A Writer's Notebook (90 page)

I was surprised when a friend of mine told me he was going over a story he had just finished to put more subtlety into it; I didn't think it my business to suggest that you couldn't be subtle by taking thought. Subtlety is a quality of the mind, and if you have it you show it because you can't help it. It's like originality: no one can be original by trying. The original artist is only being himself; he puts things in what seems to him a perfectly normal and obvious way: because it's fresh and new to you you say he's original. He doesn't know what you mean. How stupid are those second-rate painters, for instance, who can't but put paint on their canvas in a dull and commonplace way and think to impress the world with their originality by placing meaningless and incongruous objects against an academic background.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me. I would now except shaving. I am amazed when I see busy men, who tell you their time is valuable, expose themselves on six days a week to the long, tedious and elaborate operation that American barbers have made of it.

I daresay it is very pleasant to be a member of a devoted and united family, but I have a notion that it is no help to the grown man when he goes out into the world. The mutual admiration which is common in such a family gives him an erroneous idea of his own capacity, and so makes it more difficult for him to cope with the rough-and-tumble of life. But if it is no more than disadvantageous to an ordinary man, to an artist it is fatal. The artist is a lone wolf. His way is solitary. It is to his own good that the pack should drive him out into the wilderness. The extravagant praise of doting relations for work that at best only shows promise can only injure him, for being persuaded that he has done well, he will not seek to do better. Self-complacency is the death of the artist.

It has not a little puzzled me to notice how greatly the spirit of adventure seems to have declined in this country. For after all it must have been the spirit of adventure that peopled it. I know that great numbers were driven out of Europe by poverty, but many more stayed at home and endured their poverty; it was the adventurous who emigrated. I know that great numbers came so that they might enjoy religious or political freedom; they too must have had the spirit of adventure, for many more remained who were prepared to compromise with conditions that irked them. I know that of those who left the settled seaboard to make themselves homes in the Middle West many went with their families, but thousands upon thousands of men, young, middle-aged or old,
went by themselves. They flocked to the minefields of Nevada and California. When Horace Greeley said: “Go West, young man,” what was he doing but appealing to the young man's spirit of adventure? I have talked to a good many of these lads who are going to the war. Most of them go because they are obliged to, many from a sense of duty, but I have not found one who looked upon it as a thrilling adventure. You would think that their only ambition was to be left in peace in their own home town and get a job in an office or a store where they would be safe from risk.

Values. It is natural to hesitate when one comes to believe that a theory such as that values are absolute and independent of our minds is erroneous, when one knows it has been held by so many great philosophers. One would have thought that if values really were absolute and independent of our minds, the human race would have discovered by this time what they are and, taking them for granted, never think of wavering in their allegiance to them. But what values are esteemed depends on circumstances. They can change from one generation to another. The values prized by the Greeks of the Homeric age are not the same as those they prized in the Peloponnesian War. They differ in different countries. I don't know that the non-attachment of the Hindus has ever been held to be a value by the Europeans, nor that the humility which Christianity has regarded as a value has ever been regarded as such by the believers in other faiths. In my own lifetime I have seen values lose their worth. When I was young the conception of a gentleman had value; now not only what it stood for, but the word itself have become vaguely objectionable. Outside lavatories you will often see
Ladies
on the door of one, but
Men
on the door of another. If all that I hear and read is true the value of chastity in the unmarried woman has in the last thirty years become negligible in Anglo-Saxon countries. It is still important in Latin ones. But it is dishonest to assert that if
moral values are not absolute they must depend on prejudices or preferences. It is admitted that language has grown up in response to biological needs. Why should moral values not have grown up in the same way? Does it not look likely that they have been developed in the evolution of the species because they were essential to its existence? If this war has shown anything it has shown that unless a nation cherishes certain values it will be destroyed. They are no less real because they have come to be cherished owing to their necessity for the survival not only of the state, but also of the individual.

When the war is won I passionately hope that we shall not be so foolish as to think it has been won because we possess virtues that our enemies lack. It will be a great error if we persuade ourselves that we are victorious because of our patriotism, our courage, our loyalty, our integrity, our disinterestedness; they would have availed us nothing unless we had had the power to produce great armaments and the means to train vast armies. Might has won, not right. All you can say of the virtues mentioned is that unless on the whole a nation practises them it will, as the example of France has shown, neglect or refuse to provide the instruments of defence which will enable it to repel a foe. It would be silly to deny that our enemies have some of the same virtues as we; they have at least courage, loyalty and patriotism. They have certain values that are different from ours; it is long odds that if they had achieved the world domination which was their ambition, in a hundred years these values of theirs would have been no less unquestioningly accepted than the values we cherish now are accepted by the unthinking in our countries. It is a cruel saying that might is right, and all our prejudices lead us to deny it, but it is true. The moral is that a nation must make very sure that it has the might to defend its own conception of right.

Aldous in the first of his
Seven Meditations
says: “God
is
. That is the primordial fact. It is in order that we may discover this fact for ourselves, by direct experience, that we exist.” What a fool he makes out God to be!