganda in very different 
 degrees. At one end of the scale you have the purely didactic 
 teacher, preacher or reformer, who serves out his message 
 hot and strong and disdains the adventitious aids to popular 
 favour which an admixture of beauty would confer. Such 
 artists there are, but they are few : Socrates dispensed with 
 beauty, and so I think does Einstein ; but as a rule the 
 innovator, whether in thought or morals, clothes his teaching, 
 as did Christ in His parables, with poetry, with the play of 
 the imagination, or it may be of wit, and the beauty of form. 
 At the other end of the scale you have the lyric poet, the 
 pictorial artist and the musician, whose message is so difficult 
 to disentangle from the sensuous beauty of the vehicle that 
 conveys it, as to induce many critics to embrace the erroneous 
 view that beauty is an end in itself, and that it is the business 
 of art to create beauty. I am dogmatically stigmatising 
 this view as erroneous because I am at the moment stating 
 my own theory, without seeking to defend it or to criticise 
 alternative views. Speaking generally, however, I should
 
 168 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 say that the works of art in which the didactic element is 
 apparently small and the element of beauty, whether of 
 form or of sound, is large, fulfil the second and third of the 
 functions to which I referred just now, instead of subserving 
 the purposes of the Life Force by the more direct method of 
 presenting to the world new ideas. That is to say, the arts 
 of painting, of music and of lyrical poetry deepen and enrich 
 human consciousness by sharpening and refining the senses, 
 and, by means of the feelings which they arouse, reveal to us 
 a deeper knowledge of our natures. Even in these cases, 
 however, beauty is to be regarded not so much as the end 
 to which the work of art aspires, or as the criterion by which 
 it should be judged, as the method of its appeal. It is because 
 men are attracted and ensnared by the beauty of art that 
 they are brought to undergo the self-abnegation which the 
 continual refining of taste, and the pain which the revealing 
 of the self, involve. What I have said about beauty I believe 
 also to be true of literary merit, whether it be interpreted 
 as charm of style, appropriateness of diction, vivacity of 
 wit, or whatever else in the way of literary grace you care 
 to name. My view then, in short, is that it is the business 
 of the artist to be a teacher : it is his function to give conscious 
 expression to the instinctive promptings of the Life Force. 
 
 It follows that all first-rate artists will be found to have 
 brought into the world new thoughts and ideas which, in 
 the long run, have profoundly changed the convictions and 
 conduct of men. 
 
 Euripides foreshadowed a new morality : he treated 
 women as human beings ; Ibsen a changed attitude to domestic 
 relationships ; Shaw to marriage. Hardy has profoundly 
 modified our conception of God, and Blake, if we would but 
 read him, would produce an equivalent modification in our 
 conception of virtue. Dickens taught the importance of 
 kindness, Bunyan of humihty, Samuel Butler of irreverence : 
 so the hst might be indefinitely continued. 
 
 While the first-rate artist brings new ideas into the world, 
 or emphasises new aspects of old ones, it is the characteristic 
 of the second-rate artist to reflect the ideas of others, polishing 
 them incidentally in the process of presenting them in a new 
 dress. Shakespeare, I am afraid, on my conception, is for
 
 THE LIFE FORCE THEORY OF ART 169 
 
 the most part only a good second-rater : he dealt in the 
 stock of ideas current in his day and added to them not at 
 all ; and so, if I may end my statement with a reply to one 
 of your questions, I should answer that the question of 
 whether Shakespeare's Life Force value diminishes by the ' 
 mere lapse of time does not arise, since Shakespeare's Life ^ 
 Force value was always pretty much of a negligible quantity. 
 
 Professor Cameron. You certainly possess the audacity 
 of your logic ; but see into what absurd heresies it leads 
 you. I pay you the comphment of assuming that your 
 estimate of Shakespeare is not merely an expression of that 
 fashionable attitude of condescension to the past and to the 
 greatest figure of the past which Shaw, I think, initiated. 
 I pay you the compliment, I say, of beUeving that you make 
 this assertion perforce, because you find that it follows logically 
 from your theory. And I think that it does : with your 
 logic I have no quarrel ; but what a commentary on the 
 theory ! And if your premises lead you to such a demonstrably 
 absurd conclusion, does it not suggest the reflection that 
 there may be something wrong with the premises ? 
 
 Anthony. Do you really think the conclusion so absurd ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Indeed I do. Shakespeare was 
 one of the greatest geniuses of all times. 
 
 Anthony. And you are sure that your strictures spring 
 from a genuine conviction of my absurdity, and not from 
 a feehng of shock at my Hterary blasphemy ! Please have 
 the courage to avow it, if it is the latter feehng : I shall not 
 mind. To feel shocked is quite a harmless form of self- 
 indulgence. 
 
 The Academic View of Art. 
 
 Professor Cameron. My feelings of complete disagree- 
 ment might perhaps be partly analysed into what you call 
 shock, were it not for the fact that they have been more or 
 less actively aroused by the whole tenor of your remarks. 
 You will not be surprised, I think, to hear that in my opinion 
 you fundamentally misconceive the whole purpose and effect 
 of artistic and hterary production. 
 
 When we talk of the value or truth of a work of art we 
 are using the words value and truth in a very special sense.
 
 170 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 a sense which is distinct from that in which these words are 
 used in, let us say, science oi mathematics. This distinction 
 I think you overlook. Let me try to explain in a little more 
 detail what I mean. 
 
 You are, of course, aware of the well-worn difficulty which 
 centres round the question of whether the value of art is 
 objective or subjective : Has the Round Madonna in the 
 National Gallery objective value in its own right, or does 
 its value arise from the circumstance of its being appreciated ? 
 Would the picture, in fact, be beautiful if there were no minds 
 to appreciate its beauty ? Would Bach's Preludes and 
 Fugues have value if there were none to hear them ? These 
 are old questions and there are many answers to them. We 
 may hold the purely objective view and assert roundly that 
 the intrinsic qualities of a work of art remain unaffected by 
 the presence or absence of human appreciation, or we may 
 hold with Tolstoy that the value of a work of art depends 
 entirely upon its capacity for rousing emotion in those to 
 whom it is presented. Between the extreme objective and 
 the extreme subjective view there are a numbei of inter- 
 mediate theories. Whatever view we take of the matter, 
 however, we must, I think, admit that works of art are in 
 fact judged by mind in accordance with certain standards, 
 and that whether these standards have objective vaUdity or 
 whether they are tiiemselves the product of human inteUigence, 
 we all recognise that they are final, a.t any rate for human 
 judgment. That such standards exist and that they have 
 tliis kind of finality we may agree, although we may differ 
 as to their exact character and application. We do know 
 broad differences in value, however much we may dispute 
 about the merits of a particular picture or poem, and it is 
 in virtue of this knowledge that we unhesitatingly proclaim 
 Hardy the superior of Eleanor Glyn and Mozart of Mendelssohn 
 although we cannot perhaps define exactly what we mean 
 by the word superior when we use it. 
 
 All 1 am trying to estabhsh at the moment, you will 
 understand, is that the conception of value or quaUty as 
 applied to works of art does exist for us, although we may 
 differ as to the precise meaning of the conception. I 
 propose, if you will allow me, to denominate this particular
 
 THE ACADEMIC VIEW OF ART 171 
 
 kind of value which exists in works of art as artistic 
 truth. 
 
 Now although, as I say, we may not know what artistic 
 truth means, there are two things which we may unhesitatingly 
 affirm with regard to it. 
 
 In the first place it possesses the characteristic of per- 
 manence. By this characteristic it is chiefly distinguished 
 from other kinds of truth, such as scientific truth. With 
 regard to scientific truth it may be, as you say, that it is 
 relative and changing. Personally I should say that it is 
 provisional and partial, provisional in the sense that any 
 scientific tiuth may be overturned or modified by subsequent 
 discovery, partial in the sense that, since it is not the whole 
 truth about the Universe, it must always remain liable to 
 modification and amplification by other aspects of truth not 
 yet conceived ; on my view, therefore, though I am not 
 pressing this at the moment, scientific truth is not wholly 
 true just because it is not wholly complete in what it asserts. 
 It will at any rate be admitted, that the scientific truth of 
 the past is modified and superseded by the discoveries of the 
 present : pre-Darwinian biology was rendered practically 
 worthless by the work of the later nineteenth century, and 
 the science of medicine before Harvey was rendered nugatory 
 by his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Even in the 
 comparatively static realm of mathematical physics the truth 
 of Newton has, I understand, been largely put out of court 
 by the truth of Einstein. 
 
 Now the quality of artistic truth is radically different. 
 We feel that the value of a work of art is permanent, in the 
 sense that it cannot be destroyed, superseded or amplified 
 by anything that comes after it. The form, the mode of 
 expression may belong to the past, but the substance of the 
 artistic truth belongs to a world which is independent of 
 time and space. The value of Sophocles does not diminish 
 because Shakespeare wrote after him : the statues of Pheidias 
 are not superseded because the sculpture of Rodin is also 
 beautiful. Thus the creations of great art may be multiplied 
 indefinitely without any one of them destroying or diminish- 
 ing by competition the value of any other. 
 
 Take, for instance, the case of the pictorial artist. For
 
 172 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 the excellence of a picture it is immaterial whether its object 
 ever existed, or whether the object, if it does exist, has been 
 correctly reproduced : and the value of the picture, being 
 independent of the world of fact, is not affected by the changes 
 that take place in that world. Consider the novelist. It 
 is the business of the novelist neither to copy the world as 
 he sees it, nor yet to spin an unreal world out of his imagina- 
 tion ; but, starting from the world of fact, to destroy that 
 world by selection, emphasis, omission and rearrangement, 
 and to recreate from it an ideal world, which is a closer embodi- 
 ment of the essential reality of life than any world of actually 
 living people can ever hope to be. This ideal world of the 
 novelist is also independent of and unaffected by changes 
 in the world of so-called fact, which we know through the 
 medium of our senses. Artistic truth then is permanent and 
 changeless. 
 
 In the second place artistic truth possesses the character 
 of uniqueness. Its value is qualitative and not quantitative. 
 By this I mean, among other things, that every work of art 
 which has artistic truth is incomparable and unanalysable. 
 And herein consists a further distinction of artistic truth 
 from other kinds of truth. 
 
 In the case of mathematical and scientific truth we can 
 compare the value of different theories or hypotheses, just 
 because that value can be tested and expressed quantitatively. 
 Thus when the mathematician eliminates counting as an 
 adequate basis for number, and substitutes for it the notion 
 of classes of similar collections arranged serially, he has made 
 a definite advance in quantitative truth. He has, in fact, 
 attained to a more completely general conception of truth, 
 which includes the former general truth as one special aspect 
 of itself. Thus subject matter with which mathematics 
 and science deal is quantitative and not qualitative. The 
 neutral particulars which are at the basis of modern 
 physics, the integers with which the arithmetician counts, 
 the symbols which the algebraist employs are all quali- 
 tatively the same : their differences are differences of 
 order and arrangement : they are confined to the world of 
 more or less. The result is that, just as you can compare 
 and measure one mathematical formula against another, so
 
 THE ACADEMIC VIEW OF ART 173 
 
 you can arrange serially for the purposes of comparison and 
 measurement the objects with which they deal. 
 
 With artistic truth this is not so : and it is not so, just 
 because artistic truth is concerned with differences of quality 
 and not of quantity. You know that Sophocles is great and 
 that Shakespeare is great, but you cannot measure them 
 one against another to discover which is the greater. The 
 charm of Mozart defies analysis, so does the majesty of 
 Beethoven ; you cannot attempt to resolve the one into the 
 other, to find a common factor between them, or to specify 
 which embodies the greater quantity of artistic truth. 
 
 Now these two characteristics of permanence and unique- 
 ness which distinguish the world of art and literature, constitute 
 an element which, in the brief sketch you gave of your theory 
 you appeared to me entirely to neglect. This is the more 
 curious, since almost all theories of art with which I am 
 acquainted recognise that it is a fact to be taken into account, 
 in whatever way they may attempt to explain it. 
 
 The explanation which is best known is, of course, that 
 which Plato provides in his theory of Forms. He is endeavour- 
 ing in this theory to account for that sense of being in touch 
 with a permanent and unchanging reality, with something 
 stable and perfect behind and beyond the kaleidoscope of 
 fleeting and contradictory appearances known to us through 
 our senses, with which we are all familiar in the presence of 
 great art. He held, as you know, that, in some unexplained 
 way, some essence from the world of immutable reality took 
 shape and embodied itself in the works of great artists, and 
 was at once the cause and the substance of the beauty of 
 their work. In so far as any work could claim to be great, 
 its claim must stand or fall according to the presence or 
 absence in it of this hint of the real world that is behind and 
 beyond. And since the greatness of any work of art is 
 contingent upon this showing forth in it of that which is real 
 and immutable, that greatness, such as it is, must itself par- 
 take of the changeless nature of that to which it owes its 
 being. Artistic value is permanent then because, where it 
 is present, reahty itself is ghmpsed : and reahty, as opposed 
 to the fleeting appearances which imperfectly shadow it forth, 
 is eternally one and eternally constant. Artistic value is
 
 174 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 unique because reality is unique, and the essence of the real, 
 which is the source of greatness, cannot be analysed into 
 anything other than itself. Since, moreover, reality cannot be 
 more real than itself, we cannot say of any one work of art that 
 is really great, that its value is more than that of another. 
 
 And this account of Plato's is in harmony not only with 
 the quality of artistic value or truth, but with the quality 
 that attaches to the appreciation of it. The sense of finality 
 and of quiescence that characterises aesthetic contemplation, 
 the emancipation from self that is achieved, produce for the 
 moment a feeling of selflessness in the observer that is akin 
 to the nature of the beauty before him. His thoughts and 
 feelings are lifted up out of the little festering pit of vanity 
 and strife and desire that is himself, and while the contempla- 
 tion persists, become merged in the all-pervasive and changeless 
 reality which is contemplated. To glimpse the real is to 
 become merged therein. That the vision does not last, that 
 it fades as soon as we regain the consciousness of self, is but 
 one more proof, if proof were wanted, that as Plato puts it, 
 we are but shadows in a world of shadows, whose access to 
 the world of reality lies through beauty in art and thought 
 in philosophy. 
 
 It is not necessary that we should accept in its entirety 
 this view of Plato's, which is as it were the loom from which 
 I have woven the thread of my remarks ; it has its own 
 difficulties, as you are, no doubt, aware : but it nevertheless 
 is necessary to adopt a view which, like his, makes provision 
 for this quality of permanence in beauty, and of self-forget- 
 fulness in the contemplation of beauty. 
 
 These, then, are the points which I desire to establish in 
 opposition to your view. First, that the value of a work of 
 art is permanent, in the sense that it is unaffected by sub- 
 sequent occurrences ; secondly, that a work of art is unique in 
 the sense that it cannot be compared quantitatively with other 
 works ; thirdly, that it derives these qualities from its partial 
 embodiment of the real as opposed to the illusory appearances 
 which the real presents to the senses ; and fourthly, that 
 for this reason the aesthetic appreciation of beauty possesses 
 a quality of static tranquillity, and a capacity for lifting the 
 individual out of the circle of selfish ideas and desires that
 
 THE ACADEMIC VIEW OF ART 175 
 
 normally bound his horizon, into communion with — and in 
 moments of ecstasy into participation in — the fundamental 
 spirit that underlies reality. 
 
 These considerations seem to me obvious. They are as 
 old as Plato, and as new as Schopenhauer : a circumstance 
 which, to my mind, makes it the more surprising that a thinker, 
 like yourself^ whose general view bears so close an affinity to 
 that of Schopenhauer, should so entirely have failed to 
 provide for them. 
 
 Anthony. I am grateful to you, Professor Cameron, for 
 your exposition. You have given what I consider to be a 
 very adequate statement of the view of the academic mind. 
 I believe this view to be in theory incorrect and in practice 
 harmful ; yet the expression you have given to it is both 
 noble and elevated. And it is, I think, in the spiritual 
 distinction of this view and in its ability to satisfy a lofty 
 hope that there is to be found the main source of its appeal. 
 It satisfi.es the desire for unity, and the desire for permanence ; 
 it points forward to a changeless world of reality, and 
 it postulates of this reality that it shall be perfect. More 
 important still it concentrates upon the fact of beauty, a 
 fact which has always seemed of immense significance to the 
 finest human minds, and accounts for that significance by 
 the suggestion that in the contemplation of beauty we obtain 
 a glimpse of reality itself : thus beauty is, as it were, the 
 window through which we may look upon the perfection of 
 the real. These considerations may serve to explain the 
 hold which this theory has obtained upon the imaginations 
 of men. As embraced by certain minds it has passed into 
 mysticism, and men have sought to identify with spirit the 
 changeless Forms which Plato held to undeilie the world of 
 seeming, or to merge their multiplicity into some unity yet 
 more profound which they have dared to call God. 
 
 Yes, I grant you the nobility of your view ; I fully 
 recognise the importance of the considerations tending to 
 make us hope that it is true. So important are they, that, 
 for those who are disposed to mistake their hopes for judg- 
 ments of probability, they are doubtless convincing. But 
 for others the very attractiveness of the hypotheses is a 
 warning : we are suspicious of a view to which our wishes
 
 176 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 so strongly predispose us : we are anxious not to mistake 
 the promptings of our heart for the compelHng force of evidence. 
 And when we emancipate our minds from the distorting 
 influence of our desires, we find that this hypothesis evinces 
 a serious inability to square with the facts. We find, too, 
 that in practice it is responsible for much that is bad in art, 
 and affords a cover for that subordination of substance to 
 form to which I have already referred in speaking of education. 
 
 How the Academic View^ is Antagonistic to Evolution. 
 
 If you will allow me, then, I propose in the first place 
 to describe those manifestations of the academic mind theory 
 which appear to me to be harmful, and, in the second place, 
 to enlarge upon those aspects of my own conception which 
 seem to me to demonstrate its capacity to explain the signi- 
 ficance of what is greatest in art, while at the same time 
 exhibiting its superior ability to square with the facts. 
 
 In the last resort, however, the comparative merits of 
 the two views will, I think, be found to turn largely upon 
 questions of a philosophical character, which will take us 
 directly to our next and final discussion, when, I understand, 
 my friend John will endeavour to deal with the more philo- 
 sophical aspects of the difficulties you have raised. Do you 
 approve of the plan I propose? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes ! But I am not clear that 
 the view I have endeavoured to set forth lends itself to any 
 special theory of art. I was attempting rather to assert 
 the significance of beauty and its relation to reality, than 
 to establish a criterion for the determination of what con- 
 stitutes a good book or a good picture. 
 
 Anthony. I quite understand. But I think that philo- 
 sophy has considerable influence on practice, — incidentally 
 it is for this reason that I am trying to apply my friend's 
 philosophy, — and I believe that the implications of your view 
 underlie much that is second-rate in artistic production and 
 wrong-headed in artistic criticism. I want, then, in the first 
 place to describe those tendencies in art which appear to me 
 to spring from a general theory of aesthetics not dissimilar 
 from your own : the tendencies in question being to my
 
 OBSTRUCTIVENESS OF THE ACADEMIC VIEW 177 
 
 mind bad, bad, you understand, in the sense that they are 
 obstructive to the purposes of the Life Force. 
 
 It will of course be obvious, that assuming my hypothesis 
 with regard to the character of the Life Force to be correct, 
 the attitude to works of art which you have adopted as your 
 own must of necessity be harmful. When I stigmatised it 
 just now as the attitude of the academic mind, you signified 
 disagreement. But you must, I think, admit that it has 
 many features in common with what I characterised as this 
 attitude in its relation to education. In education the 
 academic mind preserved the outworn dogmas and hypotheses 
 of the past, and pressed them upon the young as the living 
 truth of the present, on the assumption that thought once 
 had value which must always retain that value. Your 
 attitude to works of art is not dissimilar. Their value, you 
 say, is permanent, their significance changeless, for the 
 reason that the value and significance of works of art are 
 not affected by what may succeed them. Very well then, 
 it follows that they are as worthy of the attention and admira- 
 tion of mankind to-day as they were on the day which gave 
 them birth ; and the academic world is right to go into 
 ecstasies of admiration over Sophocles, to hold up his perfec- 
 tion of Form as a model to aspiring youth, and to measure 
 the inferiority of Shaw by his failures to observe the standards 
 of unity and good taste that Sophocles is supposed to have 
 set. 
 
 Now if the value of Sophocles is really changeless, and 
 is changeless because his work partakes of the nature of the 
 real, all this is as it should be. But if Sophocles was a propa- 
 gandist who wrote for the Athens of his day, and whose 
 perfection of style and feeling for dramatic unity and effect 
 were the gifts bestowed on him by the Life Force to enable 
 him to obtain a hearing for its message, then, once that 
 message has been delivered, the purpose of Sophocles is 
 fulfilled. It follows that since the Athens of Sophocles is 
 past, the modern world requires a new Sophocles to com- 
 municate to it a fresh instalment of the Life Force's message. 
 But what if the new Sophocles finds that the old one has 
 staked out a permanent claim on the public ear, as Samuel 
 Butler has it, and that while he continues to squat there, 
 
 12
 
 178 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 his own message must go unheard ? Will not an attitude 
 of mind which insists on retaining, in the position of 
 eminence which he once so usefully occupied, an old 
 Sophocles whose message is dead, whose thought is super- 
 seded, and whose vitality is extinct, will not such an 
 attitude be obstructive to the purposes of the Force ? 
 Does it not compel the new men, whom the Force has 
 thrown up to voice its promptings, to fight their way to 
 an audience in the teeth of vested interests in the public 
 ear, instead of finding a community receptive to that new 
 message, for the purpose of delivering which they were created ? 
 If then we assume my hypothesis, and bear in mind the 
 indictment of an analogous theory of education which follows 
 from my hypothesis, the view of art which you have out- 
 lined will be clearly seen to be antagonistic to the progress 
 of evolution. It will attribute permanent value to what 
 is old and so distract men's attention from the emergence 
 of what is new ; it will use the lumber of the past to stifle 
 and overlay the inspiration of the present. You will admit 
 that this result follows if my hypothesis is correct ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly, if your hypothesis is 
 correct, which I do not admit. 
 
 Anthony. I will ask you to waive that point for the 
 moment, and to bear with me while I briefly run through 
 certain tendencies in art and literature, which appear to me 
 to spring from the view you have described. If I can show 
 these tendencies to be harmful, the demonstration may 
 perhaps not be without effect in weakening the authority 
 of this view. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Pray proceed. 
 
 Its Practical Manifestations : (1) The Demand for 
 Unity. 
 
 Anthony. You say that it is the business of art to 
 destroy the seeming reality of the world of appearances, and 
 to recreate from it a world in which the nature of the real 
 shall be more truly embodied. To do this it must in the 
 first place strip away the irrelevances of actual life and 
 present the play of motive and character, the influence upon 
 character of heredity or of environment, the workings let
 
 ITS PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS 179 
 
 us say of overweening pride and of the nemesis that waits 
 upon it, whatever in short it chooses as its subject-matter, 
 in an artifical simpHcity which will throw them into high relief. 
 In life these elements can scarcely be disentangled from the 
 complex skein of other phenomena with which they are inter- 
 woven : in art, which aims at unity, they must be presented 
 as single threads that their ramifications may be discerned. 
 In this way art will achieve a unity of presentment, and 
 since it is, you say, the nature of the real to be a unity, the 
 greater the unity the nearer to reality. This, then, is the 
 first tendency I wish to consider ; the tendency to regard 
 a great work of art as in some very important sense 
 a unity. 
 
 Now life, of course, is not a unity. It is a bundle of 
 incoherent motives and desires ; it contains no pure thoughts, 
 no pure instincts and no pure actions. Everything we think 
 is shot through with half-apprehended thoughts of something 
 else, everything we do is achieved by the suppression of 
 something that fights against our doing it. There are, foi 
 instance, no truly brave men : some men are more afraid 
 of some things than of others, that is all. Thus if I am more 
 afraid of the stings of my conscience, the reputation of 
 cowardice and the contempt of my fellow men than of the 
 bullets of the enemy, I go over the top and am called brave : 
 if, on the other hand, the bullets of the enemy inspire the 
 greater fear, I skulk in the trench and am called a coward. 
 Men combine to encourage the former type of cowardice 
 and applaud it by calling it bravery, because its habitual 
 practice is of advantage to them : essentially it is no braver 
 than its contrary. 
 
 Similarly there are no truly virtuous men. It is our 
 nature to obey our own instincts and impulses : some of us 
 possess impulses whose expression is of benefit to society ; 
 others possess, on the whole, the contrary impulses. The 
 habit of acting in accordance with the first class of impulses 
 is naturally approved by society and is called virtue. Vice, 
 on the other hand, is the name given to the habit of acting 
 in accordance with impulses whose expression is not approved. 
 All men possess both kinds of impulses and are thus virtuous 
 and vicious in turn.
 
 180 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 I need not multiply instances. All human qualities are 
 susceptible of similar analysis : in life all men are all things. 
 
 Now if art is to achieve the ideal of unity at which you 
 aim, it must to a large extent turn its back upon this delightful 
 and variegated hotch-potch of impulses and contradictions 
 which is life. It must present men as wholly virtuous or 
 wholly vicious, wholly brave or wholly base. Most early 
 art follows this tendency. Thersites in Homer is wholly a 
 knave, Achilles is wholly a hero. The characters in Greek 
 plays, and indeed in all great tragedies, are painted solely 
 in blacks or whites, and for this reason are wholly unlike 
 life. The first method, then, of achieving unity is that of 
 distorting life by undue simplification. 
 
 But it is not always necessary to distort. We may achieve 
 the same result by selection. Select from the confusing 
 welter of human passion and motive only those traits which 
 are harmonious, which are, as we say, in character, and you 
 still get your unity. You have destroyed your individual 
 in the process, but that of course is unimportant. Hence 
 arises the art which aims at bowdlerising its characters of 
 all that makes them inconsistent, and we have the novels 
 of Mr. Henry James. The characters of Henry James are 
 animated by none of the grosser, or, shall I say, the more 
 ordinary passions : these have all been selected away. 
 Avarice, love of scandal, snobbishness, curiosity and esoteric 
 chastities are the motives by which they are moved : lust 
 and hate, jealousy and cruelty are unknown. We are presented 
 with a distant stage set with ghost-like characters, who 
 discourse in etiolated voices on bloodless themes. I think 
 it is Chesterton who said that they have no faces. 
 
 To arrive at unity, then, you must indulge in rigorous 
 simphfication or rigorous selection. In so doing you will 
 move right away from life : a result which will necessarily 
 follow from the mere fact that hfe is not a unity. Life is 
 composed of individuals none of whom are types : unity is 
 composed of types who are individuals eviscerated of all that 
 obscures the type. 
 
 Desiring unity, then, we shall set our faces against Realism 
 at the outset. We shall be romantics. We shall look upon 
 literature as a refuge from life, and we shall demand of it
 
 ART AS A UNITY 181 
 
 that it shall pay us in beauty for what we have lost in 
 reality. 
 
 Professor Cameron. You mean in appearance : life is 
 not the reality. 
 
 Anthony. I am sorry, Professor. I should have said 
 in appearance, which is what, on your view, the world of 
 common-sense mistakes for reality : but I am talking in my 
 terms now, so, when I use the word reality, please understand 
 me to speak in the language of the plain man. Once accept 
 the divorce from life in the interests of unity, and your writer 
 may concentrate on the creation of beauty with a good con- 
 science. The world is rightly left behind, for is it not sordid 
 and ugly ? And with the world well left, the artist may 
 henceforth spin from his imagination fantasies and romances 
 riotous in beauty and perfect in form, provided only that 
 they are unities. 
 
 The academic mind then will suspect the Realist and 
 love the Romantic. The academic critic puts his women 
 upon a pedestal and wraps his artist in cotton wool. A 
 dreamer of dreams, a singer of songs, a spinner of fantasies, 
 this artist who must not soil himself with the problems of the 
 world ; who must not dull his vision by contact with the real ; 
 who must not pollute the pure streams of his inspiration by 
 a douche from Aldgate Pump ! The artist may imagine, but 
 he must not observe ; he may dream his life, but he may not 
 live his dreams. 
 
 Hence any attempt on the part of the artist to bring 
 himself into touch with actual problems is regarded as a 
 derogation from his high vocation. He must not intrude 
 upon the preserves of politics and the practical man. The 
 academic mind hates the artist who turns reformer. Let 
 him create things of beauty, let his vision remain remote, 
 let him sketch Utopias for the future, let him in fact do 
 anything but busy himself with the present, and the academic 
 mind will give him his due as the embellisher and decorator 
 of life. But preach he must not. Thus Ruskin was chidden 
 for his incursion into political theory ; he should have gone 
 on describing pretty pictures and fine scenery and remained 
 an artist. Tolstoy was told that he would have done well 
 to leave religion alone and continue to write fiction. In
 
 182 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 our own day, Max Beerbohm the cartoonist, the spoilt darhng 
 of the critics, when he caricatured the features of artists and 
 poets, is seriously admonished by the daily press when he 
 produces caricatures of modern politicians, which teach the 
 same lesson and point the same moral as the fourth satire 
 in Gulliver's Travels. What business has an artist to see 
 Yahoos in figures of modem eminence, and in so doing to 
 pass an implied criticism on the society which has raised 
 them to that eminence and consents to keep them there ? 
 
 Even Shaw has never been rated at his true worth, or if 
 he has, his reputation has been extorted from the critics 
 almost against their will. Why ? Because he is not content 
 with constructing plots and drawing characters ; he insists 
 on writing plays on modern problems and prefacing them 
 with strictures upon the age. It is only to-day, when he 
 has grown mellow with years and his problems are in process 
 of solution or of being superseded by others, that his greatness 
 is generally conceded. 
 
 I ask you to observe the fact of this hostility to the artist 
 who meddles, and to note two things in relation to it. In 
 the first place, it disguises its real character by invoking in 
 its support that theory of the function of the artist as the 
 creator of beauty, which you so eloquently expressed. In 
 order that beauty may be achieved the work of art must 
 be a unity. In order that it may be a unity it must turn its 
 back on the irrelevances of life, and by selection and simplifi- 
 cation produce what is called art. Realism, then, must fall 
 short of what is greatest in literature, and propaganda and 
 pamphleteering are outside the proper sphere of the artist. 
 Thus it is your theory of art that the tendency I have de- 
 scribed can, and does, adduce in its support. 
 
 In the second place this hostility, in its real character, 
 can be shown on my view to be but another phase of the 
 implacable opposition of the academic mind to the realisation 
 of the purposes of the Life Force, which we have already 
 had occasion to consider. Beauty is not new, it is as old 
 as the hills, and the production of beauty in itself embodies, 
 therefore, no fresh thrust forward on the part of the Force. 
 But the artist who is himself the instrument of such a thrust 
 will have something new to say, which is bound to possess the
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF FORM 183 
 
 two characteristics of direct application to society as he finds 
 it, and of disagreeableness to the conservative elements in 
 that society. If, therefore, great art is, as I would have 
 you believe, an intimation of the direction in which the Life 
 Force is moving, it is only natural that it should disturb 
 the existing order of thought and society, and provoke the 
 opposition of those who uphold it. 
 
 (2) The Emphasis on Form. 
 
 I now propose to turn to the second of the tendencies 
 in art, or rather in artistic criticism, which may, I think, be 
 traced directly to your view. I have spoken generally of 
 the academic mind as that attitude of the intellect which 
 subordinates substance to form. I now want to draw your 
 attention to a somewhat specialised expression of this attitude 
 as a canon of artistic and literary criticism. What I have 
 in mind is the insistence on the importance of form in works 
 of art. 
 
 Now it is clear that if we accept your view that the value 
 of a work of genius remains constant, that value must be 
 located very largely in the form which the work assumes. 
 You must, I think, admit that the matter of many even of 
 the greatest works loses something of its significance by the 
 passage of centuries. Those old comedies of Aristophanes, 
 in which every gibe told and every shaft had its target, are 
 now more remarkable for the fertility and exuberance of 
 the writer's wit than for its appropriateness : wit loses its 
 edge when it has ceased to be topical. We may admire 
 Pope in the abstract, but the full enjoyment of his malice 
 died with his contemporaries. If value then is to be per- 
 manent, it must be largely bound up with excellence of form. 
 
 I do not want in this discussion to enter into the old 
 controversy as to the relation between form and matter in 
 literature and art. We shall doubtless agree that it is im- 
 possible in theory to draw any clear line between form and 
 matter, such that we could say, " Here matter ends and form 
 begins." We should, I imagine, also agree that in practice 
 it is possible to speak of them as though they were distinct, 
 and that excellence of both is essential in works of the highest 
 kind, although any particular work may be pre-eminent in
 
 184 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 the one rather than in the other. Personally I should weight 
 the scales every time in favour of matter, you probably in 
 favour of form. But would you agree with my view that 
 after the lapse of centuries the value of a work of art must 
 be sought almost entirely in its form ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Very largely, I should say. I 
 agree with you that after a time the matter loses significance ; 
 though not, of course, in philosophy. 
 
 Anthony. Precisely ! Your attitude to form bears out 
 what I am saying of the academic view. In order, however, 
 that we may see exactly what it is that this view may involve, 
 let us consider its reductio ad absurdum, which is admirably 
 presented to us in its attitude to the Classics, 
 
 Form in the Classics. 
 
 Professor Cameron, Surely you are not going to drag 
 us through the classical education controversy ! All the 
 arguments for and against the Classics have been repeated 
 ad nauseam. Let us then agree upon three things and be 
 done with it : first, the Classics are distinctly useful from 
 the educational point of view, and a thorough knowledge 
 of them confers good taste ; second, they are not so useful 
 as their supporters pretend ; third, the tendency to over- 
 rate the value of the Classics is largely economic. Teaching 
 the Classics directly fits a man for nothing except to go on 
 teaching the Classics ; the livelihood of the University staffs 
 depends, therefore, upon the continued acceptance of the 
 belief that the Classics are all-important : while the Uni- 
 versities demand Classics, the public schools must supply 
 the demand, and the preparatory schools must prepare 
 for the public schools. 
 
 I think I have summed up everything that need be said 
 by intelligent men about the Classics in these days. I cannot 
 see that any of it is relevant to our present discussion. 
 
 Anthony. Your conciseness is admirable ; there is 
 indeed nothing left to say about the Classics, except one 
 thing. You have overlooked one factor in their popularity, 
 and it is this : while the form of the Classics remains intact 
 their matter has lost most, if not all of its significance The 
 Classics are not about anything which could conceivably be
 
 FORM IN THE CLASSICS 185 
 
 of importance to anyone to-day. Who cares for the rights 
 and wrongs of the quarrel between Cicero and Catihne, or 
 for the poHtical significance of Demosthenes' speeches against 
 PhiHp ? As to Virgil, it is doubtful whether he ever embodied 
 the promptings of the Life Force, he never foreshadowed 
 the future, he merely reflected the more snobbish present ; 
 but what is there in Homer that could by the wildest stretch 
 of imagination contain a message for us to-day ? The thought 
 of all these men is out of date ; it is barren and lifeless ; all 
 that remains is the form, a mere husk. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Surely you are rather letting your 
 arguments run away with you, sir. This is wild talk ; 
 it is the veriest commonplace that the Classics are full of 
 lessons for to-day. Analogies with modern life crop up on 
 almost every page. 
 
 Anthony. I know it is a commonplace, and, like most 
 commonplaces, it is quite untrue. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Oh, fiddlesticks ! Take any great 
 classical writer, take Thucydides for instance. He is full of 
 sage reflections on the politicians and parties of his age, that 
 apply to the politicians and parties of all ages. He is a store- 
 house of political wisdom, which our present rulers ignore with 
 lamentable results. 
 
 Anthony. But is he ? I know that that is the kind of 
 thing that persons, who have a sufficient knowledge of Greek 
 to give them a vested interest in Thucydides, have formed 
 the habit of saying. They bleat about his unapproachable 
 sagacity, his remarkable detachment : he seems to provoke 
 that sort of thing. But personally I have never been able 
 to find in his vaunted reflections anything but a string of 
 platitudes, which are the stock-in-trade of every pohtical 
 rhetorician. He tells you, for instance, that selfish aggrandise- 
 ment always meets with its own Nemesis — a rather pompous 
 way of saying that pride goes before a fall. He remarks 
 that when Athens was struck by the plague, the restraints 
 imposed by society upon individual behaviour gave way, 
 and what are commonly called morals went by the board. 
 Naturally ! We all of us know that ; Defoe said the same, 
 but nobody thought him particularly wise for saying it. 
 
 And does it after all seem to you so extraordinarily
 
 186 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 penetrating to have noticed that " fear when attended by 
 strengtli causes greater alarm to one's enemies " ? Yet that 
 is a pretty fair specimen of the remarks in the celebrated 
 speeches. 
 
 Professor Cameron. The wisdom is there and the 
 detachment : you can make any writer ridiculous by arbi- 
 trarily choosing your extracts. But leaving Thucydides 
 out of the question, you must admit that a knowledge of 
 Greek history is of inestimable value for the potential modern 
 statesman. The Peloponnesian war, for example, had many 
 features in common with the recent, great war. Ancient 
 Athens presents a parallel with modern England : study 
 her history and you see working clearly, simply and on a 
 small stage, the motives and forces which the greater com- 
 plexity of modern society makes it so much harder to dis- 
 entangle. Reading Greek history is like looking at the world 
 through a pair of inverted opera glasses ; the world is seen 
 small but very clear. 
 
 Anthony. That, too, is commonly said, and I think it 
 is for the most part terribly misleading. It has led people 
 to endeavour to analyse the forces at work in modern society 
 into the same elements as those, with which their study of 
 Greek history has made them familiar. 
 
 I have already spoken at some length on the subjective 
 character of our interpretation of history : what you look 
 for in history you will find, whether it is there or not ; and 
 the result is that modern phenomena, seen in relation to a 
 false analogy with ancient Greece which is taken for granted, 
 are seen in wrong perspective. 
 
 Professor Cameron. The elements of a political situation 
 are ever the same : they derive their roots from human nature. 
 Anthony. They are not. There are many important and 
 fundamental aspects in which the world of ancient Greece was 
 radically different from the world of to-day, and the differ- 
 ences are of such a kind as to render any interpretation of 
 modern phenomena based on knowledge of Greek history 
 fundamentally misleading. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Mention them. 
 
 Anthony. Surely that would take us even further afield 
 than we are straying at the moment. I cannot embark on
 
 THE VALUE OF GREEK HISTORY 187 
 
 such a discussion if I am ever to resume the application of 
 the Life Force to Hterature. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I am interested largely because I 
 disagree. Can you not briefly adumbrate ? 
 
 Anthony. I will mention just two differences of the 
 kind in question. In the first place Greek history is susceptible 
 not at all, or susceptible very little, to economic interpretation. 
 Where ways of life and habits of thought and action are 
 largely customary, they are in themselves sufficient to explain 
 the activities of states on ordinary, pohtical lines. They 
 were so customary in Greece, despite all the flair of the 
 Athenian intellectuals, to a much greater extent than is the 
 case to-day. Hence the student, steeped in the history and 
 literature of Greece, will be apt to overlook the economic 
 motive in modern society almost as much as Marx over- 
 emphasised it. 
 
 In the second place, the size of the modern state renders 
 it unamenable to the influence of individuals or even of groups 
 of individuals to a hitherto unprecedented extent. The 
 Greek city state could be swayed by a few men : the ambi- 
 tions, the eloquence, the love affairs even, of one public man 
 could determine its destinies : human will and effort counted. 
 Even the democracies, when such existed, could be really 
 representative. In a modern state this is not the case. So 
 complex are the strands that condition events, so vast the 
 machinery of government, that what actually happens is 
 the result not of human will or effort but of the fortuitous 
 interaction of a number of hidden forces, whose outcome 
 none may foresee and whose genesis none may detect. The 
 result is that the thinker or statesman who knows his Greek 
 or Roman history, will be misled into thinking that the wishes 
 of the people count to-day, that a definite line of policy can still 
 be put into effect, or that the will of an outstanding person- 
 ahty can be made to matter. He will, in fact, under-estimate 
 the deterministic factor in modern politics. For this reason 
 the record of Greek and Roman history is practically useless 
 as a guide to current events. But let us return to classical 
 literature. Do you still contend that its matter retains life ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. I still think your thesis out- 
 rageously untrue. Take Satire, Juvenal, for instance, — — •
 
 188 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 Anthony. Used society as a mere peg to hang his 
 rhetorical hat on. Not an ounce of sincere feehng behind it : 
 Pope was better, Swift a giant beside him ! 
 
 Professor Cameron. You talk of new and subversive 
 thought : what about Lucretius ? 
 
 Anthony. He may have been original in his day, but is 
 now hopelessly out of date ! He is only useful as a stick 
 for the Rationalists to beat their drum with, and pretty hollow 
 it sounds. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Tacitus ? 
 
 Anthony. A retailer of court scandal ; an indigent 
 snob growling at efficiency because it was maintained by 
 the wrong men. No, I think I have said enough to show 
 how futile and irrelevant for modern purposes is the matter 
 of these Classics ! Their form remains, I grant you, and 
 that is why they are cherished and boosted by the academic 
 mind. They are all form and no matter ; how very con- 
 venient ! Concentrate upon them, steep the young mind 
 in them, and you will render it alike impervious to the prompt- 
 ings of the Life Force in itself, and deaf to the message it 
 is delivering through others. It is recounted that in the 
 Middle Ages the monks insisted upon the composition of 
 Latin Verses, because it provided adequate occupation 
 for the minds of intelligent young men, and prevented 
 them from undertaking inconvenient, scientific enquiry. The 
 invention of Latin Verses exemplifies the objects which the 
 teaching of the Classics has been designed to serve ever 
 since. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But the endeavour to master 
 these languages with their complexity and logical structure 
 is itself a challenge to thought. 
 
 Anthony. No ! I agree that they make you think ; 
 but do they ever let you stop to think ? If you did you 
 would see the futility and aimlessness of the whole process. 
 The common presumption that, to enjoy classical literature, it 
 is necessary to learn the original tongue in which the thought 
 is conveyed, is in itself an admission that it is not the thought 
 which is required. For the thought can be conveyed ade- 
 quately in translation : in translation only the form is lost. 
 The cry of horror which the suggestion that the Classics
 
 FORM IN THE CLASSICS 189 
 
 may be read in translations provokes in your average don, is 
 thus evidence enough that the form of the original alone is what 
 has value. Pressed to admit this, he will, it is true, concoct 
 a theory to the effect that in translation even the thought 
 is lost, some subtle shades of meaning and expression being 
 detected only in the original, and evaporating in the process 
 of translation like the bouquet of an old wine. But this theory 
 deceives nobody who has taken the pains to do any trans- 
 lation work himself, in the course of which he discovers that 
 it is only his own incompetence, and not any inherent un- 
 willingness in his material, that prevents him from conveying 
 every naunce of classical thought, however clumsily, into 
 his own tongue. 
 
 If you read the Classics for their substance, translations 
 will serve the purpose of the original ; if you read them for 
 the form, the original alone will serve. The fact that, with 
 a few exceptions in favour of Plato and Aristotle, nobody 
 does voluntarily read the Classics in translations, which are 
 chiefly used as cribs by schoolboys who are supposed to be 
 reading them in the original, is evidence first, that the literary 
 form is the sole excuse for their cultivation, and second, 
 that nobody cares twopence one way or the other about 
 their substance. The academic mind does right to sub- 
 ordinate matter to form in the Classics, for the matter is now 
 practically non-existent ; but it is wrong to invest the form 
 with a false value in the interests of which the minds of men 
 are turned away from matter which is living. Form which 
 enshrines matter that is dead is like the stick of a spent 
 rocket. 
 
 Thus the Classics hang like an incubus round the neck 
 of literature, and the Life Force, thrusting new inspirations 
 through the unconscious minds of men, finds itself choked 
 with the litter of its past achievements. 
 
 (3) The Insistence on Style. 
 
 I turn now to the third of those tendencies in art and 
 literature which, on my view, derive directly from your 
 theory of the function of art and literature. And here I 
 should perhaps apologise for the unnecessary heat which
 
 190 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 manifested itself in some of my remarks on the Classics. 
 It is, you understand, my intention at the moment simply 
 to depict these tendencies without comment of any kind : 
 it will, I am afraid, be sufficiently evident that I regret them, 
 but equally do I regret that I should, at any rate at this stage, 
 have conveyed such an impression. My reasons for regarding 
 these tendencies as injurious will appear later. For the 
 moment I ask you to forgive remarks which deplore this or 
 that as obstructive to the purposes of the Life Force, and to 
 dismiss them as incidental dogmatisms which I shall hope 
 to support in due course. 
 
 It is sufhciently understood, then, that in describing 
 this third tendency, my object is simply to throw into 
 clear relief exactly what it is that your theory involves in 
 practice. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Very well ! I quite understand 
 your feelings about the Classics. Memories of syntax, irregular 
 verbs, paradigms, and gender lines still rankle. 
 
 Anthony. They do. I have already noted two elements 
 in literature which are particularly pleasing to the academic 
 mind, namely, unity and form. I now propose to add a third, 
 which is style. The academic mind places great value on style 
 for the same reason as it values unity and form. Style, which 
 is one of the elements which contribute to form, is permanent : 
 it remains constant while matter fades ; insistence on the 
 value of style supports, therefore, the theory that literature 
 possesses permanent value, and that it is its business to 
 achieve beauty instead of to disseminate propaganda. 
 
 Now you can trace, running like a continuous thread 
 throughout the whole history of literature, a succession of 
 writers and schools of writers who believed in style. Pliny 
 the Younger and Seneca, Villon and Verlaine, Walter Pater, 
 and Oscar Wilde and Stevenson, these were all men who 
 believed that it behoved them to take pains to acquire what 
 they called style, as a sort of necessary preliminary measure 
 before they could begin to write. Instead of regarding 
 language as a vehicle for conveying thought and feeling, and 
 style as merely that kind of language which conveys them in 
 the most appropriate way, they have adopted an attitude to 
 style which is like that of a conjuror who uses his apparatus
 
 THE INSISTENCE ON STYLE 191 
 
 before an audience which does not know the trick. Style, to 
 put it at its highest, is like beauty, a mere device to sugar 
 the pill of thought ; but by writers of the school I am de- 
 scribing, the function of style has been so exaggerated, that 
 the way in which they said things came to seem more important 
 to them than the things they said. 
 
 Now, personally I am doubtful whether good style can 
 ever be consciously achieved. It is like pleasure in that, 
 if directly pursued, it eludes you : but, like pleasure and also 
 like beauty, it comes incidentally and as it were by a fluke, 
 to adorn and reward the efforts of those who are actively and 
 strenuously engaged in something else. Now what is that 
 something else ? The striving to give expression to the 
 light within you ; the being entirely and wholly wrapped up 
 in some message that you wish to deliver ; the feeling that 
 this message and the saying of it is of supreme importance, 
 and the endeavouring to say it clearly and briefly and then 
 have done with it. These things, which are the surrendering of 
 oneself to the inspiration of the Life Force, must come first ; 
 and if the Life Force is really prompting your words, you 
 may rest assured, that it will take good care that they are 
 clothed in a style which will secure for them attention and 
 respect. Thus Swift, who was perhaps the greatest prose 
 writer in the English language, achieved his style by the 
 simple process of being too wrapped up in what he had to 
 say to have leisure to notice how he was saying it ; too fiercely 
 indignant with the abuses he satirised to have the patience 
 to polish his shafts. 
 
 Provided, then, that the matter be living, the style will 
 accommodate itself naturally to its requirements. Moreover, 
 different matters require different styles : the Life Force 
 must be suffered to experiment with the methods by which 
 its message is to be presented. Style, therefore, should be 
 free and various, not confined within a framework of copy- 
 book rules evolved by pedants, not clipped and groomed 
 like a box hedge. Should a living experiment be at the 
 mercy of a pack of grammarians, to be stabbed with their 
 commas and their colons ? No ! It should thrive and 
 blossom freely according to its self-chosen laws ; should 
 change continually and develop, discarding outgrown members 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 192 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 with ease, and fulfilling the function of a midwife, not of an 
 obstruction to the message of the Life Force. 
 
 Good style is, in short, a grace which adorns the writings 
 of a powerful and original mind. It is only in an intellectual 
 soil that is both deep and rich that style can blossom. It 
 is in a real sense a luxury, and like any luxury it is dependent 
 on a good income : it comes when a man has ceased to grapple 
 with his subject for mastery, and has begun to be at play 
 with it, 
 
 I am afraid I have been betrayed again into airing my 
 own views by way of comment, instead of confining myself 
 to a simple statement of the foibles of the academic mind. 
 But my polemic on style will serve its purpose. It will throw 
 into clearer relief the opposing view which is, I fear, the 
 prevalent one in literature. I think I have already men- 
 tioned a maxim observed of good architects, to the effect 
 that the architect should decorate a construction, but should 
 not construct a decoration. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Have you ? I don't remember. 
 Anthony. Whether I have or not, you may take it 
 that the undue importance attributed by the academic mind 
 to style is one form of constructing a decoration. 
 
 Now this insistence on the style and form of presentation 
 serves the important purpose of distracting attention from 
 the matter presented. Just as there has always been a 
 school of writers who cultivated style as an end in itself, 
 so there has always been a school of critics whose criticism 
 has been primarily directed to the manner instead of to the 
 matter of literature. Henry James and George Moore will 
 serve as examples of the type, a type who believe in the 
 existence of a thing called good writing, that is to say good 
 writing as such. These critics, if pressed, would have to admit, 
 assuming them to be logical, that there exists no reason in 
 theory why a novel about Willesden Junction, or a lyric on 
 sardine tins, should not achieve a literary excellence as high 
 as that of the works of Conrad or of Keats. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I admit that much literary 
 criticism is devoted to style, to expression and to diction, 
 to what, in short, you call the form of presentation. I think 
 that it is rightly so devoted since, as you have remarked,
 
 THE INSISTENCE ON STYLE 193 
 
 the value of these elements is constant and remains im- 
 perishable, even when the matter has lost its significance. 
 I admit this because I am talking in your language, and 
 assuming for the moment that it is possible, for the purposes 
 of discussion, to effect the complete division between form 
 and matter which, in spite of your opening disclaimer, you 
 are seeking to make. My own view, though I insert it here 
 in parenthesis, is that the two are inseparable ; and the fact 
 that it is impossible to say where the one ends and the other 
 begins seems to me to vitiate many of your arguments. 
 Assuming, however, that the distinction can be made for the 
 purposes of the discussion, what I do not admit is that the 
 insistence on form in general, and on style in particular, is 
 deliberately designed to distract men's attention from new 
 and subversive thought in literature, or that in point of fact 
 it has that effect. 
 
 The Case of Mr. Shaw. 
 
 Anthony. Very well : let us take a concrete instance. 
 Take the case of Shaw. Now Shaw is undoubtedly a teacher, 
 prophet and reformer, if ever such existed. His primary 
 bias is Puritanical ; his primary object, to expose outworn 
 conventions and to spring-clean institutions which are choked 
 with the cobwebs of hypocrisy and pretence. Instances of 
 such institutions are family Ufe, the medical profession and 
 the party system. It so happens that he has a sense of 
 humour and can write good plays : the drama is, in fact, the 
 vehicle by means of which he seeks to convey the doctrine 
 with which he has been entrusted by the Life Force. 
 
 What is the result ? Critics have combined to seize 
 upon the form of his presentation, the dramatic form, and 
 to ignore, or at best to write off as a series of mental fads 
 and caprices, the doctrines they enshrine. 
 
 There has been a consistent attempt to regard Shaw as 
 a comedian, who either succeeds or fails in being funny, 
 instead of as a prophet whose gospel is either true or false. 
 His plays are criticised technically, and " Candida," where the 
 element of propaganda is most in abeyance, is preferred on 
 grounds of unity and economy in construction. It is with 
 the greatest difficulty that Shaw has established himself as 
 
 13
 
 194 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 a serious thinker, who passionately believes what he asserts, 
 in face of the almost universal refusal to consider him in 
 any other light than that of a popular buffoon, whose plays, 
 being written for the sole purpose of entertaining the public, 
 are accordingly to be judged solely by the criterion of whether 
 they succeeded in doing so. 
 
 During the war Shaw succeeded in irritating the popular 
 mind to a hitherto unprecedented extent, and this circum- 
 stance, combined with the fact that of late years he has 
 written plays, which contain so much of philosophic dialogue 
 and so little of popular entertainment, that no theatrical 
 manager can, in the general way of business, afford to 
 produce them, has to a slight extent succeeded in producing 
 the conviction that Shaw does not care two straws for his 
 power to amuse, in comparison with his capacity to expound 
 the truth that is in him. This conviction is, of course, 
 correct : no real artist cares about his art any more than 
 the chemist cares about the sugar on his pills. What he 
 does care about is the truth which his art seeks to convey, 
 and Shaw being a great man, has at last managed to drive 
 home this elementary maxim, in respect of himself at least, 
 in the teeth of the united opposition of the critics, who 
 insisted on prating only of his sense of the theatre and of 
 the brilliance of his wit. 
 
 So much for the world's attitude to Shaw in general ; 
 now consider the attitude of one typical critic to his style 
 in particular. Shaw, as is well known, possesses in a 
 high degree the power of writing first-rate English prose. 
 But the character of the prose shows that he sets very little 
 store by it. It is chaste, austere and cold : it eschews 
 epithets, it avoids hyperbole, it disdains all those adventitious 
 trappings of ornament and artifice, of harmony and euphony, 
 by which a writer like Pater strove to disguise the funda- 
 mental meagreness of his thought. It is evident at a glance 
 that all Shaw cares about is expressing his ideas, and style 
 is to him a mere device for enabling him to do this as forcibly 
 as possible. 
 
 Now Dixon Scott was a critic typical of the academic 
 mind in his attitude to art and literature. That is to say, 
 he cared for fine writing, and he cared very little for anything
 
 THE CASE OF MR. SHAW 195 
 
 else. As it is natural for a human being to look for what 
 he values, and under suitable circumstances to insist that 
 he has found it whether it is there to find or not, Dixon 
 Scott wrote an article on Shaw, in which he speedily 
 comes to the conclusion that Shaw's style is nothing but an 
 intricate and elaborate conspiracy to make us believe that he 
 cares nothing about style, when in reality the style itself 
 shows that he regards it as of supreme importance. Ad- 
 mitting the obvious fact that, on the face of it, the style is 
 as straightforward, as little ornate as it is possible for a good 
 style to be, this critic proceeds to construct an ingenious 
 theory to show that deliberate austerity is the most potent, 
 literary drug yet devised to bemuse the imaginations of 
 readers. Every ancillary charm, it seems, is dourly and 
 ruthlessly threshed out of Shaw's style ; all emotional adjuncts 
 are eschewed ; there is an absence of metaphor ; exclamation 
 marks are lacking ; apostrophes are barred. Why ? Simply 
 and solely in order that the senses may be so intoxicated, 
 the imagination so dizzied by the effect of sheer speed achieved 
 by these economies, that the reason of the reader is willy- 
 nilly seduced by the argument, and becomes, as it were, a 
 mere plaything in the hands of the styHstic wizard. Ostensibly, 
 Shaw's style is prose written to be uttered on the rapid levels 
 of man to man speech ; in reality, it retains unsuspected all 
 those qualities of balance, rhythm and picturesqueness which 
 are unabashedly displayed in the orthodox periods of classical 
 oratory, and which sail into the mind's citadel by the more 
 important senses, while the colloquialisms keep the common 
 one engaged. Shaw's style is further compared to a level- 
 thrusting bar of steel and to a swift-driving mechanism, 
 while Shaw himself is envisaged as the romantic artist, whose 
 object is to please and debauch the senses of his audience, 
 not by the beauty of line, the depth of colour, the harmony 
 of chords, or the pomp of high sounding words, but by the 
 beauty and sensual ecstasy of sheer speed. Here, then, 
 you have a sample of the attitude of the academic mind to 
 a propagandist like Shaw. 
 
 Shaw saw this precious article, and I seem to remember 
 some remarks of his by way of commentary that appeared 
 in a review, or preface, or perhaps in a special article written
 
 196 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 in reply. Shaw bemoans the fact that people never will 
 take him seriously : he comes to us, he tells us, with a gospel 
 to preach, and people regard him as a licensed jester because 
 he makes jokes : he comes with a political theory to demon- 
 strate, and this fellow, Dixon Scott, hails him as a mere 
 literary stylist, a weaver of word tapestries because he writes 
 good EngUsh. 
 
 When, for instance, Shaw points out that the infant 
 mortality rate in a Bradford slum is just about double that 
 of a fashionable London suburb, or that the only way man 
 can recover from the effects of a civiHsation, whose main 
 achievement consists in the command it has won over nature, 
 is by retiring for long periods into the country where nature 
 is still in undisputed command over men, the response of the 
 academic mind, as typified by Mr. Dixon Scott, is to ejaculate, 
 ' What lucid presentation of fact,' ' What crushing and 
 mordant wit,' ' What unexpected irony,' ' What masterly 
 economy of material.' It is as if, says Shaw, a man on 
 hearing a cry of " Fire " were to call attention to the distinct 
 enunciation, the remarkable resonance, and the vibrant, bell- 
 like tones which characterised the voice, but beyond this 
 announcement of the aesthetic gratification imparted to his 
 sense of hearing, were to take no action in the matter. 
 
 ' You young whelp,' says Shaw in effect to Mr. Dixon 
 Scott, ' here am I telling you of scandals and infamies enough 
 to make any decent man's blood boil, and all the effect I have 
 is to draw your elegant attention to the excellent, literary 
 balance of my sentences. In God's name drop these aesthetic 
 fiddlesticks and tell me what you are going to do about it.' 
 Shaw's outburst was typical not of himself alone. The indigna- 
 tion aroused in all great artists by those who insist on 
 regarding them as the mere creators of beautiful or wonderful 
 things, finds perhaps its chief expression in the contempt 
 of one of the greatest of them all, for those who begged him 
 to work miracles. Knowing that men's minds are as sleepy 
 as their inquisitiveness is wide awake, he foresaw that they 
 would be only too ready to snatch at the slightest excuse 
 for forgetting the difficult message in the wonder of the 
 miracles that accompanied its delivery, just as in our day 
 Dixon Scott was ready enough to use his admiration for the
 
 THE CASE OF MR. SHAW 197 
 
 style as an excuse for shutting his intelhgence to the lesson 
 the style conveyed. 
 
 It is this question of style which constitutes, I think, 
 the clearest instance of that sacrifice of matter to form which 
 I have spoken of as characteristic of the academic mind. 
 And this sacrifice, as I have tried to show, derives both its 
 support and its sanction from that theory which regards a 
 work of art as possessing permanent and changeless value. 
 
 Summary of Preceding Argument. 
 
 Professor Cameron. A very interesting diatribe on 
 style ! But really it is highly questionable whether any body 
 of writers or critics holds the exaggerated views which the 
 necessity of strengthening your argument induces you to 
 attribute to them. Let us assume, however, that they do ; 
 you have still to establish the fact that the stylistic tendency 
 is harmful. And even if we assume this further proposition 
 to be established, does it follow that it is harmful in the special 
 sense that is relevant for your purpose ? 
 
 Anthony. In what sense do you mean ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. You hold, I believe, that the 
 Life Force in its conflict with matter and circumstance proceeds 
 by the method of trial and error. Any experiment, the 
 result of which retards its purpose instead of furthering it, 
 will, I take it, be harmful, and may in due course expect 
 to be scrapped. Now it seems that you regard insistence 
 on literary style as harmful in this way, at any rate in so 
 far as it obscures the significance of the matter the form 
 conveys : but you have not up to the present produced any 
 evidence in favour of this contention. 
 
 Anthony. One moment, please ! The occurrence of what 
 is harmful does not necessarily and always arise from mistakes 
 on the part of the Force ; from experiments that have 
 gone wrong. You see, my friend John is compelled to admit 
 the existence of free will in human beings. Not only does 
 the Life Force create instruments imperfectly adapted to its 
 purpose, but those instruments possess the capacity for 
 furthering purposes of their own which may well be incon- 
 sistent with it. This circumstance arises from the intrusion 
 of matter, which the power behind the Universe has to use
 
 198 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 as the medium in which to create its instruments. The 
 harmful and obstructive may therefore arise through human 
 free will. However, we are retracing ground which John 
 has already covered, and incidentally wandering from our 
 immediate subject. 
 
 I must now try to show, then, in what respects the theory 
 of art which you have propounded, and the literary tendencies 
 which it is used to sanction, are harmful. Let us consider 
 separately the effects of the type of art and literature in 
 question upon the writer and upon the reader or critic, 
 bearing in mind that what we have to say will apply in 
 an equal degree, mutatis mutandis, to the artist and to 
 his public, 
 
 I. The Effects of Art that Aims at Pleasing. 
 
 What, then, in the first place, is the effect of the academic 
 artist upon the public ? We agree that it is his function 
 to please them. Very well then, he must invent romances ! 
 
 Professor Cameron. Why must he necessarily invent 
 romances ? 
 
 Anthony. Because most men's lives being drab and 
 grey — lives whose tragedy is that nothing ever happens — the 
 artist who seeks only to please must portray lives that are 
 vivid and striking, in which the tragedy is that things will 
 not stop happening. When he is a good artist he writes 
 Treasure Island : when he is a bad one, detective stories in 
 the Boy's Own Paper. 
 
 By the same token he must give us stories of hectic and 
 passionate love, in which persons with impossible emotions 
 make sacrifices upon the altars of ridiculous affections. Why 
 again ? Because, you say, it is the business of the artist 
 to please. Most people's lives are loveless, or if they love, 
 people love like grocers and love for a few months ; yet most 
 of us are in love with love, and if we cannot get it in our lives, 
 we must get the next best thing to it in our books and pictures. 
 So the good writer pleases us with Sappho and Lorna Doone, 
 the bad one with The Way of an Eagle and The Rosary. Our 
 lives, again, are lives of prose : they consist of a buying of 
 things, a making of the money wherewith to buy them, and 
 a perpetual travelling to and from the places in which we
 
 EFFECTS OF ART THAT AIMS AT PLEASING 199 
 
 make it, to the places in which we consume what it buys, the 
 former being called cities and the latter suburbs. As we 
 spend about four-fifths of our time in obtaining the means 
 to make life possible and about one-fifth in living, in which 
 our lack of practice produces the inevitable result that we 
 bungle the business of Hfe altogether, and as we all insist 
 on leaving our offices to travel to our dormitories and our 
 dormitories to travel to our offices at the same time, with the 
 inevitable consequences of bustle and overcrowding, I leave 
 it to you to estimate how much of beauty and how much 
 of poetry clothe our everyday experience. 
 
 Men whose waking vision is bounded by bricks and mortar, 
 and whose lives are lives of hurry and prose, demand for 
 their pleasure and relaxation pictures of nature which are 
 called landscapes, and poems of elegance and grace which 
 are called sonnets and lyrics. Hence the artist whose business 
 it is, on your theory, to cater for the pubHc taste by producing 
 beauty, must keep up a perpetual output of pretty pictures 
 and pretty poems. 
 
 Now, having reduced the artist to the role of an enter- t 
 tainer only, what is the most that we can ask of him ? That [ 
 he should so refine our senses with beautiful pictures and ^ 
 beautiful music, that seeing and hearing, instead of remaining 
 a mere passive receptivity on the part of the senses, should 
 become consciously critical acts vigorously demanding fine 
 buildings, good furniture, suitable household utensils, and 
 pleasant sounds for their daily use and enjoyment, and 
 protesting equally vigorously against over -furnishing, over- 
 clothing, foul air, ugly sights, and inharmonious sounds. 
 At his best then, on your view, it is the function of the artist 
 by cultivating our senses, to help us to see more beauty in 
 the world, and so to put more beauty there for ourselves to 
 see. At his worst he becomes the mere satisfaction of an 
 appetite. He supplies the craving for romance and senti- 
 mentality engendered by the unnatural conditions of modem 
 civiUsation, much as the pastrycook supplies the appetite 
 for cakes, the products of the two being not dissimilar, except 
 that it is only fair to the pastrycook to admit that, while 
 his confections are compounded of good cream, butter, sugar 
 and eggs, the second-rate artist uses as his subject-matter
 
 200 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 nothing but an unwholesome hash of cheap emotions. Where 
 the real artist is like a chemist who produces to purge, the 
 second-rate artist is like a confectioner who produces to 
 please. 
 
 Now you will not, I imagine, be disposed to deny the 
 deleterious effect of this kind of art, the art of confectionery. 
 It can debauch a man's mind, enthral his senses and enfeeble 
 his imagination, until he comes to regard the world of romance 
 as a sort of glorified pleasure -garden set with amorous 
 intrigues. What is more, this kind of art and this view of 
 the function of art are deliberately encouraged by the academic 
 mind in general, and by our rulers in particular, because 
 the art of the confectioner acts as a narcotic, turning a man's 
 thoughts from effort to pleasure, and concentrating all his 
 energies upon the endeavour to obtain for himself the life 
 of amusement, which the heroes of his romantic novels have 
 led him to regard as an ideal. Just as the classics are used 
 to sate the appetite for thought and to divert curiosity for 
 the new into admiration of the old, so are poets and singers, 
 painters and pretty women, and all the appanages of the 
 romantic life employed to dope and drug the natural aspira- 
 tions of the young to realise the better world that might be, 
 and to charm them into a sensuous acquiescence in the 
 world that is. 
 
 What you will be less disposed to admit is that even 
 good art, when it makes the production of beauty its raison 
 d'etre, produces an effect which is not only not dissimilar, 
 but is even more harmful, in the sense that the best minds 
 and the most ardent spirits, which are soon cloyed to surfeit 
 by the sickly sweet confections of the romantic poet and 
 novelist, are often permanently led astray, and withdrawn 
 from the service of the Life Force, by the nobler productions 
 of the purely decorative artist. 
 
 The Worship of Women. 
 
 This subversion of purpose is achieved in a number of 
 
 '^ ways. Not the least important results from the fact that the 
 
 continual enjoyment of decorative art leads to the worship 
 
 of women. As a broad generalisation I would be prepared 
 
 to assert that all serious art which is not the vehicle of some
 
 THE WORSHIP OF WOMEN 201 
 
 evolutionary thrust of the Life Force, which is not, that is to 
 say, illustrative of a religion, or a spiritual representation of a 
 new conception of politics or morals, is concerned with the ideali- 
 sation of women ; with the result that a man who is led to 
 believe the beautiful myths that music and painting and poetry 
 have told him of woman, is tempted to devote his life to her 
 pursuit and cultivation, believing that in her alone is to be 
 found joy incarnate, when he should be going about the 
 business of the Life Force. And the woman, having the 
 function to fulfil for which the Force created her, is only 
 too ready to acquiesce in this state of affairs, and to utilise 
 the ingenious device of silence with which she has been 
 purposely endowed by the Force, to allow the man to mistake 
 the ideal visions of her beauty, purity and kindness, which 
 he has culled from his reading of romances, for reality, and 
 his own dreams of ambition and achievement for her's. But, 
 once the bait of beauty has been swallowed and the woman's 
 purpose fulfilled, she shows no compunction in disillusioning 
 the unfortunate idolater and is quite prepared to make his 
 life into a little hell of scolding and reproach, unless he is 
 willing to turn himself into a mere breadwinner for her 
 children, by consenting to do the work for which the world 
 is prepared to pay him, instead of insisting on following the 
 light which is in him. Now a man's inner light is simply his 
 awareness of the urge of the Life Force, prompting and directing 
 him to certain kinds of activity, and as the world is not only 
 not ready for such activity, but is determined on grounds 
 of conservatism to resist it as strenuously as it can, it follows 
 nine times out of ten that the world is much more likely to 
 put the pioneer of the Life Force into prison for following 
 his subversive impulses, than to repay him with the livelihood 
 which is necessary for the upkeep of his wife and children. 
 Of course when the man happens to be an artist, that is 
 to say a person whose inheritance from the Force is as direct 
 and powerful as that of the average woman, he will swallow 
 the bait and refuse to take the hook, enjoying love and beauty 
 as a recreation, yet refusing to allow them and the responsi- 
 bilities which their enjoyment brings in its train, to turn 
 him from his purpose. But for most the blandishments of 
 love and of romance prove too strong, and the would-be
 
 202 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 artist subsides into the breadwinner. And each time this 
 process occurs, each time a man falls a victim to poetry 
 and art, and by consequence to women whom poetry and 
 art have idealised for him, the academic mind may con- 
 gratulate itself on withdrawing yet one more recruit from 
 the band of those whom the Life Force has generated to 
 break through the bonds of the past and to pave the way 
 for the development of the future. 
 
 It happens sometimes that the shock of disillusionment, 
 which follows the substitution of the world of reality for 
 that of romance, is sufficiently violent to disgust even those 
 who are not first-rate artists in their own right with the life 
 of breadwinning. Such cases are normally those in which 
 the woman proves on close acquaintance to be devoid of all 
 natural attractions, except those with which the Life Force 
 has adventitiously endowed her. The emancipation of the 
 first-rate artist joined to such a spouse is a comparatively 
 easy process. Even the second-rater sometimes achieves it. 
 Thus it will be found that an abnormal proportion of the men 
 who have left their mark upon the world, the Socrates, the 
 Beethovens, the Newtons, the Merediths, were married to 
 scolds or drunkards, who, after first making the life of domestic 
 acquiescence intolerable, roundly abused their husbands for 
 their selfishness and unpractical idealism when they incon- 
 tinently left them, or insisted that their wives should share 
 the pittance which was all their refusal to do any work except 
 their own work could win for them. 
 
 In order that I may exonerate this excursion upon women 
 from the charge of a digression, let me just briefly run over 
 the steps which have led to it from our main theme. 
 
 The academic mind and the theory of art which it 
 countenances, encourage the production of decorative art, 
 insisting that it is the business of the artist to entertain and 
 not to teach. 
 
 One of the objects which this attitude is designed to serve 
 is the lulling of the discontents of the young, and the diverting 
 of their creative activities to the pursuit of ideals of beauty, 
 of love and of so-called art, by which is meant art which 
 glorifies beauty and love. 
 
 By this means inconvenient activities calculated to disturb
 
 THE WORSHIP OF WOMEN 203 
 
 the academic mind and to modify the structure of society 
 are banked down, much as if you were to stay a healthy 
 appetite for roast beef with a spoonful of treacle. 
 
 The methods by which decorative art achieves this result 
 are various. In general they consist in diverting a man's 
 attention to the life of the senses, thereby producing the 
 dilettante, who unfits himself for the serious purposes of life 
 by his pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp of beauty whether in 
 pictures, in music, in sculpture, in poetry, or in nature. More 
 particularly it is the effect of decorative art so to inflame 
 the imagination with the beauty which it attributes to woman, 
 that under its influence a man either ignores in her pursuit 
 the impulses which the Life Force has implanted in him, 
 or is deluded into the belief that woman will give strength 
 to his aim and inspiration to his teaching, whereby his effective- 
 ness in life will be increased. The belief that with a woman 
 at his side a man may do great things in the world, is a 
 common form of this delusion, which is, of course, seduously 
 supported by the woman. Sooner or later, of course, the 
 man is disillusioned ; but by the time he realises that he 
 is for the woman merely an instrument for winning bread 
 for her children, his ambition has departed and his revolu- 
 tionary ardour has cooled. Now I assert that this chain of 
 occurrences, which I cannot but regard as harmful from the 
 Life Force point of view, is strengthened and welded together 
 by that peculiar view of the function of the artist which you 
 hold, and which is exploited by the academic mind with 
 the objects I have described. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But if the artist may not please us under 
 pain of debauching our imagination and enfeebling our will 
 in the terrifying way you describe, what is the poor fellow 
 to do ? Would you confine art to the writing of tracts, and 
 the portrayal of pictorial hells ? And how are we to tell 
 in any one case whether the work of the artist is a true 
 embodiment of the purposes of the Life Force, or merely one 
 of those pleasant confections of emotion to which you have 
 referred so slightingly ? And why should we not enjoy 
 those confections anyway ? 
 
 Anthony. You ask a number of different questions, 
 Mr. Banks, most of which I have already answered impHcitly.
 
 204 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 As to why we should not enjoy the confections and be content, 
 my answer is that a permanent diet oi meringues turns a 
 man into a stick of sugar-candy, when it does not make him 
 sick. The Hfe that consists of the pursuit of pleasure is a 
 tiring life : and the art that aims solely at pleasing by the 
 representation of beauty is in the end a tiring art. Slavery 
 to beauty, like slavery to pleasure, is intolerable servitude, 
 the only kind of slavery that is at all bearable being slavery 
 to the purposes of the Life Force. Literature that disturbs 
 and deranges our ideas, that hints a new morality, aspires to a 
 new deity, or suggests a new conception of personal relations, 
 may not be pleasing in the strict sense of the word, but it 
 is never tiring : the proof of which is that Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress, an austere work, difficult to follow and demanding 
 concentration, survives as a second bible, whereas the plays 
 of Etheredge and Wycherley, whose sole aim is to please by 
 variations upon the themes of sensual intrigue, are unknown 
 outside the libraries of connoisseurs in pornographic literature. 
 
 The Marks of Great Art. 
 
 As to how the art which expresses the purpose of the 
 Life Force is to be distinguished from imitative art which 
 seeks only to please by reflecting the present, there is no 
 certain mark of differentiation. In general it is left to time 
 to demonstrate the difference between the propaganda of 
 the day which survives as many ages as it takes mankind 
 to learn its lesson, and the work of beauty produced as a 
 joy for all time which does not survive the season that gave 
 it birth. A fair index to the quality of any work of art may, 
 however, be sought in the attitude of the academic mind. 
 I have already noted that the academic mind regards the 
 artist as a sort of refined entertainer, whose function it is 
 to please and to divert. But once the power to please, which 
 all artists possess, is transformed into the power to annoy, 
 the academic mind becomes hostile. For where the artist 
 exercises the power to annoy, he does so in virtue of the fact 
 that his art is the vehicle of new thought. Compare the 
 panegyrics lavished upon the first two sonatas and the first 
 symphony of Beethoven, in which he gloriously imitated
 
 THE MARKS OF GREAT ART 205 
 
 Haydn, with the uniformly hostile reception of the Eroica 
 which broke new ground. 
 
 I have had occasion at several stages in to-day's discussion 
 and in that of yesterday to draw attention to this antagonism 
 of the academic mind to fresh developments of the Life Force, 
 the reasons for it, and the numerous devices in education and 
 in literary and artistic criticism in which it expresses itself. 
 The academic mind is the mind of old men : its stock of 
 imagination and impulse being exhausted, it is impervious to 
 their manifestations in others. Thus in the emergence of 
 new ideas it can see only a development which threatens its 
 own position. Being too inelastic to assimilate them, its only 
 course is to stigmatise them as erroneous in the world of thought, 
 just as in the sphere of music and pictorial art it denounces 
 as bad taste such modern developments as are expressed in 
 the Cubist movement or the music of Stravinsky. 
 
 But just as the hostihty of the academic mind is the surest 
 guarantee of vitality in the movement it dislikes, so is the 
 process by which that hostility fades into acquiescence a sign 
 that the movement in question has fulfilled its purpose. Such 
 a development signifies that current thought has absorbed 
 the new set of ideas and readjusted itself in consequence. 
 The earlier representatives of the academic mind, overborne, 
 as they usually if not invariably are, by an authentic 
 evolutionary push, are succeeded by those who are only too 
 glad to give their benediction to the artistic development 
 which their predecessors ruthlessly persecuted. Why ? 
 Because the necessary readjustment of the community's stock 
 of ideas having taken place, the vitality of the art which effects 
 the readjustment is spent. Thought signs its own death 
 warrant when it succeeds in imposing itself upon society, and 
 the paradoxes of yesterday become the commonplaces of 
 to-day. Thus it is the Nemesis of those who first tell the truth, 
 that we think after a few years that we have always known 
 what they have told us. 
 
 And when the new truth has found its place among the 
 common stock of ideas, when its message has ceased to be 
 a message, there is left only the form in which that message 
 was delivered. The form is usually attractive, it must needs 
 have been to have acted as a suitable vehicle for the message ;
 
 206 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 but that does not mean that in the beauty of the form lay the 
 value of the art. It does, however, enable us to understand 
 why at this stage the academic mind can afford to abandon 
 its hostihty, and, since the teeth of the new development have 
 been drawn by the acceptance of its matter, to bestow a 
 benediction upon its form. The form will now be useful to 
 strengthen the barricade which is perpetually being erected 
 against the intrusion of the new, a barricade of which, as 
 we have seen, the classics is the foundation. 
 
 An amusing instance of this process has recently occurred 
 in connection with the plays of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. 
 I am sorry to be compelled so frequently to refer to him, 
 but as he is one of the very few artists of our time, he must 
 needs be perpetually in request as an example. 
 
 I need not recount in detail the antagonism which Shaw's 
 Plays and Prefaces provoked in the early days. He was so 
 generally abused as an anarchist in politics, a free lover in 
 morals and an atheist in religion, that to the middle classes 
 he came to seem a kind of bogey, a living embodiment of 
 Satan, a conception which, it must be confessed, was not 
 belied by his appearance. One play in particular, " Man and 
 Superman," written in 1903 and produced in igo6, was furiously 
 denounced not only for the general countenance it was sup- 
 posed to give to immorality, but for the topsy-turvydom of the 
 sex relationships it envisaged. You may remember that, fol- 
 lowing Schopenhauer, it represented woman as in active pur- 
 suit of man, who, after ineffectual struggles, succumbs in the 
 end to her superior sex strategy, much as the fly is entrapped in 
 the web of the spider. This notion was regarded at the time 
 as a flagrant contradiction of the facts and an insult to the 
 modesty of women. Quite recently the play, in company 
 with a number of other plays by Mr. Shaw, has been reproduced 
 at the Hampstead Repertory Theatre. It at once became 
 apparent that the mind of the community, upon which the 
 theory expressed in 1906 had been working unconsciously 
 in the interval, had moved up to the level of thought at which 
 the theory had been conceived, with the result that the ideas 
 which had previously been too far in advance of the community 
 to appear even moderately rational, were now accepted as 
 commonplaces with which the audience were only too familiar.
 
 THE MARKS OF GREAT ART 207 
 
 The paradoxical Shaw was in fact merely dull. The inevitable 
 consequence followed : the academic mind at once recognised 
 Shaw as an artist, and began to acclaim the constructive 
 power, the character drawing and the witty dialogue of his 
 plays. 
 
 By this token we may know that the message of Shaw 
 has been delivered and that the matter of his play has spent 
 its force. All great art is subjected to this process. It is 
 anathematised when it is new and accepted when it is dull. 
 It has something to say to its own generation which could have 
 no special import for any other, and having said it, subsides 
 into the commonplace. And herein is exempHfied the difference 
 between first and second-rate art. The purpose of second-rate 
 art is, as we have seen, to please the senses ; hence, until 
 surfeit supervenes, the same stimulus will invariably produce 
 the same effect. But first-rate art loses its effect. Its appeal 
 will vary and diminish with lapse of time, so that heresy 
 becomes platitude and revolutionary thought conventional 
 dogma. Great art is for an age and relative to the purposes 
 of that age : second-rate art can perform its pastrycook's 
 function with equal effect in any age. 
 
 This completes what I have to say about the effects of art 
 conceived according to your theory upon readers, spectators 
 and audience. Let us now proceed to consider its effect upon 
 the artist. 
 
 Objections to the Application of the Life Force Theory. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I really cannot allow you to 
 continue further without interruption. You are sufficiently 
 acquainted with the position I hold to be well aware that your 
 whole attitude can only provoke in me the profoundest disagree- 
 ment ; nor need I enlarge upon that. But some of the state- 
 ments you have recently made, and the more extreme positions 
 to which the logical development of your fallacious premises 
 has led you, cannot be passed without comment, if this 
 discussion is to retain the form of a discussion instead of 
 degenerating into a monologue. 
 
 Anthony. By all means interrupt. I shall be dehghted 
 with the opportunity of enlarging upon my theory which 
 criticism will provide.
 
 208 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 Professor Cameron. Not only is your position open to 
 objections of a general character, some of which I have indicated, 
 but it becomes ludicrously untrue when applied to notoriously 
 great artists. 
 
 It is the business of the artist to teach, you say : beauty 
 of form, delineation of character, ingenious contrivance of 
 plot, production of atmosphere, all these are of negligible 
 value, unless a lesson or purpose can be detected in the artist's 
 work. Also you say that, when this alleged teaching has been 
 accepted, art has performed its function and virtue goes out 
 of it. And the theory flatly contradicts the facts. What in 
 the name of goodness I should like to know is the lesson that 
 Edgar Allen Poe has to teach us in his Tales of Mystery and 
 Imagination ? Where is the propaganda in Jane Austen ? 
 The one rouses the emotions of horror, the other portrays with 
 scrupulous fidehty and in perfect taste the manners of 
 Enghsh country society. Not a hint of an axe to grind in the 
 work of either ! I pitch on these two examples of great artists 
 at random ; but they show in what an unfortunate dilemma 
 your theory lands you : either you are compelled to invent 
 some fictitious doctrine with the propagation of which to identify 
 the gentle Jane, or you are compelled to deny that she was 
 great. Each conclusion appears equally absurd. 
 
 Anthony. Certainly I do not deny the greatness. But 
 I cannot understand your difficulty about the teaching. Take 
 Poe. The world, it is agreed, is full of horror : horrors of war, 
 horrors of industriahsm, horrors of cruelty of parents to children, 
 of white men to black men, of men to animals. The normal 
 man is so used to these horrors, his sense of humanity gets so 
 blunted and dulled, not only by custom and familiarity but 
 by outbreaks of legalised cruelty such as the late war, that he 
 scarcely notices their existence. If he does, he cannot but 
 find excuses for what he is used to. Now Poe's tales, by 
 concentrating our attention upon horrors to which we are 
 not accustomed, make us realise the significance of those to 
 which we are. We may say that it is only by presenting the 
 horrible, which is also bizarre, that you excite man's repulsion 
 to the horrible. But once such repulsion has been aroused, 
 it may be excited again by the horrible in whatever form it 
 presents itself, even when it does so in the form to which
 
 THE MESSAGE OF JANE AUSTEN 209 
 
 habit has accustomed us : and repulsion may result in action 
 to end what repels. It is possible, if not likely, that the effect 
 of Poe may be to quicken what is called the social conscience. 
 We shall protest the more vigorously against cruelty and 
 ugliness wherever we meet them after a reading of his works. 
 
 As for Jane Austen, I admit that at the first glance she 
 might well appear the most difficult example of a great artist, 
 from the point of view of my theory, that you could have 
 chosen. She is so pure and passionless, she appears so entirely 
 to accept and approve of the opinions and ways of life of those 
 about her. She was, it would seem, at once the prop and the 
 mirror of the rather limited outlook on the world that was 
 permitted to an English country gentlewoman. But on closer 
 inspection I think that a definite attitude towards this world, 
 if not a deliberate design in its adoption, begins to reveal 
 itself. There is a continual if restrained protest against 
 pretentiousness and hypocrisy in whatever form they are 
 presented. Ostentation and display are everywhere censured, 
 and as you continue your reading of her books you find that 
 there grows upon you, through numberless hints and implica- 
 tions, a consciousness that your author is pleading for greater 
 simplicity and less affectation in contemporary manners and 
 customs. The persons of whom she approves, Elizabeth 
 Bennett, Emma, and Fanny and Edward in Mansfield Park, 
 are persons of little or no ceremony : and they share a hatred 
 for the affectation and hollow politeness of others. 
 
 Yes, Jane Austen may, I think, be regarded as the satirist 
 of excess, an unconscious subscriber to the Greek doctrine of 
 ix-qhev ayav, who chose to draw her lessons of moderation and 
 simplicity from the portrayal of manners rather than of passions, 
 and to censure an excess of modishness leading to affectation, 
 where others have depicted an excess of feeling leading to 
 disaster. 
 
 Professor Cameron. As in Wuthering Heights, for 
 instance ? 
 
 Anthony. As in Wuthering Heights, where the authoress, 
 following in the footsteps of the Greeks, seems to have wished 
 to show us the Nemesis that waits on unbridled passion, and 
 the mockery of the gods for the ambitions of the self-willed. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But what can you say of purely 
 
 14
 
 210 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 realistic and descriptive works, that yet achieve artistic 
 eminence ? Take a work Hke Doughty 's Arabia Deserta, a 
 record of travel in a strange land, or Arnold Bennett's Old 
 Wives' Tale, which rests content with the portrayal of the 
 most minute incidents in the lives of commonplace persons 
 passed in a commonplace town, eschews comment, draws no 
 moral, and aims solely at painting a complete picture, as it 
 were of still life, for our contemplation. It is a picture too 
 that suggests no questions to the mind of the observer, and 
 most assuredly conveys no lessons : it is like the picture of 
 an interior by a great Dutch artist. And yet the Old Wives' 
 Tale is a great work. 
 
 Anthony. I agree. And works of such a character 
 occupy a very important place in my theory. Take Doughty's 
 Arabia Deserta, or if you prefer it, any other ol the great 
 Picaresque romances in which the author seasons incident with 
 sage comment upon hfe. Have they not the power of reveahng 
 'one to oneself ? Do they not tell you something about yourself 
 that you never knew before, so that when such and such an 
 ) incident is passed in review you say, " Of course that is exactly 
 what I should have felt or said." 
 
 Now there is a sense in which all great books have this 
 effect of revealing the reader to himself. In reading, let us 
 say, Moby Dick, it is not only the mind of the author with which 
 you become acquainted ; you become acquainted with your 
 own, and in enlarging your consciousness of yourself you are 
 at the same time enriching it. For what after all is the object 
 of reading unless it produces some change in you and in your 
 attitude to life, unless it enables you to see in life more scope 
 for your sympathy and understanding, and helps you to bring 
 to it more knowledge both of yourself and of others ? 
 
 It is a commonplace that a piece of Crown Derby china, 
 which, to the ordinary eye, is merely an inefficiently fragile article 
 of domestic use, reveals to the connoisseur a grace, a beauty, 
 and a delicacy of form and colouring which transports him with 
 modified rapture. The effect of reading great fiction j)f_ the 
 realistic tyjpe is not "dissHniTar; 'Where previously you' saw 
 only a drab worlH "peopled "l)y unworthy, uninteresting and 
 middle-class persons, you now behold a world of intensely 
 individual and various human beings, living lives which are
 
 THE FUNCTIONS OF REALISTIC ART 211 
 
 to them the most supremely interesting things in the world, 
 and deriving, like Sophia and Mr. Povey, as much excitement 
 from the unexpected extraction of a loose and aching tooth 
 as Wellington can ever have experienced from his victory at 
 Waterloo. 
 
 It is the function of the great artist to communicate this 
 excitement to you : to invest the world of commonplace 
 with the glamour of the unexpected. It is easy enough to 
 idealise things that don't happen ; the difficulty is to idealise 
 those that do. And, when the realistic artist succeeds in this 
 achievement, the effect which he produces upon the reader 
 is twofold. 
 
 In the first place, by portraying for him the reactions of 
 people similar to himself in situations of the kind which occur 
 in his own life, the artist directs the reader's attention, whether 
 by virtue of the likeness or of the difference of those reactions, 
 to experiences of his own ; that is to say, he reveals the reader 
 to himself. Secondly, the reader, in bringing to life a conscious- 
 ness enriched with this knowledge of the lives and feelings of 
 others, will look out upon the world with a wider sympathy and 
 a deeper understanding, prompting him to assist in the task 
 of removing those anomalies and injustices, whose harsh 
 incidence has occasioned the scope for his sympathy and the 
 need for his understanding. 
 
 The Function of Art in Increasing Self-knowledge. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, I recognise the second of these 
 effects, if indeed it is an effect, as one upon which your theory 
 may legitimately pride itself. But what about the first ? 
 What is all this talk about revealing the self to the self, of 
 increasing self-consciousness and so on ? It has been slipped 
 in incidentally ; yet it savours rather of my view, which insists 
 on a contemplative attitude towards works of art, than of yours, 
 which assesses the value of such works only in relation to their 
 effects on human action ? Why after all increase self-lcnow- 
 ledge, since the result is usually to diminish efficiency and 
 resolution in action ? Need I quote Hamlet ? 
 
 Anthony. No, you need not ! I am sorry, though, that 
 I did not announce this inclusion of self-revelation in my scheme 
 with a sufficient flourish of trumpets. But I assure you that
 
 212 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 no mental sleight of hand was intended. It is a subject upon 
 which I am reluctant to speak now, since it belongs more 
 properly to the sphere of metaphysics, and would take us 
 far from our present topic. 
 
 Let me, however, attempt to justify what I have said by 
 briefly mentioning two ways in which it follows from my theory 
 that increase of self-consciousness is a good, leaving a more 
 detailed discussion of the matter until you join issue with John 
 on questions of philosophy proper. In the first place it was, 
 you will remember, one of the tenets of M. Geley with whose 
 views my friend has largely identified himself, that the main 
 purpose of evolution was to evolve from complete unconscious- 
 ness to complete consciousness. This change is effected by 
 a gradual enlargement of the area of consciousness in individuals. 
 The enlargement of consciousness in one incarnation gives 
 rise in the next to the emergence of new faculties and powers, 
 which have been stored in the unconscious during the inter- 
 vening period. Increase of self-knowledge furthers, therefore, 
 the purpose of evolution. 
 
 Secondly, the experimental character of the methods of 
 the Life Force cannot too often be insisted upon. We say that 
 it proceeds by the method of trial and error, but there is a 
 predominance of error. Man appears to be the high-water 
 mark of the Life Force in the way of creative effort up to the 
 present, and man in virtue of his brain may perhaps be regarded 
 by the Force as a source of temporary congratulation. Yet 
 what a wretched brain it is ! How it thwarts the purposes 
 of evolution ! How it raises up obstructions to itself merely 
 to destroy them ! How it refuses to face reality, dressing it 
 up in the trappings of idealism and romance, and then bruising 
 itself against the brick wall it has so striven to disguise ! Look 
 at war ! The waste, the stupidity, ignorance, cruelty and folly 
 of it ! Yet up to the present the main use to which man has 
 put his superior brain is that of perfecting means for the 
 destruction of other men. Hence the necessity for evolving 
 a brain which will be more amenable to the purposes of life and 
 capable of higher powers of organisation in its service. To 
 increase and to perfect the brain is the work of the philosopher, 
 and the method usually adopted hitherto for the achievement 
 of this end is the method of self-contemplation. A mind which
 
 HOW ART INCREASES SELF-KNOWLEDGE 213 
 
 possesses increased knowledge of itself and of its powers may 
 use its knowledge to increase its powers, and the more 
 powerful the mind the more serviceable the weapon. 
 
 In these two ways I have endeavoured briefly to indicate the 
 importance of self-knowledge on my theory, and if the theory 
 be admitted, you must, I think, grant the value of that type 
 of art which has the effect of increasing it. 
 
 The art I have in mind is, as I have said, the art of the 
 realistic novel as embodied in the works of men like Wells and 
 Bennett, and in a lesser degree of Dickens, of Dumas, and of 
 Thackeray. And with this type of art we may, I think, rank 
 the paintings of the great Dutch school : those pictures of quiet, 
 cool interiors, peopled by everyday men and women engaged 
 in the performance of humdrum tasks in perfect tranquillity 
 and fatuous solemnity. How like ourselves ! 
 
 Is the Great Artist a Visionary ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. There may be something to say 
 for this function you ascribe to the realist. But he is after 
 all only an artist in a minor key. The great men of art, the 
 Michelangelos, the Beethovens, the Miltons, the Shelleys 
 and the Dantes were not realists : they cared as little about the 
 details of commonplace lives as they cared to improve or 
 reform those lives by delivering propagandist messages. They 
 were visionaries and dreamers, and in pursuing their shining 
 vision, they created for us a glorified world to which mankind 
 has always been anxious to escape from the sordid worries and 
 cares of the real one. 
 
 Meredith's women are like no women who ever lived, and 
 their conversation is impossibly brilliant ; but in this very 
 unreality lies the source of their charm. And when Meredith 
 spun these women from the loom of his vivid imagination, he 
 wished only to express in words his vision of the possibilities 
 that were latent in human intercourse, to create glorified 
 beings in a world unlike because more brilliant than his own, 
 but not to mirror his own, nor even, at any rate explicitly, 
 to change it. 
 
 The artist in fact, in virtue of his special gifts, sees a vision 
 which is denied to ordinary men. In my view that vision 
 is no fantastic illusion, but a seeing through to the reaHty that
 
 214 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 underlies the world normally presented to our senses. The 
 business of art is simply to express this artist's vision of the 
 real world that lies behind and beyond so that it may be 
 communicable to other men. If the vision is successfully 
 conveyed, it will refine men's understanding, deepen their 
 insight, and enable them to attain to a view of the real which 
 more closely approximates to that of the artist. 
 
 In this sense, if you like, the artist is a propagandist, 
 although he has no ulterior purpose in his creations. But you 
 will observe that propagandist or not, and I dislike the word, 
 he is essentially a visionary and dreamer whose eyes are fixed 
 not on appearances but on reality, not on this world but on 
 the next. The artist is, in fact, the bridge that joins the two. 
 
 Anthony. I am afraid that what 3/ou have just said 
 appears to me to embody one of the most profound misappre- 
 hensions to which persons who hold your view are hable. 
 The statement that the artist is a visionary or dreamer may be 
 true of second-rate artists, whose only purpose is to entertain. 
 This object they can most easily achieve by providing a refuge 
 from the everyday world, and placing their scene of action, 
 let us say on a South Sea island, or in a Utopia of the future. 
 And there is a sense in which such men, or at any rate 
 the best of them, may be called dreamers. Living in a world 
 of reverie and imagination, they spin from it fantasies and 
 romances which may come to them to seem more real than the 
 world around them. The Shaving of Shagpat is such a work, 
 the Crock of Gold is another, Deirdre another. And since the 
 interest of the author lies in the imaginative world he has 
 created, instead of in the world in which his body lives, he may 
 be called a dreamer in that he dreams away his life. But how 
 profoundly different is the real artist ! His dreams of what 
 might be are not valued for themselves, they are valued 
 merely as a means to the modification of what is. For where 
 the romancer is content to dream his life, the real artist 
 insists on living his dreams. 
 
 And the true artist has no ideals : he is pulled by no shining 
 vision in whose pursuit his life is spent. He is merely pushed 
 from behind by a creative force which leaves him no option 
 but to do its will. At the bidding of that force he must create 
 and teach. Yet in so doing he can give no conscious or rational
 
 IS THE GREAT ARTIST A VISIONARY? 215 
 
 account of his activities. His pictures, his books, his parables 
 and sermons are, in fact, the outcome of an inspiration of which 
 he can give absolutely no account, beyond saying that he has 
 it. Once get it out of your head that the artist is drawn 
 forward by the compelling power of some vision or ideal, 
 once realise that he is pushed from behind instead of being 
 pulled from in front, and many of his characteristics, for which 
 you must be at a loss to account, become immediately 
 explicable. 
 
 Thus your great artist is primarily remarkable for his power 
 of seeing reality — and by reality I mean the reality which is 
 known to common-sense — as it is. It is this power which 
 enables him to penetrate current shams and conventions. 
 He possesses the faculty of discerning men's desires, hopes, 
 imaginations and ambitions, under the cloak of hypocrisy 
 with which they are accustomed to conceal themselves from 
 their neighbours. It is from this penetrating vision into the 
 real, this concentration upon the actual, that great artists derive 
 the power they possess of going direct to the truth, and 
 enshrining it in words that are as simple as the truth they 
 convey. Hence the parables of Christ, the short stories of 
 Tolstoy, the sayings of Buddha, which by a homely analogy, 
 a thrust of irony, or a striking image, strip away the husk of 
 convention from life, and bring their hearers face to face with 
 truth. And not only with truth, but with new truth : for these 
 are the men who have the power to open up for mankind new 
 horizons : and they possess this power largely in virtue of 
 their faculty of concentrated vision on the actual. 
 
 Take the first great artist in this illustrious line, who, at 
 the bidding of evolution's prompting, opened up new possibilities 
 for the race. The ape, who first abandoned the trees, forewent 
 the use of his tail, gave up his crouching position, and elevated 
 himself from all fours into a precarious eminence on two legs, 
 was making possible the whole subsequent course of human 
 development. Yet he was no idealist. He did not envisage 
 his progeny of Shakespeares and Napoleons, and deny himself 
 the use of his tail to make their existence possible ; he was 
 moved simply by an irresistible push from behind, which made 
 him substitute raw meat for his vegetarian diet. The ape 
 concentrated upon the actual, and, by dint of his superior
 
 216 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 power of seeing reality as it was, contrived the necessary 
 measures to effect the substitution while his fellows were still 
 swinging in the trees. 
 
 This may be rank, bad biology for all I know, but most 
 decidedly it is the method of the great artist. Christ, Buddha, 
 Marx, Swift, Ibsen, Bunyan, Shaw ; these are the men who have 
 moved and changed the world, and they are no dreamers of 
 dreams. A clear cut and definite vision of the real as it is, is 
 made the basis of an indictment of that real ; this indictment 
 becomes in turn a starting-off point for a description of the 
 remedy which the evil demands, and the account of the remedy 
 is then elaborated into a sketch of the real as it might be. 
 The method, you observe, is as different as possible from that 
 pursued by the artist as you envisaged him. Your artist 
 spins from his own imagination fantasies which have no 
 necessary relation to life, and no object except to delight those 
 who read them : mine uses his peculiarly intense vision of 
 the actual to illumine the path along which the actual may 
 become better than itself. Your artist has no interest in the 
 real : mine has that intense, practical interest which bids him 
 change it. Yours is an idealist : mine is a mere tool. Yours 
 hitches his waggon to a star : mine drives his slowly over the 
 earth, content if he can reach as far as the next field. Yours 
 pleases, mine annoys. Yours is a parasite upon the society 
 that exists, mine is the midwife for the society that is to be. 
 
 Thus the great artist, as I conceive him, is at once a photo- 
 grapher and a visionary. But he photographs the real only 
 to show up its defects, and, in so doing, to make men desire 
 something better. That is why the early works of the greatest 
 artists are almost all of an austerely realistic character. The 
 artist is a photographer first, with a penchant for ugly subjects. 
 Why is this ? 
 
 Because only the mystic can afford to be a realist. Upon 
 the ordinary man the world impinges closely and harshly : 
 too closely to allow him the capacity, too harshly to permit 
 him the inclination to paint it. We dare not, most of us, 
 paint the world as we see it, for fear of fixing the disagreeable 
 picture permanently on our mind's eye. We desire to escape 
 it, and delight therefore in the works of beauty and romance 
 commended by your theory. It is because we are realists,
 
 IS THE GREAT ARTIST A VISIONARY? 217 
 
 our vision being bounded by the actual and our lives confined 
 within the horizon of the commonplace, that in literature and 
 fantasy we seek romance. 
 
 But the case of the artist is different. Creating at the 
 behest of some power which he can neither explain nor control, 
 and finding reality in his feeling of oneness with the power 
 that works within him, he can dare to paint the world as he 
 knows it. Instead of being obsessed, overcome, stifled and 
 cloyed with his environment, he knows himself to be inde- 
 pendent of it, and can depict it impartially from without. It is 
 because he has a real world of his own in which his inner life 
 is passed, that he can venture without fear of infection accu- 
 rately to portray that of his fellows. Thus the greatest realistic 
 work proceeds from and is conditioned by the workings of the 
 Force behind evolution, as completely as that work which, 
 more obviously inspired, acts as a signpost to the future. 
 
 But I fear that I have once again been led into digression, 
 though, in this case, the fault was yours. You protested that 
 the artist was merely a visionary or dreamer : that his 
 concern was not with the existing world, and that it was absurd 
 therefore to regard him as charged with a conscious mission 
 to change it. I was forced in reply to point to the obvious 
 fact that the great men who had changed the face of society, 
 so far from being visionaries or dreamers, were hard-headed, 
 practical people, gifted with a peculiarly penetrating vision of 
 the present. It is this power of seeing what exists as it is, as 
 much as the capacity for conceiving the future as it might be, 
 which has enabled the greatest artists to appeal to and to 
 move the hearts of men. Yet it must not be supposed that 
 the pitiless realism, which characterises great men, is an expres- 
 sion of something other than the Life Force or that it is self- 
 created. It is, on the contrary, sprung from and dependent 
 upon the continual urge of the Force, since it is only those, who 
 are the servants of a reality more complete than the set of 
 appearances which make up the real for the ordinary man, 
 who have the power and the desire to depict those appear- 
 ances for what they are. Only the artist who has his own 
 world of romance for escape, can endure to paint the world of 
 the slum and the suburb. 
 
 But these remarks were all of them, I am afraid, digressive.
 
 218 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 and it is high time to tackle that aspect of our subject, which 
 will, so far as I am concerned, bring our discussion to a close. 
 Mr. Banks. What may that be ? I should have thought 
 that you had already exhausted all that could be said on the 
 relations of the artist to the Life Force. 
 
 II. The Effect of Art that Aims at Pleasing upon 
 the Artist. 
 
 Anthony. Very nearly ; but there is one matter that 
 we have still omitted to consider. I have spoken of the effect 
 of art conceived according to the standards of the academic 
 mind upon the reader or spectator : I have still to consider 
 its effect upon the artist, and to suggest by implication the 
 contrary effect of art conceived according to my theory. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Even on this point little enough 
 remains to be said. We have each described more than once 
 the function and position of the artist in relation to our theories, 
 and we have each failed lamentably to convince the other. 
 
 Anthony. Yes. But have we mentioned the effect upon 
 the artist of the application of our theories ? Come ! The 
 point is a new one and is worth considering. I promise you 
 it shall not take us long. We want to describe how the artist 
 whose work is carried out according to your prescription is 
 affected thereby, and for this purpose we will take a concrete 
 instance 
 
 Sometime after the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 there was published Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a work 
 which has been a delight to the academic mind ever since. 
 I need not describe its character, the store of curious knowledge 
 it enshrines, its unblushing digressions, its bookishness, and 
 plundering of mediaeval pedants and charlatans for saws 
 and recipes, moral maxims and political platitudes, entomo- 
 logical observations and mythological science. What is 
 important for my purpose is that this book, a famous and a 
 great book by most standards, took Burton between twenty 
 and thirty years to write ; and the writing of it is usually 
 considered to be an achievement of which any man would be 
 proud. I say usually, because on my theory it is obvious that 
 such a work can possess little value. It sheds no new light 
 upon problems of morals, of politics, or of human relationship ;
 
 EFFECT OF ART THAT AIMS AT PLEASING 219 
 
 it is not in any sense original ; it is rather a museum of the 
 past, into which the author has striven to pack all the curiosities 
 of thought and feeling which unremitting research has revealed 
 to him. In a word, it looks backward instead of forward. 
 Clearly a book, to which only those who believe the value of 
 knowledge to be permanent, even when that knowledge 
 dissolves on examination into myth, can apply the epithet 
 great. 
 
 Upon the compilation of such a work, then, according to 
 your theory, but not according to mine, the author should have 
 spent happy years of pride and effort, knowing that he was 
 handing down to posterity an imperishable storehouse of 
 curious lore and out-of-the-way learning. 
 
 What are the facts ? It so happens that Burton has 
 strangely impregnated this mass of accumulated detail which 
 forms the Anatomy with the flavour of his own personality ; 
 and it is probably this personal element, which runs through 
 the whole like a single thread in a parti-coloured web, which 
 has so endeared the work to subsequent scholars. What does 
 it reveal ? A fine, magnanimous spirit chafing at the waste of 
 his own life. A disappointed idealist who, finding that the 
 world offers no better scope for his talents than in the collection 
 of the rubbish of antiquity, has recourse, after the habit of 
 such men, to a soured cynicism which his natural kindliness 
 renders difficult to maintain. He is an educated man ; he 
 has knowledge, talents and attainments, but he cannot avoid 
 the belief, my behef mark you, that it is the business of know- 
 ledge, talents and attainments to 'make some practical difference 
 in the world, to improve the material welfare of mankind, 
 to diminish the popular ignorance. And because he cannot 
 avoid this belief, he rails against the useless pedantry to which 
 he is condemned. For he has no illusions about his own work : 
 he is fully conscious of the futility of the huge labour he has 
 undertaken, and the resentment which he feels against the 
 destiny which confines him to the sterile, intensive culture of 
 the University, when he might be spreading the light of his 
 attainments in the world, is sufficiently marked to justify the 
 belief that the Melancholy his mighty volume is chiefly 
 concerned to dissect is his own. 
 
 Now I maintain that this state of mind in Burton, and
 
 220 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 more especially this attitude to his work, sprang directly from 
 the consciousness of waste on the part of a creative mind 
 condemned by circumstances to sterility 
 
 Professor Cameron. May I ask what is your evidence 
 for the extreme melancholy you attribute to Burton ? I 
 always thought of him as a genial, happy, kindly old soul. 
 
 Anthony, You would ; your theory requires it. But the 
 evidence is scattered everywhere through his own work. I 
 have a copy here. Listen for instance to this : " We that are 
 University men, like so many hide-bound calves in a pasture, 
 tarry out our time, wither away as a flower ungathered in a 
 garden, and are never used ; or, as so many candles, illumine 
 ourselves alone, obscuring one another's light, and are not 
 discerned here at all, the least of which translated to a dark 
 room or some country benefice where it might shine apart, 
 would give a fair light and be seen over all." 
 
 Now I maintain that this complaint of Burton's was typical 
 of the malaise that affects all men of creative spirit, who, being 
 condemned to the academic life, find their creative inspiration 
 confined within the boundaries set by the academic mind. 
 The academic mind breeds a fear of life, especially of what is 
 new in life, and many a don, who chooses to purchase security 
 at the expense of adventure, finds to his cost that he has 
 atrophied his creative powers, violated his artistic conscience, 
 and doomed his efforts to futility. In Burton's case the 
 inhibitions demanded by the circumstances of his life amounted 
 almost to what the psychoanalyst would term a complex : 
 he wished to marry, but he could not ; he wished to travel, 
 but he dared not ; above all he longed for free, mental adventure 
 and speculation, that the power, which he felt continuously 
 urging him forward, might be given its chance through experi- 
 ment to bring forth something new into the world ; yet he 
 was obhged by the hostility of the academic mind to waste 
 his talents and his energy in poking about among the rubbish 
 of the past, and by perpetuating those idle thoughts of antiquity 
 which men had long since outgrown, to erect a barrier agamst 
 the newer manifestations of that Force, into whose service it 
 was his inmost wish to enter. For men have for three centuries 
 tumbled over themselves in admiration of the Anatomy. 
 Because of Burton's Anatomy much energy and interest have
 
 EFFECT OF ART THAT AIMS AT PLEASING 221 
 
 been abstracted from the service of the Life Force ; men's 
 vision of the future has been dimmed by their deHght in the 
 past, and new works have come still-born into the world for 
 lack of recognition and encouragement. The Anatomy of 
 Melancholy is a monument to a pitiful lack of true occupation, 
 and its completion produced in its author no feeling but that 
 of contempt for its futility. The production of what is merely 
 learned or merely beautiful is, I feel assured, inevitably 
 attended by such feelings. The production of beauty or 
 learning for their own sake has mainly flourished in ages of 
 decay, such as the present, when the size of the State offered 
 no opportunity for effective action in the world of affairs. 
 During the profound peace that characterised the Roman 
 Empire after the death of Trajan, men lost interest in the world 
 of politics and action, and turned for a substitute to the 
 cultivation and enjoyment of beauty. A few years before the 
 circle of Pliny the Younger and his friends had asked nothing 
 better than to retire from public life and edit the poets. To-day 
 again the State has grown too big to admit of effective influence 
 by individuals, and the machinery of administration too complex 
 to permit of intervention by outsiders. What happens is 
 the result less of individual will and effort than of the interplay 
 of economic forces, whose genesis escapes detection and whose 
 workings and conclusions escape control. In such a posture 
 of affairs tne popular ear is captivated by the loudest voice, 
 the popular eye by the crudest design. For the intricacies, 
 the complexities, the dignity and labour of real statesmanship 
 there is no place, and the best men turn sick at heart from public 
 affairs to seek dignity and retirement in literature and art. 
 But art produced under such circumstances fails to achieve 
 greatness for two reasons. In the first place, a fatalistic 
 attitude towards the world and the forces which condition 
 events is not compatible with great art. The production of 
 great art requires faith in the possibility of change and improve- 
 ment, and a belief that such change can be effected by human 
 will and effort. The burning indignation that produced 
 Gulliver's Travels, the shining vision that illumines Pilgrim's 
 Progress or News from Nowhere, do not spring from a belief 
 in the impotence of man to control his fate. For the Life 
 Force implants in those it has specially chosen to give expression
 
 222 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 to its purpose a belief that mankind will not in the long run 
 prove deaf to their words. Apathy and indifference spring 
 from Fatalism, not from creative force. 
 
 In the second place, art which is cultivated as a second 
 string, revenges itself by remaining second-rate. Where, as in 
 the modern state, men of conspicuous talent and wide social 
 interests are denied a place of influence in the world of affairs, 
 and endeavour to console themselves with the cultivation of 
 their senses and the production of beauty, the type of art which 
 results lacks both inspiration and originality. 
 
 Such men produce dainty lyrics, comedies of manners, 
 belles lettres and realistic fiction. These works set the taste 
 for their age : their influence and example call into being 
 a host of imitators, who strive to exhibit their good taste by 
 cultivating the style of art that has been made fashionable 
 by the elect. Thus the art of a whole age may be minor. 
 The main characteristic of such art is directly derivable from 
 the circumstances which gave it birth. Where the world of 
 action rebuffs the efforts of those who desire to mould the 
 course of events, they turn perforce to the world of personal 
 relations and intrigue : when external things prove unamenable 
 to control and appear to move in obedience to laws whose 
 operations are inevitably determined, interest in the external 
 fades and is replaced by interest in the self. Introspection 
 takes the place of action, and objective art which concentrates 
 upon the world gives way to subjective art which is concerned 
 only to express the self. 
 
 These, then, are the characteristics of modem art, and they 
 are equally prominent wherever you choose to look. Modem 
 poetry is subjective : it is written as a divertissement to 
 immortalise a mood or to crystalHse a caprice, rather than 
 under the compulsion of an all-constraining force. Lyrics, 
 which should spring from an absorbed self-forgetfulness, are 
 written in a rapture of self -consciousness. The sensibilities 
 rather than the passions of the writer are presented for our 
 interest, and poems of revolutionary or erotic ardour give place 
 to records of impressions produced by a rainbow or a ribbon. 
 Modem poetry is in fact written by men to be read by women. 
 
 In fiction the modem novel substitutes for the record of 
 objective fact the recital of the sensations experienced by the
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN ART 223 
 
 hero, or more usually the heroine. Plot has been long 
 abandoned, but even character-drawing is now thought un- 
 necessary, except in so far as a cinematographic presentation 
 of all the moods, feelings and thoughts of the author, a presenta- 
 tion which is not subjected to censorship, to selection or to 
 arrangement, may be ranked as a form of character delineation. 
 The novel has in fact become a shop window in which tempera- 
 mental young misses may exhibit their emotions duly labelled, 
 ticketed and appraised for the degustation of the public. 
 
 Music is tainted with the same subjectivity. Until the 
 middle of the nineteenth century people held that it was the 
 business of music to be beautiful, and there is little doubt that 
 they were right. Then, under the influence of Wagner, 
 dramatic music supplanted pattern music, and the function 
 of music was mainly held to be the expression or com- 
 munication, of emotion. It is only in the twentieth century, 
 however, that composers have tacitly agreed to proceed upon 
 the assumption that the emotions to be communicated are 
 their own. As these are rarely beautiful, it is not to be ex- 
 pected that the music which is designed to represent them 
 should be remarkable either for harmony or for melody : 
 it is not, and, as a result, modem compositions are to be 
 commended neither on your theory nor on mine, since the 
 musical embodiment of bad temper or eroticism is neither 
 permanently valuable as a work of beauty, nor particularly 
 compelling (except perhaps by way of warning) as a work of 
 propaganda. 
 
 As for modern painting, it has long ceased to attempt to 
 depict the external world. It does, presumably, depict some- 
 thing that is going on inside the artist's head ; but whether this 
 occurrence is an idea in the mind caused by the stimulus of 
 some external object, or whether it is a relation between the idea 
 and the object, or whether it is spontaneously generated is 
 a question belonging to the Theory of Knowledge, which it 
 would take us too far from our path to pursue here. Besides 
 I grow tired of talking and want to finish. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Personally I think it is spontaneously 
 generated. 
 
 Anthony. Why ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Because of its complete unlikeness
 
 224 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 to anything in the visible world. A modern picture is only 
 called " Portrait of Mrs. Jones," or " Blast Furnaces at Stoke," 
 and called either indifferently, because modern artists are very 
 conventional and still believe it to be necessary to name a 
 picture after some external object, as though the picture 
 represented it, instead of calling it " My ill temper," or " My' 
 desire for a virgin," or whatever the real subject may be. 
 
 Anthony. Probably that is the explanation : but you 
 agree on the main point, which is that the tendency of modern 
 art is to be subjective. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly I do. 
 
 Anthony. Now I maintain that this tendency springs 
 directly from the fact that such art is embraced as a diversion, 
 as a second string ; it is so embraced, partly because it is fashion- 
 able, partly because the artist can find no place for his energies 
 in politics and affairs. In any event, art of this type is in no 
 sense an embodiment of the inspiration of the Life Force. 
 It is the art of amateurs produced for dilettantes. Men and 
 women write not because they must, but because, like the 
 people who appear in Tchekov's plays and stories, or in Shaw's 
 Heartbreak House, they believe in the cult of art for its own 
 sake, or as a means to the attainment of happiness and beauty. 
 And they pursue happiness and beauty directly, because they 
 are denied by circumstances the opportunity of pursuing 
 anythmg better worth having : they are compelled to make of 
 personal relationships an end and of their own feelings an 
 interest in life, because they have no ends and interests to 
 serve in the outside world. 
 
 Art of this type is valueless from the point of view of the 
 Life Force, because it is stationary, or, perhaps I should say, 
 circular. Instead of aiming at changing the world, it aims only 
 at expressing the self : instead of acting as a signpost to the 
 possible, it is only a mirror of the actual. When it should 
 perform the function of true culture which is to bring to birth 
 what is new, it gives consciousness only of what has already 
 been achieved. For these reasons, then, I believe that the 
 art which seeks to express the self, equally with the art which 
 aims solely at creating beauty, fails to serve the purposes of 
 the Life Force. The first is circular ; the second is static ; 
 neither represents an advance.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF TASTE AND CHARACTER 225 
 
 And, that I may return to my final theme, the effect of such 
 art upon the artist is always in a greater or less degree what 
 it was upon Burton. Where the true artist loses himself 
 in the Force which bears him on, the scholar, the pedant, the 
 realist, and the pretty-pretty poet only become the more 
 conscious of themselves. Where the true artist uses art to 
 lift up his thought out of the selfish, little pit of vanity and 
 desire which is himself, into that greater self which is the all- 
 embracing Force, the second-rater regards it as a device 
 for perpetuating his vanities and enshrining his desires. If 
 art is so used, it will be found that the pursuit of beauty, 
 like the pursuit of pleasure, ends in intolerable boredom, and 
 that the expression of the self for self-expression's sake is 
 but another name for servitude to the self. 
 
 To escape this fate the artist must have at bottom an insight 
 and a vision into the Universe as a whole. He must possess 
 a profound consciousness both of the meaning and of the 
 purpose of the Universe, and his writing must be, from first 
 to last, nothing but the attempt to give expression to such 
 consciousness with the intent that others may share it. And 
 the value of what he will have to say depends wholly and 
 entirely upon the extent to which his works embody some 
 prompting of the Life Force. If the artist by his work helps 
 forward the purpose of evolution, he is a great artist, if not, 
 he is a mere entertainer. Beyond this nothing matters. 
 
 Professor Cameron. And do I understand you to deny 
 completely the value of beauty and form, style and diction, 
 except as means to the better communication of this message 
 you hold to be so important, and as means which, though useful 
 are by no means necessary ? Have you no place for culture 
 and good taste as things valuable in themselves ; and have not 
 beauty and form at least a value relative to the good taste 
 which appreciates them ? 
 
 Anthony. Yes, I have a place for good taste and for 
 culture : they possess the value and perform the function of 
 manure. The mind which has been impregnated with all that 
 is best in literature, the eye that can recognise beauty 
 in pictorial art, the ear that is sensitive to beautiful sounds, 
 are like a richly cultivated soil. Such a soil should be more 
 ready to receive the seed of a new thought, and more capable 
 
 15
 
 226 LIFE FORCE IN LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 of giving it nurture until the time of fruition arrives. Thus 
 it is to the cultivated mind that we should look to provide 
 the most suitable environment for the growth into conscious- 
 ness of the seed implanted by the Life Force in the unconscious. 
 And when the seed in the unconscious has grown and taken 
 shape in the conscious as a definite conception of the direction 
 in which mankind should travel, it still remains to give that 
 conception concrete form in words, or paint, or music, that there 
 may be communicated to the consciousness of mankind the 
 message of which the artist is the chosen vehicle. And herein 
 lies the function of technique. That the artist may adequately 
 express his vision, that he may give it material substance 
 which will at once appeal and attract, it is desirable that he 
 should possess a mastery over all the mysteries and secrets 
 of his art. The writer should possess a flow of words, a sense 
 of style, a feeling for form, the musician a knowledge of 
 harmony and counterpoint, the painter of draughtmanship 
 and the properties of colours. 
 
 All these things, then, are important but they are not indis- 
 pensable, and I have in my exposition tended rather to keep 
 th- m in the background, just because these secondary things 
 have come so often, under the influence of the academic mind, 
 to usurp the place of the primary thing, the adjuncts of art to 
 be mistaken for its purpose. 
 
 But I have dwelt sufhciently often upon the dangers that 
 attend the subordination of matter to form, and there is 
 little fear that in now mentioning the importance of form and 
 technique I shall be misunderstood. They have their place, 
 but it is not the first place. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Which is ? 
 
 Anthony. The persistent striving of the Life Force for 
 more life, more power, more understanding, more consciousness. 
 The creation of the artist as its mouthpiece and of mankind 
 as its instrument. The conception by the artist of something 
 better than what exists, and the rendering in material form of 
 his conception. And, finally, the attempt to bring into being 
 something higher and nobler than what is and the persistent 
 effort to remove from the path whatever stands in the way 
 of its realisation.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 KNOWLEDGE AND FACT IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 Scope of the Discussion. 
 
 Anthony. Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you have 
 brought to this morning's discussion minds refreshed by a 
 good xiight's sleep. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Thank you, we slept well, and it is as well 
 that we did. We have need of clear brains, for this morning, 
 if I am not mistaken, we are to penetrate to the heart of 
 philosophy. 
 
 John. Well, scarcely that perhaps ; but it is true that 
 our subject this morning may prove a httle abstruse. Certain 
 fundamental questions were perpetually thrusting themselves 
 forward during Anthony's discussion with Professor Cameron, 
 and urgently demanding solution. It is these questions 
 which I should Hke to tackle before you go away. It was 
 seen, I think, that many of my friend's positions were only 
 valid on the assumption of premises v/hich it was beyond 
 his immediate purpose to discuss, and which accordingly were 
 continually being referred to me or postponed until the 
 morrow. It also became pretty clear that the assumption 
 of these premises involved the adoption of a somewhat extreme 
 position in philosophy, which we were certainly not entitled 
 to take for granted, while a failure to assume them lead to 
 inconsistency in the general thesis of the Life Force which 
 I had outUned to Mr. Banks, and left my friend's theories 
 of education and of art standing without support, a mere 
 intellectual castle in the air, hable at any moment to be 
 overturned through lack of foundation. 
 
 Anthony. You are a httle hard on my poor efforts, 
 friend John, seeing that you inspired them. 
 
 John. I did not mean to be. I think we shall be able 
 
 227
 
 228 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 to lay your foundations for you with a little care and patience ; 
 but it would have been better had we laid them first. Pro- 
 fessor Cameron, you know, has some cause to blaspheme. 
 He asked you a number of very awkward questions about 
 absolute knowledge and changeless fact at the beginning of 
 your discussion on the function of education, which you have 
 entirely failed to answer. They were perfectly legitimate 
 questions, and unless we know the general tenor of our reply 
 we may as well abandon the Life Force theory altogether. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I hope that you will make an 
 attempt to deal with them now. 
 
 John. That is, as I understand it, the purpose of our 
 discussion. But the subject is not an easy one, and although 
 I shall endeavour to make what I have to say as untechnical 
 as possible, I take this opportunity of warning Mr. Banks that 
 he will probably be bored to extinction. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Do you suggest, sir, that my intelligence is 
 not capable of following your reasoning ? 
 
 John. Not at all : but it is a case of being familiar with 
 the particular kind of language in which philosophers talk. 
 I am afraid that, in the interests of brevity, I may occasionally 
 slip in words with a technical significance, without first 
 explaining the sense in which they are being used. Philosophy 
 often appears to be more difficult than it is, not because of 
 the nature of its subject-matter, but because of the professional 
 method of treatmg it. 
 
 Mr. Banks. If you become obscure I will ask for en- 
 lightenment. 
 
 John. Very well ! Then I will proceed at once to the 
 difficulties which have been, as it weie, impUcit throughout 
 the whole course of the previous discussions. These diffi- 
 culties were numerous enough ; but there appear to me to 
 be two main difficulties into one or other of which all the 
 others resolve themselves, and they are these. 
 
 How can Knowledge be Possible and Reality be Real ? 
 
 If the fmidamental principle of the Universe, or at any 
 rate of the non-material Universe, is change, how is it possible 
 that there should exist in the first place absolute knowledge, 
 by v/hich I mean knowledge which is entirely true, and in
 
 HOW IS KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE? 229 
 
 the second place, absolute fact, by which I mean fact which 
 is entirely real and which remains eternally the same for 
 us to know ? I think, Professor Cameron, you would grant 
 that most of the difficulties which you found in the assump- 
 tions underlying Anthony's exposition, would be considerably 
 relieved if I could suggest a satisfactory answer to these two 
 questions. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly they would. It is, I 
 think, essential that you should account for the possbibihty 
 of knowledge, by which I mean true knowledge, on your 
 theory ; since not only do we appear to possess such know- 
 ledge, as for instance our knowledge of mathematical pro- 
 positions to which I have already referred, but if we do not, 
 we can have no ground for ever preferring one hypothesis to 
 another, we cannot know that any hypothesis is true, and 
 there can be no meaning in the word truth. In this event 
 your own theory will fall to the ground among others, since 
 if knowledge does not exist, that particular form of it in 
 which the Life Force theory professes to express itself, is no 
 more knowledge than any other knowledge. Again, if there 
 is no such thing as truth, the Life Force theory cannot be 
 true, or rathe-, to put it in another way, if we concentrate 
 upon your statement that change is the fundamental reahty 
 of the Universe, the Life Force theory is no sooner true — if 
 it is true— than it changes, that is to say, it becomes some 
 other theory and therefore, presumably, ceases to be true. 
 
 Therefore, if your own theory is not to be reduced to 
 a meaningless succession of phrases, you must provide me 
 with a ground for the possibihty of knowledge and also with 
 a meaning for truth. 
 
 As for permanent fact, it is clear, as Plato would put it, 
 that true knowledge must be of something. That something 
 must be real, for you cannot have true knowledge of that 
 which is not. In order to be real, it must subsist through 
 change. Therefore you must, it seems to me, demonstrate 
 somewhere or somehow the existence of an unchanging reaUty, 
 which remains the same in spite of change, in order that you 
 may predicate change of it. For, in the last resort, it is only the 
 unchanging which can change. There must, in fact, be some- 
 thing which changes, which is other than the changes it under-
 
 230 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 goes, something in which the changes can take place ; and 
 since that something is other than change, it must be 
 changeless reahty. It is of this reality, then, it would seem, 
 that there must be true knowledge, and it is this reahty 
 that you must establish. And all these things you must do 
 within the framework of your Life Force hypothesis. 
 
 John. Yes, it is not an easy task : in fact to perform 
 all that you require of me is entirely beyond my powers. 
 You put problems that have puzzled all philosophers, and 
 have been successfully solved by none, as if they applied in 
 a special and peculiar sense to my philosophy. Why, for 
 instance, should I be called upon to elucidate the difficulties 
 propounded by the Greeks about being and becoming, about 
 knowledge and probable opinion ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Because, as far as I can see, your 
 hypothesis must involve the denial of the fact of knowledge. 
 If everything changes, knowledge must change ; no know- 
 ledge therefore remains permanently true, and, if it is not 
 permanently true, it is not knowledge. Further, if our minds 
 are instruments created for the performance of a purpose, 
 knowledge which is the pecuHar emanation of mind must 
 itself be relative to the purpose for which it has been evolved. 
 It must therefore be infected with the relativity that attaches. 
 to whatever is a means to an end and not an end in itself. 
 But if you cheerfully face these conclusions, if. in fact, 
 you deny knowledge, then your position is exposed to that 
 oldest and simplest of objections, which Aristotle brought 
 against the Megarians : the objection, namely, that know- 
 ledge is affirmed in the very fact of its denial. You cannot 
 assert that there is no such thing as knowledge, for knowledge 
 is involved in your assertion, the knowledge, namely, that 
 there is no such thing as knowledge. If it is true that there 
 is no knowledge, then you cannot know that there is not : 
 hence there always may be knowledge, and your so-called 
 knowledge that knowledge is impossible subsides into an 
 improbable belief. 
 
 John. Yes, I know, I know. But your last remark 
 gives me my loophole. It is possible to assert that there 
 may be knowledge without asserting that there is know- 
 ledge ; it is also possible to hold that although knowledge
 
 HOW IS KNOWLEDGE POSSIBLE? 231 
 
 may exist, we can never know that we have it : we may, 
 in fact, have to stop at beliefs, which must remain beUefs, 
 just because they can never be verified : and it may be that 
 the Life Force hypothesis is itself a belief of this kind. I am 
 saying this now as an indication of the line I should feel com- 
 pelled to adopt if I were approaching this subject from the 
 old logical standpoint. But you know how bairen this 
 approach has been in the past, leading as it does either to 
 the empty void of the Absolute, or to the unhelpful scepti- 
 cism of the Pragmatists. 
 
 If you will permit me, therefore, I should like to consider 
 the questions you have raised from an entirely different 
 standpoint, by making an excursion into modern psychology. 
 I hope that the results of this excursion may enable me to 
 suggest a certain point of view on these logical matters which 
 will be not inconsistent with the premises of the Life Force 
 which my friend and I have assumed. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Tackle the question I have put 
 from any angle you like, if you think that you are more likely 
 to arrive at a solution. Personally I should not have thought 
 that a flank attack through psychology would overcome the 
 logical barrier which at present blocks your road. However, 
 proceed as you will. 
 
 The Pooling of Knowledge. 
 
 John. I will begin with a few words, by way of intro- 
 duction, as it were, upon a tendency in modern thought with 
 the spirit of which I should like to identify myself. It may 
 be described as the tendency to break through partitions. 
 Up to very recent times we have seen groups of learned 
 enquirers pursuing their own special branches of study as 
 though each branch were distinct and separate. Mathema- 
 ticians, physicists, psychologists, and physiologists, have 
 lived in water-tight compartments which permitted no 
 interchange of communication. Each science has followed its 
 own line of enquiry, reached its own conclusions and assumed 
 its own hypotheses, without stopping to check conclusions 
 or to verify hypotheses with reference to the others. Philo- 
 sophy alone was supposed to take all knowledge for its
 
 232 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 province, and as a punishment for its arrogance, was convicted 
 of failure to show definite results in any province. 
 
 In particular, physics and psychology proceeded on parallel 
 Unes which seemed fated never to intersect. Physics was 
 supposed to study the properties of matter, psychology the 
 properties of mind, and mind and matter being regarded as 
 distinct, it was taken for granted that neither science had 
 anything to learn from the other. Now it is just this dis- 
 tinction between mind and matter and between the sciences 
 which deal with them, which is becoming increasingly open 
 to question ; and it is with this questioning that I wish, at 
 any rate in part, to identify myself. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But, when discussing Bergson and Geley, 
 you insisted on a fundamental duahsm, and fell foul of them 
 both just because they endeavoured to resolve matter into 
 mind by finding a common source for both matter and mind. 
 John. That is true enough. But the uniformity to 
 which I am now referring is not a uniformity either of mind 
 or matter, nor does it seek to resolve either into the other. 
 Nor, mark you, am I necessarily committing myself to the 
 conclusion that there is only one thing in the Universe. I 
 am only afhrming my sympathy with a certain method of 
 approach to certain problems. 
 
 This method I will now try to outhne. 
 As T have just hinted, the tendency of those who have 
 sought for unity in the world in the past has been to achieve 
 it by eliminating either mind or matter, thus bringing all 
 existence under one common formula. Philosophers on the 
 whole have endeavoured, under the name of Idealism, to rid 
 the world of matter ; everything is mind, thay have asserted, 
 and this mind taken as a whole has been termed God or the 
 Absolute, according as the philosopher in question has a 
 need to believe in the conclusion of his reasoning, or is satisfied 
 with the reasoning which establishes his conclusions. Scien- 
 tists on the whole have endeavoured to behttle mind both 
 by denying its efficacy and by restricting its scope, while 
 extreme views throw doubt on the very existence of mind 
 as a unique and unanalysable entity, and endeavour to explain 
 it away as a rarefied form of matter. 
 
 Recent developments have proceeded on somewhat different
 
 THE POOLING OF KNOWLEDGE 233 
 
 lines. In the first place, matter, under the influence of modern 
 physics, has been growing less material. Objects are not 
 Jumps of sohd matter, but logical constructions denoting the 
 relations normally subsisting betv/een what the physicist 
 calls " events," and changing according to the changes in 
 these relations. In the second place, mind, under the influence 
 of modern psychology, has been growing less mental. The 
 Behaviourists assert that the sum total of our knowledge 
 of a man is that which can be obtained from observation of 
 his physical Behaviour : observation of actions is the basis 
 of knowledge : knowledge of a mind behind these actions 
 is mere inference, and inference which, by its very nature, 
 can never be tested. Now once matter and mind have lost 
 their most salient characteristics, the partitions between the 
 pigeon holes in which they have hitherto been separately 
 studied are in a fair way to being broken down. As a result 
 there emerges a new and more fundamental science which 
 takes as its subject of enquiry neither matter nor mind, but 
 certain fundamental particulars which the physicists call 
 events, to which I should like to apply the epithet neutral 
 to indicate the fact of their priority to both matter and mind. 
 From these events both matter and mind ate constructed. 
 Arrange these particulars in one context, and you have matter ; 
 arrange them in another, and you have mind. But the funda- 
 mental stuff from which both matter and mind are manufac- 
 tured is the same. 
 
 Now this attempt to build a bridge between psychology 
 and physics, with its insistence on the homogeneity of the 
 stuff which both sciences study, has been considerably fur- 
 thered by the recent work of Mr. Bertrand Russell. His 
 book. The Analysis of Mind, has suggested most of what 
 I am going to say, and the method which I propose to follow 
 in considering the problems you raised is the radically 
 empirical and psychological method adopted in that book. 
 
 The conclusions I have just indicated as to the homo- 
 geneous stuff from which matter and mind are constructed, 
 conclusions which are also Mr. Russell's, are to be regarded 
 as strictly outside oui immediate purpose. I only mentioned 
 them in passing, in order to give in a few words as complete 
 a summary as possible of the so-called " psychologising "
 
 234 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 tendenc}^ in modern thought, which I am proposing to follow, 
 at any rate as regards its method, in discussing the difficulties 
 you have raised. The abolition of pigeon-holes will also 
 enable me to treat in the same way and from the same point 
 of view the two different questions you have put to me, the 
 first as regards the nature of knowledge, which I propose to 
 treat as a question not of logic but of psychology, the second 
 as regards the nature of change and reality, which I propose 
 to regard as a question not of metaphysics but of physics. 
 Let me take these questions separately. 
 
 I. The Analysis of Thought. 
 
 You have asked me how truth is possible if we assume 
 my premises which assert the existence of a Life Force whose 
 function it is continuaUy to change. Now truth T take to 
 be a property of judgment, or if you like, of knowledge ; 
 facts are real and judgments are true. How then is it possible 
 to have knowledge of fact such that it remains true per- 
 manently and absolutely, and not temporarily and relatively, 
 relatively, that is to say, in the sense that truth may be 
 relative to the achievement of some temporary purpose of the 
 Life Force ? You agree with this statement of the question ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. You have stated it correctly. 
 
 John. Let us consider, then, for a moment what is to 
 be said for the existence of knowledge or thought itself from 
 the Behaviourist point of view. The Behaviourists, as I 
 said just now, beheve that nothing can be known about human 
 psj/chology except what can be observed. Psychology for 
 them is the study of what we do ; and what we do can, on this 
 view, be completely explained in terms of bodily movement 
 and bodily change. Thought may, of course, take place ; 
 the existence of thought is, in fact, an assumption which cannot 
 be ruled out of court ; but, inasmuch as no factors are needed 
 to explain human behaviour other than observable bodily 
 movements, it is an assumption which it is unnecessary to 
 make. If there really is something in thought other than 
 and additional to observable bodily movements (and by 
 observable is meant theoretically observable), it is a some- 
 thing of which we can never have knowledge, and may safely 
 be ignored. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Behaviourist
 
 DOES THOUGHT EXIST? 235 
 
 should be sceptical about the existence of thought and should 
 regard it as at best an inference from observed behaviour ; and 
 it is an inference which it is more prudent not to make. 
 
 This view sprang originally from the observation of the 
 behaviour of animals. When we examine the behaviour of 
 animals, our interpretation of the phenomena they present 
 is not biassed b}^ the initial presumption that animals nmst 
 have minds, a presumption which human conceit has hitherto 
 required us to make when considering our own actions. Thus, 
 we are quite prepared to believe that, when a dog hoards or 
 buries a bone, he does not necessarily reflect that he may be 
 hungry at the same time to-morrow, and that the bone will 
 come in handy then ; on the contrary, we incline naturally 
 enough to the view that the dog's activity is dictated solely 
 by the promptings of instinct. He may, of course, reflect 
 on the matter, but his reflection, if it occurs, is a mere inference 
 from his behaviour on the part of the observer, an inference 
 which experiments on animals have increasingly shown to 
 be superfluous. 
 
 The next step taken by the Behaviourists is to apply 
 this method of accounting for the actions of animals to the 
 behaviour of human beings. It is surprising to find how far 
 the method may be pushed. On analysis it will be found 
 that a very considerable proportion of our actions can be 
 explained as automatic reactions to stimulus, and such actions 
 do not involve the intervention of thought at any point to ex- 
 plain their occurrence. In many cases this is obvious. Name 
 an object in the presence of a child, and when he is again brought 
 into contact with the same, or with a similar object, he will 
 pronounce the appropriate word in designation of it. This 
 does not mean that a process of intellectual recognition has 
 taken place. The child's behaviour — in this case, the enuncia- 
 tion of a word — may be explained as an automatic reaction 
 to the same stimulus as that which was applied when the 
 object was first named in his hearing. The repeated appli- 
 cation of the stimulus leads to the formation by means of 
 association of what is called a language habit, which prompts 
 the child to pronounce the name of the object whenever he 
 is brought into contact with it. More complicated cases are 
 treated on the same principle. If a child gives an answer
 
 236 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 in mental arithmetic correctly, all that has happened, on the 
 Behaviourist view, is that he has acquired a complicated 
 language habit, which results in the automatic production 
 of the sounds which make up the words, " forty-nine," when- 
 ever the stimulus of the question, " What is seven times 
 seven ? " is applied. Once again there is no necessity to 
 assume thought, since the thought cannot be observed. 
 
 Mr. Banks. But surely this is a little unnecessary. 
 What on earth is the good of taking all this trouble to prove 
 that thought may not occur in certain cases, when it is beyond 
 all question in others ? I myself am no great thinker, yet 
 I am frequently conscious of the process of thought going on 
 in my own brain. When you sit down and balance alternative 
 courses of action, when you do a sum in arithmetic, when you 
 calculate the amount of your change or the population of 
 a town, when you even decide which of two hotels to stay 
 at for the week-end, you are not only thinking, but conscious 
 of thinking. I am, for instance, clearly aware of my own 
 thought processes in following your exposition of the absurd 
 proposition that thought processes do not exist. 
 
 John. Ah, you mean knowledge by introspection. Now 
 the Behaviourists deny absolutely that such knowledge exists. 
 According to them it is not possible to obtain knowledge of 
 the self by a special method, namely, the method of intro- 
 spection, which is different from that by which you acquire 
 knowledge of other people. You can know more about 
 yourself than about other people, because you have greater 
 opportunities for observing your own activities ; but this 
 knowledge is the same kind of knowledge as that which you 
 have of others. As it is not possible to observe oneself 
 thinking, in the sense in which one observes an actual physical 
 process, introspection does not, it is asserted, in itself provide 
 evidence for thought. 
 
 I want you to understand that I am simply stating this 
 view, and not attempting to give you arguments in its favour. 
 It will be seen shortly that I do not accept it in its entirety. 
 Meanwhile I am summarising it because, with suitable modi- 
 fications, it provides the basis of the view of knowledge I am 
 going to suggest. 
 
 Mr. Banks. It all seems rather nonsensical on the face
 
 DOES THOUGHT EXIST? 237 
 
 of it. But even if I am not permitted to have knowledge 
 by introspection, surely I am conscious of my thinking as an 
 ordinary mental process. 
 
 John. It is possible ; but unfortunately even the exist- 
 ence of consciousness is impugned by the Behaviourists. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Surely not ! 
 
 Does Consciousness Exist ? 
 
 John. It is, I assure you. But the denial of conscious- 
 ness as a unique and separate mental phenomenon is of much 
 older date than the Behaviourists. William James began it 
 with his famous phrase, " the thoughts themselves are the 
 thinkers," a phrase which was intended to imply the view 
 that there is no static, independent ego, which thinks the 
 thoughts that occur and is something separate from and 
 other than these thoughts. There is simply a stream of 
 experience, and though this experience may be conscious, in 
 the sense that it is conscious of the objects before it and of 
 preceding sections of the stream, it is not itself an experience 
 of which a self, which may be described as having the experi- 
 ence, is conscious. But, having once eliminated the inde- 
 pendent, permanent ego (whose sole function is to be con- 
 scious) and left only a stream of experience, James was enabled 
 in a later stage of his philosophy to dispense with conscious- 
 ness altogether, on the ground that some experiences were 
 unconscious, and consciousness was not therefore a necessary 
 concomitant of experience. He proceeded therefore to assert 
 that there was no fundamental, mental stuff called conscious- 
 ness in the world out of which mind was formed, such that, 
 whenever mind was engaged in any activity such as thinking, 
 it could be said that the individual must be conscious of the 
 activity, on the ground that consciousness is an inseparable 
 accompaniment of every mental activity. 
 
 The argument is largely based on the lack of evidence 
 for a bare act of consciousness, e.g. an act of thinking or of 
 desiring, which is additional to or other than the content 
 of the thought or the desire in question. Thus a feeling of 
 pleasure cannot be analysed into (i) a consciousness of feel- 
 ing, and (2) the pleasure feeling which is the content of the 
 consciousness, (i) being of such a character that it is precisely
 
 238 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 the same activity as the equivalent act (i) in a similar analysis 
 of a feeling of pain. The truth is that the feeling of pleasure 
 is the consciousness of the feeling and constitutes, therefore, 
 a different experience from the feeling of pain. Thus, if we 
 are unable on analysis to discover a conscious self which 
 thinks and desires, and which is in some mysterious way 
 responsible for the thinking and desiring and yet independent 
 of it, the accurate way of describing what occurs when these 
 phenomena take place would be to say " there is a thinking," 
 " there is a desiring," etc. 
 
 Many desires, you see, have been shown by your old love, 
 psychoanalysis, to be unconscious desires. If, then, it is 
 possible to desire objects of which we are not conscious, the 
 question arises whether consciousness of the object of desire 
 is ever necessary to enable the fact of desire to take place. 
 I shall have more to say about desire later, but for the present 
 I mention the fact of unconscious desire only to show that 
 consciousness, so far from being an inalienable accompani- 
 ment of all our emotional and mental processes, is at best 
 an irrelevant and incidental concomitant of those processes, 
 whose absence or presence is not by any means necessary to 
 their occurrence. 
 
 I have not time to go further into this question, but 
 I think I have said sufficient to show that, on Behaviourist 
 premises, mind as such, and knowledge, which is usually 
 regarded as the peculiar emanation of mind, cannot be cer- 
 tainly known to exist. Mind is, in fact, reduced to a mere 
 register of external stimuli, which are called sensations : 
 each stimulus produces its appropriate bodily reaction, which 
 expresses itself in the movements whether of throat or limbs, 
 which the Behaviourist observes. Psychology is, you see, 
 in a fair way to being merged in physiology, just as chemistry 
 has been merged in physics. In the last resort, it is suggested 
 that all thought is a mere disturbance of bodily substance, 
 on the ground that every sensation produces a sHght modifi- 
 cation in nervous tissue, and that every so-called thought 
 is in essence simply a form of the resultant sensation. Thus 
 the whole apparatus of conscious, mental life can be resolved 
 into physiological modifications of the brain and nerves, which, 
 if our powers of observation and opportunities for investi-
 
 DOES CONSCIOUSNESS EXIST? 239 
 
 gation were sufficiently good, could be duly observed and 
 noted down. 
 
 I think, however, that Behaviourism, which possesses the 
 seductive simplicity which attaches to all extreme views, is 
 just a little too simple : in its desire to analyse and resolve 
 away it has rather overshot the mark. Although it is true 
 that there is remarkably little in our mental life which cannot 
 be explained by language habits and other associated habits, 
 it does seem to be a fact that it contains at least one ingredient 
 which is revealed by introspection, but which cannot be 
 detected by outside observers : this ingredient is constituted 
 by the existence of mental images. 
 
 Mr. Russell, to whose book I referred before, parts com- 
 pany with the Behaviourists, who strenuously deny the 
 existence of images, on this point. It seems to be true of 
 images {a) that we do possess them ; (6) that they are different 
 from the sensations which are alone recognised by the 
 Behaviourists. Their chief differences from sensations are 
 causal. They are excited not by external stimuli but by 
 other sensations, while their effects are limited to the world 
 of psychology, and do not extend, as do the effects of sen- 
 sations, into the physical world. The existence of images is 
 a highly controversial question into which I cannot enter 
 now ; but assuming for the moment that we disregard the 
 Behaviourists to the extent of admitting their existence — 
 an admission which I am sure. Professor Cameron, you would 
 not be reluctant to make — we can proceed with Mr. Russell 
 to analyse all mental phenomena into sensations and images 
 suitably related. 
 
 Professor Cameron. That sounds a rather bold state- 
 ment. Is there nothing in thought, for instance, save sen- 
 sations and images ? 
 
 The Analysis of Thought into Sensations and Images. 
 
 John. That is Mr. Russell's contention, and I admit that 
 at first sight it is a httle startling. Let us, however, take 
 any accredited mental phenomenon at random and see into 
 what constituents it can be analysed : take consciousness, for 
 instance, upon whose existence we were throwing doubt 
 a few moments ago. I propose simply to specify the con-
 
 240 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 stituents into which the various, mental phenomena are 
 analysed, without going into Mr. Russell's reasons for his 
 view. It is admitted, you will remember, that consciousness 
 may occur as a concomitant of sensations and images ; what 
 is denied is that consciousness is a necessary concomitant 
 of them. When consciousness does occur, it may be con- 
 sciousness of our own mental states, or a consciousness of 
 external objects. In the first place, then, consciousness of a 
 sensation, for example, appears to be constituted by a mental 
 image of the sensation of which there is consciousness, accom- 
 panied by a belief that the image is a sign of something other 
 than itself. Consciousness of so-called external objects. . . . 
 
 Professor Cameron. But you have already introduced 
 a constituent in your mental process which is neither an 
 image nor a sensation, namely, behef. What is behef ? 
 
 John. I will endeavour to analyse belief in a moment. 
 Consciousness of so-called external objects, as I was saying, 
 may be resolved into the occurrence of sensations and images 
 of the object, accompanied by a belief in the existence of the 
 object to which the sensations and images relate. As regards 
 the behef in the existence of the object, Mr. Russell points 
 out that its character is normally that of a belief that certain 
 sensations will occur in the future if the object is approached 
 in such a way as would normally cause those sensations to 
 occur, as for instance, if we touch an assumed object, or hear 
 a noise when it is rapped. In order, however, to avoid the 
 anomaly involved in the assumption that we can be conscious 
 of what does not exist, it is required that the behef in question 
 should be a true belief. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But what is a true behef on these 
 premises ? You keep using words you have not explained. 
 
 John. I am coming to the question of truth very shortly. 
 All this is merely preliminary, to illustrate the method pur- 
 sued, and the way in which the analysis of mind into sensations 
 and images is carried out. Let us take one more instance, 
 that of memory. 
 
 Memory is constituted by the occurrence of the image of 
 a past event, accompanied by a certain kind of behef as to 
 the object of the image. The particular form of behef in 
 question is characterised by a special kind of sensation or
 
 THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHT 241 
 
 feeling, called the feeling of pastness. This feeling of pastness 
 is a characteristic of the believing itself and not part of the 
 content of belief. The occurrence of this belief feeling, plus 
 the image, plus a feeling that the object of the image was 
 real, together constitute memory. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Perhaps they do. I am not deny- 
 ing it. But this elaborate analysis seems to me terribly 
 irrelevant to the subject at issue. When are we going to 
 arrive at knowledge itself ? 
 
 John. Almost at once, I hope ; although we must first 
 consider belief, whose conformity with the theory has 
 been hitherto assumed without analysis. Belief, after all, 
 is a part of knowledge, so we are already approaching nearer 
 the question at issue. Belief may be divided into three 
 component parts. The act of believing, the content believed, 
 and the objective of the belief. The objective of the belief 
 is an external fact which may be in the past. It is the exist- 
 ence or non-existence of the objective fact which makes the 
 belief true or false. 
 
 The act of believing and the content of the belief are 
 mental occurrences. The act of belief is a feeling or sen- 
 sation : it may be a feeling of mere assent, a feeling of pastness 
 or a feeling of expectation. The content believed may be 
 composed of words only (words are a form of sensation), of 
 words and images, or of images and sensations. When, for 
 instance, I believe that Napoleon retreated from Russia, the 
 content of my belief is composed of images of Napoleon and 
 of Russia suitably related by the word " retreated," which 
 may or may not convey an image. This analysis of belief 
 brings us at once to the question of knowledge. Knowledge 
 may be defined as true belief. The constituents of beUef 
 I have already indicated : as regards the truth of a belief, 
 I will be content for the moment with the provisional state- 
 ment that the proposition which forms the content of a belief 
 is true, when there exists an objective fact which corresponds 
 with it. 
 
 It is now time to return once more to the difficulties you 
 have raised regarding knowledge. It will be seen that they 
 resolve themselves into two questions: Can any belief be 
 and remain permanently true ? Can we ever know of a 
 
 16
 
 242 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 belief that it is true ? These questions can be considered 
 on two different hypotheses : first on your hypothesis, that 
 fact is changeless and static : secondly on mine, that it is 
 changing and fluid. 
 
 The Nature of Truth where Fact is Changeless. 
 
 I. (a) Let us in the first place assume the truth of your 
 hypothesis. 
 
 The criterion of truth on this hypothesis is not difficult 
 to define. If there exists an objective fact which corresponds 
 with the content of the beUef, then that beUef is true. 
 
 Thus the belief that Nelson was shot in the chest is true, 
 if there was at sometime or other an objective fact, namely, 
 the shooting of Nelson in the chest. The case of false belief 
 introduces a complication. We might believe that Nelson 
 was shot in the chest, not only when he was in fact shot in 
 the chest, but when he was shot in the leg. If he was in 
 fact shot in the leg, then the behef that he was shot in the 
 chest is false, and in this case it is clear that the relation of 
 the belief to the fact is different from the relation that existed 
 when we made the assumption that Nelson was shot in the 
 chest. 
 
 This difference of relationship is expressed by Mr. Russell 
 by saying that the belief that Nelson was shot in the chest 
 points towards the fact if Nelson was shot in the chest, and 
 away from the fact if Nelson was shot in the leg. Taking 
 this for our formal definition of truth, we may ask whether 
 it is ever possible for a behef to be absolutely true. 
 
 Let us consider three possible types of behefs. 
 
 (i) Beliefs with regard to Objects of Perception. 
 
 Is a behef of the kind that asserts that the picture is to 
 the right of the clock absolutely true ? 
 
 Our beliefs, as we have seen, are composed of sensations 
 and images suitably related. A belief of the kind in question 
 may be composed entirely of images. We may have an 
 image of the picture and an image of the clock and an image 
 of the relationship between them, which is described by the 
 statement that one is to the right of the other. Now this 
 belief will only be true if the images do in some sense, how-
 
 BELIEF IN OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION 243 
 
 ever vague, represent or reproduce the objects which are 
 their prototypes. But, unfortunately, we do not know the 
 picture itself : we only know the appearance it presents to 
 us when we experience certain sensations, which are called 
 seeing the picture. To another person it will probably present 
 an entirely different appearance. My image of the picture 
 would not therefore correspond with the appearance which 
 the picture presents to another person ; yet this second 
 appearance has as much right to claim to be the real appear- 
 ance as the appearance presented to me. Whether there 
 exists a real picture which is behind the system of appear- 
 ances it presents, and which is the cause of their being pre- 
 sented, or whether, as seems more probable, the picture is 
 simply the sum total of all the appearances presented by 
 it, I am not prepared at the moment to say, as I shall return 
 to the question later. At any rate, it is clear that, even if | 
 there is such a real picture, my image is not a copy of it, but j 
 only of one of its appearances. The same reasoning would 
 apply to the clock, and to the image of the clock which is i 
 a constituent of the belief. It would appear, therefore, that 
 the belief in question does not accurately correspond with 
 the external fact which is its objective, and is accordingly 
 not absolutely true. 
 
 (ii) Belief in Logical Propositions and Mathematical 
 Truths. 
 
 I think my friend Anthony committed himself in an 
 earlier discussion to the view that, if absolute truth existed, 
 it was truth of an unimportant and trivial character. I think it 
 possible that the truths of logical propositions, as, for example, 
 the proposition that it is not possible for A to be at the same 
 time greater and less than B, may be absolute ; but I agree 
 with Anthony that they are not important, or, as I should 
 prefer to put it, not significant. By this I mean that the 
 truths in question do not relate to objects in the external world, 
 but are purely logical deductions resulting ^^rom and depen- 
 dent upon definitions that we have ourselves invented. We 
 define greater and less in a certain way, and then construct 
 propositions which do no more than elaborate or paraphrase 
 the meaning of our definition. There are, in short, no external
 
 244 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 facts with which the various images involved in the belief 
 I have just quoted can correspond. 
 
 (iii) Beliefs purporting to possess Artistic or Religious 
 Truth. 
 
 These are, I think, Professor, the kind of beliefs you have 
 chiefly had in mind when urging the changeless existence 
 and validity of artistic truth, as opposed to Anthony's 
 relativist theories. What I take you to mean is, is that certain 
 works of art possess permanent value, and that our recognition 
 of that value constitutes a form of permanent truth. Well, 
 I am granting you for a moment the possibility of artistic 
 value as a permanent or changeless fact. But the question 
 arises in what sense is it possible to possess absolute know- 
 ledge of such a fact ? Beliefs, you will remember, are com- 
 posed of sensations and images. Now, I admit that we can 
 have sensations and images of the form, the colouring, the 
 perspective, the size, and so forth of Botticelli's Round 
 Madonna ; but in what sense can we have sensations and 
 images of its artistic value ? Artistic value is, as you your- 
 self have said, an imponderable and incalculable thing. 
 Even if we are to assume that it exists, it is, I think, generally 
 admitted that we can never accurately gauge it ; if we could, 
 we should not all differ about it. As you have already said, 
 artistic truth is not a kind of quantitative attribute of which 
 each work of art possesses a definite amount either more or 
 less. How then can we possess sensations and images which 
 correspond accurately with the precise amount of value 
 possessed by works of art ? It is the same with religion. 
 Even if we assume the existence of a personal God, it is not 
 possible to possess accurate images and sensations of that 
 which transcends the possibility of all sensation ; so that, 
 if true belief is composed of images and sensations, it would 
 appear that it is not possible to possess true belief, or, if you 
 prefer, knowledge, in matters of art and religion. This con- 
 clusion has the double merit of squaring with experience, 
 which is to the effect that questions of art and religion are 
 matters for the expression of feeling rather than for the 
 exercise of judgment, and of answering a number of the 
 difficulties that you put to Anthony when you charged him
 
 ARTISTIC OR RELIGIOUS TRUTHS 245 
 
 with overlooking the existence in the world of a definite body 
 of artistic and similar kinds of knowledge, which you asserted 
 it to be the function of education to transmit. 
 
 You will observe that, according to my conclusion, he was 
 right in disregarding such knowledge, since from the nature 
 of things it cannot exist. And if we cannot at any time have 
 true or certain knowledge in matters of art and literature, 
 it follows that no knowledge of this kind can be permanently 
 true. It would not be surprising therefore if judgments of 
 artistic value, instead of having a degree of accuracy which is 
 constant, should vary in precision at different times. 
 
 I think that was one of your conclusions, Anthony. 
 
 Anthony. Yes ! I contended that the greatness of 
 Shakespeare, for example, might diminish with the passage 
 of time, which is another way of saying that the judgment 
 that Shakespeare is the greatest playwright in the world, 
 though possibly true once, may now possess a smaller degree 
 of truth than it did, say, fifty years ago. 
 
 Is Truth the Same as Consistency ? 
 
 John. Let us now consider the second of the questions 
 into which Professor Cameron's series of difficulties resolved 
 itself, the question of whether we can ever know that a belief 
 is true ? And bear in mind that we are still considering these 
 questions on the assumption that there is such a thing as 
 static, changeless fact with which a belief may correspond. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Excuse my interrupting you, but 
 may I ask why it should be necessarily assumed that the 
 meaning of truth is correspondence with external fact ? You 
 have hitherto made the assumption unquestioned ; but now 
 that you are proceeding to the question of the verifiability 
 of beliefs, I must be allowed to suggest that the criterion of 
 a true belief may consist in some intrinsic characteristic 
 of the belief itself, and not in its capacity to correspond with 
 an external fact. A true belief may mean a consistent belief, 
 consistent, that is, not with external fact, but with all the 
 rest of our beliefs, or, as I should prefer to put it, with the 
 structure of our knowledge as a whole. 
 
 John. Oh, you mean the coherence theory of truth ! I 
 confess I had not thought it necessary to go into that, as it
 
 246 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 involves the assumption of the Hegelian metaphysic or some- 
 thing hke it, into which, I am afraid, I had not thought it 
 worth while to enter. The theory is one, is it not, which asserts 
 that a true behef is a belief which is coherent not only with 
 the general structure of the beliefs of the person holding 
 the belief, but, since on this view there is no real distinction 
 between one mind and another, with the sum total of all the 
 beliefs in the Universe ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes ! Knowledge is a whole, and 
 all the distinctions which appear to exist between my know- 
 ledge and yours are distinctions introduced by mind within 
 knowledge itself, and spring directly from the partial and 
 finite character of my intellect. On a larger view such dis- 
 tinctions would be shown to be unreal, error would cease to 
 exist, and everything which is known would be seen to be 
 coherent with everything else. Knowledge, in fact, is in the 
 last resort a unified and perfect whole. 
 
 John. That phrase, " in the last resort," means, I pre- 
 sume, when all distinctions are merged in the Absolute ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes. 
 
 John. But it is only when the whole sum of possible 
 beliefs is known, as, presumably, it can be known by the 
 Absolute, that all beliefs become coherent. Some beliefs, false 
 beliefs for example, may to a finite intelligence be non-coherent. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly, that is how one accounts 
 for error, error being due to partial knowledge. 
 
 John. Then since we do not know the whole of know- 
 ledge, it is always possible that a belief which appears to be 
 coherent, may not really be coherent, and vice versa. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Why so ? 
 
 John. Because there may be certain beliefs in that part 
 of knowledge which you do not know, with which the appar- 
 ently coherent belief is non-coherent. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Certainly. 
 
 John. Then the coherence theory provides no test of 
 the truth of any belief, since, short of the Absolute, no one 
 can know whether a belief is coherent or whether it is not. 
 That is to say, since coherence is on this view the meaning 
 of truth, no one can ever know whether a belief is true or 
 whether it is not. Also it may be observed incidentally that
 
 IS TRUTH THE SAME AS CONSISTENCY? 247 
 
 since any belief, short of the Absolute, is partial, no such belief 
 can be absolutely true, which is the result at which I have 
 already arrived by a different chain of reasoning. 
 
 Can Beliefs be Verified ? 
 
 I, {b) Let me then return to the point which I reached 
 before we began to talk about coherence, and consider whether 
 we can ever know that a belief is true according to the criterion 
 which I have assumed, namely, that of correspondence with 
 fact. 
 
 I think there are three reasons why we cannot have this 
 knowledge, or can have it only to a very limited extent. 
 The first is a formal one, and applies in particular to general 
 beliefs of a non-perceptual character. The second applies 
 rather to judgments of perception, and depends upon the 
 peculiar view of belief as composed of sensations and images 
 which I have outlined. The third considers the test of verifi- 
 cation suggested in the case of judgments of perception in 
 relation to beliefs of a general character. 
 
 (i) It is clear, in the first place, that we can only know 
 whether a belief is true by knowing the external fact with 
 which the belief is to correspond : it is also clear that we 
 must know this external fact independently of the belief 
 itself, if we are to use our knowledge to test the truth of 
 the belief. 
 
 Let us call the content of the belief that Caesar crossed 
 the Rubicon (A), and the external fact, namely Caesar's 
 crossing of the Rubicon (B). Now our knowledge that (A) 
 is a true belief will involve another belief upon which its 
 truth will depend ; this second belief is the belief that (A) 
 corresponds with (B). This second belief we will call (C), 
 and in order that we may know that belief (A) is true, it is 
 necessary that belief (C) should also be true. It becomes 
 necessary, therefore, to know that the belief (C), the belief 
 namely, that belief (A) corresponds with external fact, corre- 
 sponds itself with external fact, the fact, namely, that belief 
 (A) corresponds with (B). We can only know this by means 
 of a further belief (D), and thus we are landed in an infinite 
 regress of beliefs before we can ever know that any belief is 
 true.
 
 248 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 Similarly with regard to so-called self-evident beliefs : 
 many thinkers, as you know, regard self-evidence as a cri- 
 terion of truth ; yet how can you know that a belief is self- 
 evident, except by means of a second self-evident belief 
 that it is self-evident ? The second self-evident belief will 
 depend upon a third self-evident belief, and so on as 
 before. 
 
 (ii) In the second place, let us consider the test by which 
 we are to recognise a belief as true, in the case of judgments 
 of perception. A belief, we decided, was composed of sen- 
 sations and images. Now such a belief is shown to have been 
 true by the subsequent occurrence of the kind of sensations 
 which the belief, if true, would lead the holder of the belief 
 to expect. 
 
 Thus, if I believe there is an egg for my breakfast, the 
 content of my belief will be made up of a number of images, 
 among which will be the image of the egg, of the egg-cup, 
 and of the while tablecloth. These images will be accom- 
 panied by a certain feeling of expectation. If on descending 
 to the breakfast room the egg is found to be on the table as 
 expected, certain sensations will occur as a result of my seeing 
 and touching the egg, which will be of a kind to satisfy the 
 feeling of expectation accompanying the image content of 
 my beli^. 
 
 In this case we may say that the occurrence of the ex- 
 pected sensations verifies the belief, which is thereby proved 
 to have been a true one. 
 
 Now verification in this sense can, I think, be said to be 
 possible. But it is verification of an extremely limited kind. 
 It is, in particular, subject to two important limitations which 
 render it practically valueless as applied to the kind of beliefs 
 whose certainty you are desirous of establishing. 
 
 In the first place, it is a type of verification which is only 
 possible in the future. In the case of beliefs with regard to 
 objects of perception the future is practically realisable. 
 Thus the belief that the inside of my egg will become solid 
 if I leave it in boiling water, is practically verifiable at the 
 end of ten minutes when the egg is taken out of the water, 
 and the expected sensations of solidity are found to attend 
 the examination of its interior.
 
 THE VERIFIABILITY OF BELIEFS 249 
 
 The Verifiability of Beliefs of a General Character. 
 
 (iii) In the case of beliefs of a general character, however, 
 this future is indefinitely prolonged. Thus the image content 
 of the belief that the sun rises in the east is incapable of 
 verification, until we are acquainted with the sensations 
 attendant upon all possible risings of the sun. Until we do 
 become acquainted with each one of all the risings of the sun 
 that can possibly occur, it will always remain possible that 
 the sun may rise in the west. 
 
 One single instance of the sun's rising in the west would 
 present us with sensations which would fail to verify our 
 image belief that the sun rises in the east ; we must, there- 
 fore, be acquainted with all the instances of the sun's rising, 
 before our belief can attain the certainty which arises from 
 verification. 
 
 Professor Cameron. But each fresh occasion on which 
 the sun rises in the east tends to verify the belief, which 
 becomes therefore progressively truer. 
 
 John. Agreed : but we are concerned, are we not, not 
 with beliefs which are more true or less true, but with the 
 question of whether we can ever know of any belief that is 
 absolutely true. You are, you will remember, contending 
 for the possibility of knowledge which is certain, and I am 
 denying that we can ever know that we have such know- 
 ledge. My present argument, then, is to the effect that 
 beliefs of a general character can never be known to be com- 
 pletely true, because until we are acquainted with all possible 
 instances of the belief, the general belief can never be com- 
 pletely verified. That is my first argument ; my second 
 argument is this. 
 
 In the case of beliefs with regard to objects of perception, 
 we saw that a certain kind of verification was afforded where 
 the image content of the belief which was accompanied by 
 a feeling of expectation, was, in fact, succeeded by the expected 
 sensations. Let us consider this test as applied to the kind 
 of beliefs whose certainty you are affirming in matters of 
 science, of art, and of history. You urged, if I remember, 
 that there existed a definite body of fixed and certain beliefs 
 which constituted the inherited knowledge of mankind. This
 
 250 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 knowledge was to be handed on to posterity by education. 
 You also argued for the absolute truth of certain artistic and 
 historical judgments. Let us take an unimpeachable instance 
 of such knowledge ; take the belief which asserts " Plato 
 lived, and was a great philosopher." How can this belief 
 be verified ? The first part of the belief " Plato lived " 
 raises a question of historical fact. The sensations which, 
 according to our theory, might be expected to verify it, would 
 be the sensations experienced on reading printed pages, 
 which purported to be the pages of his works, on consulting 
 works of reference and encyclopaedias which asserted that 
 Plato was born on such and such a date and lived at such 
 and such a place, and on seeing busts of Plato in museums 
 and similar places. 
 
 But on further examination it is found that the belief 
 which these sensations do verify is a totally different belief. 
 The verified belief is not the belief that Plato existed, but 
 the belief that other people believe that he existed, and, 
 because of this belief, write books about him and make busts 
 that purport to reproduce him. In order that this belief, 
 the belief, namely, that people believe that Plato existed, 
 should yield the required evidence for the belief that Plato 
 existed, it is necessary that it should be accompanied by 
 another belief, to the effect that what people as a whole 
 believe is true ; and this other belief is a belief of that general 
 kind which we have seen to be incapable of verification. I 
 conclude, therefore, that we cannot know that the belief 
 that Plato existed is true. 
 
 Now take the second part of the belief with which we 
 started, the belief that Plato was a great philosopher. This 
 belief is akin to the class of beliefs with regard to artistic 
 value whose certainty you are most anxious to establish. 
 Of what words and images the content of such beliefs consists, 
 I find it difficult to say ; but the expected sensations appro- 
 priate to such a content will be the highly complex sensations 
 of profundity, comprehensiveness, insight, and logical power 
 which are caused by the reading of Plato's works. But 
 these sensations, when they occur, do not verify the great- 
 ness of Plato. What they do verify is your belief that you 
 thought him great. Because of this belief you expected to
 
 THE VERIFIABILITY OF BELIEFS 251 
 
 experience the sensations I have mentioned on reading him. 
 The expected sensations occur, and accordingly verify the 
 belief that they would occur. But these sensations afford 
 no test to enable you to decide whether the belief is true or 
 not. If Plato is in fact a great philosopher, the belief is 
 true ; if not, the belief is false ; but the expected sensations 
 do not enable you to determine the matter ; they only support 
 and verify the belief you already entertained with regard to 
 it. I conclude, therefore, that we cannot know that judg- 
 ments of artistic value, of literary and philosophic greatness, 
 and other judgments of a similar kind are true : we can only 
 confirm ourselves in the possession of them. This confirma- 
 tion may be a reinforcement of our prejudices, or it may 
 constitute knowledge which approximates to truth ; whether 
 it reinforces our prejudices or gives us true knowledge 
 will depend upon whether the original belief which it 
 supports was true or false, a question which must be 
 decided, if it can be decided, independently of such 
 confirmation. 
 
 This conclusion is of importance, in so far as it lends 
 countenance to the provisional and relative character which 
 my friend Anthony attributed to judgments of literary and 
 artistic value. If it does not actually imply that one opinion 
 is as good as another, it suggests that there is no means of 
 teUing which of two conflicting opinions is the better ; it 
 also robs such opinions of the authoritativeness and certainty 
 which you were anxious to claim for them. 
 
 Up to the present I have only considered the question 
 of knowledge from the point of view of the knower, and I 
 have assumed that such a thing as changeless fact existed 
 to be known. We have now to look at the matter from the 
 point of view of the object of knowledge, and consider whether 
 this assumption can be admitted. Our conclusions on this 
 point will be strictly relevant to the main theme of our dis- 
 cussion, since, besides rendering us assistance in our considera- 
 tion of the possibility of absolute knowledge, they will 
 throw light upon such questions as whether the works of 
 Shakespeare possess permanent and unchanging value, 
 which you have frequently put during the course of our 
 discussions.
 
 252 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 II. The Analysis of Matter. 
 
 Can we make the assumption that fact is changeless, and 
 if we cannot make it, what conclusions are to be drawn as 
 to the possibiUty of knowledge and truth ? 
 
 You will remember that when speaking of Mr. Russell's 
 endeavour to effect a rapprochement between different branches 
 of knowledge, I foreshadowed a treatment of this question as 
 a question of physics and not of metaphysics. I did not 
 mean by this hint that I intended to analyse the constituents 
 of the atom. What I did mean was that our enquiry into 
 the nature of matter would be pursued by the same " psycho- 
 logical " methods, if I may be forgiven this use of the word, 
 as those which have been followed in our brief analysis of 
 knowledge. 
 
 What is it exactly that an analysis of our experience of 
 matter tells us of the so-called object of experience ? 
 
 Common-sense takes it for granted, and you have. Pro- 
 fessor, in several of your arguments assumed that there is 
 a world of solid objects extended in space, which is presented 
 to the mind in knowledge, that this world is the object of 
 our knowledge, and that it is at the same time other than 
 the mind which knows it. It is this assumption that I want 
 very briefly to question. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Excuse me, but I should be the 
 last to make such an assumption. As I hinted in my remarks 
 on truth, I believe there is no such thing as external reality 
 in the sense of a reality which is other than mind. I would 
 also prefer not to use the word external, since for me, all 
 distinctions of the kind impUed by the words internal and 
 external are partial and unreal. In the last resort there is 
 no distinction between mind and its object. 
 
 John. I am so sorry ; I forgot. But in excuse for my 
 erroneous supposition that you believed in external fact, 
 you must allow me to plead the countenance given to my 
 error by the kind of difficulty you put to Anthony. You 
 see, if one were to take your Hegelian theory seriously, there 
 would be no definite and distinctive value in the works of 
 Shakespeare, just as there would be no works of Shakespeare, 
 to have value, and no minds to wrangle about its quality
 
 THE ANALYSIS OF IMATTER 253 
 
 and permanence. All these conceptions depend on the recog- 
 nition of a distinction both between Shakespeare and his 
 works, and between Shakespeare's works and the minds of 
 their appreciative or disparaging critics. Your very eloquent 
 development of Plato's Theory of Ideas, which both Anthony 
 and I have taken seriously enough to endeavour to combat, 
 also presupposes the distinctions you are now denying. I 
 propose, therefore, to concentrate my attention upon what 
 I take to be the common-sense view of the world as external 
 fact presented to mind, and to comfort myself by the reflec- 
 tion that you have frequently maintained the existence and 
 changelessness of such external fact, at any rate for practical 
 purposes, in discussion with Anthony. 
 
 Professor Cameron. For practical purposes, yes. You 
 cannot conduct your life on Hegelian premises. 
 
 John. I agree. To return, then, to the point at which 
 we digressed, I want to question the changeless fact assump- 
 tion from a point of view suggested not by Hegel but by Mr. 
 Russell. This point of view amounts to an importation into 
 the world of metaphysics of the methods of psychology, with 
 the resultant reduction of metaphysics to physics. As I think 
 I have already mentioned, the " psychologising " of various 
 branches of philosophical enquiry is the chief characteristic 
 of the tendencies in modem thought to which I referred earlier 
 in our discussion. I cannot hope to give all Mr. Russell's 
 arguments in the brief time left to us, or even to do justice 
 to those which I do give. I will, however, select two which 
 are particularly relevant to our main theme. 
 
 The So-called Law of Cause and Effect. 
 
 {a) The first relates to the so-called unalterable laws of 
 physics. A world of solid objects, even if they be reduced 
 to solid atoms or electrons or whatever other entity happens 
 to be fashionable at the moment, presupposes certain un- 
 alterable laws according to which such objects behave. One 
 such law was Newton's law of gravitation ; but Einstein 
 has, I understand, already shown that to be in certain respects 
 inadequate, so we will take an even more universally accepted 
 law, the law of cause and effect.
 
 254 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 This law is a delight to the mechanists ; it lies at the 
 very foundation of physics. Let us see to what Mr. Russell's 
 analysis reduces it. 
 
 Modern physics have shown that so-called events or 
 changes are really processes. If, then one event is to cause 
 another, the two events must be contiguous in time, since, if 
 there were any interval between them, another event might 
 intervene to prevent the expected effect. Furthermore, it 
 cannot be the whole of the causal process which has the effect 
 of causing the caused process, since, so long as the later 
 part of the causal process remains unchanged, the earlier 
 part is irrelevant. It is only the later part of the causal 
 process, therefore, that is effective. Similarly, it is not the 
 whole of the caused process which we need consider to be 
 affected ; the later part of the caused process is irrelevant, 
 provided the earlier part of the caused process manifests 
 the appropriate changes. Thus, if I get my feet wet and 
 consequently catch a cold, it is not the actual wetting of 
 the feet which causes the cold, since I might be subsequently 
 drenched to the skin before getting home, in which case 
 the drenching of my clothes, coupled with a presumed inability 
 to change them, would be the cause of the cold. What happens 
 is that the wetting of the feet produces certain physiological 
 changes in myself ; assuming that these changes operate 
 uninterruptedly they will nevertheless occupy a certain time 
 before the resultant cold occurs. The earlier part of these 
 changes may be again eliminated so that the process which 
 is called the cause comes to be continually shortened. 
 Similarly with the effect. Immediately after catching the 
 cold, I may succumb to a typhoid infection which will have 
 the effect of intensifying or at least of profoundly modifying 
 the cold. It is, moreover, impossible to say what kind of 
 cold it will be or how it will affect the system, merely through 
 knowing that it was caused by wet feet. These later develop- 
 ments can therefore be ruled out of our consideration of 
 " the effect." Thus it is only the latest part of the cause 
 process and the earliest part of the effect process which can 
 be regarded as causally related. Proceeding in this way we 
 can indefinitely shorten both the cause process and the effect 
 process, until we arrive at a limit at which the notion of two
 
 SO-CALLED LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT 255 
 
 causally related events gives way to the notion of one con- 
 tinuous process. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of a uniform law of cause and effect 
 applicable to objects whose movements are governed by the 
 operations of the law, we have in the world of physics 
 to deal with processes which are undergoing continual 
 change, and with laws which tell us what is the rate and 
 direction of the change at a given moment. But we 
 have now to take a further step, and to show that these 
 processes with which physics deals are the same as the pro- 
 cesses which, under the name of mental events, are the 
 subject-matter of psychology. If this step can be taken, 
 the result will be to abolish the conception of an external 
 world of changeless fact, and to substitute instead a world 
 of neutral and continually changing events, which, under 
 different forms of arrangement, are the subject-matter of 
 physics and psychology respectively. At the same time we 
 shall be able to answer the question with which we started 
 this part of our enquiry, namely, the question of whether it 
 is possible to have absolute and certain knowledge, assuming 
 that there is no such thing as changeless fact to know. 
 
 Neutral Particulars as the Subject-matter of Physics 
 and Psychology. 
 
 (6) The argument which I propose to follow is the second 
 of the arguments which we are borrowing from Mr. Russell, 
 and affords a good example of the bridge-building between 
 the different departments of knowledge so characteristic of 
 modern tendencies of thought. 
 
 You will remember that at an earlier stage of my remarks, 
 I expressed a doubt as to whether there existed a real picture 
 on the wall in addition to the sum of the various appearances 
 of the picture presented to various observers. Now the Idealist 
 theories, which I understand you uphold, have made it clear 
 that if such a real picture exists we can never know it as 
 it is. What we do know are the appearances of the so-called 
 picture which are presented to ourselves, or if you like, which 
 are imprinted on the retina of the eye, and these appearances 
 are only selections from the whole content of the picture 
 observed.
 
 i 
 
 256 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 These selections are governed by the special interests or 
 circumstances of the observer, so that the artist will see a 
 different appearance from the framemaker, and the colour- 
 blind person from the man with normal sight. 
 
 Now it has been generally assumed that there must be 
 an underlying cause for these various appearances. The 
 familiar formula for perception on the old Representationalist 
 view, which may be taken as typical, was, in fact, something 
 after this fashion : if A is the knowing mind and C the external 
 object, what is known by A is not C but B, B being the 
 impression made upon A, via the optical nerves and so forth, 
 by C. This, you will remember, was Locke's formula for 
 the process of perception. Berkeley pointed out that if you 
 never knew C, you could not know that C existed, much 
 less that it was the cause of B. Berkeley, then, was left 
 with only A and B. The modem Idealists went one step 
 further. As all distinctions are unreal, the distinction between 
 the subject and object of knowledge cannot be maintained, 
 knowledge being a synthesis, which is only split up into mind 
 and object with the knowledge relation subsisting between 
 them, as a result of later analysis : the distinction, it is urged, 
 is not given ready-made in experience. For the Idealist, 
 then, B is merged in A, and A alone, or if you like, A qualified 
 by a B, which is only disentangled from A by later reflection, 
 is left. The new Realists, on the other hand, cut out B and 
 asserted that it was the function of mind to know the object 
 direct without the intervention of any intermediate ideas or 
 appearances. For the new Realist, then, there exist A and C. 
 
 Now we have already seen that Mr. Russell looks coldly 
 on consciousness. He adopts a Behaviourist attitude towards 
 it, tending to throw suspicion upon its existence or at any 
 rate upon its importance, since it cannot be observed. He 
 is aware of thoughts, but not of a thinker of those thoughts, 
 and in reducing thought to images and sensations and the 
 relations between them, he has rendered the existence of a 
 continuous I, a bare subject, which has or experiences the 
 various images and sensations superfluous. We are faced, 
 then, from the beginning with the elimination of A. The 
 next stage of the argument consists in the suppression of C, 
 and we are left with B alone, B being composed of neutral
 
 FUNDAMENTAL STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE 257 
 
 particulars or events, which in one context are called mind 
 and in another matter. 
 
 How is this last stage effected ? 
 
 Mr. Russell considers the case of a star which is being 
 photographed by an ordinary camera. The star so photo- 
 graphed produces an effect upon the photographic plate 
 which is called the photograph of the star. Assuming, as 
 science usually does assume, the continuity of physical pro- 
 cesses, we must conclude that not only at the place where 
 the plate is, but at every place between it and the star some- 
 thing is happening which is specially connected with the 
 star. Whenever, then, a plate is exposed to a star, something 
 connected with the star will be happening at the place where 
 the plate is ; and, since the photographic plate is only intro- 
 duced as an example, because owing to its sensitiveness to 
 light rays we can observe the happenings, we are forced to 
 the conclusion that at any given moment, (i) an enormous 
 number of happenings which are specially connected with 
 the star are occurring at different places, and (2) since many 
 other objects besides the star present appearances to the 
 plate, an enormous number of happenings are occurring at 
 the place where the plate is ; that is to say, an enormous 
 number of happenings are occurring at each one of the places 
 referred to in (i), namely, a separate series of happenings 
 for each physical object which can be photographed from 
 that place. Now, these two different classes of happenings 
 are really two different arrangements of the same class of 
 happening. The first arrangement is one which collects 
 together all the happenings occurring, or appearances pre- 
 sented at one place at a given time ; the other collects together 
 all the happenings occurring or appearances presented at 
 different places at the same time, these appearances being 
 those which, owing to their similarity and to certain laws 
 of perspective with which I need not trouble you here, common- 
 sense regards as being the appearances of the same object. 
 
 The first class of appearances represents the view of the 
 world from one place ; this view of the world Mr. Russell 
 calls a perspective. The second, which consists of all the 
 similar and related appearances presented at different places, 
 constitutes a piece of matter. 
 
 17
 
 258 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 One further point, and I shall be in a position to deal 
 with some of the specific questions with which we started. 
 Returning for a moment to the case of the star, it is obvious 
 that, before the light of the star reaches the photographic 
 plate, it passes through an intervening medium. Whether 
 this medium is ether or some other entity or merely empty 
 space need not trouble us here. The effect of the passage 
 through the medium is, however, to distort the appearance 
 of the star, according to certain definite laws which will vary 
 according to the nature of the substance through which the 
 light passes. 
 
 In one class of case, namely, that class in which the place 
 at which the various appearances are presented is a human 
 brain, the intervening medium is partly composed of the 
 human eye and the optical nerves. What is called the sen- 
 sation of seeing the star may therefore be defined as one of 
 the system of appearances which is the star, namely, that 
 one which is presented at a place at which there is a brain 
 with sense organs and nerves as the intervening medium. 
 The sensation of seeing the star is, therefore, one of that set 
 of appearances which, when taken together at all the places 
 at which they are appearances, constitutes the star. We 
 have, therefore, arrived at a formula for stating mind and 
 matter, the subject-matter of psychology and physics 
 respectively, in the same terms. 
 
 Treating all sensations in the same way as the sensation 
 of seeing the star, we may say that the core of a mind at 
 any given moment — and by the core of a mind I mean sen- 
 sations which, together with the images which they cause, 
 have been shown to be the stuff of which mind is made — 
 consists of a system of particulars or appearances occurring 
 at a place such that all appearances reaching that place 
 have passed through the intervening medium of sense organs 
 and nerves. 
 
 Professor Cameron. How, then, do you distinguish 
 one so-called mind from another ? 
 
 John. Partly by time relations. I admit that the sen- 
 sation of seeing the star may, as I have defined it up to the 
 present, occur in precisely the same way in two places at 
 what is apparently the same time. But two sensations of
 
 FUNDAMENTAL STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE 259 
 
 the same thing, which, as we have been accustomed to say, 
 are known by mind, are not identical particulars, nor are 
 the perspectives in which they occur identical perspectives. 
 
 Take the second point first. You will remember that we 
 spoke of a perspective, or the view of the world from a given 
 place, as all the appearances of different objects presented 
 at that place, or as all the particulars happening at a given 
 moment at that place. Now, if you take any one of these 
 particulars, which, in a case in which the place is a human 
 brain and the intervening medium is composed of sense 
 organs, has been defined as a sensation, this sensation is 
 related to all the other particulars which form part of the 
 same mind at the same time by the relation of simultaneity. 
 Now this relation of simultaneity does not hold between the 
 sensation in question and the sensation made by the same 
 physical object upon another mind at what is called the same 
 time, since there is no universal time such that all minds 
 participate in it, but only local times, each one of which is 
 confined to one mental biography. Hence the only events 
 which can be simultaneous with a given event are events in 
 that biography. Hence you can group together the sensations 
 occurring in one perspective by the relation of simultaneity, 
 and so distinguish the view taken by a mind of the world at a 
 given moment from the view taken by another mind at the 
 same moment. This argument, of course, depends upon 
 developments in modern physics which are largely bound 
 up with the theory of Relativity. I am assuming the 
 validity of these developments. 
 
 But not only are sensations occurring in different per- 
 spectives distinguished from each other by the absence of 
 the relation of simultaneity, but they are, or at any rate, 
 they immediately become, different sensations, I spoke just 
 now of the core of mind being constituted of the set of appear- 
 ances or particulars occurring at a certain kind of place, 
 because I was anxious to establish the homogeneous character 
 of the particulars constituting the physical object and the 
 sensation of the physical object ; but it is in a very real sense 
 only the core of mind which is so constituted. The appear- 
 ances of objects occurring in a place at which a brain and sense 
 organs form the intervening medium become specially char-
 
 260 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 acterised in two ways : they give rise to mnemic phenomena, 
 and they are themselves affected by mnemic phenomena. 
 
 Professor Cameron. What are mnemic phenomena, pray ? 
 
 John. The term mnemic phenomena, a name suggested 
 by the German psychologist Semon, is the term applied to 
 those responses of an organism which cannot be explained 
 by taking into account only the present stimulus to the 
 organism, but which demand that the past history of the 
 organism shall be included among the causal factors con- 
 ditioning the response. Thus if I have been to New York 
 and you have not, the images called up in our minds by the 
 stimulus of the words " New York " will be very different 
 in character. Since the present stimulus is the same, the 
 difference in the images evoked can only be explained by 
 taking into account the difference between your past history 
 and mine. These images, then, would be instances of mnemic 
 phenomena. 
 
 It is, I think, not too much to say that every mental 
 occurrence of whatever kind is influenced by past history. 
 It is affected by memory, by association, by mental habits, 
 inherited beliefs and so forth ; it is natural, therefore, to 
 suppose that this influence extends to the occurrence of those 
 particulars which we have defined as sensations. 
 
 Theoretically these sensations are as I have endeavoured 
 to define them. Practically, however, we never experience 
 a bare sensation. In practice a sensation is only the core 
 of what we do actually experience : it is that part of the 
 experience which results from the present stimulus. The 
 rest of the experience is due to the operations of memory, 
 association, mental habits, trends of desire and all the other 
 mental factors with which psychologists have made us 
 familiar. And the particular which is a sensation is not only 
 influenced by these factors, but it plays its part in causing 
 and conditioning the operation of these same factors in 
 relation to future sensations. 
 
 After it has been subjected to these influences the sensa- 
 tion becomes a perception, and although, as I have said, mind 
 in the last analysis is made up of sensations and the images 
 which sensations cause, what we experience in practice are 
 perceptions.
 
 FUNDAMENTAL STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE 261 
 
 I have been discussing here the nature of the events 
 which occur when appearances are presented at a place where 
 there is a brain with sense organs and nerves for the inter- 
 vening medium. These events are mental events. But it 
 is important to bear in mind that such occurrences are only 
 a special class of the occurrences or particulars, which con- 
 stitute any piece of matter. Psychology from this point 
 of view is simply a branch of physics, the so-called psycho- 
 logical events which occur at a place where there is a brain, 
 and which are accordingly called sensations, being only dis- 
 tinguished in their general character from events occurring 
 at other places by the fact of their being affected by and 
 giving rise to mnemic phenomena. 
 
 To sum up the method of regarding the Universe which 
 I have been trying briefly to sketch, we may say that the 
 Universe is composed of neutral particulars. Every such 
 particular is associated with two places. Thus, reverting to 
 our instance of the star and the photographic plate, the par- 
 ticular which is happening at the plate which is the appear- 
 ance of the star presented to the plate is associated both 
 with the place, where the star is, and with the place where 
 the plate is. Taken in association with all the appearances 
 which the star presents at all other places, it belongs to the 
 system of appearances which constitute the momentary 
 star ; taken in association with all the other appearances 
 presented at the same time, at the place where the plate is, 
 it belongs to the system which constitutes the momentary 
 plate. The case of the brain is only a special instance of the 
 case of the plate : in this special instance the appearance 
 presented is called a sensation, and the sum total of all the 
 appearances presented at the same time at a place where 
 a brain is constitutes a mental perspective. 
 
 Each star is a series of such momentary stars, the system 
 of appearances which constitutes each momentary star being 
 related to the other systems which constitute the life history 
 of what is called the same star, by the relation of similarity 
 and by the fact of belonging to the same time series. Similarly 
 the series of momentary plates constitutes a plate, and the 
 series of momentary perspectives constitutes a mind. 
 
 This, I think, must serve as a summary of the general
 
 262 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 position. I propose, however, to cite one more instance of 
 Mr. Russell's in illustration of its special significance for 
 psychology, and will then proceed to draw deductions with 
 reference to the questions with which we started. An actor 
 is appearing on the stage before an audience. He presents 
 different appearances and aspects to each member of the 
 audience. Form the series of all such appearances into sets, 
 and the sum total of the sets is what the actor is doing at 
 a given moment : if you could extend these sets of series to 
 embrace all the appearances presented by the actor at all 
 possible places (that is to say, not only at those places at 
 which the brains of the various members of the audience are 
 situated), you would have a complete description of the 
 actor from the point of view which regards him as a piece 
 of matter. 
 
 Now collect together the series of appearances which he 
 presents successively to the same spectator, and proceed 
 similarly with each other spectator in the house ; the result 
 will be a set of series instead of a series of sets, and it will 
 tell you not what the actor does but the impressions he pro- 
 duces. The significant point is that, although we are dealing 
 with the same particulars as those which gave us our descrip- 
 tion of the actor as a piece of matter, the mere process of 
 arranging them differently has transformed our subject- 
 matter into the mental biographies of the spectators. Hence 
 the same particulars which, arranged in one context con- 
 stitute a piece of matter, will, when arranged in another, con- 
 stitute the impression produced by that piece of matter on 
 a mind. Hence we have defined mind and matter in the 
 same terms, namely, in terms of neutral particulars or 
 occurrences. 
 
 We are now in a position to deal with the questions which 
 provoked all this exposition. 
 
 Subjectivity in the World of Matter. 
 
 With regard to the character of matter it will be readily 
 seen that, if the analysis of objects into successive systems 
 of momentary particulars is correct, no world of sohd, change- 
 less matter exists. Each particular has only a momentary 
 existence, and is related to the remaining members of the
 
 SUBJECTIVITY IN THE WORLD OF MATTER 263 
 
 system of particulars, which, taken together, constitute an 
 object by certain time relations and relations of similarity. 
 Similarity is a conception capable of a considerable degree of 
 vagueness, so that the limits of any particular system of 
 particulars will tend to be variable, instead of being well 
 defined and constant like the boundaries of a solid object. 
 
 Furthermore, matter itself is tainted with subjectivity. 
 By this I mean that the so-called subjectivity attendant 
 upon the knowledge of matter by mind is not confined to 
 mind : it infects equally the relations between matter and 
 matter. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I am not sure that I understand 
 you here. Can you explain ? 
 
 John. The conclusion follows directly from the pre- 
 ceding exposition. We saw that matter could not be defined 
 in isolation, but only by reference to the appearances it pre- 
 sented at various places. Now these appearances can never 
 be interpreted solely in terms of the matter of which they 
 are appearances : they are always infected, as it were, by the 
 nature of that to which they are appearances ; that is to say, 
 they are always irregular appearances of the piece of matter. 
 
 Mr. Russell compares the appearances of a piece of matter, 
 the star for example, to the conjugations of a Greek verb. 
 The star being situated in empty space, may be defined for 
 the purposes of physics as consisting of all those appearances 
 which it presents in vacuo, together with all the other appear- 
 ances which, according to the laws of perspective, it would 
 present elsewhere if its appearances elsewhere were regular. 
 
 But, strictly speaking, its appearances in vacuo are not 
 appearances, and none of its appearances elsewhere are regular. 
 In the first place irregularity arises from the fact that, when 
 the light of the star reaches our atmosphere, it is dimmed 
 and refracted ; that is to say, the appearance of the star 
 becomes an irregular appearance because of the distorting 
 effect of the medium. Presently the light of the star reaches 
 the place at which the appearance is, as we say, presented. 
 Here a complicated process takes place. If the " place " in 
 question is a human eye with a brain behind it, there occurs 
 a sensation which is immediately subject to mnemic pheno- 
 mena. This sensation is called seeing the star. It is clear
 
 264 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 with regard to this sensation, that it is not a regular appear- 
 ance of the star, that is to say, it is not an appearance whose 
 causation lies entirely within the system of appearances 
 which is the star, but a complex phenomenon considerably 
 affected by the biography of the person observing the star. 
 This is only one way of putting the old point that we do not 
 know the star as it is, but only know an appearance of it : 
 our knowledge is, in fact, subjective. 
 
 But it is not only when the light of the star reaches a 
 place where there is a living creature's eye that this irregularity 
 in the appearing takes place, although this may be the only 
 case in which the irregular appearance is observed. The 
 distorting medium of the atmosphere is, of course, present 
 in any event ; but there is no reason to suppose that this 
 is the only source of irregularity when the star is presented, 
 say, to the photographic plate. What does happen when 
 the light of the star reaches the plate it is impossible to say, 
 but it is, I think, clear that the event in question is one whose 
 causation lies no more wholly within the system of appear- 
 ances which is the star, than it did when the appearance was 
 thought of as being presented to a mind. The event, which 
 is the appearance of the star at the place where the plate is, 
 is, in fact, as much affected by the characteristics of the plate 
 as of the star. Thus every event or particular in the material 
 world is an irregular appearance of the object of which it is 
 an appearance ; and the irregularity is due not only to the 
 effect of the intervening medium, but also to the fact that 
 the object at the place at which the appearance is presented 
 is causally related to the appearance equally with the object 
 of which it is an appearance. A perspective is, as we have 
 said, a view of the world from a given place ; it follows from 
 this last consideration, that it is not only when that place 
 is occupied by a mind that the view of the world from it 
 is partial and subjective. 
 
 Thus the relations between so-called objects are infected 
 with the subjectivity which arises from the necessity of taking 
 the nature of each of the related objects into account ; and 
 this subjectivity is not confined to the one case in which one 
 of the objects is a knowing mind. The system of particulars, 
 which is a piece of matter, is, in fact, affected by the nature
 
 SUBJECTIVITY IN THE WORLD OF MATTER 265 
 
 of the systems which constitute the other pieces of matter 
 to which it is related ; so that, instead of dealing with a 
 world of matter composed of solid objects extended in space, 
 the physicist does in fact record changes in the relations 
 between constantly changing systems of particulars. 
 
 In applying our conclusions to the question you raised 
 as to the nature of matter, we have incidentally provided 
 the answer to that other important question from which we 
 set out. We contracted, if you remember, to find an answer 
 to the question of whether absolute knowledge is possible ; 
 and having considered that question on the assumption of 
 the truth of the hypothesis that there was a changeless world 
 of external fact to know, we have now to ask whether my 
 hypothesis of a world composed of constantly changing 
 systems of particulars affects our answer. It is, I think, 
 sufficiently obvious that it does not. 
 
 Our Know^ledge of the World studied by Physics. 
 
 You will remember our previous conclusion that, with 
 unimportant exceptions, it was not possible to entertain beliefs 
 that were completely true, however we defined the meaning 
 of truth, and that it was equally impossible to assert of any 
 belief that it was true. Let us return to our definition of 
 the meaning of truth as correspondence with external fact, 
 a definition which seemed to be more in accord with the 
 dictates of common-sense and less open to criticism than any 
 of the others. It is necessary, then, in order that a belief 
 may be true, for the related images and sensations which 
 compose it to correspond with the objective of the belief. 
 Translating this statement into the phraseology we have 
 been using when speaking of matter, we may say that it is 
 necessary, in order that a belief may be true, for it to be com- 
 posed of sensations and images which are copies of the sen- 
 sations which would constitute regular appearances of a piece 
 of matter, if such regular appearances could be experienced. 
 But we have already seen that no sensation can be a regular 
 appearance, all appearances presented at a given place being 
 affected not only by the intervening medium but by the 
 character of the object, in this case the brain of the person 
 entertaining the behef, occupying that place. It follows, then,
 
 266 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 that the greatest degree of accuracy of which a behef is capable, 
 is that constituted by correspondence between the content of 
 the behef and a sensation, which is an irregular appearance 
 of a piece of matter ; and that we can never have a belief 
 which corresponds with a regular appearance of a piece of 
 matter. Hence I conclude that we can never possess an 
 absolutely true belief with regard to the external world, and 
 also, since we could only convict any given correspondence 
 as a correspondence with an irregular appearance by knowing 
 the regular appearance to begin with, I conclude that we 
 can never know of any belief that it is true, or, except on the 
 general ground of necessary irregularity I have just suggested, 
 that it is untrue. 
 
 That, I think, completes my answer to the specific ques- 
 tions you have raised. I am sorry, Mr. Banks, that it has 
 been so complicated and technical. 
 
 Mr. Banks. I am afraid I have not been able to follow 
 very much of it. It does not seem to me to have very much 
 to do with the philosophy I am used to. What are these 
 particulars I should like to know ? I have never seen one 
 that I am aware of, and yet, so far as I could gather, this 
 new method of which we have heard, prides itself consider- 
 ably on its refusal to go beyond what is actually given in 
 experience. Is a particular actually given in experience ? 
 
 John. No ! It is arrived at by a logical analysis of 
 what is given ; or rather, since we never know what is 
 actually given because it immediately becomes subject to 
 mnemic phenomena, by analysis the perception which forms 
 the content of our expression. As I pointed out a moment 
 ago, we never experience a pure sensation : what we experi- 
 ence is the perception, i.e. the sensation as affected by mnemic 
 phenomena ; but the sensation can be shown to be the core 
 of perception by logical analysis : and the sensation is a 
 particular. 
 
 It is only theoretically, then, that the content of what 
 
 is actually given is a series of momentary particulars or 
 
 appearances : practically it is not of them that we are aware. 
 
 Mr. Banks. Well, frankly, I don't understand it. 
 
 What do you make of it, Professor ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Personally I have no quarrel to
 
 MONISM OR DUALISM 267 
 
 make with the exposition, and I am not sure that I should 
 disagree very violently with the theories expounded. I 
 daresay they are admirable as psychology, but they do not 
 seem to me to touch the real problems of philosophy, as I 
 have understood them. 
 
 John. It is because the real problems of philosophy, as 
 you have understood them, are insoluble by the traditional 
 methods of philosophy, that some of us have had recourse 
 to the methods of psychology, and have applied those methods 
 to the Universe as known to physics. The methods of tradi- 
 tional logic have proved barren except in the world of logic, 
 a world that has no real existence. 
 
 Professor Cameron. That may be so. I don't think 
 it is so, but I say it may be so because I don't want to go 
 into that now. What I was about to say was, that whatever 
 we may think of the application of the Behaviourist psycho- 
 logy and of the conclusions of the physicists to philosophy 
 in general, it seems to me singularly unfortunate that you 
 should have introduced them into yours. 
 
 John. Why so ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. Because your zeal for these new 
 methods, and your anxiety to be in line with modern ten- 
 dencies, appear to have led you into a grave inconsistency. 
 
 John. How ? 
 
 In what Sense is there Duality of Mind and Matter ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. I have now had an opportunity 
 of obtaining from Mr. Banks a full account of the theories 
 you expounded during the course of his first two discussions 
 with you, of which he took copious notes. I understand that 
 in those discussions you took your stand on a certain funda- 
 mental position, and that you took special pains to emphasize 
 this position by contrasting it with the different positions 
 taken up by others. This fundamental postulate of yours 
 was the duality of mind and matter ; and, if you remember, 
 you fell foul both of M. Bergson and of M. Geley for their 
 failure to recognise this duality. 
 
 How, you asked, could the elan vital account both for 
 consciousness and for matter, for action and for action un- 
 making itself, unless there was a fundamental distinction in
 
 268 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 the elan vital itself ? And if such a fundamental distinction 
 were assumed, how could reality be the homogeneous, indi- 
 visible flow which Bergson conceived ? 
 
 Again you asked in criticism of M. Geley, How could the 
 all-pervading dynamo-psychism be the innermost essence of 
 brute matter ? Could it be said of matter, " of all that sea 
 for example," that it was evolving from unconsciousness 
 into consciousness ? Was not the unconscious of the Self 
 implanted in the Self by the dynamo-psychism, of quite a 
 different type from the unconsciousness of matter ? And 
 finally you called upon both Bergson and Geley to explain 
 how difference, or even the delusive appearance of differ- 
 ence, could be generated from absolute oneness and homo- 
 geneity ? Having suggested that these difficulties were 
 insoluble, you proceeded to infer a duality in the Universe, 
 a duality of mind and matter, and then went on to postulate 
 a Life Force which had created the human mind as a weapon 
 in its struggle to overcome matter. 
 
 So far as I followed Mr. Banks' account, you considered 
 each of these three entities, the Life Force, mind and matter, 
 to be unanalysable in the sense that no one of them could 
 be resolved into either of the other two. 
 
 John. Yes, these are three now, but as the Life Force 
 created mind, it is probable that mind could again be resolved 
 into that which created it. If and when the Life Force 
 accomplishes its purpose, which we will assume to be the 
 imposition of life and consciousness upon the whole Universe 
 of dead matter, I can conceive that it will have no further 
 use for mind, in the sense of the individualised minds of 
 human beings, and mind may accordingly be merged again 
 in the all-pervading Life Force. 
 
 Professor Cameron. That of course is a possibility, 
 though I do not feel sure that you have sufficiently examined 
 all its implications : the idea savours too much of the 
 Absolute to accord harmoniously with the rest of your system. 
 However, that is not the main point : the main point is that 
 as you expounded the theory of the Life Force, it provided 
 for mind and matter as two real and fundamental entities, 
 neither of which could be resolved into the other. Very 
 good ! You then approach the subject from an entirely
 
 NATURE OF DUALITY OF MIND AND MATTER 269 
 
 different angle, and, in order to meet certain difficulties 
 touching the possibility of absolute knowledge which I put 
 to Mr. Anthony, you expound, with every appearance of 
 agreement, a metaphysic whose cardinal feature is the asser- 
 tion of one fundamental, homogeneous " stuff " of which the 
 Universe is composed. This homogeneous stuff turns out to 
 be " systems of neutral particulars," which, when arranged 
 in one context form the substance of mind, and in another 
 the substance of matter. 
 
 Now, without expressing any opinion as to the soundness 
 of this latter conception, I want to ask how you reconcile it 
 with the former. How can a fundamental duality of mind 
 and matter be reconciled with a fundamental homogeneous 
 stuff ? And what has become of the Life Force, anyhow ? 
 
 John. I must thank you for putting the difficulty so 
 clearly for me. I was thinking of dealing with the point in 
 any event, but you have made me see that, as I have put the 
 case in to-day's discussion, it does seem to involve a contra- 
 diction with my earlier presentation of it. This contradiction 
 is, however, only superficial, as I shall try to show. 
 
 You will remember, Mr. Banks, that I spoke of the Life 
 Force as a principle of energy and vitality, appearing, as it 
 were, in a world of chaos and deadness and blankness, whose 
 existence was in some way or other anterior to the existence 
 of the Force. I assumed this Force to have a purpose, which 
 I conceived to be the conquest of matter, so that universal 
 life and consciousness might take the place of universal dead- 
 ness and materiality. To accomplish this purpose the Life 
 Force created human beings and breathed into them a vital 
 spirit, which subsequently took shape as the human mind, 
 the human conscious and the human unconscious. In order, 
 however, to obtain the substance or material of which to make 
 these creatures, the Life Force was compelled to use the stuff 
 of which it found the Universe to be composed, and this 
 stuff, which was the only available stuff in the Universe, we 
 called matter. 
 
 Now I have tried to-day to suggest an analysis of matter, 
 which shows it to be composed of series of particulars arranged 
 in certain contexts. I want you to think of these series of 
 particulars as the homogeneous stuff which forms the sub-
 
 270 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 stance of the Universe, the stuff with which the Life Force 
 has to work when endeavouring to forge the weapons which 
 it intends to use for the fulfilment of its purpose. Our ques- 
 tion is, then, in what way does the Life Force make use of 
 these series of particulars in order to form the weapon which 
 is human mind ? Now, it is clear that the Life Force cannot 
 create a new substance, for the particulars or events, as we 
 have conceived them, are the only substance in the Universe, 
 and, as nothing can be created out of nothing, whatever was 
 created would have to be formed out of the particulars ; nor can 
 it transform the particulars into some substance which is other 
 than themselves : such a transformation would either be 
 tantamount to a new creation, or, if it were not, would involve 
 the necessity of the newly formed substance being infected 
 by the nature of that out of which it was transformed. 
 
 The Life Force, therefore, can neither create new parti- 
 culars, nor can it transform the existing particulars. What 
 it can do is to arrange the particulars in special contexts 
 and series. 
 
 At this point I want to have recourse to a metaphor in 
 order to explain the kind of process which my conception 
 involves. If you take a collection of steel shavings and 
 subject them to the influence of a magnet, they will imme- 
 diately stand to attention, as it were, and arrange themselves 
 in certain very definite patterns. Now mind, as I conceive 
 it, is just such an arrangement of particulars, which have 
 been magnetised, as it were, by the operations of the Life 
 Force. 
 
 The Life Force is like an electric current running down 
 the wire of a battery. Certain substances, such as wood or 
 the silk on lightning conductors, refuse to take the current ; 
 what is wanted, therefore, is an arrangement of particulars 
 of such a kind that it will take the current of energy proceeding 
 from the Force. Given such an arrangement, we may call 
 it mind ; and it is by means of this arrangement that the 
 Life Force contrives, while utilising the material out of 
 which the Universe is composed, to create out of that material 
 weapons which may be used and stimulated into its service. 
 
 There are three important points about this explanation 
 to which I should like to draw attention. The first consists
 
 NATURE OF DUALITY OF MIND AND MATTER 271 
 
 of its recognition of the fact that mind is not a new and 
 unique substance in the Universe, but simply a certain arrange- 
 ment of the one homogeneous substance. This arrangement 
 is, however, a fundamental fact, as fundamental almost as 
 the Life Force itself, since we may suppose that, from the 
 moment of its appearance in the Universe, the Life Force 
 began to impose its form of arrangement upon matter. 
 
 In the second place this conception does not involve the 
 creation of matter by the Life Force. The Life Force is 
 outside matter, and does not create matter. Matter may 
 be defined as all those arrangements of the particulars which 
 are other than the arrangement which constitutes mind. 
 The Life Force then finds matter ready made and uses it 
 for its purposes. 
 
 The merit of this hypothesis lies in its avoidance of the 
 difficulties, which were found to attend the endeavour made 
 both by Bergson and Geley, to saddle their creative force with 
 the responsibility for matter. If the creative force creates 
 everything and controls everything, it cannot escape the 
 responsibility for pain and evil. It is the necessity for 
 accounting for the existence of these facts, and the imprac- 
 ticability of the attempt to explain them away as partially 
 seen aspects of something else, which has led to the abandon- 
 ment by most thinking men of the omnipotent god theory. 
 We may add that, if the creative force is to an equal degree 
 the source and origin of everything, the question of motive 
 is insoluble. Why was this tremendous process of evolution 
 ever set on foot ? That perfection might, via pain, evil 
 and imperfection, evolve back again into perfection ? 
 
 These questions are not to be answered, and in the 
 interests of an economy of mystery, it is better not to assume 
 a hypothesis which provokes them. By placing the Life 
 Force outside matter we are able to conceive of it as limited 
 and imperfect, hampered in its operations by the recalcitrant 
 nature of the material with which it has to work, and experi- 
 menting with the character of its instruments, in order to 
 determine into what shape that material may most effectively 
 be moulded. 
 
 Thirdly, it is important to note that the mere process 
 of arranging of matter into certain collections of particulars.
 
 272 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 which will, so to speak, take the current, constitutes in itself 
 the creation of mind ; it is not therefore necessary to 
 suppose that the minds of which we are aware, and which 
 we call ours, are themselves part of the Life Force, in the 
 sense of being an expression of the Life Force's mind. 
 
 I have already shown, in criticising M. Geley, with what 
 difficulties this latter conception is attended. It requires us to 
 Y suppose that every act, every thought, every desire, every 
 expression of will and purpose on our part is, to an equal 
 degree, an emanation from the Life Force itself. But if we 
 can only will with the will of the Force, how can we ever 
 will contrary to its purpose ? That we do so will, the fact 
 of inconsistency between our own desires and of opposition 
 between our own and our neighbour's is sufficient evidence. 
 Hence it seems necessary to assume that our will and our 
 consciousness are not themselves part of the consciousness 
 of the Life Force, if indeed it is conscious, but are in them- 
 selves something other than the Life Force, though created 
 by it and subject to its influence. 
 
 We are to conceive then that, having once effected such 
 a grouping of particulars as constitutes mind, the Life Force, 
 though able to influence and stimulate it through the uncon- 
 scious in the manner I have already endeavoured to describe, 
 is not in a position of absolute command over its activities, 
 such that it can always dictate their direction. And it is 
 to this circumstance, that the Life Force has to work in and 
 through matter, that we may, as I have already suggested, 
 attribute the phenomenon of Free Will. 
 
 I hope what I have just said will indicate, however 
 sketchily, the way in which my contention that the Universe 
 is composed of one homogeneous stuff, may be reconciled 
 with my insistence on the duality of mind and matter. There 
 is homogeneity in the sense that mind and matter are both 
 composed of the same stuff ; thus psychology deals with 
 a special arrangement of the subject-matter of physics. 
 There is duality in the sense that the difference in arrangement 
 is vital and fundamental. Because of this difference mind is 
 subject to the Life Force, while matter is opposed to it, while 
 all arrangements of particulars, except that one arrangement 
 which constitutes a brain with sense organs as the inter-
 
 THE LIFE FORCE AND DESIRE 273 
 
 vening medium, remain outside the influence and operations 
 of the Force. 
 
 I hope that what I have said is satisfactory, at any rate 
 as a reconcihation of apparent inconsistency. 
 
 Professor Cameron. You postulate a homogeneity of 
 substance and a duality of arrangement. 
 
 John. Yes ! 
 
 Professor Cameron. And your Life Force is responsible 
 for the special arrangement of the substance, which is mind. 
 
 John. Yes ! 
 
 Professor Cameron. So that, even if all matter and all 
 mind were to be abolished, the Life Force would still persist. 
 
 John. That is so. 
 
 Professor Cameron. And does that complete your 
 doctrine ? 
 
 The Phenomenon of Desire. 
 
 John. Practically it does ! But I would like to add, if 
 I might, a few words on the special relationship between 
 the kind of psychology I have been describing — the sensation 
 and image psychology — and the Life Force hypothesis. I 
 think that this psychology does afford new and important 
 evidence of a general character for my thesis. Have you 
 the time ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. I think so. Will it take 
 long ? 
 
 John. No, I have nearly finished. What I have to say 
 in these concluding words relates mainly to the phenomenon 
 of desire. I want very briefly to consider the account of 
 desire which would, I think, be given by the Behaviourist 
 psychology, and to emphasise its significance for the general 
 view I have been advocating. 
 
 Let me first of all state what I take to be the normal view 
 of the psychology of desire. A desire is usually regarded 
 as an attitude on the part of the subject towards something 
 which appears in his consciousness. The individual imagines 
 something, he is aware of the imagining, and he experiences 
 a certain feeling towards what he imagines ; the something 
 imagined is called the object of the desire ; the feeling towards 
 
 18 
 
 i
 
 1 
 
 274 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 it is called the desiring. The so-called object of the desire, 
 which is also termed the " content of the desire," may equally 
 well form the content of a belief or of a fear without under- 
 going any change. Thus in the expression, " I desire to have 
 a fortune," the having of the fortune, which is the content 
 of the desire, is also the content of the belief " that I have 
 a fortune," and of the fear " lest I have a fortune." 
 
 Desire, then, on this view necessarily presupposes both an 
 imagined object, and a consciousness of that object. It is 
 easy to see how admirably this account accords with the 
 needs of human psychology, even if it belies the facts. It 
 involves and justifies beliefs which are accepted the more 
 readily because they both reflect and support our preconceived 
 notions of our own natures. 
 
 We like to believe that we are capable of conceiving noble 
 and elevated ideals, and that we possess the capacity of 
 pursuing them for long periods in spite of rebuffs and dis- 
 tractions. It is necessary, therefore, to hold a theory of 
 desire which enables the ideal to figure as the consciously 
 conceived object of the desire. We like to believe that we 
 possess the power of rational choice, and of acting consistently 
 along the line chosen. It is natural, therefore, to postulate 
 an act of choice which involves the conscious preference of 
 one desired object to another. We like to believe that we 
 are capable of what is known as virtuous conduct : but in 
 order that virtue may exist, it must at least be possible for 
 us to desire what is difficult and good and to eschew what is 
 easy and wicked, with full consciousness of the meaning of 
 our preference. It is necessary to be aware of the objects you 
 desire in order both to resist and to yield to temptation. 
 
 For these and for similar reasons, the psychology of desire 
 that I have just sketched is usually taken for granted by 
 human beings as applied to human beings. With animals 
 however, the case is different. We do not believe that 
 animals are either rational or virtuous, and we are not there- 
 fore under the necessity of holding a theory about animals 
 which demands the possibihty of their being both. It is, 
 therefore, primarily the investigation of animal behaviour 
 which has suggested the theory of desire, to which I wish to 
 draw your attention.
 
 DESIRE AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF ACTIONS 275 
 
 Desire as a Characteristic of Actions. 
 
 In the first place, it is clear that we have no direct know- 
 ledge of the minds of animals : we can only observe their 
 actions. We believe that we can tell what animals desire by 
 observing their actions, and, as our self-respect is not under 
 the necessity of forcing us to assume that animals have minds, 
 we do not proceed to infer that the animal is in advance 
 conscious of what it desires. Such a supposition is, in fact, 
 palpably absurd when invoked as an explanation of cycles 
 of actions, which proceed along consistent and well-defined 
 lines in the direction of a definite result. When, for instance, 
 a bird first begins to build a nest, it seems unlikely that it 
 is aware that it will one day lay eggs in it, that it will sit 
 upon the eggs, that it will hatch them, and will feed the young 
 birds that are hatched ; if it is not aware that these occur- 
 rences will follow, it cannot be said that it consciously desires 
 them or that it desires to produce offspring. It is unnecessary, 
 therefore, to suppose that the bird possesses a mind and a 
 consciousness in order to explain its actions. Similarly, with 
 regard to the phenomenon of hunger. We know the actions 
 which are normally characteristic of hunger : they are a cycle 
 of restless movements continuing and intensifying until food is 
 found, followed by a state of quiescence involving actions of 
 a different order. Once again it is not necessary to infer 
 the existence of a conscious awareness of desire, of the kind 
 which would express itself in a human being in some such 
 words as " By Jove, I am hungry," to explain the activities. 
 
 Mr. Russell concludes, therefore, that desire in an animal 
 is not a peculiar state of mind or consciousness, but a char- 
 acteristic of certain activities, namely, of that cycle of 
 activities which on the ordinary theory of desire would be 
 regarded as inspired by the desire in question. We have seen 
 that the cycle of actions terminates in the case of hunger 
 in a state of quiescence : this state of quiescence is called 
 the purpose of the cycle. The purpose of a cycle of actions 
 is therefore to be defined as whatever brings the cycle to 
 an end — I am of course ignoring the case of accidental inter- 
 ruptions of the cycle — and throughout the period during 
 which the cycle persists, the animal is said to be desiring
 
 i 
 
 276 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 the purpose or end of the cycle. The importance of this 
 last point lies in the fact that it introduces a conception of 
 the purpose of a desire, which does not involve a conscious 
 awareness of the purpose in advance by the creature enter- 
 taining the desire, but which, on the contrary, only enables 
 the observer to specify the purpose of the series on its com- 
 pletion. 
 
 It may, however, be asked whether the initial stimulus 
 which sets the series of actions in motion does not involve 
 a conception of purpose at the beginning of the series. Does 
 not the feeling of hunger involve the idea of food ? 
 
 This assumption does not appear to be necessary. The 
 origin of the cycle of actions can be adequately explained by 
 the occurrence of certain sensations possessing the property 
 which is called discomfort. These sensations produce a 
 feeling of restlessness which stimulates movements on the 
 part of the creature concerned, which, unless interrupted by 
 another cycle, persist until the sensations of discomfort cease 
 and the feeling of restlessness is allayed. Hence the primitive 
 element in desire, which may be regarded as the mainspring 
 of the whole subsequent process, consists of a kind of aversion 
 from the actual rather than of an attraction to the possible, 
 a distaste for what is rather than a conscious wish for what is 
 imagined. Desire is briefly to be described as a push from 
 behind rather than as a pull from in front. 
 
 Professor Cameron. So far as I understand you, you 
 have up to the present been speaking of animal psychology. 
 What has this exposition to do with the facts of human desire, 
 and what is its significance for your Life Force theory ? 
 
 John. The connection is not far to seek. Up to the 
 present, it is true, I have been speaking of the behaviour of 
 animals, but my chief reason in doing so was to let you down 
 lightly. Almost everything that has been said with regard 
 to the phenomena of desire in animals, is true also of desire 
 in human beings. 
 
 Professor Cameron, Do you mean to say we are not 
 conscious of our desires ? 
 
 John. I mean to say that we need not be, and that, as 
 a rule, we are not. Most of our desires are unconscious. 
 Take, for example, the evidence of psychoanalysis. Psycho-
 
 DESIRE AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF ACTIONS 277 
 
 analysis shows that we entertain all manner of desires of 
 which we are not conscious. If they do make themselves 
 known to consciousness, they usually undergo a process of 
 sunblimation and appear in consciousness under a totally 
 different guise. Thus a man who wants to elope with his 
 housemaid will develop a sudden liking for curried eggs. 
 But this is by no means the end of the story. By observing 
 people's behaviour you are frequently led to the conclusion, 
 not only that they do not desire the things which they believe 
 themselves to desire, but that their activities do not spring 
 from a desire for an object or goal in the ordinary accepted 
 sense of those words at all. It is not only our desires for 
 disreputable things that are disguised and sublimated by 
 the Censor ; we are frequently driven to invent fictitious 
 objects for what would otherwise appear purely irrational 
 and objectless activities. 
 
 Thus in all ages men have been attracted by novelty, 
 danger and discomfort : those who spontaneously follow their 
 impulses find that their impulses lead them to assault the 
 Poles, to scale Mount Everest, and to traverse the Sahara. 
 But men are ashamed of owning to activities which spring 
 merely from a love of adventure : their activities must have 
 an object. Hence in all ages they have been driven to pre- 
 tend that their objectless curiosity, their purely disinter- 
 ested impulse to make themselves uncomfortable, have been 
 prompted by some rational object or some motive of com- 
 mercial gain. There is coal to be exploited in Spitzbergen, 
 there are currents to be observed in the Antarctic Ocean, 
 there are observations to be taken from the top of Mount 
 Everest, and so forth. But the motive of gain or the interests 
 of science are mere camouflage, invented to satisfy man's 
 incurable propensity for thinking himself rational. As a 
 matter of fact, all the great discoveries in the world have 
 been made by men who could give no reasonable account 
 of their objects in making the discovery. They were driven 
 by an irresistible curiosity, impelled by a push from behind, 
 moved by some spirit within themselves of which they could 
 give absolutely no account. 
 
 It is not necessary then that we should be conscious of 
 the objects of our desires ; it is not even necessary that our 
 
 i
 
 278 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 desires should have objects ; and the deeper the psycho- 
 analysts delve into the mysteries of the unconscious, the 
 less do they find anything resembling a desired object or 
 purpose. 
 
 For desires for consciously conceived ends, then, we shall 
 be disposed to substitute tendencies to act in certain ways, 
 and we shall begin to regard the phenomena of desire in a 
 way not dissimilar from that with which the Behaviourist 
 treatment of desire in animals has already made us 
 familiar. 
 
 If, then, we revert to the definition of desire already given 
 in the case of animals, we shall find that the behaviour of 
 human beings conforms to it without evincing any glaring 
 discrepancies. With us, as with animals, the initial stimulus 
 that sets a series of actions in motion is some sensation which 
 possesses the property of discomfort. If you are hungry 
 you are aware of a disagreeable feeling inside and a disin- 
 clination to sit still ; you are restless and commence a series 
 of activities, perhaps those involved in going to a restaurant, 
 sitting down at a table and calHng the waiter, which persist 
 until food is obtained. You may, of course, be conscious 
 that this process is occurring, and you may tell yourself that 
 the object of the process is to obtain food. But the presence 
 or absence of this consciousness is a mere incidental pheno- 
 menon which in no way affects the process. You can eat 
 without being conscious of the fact — most of us read our 
 morning paper at breakfast — just as you may go down to the 
 dining-room without telhng yourself that it is time for dinner, 
 so that it appears to be possible for the whole process, dis- 
 agreeable mental occurrences, cycle of actions which persist 
 until the disagreeable occurrences are allayed, and subsequent 
 feeling of quiescence, to take place without your being aware 
 at any stage of what is going on. As the initial mental 
 occurrence causing the cycle is the origin of the so-called 
 desire for the state of affairs which brings quiescence, it would 
 seem that desire is in essence unconscious. 
 
 Professor Cameron. I think I follow you here ; but 
 there is one point I should like you to clear up. You admit, 
 I take it, that there is such a thing as conscious desire. 
 John. Certainly.
 
 THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUS DESIRE 279 
 
 The Nature of Conscious Desire. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Well, if it is the nature of desire 
 to be as you have described it, what is the special charac- 
 teristic of those desires which are conscious ? 
 
 John. An unconscious desire becomes conscious through the 
 addition of a true belief as to the object of the desire. The 
 object, as we have seen, is the achievement of a certain state 
 of quiescence, or the occurrence of certain pleasurable sen- 
 sations. If there exists in advance a true belief as to the 
 nature of the state of affairs which will bring the quiescence 
 or the pleasurable sensations, then the desire may be said to 
 be conscious. 
 
 I have already suggested, however, that the beliefs which 
 we entertain as to the objects of our desires are very fre- 
 quently false beliefs. If you closely observe a man's actions 
 you will often notice that they are calculated to achieve 
 objects which are different from those which he is professing 
 to pursue and believes himself to be pursuing. The real as 
 opposed to the supposed objects of his desire are, needless 
 to say, almost always of a primitive or disreputable character. 
 It is this habit of ours of entertaining false beliefs as to the 
 objects of our desires which so often enables vengeance to 
 masquerade as justice, vindictiveness as discipline and fear 
 as morality. 
 
 In this connection, Mr Russell draws attention to a com- 
 plication which is largely responsible for our attributing so 
 much more important a place to conscious desire than it 
 actually occupies in our psychology. A false belief that 
 something is desired, which is not in fact desired, causes us 
 actually to desire the object falsely believed to be desired. 
 Thus if your wife wishes to elope with another man, your 
 resultant feeling of restlessness or discomfort which will be 
 allayed only by the torture, or at any rate by the discom- 
 fiture of the man in question, will probably appear in your 
 consciousness as the desire to shoot big game in Africa. The 
 shooting of big game in Africa will as a result become actually 
 desired, but will almost inevitably be found on realisation 
 to be disappointing, thereby proving itself a secondary or 
 derivative and not a primitive desire. The tendency to
 
 280 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 desire the things which we falsely believe we desire, a ten- 
 dency generated by the occurrence of the false belief in ques- 
 tion, explains why we are in the habit of regarding most of 
 our desires as conscious desires. If, however, my previous 
 analysis has any degree of accuracy, it will be obvious that 
 consciousness is only an incidental and intermittent accom- 
 paniment of desire, in no way essential to its occurrence, 
 and that the tendency to attribute objects or purposes to 
 desires is as a rule the result of later rationalisation on the 
 part of the person observing the actions to which his desires 
 give rise. There is no reason to suppose that a conscious 
 awareness of the object or purpose necessarily formed part 
 of the psychological history of the individual entertaining 
 the desire. 
 
 You will no doubt be wondering why I have involved 
 myself in this lengthy exposition of the Behaviourist view 
 of desire. Yet the reason should be sufficiently obvious. 
 For a person who holds a metaphysic such as I have 
 been endeavouring to set before you the theory is a 
 godsend. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Please explain how it helps you ; 
 beyond the elimination of consciousness . . . 
 
 Desire and Thought as the Expression of the Life 
 Force. 
 
 John. Ah, but the elimination of consciousness is the 
 thing. The elimination of consciousness from the process 
 which constitutes desiring is only one aspect of that general 
 attack on consciousness, which I referred to at the beginning 
 of my remarks as being characteristic of modern psychology. 
 It is a development which points in the same direction as 
 the theory that sensations form part of the contents of the 
 external world arranged in a certain way. Analyse all mental 
 occurrences into sensations and images which are caused by 
 sensations, and analyse all desires into characteristics of 
 actions prompted by feelings of discomfort and persisting until 
 the feelings are allayed, and the need for a conscious and 
 continuous self or subject begins to disappear. 
 
 Instead of an " I " who thinks, an " I " who perceives,
 
 DESIRE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 281 
 
 and an " I " who desires, we are left simply with sensations 
 which occur and feelings which are experienced. The bare 
 cognitive act of thinking and the bare cognitive act of desir- 
 ing, which psychologists used to separate from the content 
 thought and the content desired as distinct elements in our 
 psychology, are no longer required ; and with the ehmina- 
 tion of the thinking self and the desiring self as opposed to 
 the thought and the desire, the need for the " ego " itself 
 disappears. " There is a tliinking " or " there is a desiring " 
 becomes the correct way of describing what takes place in 
 our psychology, and the laws which relate my thoughts of 
 to-day and my thoughts of yesterday, and relate them more 
 closely than my thoughts of to-day and your thoughts of 
 yesterday, instead of being simple and obvious and springing 
 direct from the notion of a continuous self, become complex, 
 derivative and dubious. 
 
 Now consider the significance of all this for the theory 
 of the Life Force. We have already sketched an analysis 
 of thought as composed of sensations and images suitably 
 related ; and we have seen that these sensations themselves 
 form part of the outside world arranged in a certain context. 
 Our thoughts, then, depend ultimately upon the sensations 
 we receive, and for these sensations we are not responsible. 
 Similarly, it appears that desire involves no conscious act 
 of choice on the part of an actively willing self : it is a 
 characteristic of certain kinds of action rather than a 
 preference for certain kinds of ends, and of the origin and 
 purpose of these actions we are normally unconscious. It 
 would seem, therefore, that we are not responsible for our 
 desires. 
 
 Now, it is just such a state of affairs which the existence 
 and activity of a Life Force, such as I have described, would 
 lead us to expect. Mind, we say, is a certain arrangement 
 of the stuff of matter. Naturally, since the Life Force has 
 only matter to work with ! Thought is in the last resort 
 reducible to sensations and images, the occurrence of which 
 is outside our control. This accords exactly with the view 
 we were led to take of the workings of the Life Force, which 
 puts into the head of the artist ideas and thoughts which he 
 is unable to explain and has no choice but to express. Desire,
 
 i 
 
 282 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 we affirm, is in the nature of a push from behind and not 
 of a pull from in front ; it is a characteristic of certain actions 
 of which we are normally unconscious, and which are per- 
 formed without motive. Is it not just such a piece of machin- 
 ery that our conception of the Life Force, creating men as 
 puppets to be twitched into life and love, war and death, 
 in conformity with its purposes, irresistibly demands ? It is 
 characteristic of a machine to be unconscious of its working 
 and ignorant of why it works. 
 
 Professor Cameron. Yes, yes ! It all fits together 
 very nicely ; but isn't there just one little flaw ? 
 
 John. What is that ? 
 
 Professor Cameron. You picture us as puppets of the 
 Life Force. We are responsible, you say, neither for our 
 thoughts nor for our desires. The Life Force, it seems, is 
 in complete control of us, and we respond unerringly to its 
 promptings. Very well ! What, then, of this Free Will that 
 you found yourself driven to admit : and what of the problem 
 of pain and evil and error springing from an all-powerful 
 and all-controUing Life Force, the very problem, if I mistake 
 not, which placed you under the necessity of allowing us 
 Free Will ? 
 
 John. I am sorry, I forgot to speak of Free Will ; but 
 even Free Will, I think, can be accommmodated. That we 
 are not responsible for our impulses and desires I think we 
 are agreed : but may we not be responsible for suppressing 
 them ? We cannot say, I shall Hke doing this or I shall like 
 doing that ; but can we not say, I shall do this or do that ? 
 And it is, I conceive, in the power we possess of repressing 
 the desires and impulses which spring from the Life Force 
 that our Free Will is chiefly exercised. The Life Force we 
 saw was driven to operate upon our unconscious and not 
 upon our conscious, in order that the promptings and ener- 
 gisings which it desired to communicate to us might masquer- 
 ade as desires of our own, and so contrive to gain expression 
 in action. But even .so, many of our desires bear too clearly 
 the mark of their origin to get themselves passed by the 
 psychoanalyst's censor. We all hke to think that the actions 
 and desires which are creditable to us express our true nature 
 and are really ours in some sense in which our more regrettable
 
 DESIRE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 283 
 
 activities are not, being only temporary aberrations which 
 occur in spite of, and not as an expression of, the real character 
 of the self. Sexual desires are the chief example of these 
 regrettable activities, and it is these which we are most 
 liable to disown, as springing from some source outside 
 ourselves. 
 
 Now, our Free Will consists in our power to repress such 
 desires, or at least to sublimate them in such a way as to 
 enable us to entertain a false belief as to what the object 
 of our desire really is. As we have seen, the existence of 
 a false behef as to the purpose of a desire may produce a 
 secondary desire for the object falsely believed to be the 
 purpose of the original desire. Thus, there springs up as 
 a result of repression a whole train of secondary desires in 
 fulfilUng which many ot us pass the bulk of our lives. These 
 secondary desires are conscious desires, since we possess a 
 true behef as to their object ; and the existence both of the 
 desire and of the true belief is due to the false belief, which 
 is in turn due to the sublimation of the original desire, which 
 is in turn due to our power of Free Will. Thus, secondary 
 desires spring from our exercise of the power of Free Will, 
 and not at all from the Life Force. 
 
 But the fulfilment of these secondary desires is disappoint- 
 ing ; it brings little joy. Joy, you may remember, Mr. 
 Banks, was one of the devices of the Life Force — a device 
 upon which I spoke at some length — for insuring that we 
 devoted our lives to its service. Hence the fulfilment of a 
 purely unreflecting Life Force desire, such as the desire to 
 eat or to create, brings joy ; while the secondary desires, 
 which spring from Free Will, are attended with but little 
 joy, since they are artificial and manufactured, the product 
 of reflection and suppression. 
 
 " Don't reflect upon your impulses : obey them," might 
 be the motto of a hfe given to the service of the Life Force. 
 Such a hfe would be a happy one ; for reflection brings sadness 
 and not joy. " To be a pig happy, or to be Socrates un- 
 happy," is the statement of a choice which symbohses the 
 permanent antithesis between happiness and thought. And 
 the reason for this antithesis is that the desires engendered 
 by the life of reflection are not primitive and authentic, but
 
 284 KNOWLEDGE IN A WORLD OF CHANGE 
 
 secondary and Free Willist ; they are caricatures and sub- 
 limations of the promptings of the Force. 
 
 Hence, Mr. Banks, I beg of you not to philosophise any 
 more, if you would be happy ! 
 
 Mr. Banks. Unless, of course, I am one of Anthony's 
 artists. 
 
 John. Unless, of course, you are one of Anthony's 
 artists : but in that case, you know, your thoughts must 
 be new.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absolute, the, 14, 79, 231, 232, 246- 
 
 248 
 Academic mind, the, 125, 127, 129, 
 
 133. 147. 153. 156-158. 205, 
 206, 220 
 Achilles, 180 
 Aid gate Pump, 181 
 Amoeba, the, 65, 100, loi 
 r Amour medecin, 130 
 Analysis of Mind, The, 233 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 218- 
 
 221 
 Arabia Deserta, 210 
 Aristophanes, 183 
 
 Aristotle, 126, 127, 151, 157, 189. 230 
 Art, 163-226 
 
 academic view of, 169-175, 190, 
 
 202, 213, 214 
 criticism of the academic view of, 
 
 176-183, 200, 202-204 
 Life Force theory of, 165-169 
 modern, 222-224 
 Aspasia, 145 
 
 Athens, 145, 177, 185, 186 
 Austen, Jane, 164, 208, 209 
 
 Babylon, 92 
 
 Bach, 170 
 
 Barker, 131 
 
 Beauty, Form of, 102, 103, 106 
 
 Beerbohm, Max, 182 
 
 Beethoven, 155, 204 
 
 Behaviourism, 45, 96, 233-239, 275- 
 
 280 
 BeUef, 241-245, 265, 266 
 
 verifiability of, 247-251 
 Bennett, Arnold, 210, 213 
 Bergson, 9, 14-20, 27-30, 35, 57, 
 
 58, 61-65, 69, 79, 83-86, 104, 
 
 108, 109, 137, 232, 267, 268, 
 
 271 
 Berkeley, 256 
 
 Blake. 168 
 
 Blucher, 135 
 
 Bible, the, 152 
 
 Biology, 33 
 
 Birth, 113, 115, 117 
 
 Botticelli, 244 
 
 Bradley, 14, 79 
 
 Buddha, 109, 215, 216 
 
 Bunyan, 168, 204, 216 
 
 Burton, 218, 220, 225 
 
 Bury, 99 
 
 Butcher, 127 
 
 Butler, Samuel, 168, 177 
 
 By water, 127 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 147, 247 
 
 Candida, 152, 193 
 
 Capitalism, 136, 143 
 
 Carr, Professor Wildon, 24 
 
 Catiline, 185 
 
 Cause and effect, law of, 58, 63, 
 
 253-255 
 Censor, the, 45-491 51 
 Chesterton, 98, 180 
 Christ, 109, 147, 155, 164, 167, 215, 
 
 216 
 Cicero, 185 
 Civilisation, 48 
 Classics, the, 152, 153, 184, 185, 
 
 188, 189 
 Communism, 136, 143 
 Congreve, 147 
 Conrad, 192 
 Creative Evolution, 14 
 Crock of Gold, The. ■zii^ 
 Cubist movement, 204 
 
 Darwin, 38, 56, 57 
 Defoe, 185 
 Deirdre, 214 
 Deity, Limited, 15 
 Democracy, 92, 143 
 
 285
 
 286 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Demosthenes, 185 
 Descartes, 151 
 Desire, 273-283 
 De Vries, 63 
 
 Dialogue, Form of, 10, 11 
 Dickens, 168, 213 
 Displacement, 50 
 Doctor's Dilemma, The, 130 
 Doughty, 210 
 Dreams, 49-51, 105 
 Dualism, 9, 39, 267, 26S 
 Dumas, 213 
 Duration, 18, 39 
 Dutch school in art, the, 213 
 Dynamo-psychism, 71, 72, 77, 78, 80, 
 81, 85, 86 
 
 Economics, teaching of, 136 
 Education, 132-162 
 
 academic view of, 1 4 1, 1 47, 1 32, 133, 
 Einstein, 143, 167, 171, 253 
 Elan vital, the, 9, 15, 28-30, 65, 81, 
 
 84, 86, 137, 267, 268 
 Elliot, George, 152 
 Empiricism, 37 
 Eroica symphony, the, 205 
 Essay on Women, 69 
 Etheridge, 204 
 Euripides, 16S 
 Everest, Mount, 277 
 Evolution, classical theories of, 56- 
 
 58. 63. 65 
 
 Fabians, 112 
 
 Fielding, 152 
 
 Forms of Plato, 102-104, 173, 175 
 
 Free association, 52, 53 
 
 Free Will, 89-91, 113, 166, 272, 282, 
 283 
 
 Freud, 42, 43 
 
 From the Unconscious to the Con- 
 scious, 33, 62 
 
 Geley, 33. 34. 61, 65-69, 71, 73-77, 
 84-86, 94, 95, 100, 104, 105, 
 160, 161, 166, 212, 232, 267, 
 268, 271, 272 
 criticism of, 79-84 
 
 General Will, 128 
 
 Genius, 91, 93, 94, 152 
 
 Glyn, Eleanor, 170 
 
 God, 7-9, 69, 117, 132, 138, 141, 
 168. 175, 232, 244 
 
 Goethe, 137 
 
 Goodness, Form of, 102, 103 
 
 Gravitation, the law of, 125, 142 
 
 Greece, 187 
 
 Green, T. H., 79 
 
 Greene, 151 
 
 Gulliver's Travels, 182, 221 
 
 Hamlet, 211 
 
 Hampstead Repertory Theatre, 206 
 
 Hardy, 168, 170 
 
 Harvey, 171 
 
 Heartbreak House, 224 
 
 Hegel, 14, 79, 128, 253 
 
 Henry V, 134 
 
 Henry VI, 134 
 
 Henry VIII, 149 
 
 Heracleitus, 9 
 
 History — 
 
 Greek, 186, 187 
 
 the teaching of, 134, 135, 144 
 Historical truth, 144-149 
 Homer, 180, 185 
 Huxley, 38, 56 
 
 Ibsen, 168, 216 
 
 Idea of Progress, The, 99 
 
 Idealism, 232 
 
 Idealists, 79, 256 
 
 Ideas, Plato's Theory of, 107, 253 
 
 Instinct, 29, 30, 32, 34 
 
 Intellect, the, 16-19. 23, 27, 29, 35 
 
 Introspection, 112 
 
 Intuition, 17, 28-30, 35, 84 
 
 James, Henry, 180, 192 
 Wilham, 37, 60, 237 
 Joy, 108, 109, 112, 283 
 Jung, 42 
 Juvenal, 187, 188 
 
 Kant, 28, 29, 137, 140 
 
 Keats, 192 
 
 Knowledge, 121, 144, 228, 230, 231, 
 
 241, 244, 245, 251, 265 
 Behaviourist, conception of, 234- 
 
 236, 238 
 
 Lamarck, 38, 57 
 Le Roy, 21, 30 
 Life and Consciousness, 108 
 Life Force, the, 7-10, 15, 39, 86-91, 
 95-99. 113, 117, 121, 122,
 
 INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 132, 177, 191, 197, 201, 212, 
 217, 221, 226, 229, 268-273, 
 281, 282 
 
 criticism of, 1 21-125 
 devices of, 87, 88, 91, 93-97, 107, 
 108, 112, 114-117, 166, 177, 
 178, 283 
 limitations of, 89, 90, 197, 271, 
 
 272 
 purpose of, 88, 98, 99, 106, 154, 
 156, 159, 165, 268 
 Literature, teaching of, 151-153 
 Locke, 256 
 Lorna Doone, 198 
 Love, 113, 115-117 
 Lucretius, 188 
 Lyly, 151 
 
 Man and Superman, 206 
 Mansfield, Lord, 74 
 Mansfield Park, 209 
 Marriage, 115 
 Marx, Karl, 136, 187, 216 
 Materialist theories, 38 
 Matter, 197, 232, 261, 269, 271 
 
 Subjectivity of, 262-265 
 
 Bergson's conception of, 20-27, 
 84 
 Matter and Memory, 14 
 Mechanist theories, 38, 55-58, 63, 83 
 Megarians, the 145, 230 
 Memory, 18, 78, 240 
 Mendelssohn, 170 
 Meredith, 213 
 Milton, 147 
 
 Mind and Matter, duality of, 267-272 
 Mnemic phenomena, 260, 266 
 Moby Dick, 210 
 Monads, 77, 82 
 Monism, 39 
 Moore, George, 192 
 Mozart, 92, 170, 173 
 
 Napoleon, 146, 241 
 
 National Gallery, 170 
 
 Nelson, 149, 242 
 
 Neutral particulars, 257-262 
 
 New Materialists, 45 
 
 News from Nowhere, 221 
 
 Newton, 125, 128, 142, 143, 171, 
 
 253 
 Novel, the realistic, 213 
 Nunn, T. P., 12 
 
 QEdipus complex, the, 54 
 Old Wives' Tale, 210 
 Origin of Species, The, 62 
 Owen, Rev. Vale, 67 
 
 Paine, Tom, 145 
 
 Parallelism, 58-60, 64 
 
 Pater, Walter, iii, 190, 194 
 
 Peacock, 152 
 
 Peele, 151 
 
 Peloponnesian War, the, 186 
 
 Pericles, 145 
 
 Pheidias, 171 
 
 Philosophy, teaching of, 139-141, 151 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 204, 221 
 
 Plato, 10, 38, 102-107, 125, 127, 
 
 140, 155-157. 159, 173-175. 
 
 189, 229, 250, 251, 253 
 Pleasure, 108, 109, in, 112 
 Pliny the Younger, 190, 221 
 Poe, Edgar Allen, 208 
 Poetics, Aristotle's, 126 
 Politics, teaching of, 136, 137 
 Pope, 188 
 
 Pragmatism, 37, 231 
 Professionahsm, 130, 131 
 Progress, 98, 100-102 
 Psychoanalysis, 40-55, 61, 73, 75, 
 
 79, 84, 85, 107, 126 
 criticism of, 42-55 
 Psychology, supernormal, 65-68, 105 
 
 Reahsm in art, 21 1-2 13 
 
 Realists, philosophical, 256 
 
 Reahty, Bergson's view of, 17-19. 
 
 29 
 Relativity, theory of, 259 
 Rehgion, the teaching of, 137-139 
 
 144 
 Renaissance, The, in 
 Representationalism, 256 
 Repression, 47, 48, 50 
 Republic, Plato's, 102, 125 
 Revolution — 
 
 the French, 136 
 
 the Russian, 136 
 Rodin, 171 
 
 Roman Empire, the, 144, 221 
 Rosary, The, 198 
 Round Madonna, the, 170, 244 
 Rousseau, 136 
 Rubicon, the, 247 
 Ruskin, 181
 
 288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Russell, Bertrand, 45. 48, 136, 233, 
 239, 240, 242, 252, 253, 255- 
 257, 262, 263, 275, 279 
 
 Russia, 241 
 
 Sand, George, 152 
 
 Sappho, 198 
 
 Satan, 206 
 
 Satire, 187 
 
 Schopenhauer, 9, 15, 39, 62, 69-72, 
 
 75, 77, 81, 100, 115, 119. 175. 
 
 206 
 Scott, Dixon, 194-196 
 Self, the, 77, 78, 80-83, 85, 104 
 Self-expression, the doctrine of, no, 
 
 III 
 Self-knowledge, 21 1-2 13 
 Self ridge, 158 
 Semon, 260 
 Seneca, 190 
 Sensations, 258-260 
 Shakespeare, 124, 151, 152, 164, 168, 
 
 169, 171. 173. 245. 251-253 
 Shaving of Shagpat, The, 214 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 15, 29, 39, 
 
 109, III, 116, 152, 168, 169, 
 
 177, 182, 193-196, 206, 207, 
 
 216 224 
 Socialism, in, 143 
 Socrates, 167, 283 
 Sophocles, 114, 171, 173, 177 
 Sorel, 136 
 Soul, the, 105 
 Sparta, 145 
 Spinoza, 151 
 Spiritualism, 62, 66-68 
 Sports, 63 
 
 State, Hegel's theory of the, 128, 129 
 Stevenson, 190 
 Stravinsky, 205 
 Style in literature, 190-197 
 Sublimation, 50, 126 
 Swift, 188, 191, 216 
 Symbolism, 49 
 
 Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 208, 
 Tchekov, 224 
 Tender-mindedness, 60, 61 
 
 Tess of the D'Urhevvilles, 113 
 
 Thackeray, 213 
 
 Thersites, 180 
 
 Thing-in-itself, 75, 100 
 
 Thucydides, 185, 186 
 
 Time and Freewill, 14 
 
 Tolstoy, 181, 215 
 
 Tough-mindedness, 60, 6r 
 
 Tragedy, Aristotle's theory of, 126, 151 
 
 Trajan, 221 
 
 Transmigration, 104 
 
 Treasure Island, 198 
 
 Truth- 
 artistic, 1 71-174, 244 
 Form of, 102, 103 
 logical, 243 
 mathematical, 243 
 scientific, 171 
 
 Unconscious, the, 33, 34, 43, 44, 47- 
 49, 56, 61, 72-76, 85, 94-100, 
 105-107, 160, i5i 
 Universe — 
 
 Geley's conception of the, 77-80 
 composition of the, 261 
 
 Verlaine, 190 
 
 Villon, 190 
 
 Virgil, 185 
 
 Vitalism, 9, 15, 58, 69, 104 
 
 Von Hartmann, 39 
 
 Waterloo, battle of, 135, 142, 2ix 
 
 Way of an Eagle, The, 198 
 
 Webster, 151 
 
 Wellington, 211 
 
 Wells, 15, 60, 109, 137, 213 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, no, 112, 190 
 
 Will, the, 9, 15, 70-72, 75, 81 
 
 Freedom of, 89-91, 113, 282, 283 
 Willesden Junction, 192 
 Wordsworth, 153 
 Wuthering Heights, 209 
 Wycherley, 204 
 
 Yahoos, 182 
 
 Yogi, Indian, 106 
 
 You Never Can Tell, 116
 
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