By endeavouring to explain the justice of that verdict we shall more easily give an indication of the nature and scope of Professor Babbitt's achievement. We think that it would be easy to show that in the last generation—we will go no further back for the moment, though our author's arraignment7 reaches at least a century earlier—criticism has imperceptibly given way to a different activity which we may call appreciation8. The emphasis has been laid upon the uniqueness of the individual, and the unconscious or avowed9 aim of the modern 'critic' has been to persuade us to understand, to sympathise with and in the last resort to enter into the whole psychological process which culminated10 in the artistic11 creation of the author examined. And there modern criticism has stopped. There has been no indication that it was aware of the necessity of going further. Many influences went to shape the general conviction that mere12 presentation was the final function of criticism, but perhaps the chief of these was the curious contagion13 of a scientific terminology14. The word 'objectivity' had a great vogue15; it was felt that the spiritual world was analogous16 to the physical; the critic was faced, like the man of science, with a mass of hard, irreducible facts, and his function was, like the scientist's, that of recording17 them as compendiously18 as possible and without prejudice. The unconscious programme was, indeed, impossible of fulfilment. All facts may be of equal interest to the scientist, but they are not to the literary critic. He chose those which interested him most for the exercise of his talent for demonstration19. But that choice was, as a general rule, the only specifically critical act which he performed, and, since it was usually unmotived, it was difficult to attach even to that more than a 'scientific' importance. Reasoned judgments20 of value were rigorously eschewed22, and even though we may presume that the modern critic is at times vexed23 by the problem why (or whether) one work of art is better than another, when each seems perfectly24 expressive25 of the artist's intention, the preoccupation is seldom betrayed in the language of his appreciation. Tacitly and insensibly we have reached a point at which all works of art are equally good if they are equally expressive. What every artist seeks to express is his own unique consciousness. As between things unique there is no possibility of subordination or comparison.
That does not seem to us an unduly26 severe diagnosis27 of modern criticism, although it needs perhaps to be balanced by an acknowledgment that the impulse towards the penetration28 of an artist's consciousness is in itself salutary, as a valuable adjunct to the methods of criticism, provided that it is definitely subordinated to the final critical judgment21, before which uniqueness is an impossible plea. Such a diagnosis will no doubt be welcomed by those who belong to an older generation than that to which it is applied29. But they should not rejoice prematurely30. We require of them an answer to the question whether they were really in better case—whether they were not the fathers whose sins are visited upon the children. Professor Babbitt, at least, has no doubt of their responsibility. From his angle of approach we might rake their ranks with a cross-fire of questions such as these: When you invoked31 the sanction of criticism were you more than merely destructive? When you riddled32 religion with your scientific objections, did you not forget that religion is something more, far more than a nexus33 of historical facts or a cosmogony? When you questioned everything in the name of truth and science, why did you not dream of asking whether those creations of men's minds were capax imperii in man's universe? What right had you to suppose that a man disarmed34 of tradition is stronger for his nakedness? Why did you not examine in the name of that same truth and science the moral nature of man, and see whether it was fit to bear the burden of intolerable knowledge which you put upon it? Why did you, the truth-seekers and the scientists, indulge yourselves in the most romantic dream of a natural man who followed instinctively35 the greatest good of the greatest number, which you yourselves never for one moment pursued? What hypocrisy36 or self-deception enabled you to clothe your statements of fact in a moral aura, and to blind yourselves and the world to the truth that you were killing37 a domesticated38 dragon who guarded the cave of a devouring39 hydra40, whom you benevolently41 loosed? Why did you not see that the end of all your devotion was to shift man's responsibility for himself from his shoulders? Do you, because you clothed yourselves in the shreds42 of a moral respectability which you had not the time (or was it the courage?) to analyse, dare to denounce us because our teeth are set on edge by the sour grapes which you enjoyed?
But this indictment, it may be said by a modern critic, deals with morals, and we are discussing art and criticism. That the objection is conceivable is precisely43 the measure of our decadence44. For the vital centre of our ethics45 is also the vital centre of our art. Moral nihilism inevitably46 involves an ?sthetic nihilism, which can be obscured only temporarily by an insistence47 upon technical perfection as in itself a supreme48 good. Neither the art of religion nor the religion of art is an adequate statement of the possibilities and purpose of art, but there is no doubt that the religion of art is by far the more vacuous49 of the two. The values of literature, the standards by which it must be criticised, and the scheme according to which it must be arranged, are in the last resort moral. The sense that they should be more moral than morality affords no excuse for accepting them when they are less so. Literature should be a kingdom where a sterner morality, a more strenuous50 liberty prevails—where the artist may dispense51 if he will with the ethics of the society in which he lives, but only on condition of revealing a deeper insight into the moral law to whose allegiance man, in so far as he is man and not a beast, inevitably tends. Never, we suppose, was an age in which art stood in greater need of the true law of decorum than this. Its philosophy has played it false. It has passed from the nebulous Hegelian adulation of the accomplished52 fact (though one would have thought that to a generation with even a vague memory of Aristotle's Poetics, the mere title, The Philosophy of History would have been an evident danger signal) to an adulation of science and of instinct. From one side comes the cry, 'Man is a beast'; from the other, 'Trust your instincts.' The sole manifest employment of reason is to overthrow53 itself. Yet it should be, in conjunction with the imagination, the vital principle of control.
Professor Babbitt would have us back to Aristotle, or back to our senses, which is roughly the same thing. At all events, it is certain that in Aristotle the present generation would find the beginnings of a remedy for that fatal confusion of categories which has overcome the world. It is the confusion between existence and value. That strange malady54 of the mind by which in the nineteenth century material progress was supposed to create, ipso facto, a concomitant moral progress, and which so plunged55 the world into catastrophe56, has its counterpart in a literature of objective realism. One of the most admired of contemporary works of fiction opens with an infant's memory of a mackintosh sheet, pleasantly warmed with its own water; another, of almost equal popularity among the cultivated, abounds57 with such reminiscences of the heroine as the paste of bread with which she filled her decaying teeth while she ate her breakfast. Yet the young writers who abuse their talents so unspeakably have right on their side when they refuse to listen to the condemnation58 pronounced by an older generation. What right, indeed, have these to condemn59 the logical outcome of an anarchic individualism which they themselves so jealously cherished? They may not like the bastard60 progeny61 of the various mistresses they adored—of a Science which they enthroned above instead of subordinating to humanistic values, of a brutal62 Imperialism63 which the so-called Conservatives among them set up in place of the truly humane64 devotion of which man is capable, of the sickening humanitarianism65 which appears in retrospect67 to have been merely an excuse for absolute indolence—but they certainly have forfeited68 the right to censure69 it. Let those who are so eager to cast the first stone at the ?sthetic and moral anarchy70 of the present day consider Professor Babbitt's indictment of themselves and decide whether they have no sin:—
'"If I am to judge by myself," said an eighteenth-century Frenchman, "man is a stupid animal." Man is not only a stupid animal, in spite of his conceit71 of his own cleverness, but we are here at the source of his stupidity. The source is the moral indolence that Buddha72, with his almost infallible sagacity, defined long ago. In spite of the fact that his spiritual and, in the long run, his material success, hinge on his ethical73 effort, man persists in dodging74 this effort, in seeking to follow the line of least or lesser75 resistance. An energetic material working does not mend, but aggravate76 the failure to work ethically77, and is therefore especially stupid. Just this combination has in fact led to the crowning stupidity of the ages—the Great War. No more delirious78 spectacle has ever been witnessed than that of hundreds of millions of human beings using a vast machinery79 of scientific efficiency to turn life into a hell for one another. It is hard to avoid concluding that we are living in a world which has gone wrong on first principles, a world that, in spite of all the warnings of the past, has allowed itself to be caught once more in the terrible naturalistic trap. The dissolution of civilisation81 with which we are threatened is likely to be worse in some respects than that of Greece or Rome, in view of the success that has been obtained in 'perfecting the mystery of murder.' Various traditional agencies are indeed still doing much to chain up the beast in man. Of these the chief is no doubt the Church. But the leadership of the Occident82 is no longer here. The leaders have succumbed83 in greater or less degree to naturalism, and so have been tampering84 with the moral law. That the brutal imperialist who brooks85 no obstacle to his lust86 for domination has been tampering with this law goes without saying, but the humanitarian66, all adrip with brotherhood87 and profoundly convinced of the loveliness of his own soul, has been tampering with it also, and in a more dangerous way, for the very reason that it is less obvious. This tampering with the moral law, or, what amounts to the same thing, this overriding88 of the veto power in man, has been largely a result, though not a necessary result, of the rupture89 with the traditional forms of wisdom. The Baconian naturalist80 repudiated90 the past because he wished to be more positive and critical, to plant himself on the facts. But the veto power is itself a fact—the weightiest with which man has to reckon. The Rousseauistic naturalist threw off traditional control because he wished to be more imaginative. Yet without the veto power imagination falls into sheer anarchy. Both Baconian and Rousseauist were very impatient of any outer authority that seemed to stand between them and their own perceptions. Yet the veto power is nothing abstract, nothing that one needs to take on hearsay91, but is very immediate92. The naturalistic leaders may be proved wrong without going beyond their own principles, and their wrongness is of a kind to wreck93 civilisation.'
We find it impossible to refuse our assent94 to the main counts of this indictment. The deanthropocentrised universe of science is not the universe in which man has to live. That universe is at once smaller and larger than the universe of science: smaller in material extent, larger in spiritual possibility. Therefore to allow the perspective of science seriously to influence, much less control, our human values, is an invitation to disaster. Humanism must reassert itself, for even we can see that Shakespeares are better than Hamlets. The reassertion of humanism involves the re-creation of a practical ideal of human life and conduct, and a strict subordination of the impulses of the individual to this ideal. There must now be a period of critical and humanistic positivism in regard to ethics and to art. We may say frankly95 that it is not to our elders that we think of applying for its rudiments96. We regard them as no less misguided and a good deal less honest than ourselves, It is among our anarchists97 that we shall look most hopefully for our new traditionalists, if only because, in literature at least, they are more keenly aware of the nature of the abyss on the brink98 of which they are trembling.
[FEBRUARY, 1920.
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copiously
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| adv.丰富地，充裕地 | |
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indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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crabbed
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| adj.脾气坏的；易怒的；（指字迹）难辨认的；（字迹等）难辨认的v.捕蟹( crab的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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animates
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| v.使有生气( animate的第三人称单数 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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arraignment
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| n.提问，传讯，责难 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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terminology
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| n.术语；专有名词 | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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compendiously
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| adv.扼要地；简要地；摘要地；简洁地 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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eschewed
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| v.（尤指为道德或实际理由而）习惯性避开，回避( eschew的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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nexus
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| n.联系；关系 | |
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disarmed
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| v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 )；使息怒 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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hydra
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| n.水螅；难于根除的祸患 | |
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benevolently
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| adv.仁慈地，行善地 | |
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42
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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vacuous
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| adj.空的，漫散的，无聊的，愚蠢的 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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51
dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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52
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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54
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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55
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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progeny
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| n.后代，子孙；结果 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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humanitarianism
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| n.博爱主义；人道主义；基督凡人论 | |
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humanitarian
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| n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者 | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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forfeited
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| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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74
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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76
aggravate
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| vt.加重(剧)，使恶化；激怒，使恼火 | |
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ethically
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| adv.在伦理上，道德上 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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occident
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| n.西方；欧美 | |
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83
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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84
tampering
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| v.窜改( tamper的现在分词 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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85
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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86
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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87
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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88
overriding
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| a.最主要的 | |
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89
rupture
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| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
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90
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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91
hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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92
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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93
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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94
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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95
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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96
rudiments
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| n.基础知识，入门 | |
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97
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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98
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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