Yes,Ernest:the contemplative life,the life that has for its aim not DOING but BEING,and not BEING merely,but BECOMING -that is what the critical spirit can give us.The gods live thus:either brooding over their own perfection,as Aristotle tells us,or,as Epicurus fancied,watching with the calm eyes of the spectator the tragicomedy of the world that they have made.We,too,might live like them,and set ourselves to witness with appropriate emotions the varied scenes that man and nature afford.We might make ourselves spiritual by detaching ourselves from action,and become perfect by the rejection of energy.It has often seemed to me that Browning felt something of this.Shakespeare hurls Hamlet into active life,and makes him realise his mission by effort.Browning might have given us a Hamlet who would have realised his mission by thought.Incident and event were to him unreal or unmeaning.He made the soul the protagonist of life's tragedy,and looked on action as the one undramatic element of a play.To us,at any rate,the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]is the true ideal.From the high tower of Thought we can look out at the world.Calm,and self-centred,and complete,the aesthetic critic contemplates life,and no arrow drawn at a venture can pierce between the joints of his harness.He at least is safe.He has discovered how to live.
Is such a mode of life immoral?Yes:all the arts are immoral,except those baser forms of sensual or didactic art that seek to excite to action of evil or of good.For action of every kind belongs to the sphere of ethics.The aim of art is simply to create a mood.Is such a mode of life unpractical?Ah!it is not so easy to be unpractical as the ignorant Philistine imagines.It were well for England if it were so.There is no country in the world so much in need of unpractical people as this country of ours.With us,Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice.Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence,noisy politician,or brawling social reformer,or poor narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant section of the community among whom he has cast his lot,can seriously claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any one thing?Each of the professions means a prejudice.The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides.We live in the age of the overworked,and the under-educated;the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.And,harsh though it may sound,I cannot help saying that such people deserve their doom.The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.
ERNEST.A charming doctrine,Gilbert.
GILBERT.I am not sure about that,but it has at least the minor merit of being true.That the desire to do good to others produces a plentiful crop of prigs is the least of the evils of which it is the cause.The prig is a very interesting psychological study,and though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive,still to have a pose at all is something.It is a formal recognition of the importance of treating life from a definite and reasoned standpoint.That Humanitarian Sympathy wars against Nature,by securing the survival of the failure,may make the man of science loathe its facile virtues.The political economist may cry out against it for putting the improvident on the same level as the provident,and so robbing life of the strongest,because most sordid,incentive to industry.But,in the eyes of the thinker,the real harm that emotional sympathy does is that it limits knowledge,and so prevents us from solving any single social problem.We are trying at present to stave off the coming crisis,the coming revolution as my friends the Fabianists call it,by means of doles and alms.Well,when the revolution or crisis arrives,we shall be powerless,because we shall know nothing.And so,Ernest,let us not be deceived.England will never be civilised till she has added Utopia to her dominions.There is more than one of her colonies that she might with advantage surrender for so fair a land.What we want are unpractical people who see beyond the moment,and think beyond the day.Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.
But perhaps you think that in beholding for the mere joy of beholding,and contemplating for the sake of contemplation,there is something that is egotistic.If you think so,do not say so.
It takes a thoroughly selfish age,like our own,to deify self-sacrifice.It takes a thoroughly grasping age,such as that in which we live,to set above the fine intellectual virtues,those shallow and emotional virtues that are an immediate practical benefit to itself.They miss their aim,too,these philanthropists and sentimentalists of our day,who are always chattering to one about one's duty to one's neighbour.For the development of the race depends on the development of the individual,and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal,the intellectual standard is instantly lowered,and,often,ultimately lost.If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself -a rare type in our time,I admit,but still one occasionally to be met with -you rise from table richer,and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.But oh!my dear Ernest,to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others!What a dreadful experience that is!How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions!How limited in range the creature's mind proves to be!How it wearies us,and must weary himself,with its endless repetitions and sickly reiteration!How lacking it is in any element of intellectual growth!In what a vicious circle it always moves!
