RABELAISIAN REGRETS

There has arisen in our time an extraordinary notion that there is something humane, open-hearted or generous about refusing to define one's creed. Obviously the very opposite is the truth. Refusing to define a creed is not only not generous, it is distinctly mean. It fails in frankness and fraternity towards the enemy. It is fighting without a flag or a declaration of war. It denies to the enemy the decent concessions of battle; the right to know the policy and to treat with the headquarters. Modern "broad-mindedness" has a quality that can only be called sneakish; it endeavours to win without giving itself away, even after it has won. It desires to be victorious without betraying even the name of the victor. For all sane men have intellectual doctrines and fighting theories; and if they will not put them on the table, it can only be because they wish to have the advantage of a fighting theory which cannot be fought.

In the things of conviction there is only one other thing besides a dogma, and that is a prejudice. If there is something in your life for which you will hold meetings and agitate and write letters to the newspaper, but for which you will not find the plain terms of a creed, then that thing is properly to be described as a prejudice, however new or noble or advanced it may seem to be. But indeed I think that when these ages are seen in proper perspective, men will say that the chief mark of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was the growth of vast and victorious prejudices. I give, in passing, some instances of what I mean. Thus, for instance, it is a brave and logical creed which declares, like Mahomet and some modern Puritans, that the drinking of fermented liquor is really wrong. But the modern world has not adopted this clear creed and never will. What it has done has been to spread everywhere a strong but vague prejudice against certain forms of drinking, particularly those adopted by the poor. We have not made it wicked to drink ale, but we have made it slightly disreputable to go into a public-house. In other words, we have made it slightly disreputable, if you drink ale, to be poor or to be sociable. What it comes to is this: that any one wishing to sneer at me can get a laugh by saying I am a beer-drinker, but he will not commit himself to the statement that the thing that he has sneered at is wrong. He may hit me, because he is appealing to a prejudice; but I may not hit him because he is not appealing to a creed. He will not set anything up for me to hit. He wants, somehow or other, to avoid calling liquor wrong and yet to call me wrong for touching liquor. This is not latitudinarianism; it is ordinary human cowardice.

There are a great many other instances which could be given. For instance, fashionable opinion does not actually declare (as do, I believe, certain Eastern religions) that ablutions and bodily cleanliness are primary things, above even ordinary morals; but it does create a loose popular impression that it has scored off a personality or a nation more by saying that it is dirty than by saying that it is avaricious or timid or unchaste. No new creed is preached about cleanliness, but a strong sentimental emphasis and partiality is attached to the thing, making it more important than other things. Of course cleanliness is only made so very important at present because it happens to be a thing quite easy for the rich and very difficult for the poor. My only concern here, however, is to point out the method by which it has been made important; never by explaining or defining its importance, as in a creed; always by assuming its importance, as in a prejudice. I have no space to go at length into other examples, but the reader can easily put the cases to himself; and he can employ this general test: that in the case of half the most typical movements of the last thirty years, nobody can say how or when they really began. In no barbaric twilight or tangled forest or confusion of the dark ages did huge forces ever come so silently or secretly into the world as they come to-day. No one knows or can name the real beginning of Imperialism or of the popularity of the Royal Family (a thing quite recent yet quite untraceable), or of the taking for granted, in so many minds, of the materialist philosophy or of the practical imposition of teetotalism as a discipline on the Nonconformist public ministry. These things come out of the night and are formless even when they are forming everything else.

But discussions on the subject of the Censor and other theatrical problems have brought before the public a supreme instance of what I mean. We have been asked for the hundredth time to find some solution of that problem of the combination in art of truth with sexual modesty; and the result of considering this has been that we find ourselves face to face with a profound and most important change in public opinion on this subject; a change that has been going on, perhaps, for the last twenty years, perhaps ever since the coming of the Puritans; but a change which is, at any rate, of the utmost import to the wholesomeness of ethics, and a change which has proceeded in the same powerful silence as the growth of a tree. It is this difference between new English and old English ethics in the matter of verbal delicacy of which I wish to speak here. The subject is difficult, it is even emotional and painful; and I think it will do no harm to begin with some of the general human principles of the problem, even if they are as old and obvious as the alphabet.

There is not really much difference of opinion among normal men about the first principles of decency in expression. All healthy men, ancient and. modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane. There are people, indeed, who maintain that they would talk of this topic as coldly or openly as of any other; there are people who maintain that they would walk naked down the street. But these people are not only insane people, they are in the most emphatic sense of the word stupid people. They do not think; they only point (as children do) and say "Why?" Even children only do it when they are tired; but exactly this tired quality is most of what passes in our time not only for thought but for bold and disturbing thought. To ask, "Why cannot we discuss sex coolly and rationally anywhere?" is a tired and unintelligent question. It is like asking, "Why does not a man walk on his hands as well as on his feet?" It is silly. If a man walked systematically on his hands, they would not be hands, but feet. And if love or lust were things that we could all discuss without any possible emotion they would not be love or lust, they would be something elsesome mechanical function or abstract natural duty which may or may not exist in animals or in angels, but which has nothing at all to do with the sexuality we are talking about. All the ideas of grasp or gesture, which to us make up the meaning of the word "hand", depend upon the fact that hands are loose extremities used not for walking on but for waving about. And all that we mean when we speak of "sex" is involved in the fact that it is not an unconscious or innocent thing, but a special and violent emotional stimulation at once spiritual and physical. A man who asks us to have no emotion in sex is asking us to have no emotion in emotion. He has forgotten the subject-matter with which he deals. He has lost the topic of the conversation. It may be said of him, in the strict meaning of the words, that he does not know what he is talking about.

And if men have never doubted that there should be a decorum in such things, neither have they ever doubted that that decorum might be carried much too far; that courage and laughter and wholesome truth might be sacrificed to the proprieties. So far, I say, humanity is essentially unanimous. It is in the discussion as to which thing shall be suppressed and which permitted, in the selection of the more harmless from the more harmful types of candour, that we begin to find the difference between different civilisations and different religions among men. And it is exactly upon the point of such a difference as this that I wish to speak here. Among other societies and ages our own society and age has made a choice in this matter. We have said, substantially by a general feeling, that one kind of expression shall be allowed and another rendered impossible. We have chosen, and I think we have chosen wrong.

Before going deeper into this most difficult subject there is at least one general statement to be made. The evil of excess in this matter really consists of three quite separate evils. Verbal impropriety or excess can spring from three quite different motives, three quite different states of mind, which have really very little to do with each other. It is necessary to unpick these three strands before we go any further. Ordinary popular discussion of the problem always hopelessly mixes them up. Briefly, they may be stated thus: impropriety arises either from a really vicious spirit, or from the love of emphasis, or from the love of analysis.

The first can be dismissed with brevity and with relief. There is such a thing as pornography; as a system of deliberate erotic stimulants. That is not a thing to be argued about with one's intellect, but to be stamped on with one's heel. But the point about it to be noted for our purpose is that this form of excess is separated from the other two by the fact that the motive of it must be bad. If a man tries to excite a sex instinct which is too strong already, and that in its meanest form, he must be a scoundrel. He is either taking money to degrade his kind or else he is acting on that mystical itch of the evil man to make others evil, which is the strangest secret in hell.

But when we come to the two motives of emphasis and of analysis, it is essential to observe that in both cases the motive may be beautiful, even when the result is most disastrous. The motive for impropriety arising out of emphasis can be best illustrated by a comparison with the habit of swearing. Swearing is, of course, the strongest possible argument for the religious view of life. A man cannot satisfactorily affirm anything about this world except by getting out of this world. The things commonly called fables are so true that they alone can give final ratification even to the things commonly called facts. A man in Balham cannot even call his dog a good dog without summoning to his aid either the angels or the devils. The Balhamite, like the Roman, if he cannot bend the gods will move Acheron; but he never thinks of trying to move Balham. Religion is his only resort for purposes of real emphasis; and often, even when he is attacking religion, his instinctive way of attacking it is to say that it is a damned lie. The most natural way of talking is the supernatural way of talking. And indeed this may be considered a good working test for all modern fads and philosophies which pretend to be religions. The new faiths founded on evolution or an impersonal ethic are always claiming, that they also can produce holiness; and no Christian has any right in Christian charity to deny that possibility. But if the question really is whether the things in question are religions in the sense that Christianity or Mohammedanism are religions, then I should suggest a different test. I should not ask whether they can produce holiness, but whether they can produce profanity. Can any one swear by ethics? Can any one blaspheme evolution? Many men now hold that a mere adoration of abstract morality or goodness is the core and sole necessity of religion. I know many of them; I know that their lives are noble, and their intellects just. But (I say it with respect and even hesitation) would not their oaths be a little mild? I do not mean that they ought to swear, or that anybody ought to swear, I mean that if it comes to swearing one can see in such a competition the vast difference in actuality between the new sham religion which talks about the holiness within, and an old practical religion which worshipped a real holiness without. You can see the difference in the weakness of the oaths considered as literature. The man of the Christian Churches said (occasionally), "Oh, my God!" The man of the ethical societies says (presumably), "Oh, my goodness!"

It is generally true, I say, that the whole circle of this physical universe does not contain anything strong enough for the purposes of a man who really means what he says; even about a small dog. Yet there is one exception to this generalisation. There is one thing which belongs to this world, but which is yet so fierce and startling, so full of menace and ecstasy, that it seems at times to partake of the character of miracle. This thing is the thing called sex; and on this also from time to time the man with the small dog in Balham will call in his dire need. Men used to swear by their heads; they still in a manner swear by their bodies. Sex is actual enough to swear by. To take but one coarse democratic test, people scribble about it on walls as they do about religion. Nobody ever scribbled on a wall about ethics. Above all, the language of sex can be used as a kind of violent invocation; a reinforcement of common words by the strongest words. I will not pause here to ask the reason of this; whether saying "damn" and saying other things unprintable have something to do with the fact that sex is the great business of the body, and salvation the great business of the soul. It is enough to say that any one can read the thing I mean and any one can hear it. He can read the thing best perhaps in Aristophanes or in Rabelais. He can hear the thing best in the street outside.

But though he can find it in the street outside, he cannot find it in any of the books or newspapers sold in the street. There is no law against indecent ideas; but there is a quite efficient and practical law against indecent words. Slowly throughout the eighteenth century word after word was dropped until by the Victorian time it was insisted that no coarse phrases should be used even in defending coarseness. I am myself under the limitations of this very local prejudice. I am compelled to prove my case in many pages because I have to talk as one talks in a respectable magazine. I could prove my case in ten minutes if I could talk as two respectable married men really talk on the top of an omnibus. It is sufficient, however, to put the matter thus: When a navvy uses what is called obscene language it is almost always to express his righteous disgust at obscene conduct. And here the navvy is at one with all the most really masculine poets or romancers; he is at one with Rabelais, with Swift, and even with Browning. Browning uses a foul metaphor to express the foulness of those who profess sympathy with human sorrows merely out of their own morbidity. You can find the phrase in "At the Mermaid." Browning uses the same foul metaphor to express the foulness of those who cannot understand a man's prompt grasp of the presence of a good woman. You can find the phrase in the speech of Capponsacchi. In short, the emphatic use of sexual language has this great advantage that it is commonly used purely in the interests of virtue. The virtuous cabman may (and does) call a man a blank, in a state of furious and innocent horror at the idea of any one being a blank. But this is not true in the case of the third impulse to indecorum. The third impulse is that which I have called the analytical; the mere curiosity of the mind about how the relations of the sexes are to be considered and classified. This covers all that we now call the Problem Play, and all that we associate with the realistic and psychological novel, and all the millions of proposals for the rearrangement of marriage. The dialogue in The Little Eyolf horrified many people; but it did not contain a single coarse word. Mr. George Moore, Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, and the lady called "Victoria Cross" have in turn been accused of being needlessly daring; but not one of them dare use words straight out of Bunyan or the Bible. The analytic indecency is now more free than it ever was among free men. The emphatic indecency is more stifled than it ever was among free men; more stifled than it ever was among slaves.

I am not concerned here to deny that the modern fashion of analysing sex is in general a good thing. Certainly there is grossly too much hypocrisy about sex; not in the English people, but in the literature and journalism which the English people, for some incomprehensible reason, permit to speak for them. There is no hypocrisy on the top of an English omnibus; but I warmly agree that there is really too much hypocrisy in the front page of an English newspaper, or within the covers of an English book. Let us agree that Ibsen had a right to suggest that marriage is an unpleasant fact as well as a pleasant one; that as well as the more chivalrous side of sex which is exaggerated by the Victorian poets, there is also the realistic and scientific side of sex, which was exaggerated by the old monks. Let me concede altogether and at once the fact that the modern tendency to dissect sex and to subdivide it, to put it into pigeon-holes, is a just and necessary measure. I will not even say here that the tendency has gone too far. But I will say this: what will you do if it does go too far? Suppose you wake up some fine morning and find indecencies which are quite ludicrous being taken quite seriously. Suppose you find certain sins put in a pigeon-hole when they ought to be put in a dust-hole. Suppose that after twenty years of scientific study you find that you have all the dirty jokes back again, the only difference being that you must enjoy them without laughing at them. Suppose, in short, that you are confronted with the exasperating spectacle of people chewing sins, instead of spitting them out of their mouths like their fathers; what will you do then? How will you express your feelings if you are faced with that horrible fashion of taking sex seriouslyof which the true name is Phallic Worship? I know what you will do: you will call upon the shades of Rabelais and Fielding to deliver you out of that foul idolatry; and perhaps the English people will answer you and speak. It is common enough to talk of the English people speaking; but if ever they do speak they will speak as Rabelais spoke, and as English cabmen speak now.