,,miscellaneous ,,aphorisms2 ,,the ,,soul ,,of ,,man ,,sebastian ,,melmoth ,,oscar ,,wilde ,london ,arthur ,l4 ,humphreys #aiaa 7,miscellaneous aphorisms1 followed by ,the ,soul of ,man47 ,the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death4 ,women are made to be loved1 not to be understood4 ,it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't4 ,moren than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read4 ,women1 as someone says1 love with their ears1 just as men love with their eyes1 if they ever love at all4 ,it is better to be beautiful than to be good1 but it is better to be good than to be ugly4 ,nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion4 ,misfortunes one can endure1 they come from outside1 they are accidents4 ,but to suffer for one's faults--ah6 there is the sting of life4 ,beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm4 ,philosophies fall away like sand1 creeds follow one another1 but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons1 a possession for all eternity4 ,questions are never indiscreet2 answers sometimes are4 ,twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin2 but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building4 ,the only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes4 ,anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend1 but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success4 ,selfishness is not living as one wishes to live1 it is asking others to live as one wishes to live3 and unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone1 not interfering with them4 ,a man who does not think for himself does not think at all4 ,nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation4 ,it is not a speculation4 ,it is a sacrament4 ,its ideal is love4 ,its purification is sacrifice4 ,in old days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbour4 ,in fact1 to be a bit better than one's neighbour was considered excessively vulgar and middle class4 ,nowadays1 with our modern mania for morality1 everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity1 incorruptibility1 and all the other seven deadly virtues4 ,and what is the result8 ,you all go over like ninepins--one after the other4 ,all sympathy is fine1 but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode4 ,if you pretend to be good the world takes you very seriously4 ,if you pretend to be bad it doesn't4 ,such is the astounding stupidity of optimism4 ,it is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public4 ,it always makes people think that he beats her when they're alone4 ,the world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life4 ,actors are so fortunate4 ,they can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy1 whether they will suffer or make merry1 laugh or shed tears4 ,but in real life it is different4 ,most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications4 ,the world is a stage1 but the play is badly cast4 ,men know life too early2 women know life too late-that is the difference between men and women4 ,he who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best4 ,there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about1 and that is not being talked about4 ,life is not governed by will or intention4 ,life is a question of nerves and fibres and slowly built-up cells1 in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams4 ,man is a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations1 a complex1 multiform creature that bears within itself strange legacies of thought and passion1 and whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead4 ,as long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she is perfectly satisfied4 ,there is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies4 ,public and private life are different things4 ,they have different laws and move on different lines4 ,when one is placed in the position of guardian one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects4 ,it's one's duty to do so4 ,i have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing4 ,an engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise1 pleasant or unpleasant1 as the case may be4 ,it is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself4 ,if the lower classes don't set us a good example what on earth is the use of them8 ,they seem1 as a class1 to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility4 ,if a woman cannot make her mistakes charming she is only a female4 ,the world was made for men and not for women4 ,it is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done4 ,if you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism4 ,why do you talk so trivially about life8 ,because ,i think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it4 ,what a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us4 ,it is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating4 ,relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die4 ,charity creates a multitude of sins4 ,my experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better they don't know anything at all4 ,truth is a very complex thing and politics is a very complex business4 ,there are wheels within wheels4 ,one may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay4 ,sooner or later in political life one has to compromise4 ,everyone does4 ,men can love what is beneath them--things unworthy1 stained1 dishonoured4 ,we women worship when we love2 and when we lose our worship we lose everything4 ,the proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding4 ,the one advantage of playing with fire is that one never gets even singed4 ,it is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up4 ,there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life fully1 entirely1 completely1 or dragging out some false1 shallow1 degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands4 ,when one is in town one amuses oneself4 ,when one is in the country one amuses other people4 ,it is excessively boring4 ,romance is the privilege of the rich1 not the profession of the unemployed4 ,the poor should be practical and prosaic4 ,an acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship4 ,it starts in the right manner4 ,the truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks4 ,science can never grapple with the irrational4 ,that is why it has no future before it in this world4 ,the happy people of the world have their value1 but only the negative value of foils4 ,they throw up and emphasise the beauty and the fascination of the unhappy4 ,in this world there are only two tragedies4 ,one is not getting what one wants1 and the other is getting it4 ,the last is much the worst--the last is a real tragedy4 ,disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's original virtue4 ,it is through disobedience that progress has been made--through disobedience and rebellion4 ,it is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees4 ,it makes life too full of terrors4 ,comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us4 ,politics are my only pleasure4 ,you see nowadays it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty or to be romantic till one is forty-five1 so we poor women who are under thirty1 or say we are1 have nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy4 ,and philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures4 ,i prefer politics4 ,i think they are more 444 becoming4 ,one's past is what one is4 ,it is the only way by which people should be judged4 ,in a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow1 not from life1 but from each other4 ,it is always a silly thing to give advice1 but to give good advice is fatal4 ,secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life4 ,so1 at least1 ,i am told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better4 ,but no man should have a secret from his own wife4 ,she invariably finds it out4 ,women have a wonderful instinct about things4 ,they discover everything except the obvious4 ,life holds the mirror up to art1 and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction4 ,i feel sure that if ,i lived in the country for six months ,i should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me4 ,to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting4 ,it is like advising a man who is starving to eat less4 ,a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it4 ,i am always saying what ,i shouldn't say2 in fact1 ,i usually say what ,i really think--a great mistake nowadays4 ,it makes one so liable to be misunderstood4 ,experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes4 ,the true perfection of man lies1 not in what man has1 but in what man is4 ,the basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty4 ,people talk so much about the beauty of confidence4 ,they seem to entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt4 ,to believe is very dull4 ,to doubt is intensely engrossing4 ,to be on the alert is to live1 to be lulled into security is to die4 ,every effect that one produces gives one an enemy4 ,to be popular one must be a mediocrity4 ,it is a sad truth1 but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things4 ,names are everything4 ,i never quarrel with actions1 my one quarrel is with words4 ,that is the reason ,i hate vulgar realism in literature4 ,the man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one4 ,it is the only thing he is fit for4 ,a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness4 ,there are terrible temptations that it requires strength--strength and courage--to yield to4 ,to stake all one's life on one throw--whether the stake be power or pleasure ,i care not--there is no weakness in that4 ,there is a horrible1 a terrible1 courage4 ,nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs4 ,all charming people are spoiled4 ,it is the secret of their attraction4 ,there is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine4 ,personally1 ,i have a great admiration for stupidity4 ,it is a sort of fellow-feeling1 ,i suppose4 ,all men are monsters4 ,the only thing to do is to feed the wretches well4 ,a good cook does wonders4 ,there is no such thing as an omen4 ,destiny does not send us heralds4 ,she is too wise or too cruel for that4 ,crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones4 ,love art for its own sake and then all things that you need will be added to you4 ,this devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful things is the test of all great civilisations2 it is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation4 ,it is always worth while asking a question1 though it is not always answering one4 ,it takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing4 ,with a proper background women can do anything4 ,chiromancy is a most dangerous science1 and one that ought not to be encouraged1 except in a 'tte--tte4' ,one should never take sides in anything4 ,taking sides is the beginning of sincerity1 and earnestness follows shortly afterwards1 and the human being becomes a bore4 ,the work of art is beautiful by being what art never has been2 and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the reflection of which its real perfection depends4 ,there are three kinds of despots4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over the body4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over the soul4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over soul and body alike4 ,the first is called the prince4 ,the second is called the pope4 ,the third is called the people4 ,costume is a growth1 an evolution1 and a most important1 perhaps the most important1 sign of the manners1 customs1 and mode of life of each century4 ,i really don't see anything romantic in proposing4 ,it is very romantic to be in love1 but there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal4 ,why1 one may be accepted4 ,one usually is1 ,i believe4 ,then the excitement is all over4 ,the very essence of romance is uncertainty4 ,what consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure4 ,repentance is quite out of date4 ,ideals are dangerous things4 ,realities are better4 ,they wound1 but they are better4 ,unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow4 ,shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on4 ,the loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude4 ,an eternal smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown4 ,the one sweeps away all possibilities1 the other suggests a thousand4 ,to disagree with three-fourths of ,england on all points is one of the first elements of vanity1 which is a deep source of consolation in all moments of spiritual doubt4 ,women live by their emotions and for them1 they have no philosophy of life4 ,as long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have a fascination4 ,when it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular4 ,there is only one thing worse than injustice1 and that is justice without her sword in her hand4 ,when right is not might it is evil4 ,we spend our days1 each one of us1 in looking for the secret of life4 ,well1 the secret of life is in art4 ,the truth isn't quite the sort of thing that one tells to a nice1 sweet1 refined girl4 ,if one plays good music people don't listen1 and if one plays bad music people don't talk4 ,how fond women are of doing dangerous things4 ,it is one of the qualities in them that ,i admire most4 ,a woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on4 ,englishwomen conceal their feelings till after they are married4 ,they show them then4 ,moderation is a fatal thing4 ,nothing succeeds like excess4 ,actions are the first tragedy in life1 words are the second4 ,words are perhaps the worst4 ,words are merciless4 ,life is terrible4 ,it rules us1 we do not rule it4 ,in art there is no such thing as a universal truth4 ,a truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true4 ,one's days are too brief to take the burden of another's sorrows on one's shoulders4 ,each man lives his own life1 and pays his own price for living it4 ,the only pity is that one has to pay so often for a single fault4 ,one has to pay over and over again1 indeed4 ,in her dealings with man ,destiny never closes her accounts4 ,pleasure is ,nature's test1 her sign of approval4 ,when we are happy we are always good1 but when we are good we are not always happy4 ,the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people4 ,what they call their loyalty and their fidelity ,i call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination4 ,better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a microscope4 ,of ,shakespeare it may be said that he was the first to see the dramatic value of doublets and that a climax may depend on a crinoline4 ,plain women are always jealous of their husbands2 beautiful women never are6 ,they never have time4 ,they are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands4 ,what between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime and the duties exacted from one after one's death land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure4 ,it gives one position and prevents one from keeping it up4 ,a man who moralises is usually a hypocrite1 and a woman who moralises is invariably plain4 ,there is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a nonconformist conscience4 ,and most women know it1 ,i am glad to say4 ,it was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat4 ,a map of the world that does not include ,utopia is not worth even glancing at1 for it leaves out the one country at which ,humanity is always landing4 ,and when ,humanity lands there it looks out1 and1 seeing a better country1 sets sail4 ,progress is the realisation of ,utopias4 ,what is the difference between scandal and gossip8 ,oh6 gossip is charming6 ,history is merely gossip1 but scandal is gossip made tedious by morality4 ,all beautiful things belong to the same age4 ,it is personalities1 not principles1 that move the age4 ,modern pictures are1 no doubt1 delightful to look at4 ,at least1 some of them are4 ,but they are quite impossible to live with2 they are too clever1 too assertive1 too intellectual4 ,their meaning is too obvious and their method too clearly defined4 ,one exhausts what they have to say in a very short time1 and then they become as tedious as one's relations4 ,to know nothing about our great men is one of the necessary elements of ,english education4 ,the truth is rarely pure and never simple4 ,modern life would be very tedious if it were either and modern literature a complete impossibility4 ,you may laugh1 but it is a great thing to come across a woman who thoroughly understands one4 ,the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism4 ,the number of women in ,london who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous4 ,it looks so bad4 ,it is simply washing one's clean linen in public4 ,the chief thing that makes life a failure from the artistic point of view is the thing that lends to life its sordid security--the fact that one can never repeat exactly the same emotion4 ,we teach people how to remember1 we never teach them how to grow4 ,vulgar habit that is people have nowadays of asking one1 after one has given them an idea1 whether one is serious or not4 ,nothing is serious except passion4 ,the intellect is not a serious thing and never has been4 ,it is an instrument on which one plays1 that is all4 ,the only serious form of intellect ,i know is the ,british intellect1 and on the ,british intellect the illiterate always plays the drum4 ,it is absurd to divide people into good and bad4 ,people are either charming or tedious4 ,it is only the modern that ever become old-fashioned4 ,it is only the ,philistine who seeks to estimate a personality by the vulgar test of production4 ,musical people are so absurdly unreasonable4 ,they always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf4 ,nothing is so dangerous as being too modern4 ,one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly4 ,the fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose4 ,the domestic virtues are not the true basis of art4 ,to the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind1 just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals4 ,the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life4 ,the only horrible thing in the world is 'ennui4' ,that is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness4 ,french songs ,i cannot possibly allow4 ,people always seem to think that they are improper1 and either look shocked1 which is vulgar1 or laugh1 which is worse4 ,it has often been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of letters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature4 ,as a rule this must necessarily be so4 ,that very concentration of vision and inversity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation4 ,to those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of so much importance4 ,the work of art is to dominate the spectator4 ,the spectator is not to dominate the work of art4 ,one should sympathise with the joy1 the beauty1 the colour of life4 ,the less said about life's sores the better4 ,you can't make people good by act of ,parliament--that is something4 ,art creates an incomparable and unique effect1 and having done so passes on to other things4 ,nature1 on the other hand1 forgetting that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult1 keeps on repeating the effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it4 ,it is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true4 ,a true artist takes no notice whatever of the public4 ,the public are to him non-existent4 ,one should never trust a woman who tells one her real age4 ,a woman who would tell one that would tell one anything4 ,nothing is so aggravating as calmness4 ,there is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men4 ,i wonder we women stand it as well as we do4 ,the truth is a thing ,i get rid of as soon as possible4 ,bad habit1 by the way1 makes one very unpopular at the club 444 with the older members4 ,they call it being conceited4 ,perhaps it is4 ,my own business always bores me to death4 ,i prefer other people's4 ,don't be led astray into the paths of virtue--that is the worst of women4 ,they always want one to be good4 ,and if we are good1 when they meet us they don't love us at all4 ,they like to find us quite irretrievably bad and to leave us quite unattractively good4 ,men are such cowards4 ,they outrage every law in the world and are afraid of the world's tongue4 ,wicked women bother one4 ,good women bore one4 ,that is the only difference between them4 ,to know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of all the arts4 ,i don't believe in the existence of ,puritan women4 ,i don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her4 ,it is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable4 ,when ,i am in trouble eating is the only thing that consoles me4 ,indeed1 when ,i am in really great trouble1 as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you1 ,i refuse everything except food and drink4 ,when one is going to lead an entirely new life one requires regular and wholesome meals4 ,the soul is born old1 but grows young4 ,that is the comedy of life4 ,the body is born young1 and grows old4 ,that is life's tragedy4 ,one can survive everything nowadays except death1 and live down anything except a good reputation4 ,the past is of no importance4 ,the present is of no importance4 ,it is with the future that we have to deal4 ,for the past is what men should not have been4 ,the present is what men ought not to be4 ,the future is what artists are4 ,men become old1 but they never become good4 ,by persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation4 ,men should be more careful2 this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray4 ,i think that in practical life there is something about success1 actual success1 that is a little unscrupulous1 something about ambition that is scrupulous always4 ,every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons4 ,what this century worships is wealth4 ,the god of this century is wealth4 ,to succeed one must have wealth4 ,at all costs one must have wealth4 ,i love scandals about other people1 but scandals about myself don't interest me4 ,they have not got the charm of novelty4 ,moderation is a fatal thing4 ,enough is as bad as a meal4 ,more than enough is as good as a feast4 ,the ,english can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right1 but they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong4 ,it is one of the best things in them4 ,life is simply a 'mauvais quart d'heure' made up of exquisite moments4 ,there is the same world for all of us1 and good and evil1 sin and innocence1 go through it hand in hand4 ,to shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice4 ,married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and abominably conceited when they are not4 ,between men and women there is no friendship possible4 ,there is passion1 enmity1 worship1 love1 but no friendship4 ,everybody is clever nowadays4 ,you can't go anywhere without meeting clever people4 ,this has become an absolute public nuisance4 ,i don't think man has much capacity for development4 ,he has got as far as he can1 and that is not far1 is it8 ,i am not quite sure that ,i quite know what pessimism really means4 ,all ,i do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity1 cannot be lived without much charity4 ,it is love1 and not ,german philosophy1 that is the explanation of this world1 whatever may be the explanation of the next4 ,i do not approve of anything that that tampers with natural arrogance4 ,ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit3 touch it1 and the blossom is gone4 ,the whole theory of modern education is radically unsound4 ,fortunately1 in ,england1 at any rate1 education produces no effect whatsoever4 ,if it did it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes1 and probably lead to acts of violence in ,grosvenor ,square4 ,no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age4 ,it looks so calculating4 ,emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art1 and emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of life and of that practical organisation of life that we call society4 ,men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others4 ,modern1 no less than ancient1 history supplies us with many most painful examples of what ,i refer to4 ,if it were not so1 indeed1 history would be quite unreadable4 ,i am not in favour of long engagements4 ,they give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage1 which ,i think is never advisable4 ,it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth4 ,the two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of profile4 ,thirty-five is a very attractive age4 ,london society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years4 ,never speak disrespectfully of society4 ,only people who can't get into it do that4 ,it is always painful to part with people whom one has known for a very brief space of time4 ,the absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity4 ,but even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable4 ,to be natural is to be obvious1 and to be obvious is to be inartistic4 ,one is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason4 ,the essence of thought1 as the essence of life1 is growth4 ,what people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities4 ,in a temple everyone should be serious except the thing that is worshipped4 ,we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent4 ,there is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love4 ,intellectual generalities are always interesting1 but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing4 ,to be in society is merely a bore1 but to be out of it simply a tragedy4 ,we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities4 ,one should never make one's dbut with a scandal4 ,one should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age4 ,what man has sought for is1 indeed1 neither pain nor pleasure1 but simply life4 ,man has sought to live intensely1 fully1 perfectly4 ,when he can do so without exercising restraint on others1 or suffering it ever1 and his activities are all pleasurable to him1 he will be saner1 healthier1 more civilised1 more himself4 ,pleasure is nature's test1 her sign of approval4 ,when man is happy he is in harmony with himself and his environment4 ,society often forgives the criminal1 it never forgives the dreamer4 ,it is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering4 ,it is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought4 ,conversation should touch on everything1 but should concentrate itself on nothing4 ,there is a luxury in self-reproach4 ,when we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us4 ,it is the confession1 not the priest1 that gives us absolution4 ,there are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing4 ,the public is wonderfully tolerant2 it forgives everything except genius4 ,life makes us pay too high a price for its wares1 and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite4 ,this horrid ,house of ,commons quite ruins our husbands for us4 ,i think the ,lower ,house by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing they called the ,higher ,education of ,women was invented4 ,once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate1 does he not8 ,and ,i don't like that4 ,it makes men so very attractive4 ,experience is a question of instinct about life4 ,what is true about art is true about life4 ,one can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing4 ,i like men who have a future and women who have a past4 ,women1 as some witty ,frenchman put it1 inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out4 ,in matters of grave importance style1 not sincerity1 is the vital thing4 ,the only way to behave to a woman1 is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain4 ,women give to men the very gold of their lives4 ,possibly2 but they invariably want it back in such very small change4 ,define women as a sex8 ,sphinxes without secrets4 ,what do you call a bad man8 ,the sort of man who admires innocence4 ,what do you call a bad woman8 ,oh6 the sort of woman a man never gets tired of4 ,one can resist everything except temptation4 ,don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience4 ,it is a thing narrowed by circumstances1 incoherent in its utterance1 and without that fine correspondence or form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament4 ,it is a dangerous thing to reform anyone4 ,one can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life or not4 ,i have noticed a very1 very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men4 ,a mother who doesn't part with a daughter every season has no real affection4 ,to be good is to be in harmony with oneself4 ,discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others4 ,a really grand passion is comparatively rare nowadays4 ,it is the privilege of people who have nothing to do4 ,that is the one use of the idle classes in a country4 ,there is no secret of life4 ,life's aim1 if it has one1 is simply to be always looking for temptations4 ,there are not nearly enough of them2 ,i sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one4 ,it is quite dreadful4 ,it makes one so nervous about the future4 ,all thought is immoral4 ,its very essence is destruction4 ,if you think of anything you kill it2 nothing survives being thought of4 ,what is truth8 ,in matters of religion it is simply the opinion that has survived4 ,in matters of science it is the ultimate sensation4 ,in matters of art it is one's last mood4 ,it is so easy to convert others4 ,it is so difficult to convert oneself4 ,a little sincerity is a dangerous thing1 and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal4 ,life cheats us with shadows1 like a puppet-master4 ,we ask it for pleasure4 ,it gives it to us1 with bitterness and disappointment in its train4 ,we come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days1 but it passes away from us1 and things less noble take its place1 and on some grey1 windy dawn1 or odorous eve of silence and of silver1 we find ourselves looking with callous wonder1 or dull heart of stone1 at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed4 ,there are two ways of disliking art ,one is to dislike it and the other to like it rationally4 ,there is nothing sane about the worship of beauty4 ,it is too splendid to be sane4 ,those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be mere visionaries4 ,i am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world4 ,certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance4 ,a sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the marked price of any single thing4 ,punctuality is the thief of time4 ,self-culture is the true ideal for man4 ,there's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman4 ,it's a thing no married man knows anything about4 ,no woman should have a memory4 ,memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness4 ,one can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not4 ,there are things that are right to say but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people4 ,the meaning of any beautiful created thing is1 at least1 as much in the soul of him who looks at it as it was in his soul who wrought it4 ,nay1 it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings1 and makes it marvellous for us1 and sets it in some new relation to the age1 so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives and a symbol of what we pray for1 or perhaps of what1 having prayed for1 we fear that we may receive4 ,the ,renaissance was great because it sought to solve no social problem1 and busied itself not about such things1 but suffered the individual to develop freely1 beautifully1 and naturally1 and so had great and individual artists and great and individual men4 ,in ,england people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast4 ,that is so dreadful of them6 ,only dull people are brilliant at breakfast4 ,when one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself1 and one ends by deceiving others4 ,that is what the world calls a romance4 ,the secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming4 ,no artist is ever morbid4 ,the artist can express everything4 ,the development of the race depends on the development of the individual1 and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal the intellectual standard is instantly lowered and often ultimately lost4 ,an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all4 ,to elope is cowardly2 it is running away from danger1 and danger has become so rare in modern life4 ,when a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also4 ,the ,book of ,life begins with a man and a woman in a garden4 ,it ends with ,revelations4 ,in married life three is company and two is none4 ,out of ourselves we can never pass1 nor can there be in creation what in the creator was not4 ,don't tell me that you have exhausted life4 ,when a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him4 ,when a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband4 ,when a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife4 ,women try their luck2 men risk theirs4 ,the highest criticism really is the record of one's own soul4 ,it is more fascinating than history1 as it is concerned simply with oneself4 ,it is more delightful than philosophy1 as its subject is concrete and not abstract1 real and not vague4 ,it is the only civilised form of autobiography1 as it deals1 not with the events1 but with the thoughts of one's life1 not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance1 but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind4 ,to know anything about oneself one must know all about others4 ,duty is what one expects from others1 it is not what one does oneself4 ,after a good dinner one can forgive anybody1 even one's own relations4 ,talk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored you1 and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact4 ,man--poor1 awkward1 reliable1 necessary man--belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years4 ,he can't help himself2 it is in his race4 ,the history of women is very different4 ,they have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common-sense2 they saw its dangers from the first4 ,more marriages are ruined nowadays by the common-sense of the husband than by anything else4 ,how can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being4 ,it is very vulgar to talk about one's business4 ,only people like stock-brokers do that1 and then merely at dinner-parties4 ,it is awfully hard work doing nothing4 ,however1 ,i don't mind hard work when there is no definite object of any kind4 ,to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world1 the most difficult and the most intellectual4 ,to ,plato1 with his passion for wisdom1 this was the noblest form of energy4 ,to ,aristotle1 with his passion for knowledge1 this was the noblest form of energy also4 ,it was to this that the passion for holiness led the saint and the mystic of medival days4 ,youth6 ,there is nothing like it4 ,it is absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth4 ,the only people to whose opinions ,i listen now with any respect are persons much younger than myself4 ,they seem in front of me4 ,life has revealed to them her latest wonder4 ,romance lives by repetition1 and repetition converts an appetite into an art4 ,i adore simple pleasures4 ,they are the last refuge of the complex4 ,there is nothing like youth4 ,the middle-aged are mortgaged to life4 ,the old are in life's lumber-room4 ,but youth is the lord of life4 ,youth has a kingdom waiting for it4 ,everyone is born a king1 and most people die in exile--like most kings4 ,all crime is vulgar1 just as all vulgarity is crime4 ,society1 civilised society at least1 is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating4 ,it instinctively feels that manners are of more importance than morals1 and in its opinion the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef4 ,and1 after all1 it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner or poor wine is irreproachable in his private life4 ,even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees4 ,while1 in the opinion of society1 contemplation is the gravest thing of which any citizen can be guilty1 in the opinion of the highest culture it is the proper occupation of man4 ,life is terribly deficient in form4 ,its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people4 ,there is a grotesque horror about its comedies1 and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce4 ,one is always wounded when one approaches it4 ,things last either too long or not long enough4 ,if a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him4 ,we are all in the gutter1 but some of us are looking at the stars4 ,beauty has as many meanings as man has moods4 ,it is the symbol of symbols4 ,it reveals everything1 because it expresses nothing4 ,when it shows us itself it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world4 ,men always want to be a woman's first love4 ,that is their clumsy vanity4 ,women have a more subtle instinct about things4 ,what they like is to be a man's last romance4 ,anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us4 ,people cry out against the sinner1 yet it is not the sinful but the stupid who are our shame4 ,there is no sin except stupidity4 ,one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits4 ,perhaps one regrets them the most4 ,they are such an essential part of one's personality4 ,it is through art1 and through art only1 that we can realise our perfection2 through art and through art only1 that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence4 ,a man who can dominate a ,london dinner-table can dominate the world4 ,the future belongs to the dandy4 ,it is the exquisites who are going to rule4 ,it often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence1 their absolute incoherence1 their absurd want of meaning1 their entire lack of style4 ,they affect us just as vulgarity affects us4 ,they give us an impression of sheer brute force1 and we revolt against that4 ,sometimes1 however1 a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives4 ,if these elements of beauty are real the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect4 ,suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors but the spectators of the play4 ,or rather we are both4 ,we watch ourselves1 and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthrals us4 ,when a woman finds out that her husband is absolutely indifferent to her1 she either becomes dreadfully dowdy or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for4 ,it is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property4 ,it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates4 ,art is always more abstract than we fancy4 ,form and colour tell us of form and colour-that is all4 ,it is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal4 ,but the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely4 ,for when the ideal is realised it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery1 and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself4 ,people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others have4 ,the only difference is that their moods are rather meaningless4 ,it is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion4 ,a man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure4 ,good women have such a limited view of life1 their horizon is so small1 their interests so petty4 ,the fact is they are not modern1 and to be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays4 ,discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation4 ,men marry because they are tired1 women because they are curious4 ,both are disappointed4 ,all men are married women's property4 ,that is the only true definition of what married women's property really is4 ,i am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice4 ,as a man sows so let him reap4 ,nothing refines but the intellect4 ,it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth4 ,it is the first time in my life that ,i have ever been reduced to such a painful position1 and ,i am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind4 ,the man who regards his past is a man who deserves to have no future to look forward to4 ,just as it is only by contact with the art of foreign nations that the art of a country gains that individual and separate life that we call nationality1 so1 by curious inversion1 it is only by intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the personality of others2 and the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation the more real the interpretation becomes1 the more satisfying1 the more convincing1 and the more true4 ,man is least himself when he talks in his own person4 ,give him a mask1 and he will tell you the truth4 ,all women become like their mothers3 that is their tragedy4 ,no man does3 that is his4 ,women are a fascinatingly wilful sex4 ,every woman is a rebel1 and usually in wild revolt against herself4 ,one should always be in love4 ,that is the reason one should never marry4 ,no man came across two ideal things4 ,few come across one4 ,to become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life4 ,the state is to make what is useful4 ,the individual is to make what is beautiful4 ,a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime4 ,the systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature and not on its growth and development4 ,jealousy1 which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life1 is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property1 and under socialism and individualism will die out4 ,it is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown4 ,all art is immoral4 ,he to whom the present is the only thing that is present knows nothing of the age in which he lives4 ,to realise the nineteenth century one must realise every century that has preceded it and that has contributed to its making4 ,few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them4 ,the old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out4 ,the history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known2 the tyranny of the weak over the strong4 ,it is the only tyranny that lasts4 ,the happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married4 ,there is no one type for man4 ,there are as many perfections as there are imperfect men4 ,and while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free1 to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all4 ,a practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions4 ,all imitation in morals and in life is wrong4 ,the world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it4 ,women love us for our defects4 ,if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything1 even our gigantic intellects4 ,society is a necessary thing4 ,no man has any real success in this world unless he has got women to back him--and women rule society4 ,if you have not got women on your side you are quite over4 ,you might just as well be a barrister or a stockbroker or a journalist at once4 ,the worship of the senses has often1 and with much justice1 been decried2 men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves1 and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existence4 ,but it is probable the true nature of the senses has never been understood1 and that they have remained savage and animal merely because the world has sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality1 of which a fine instinct for beauty will be the dominant characteristic4 ,women appreciate cruelty more than anything else4 ,they have wonderfully primitive instincts4 ,we have emancipated them1 but they remain slaves1 looking for their master all the same4 ,they love being dominated4 ,those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob4 ,it is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the way of the gods must be prepared4 ,circumstances are the lashes laid on to us by life4 ,some of us have to receive them with bared ivory backs1 and others are permitted to keep on a coat--that is the only difference4 ,criticism is itself an art4444 ,it is no more to be judged by any low standard of imitation or resemblance than is the work of poet or sculptor4 ,the critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that he criticises as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour or the unseen world of passion and thought4 ,he does not even require for the perfection of his art the finest materials4 ,anything will serve his purpose4 ,it is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it4 ,in the sphere of actual life that is1 of course1 obvious4 ,anybody can make history1 only a great man can write it4 ,if we lived long enough to see the results of our actions it may be that those who call themselves good would be filled with a wild remorse and those whom the world calls evil stirred with a noble joy4 ,each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life1 which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless or transform our sins into elements of a new civilisation more marvellous and more splendid than any that has gone before4 ,children begin by loving their parents2 as they grow older they judge them1 sometimes they forgive them4 ,we live in an age that reads too much to be wise and that thinks too much to be beautiful4 ,one should absorb the colour of life1 but one should never remember its details4 ,details are always vulgar4 ,it will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it4 ,it will grow naturally and simply flowerlike1 or as a tree grows4 ,it will not be at discord4 ,it will never argue or dispute4 ,it will not prove things4 ,it will know everything1 and yet it will not busy itself about knowledge4 ,it will have wisdom4 ,its value will not be measured by material things4 ,it will have nothing1 and yet it will have everything1 and whatever one takes from it it will still have1 so rich it will be4 ,it will not be always meddling with others or asking them to be like itself4 ,it will love them because they will be different4 ,and yet1 while it will not meddle with others1 it will help all1 as a beautiful thing helps us1 by being what it is4 ,the personality of man will be very wonderful4 ,it will be as wonderful as the personality of a child4 ,cynicism is merely the art of seeing things as they are instead of as they ought to be4 ,three addresses always inspire confidence1 even in tradesmen4 ,if one doesn't talk about a thing it has never happened4 ,it is simply expression that gives reality to things4 ,no man is able who is unable to get on1 just as no woman is clever who can't succeed in obtaining that worst and most necessary of evils1 a husband4 ,the one charm of the past is that it is the past4 ,but women never know when the curtain has fallen4 ,they always want a sixth act1 and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to continue it4 ,if they were allowed their way every comedy would have a tragic ending and every tragedy would culminate in a farce4 ,they are charmingly artificial1 but they have no sense of art4 ,each time that one loves is the only time that one has ever loved4 ,difference of object does not alter singleness of passion4 ,it merely intensifies it4 ,the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial4 ,beautiful sins1 like beautiful things1 are the privilege of the rich4 ,human life is the one thing worth investigating4 ,compared to it there is nothing else of any value4 ,it is true that as one watches life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure one cannot wear over one's face a mask of glass nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams4 ,there are poisons so subtle that to know their properties one has to sicken of them4 ,there are maladies so strange that one has to pass through them if one seeks to understand their nature4 ,and yet what a great reward one receives6 ,how wonderful the whole world becomes to one6 ,to note the curious1 hard logic of passion and the emotional1 coloured life of the intellect--to observe where they meet1 and where they separate1 at what point they are in unison and at what point they are in discord--there is a delight in that6 ,what matter what the cost is8 ,one can never pay too high a price for any sensation4 ,there is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich1 and that is the poor4 ,the poor can think of nothing else4 ,that is the misery of being poor4 ,to live is the rarest thing in the world4 ,most people exist--that is all4 ,personality is a very mysterious thing4 ,a man cannot always be estimated by what he does4 ,he may keep the law1 and yet be worthless4 ,he may break the law1 and yet be fine4 ,he may be bad without ever doing anything bad4 ,he may commit a sin against society1 and yet realise through that sin his true perfection4 ,medival art is charming1 but medival emotions are out of date4 ,one can use them in fiction1 of course2 but then the only things that one can use in fiction are the only things that one has ceased to use in fact4 ,man is complete in himself4 ,what is a cynic8 ,a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing4 ,it's the old1 old story4 ,love--well1 not at first sight--but love at the end of the season1 which is so much more satisfactory4 ,no nice girl should ever waltz with such particularly younger sons6 ,it looks so fast6 ,good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws4 ,their origin is pure vanity4 ,their result is absolutely nil4 ,they give us now and then some of those luxurious1 sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak4 ,that is all that can be said for them4 ,they are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account4 ,what is the difference between literature and journalism8 ,journalism is unreadable and literature is unread4 ,i hope you have not been leading a double life1 pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time4 ,that would be hypocrisy4 ,my husband is a sort of promissory note2 ,i am tired of meeting him4 ,conscience makes egotists of us all4 ,never trust a woman who wears mauve1 whatever her age may be1 or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons4 ,it always means that they have a history4 ,there is a fatality about good resolutions-they are always made too late4 ,we can have in life but one great experience at best1 and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible4 ,anybody can be good in the country4 ,there are no temptations there4 ,that is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised4 ,civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to4 ,there are only two ways by which man can reach it4 ,one is by being cultured1 the other by being corrupt4 ,country people have no opportunity of being either1 so they stagnate4 ,what nonsense people talk about happy marriages6 ,a man can be happy with any woman so long as he does not love her4 ,the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true4 ,that is the fatality of faith and the lesson of romance4 ,in the common world of fact the wicked are not punished nor the good rewarded4 ,success is given to the strong1 failure thrust upon the weak4 ,nothing should be able to harm a man except himself4 ,nothing should be able to rob a man at all4 ,what a man really has is what is in him4 ,what is outside of him should be a matter of no importance4 ,modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age4 ,i consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality4 ,perplexity and mistrust fan affection into passion1 and so bring about those beautiful tragedies that alone make life worth living4 ,women once felt this1 while men did not1 and so women once ruled the world4 ,sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's1 face4 ,it cannot be concealed4 ,people talk sometimes of secret vices4 ,there are no such things4 ,if a wretched man has a vice it shows itself in the lines of his mouth1 the drop of his eyelids1 the moulding of his hands even4 ,there are sins whose fascination is more in the memory than in the doing of them1 strange triumphs that gratify the pride more than the passions and give to the intellect a quickened sense of joy1 greater than they bring or can ever bring to the senses4 ,no civilised man ever regrets a pleasure1 and no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is4 ,as for a spoiled life1 no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested4 ,if you want to mar a nature you have merely to reform it4 ,socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism4 ,some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties4 ,it is perfectly true4 ,property not merely has duties1 but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore4 ,if property had simply pleasures we could stand it1 but its duties make it unbearable4 ,it is through joy that the individualism of the future will develop itself4 ,christ made no attempt to reconstruct society1 and consequently the individualism that ,he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude4 ,most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life4 ,to have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour4 ,the only artists ,i have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists4 ,good artists exist simply on what they make1 and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are4 ,what are the virtues8 ,nature1 ,renan tells us1 cares little about chastity1 and it may be that it is to the shame of the ,magdalen1 and not to their own purity1 that the ,lucretias of modern life owe their freedom from stain4 ,charity1 as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge1 creates a multitude of evils4 ,the mere existence of conscience1 that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays1 and are so ignorantly proud1 is a sign of our imperfect development4 ,it must be merged in instinct before we become fine4 ,self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress1 and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage1 part of that old worship of pain which is so terrible a factor in the history of the world1 and which even now makes its victims day by day and has its altars in the land4 ,virtues6 ,who knows what the virtues are8 ,not you4 ,not ,i4 ,not anyone4 ,it is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal1 for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by his crime4 ,it is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom4 ,he is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest4 ,nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors like married men4 ,the higher education of men is what ,i should like to see4 ,men need it so sadly4 ,the world is perfectly packed with good women4 ,to know them is a middle-class education4 ,hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young1 of physical weakness in the old4 ,our husbands never appreciate anything in us4 ,we have to go to others for that4 ,most women in ,london nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids1 foreigners and ,french novels4 ,the canons of good society are1 or should be1 the same as the canons of art4 ,form is absolutely essential to it4 ,it should have the dignity of a ceremony as well as its unreality1 and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us4 ,is sincerity such a terrible thing8 ,i think not4 ,it is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities4 ,the tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young4 ,a great poet1 a really great poet1 is the most unpoetical of all creatures4 ,but inferior poets are absolutely fascinating4 ,the worse their rhymes are the more picturesque they look4 ,the mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible4 ,he lives the poetry that he cannot write4 ,the others write the poetry that they dare not realise4 ,being adored is a nuisance4 ,women treat us just as humanity treats its gods4 ,they worship us1 and are always bothering us to do something for them4 ,if a man treats life artistically his brain is his heart4 ,the ',peerage' is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly1 and it is the best thing in fiction the ,english have ever done4 ,the world has always laughed at its own tragedies1 that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them4 ,consequently whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things4 ,the only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future4 ,what is termed sin is an essential element of progress4 ,without it the world would stagnate or grow old or becomes colourless4 ,by its curiosity it increases the experience of the race4 ,through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from the commonplace4 ,in its rejection of the current notions about morality it is one with the higher ethics4 ,formerly we used to canonise our heroes4 ,the modern method is to vulgarise them4 ,cheap editions of great books may be delightful1 but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable4 ,individualism does not come to man with any claims upon him at all4 ,it comes naturally and inevitably out of man4 ,it is the point to which all development tends4 ,it is the differentiation to which all organisms grow4 ,it is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life and toward which every mode of life quickens4 ,individualism exercises no compulsion over man4 ,on the contrary1 it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him4 ,it does not try to force people to be good4 ,it knows that people are good when they are let alone4 ,man will develop individualism out of himself4 ,man is now so developing individualism4 ,to ask whether individualism is practical is like asking whether evolution is practical4 ,evolution is the law of life1 and there is no evolution except towards individualism4 ,the longer ,i live the more keenly ,i feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us4 ,in art1 as in politics1 'les grand pres ont toujours tort4' ,no woman is a genius4 ,women are a decorative sex4 ,they never have anything to say but they say it charmingly4 ,humanity takes itself too seriously4 ,it is the world's original sin4 ,if the cave men had known how to laugh history would have been different4 ,i wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal4 ,it was the most premature definition ever given4 ,man is many things1 but he is not rational4 ,thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art4 ,to get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people1 amuse people1 or shock people--that is all4 ,you should never try to understand women4 ,women are pictures1 men are problems4 ,if you want to know what a woman really means--which1 by the way1 is always a dangerous thing to do--look at her1 don't listen to her4 ,ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination4 ,they are limited to their century4 ,no glamour ever transfigures them4 ,one knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets4 ,one can always find them4 ,there is no mystery in any of them4 ,they ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea parties in the afternoon4 ,they have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable mauve4 ,don't run down dyed hair and painted faces4 ,there is an extraordinary charm in them--sometimes4 ,to have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays4 ,it shuts one out from so much4 ,the people who have adored me--there have not been very many1 but there have been some--have always insisted on living on long after ,i had ceased to care for them or they to care for me4 ,they have become stout and tedious1 and when ,i meet them they go in at once for reminiscences4 ,that awful memory of women6 ,what a fearful thing it is6 ,and what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals6 ,examinations are pure humbug from beginning to end4 ,if a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough1 and if he is not a gentleman whatever he knows is bad for him4 ,credit is the capital of a younger son1 and he can live charmingly on it4 ,the object of art is not simply truth but complex beauty4 ,art itself is really a form of exaggeration1 and selection1 which is the very spirit of art1 is nothing more than an intensified mode of over-emphasis4 ,the popular cry of our time is3 ',let us return to ,life and ,nature1 they will recreate ,art for us and send the red blood coursing through her veins2 they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong4' ,but1 alas6 we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meant efforts4 ,nature is always behind the age4 ,and as for life1 she is the solvent that breaks up ,art1 the enemy that lays waste her house4 ,there are only two kinds of women--the plain and the coloured4 ,the plain women are very useful4 ,if you want to gain a reputation for respectability you have merely to take them down to supper4 ,the other women are very charming4 ,they commit one mistake1 however--they paint in order to try and look young4 ,the way of paradoxes is the way of truth4 ,to test reality we must see it on the tight-rope4 ,when the verities become acrobats we can judge them4 ,life imitates art far more than art imitates life4444 ,the ,greeks with their quick1 artistic instinct understood this1 and set in the bride's chamber the statue of ,hermes or of ,apollo1 that she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain4 ,they knew that life gains from art not merely spirituality1 depth of thought and feeling1 soul-turmoil or soul-peace1 but that she can form herself on the very lines and colours of art1 and can reproduce the dignity of ,pheidias as well as the grace of ,praxiteles4 ,hence came this objection to realism4 ,they disliked it on purely social grounds4 ,they felt that it inevitably makes people ugly1 and they were perfectly right4 ,faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a confession of failure4 ,there are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up4 ,what a fuss people make about fidelity6 ,why1 even in love it is purely a question for physiology4 ,it has nothing to do with our own will4 ,young men want to be faithful and are not2 old men want to be faithless and cannot--that is all one can say4 ,modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and absolutely wrong4 ,we have mistaken the common livery of the age for the vesture of the muses1 and spent our days in the sordid streets and hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside with ,apollo4 ,certainly we are a degraded race1 and have sold our birthright for a mess of facts4 ,nothing can cure the soul but the senses1 just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul4 ,i can stand brute force1 but brute reason is quite unbearable4 ,there is something unfair about its use4 ,it is hitting below the intellect4 ,those who live in marble or on painted panel know of life but a single exquisite instant1 eternal1 indeed1 in its beauty but limited to one note of passion or one mood of calm4 ,those whom the poet makes live have their myriad emotions of joy and terror1 of courage and despair1 of pleasure and of suffering4 ,the seasons come and go in glad or saddening pageant1 and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them4 ,they have their youth and their manhood1 they are children1 and they grow old4 ,it is always dawn for ,st ,helena as ,veronese saw her at the window4 ,through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of ,god's pain4 ,the cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from her brow4 ,on that little hill by the city of ,florence1 where the lovers of ,giorgione are lying1 it is always the solstice of noon--of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim1 naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass1 and the long fingers of the lute player rest idly upon the chords4 ,it is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom ,corot set free among the silver poplars of ,france4 ,in eternal twilight they move1 those frail1 diaphanous figures1 whose tremulous1 white feet seem not to touch the dew-drenched grass they tread on4 ,but those who walk in epos1 drama1 or romance see through the labouring months the young moons wax and wane1 and watch the night from evening into morning star1 and from sunrise into sun-setting can note the shifting day with all its gold and shadow4 ,for them1 as for us1 the flowers bloom and wither1 and the earth1 that green-tressed goddess1 as ,coleridge calls her1 alters her raiment for their pleasure4 ,the statue is concentrated to one moment of perfection4 ,the image stained upon the canvas possesses no spiritual element of growth or change4 ,if they know nothing of death it is because they know little of life1 for the secrets of life and death belong to those1 and to those only1 whom the sequence of time affects1 and who possess not merely the present but the future1 and can rise or fall from a past of glory or of shame4 ,movement1 that problem of the visible arts1 can be truly realised by literature alone4 ,it is literature that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest4 ,behind every exquisite thing that exists there is something tragic4 ,worlds have to be in travail that the merest flower may blow4 ,beauty is a form of genius--is higher1 indeed1 than genius1 as it needs no explanation4 ,it is one of the great facts of the world1 like sunlight1 or spring-time1 or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon4 ,it cannot be questioned1 it has its divine right of sovereignty4 ,the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it4 ,resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself4 ,women spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever4 ,he's sure to be a wonderful success4 ,he thinks like a ,tory and talks like a ,radical1 and that's so important nowadays4 ,nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out4 ,we make gods of men and they leave us4 ,others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful4 ,the husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes4 ,to me beauty is the ,wonder of wonders4 ,it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances4 ,the true mystery of the world is the visible1 not the invisible4 ,the thoroughly well-informed man is the modern ideal4 ,and the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing4 ,it is like a bric-a-brac shop1 all monsters and dust1 with everything priced above its proper value4 ,women have no appreciation of good looks in men--at least good women have none4 ,to influence a person is to give him one's own soul4 ,he does not think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions4 ,his virtues are not real to him4 ,his sins1 if there are such things as sins1 are borrowed4 ,he becomes an echo of someone else's music1 an actor of a part that has not been written for him4 ,those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love2 it is the faithless who know love's tragedies4 ,an artist should create beautiful things1 but should put nothing of his own life into them4 ,we live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography4 ,we have lost the abstract sense of beauty4 ,a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies4 ,i have not got one who is a fool4 ,they are all men of some intellectual power1 and consequently they all appreciate me4 ,the value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it4 ,i like persons better than principles1 and ,i like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world4 ,he who would lead a ,christ-like life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself4 ,he may be a great poet1 or a great man of science2 or a young student at the university1 or one who watches sheep upon a moor2 or a maker of dramas1 like ,shakespeare1 or a thinker about ,god1 like ,spinoza2 or a child who plays in a garden1 or a fisherman who throws his nets into the sea4 ,it does not matter what he is as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him4 ,the aim of life is self-development4 ,to realise one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for4 ,there is no such thing as a good influence4 ,all influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view4 ,words have not merely music as sweet as that of viol and lute1 colour as rich and vivid as any that makes lovely for us the canvas of the ,venetian or the ,spaniard1 and plastic form no less sure and certain than that which reveals itself in marble or in bronze1 but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs also--are theirs1 indeed1 alone4 ,there is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox4 ,the pun is the clown among jokes1 the well-turned paradox is the polished comedian1 and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy1 just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour4 ,our minds are shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours1 and our moods often seem inappropriate4 ,everything that is true is inappropriate4 ,the longer one studies life and literature the more strongly one feels that behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual1 and that it is not the moment that makes the man but the man who creates the age4 ,to know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask4 ,it is a sad thing to think of1 but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty4 ,that accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves4 ,the ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world4 ,they can sit at their ease and gape at the play4 ,if they know nothing of victory they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat4 ,to have a capacity for a passion1 and not to realise it is to make oneself incomplete and limited4 ,even in actual life egotism is not without its attractions4 ,when people talk to us about others they are usually dull4 ,when they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting1 and if one could shut them up when they become wearisome as easily as one can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied they would be perfect absolutely4 ,every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is invariably ,judas who writes the biography4 ,art finds her own perfection within1 and not outside of1 herself4 ,she is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance4 ,she is a veil rather than a mirror4 ,she has flowers that no forest knows of1 birds that no woodland possesses4 ,she makes and unmakes many worlds1 and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread4 ,hers are the 'forms more real than living man1' and hers the great archetypes1 of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies4 ,nature has1 in her eyes1 no laws1 no uniformity4 ,she can work miracles at her will1 and when she calls monsters from the deep they come4 ,she can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield4 ,at her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of ,june1 and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the ,lydian hills4 ,the dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by1 and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them4 ,she has hawk-faced gods that worship her1 and the centaurs gallop at her side4 ,in literature mere egotism is delightful4 ,if we live for aims we blunt our emotions4 ,if we live for aims we live for one minute1 for one day1 for one year1 instead of for every minute1 every day1 every year4 ,the moods of one's life are life's beauties4 ,to yield to all one's moods is to really live4 ,many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which1 if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings1 or by the imitations of the best models1 might grow into something really great and wonderful4 ,but1 as a rule1 he comes to nothing4 ,he either falls into careless habits of accuracy or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well-informed4 ,both things are equally fatal to his imagination4 ,the spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts1 for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal4 ,as for believing things1 ,i can believe anything provided that it is quite incredible4 ',know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world4 ,over the portal of the new world ',be thyself' shall be written4 ,and the message of ,christ to man was simply3 ',be thyself4' ,that is the secret of ,christ4 ,london is full of women who trust their husbands4 ,one can always recognise them1 they look so thoroughly unhappy4 ,for those who are not artists1 and to whom there is no mode of life but the actual life of fact1 pain is the only door to perfection4 ,the ,english public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it4 ,men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind1 to push it violently forward in this direction or in that4 ,the mind should be receptive1 a harp waiting to catch the winds1 a pool ready to be ruffled1 not a bustling busybody for ever trotting about on the pavement looking for a new bun shop4 ,there is nothing more beautiful than to forget1 except1 perhaps1 to be forgotten4 ,all bad art comes from returning to life and nature1 and elevating them into ideals4 ,life and nature may sometimes be used as part of art's rough material1 but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions4 ,the moment art surrenders its imaginative medium it surrenders everything4 ,as a method realism is a complete failure1 and the two things that every artist should avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter4 ,men may have women's minds just as women may have the minds of men4 ,london is too full of fogs and serious people4 ,whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs ,i don't know4 ,how marriage ruins a man6 ,it's as demoralising as cigarettes1 and far more expensive4 ,he must be quite respectable4 ,one has never heard his name before in the whole course of one's life1 which speaks volumes for a man nowadays4 ,literature always anticipates life4 ,it does not copy it1 but moulds it to its purpose4 ,as long as a thing is useful or necessary to us or affects us in any way1 either for pain or pleasure1 or appeals strongly to our sympathies or is a vital part of the environment in which we live1 it is outside the proper sphere of art4 ,i couldn't have a scene in this bonnet3 it is far too fragile4 ,a harsh word would ruin it4 ,music creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears4 ,nothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation4 ,i adore ,london dinner parties4 ,the clever people never listen and the stupid people never talk4 ,learned conversation is either the affection of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed4 ,the ,academy is too large and too vulgar4 ,whenever ,i have gone there1 there have been either so many people that ,i have not been able to see the pictures--which was dreadful1 or so many pictures that ,i have not been able to see the people--which was worse4 ,all art is quite useless4 ,beauty1 real beauty1 ends where an intellectual expression begins4 ,intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration and destroys the harmony of any face4 ,the moment one sits down to think one becomes all nose or all forehead or something horrid4 ,the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties4 ,secrecy seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us4 ,the commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it4 ,conceit is one of the greatest of the virtues1 yet how few people recognise it as a thing to aim at and to strive after4 ,in conceit many a man and woman has found salvation1 yet the average person goes on all-fours grovelling after modesty4 ,it is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves4 ,humanity will always love ,rousseau for having confessed his sins not to a friend but to the world4 ,just as those who do not love ,plato more than truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of the ,academe1 so those who do not love beauty more than truth never know the inmost shrine of art4 ,there is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction3 the sort of fatality that seems to dog1 through history1 the faltering steps of kings4 ,it is better not to be different from one's fellows4 ,to be born1 or at any rate bred1 in a handbag1 whether it had handles or not1 seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the ,french ,revolution4 ,vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art4 ,there must be a new ,hedonism that shall recreate life and save it from that harsh1 uncomely ,puritanism that is having1 in our own day1 its curious revival4 ,it must have its service of the intellect1 certainly1 yet it must never accept any theory or system that will involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience4 ,its aim1 indeed1 is to be experience itself and not the fruits of experience1 bitter or sweet as they may be4 ,of the stheticism that deadens the senses1 as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them1 it is to know nothing4 ,but it is to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment4 ,art never expresses anything but itself4 ,it has an independent life1 just as thought has1 and develops purely on its own lines4 ,it is not necessarily realistic in an age of realism nor spiritual in an age of faith4 ,so far from being the creation of its time it is usually in direct opposition to it1 and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress4 ,people who mean well always do badly4 ,they are like the ladies who wear clothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety4 ,good intentions are invariably ungrammatical4 ,man can believe the impossible1 but man can never believe the improbable4 ,when art is more varied nature will1 no doubt1 be more varied also4 ,if a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie he might just as well speak the truth at once4 ,the ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact2 the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction4 ,nature is no great mother who has home us4 ,she is our own creation4 ,it is in our brain that she quickens to life4 ,things are because we see them1 and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have influenced us4 ,to look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing4 ,one does not see anything until one sees its beauty4 ,the proper school to learn art in is not life but art4 ,i won't tell you that the world matters nothing1 or the world's voice1 or the voice of society4 ,they matter a good deal4 ,they matter far too much4 ,i wouldn't marry a man with a future before him for anything under the sun4 ,i am the only person in the world ,i should like to know thoroughly1 but ,i don't see any chance of it just at present4 ,modern memoirs are generally written by people who have entirely lost their memories and have never done anything worth recording4 ,education is an admirable thing1 but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught4 ,women are like minors1 they live upon their expectations4 ,twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies4 ,it is the very passions about whose origin we deceive ourselves that tyrannise most strongly over us4 ,our weakest motives are those of whose nature we are conscious4 ,it often happens that when we think we are experimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves4 ,whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motives4 ,i thought ,i had no heart4 ,i find ,i have1 and a heart doesn't suit me4 ,somehow it doesn't go with modern dress4 ,it makes one look old1 and it spoils one's career at critical moments4 ,i don't play accurately--anyone can play accurately--but ,i play with wonderful expression4 ,as far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my forte4 ,i keep science for life4 ,i delight in men over seventy4 ,they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime4 ,everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching--that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to4 ,nature hates mind4 ,from the point of view of form the type of all the arts is the art of the musician4 ,from the point of view of feeling the actor's craft is the type4 ,where we differ from each other is purely in accidentals--in dress1 manner1 tone of voice1 religious opinions1 personal appearance1 tricks of habit1 and the like4 ,the more we study art the less we care for ,nature4 ,what art really reveals to us is ,nature's lack of design1 her curious crudities1 her extraordinary monotony1 her absolutely unfinished condition4444 ,it is fortunate for us1 however1 that nature is so imperfect1 as otherwise we should have had no art at all4 ,art is our spirited protest1 our gallant attempt to teach ,nature her proper place4 ,as for the infinite variety of nature1 that is a pure myth4 ,it is not to be found in ,nature herself4 ,it resides in the imagination or fancy or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her4 ,facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are usurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance4 ,their chilling touch is over everything4 ,they are vulgarising mankind4 ,ordinary people wait till life discloses to them its secrets1 but to the few1 to the elect1 the mysteries of life are revealed before the veil is drawn away4 ,sometimes this is the effect of art1 and chiefly of the art of literature which deals immediately with the passions and the intellect4 ,but now and then a complex personality takes the place and assumes the office of art1 is1 indeed1 in its way a real work of art1 ,life having its elaborate masterpieces just as poetry has1 or sculpture1 or painting4 ,thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world1 and people die of it just as they die of any other disease4 ,a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure4 ,it is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied4 ,the aim of the liar is simply to charm1 to delight1 to give pleasure4 ,he is the very basis of civilised society4 ,it is quite a mistake to believe1 as many people do1 that the mind shows itself in the face4 ,vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes of contour1 but that is all4 ,our faces are really masks given to us to conceal our minds with4 ,what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence8 ,a carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective4 ,the only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer4 ,people say sometimes that beauty is only superficial4 ,that may be so1 but at least it is not so superficial as thought is4 ,it is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors4 ,nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing4 ,conscience and cowardice are really the same things4 ,conscience is the trade name of the firm--that is all4 ,in every sphere of life form is the beginning of things4 ,the rhythmic1 harmonious gestures of dancing convey1 ,plato tells us1 both rhythm and harmony into the mind4 ,forms are the food of faith1 cried ,newman1 in one of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and know the man4 ,he was right1 though he may not have known how terribly right he was4 ,the creeds are believed not because they are rational but because they are repeated4 ,yes2 form is everything4 ,it is the secret of life4 ,find expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you4 ,find expression for a joy and you intensify its ecstasy4 ,do you wish to love8 ,use love's litany and the words will create the yearning from which the world fancies that they spring4 ,have you a grief that corrodes your heart8 ,learn its utterance from ,prince ,hamlet and ,queen ,constance and you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation and that form1 which is the birth of passion1 is also the death of pain4 ,and so1 to return to the sphere of art1 it is form that creates not merely the critical temperament but also the sthetic instinct that reveals to one all things under the condition of beauty4 ,start with the worship of form and there is no secret in art that will not be revealed to you4 ,it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue4 ,nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common-sense1 and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes4 ,lady ,henry ,wotton was a curious woman1 whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest4 ,she was usually in love with somebody1 and1 as her passion was never returned1 she had kept all her illusions4 ,she tried to look picturesque but only succeeded in being untidy4 ,those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril4 ,with an evening coat and a white tie anybody1 even a stockbroker1 can gain a reputation for being civilised4 ,there is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad one has been4 ,it is intellectually fascinating4 ,one of the greatest pleasures of having been wicked is that one has so much to say to the good4 ,laws are made in order that people in authority may not remember them1 just as marriages are made in order that the divorce court may not play about idly4 ,to get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies4 ,never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair4 ,they are so sentimental4 ,the reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves4 ,the basis of optimism is sheer terror4 ,we think that we are generous because we credit our neighbours with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us4 ,we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account1 and find good qualities in the high-wayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets4 ,i have the greatest contempt for optimism4 ,art begins with abstract decoration1 with purely imaginative and pleasureable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent4 ,this is the first stage4 ,then life becomes fascinated with this new wonder1 and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle4 ,art takes life as part of her rough material1 recreates it and refashions it in fresh form2 is absolutely indifferent to facts2 invents1 imagines1 dreams1 and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style1 of decorative or ideal treatment4 ,the third stage is when ,life gets the upper hand and drives ,art out into the wilderness4 ,this is the true decadence1 and it is from this that we are now suffering4 ,good intentions have been the ruin of the world4 ,the only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all4 ,i never take any notice of what common people say1 and ,i never interfere with what charming people do4 ,you know ,i am not a champion of marriage4 ,the real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish1 and unselfish people are colourless--they lack individuality4 ,still there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex4 ,they retain their egotism1 and add to it many other egos4 ,they are forced to have more than one life4 ,they become more highly organised1 and to be highly organised is1 ,i should fancy1 the object of man's existence4 ,besides1 every experience is of value1 and whatever one may say against marriage it is certainly an experience4 ,those who read the symbol do so at their peril4 ,i never talk during music--at least not during good music4 ,if anyone hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it in conversation4 ,when critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself4 ,faith is the most plural thing ,i know4 ,we are all supposed to believe in the same thing in different ways4 ,it is like eating out of the same dish with different coloured spoons4 ,experience is of no ethical value4 ,it is merely the name men give to their mistakes4 ,moralists have1 as a rule1 regarded it as a mode of warning1 have claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character1 have praised it as something that teaches us what to follow and shows us what to avoid4 ,but there is no motive power in experience4 ,it is as little of an active cause as conscience itself4 ,all that it really demonstrates is that our future will be the same as our past and that the sin we have done once1 and with loathing1 we shall do many times1 and with joy4 ,sensations are the details that build up the stories of our lives4 ,no artist has ethical sympathies4 ,an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style4 ,she looks like an 'edition de luxe' of a wicked ,french novel meant specially for the ,english market4 ,i never knew what terror was before2 ,i know it now4 ,it is as if a hand of ice were laid upon one's heart4 ,it is as if one's heart were beating itself to death in some empty hollow4 ,we can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it4 ,the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely4 ,no artist desires to prove anything4 ,even things that are true can be proved4 ,one knows so well the popular idea of health4 ,the ,english country gentleman galloping along after a fox--the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable4 ,people seldom tell the truths that are worth telling4 ,we ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies4 ,soul and body1 body and soul--how mysterious they are6 ,there is animalism in the soul1 and the body has its moments of spirituality4 ,the senses can refine and the intellect can degrade4 ,who can say where the fleshly impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins8 ,how shallow are the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists6 ,and yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools6 ,is the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin8 ,or is the body really in the soul1 as ,giordano ,bruno thought8 ,the separation of spirit from matter is a mystery1 and the unison of spirit with matter is a mystery also4 ,those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated4 ,for these there is hope4 ,there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book4 ,books are well written or badly written-that is all4 ,marriage is a sort of forcing house4 ,it brings strange sins to fruit1 and sometimes strange renunciations4 ,the moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist1 but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium4 ,a sense of duty is like some horrible disease4 ,it destroys the tissues of the mind1 as certain complaints destroy the tissues of the body4 ,the catechism has a great deal to answer for4 ,they are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty4 ,those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming4 ,this is a fault4 ,few people have sufficient strength to resist the preposterous claims of orthodoxy4 ,she wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes4 ,that is always a sign of despair in a woman4 ,a virtue is like a city set upon a hill--it cannot be hid4 ,we can conceal our vices if we care to--for a time at least--but a virtue will out4 ,can't make out how you stand ,london society4 ,the thing has gone to the dogs3 a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing4 ,you don't know what an existence they lead down there4 ,it is pure1 unadulterated country life4 ,they get up early because they have so much to do1 and go to bed early because they have so little to think about4 ,nothing is so fatal to a personality as the keeping of promises1 unless it be telling the truth4 ,who cares whether ,mr ,ruskin's views on ,turner are sound or not8 ,what does it matter8 ,that mighty and majestic prose of his1 so fervid and so fiery coloured in its noble eloquence1 so rich in its elaborate symphonic music1 so sure and certain1 at its best1 in subtle choice of word and epithet1 is1 at least1 as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in ,england's gallery--greater1 indeed1 one is apt to think at times1 not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring but on account of the fuller variety of its appeal--soul speaking to soul in those long1 cadenced lines1 not through form and colour alone1 though through these1 indeed1 completely and without loss1 but with intellectual and emotional utterance1 with lofty passion and with loftier thought1 with imaginative insight and with poetic aim--greater1 ,i always think1 even as literature is the greater art4 ,laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship1 and it is far the best ending for one4 ,mrs ,cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet1 and air them both in the ,park every afternoon at #e4cj4 ,i am sure she adores scandals1 and that the sorrow of her life at present is that she can't manage to have enough of them4 ,the world divides actions into three classes3 good actions1 bad actions that you may do1 and bad actions that you may not do4 ,if you stick to the good actions you are respected by the good4 ,if you stick to the bad actions that you may do you are respected by the bad4 ,but if you perform the bad actions that no one may do then the good and the bad set upon you and you are lost indeed4 ,i choose my friends for their good looks1 my acquaintances for their good characters1 and my enemies for their good intellects4 ,the artist is the creator of beautiful things4 ,to me the word 'natural' means all that is middle class1 all that is of the essence of ,jingoism1 all that is colourless and without form and void4 ,it might be a beautiful word1 but it is the most debased coin in the currency of language4 ,i pity any woman who is married to a man called ,john4 ,she would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude4 ,it is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have learned the art of living4 ,to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim4 ,the world taken 'en masse' is a monster1 crammed with prejudices1 packed with prepossessions1 cankered with what it calls virtues1 a ,puritan1 a prig4 ,and the art of life is the art of defiance4 ,to defy--that is what we ought to live for1 instead of living1 as we do1 to acquiesce4 ,some resemblance the creative work of the critic will have to the work that has stirred him to creation1 but it will be such resemblance as exists1 not between nature and the mirror that the painter of landscape or figure may be supposed to hold up to her1 but between nature and the work of the decorative artist4 ,just as on the flowerless carpets of ,persia tulip and rose blossom indeed1 and are lovely to look on1 though they are not reproduced in visible shape or line2 just as the pearl and purple of the sea shell is echoed in the church of ,st ,mark at ,venice2 just as the vaulted ceiling of the wondrous chapel at ,ravenna is made gorgeous by the gold and green and sapphire of the peacock's tail1 though the birds of ,juno fly not across it2 so the critic reproduces the work that he criticises in a mode that is never imitative1 and part of whose charm may really consist in the rejection of resemblance1 and shows us in this way not merely the meaning but also the mystery of beauty1 and by transforming each art into literature solves once for all the problem of art's unity4 ,diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new1 complex1 and vital4 ,nothing is more painful to me than to come across virtue in a person in whom ,i have never suspected its existence4 ,it is like finding a needle in a bundle of hay4 ,it pricks you4 ,if we have virtue we should warn people of it4 ,the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things4 ,hopper is one of nature's gentlemen--the worst type of gentleman ,i know4 ,if one intends to be good one must take it up as a profession4 ,it is quite the most engrossing one in the world4 ,i like ,wagner's music better than anybody's4 ,it is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says4 ,all art is at once surface and symbol4 ,childhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping1 of hearing what one ought not to hear4 ,the highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography4 ,the only things worth saying are those that we forget1 just as the only things worth doing are those that the world is surprised at4 ,maturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say4 ,that is the art of conversation4 ,virtue is generally merely a form of deficiency1 just as vice is an assertion of intellect4 ,people teach in order to conceal their ignorance1 as people smile in order to conceal their tears4 ,to be unnatural is often to be great4 ,to be natural is generally to be stupid4 ,to lie finely is an art1 to tell the truth is to act according to nature4 ,people who talk sense are like people who break stones in the road3 they cover one with dust and splinters4 ,jesus said to man3 ,you have a wonderful personality4 ,develop it4 ,be yourself4 ,don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things4 ,your perfection is inside of you4 ,if only you could realise that you would not want to be rich4 ,ordinary riches can be stolen from a man1 real riches cannot4 ,in the treasury-house of your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken from you4 ,try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you1 and try also to get rid of personal property4 ,it involves sordid preoccupation1 endless industry1 continual wrong4 ,personal property hinders individualism at every step4 ,when ,jesus talks about the poor ,he simply means personalities1 just as when ,he talks about the rich ,he simply means people who have not developed their personalities4 ,an echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,the ,,soul ,,of ,,man ,the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of ,socialism is1 undoubtedly1 the fact that ,socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which1 in the present condition of things1 presses so hardly upon almost everybody4 ,in fact1 scarcely anyone at all escapes4 ,now and then1 in the course of the century1 a great man of science1 like ,darwin2 a great poet1 like ,keats2 a fine critical spirit1 like ,m1 ,renan2 a supreme artist1 like ,flaubert1 has been able to isolate himself1 to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others1 to stand 'under the shelter of the wall1' as ,plato puts it1 and so to realise the perfection of what was in him1 to his own incomparable gain1 and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world4 ,these1 however1 are exceptions4 ,the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism--are forced1 indeed1 so to spoil them4 ,they find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty1 by hideous ugliness1 by hideous starvation4 ,it is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this4 ,the emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence2 and1 as ,i pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism1 it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought4 ,accordingly1 with admirable1 though misdirected intentions1 they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see4 ,but their remedies do not cure the disease3 they merely prolong it4 ,indeed1 their remedies are part of the disease4 ,they try to solve the problem of poverty1 for instance1 by keeping the poor alive2 or1 in the case of a very advanced school1 by amusing the poor4 ,but this is not a solution3 it is an aggravation of the difficulty4 ,the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible4 ,and the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim4 ,just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves1 and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it1 and understood by those who contemplated it1 so1 in the present state of things in ,england1 the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good2 and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life-educated men who live in the ,east ,end--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity1 benevolence1 and the like4 ,they do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises4 ,they are perfectly right4 ,charity creates a multitude of sins4 ,there is also this to be said4 ,it is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property4 ,it is both immoral and unfair4 ,under ,socialism all this will1 of course1 be altered4 ,there will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags1 and bringing up unhealthy1 hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings4 ,the security of society will not depend1 as it does now1 on the state of the weather4 ,if a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work1 tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery1 or whining to their neighbours for alms1 or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night's unclean lodging4 ,each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society1 and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse4 ,upon the other hand1 ,socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to ,individualism4 ,socialism1 ,communism1 or whatever one chooses to call it1 by converting private property into public wealth1 and substituting co-operation for competition1 will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism1 and insure the material well-being of each member of the community4 ,it will1 in fact1 give ,life it's proper basis and its proper environment4 ,but for the full development of ,life to its highest mode of perfection1 something more is needed4 ,what is needed is ,individualism4 ,if the ,socialism is ,authoritarian2 if there are ,governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power2 if1 in a word1 we are to have ,industrial ,tyrannies1 then the last state of man will be worse than the first4 ,at present1 in consequence of the existence of private property1 a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of ,individualism4 ,they are either under no necessity to work for their living1 or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them1 and gives them pleasure4 ,these are the poets1 the philosophers1 the men of science1 the men of culture--in a word1 the real men1 the men who have realised themselves1 and in whom all ,humanity gains a partial realisation4 ,upon the other hand1 there are a great many people who1 having no private property of their own1 and being always on the brink of sheer starvation1 are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden1 to do work that is quite uncongenial to them1 and to which they are forced by the peremptory1 unreasonable1 degrading ,tyranny of want4 ,these are the poor1 and amongst them there is no grace of manner1 or charm of speech1 or civilisation1 or culture1 or refinement in pleasures1 or joy of life4 ,from their collective force ,humanity gains much in material prosperity4 ,but it is only the material result that it gains1 and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance4 ,he is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that1 so far from regarding him1 crushes him3 indeed1 prefers him crushed1 as in that case he is far more obedient4 ,of course1 it might be said that the ,individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always1 or even as a rule1 of a fine or wonderful type1 and that the poor1 if they have not culture and charm1 have still many virtues4 ,both these statements would be quite true4 ,the possession of private property is very often extremely demoralising1 and that is1 of course1 one of the reasons why ,socialism wants to get rid of the institution4 ,in fact1 property is really a nuisance4 ,some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties4 ,they said it so often and so tediously that1 at last1 the ,church has begun to say it4 ,one hears it now from every pulpit4 ,it is perfectly true4 ,property not merely has duties1 but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore4 ,it involves endless claims upon one1 endless attention to business1 endless bother4 ,if property had simply pleasures1 we could stand it2 but its duties make it unbearable4 ,in the interest of the rich we must get rid of it4 ,the virtues of the poor may be readily admitted1 and are much to be regretted4 ,we are often told that the poor are grateful for charity4 ,some of them are1 no doubt1 but the best amongst the poor are never grateful4 ,they are ungrateful1 discontented1 disobedient1 and rebellious4 ,they are quite right to be so4 ,charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution1 or a sentimental dole1 usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives4 ,why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table8 ,they should be seated at the board1 and are beginning to know it4 ,as for being discontented1 a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute4 ,disobedience1 in the eyes of anyone who has read history1 is man's original virtue4 ,it is through disobedience that progress has been made1 through disobedience and through rebellion4 ,sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty4 ,but to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting4 ,it is like advising a man who is starving to eat less4 ,for a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral4 ,man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal4 ,he should decline to live like that1 and should either steal or go on the rates1 which is considered by many to be a form of stealing4 ,as for begging1 it is safer to beg than to take1 but it is finer to take than to beg4 ,no3 a poor man who is ungrateful1 unthrifty1 discontented1 and rebellious1 is probably a real personality1 and has much in him4 ,he is at any rate a healthy protest4 ,as for the virtuous poor1 one can pity them1 of course1 but one cannot possibly admire them2 ,they have made private terms with the enemy1 and sold their birthright for very bad pottage4 ,they must also be extraordinarily stupid4 ,i can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property1 and admit of its accumulation1 as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life4 ,but it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance4 ,however1 the explanation is not really difficult to find4 ,it is simply this4 ,misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading1 and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men1 that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering4 ,they have to be told of it by other people1 and they often entirely disbelieve them4 ,what is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true4 ,agitators are a set of interfering1 meddling people1 who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community1 and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them4 ,that is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary4 ,without them1 in our incomplete state1 there would be no advance towards civilisation4 ,slavery was put down in ,america1 not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves1 or even any express desire on their part that they should be free4 ,it was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in ,boston and elsewhere1 who were not slaves themselves1 nor owners of slaves1 nor had anything to do with the question really4 ,it was1 undoubtedly1 the ,abolitionists who set the torch alight1 who began the whole thing4 ,and it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received1 not merely very little assistance1 but hardly any sympathy even2 and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free1 found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve1 many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things4 ,to the thinker1 the most tragic fact in the whole of the ,french ,revolution is not that ,marie ,antoinette was killed for being a queen1 but that the starved peasant of the ,vende voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism4 ,it is clear1 then1 that no ,authoritarian ,socialism will do4 ,for while under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness1 under an industrial-barrack system1 or a system of economic tyranny1 nobody would be able to have any such freedom at all4 ,it is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery1 but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish4 ,every man must be left quite free to choose his own work4 ,no form of compulsion must be exercised over him4 ,if there is1 his work will not be good for him1 will riot be good in itself1 and will not be good for others4 ,and by work ,i simply mean activity of any kind4 ,i hardly think that any ,socialist1 nowadays1 would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours4 ,humanity has got beyond that stage1 and reserves such a form of life for the people whom1 in a very arbitrary manner1 it chooses to call criminals4 ,but ,i confess that many of the socialistic views that ,i have come across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority1 if not of actual compulsion4 ,of course1 authority and compulsion are out of the question4 ,all association must be quite voluntary4 ,it is only in voluntary associations that man is fine4 ,but it may be asked how ,individualism1 which is now more or less dependent on the existence of private property for its development1 will benefit by the abolition of such private property4 ,the answer is very simple4 ,it is true that1 under existing conditions1 a few men who have had private means of their own1 such as ,byron1 ,shelley1 ,browning1 ,victor ,hugo1 ,baudelaire1 and others1 have been able to realise their personality more or less completely4 ,not one of these men ever did a single day's work for hire4 ,they were relieved from poverty4 ,they had an immense advantage4 ,the question is whether it would be for the good of ,individualism that such an advantage should be taken away4 ,let us suppose that it is taken away4 ,what happens then to ,individualism8 ,how will it benefit8 ,it will benefit in this way1 under the new conditions ,individualism will be far freer1 far finer1 and far more intensified than it is now4 ,i am not talking of the great imaginatively-realised ,individualism of such poets as ,i have mentioned1 but of the great actual ,individualism latent and potential in mankind generally4 ,for the recognition of private property has really harmed ,individualism1 and obscured it1 by confusing a man with what he possesses4 ,it has led ,individualism entirely astray4 ,it has made gain not growth its aim4 ,so that man thought that the important thing was to have1 and did not know that the important thing is to be4 ,the true perfection of man lies1 not in what man has1 but in what man is4 ,private property has crushed true ,individualism1 and set up an ,individualism that is false4 ,it has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them4 ,it has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road1 and encumbering them4 ,indeed1 so completely has man's personality been absorbed by his possessions that the ,english law has always treated offences against a man's property with far more severity than offences against his person1 and property is still the test of complete citizenship4 ,the industry necessary for the making of money is also very demoralising4 ,in a community like ours1 where property confers immense distinction1 social position1 honour1 respect1 titles1 and other pleasant things of the kind1 man1 being naturally ambitious1 makes it his aim to accumulate this property1 and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants1 or can use1 or enjoy1 or perhaps even know of4 ,man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property1 and really1 considering the enormous advantages that property brings1 one is hardly surprised4 ,one's regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful1 and fascinating1 and delightful in him--in which1 in fact1 he misses the true pleasure and joy of living4 ,he is also1 under existing conditions1 very insecure4 ,an enormously wealthy merchant may be--often is--at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control4 ,if the wind blows an extra point or so1 or the weather suddenly changes1 or some trivial thing happens1 his ship may go down1 his speculations may go wrong1 and he finds himself a poor man1 with his social position quite gone4 ,now1 nothing should be able to harm a man except himself4 ,nothing should be able to rob a man at all4 ,what a man really has1 is what is in him4 ,what is outside of him should be a matter of no importance4 ,with the abolition of private property1 then1 we shall have true1 beautiful1 healthy ,individualism4 ,nobody will waste his life in accumulating things1 and the symbols for things4 ,one will live4 ,to live is the rarest thing in the world4 ,most people exist1 that is all4 ,it is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a personality1 except on the imaginative plane of art4 ,in action1 we never have4 ,csar1 says ,mommsen1 was the complete and perfect man4 ,but how tragically insecure was ,csar6 ,wherever there is a man who exercises authority1 there is a man who resists authority4 ,csar was very perfect1 but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road4 ,marcus ,aurelius was the perfect man1 says ,renan4 ,yes2 the great emperor was a perfect man4 ,but how intolerable were the endless claims upon him6 ,he staggered under the burden of the empire4 ,he was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the weight of that ,titan and too vast orb4 ,what ,i mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions2 one who is not wounded1 or worried or maimed1 or in danger4 ,most personalities have been obliged to be rebels4 ,half their strength has been wasted in friction4 ,byron's personality1 for instance1 was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity1 and hypocrisy1 and ,philistinism of the ,english4 ,such battles do not always intensify strength3 they often exaggerate weakness4 ,byron was never able to give us what he might have given us4 ,shelley escaped better4 ,like ,byron1 he got out of ,england as soon as possible4 ,but he was not so well known4 ,if the ,english had had any idea of what a great poet he really was1 they would have fallen on him with tooth and nail1 and made his life as unbearable to him as they possibly could4 ,but he was not a remarkable figure in society1 and consequently he escaped1 to a certain degree4 ,still1 even in ,shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too strong4 ,the note of the perfect personality is not rebellion1 but peace4 ,it will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it4 ,it will grow naturally and simply1 flowerlike1 or as a tree grows4 ,it will not be at discord4 ,it will never argue or dispute4 ,it will not prove things4 ,it will know everything4 ,and yet it will not busy itself about knowledge4 ,it will have wisdom4 ,its value will not be measured by material things4 ,it will have nothing4 ,and yet it will have everything1 and whatever one takes from it1 it will still have1 so rich will it he4 ,it will not be always meddling with others1 or asking them to be like itself4 ,it will love them because they will be different4 ,and yet while it will not meddle with others1 it will help all1 as a beautiful thing helps us1 by being what it is4 ,the personality of man will be very wonderful4 ,it will be as wonderful as the personality of a child4 ,in its development it will be assisted by ,christianity1 if men desire that2 but if men do not desire that1 it will develop none the less surely4 ,for it will not worry itself about the past1 nor care whether things happened or did not happen4 ,nor will it admit any laws but its own laws2 nor any authority but its own authority4 ,yet it will love those who sought to intensity it1 and speak often of them4 ,and of these ,christ was one4 ',know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world4 ,over the portal of the new world1 ',be thyself' shall be written4 ,and the message of ,christ to man was simply ',be thyself4' ,that is the secret of ,christ4 ,when ,jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities1 just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities4 ,jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does1 and the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty1 unwholesome food1 to wear ragged1 unwholesome clothes1 to sleep in horrid1 unwholesome dwellings1 and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy1 pleasant1 and decent conditions4 ,such a view would have been wrong there and then1 and would1 of course1 be still more wrong now and in ,england2 for as man moves northward the material necessities of life become of more vital importance1 and our society is infinitely more complex1 and displays far greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world4 ,what ,jesus meant1 was this4 ,he said to man1 ',you have a wonderful personality4 ,develop it4 ,be yourself4 ,don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things4 ,your perfection is inside of you4 ,if only you could realise that1 you would not want to be rich4 ,ordinary riches can be stolen from a man4 ,real riches cannot4 ,in the treasury-house of your soul1 there are infinitely precious things1 that may not be taken from you4 ,and so1 try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you4 ,and try also to get rid of personal property4 ,it involves sordid preoccupation1 endless industry1 continual wrong4 ,personal property hinders ,individualism at every step4 ,it is to be noted that ,jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good1 or wealthy people necessarily bad4 ,that would not have been true4 ,wealthy people are1 as a class1 better than impoverished people1 more moral1 more intellectual1 more well-behaved4 ,there is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich1 and that is the poor4 ,the poor can think of nothing else4 ,that is the misery of being poor4 ,what ,jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection1 not through what he has1 not even through what he does1 but entirely through what he is4 ,and so the wealthy young man who comes to ,jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen1 who has broken none of the laws of his state1 none of the commandments of his religion4 ,he is quite respectable1 in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word4 ,jesus says to him1 ',you should give up private property4 ,it hinders you from realising your perfection4 ,it is a drag upon you4 ,it is a burden4 ,your personality does not need it4 ,it is within you1 and not outside of you1 that you will find what you really are1 and what you really want4' ,to his own friends he says the same thing4 ,he tells them to be themselves1 and not to be always worrying about other things4 ,what do other things matter8 ,man is complete in himself4 ,when they go into the world1 the world will disagree with them4 ,that is inevitable4 ,the world hates ,individualism4 ,but that is not to trouble them4 ,they are to be calm and self-centred4 ,if a man takes their cloak1 they are to give him their coat1 just to show that material things are of no importance4 ,if people abuse them1 they are not to answer back4 ,what does it signify8 ,the things people say of a man do not alter a man4 ,he is what he is4 ,public opinion is of no value whatsoever4 ,even if people employ actual violence1 they are not to be violent in turn4 ,that would be to fall to the same low level4 ,after all1 even in prison1 a man can be quite free4 ,his soul can be free4 ,his personality can be untroubled4 ,he can be at peace4 ,and1 above all things1 they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way4 ,personality is a very mysterious thing4 ,a man cannot always be estimated by what he does4 ,he may keep the law1 and yet be worthless4 ,he may break the law1 and yet be fine4 ,he may be bad1 without ever doing anything bad4 ,he may commit a sin against society1 and yet realise through that sin his true perfection4 ,there was a woman who was taken in adultery4 ,we are not told the history of her love1 but that love must have been very great2 for ,jesus said that her sins were forgiven her1 not because she repented1 but because her love was so intense and wonderful4 ,later on1 a short time before his death1 as he sat at a feast1 the woman came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair4 ,his friends tried to interfere with her1 and said that it was an extravagance1 and that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want1 or something of that kind4 ,jesus did not accept that view4 ,he pointed out that the material needs of ,man were great and very permanent1 but that the spiritual needs of ,man were greater still1 and that in one divine moment1 and by selecting its own mode of expression1 a personality might make itself perfect4 ,the world worships the woman1 even now1 as a saint4 ,yes2 there are suggestive things in ,individualism4 ,socialism annihilates family life1 for instance4 ,with the abolition of private property1 marriage in its present form must disappear4 ,this is part of the programme4 ,individualism accepts this and makes it fine4 ,it converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality1 and make the love of man and woman more wonderful1 more beautiful1 and more ennobling4 ,jesus knew this4 ,he rejected the claims of family life1 although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form4 ',who is my mother8 ,who are my brothers8' he said1 when he was told that they wished to speak to him4 ,when one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father1 ',let the dead bury the dead1' was his terrible answer4 ,he would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality4 ,and so he who would lead a ,christ-like like life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself4 ,he may be a great poet1 or a great man of science2 or a young student at a ,university1 or one who watches sheep upon a moor2 or a maker of dramas1 like ,shakespeare1 or a thinker about ,god1 like ,spinoza2 or a child who plays in a garden1 or a fisherman who throws his net into the sea4 ,it does not matter what he is1 as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him4 ,all imitation in morals and in life is wrong4 ,through the streets of ,jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders4 ,he is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation4 ,father ,damien was ,christ-like when he went out to live with the lepers1 because in such service he realised fully what was best in him4 ,but he was not more ,christ-like than ,wagner when he realised his soul in music2 or than ,shelley1 when he realised his soul in song4 ,there is no one type for man4 ,there are as many perfections as there are imperfect men4 ,and while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free1 to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all4 ,individualism1 then1 is what through ,socialism we are to attain to4 ,as a natural result the ,state must give up all idea of government4 ,it must give it up because1 as a wise man once said many centuries before ,christ1 there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone2 there is no such thing as governing mankind4 ,all modes of government are failures4 ,despotism is unjust to everybody1 including the despot1 who was probably made for better things4 ,oligarchies are unjust to the many1 and ochlocracies are unjust to the few4 ,high hopes were once formed of democracy2 but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people4 ,it has been found out4 ,i must say that it was high time1 for all authority is quite degrading4 ,it degrades those who exercise it1 and degrades those over whom it is exercised4 ,when it is violently1 grossly1 and cruelly used1 it produces a good effect1 by creating1 or at any rate bringing out1 the spirit of revolt and ,individualism that is to kill it4 ,when it is used with a certain amount of kindness1 and accompanied by prizes and rewards1 it is dreadfully demoralising4 ,people1 in that case1 are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them1 and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort1 like petted animals1 without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts1 living by other people's standards1 wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes1 and never being themselves for a single moment4 ',he who would be free1' says a fine thinker1 'must not conform4' ,and authority1 by bribing people to conform1 produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism amongst us4 ,with authority1 punishment will pass away4 ,this will be a great gain--a gain1 in fact1 of incalculable value4 ,as one reads history1 not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen1 but in the original authorities of each time1 one is absolutely sickened1 not by the crimes that the wicked have committed1 but by the punishments that the good have inflicted2 and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment1 than it is by the occurrence of crime4 ,it obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced1 and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this1 and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can4 ,wherever it has really diminished it1 the results have always been extremely good4 ,the less punishment1 the less crime4 ,when there is no punishment at all1 crime will either cease to exist1 or1 if it occurs1 will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia1 to be cured by care and kindness4 ,for what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all4 ,starvation1 and not sin1 is the parent of modern crime4 ,that indeed is the reason why our criminals are1 as a class1 so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view4 ,they are not marvellous ,macbeths and terrible ,vautrins4 ,they are merely what ordinary1 respectable1 commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat4 ,when private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime1 no demand for it2 it will cease to exist4 ,of course1 all crimes are not crimes against property1 though such are the crimes that the ,english law1 valuing what a man has more than what a man is1 punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity1 if we except the crime of murder1 and regard death as worse than penal servitude1 a point on which our criminals1 ,i believe1 disagree4 ,but though a crime may not be against property1 it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding1 and so1 when that system is abolished1 will disappear4 ,when each member of the community has sufficient for his wants1 and is not interfered with by his neighbour1 it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else4 ,jealousy1 which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life1 is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property1 and under ,socialism and ,individualism will die out4 ,it is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown4 ,now as the ,state is not to govern1 it may be asked what the ,state is to do4 ,the ,state is to be a voluntary association that will organise labour1 and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities4 ,the ,state is to make what is useful4 ,the individual is to make what is beautiful4 ,and as ,i have mentioned the word labour4 ,i cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour4 ,there is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all1 and most of it is absolutely degrading4 ,it is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure1 and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities1 and should be regarded as such4 ,to sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation4 ,to sweep it with mental1 moral1 or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible4 ,to sweep it with joy would be appalling4 ,man is made for something better than disturbing dirt4 ,all work of that kind should be done by a machine4 ,and ,i have no doubt that it will be so4 ,up to the present1 man has been1 to a certain extent1 the slave of machinery1 and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve4 ,this1 however1 is1 of course1 the result of our property system and our system of competition4 ,one man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men4 ,five hundred men are1 in consequence1 thrown out of employment1 and1 having no work to do1 become hungry and take to thieving4 ,the one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it1 and has five hundred times as much as he should have1 and probably1 which is of much more importance1 a great deal more than he really wants4 ,were that machine the property of all1 everyone would benefit by it4 ,it would be an immense advantage to the community4 ,all unintellectual labour1 all monotonous1 dull labour1 all labour that deals with dreadful things1 and involves unpleasant conditions1 must be done by machinery4 ,machinery must work for us in coal mines1 and do all sanitary services1 and be the stoker of steamers1 and clean the streets1 and run messages on wet days1 and do anything that is tedious or distressing4 ,at present machinery competes against man4 ,under proper conditions machinery will serve man4 ,there is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery1 and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep1 so while ,humanity will be amusing itself1 or enjoying cultivated leisure--which1 and not labour1 is the aim of man--or making beautiful things1 or reading beautiful things1 or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight1 machinery will he doing all the necessary and unpleasant work4 ,the fact is1 that civilisation requires slaves4 ,the ,greeks were quite right there4 ,unless there are slaves to do the ugly1 horrible1 uninteresting work1 culture and contemplation become almost impossible4 ,human slavery is wrong1 insecure1 and demoralising4 ,on mechanical slavery1 on the slavery of the machine1 the future of the world depends4 ,and when scientific men are no longer called upon to go down to a depressing ,east ,end and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people1 they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of everyone else4 ,there will be great storages of force for every city1 and for every house if required1 and this force man will convert into heat1 light1 or motion1 according to his needs4 ,is this ,utopian8 ,a map of the world that does not include ,utopia is not worth even glancing at1 for it leaves out the one country at which ,humanity is always landing4 ,and when ,humanity lands there1 it looks out1 and1 seeing a better country1 sets sail4 ,progress is the realisation of ,utopias4 ,now1 ,i have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things1 and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual4 ,this is not merely necessary1 but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other4 ,an individual who has to make things for the use of others1 and with reference to their wants and their wishes1 does not work with interest1 and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him4 ,upon the other hand1 whenever a community or a powerful section of a community1 or a government of any kind1 attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do1 ,art either entirely vanishes1 or becomes stereotyped1 or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft4 ,a work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament4 ,its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is4 ,it has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want4 ,indeed1 the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want1 and tries to supply the demand1 he ceases to be an artist1 and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman1 an honest or a dishonest tradesman4 ,he has no further claim to be considered as an artist4 ,art is the most intense mode of ,individualism that the world has known4 ,i am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of ,individualism that the world has known4 ,crime1 which1 under certain conditions1 may seem to have created ,individualism1 must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them4 ,it belongs to the sphere of action4 ,but alone1 without any reference to his neighbours1 without any interference1 the artist can fashion a beautiful thing2 and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure1 he is not an artist at all4 ,and it is to be noted that it is the fact that ,art is this intense form of ,individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous1 and as corrupting as it is contemptible4 ,it is not quite their fault4 ,the public has always1 and in every age1 been badly brought up4 ,they are continually asking ,art to be popular1 to please their want of taste1 to flatter their absurd vanity1 to tell them what they have been told before1 to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing1 to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much1 and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity4 ,now ,art should never try to be popular4 ,the public should try to make itself artistic4 ,there is a very wide difference4 ,if a man of science were told that the results of his experiments1 and the conclusions that he arrived at1 should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject1 or disturb popular prejudice1 or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science2 if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought1 provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all--well1 nowadays the man of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused4 ,yet it is really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal popular control1 to authority in fact--the authority of either the general ignorance of the community1 or the terror and greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class4 ,of course1 we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community1 or the ,church1 or the ,government1 to interfere with the individualism of speculative thought1 but the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art still lingers4 ,in fact1 it does more than linger2 it is aggressive1 offensive1 and brutalising4 ,in ,england1 the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest4 ,poetry is an instance of what ,i mean4 ,we have been able to have fine poetry in ,england because the public do not read it1 and consequently do not influence it4 ,the public like to insult poets because they are individual1 but once they have insulted them1 they leave them alone4 ,in the case of the novel and the drama1 arts in which the public do take an interest1 the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous4 ,no country produces such badly-written fiction1 such tedious1 common work in the novel form1 such silly1 vulgar plays as ,england4 ,it must necessarily be so4 ,the popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it4 ,it is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist4 ,it is too easy1 because the requirements of the public as far as plot1 style1 psychology1 treatment of life1 and treatment of literature are concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind4 ,it is too difficult1 because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament1 would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing1 but for the amusement of half-educated people1 and so would have to suppress his individualism1 forget his culture1 annihilate his style1 and surrender everything that is valuable in him4 ,in the case of the drama1 things are a little better3 the theatre-going public like the obvious1 it is true1 but they do not like the tedious2 and burlesque and farcical comedy1 the two most popular forms1 are distinct forms of art4 ,delightful work may be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions1 and in work of this kind the artist in ,england is allowed very great freedom4 ,it is when one comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control is seen4 ,the one thing that the public dislike is novelty4 ,any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public2 and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter4 ,the public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it4 ,it represents to them a mode of ,individualism1 an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject1 and treats it as he chooses4 ,the public are quite right in their attitude4 ,art is ,individualism1 and ,individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force4 ,therein lies its immense value4 ,for what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type1 slavery of custom1 tyranny of habit1 and the reduction of man to the level of a machine4 ,in ,art1 the public accept what has been1 because they cannot alter it1 not because they appreciate it4 ,they swallow their classics whole1 and never taste them4 ,they endure them as the inevitable1 and as they cannot mar them1 they mouth about them4 ,strangely enough1 or not strangely1 according to one's own views1 this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm4 ,the uncritical admiration of the ,bible and ,shakespeare in ,england is an instance of what ,i mean4 ,with regard to the ,bible1 considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter1 so that ,i need not dwell upon the point4 ,but in the case of ,shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays4 ,if they saw the beauties1 they would not object to the development of the drama2 and if they saw the defects1 they would not object to the development of the drama either4 ,the fact is1 the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of ,art4 ,they degrade the classics into authorities4 ,they use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of ,beauty in new forms4 ,they are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else1 or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else1 quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist4 ,a fresh mode of ,beauty is absolutely distasteful to them1 and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered1 that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible2 the other1 that the work of art is grossly immoral4 ,what they mean by these words seems to me to be this4 ,when they say a work is grossly unintelligible1 they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new2 when they describe a work as grossly immoral1 they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true4 ,the former expression has reference to style2 the latter to subject-matter4 ,but they probably use the words very vaguely1 as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones4 ,there is not a single real poet or prose-writer of this century1 for instance1 on whom the ,british public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality1 and these diplomas practically take the place1 with us1 of what in ,france1 is the formal recognition of an ,academy of ,letters1 and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in ,england4 ,of course1 the public are very reckless in their use of the word4 ,that they should have called ,wordsworth an immoral poet1 was only to be expected4 ,wordsworth was a poet4 ,but that they should have called ,charles ,kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary4 ,kingsley's prose was not of a very fine quality4 ,still1 there is the word1 and they use it as best they can4 ,an artist is1 of course1 not disturbed by it4 ,the true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself1 because he is absolutely himself4 ,but ,i can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in ,england that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public1 through their medium1 which is the public press1 as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral1 he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all1 and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him1 and either of a thoroughly second-rate order1 or of no artistic value whatsoever4 ,perhaps1 however1 ,i have wronged the public in limiting them to such words as 'immoral1' 'unintelligible1' 'exotic1' and 'unhealthy4' ,there is one other word that they use4 ,that word is 'morbid4' ,they do not use it often4 ,the meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of using it4 ,still1 they use it sometimes1 and1 now and then1 one comes across it in popular newspapers4 ,it is1 of course1 a ridiculous word to apply to a work of art4 ,for what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of thought that one cannot express8 ,the public are all morbid1 because the public can never find expression for anything4 ,the artist is never morbid4 ,he expresses everything4 ,he stands outside his subject1 and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects4 ,to call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called ,shakespeare mad because he wrote ',king ,lear4' ,on the whole1 an artist in ,england gains something by being attacked4 ,his individuality is intensified4 ,he becomes more completely himself4 ,of course1 the attacks are very gross1 very impertinent1 and very contemptible4 ,but then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind1 or style from the suburban intellect4 ,vulgarity and stupidity are two very vivid facts in modern life4 ,one regrets them1 naturally4 ,but there they are4 ,they are subjects for study1 like everything else4 ,and it is only fair to state1 with regard to modern journalists1 that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public4 ,within the last few years two other adjectives1 it may be mentioned1 have been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at the disposal of the public4 ,one is the word 'unhealthy1' the other is the word 'exotic4' ,the latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary mushroom against the immortal1 entrancing1 and exquisitely lovely orchid4 ,it is a tribute1 but a tribute of no importance4 ,the word 'unhealthy1' however1 admits of analysis4 ,it is a rather interesting word4 ,in fact1 it is so interesting that the people who use it do not know what it means4 ,what does it mean8 ,what is a healthy1 or an unhealthy work of art8 ,all terms that one applies to a work of art1 provided that one applies them rationally1 have reference to either its style or its subject1 or to both together4 ,from the point of view of style1 a healthy work of art is one whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs1 be that material one of words or of bronze1 of colour or of ivory1 and uses that beauty as a factor in producing the sthetic effect4 ,from the point of view of subject1 a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose subject is conditioned by the temperament of the artist1 and comes directly out of it4 ,in fine1 a healthy work of art is one that has both perfection and personality4 ,of course1 form and substance cannot be separated in a work of art2 they are always one4 ,but for purposes of analysis1 and setting the wholeness of sthetic impression aside for a moment1 we can intellectually so separate them4 ,an unhealthy work of art1 on the other hand1 is a work whose style is obvious1 old-fashioned1 and common1 and whose subject is deliberately chosen1 not because the artist has any pleasure in it1 but because he thinks that the public will pay him for it4 ,in fact1 the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production2 and what the public call an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art4 ,i need hardly say that ,i am not1 for a single moment1 complaining that the public and the public press misuse these words4 ,i do not see how1 with their lack of comprehension of what ,art is1 they could possibly use them in the proper sense4 ,i am merely pointing out the misuse2 and as for the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all1 the explanation is very simple4 ,it comes from the barbarous conception of authority4 ,it comes from the natural inability of a community corrupted by authority to understand or appreciate ,individualism4 ,in a word1 it comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called ,public ,opinion1 which1 bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to control action1 is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control ,thought or ,art4 ,indeed1 there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of the public than there is in favour of the public's opinion4 ,the former may be fine4 ,the latter must be foolish4 ,it is often said that force is no argument4 ,that1 however1 entirely depends on what one wants to prove4 ,many of the most important problems of the last few centuries1 such as the continuance of personal government in ,england1 or of feudalism in ,france1 have been solved entirely by means of physical force4 ,the very violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a moment4 ,it was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone1 and can be made as offensive as the brickbat4 ,they at once sought for the journalist1 found him1 developed him1 and made him their industrious and well-paid servant4 ,it is greatly to be regretted1 for both their sakes4 ,behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic4 ,but what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice1 stupidity1 cant1 and twaddle8 ,and when these four are joined together they make a terrible force1 and constitute the new authority4 ,in old days men had the rack4 ,now they have the press4 ,that is an improvement certainly4 ,but still it is very bad1 and wrong1 and demoralising4 ,somebody--was it ,burke8--called journalism the fourth estate4 ,that was true at the time1 no doubt4 ,but at the present moment it really is the only estate4 ,it has eaten up the other three4 ,the ,lords ,temporal say nothing1 the ,lords ,spiritual have nothing to say1 and the ,house of ,commons has nothing to say and says it4 ,we are dominated by ,journalism4 ,in ,america the ,president reigns for four years1 and ,journalism governs for ever and ever4 ,fortunately in ,america ,journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme4 ,as a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt4 ,people are amused by it1 or disgusted by it1 according to their temperaments4 ,but it is no longer the real force it was4 ,it is not seriously treated4 ,in ,england1 ,journalism1 not1 except in a few well-known instances1 having been carried to such excesses of brutality1 is still a great factor1 a really remarkable power4 ,the tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary4 ,the fact is1 that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything1 except what is worth knowing4 ,journalism1 conscious of this1 and having tradesman-like habits1 supplies their demands4 ,in centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump4 ,that was quite hideous4 ,in this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole4 ,that is much worse4 ,and what aggravates the mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who write for what are called ,society papers4 ,the harm is done by the serious1 thoughtful1 earnest journalists1 who solemnly1 as they are doing at present1 will drag before the eyes of the public some incident in the private life of a great statesman1 of a man who is a leader of political thought as he is a creator of political force1 and invite the public to discuss the incident1 to exercise authority in the matter1 to give their views1 and not merely to give their views1 but to carry them into action1 to dictate to the man upon all other points1 to dictate to his party1 to dictate to his country2 in fact1 to make themselves ridiculous1 offensive1 and harmful4 ,the private lives of men and women should not be told to the public4 ,the public have nothing to do with them at all4 ,in ,prance they manage these things better4 ,there they do not allow the details of the trials that take place in the divorce courts to be published for the amusement or criticism of the public4 ,all that the public are allowed to know is that the divorce has taken place and was granted on petition of one or other or both of the married parties concerned4 ,in ,france1 in fact1 they limit the journalist1 and allow the artist almost perfect freedom4 ,here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist1 and entirely limit the artist4 ,english public opinion1 that is to say1 tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect1 and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly1 or disgusting1 or revolting in fact1 so that we have the most serious journalists in the world1 and the most indecent newspapers4 ,it is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion4 ,there are possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible things1 or who1 being poor1 look to scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income4 ,but there are other journalists1 ,i feel certain1 men of education and cultivation1 who really dislike publishing these things1 who know that it is wrong to do so1 and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants1 and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible4 ,it is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in1 and ,i have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely4 ,however1 let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject1 and return to the question of popular control in the matter of ,art1 by which ,i mean ,public ,opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is to use1 the mode in which he is to use it1 and the materials with which he is to work4 ,i have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best in ,england are the arts in which the public have not been interested4 ,they are1 however1 interested in the drama1 and as a certain advance has been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years1 it is important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their standard1 and refusing to regard ,art as a mere matter of demand and supply4 ,with his marvellous and vivid personality1 with a style that has really a true colour-element in it1 with his extraordinary power1 not over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation1 ,mr ,irving1 had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted1 could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner1 and made as much success and money as a man could possibly desire4 ,but his object was not that4 ,his object was to realise his own perfection as an artist1 under certain conditions1 and in certain forms of ,art4 ,at first he appealed to the few2 now he has educated the many4 ,he has created in the public both taste and temperament4 ,the public appreciate his artistic success immensely4 ,i often wonder1 however1 whether the public understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not accept their standard1 but realised his own4 ,with their standard the ,lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth1 as some of the popular theatres in ,london are at present4 ,whether they understand it or not the fact however remains1 that taste and temperament have1 to a certain extent1 been created in the public1 and that the public is capable of developing these qualities4 ,the problem then is1 why do not the public become more civilised8 ,they have the capacity4 ,what stops them8 ,the thing that stops them1 it must be said again1 is their desire to exercise authority over the artist and over works of art4 ,to certain theatres1 such as the ,lyceum and the ,haymarket1 the public seem to come in a proper mood4 ,in both of these theatres there have been individual artists1 who have succeeded in creating in their audiences--and every theatre in ,london has its own audience--the temperament to which ,art appeals4 ,and what is that temperament8 ,it is the temperament of receptivity4 ,that is all4 ,if a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist1 he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all4 ,the work of art is to dominate the spectator3 the spectator is not to dominate the work of art4 ,the spectator is to be receptive4 ,he is to be the violin on which the master is to play4 ,and the more completely he can suppress his own silly views1 his own foolish prejudices1 his own absurd ideas of what ,art should be1 or should not be1 the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question4 ,this is1 of course1 quite obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of ,english men and women4 ,but it is equally true of what are called educated people4 ,for an educated person's ideas of ,art are drawn naturally from what ,art has been1 whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what ,art has never been2 and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends4 ,a temperament capable of receiving1 through an imaginative medium1 and under imaginative conditions1 new and beautiful impressions1 is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art4 ,and true as this is in the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting1 it is still more true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama4 ,for a picture and a statue are not at war with ,time4 ,they take no count of its succession4 ,in one moment their unity may be apprehended4 ,in the case of literature it is different4 ,time must be traversed before the unity of effect is realised4 ,and so1 in the drama1 there may occur in the first act of the play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the spectator till the third or fourth act is reached4 ,is the silly fellow to get angry and call out1 and disturb the play1 and annoy the artists8 ,no1 the honest man is to sit quietly1 and know the delightful emotions of wonder1 curiosity1 and suspense4 ,he is not to go to the play to lose a vulgar temper4 ,he is to go to the play to realise an artistic temperament4 ,he is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament4 ,he is not the arbiter of the work of art4 ,he is one who is admitted to contemplate the work of art1 and1 if the work be fine1 to forget in its contemplation all1 the egotism that mars him--the egotism of his ignorance1 or the egotism of his information4 ,this point about the drama is hardly1 ,i think1 sufficiently recognised4 ,i can quite understand that were ',macbeth' produced for the first time before a modern ,london audience1 many of the people present would strongly and vigorously object to the introduction of the witches in the first act1 with their grotesque phrases and their ridiculous words4 ,but when the play is over one realises that the laughter of the witches in ',macbeth' is as terrible as the laughter of madness in ',lear1' more terrible than the daughter of ,iago in the tragedy of the ,moor4 ,no spectator of art needs a more perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play4 ,the moment he seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of ,art and of himself4 ,art does not mind4 ,it is he who suffers4 ,with the novel it is the same thing4 ,popular authority and the recognition of popular authority are fatal4 ,thackeray's ',esmond' is a beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself4 ,in his other novels1 in ',pendennis1' in ',philip1' in ',vanity ,fair' even1 at times1 he is too conscious of the public1 and spoils his work by appealing directly to the sympathies of the public1 or by directly mocking at them4 ,a true artist takes no notice whatever of the public4 ,the public are to him non-existent4 ,he has no poppied or honeyed cakes through which to give the monster sleep or sustenance4 ,he leaves that to the popular novelist4 ,one incomparable novelist we have now in ,england1 ,mr ,george ,meredith4 ,there are better artists in ,france1 but ,france has no one whose view of life is so large1 so varied1 so imaginatively true4 ,there are tellers of stories in ,russia who have a more vivid sense of what pain in fiction may be4 ,but to him belongs philosophy in fiction4 ,his people not merely live1 but they live in thought4 ,one can see them from myriad points of view4 ,they are suggestive4 ,there is soul in them and around them4 ,they are interpretative and symbolic4 ,and he who made them1 those wonderful quickly-moving figures1 made them for his own pleasure1 and has never asked the public what they wanted1 has never cared to know what they wanted1 has never allowed the public to dictate to him or influence him in any way1 but has gone on intensifying his own personality1 and producing his own individual work4 ,at first none came to him4 ,that did not matter4 ,then the few came to him4 ,that did not change him4 ,the many have come now4 ,he is still the same4 ,he's an incomparable novelist4 ,with the decorative arts it is not different4 ,the public clung with really pathetic tenacity to what ,i believe were the direct traditions of the ,great ,exhibition of international vulgarity1 traditions that were so appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind people to live in4 ,beautiful things began to be made1 beautiful colours came from the dyer's hand1 beautiful patterns from the artist's brain1 and the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set forth4 ,the public were really very indignant4 ,they lost their temper4 ,they said silly things4 ,no one minded4 ,no one was a whit the worse4 ,no one accepted the authority of public opinion4 ,and now it is almost impossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of good taste1 some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings1 some sign of appreciation of beauty4 ,in fact1 people's houses are1 as a rule1 quite charming nowadays4 ,people have been to a very great extent civilised4 ,it is only fair to state1 however1 that the extraordinary success of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very fine taste in such matters4 ,it has been chiefly due to the fact that the craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was beautiful1 and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted1 that they simply starved the public out4 ,it would be quite impossible at the present moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago1 without going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from some third-rate lodging-house4 ,the things are no longer made4 ,however they may object to it1 people must nowadays have something charming in their surroundings4 ,fortunately for them1 their assumption of authority in these art-matters came to entire grief4 ,it is evident1 then1 that all authority in such things is bad4 ,people sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under4 ,to this question there is only one answer4 ,the form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all4 ,authority over him and his art is ridiculous4 ,it has been stated that under despotisms artists have produced lovely work4 ,this is not quite so4 ,artists have visited despots1 not as subjects to be tyrannised over1 but as wandering wonder-makers1 as fascinating vagrant personalities1 to be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace1 and allowed to create4 ,there is this to be said in favour of the despot1 that he1 being an individual1 may have culture1 while the mob1 being a monster1 has none4 ,one who is an ,emperor and ,king may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter1 but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud4 ,and yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor4 ,in fact1 when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all4 ,but there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob2 all authority is equally bad4 ,there are three kinds of despots4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over the body4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over the soul4 ,there is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike4 ,the first is called the ,prince4 ,the second is called the ,pope ,the third is called the ,people4 ,the ,prince may be cultivated4 ,many ,princes have been4 ,yet in the ,prince there is danger4 ,one thinks of ,dante at the bitter feast in ,verona1 of ,tasso in ,ferrara's madman's cell4 ,it is better for the artist not to live with ,princes4 ,the ,pope may be cultivated4 ,many ,popes have been2 the bad ,popes have been4 ,the bad ,popes loved ,beauty1 almost as passionately1 nay1 with as much passion as the good ,popes hated ,thought4 ,to the wickedness of the ,papacy humanity owes much4 ,the goodness of the ,papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity4 ,yet1 though the ,vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders1 and lost the rod of its lightning1 it is better for the artist not to live with ,popes4 ,it was a ,pope who said of ,cellini to a conclave of ,cardinals that common laws and common authority were not made for men such as he2 but it was a ,pope who thrust ,cellini into prison1 and kept him there till he sickened with rage1 and created unreal visions for himself1 and saw the gilded sun enter his room1 and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape1 and crept out from tower to tower1 and falling through dizzy air at dawn1 maimed himself1 and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves1 and carried in a cart to one who1 loving beautiful things1 had care of him4 ,there is danger in ,popes4 ,and as for the ,people1 what of them and their authority8 ,perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough4 ,their authority is a thing blind1 deaf1 hideous1 grotesque1 tragic1 amusing1 serious1 and obscene4 ,it is impossible for the artist to live with the ,people4 ,all despots bribe4 ,the people bribe and brutalise4 ,who told them to exercise authority8 ,they were made to live1 to listen1 and to love4 ,someone has done them a great wrong4 ,they have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors4 ,they have taken the sceptre of the ,prince4 ,how should they use it8 ,they have taken the triple tiara of the ,pope4 ,how should they carry its burden8 ,they are as a clown whose heart is broken4 ,they are as a priest whose soul is not yet born4 ,let all who love ,beauty pity them4 ,though they themselves love not ,beauty1 yet let them pity themselves4 ,who taught them the trick of tyranny8 ,there are many other things that one might point out4 ,one might point out how the ,renaissance was great1 because it sought to solve no social problem1 and busied itself not about such things1 but suffered the individual to develop freely1 beautifully1 and naturally1 and so had great and individual artists1 and great and individual men4 ,one might point out how ,louis ,,xiv41 by creating the modern state1 destroyed the individualism of the artist1 and made things monstrous in their monotony of repetition1 and contemptible in their conformity to rule1 and destroyed throughout all ,france all those fine freedoms of expression that had made tradition new in beauty1 and new modes one with antique form4 ,but the past is of no importance4 ,the present is of no importance4 ,it is with the future that we have to deal4 ,for the past is what man should not have been4 ,the present is what man ought not to be4 ,the future is what artists are4 ,it will1 of course1 be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is quite unpractical1 and goes against human nature4 ,this is perfectly true4 ,it is unpractical1 and it goes against human nature4 ,this is why it is worth carrying out1 and that is why one proposes it4 ,for what is a practical scheme8 ,a practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence1 or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions4 ,but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to2 and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish4 ,the conditions will be done away with1 and human nature will change4 ,the only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes4 ,change is the one quality we can predicate of it4 ,the systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature1 and not on its growth and development4 ,the error of ,louis ,,xiv4 was that he thought human nature would always be the same4 ,the result of his error was the ,french ,revolution4 ,it was an admirable result4 ,all the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable4 ,it is to be noted also that ,individualism does not come to man with any sickly cant about duty1 which merely means doing what other people want because they want it2 or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice1 which is merely a survival of savage mutilation4 ,in fact1 it does not come to man with any claims upon him at all4 ,it comes naturally and inevitably out of man4 ,it is the point to which all development tends4 ,it is the differentiation to which all organisms grow4 ,it is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life1 and towards which every mode of life quickens4 ,and so ,individualism exercises no compulsion over man4 ,on the contrary1 it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him4 ,it does not try to force people to be good4 ,it knows that people are good when they are let alone4 ,man will develop ,individualism out of himself4 ,man is now so developing ,individualism4 ,to ask whether ,individualism is practical is like asking whether ,evolution is practical4 ,evolution is the law of life1 and there is no evolution except towards ,individualism4 ,where this tendency is not expressed1 it is a case of artificially-arrested growth1 or of disease1 or of death4 ,individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected4 ,it has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning1 and are used to express the obverse of their right signification4 ,what is true about ,art is true about ,life4 ,a man is called affected1 nowadays1 if he dresses as he likes to dress4 ,but in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner4 ,affectation1 in such matters1 consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour1 whose views1 as they are the views of the majority1 will probably be extremely stupid4 ,or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality2 if1 in fact1 the primary aim of his life is self-development4 ,but this is the way in which everyone should live4 ,selfishness is not living as one wishes to live1 it is asking others to live as one wishes to live4 ,and unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone1 not interfering with them4 ,selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type4 ,unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing1 accepts it1 acquiesces in it1 enjoys it4 ,it is not selfish to think for oneself4 ,a man who does not think for himself does not think at all4 ,it is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way1 and hold the same opinions4 ,why should he8 ,if he can think1 he will probably think differently4 ,if he cannot think1 it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him4 ,a red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose4 ,it would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses4 ,under ,individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish1 and will know the meanings of the words1 and realise them in their free1 beautiful lives4 ,nor will men be egotistic as they are now4 ,for the egotist is he who makes claims upon others1 and the ,individualist will not desire to do that4 ,it will not give him pleasure4 ,when man has realised ,individualism1 he will also realise sympathy and exercise it freely and spontaneously4 ,up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all4 ,he has merely sympathy with pain1 and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy4 ,all sympathy is fine1 but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode4 ,it is tainted with egotism4 ,it is apt to become morbid4 ,there is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety4 ,we become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind1 and that no man would have care of us4 ,it is curiously limiting1 too4 ,one should sympathise with the entirety of life1 not with life's sores and maladies merely1 but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom4 ,the wider sympathy is1 of course1 the more difficult4 ,it requires more unselfishness4 ,anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend1 but it requires a very fine nature--it requires1 in fact1 the nature of a true ,individualist--to sympathise with a friend's success4 ,in the modern stress of competition and struggle for place1 such sympathy is naturally rare1 and is also very much stifled by the immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent everywhere1 and is perhaps most obnoxious in ,england4 ,sympathy with pain there will1 of course1 always be4 ,it is one of the first instincts of man4 ,the animals which are individual1 the higher animals1 that is to say1 share it with us4 ,but it must be remembered that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world1 sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain4 ,it may make man better able to endure evil1 but the evil remains4 ,sympathy with consumption does not cure consumption2 that is what ,science does4 ,and when ,socialism has solved the problem of poverty1 and ,science solved the problem of disease1 the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened1 and the sympathy of man will be large1 healthy1 and spontaneous4 ,man will have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others4 ,for it is through joy that the ,individualism of the future will develop itself4 ,christ made no attempt to reconstruct society1 and consequently the ,individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude4 ,the ideals that we owe to ,christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely1 or of the man who resists society absolutely4 ,but man is naturally social4 ,even the ,thebaid became peopled at last4 ,and though the cenobite realises his personality1 it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises4 ,upon the other hand1 the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world4 ,shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world's worship of pleasure1 and whine against it4 ,but it is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty4 ,the worship of pain has far more often dominated the world4 ,medivalism1 with its saints and martyrs1 its love of self-torture1 its wild passion for wounding itself1 its gashing with knives1 and its whipping with rods--,medivalism is real ,christianity1 and the medival ,christ is the real ,christ4 ,when the ,renaissance dawned upon the world1 and brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of living1 men could not understand ,christ4 ,even ,art shows us that4 ,the painters of the ,renaissance drew ,christ as a little boy playing with another boy in a palace or a garden1 or lying back in his mother's arms1 smiling at her1 or at a flower1 or at a bright bird2 or as a noble1 stately figure moving nobly through the world2 or as a wonderful figure rising in a sort of ecstasy from death to life4 ,even when they drew him crucified they drew him as a beautiful ,god on whom evil men had inflicted suffering4 ,but he did not preoccupy them much4 ,what delighted them was to paint the men and women whom they admired1 and to show the loveliness of this lovely earth4 ,they painted many religious pictures--in fact1 they painted far too many1 and the monotony of type and motive is wearisome1 and was bad for art4 ,it was the result of the authority of the public in art-matters1 and is to be deplored4 ,but their soul was not in the subject ,raphael was a great artist when he painted his portrait of the ,pope4 ,when he painted his ,madonnas and infant ,christs1 he is not a great artist at all4 ,christ had no message for the ,renaissance1 which was wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance with his1 and to find the presentation of the real ,christ we must go to medival art4 ,there he is one maimed and marred2 one who is not comely to look on1 because ,beauty is a joy2 one who is not in fair raiment1 because that may be a joy also3 he is a beggar who has a marvellous soul2 he is a leper whose soul is divine2 he needs neither property nor health2 he is a ,god realising his perfection through pain4 ,the evolution of man is slow4 ,the injustice of men is great4 ,it was necessary that pain should be put forward as a mode of self-realisation4 ,even now1 in some places in the world1 the message of ,christ is necessary4 ,no one who lived in modern ,russia could possibly realise his perfection except by pain4 ,a few ,russian artists have realised themselves in ,art2 in a fiction that is medival in character1 hecauae its dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering4 ,but for those who are not artists1 and to whom there is no mode of life but the actual life of fact1 pain is the only door to perfection4 ,a ,russian who lives happily under the present system of government in ,russia must either believe that man has no soul1 or that1 if he has1 it is not worth developing4 ,a ,nihilist who rejects all authority1 because he knows authority to be evil1 and welcomes all pain1 because through that he realises his personality1 is a real ,christian4 ,to him the ,christian ideal is a true thing4 ,and yet1 ,christ did not revolt against authority4 ,he accepted the imperial authority of the ,roman ,empire and paid tribute4 ,he endured the ecclesiastical authority of the ,jewish ,church1 and would not repel its violence by any violence of his own4 ,he had1 as ,i said before1 no scheme for the reconstruction of society4 ,but the modern world has schemes4 ,it proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails4 ,it desires to get rid of pain1 and the suffering that pain entails4 ,it trusts to ,socialism and to ,science as its methods4 ,what it aims at is an ,individualism expressing itself through joy4 ,this ,individualism will be larger1 fuller1 lovelier than any ,individualism has ever been4 ,pain is not the ultimate mode of perfection4 ,it is merely provisional and a protest4 ,it has reference to wrong1 unhealthy1 unjust surroundings4 ,when the wrong1 and the disease1 and the injustice are removed1 it will have no further place4 ,it will have done its work4 ,it was a great work1 but it is almost over4 ,its sphere lessens every day4 ,nor will man miss it4 ,for what man has sought for is1 indeed1 neither pain nor pleasure1 but simply ,life4 ,man has sought to live intensely1 fully1 perfectly4 ,when he can do so without exercising restraint on others1 or suffering it ever1 and his activities are all pleasurable to him1 he will be saner1 healthier1 more civilised1 more himself4 ,pleasure is ,nature's test1 her sign of approval4 ,when man is happy1 he is in harmony with himself and his environment4 ,the new ,individualism1 for whose service ,socialism1 whether it wills it or not1 is working1 will be perfect harmony4 ,it will be what the ,greeks sought for1 but could not1 except in ,thought1 realise completely1 because they had slaves1 and fed them2 it will be what the ,renaissance sought for1 but could not realise completely except in ,art1 because they had slaves1 and starved them4 ,it will be complete1 and through it each man will attain to his perfection4 ,the new ,individualism is the new ,hellenism4 ,reprinted from the ',fortnightly ,review1' by permission of ,messrs ,chapman ,hall4