Read A Writer's Notebook Online
Authors: W. Somerset Maugham
A Writer's Notebook (25 page)
After all, the only means of improving the race is by natural selection; and this can only be done by elimination of the unfit. All methods which tend to their preservationâeducation of the blind and of deaf-mutes, care of the organically diseased, of the criminal and of the alcoholicâcan only cause degeneration.
Reason must act eventually on the side of Natural Selection. Admitting the conflict between selfishness supported by reason and altruism supported by religion, it is, after all, as the history of Evolution shows, the individual advantage which has occasioned progress; and it seems illogical to suppose that in human society it should be different.
Goodness originated in human instincts, and those characteristics which have been peculiar to a tribe have always been dignified as virtues. Just as the ideal of beauty in any tribe has always been its average appearance carried to a rather higher degree, so the instincts which it has found in itself it has called good.
All this effort of natural selection, wherefore? What is the good of all this social activity beyond helping unessential creatures to feed and propagate?
The ethical standard is as ephemeral as all else in the world. Good is nothing more than the conduct which is fittest to the circumstances of the moment; and the result of further evolution may be to dethrone the present ethical ideal and overthrow all that we now regard as virtue. Failure or success in the struggle for existence is the sole moral standard. Good is what survives.
Morality is the weapon which society in the struggle for existence uses in its dealings with the individual. Society rewards those actions and praises those qualities which are necessary to its survival. The office of morality is to persuade
the individual that what is of benefit to society is of benefit to him.
There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
Put, for the sake of argument, the End in Itself of Kant in Truth, Beauty, Goodness; what answer will you make to the simple observation that Truth, Beauty and Goodness are scarcely less ephemeral than the flowers of the field? Even in the short period of recorded history the connotation of these three concepts has radically changed. Why should you presumptuously assume that the ideas of the present day on these subjects are absolute? How then can you take as the End in Itself what is purely relative? Before you talk to us of the End in Itself tell us what is the Absolute.
It is the fashion to despise the palate and its pleasures; but in point of fact the sense of taste is more important than the æsthetic instinct. A man can get through life more easily without an æsthetic sense than without a sense of taste. If, as seems reasonable, the various faculties of man are ranked
according to their necessity for his preservation, the digestive apparatus, with the sexual, is the highest and the most important.
It is obvious that the hedonic element is very present to the mind of the religious man, and influences his action as profoundly as it influences that of the hedonist pure and simpleâonly he puts a future happiness as the reward of his deed rather than an immediate one. In fact, hedonism is nowhere more conspicuous than in those who choose a certain course because they will enjoy eternal bliss; and if their idea of this future happy state be examined, it will generally be found so grossly material that many a professed hedonist would be ashamed to acknowledge it.
But by a curious refinement of emotion some deeply religious persons persuade themselves that they act with no hope of reward, but merely for the love of God. Yet here too, if the feeling is analysed, a hedonic element will be discovered; the reward is in the intimate self-satisfaction of virtuous action, in the pleasant consciousness of having done right; and this for emotional natures can be more satisfying than any grosser, more obvious benefits.
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
Human beauty is determined by sexual attractiveness. It is an intensification of traits common to a certain people at a certain time, but a slight one, for too great a departure from
the normal excites aversion rather than admiration. Sexually the aim both of men and women is to distinguish themselves from others and thus call attention to themselves. This they do by accentuating the characteristics of their race. So the Chinese compress their naturally small feet and the Europeans constrict their naturally slim waists. And when the characteristics of a people change, their ideal of beauty changes too. English women have added to their stature during the last hundred years; the heroines of the older novels were far from tall, and literature had to wait for Tennyson to learn that inches added to beauty.
They talk about art as though they knew all about it and what they don't know weren't worth knowing. But art isn't as simple as all that. How can it be when so many diverse things enter into its origins: sex, imitation, play, habit, boredom and the wish for change, emotional desire for enhancement of pleasure or diminution of pain.
It is the irreparableness of every action which makes life so difficult. Nothing occurs again precisely as it came about before, and in the most important things there has been no previous experience to guide one. It is once for all that one takes each action, and every mistake is irremediable. Sometimes, looking back, one is appalled at one's errors, one seems to have wasted so much time in idle byways, and often to have mistaken the road so completely that whole years appear frustrate.
In most biographies it is the subject's death which is most interesting. That last inevitable step has a fascination and even
a practical interest which no previous event can equal. I cannot understand why a biographer, having undertaken to give the world details of a famous man's life, should hesitate, as so often happens, to give details of his death also. It is the man's character which is the chief interest, his strength and weakness, his courage and despondency; and these are nowhere more apparent than on a death-bed. It imports us as much to know how great men die as to know how they live. Our lives are conditioned by outer circumstances, but our death is our own. To see how others have taken that final journey is the only help we have when ourselves we enter upon it.