I have been planning and replanning, writing and rewriting, this next portion of my book for many days. I perceive I must leave it raw edged and ill joined. I have learnt something of the impossibility of History. For all I have had to tell is the story of one man's convictions and aims and how they reacted upon his life; and I find it too subtle and involved and intricate for the doing. I find it taxes all my powers to convey even the main forms and forces in that development. It is like looking through moving media of changing hue1 and variable refraction at something vitally unstable2. Broad theories and generalisations are mingled4 with personal influences, with prevalent prejudices; and not only coloured but altered by phases of hopefulness and moods of depression. The web is made up of the most diverse elements, beyond treatment multitudinous.... For a week or so I desisted altogether, and walked over the mountains and returned to sit through the warm soft mornings among the shaded rocks above this little perched-up house of ours, discussing my difficulties with Isabel and I think on the whole complicating6 them further in the effort to simplify them to manageable and stateable elements.
Let me, nevertheless, attempt a rough preliminary analysis of this confused process. A main strand8 is quite easily traceable. This main strand is the story of my obvious life, my life as it must have looked to most of my acquaintances. It presents you with a young couple, bright, hopeful, and energetic, starting out under Altiora's auspices9 to make a career. You figure us well dressed and active, running about in motor-cars, visiting in great people's houses, dining amidst brilliant companies, going to the theatre, meeting in the lobby. Margaret wore hundreds of beautiful dresses. We must have had an air of succeeding meritoriously10 during that time.
We did very continually and faithfully serve our joint11 career. I thought about it a great deal, and did and refrained from doing ten thousand things for the sake of it. I kept up a solicitude12 for it, as it were by inertia13, long after things had happened and changes occurred in me that rendered its completion impossible. Under certain very artless pretences14, we wanted steadfastly15 to make a handsome position in the world, achieve respect, SUCCEED. Enormous unseen changes had been in progress for years in my mind and the realities of my life, before our general circle could have had any inkling of their existence, or suspected the appearances of our life. Then suddenly our proceedings16 began to be deflected17, our outward unanimity19 visibly strained and marred20 by the insurgence21 of these so long-hidden developments.
That career had its own hidden side, of course; but when I write of these unseen factors I do not mean that but something altogether broader. I do not mean the everyday pettinesses which gave the cynical22 observer scope and told of a narrower, baser aspect of the fair but limited ambitions of my ostensible23 self. This "sub-careerist" element noted24 little things that affected25 the career, made me suspicious of the rivalry26 of so-and-so, propitiatory27 to so-and-so, whom, as a matter of fact, I didn't respect or feel in the least sympathetic towards; guarded with that man, who for all his charm and interest wasn't helpful, and a little touchy28 at the appearance of neglect from that. No, I mean something greater and not something smaller when I write of a hidden life.
In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation29 of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated30, in the House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary31 notice. But I am tremendously impressed now in the retrospect32 by the realisation of how little that frontage represented me, and just how little such frontages do represent the complexities33 of the intelligent contemporary. Behind it, yet struggling to disorganise and alter it, altogether, was a far more essential reality, a self less personal, less individualised, and broader in its references. Its aims were never simply to get on; it had an altogether different system of demands and satisfactions. It was critical, curious, more than a little unfeeling--and relentlessly34 illuminating36.
It is just the existence and development of this more generalised self-behind-the-frontage that is making modern life so much more subtle and intricate to render, and so much more hopeful in its relations to the perplexities of the universe. I see this mental and spiritual hinterland vary enormously in the people about me, from a type which seems to keep, as people say, all its goods in the window, to others who, like myself, come to regard the ostensible existence more and more as a mere37 experimental feeder and agent for that greater personality behind. And this back-self has its history of phases, its crises and happy accidents and irrevocable conclusions, more or less distinct from the adventures and achievements of the ostensible self. It meets persons and phrases, it assimilates the spirit of a book, it is startled into new realisations by some accident that seems altogether irrelevant38 to the general tenor39 of one's life. Its increasing independence of the ostensible career makes it the organ of corrective criticism; it accumulates disturbing energy. Then it breaks our overt40 promises and repudiates42 our pledges, coming down at last like an overbearing mentor44 upon the small engagements of the pupil.
In the life of the individual it takes the role that the growth of philosophy, science, and creative literature may play in the development of mankind.
2
It is curious to recall how Britten helped shatter that obvious, lucidly46 explicable presentation of myself upon which I had embarked47 with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of adolescent dreams and a habit of adolescent frankness; he reached through my shallow frontage as no one else seemed capable of doing, and dragged that back-self into relation with it.
I remember very distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him which presents itself now as altogether typical of the quality of his influence.
I had come upon him one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at the Playwrights48' Club, and had asked him to dinner on the spur of the moment. He was oddly the same curly-headed, red-faced ventriloquist, and oddly different, rather seedy as well as untidy, and at first a little inclined to make comparisons with my sleek49 successfulness. But that disposition50 presently evaporated, and his talk was good and fresh and provocative51. And something that had long been straining at its checks in my mind flapped over, and he and I found ourselves of one accord.
Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came matters were apt to become confusedly strenuous52. There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the establishment of some entirely53 unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter influence of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information for its own sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of thought.... Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were! I wonder I endured them as I did. They had all of them the trick of lying in wait conversationally54; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the gallant55 experiments in statement that are necessary for good conversation. They would watch one talking with an expression exactly like peeping through bushes. Then they would, as it were, dash out, dissent56 succinctly57, contradict some secondary fact, and back to cover. They gave one twilight58 nerves. Their wives were easier but still difficult at a stretch; they talked a good deal about children and servants, but with an air caught from Altiora of making observations upon sociological types. Lewis gossiped about the House in an entirely finite manner. He never raised a discussion; nobody ever raised a discussion. He would ask what we thought of Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would say it was good, and Mrs. Willie, who had been behind the grille, would think it was very good, and then Willie, parting the branches, would say rather conclusively61 that he didn't think it was very much good, and I would deny hearing the question in order to evade62 a profitless statement of views in that vacuum, and then we would cast about in our minds for some other topic of equal interest....
On this occasion Altiora was absent, and to qualify our Young Liberal bleakness63 we had Mrs. Millingham, with her white hair and her fresh mind and complexion64, and Esmeer. Willie Crampton was with us, but not his wife, who was having her third baby on principle; his brother Edward was present, and the Lewises, and of course the Bunting Harblows. There was also some other lady. I remember her as pale blue, but for the life of me I cannot remember her name.
Quite early there was a little breeze between Edward Crampton and Esmeer, who had ventured an opinion about the partition of Poland. Edward was at work then upon the seventh volume of his monumental Life of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perhaps not altogether false but betraying a lamentable65 ignorance of accessible literature. At any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial66. After that there was a distinct and not altogether delightful67 pause, and then some one, it may have been the pale-blue lady, asked Mrs. Lewis whether her aunt Lady Carmixter had returned from her rest-and-sun-cure in Italy. That led to a rather anxiously sustained talk about regimen, and Willie told us how he had profited by the no-breakfast system. It had increased his power of work enormously. He could get through ten hours a day now without inconvenience.
"What do you do?" said Esmeer abruptly68.
"Oh! no end of work. There's all the estate and looking after things."
"But publicly?"
"I asked three questions yesterday. And for one of them I had to consult nine books!"
We were drifting, I could see, towards Doctor Haig's system of dietary, and whether the exclusion69 or inclusion of fish and chicken were most conducive70 to high efficiency, when Britten, who had refused lemonade and claret and demanded Burgundy, broke out, and was discovered to be demanding in his throat just what we Young Liberals thought we were up to?
"I want," said Britten, repeating his challenge a little louder, "to hear just exactly what you think you are doing in Parliament?"
Lewis laughed nervously71, and thought we were "Seeking the Good of the Community."
"HOW?"
"Beneficient Legislation," said Lewis.
"Beneficient in what direction?" insisted Britten. "I want to know where you think you are going."
"Amelioration of Social Conditions," said Lewis.
"That's only a phrase!"
"You wouldn't have me sketch73 bills at dinner?"
"I'd like you to indicate directions," said Britten, and waited.
"Upward and On," said Lewis with conscious neatness, and turned to ask Mrs. Bunting Harblow about her little boy's French.
For a time talk frothed over Britten's head, but the natural mischief74 in Mrs. Millingham had been stirred, and she was presently echoing his demand in lisping, quasi-confidential undertones. "What ARE we Liberals doing?" Then Esmeer fell in with the revolutionaries.
To begin with, I was a little shocked by this clamour for fundamentals--and a little disconcerted. I had the experience that I suppose comes to every one at times of discovering oneself together with two different sets of people with whom one has maintained two different sets of attitudes. It had always been, I perceived, an instinctive75 suppression in our circle that we shouldn't be more than vague about our political ideals. It had almost become part of my morality to respect this convention. It was understood we were all working hard, and keeping ourselves fit, tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro7 Bono Publico. Bunting Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on the verge76 of the Cabinet, and these things we considered to be in the nature of confirmations77.... It added to the discomfort78 of the situation that these plunging79 enquiries were being made in the presence of our wives.
The rebel section of our party forced the talk.
Edward Crampton was presently declaring--I forget in what relation: "The country is with us."
My long-controlled hatred80 of the Cramptons' stereotyped81 phrases about the Country and the House got the better of me. I showed my cloven hoof82 to my friends for the first time.
"We don't respect the Country as we used to do," I said. "We haven't the same belief we used to have in the will of the people. It's no good, Crampton, trying to keep that up. We Liberals know as a matter of fact--nowadays every one knows--that the monster that brought us into power has, among other deficiencies, no head. We've got to give it one--if possible with brains and a will. That lies in the future. For the present if the country is with us, it means merely that we happen to have hold of its tether."
Lewis was shocked. A "mandate83" from the Country was sacred to his system of pretences.
Britten wasn't subdued84 by his first rebuff; presently he was at us again. There were several attempts to check his outbreak of interrogation; I remember the Cramptons asked questions about the welfare of various cousins of Lewis who were unknown to the rest of us, and Margaret tried to engage Britten in a sympathetic discussion of the Arts and Crafts exhibition. But Britten and Esmeer were persistent85, Mrs. Millingham was mischievous86, and in the end our rising hopes of Young Liberalism took to their thickets87 for good, while we talked all over them of the prevalent vacuity88 of political intentions. Margaret was perplexed89 by me. It is only now I perceive just how perplexing I must have been. "Of course, she said with that faint stress of apprehension90 in her eyes, one must have aims." And, "it isn't always easy to put everything into phrases." "Don't be long," said Mrs. Edward Crampton to her husband as the wives trooped out. And afterwards when we went upstairs I had an indefinable persuasion91 that the ladies had been criticising Britten's share in our talk in an altogether unfavourable spirit. Mrs. Edward evidently thought him aggressive and impertinent, and Margaret with a quiet firmness that brooked92 no resistance, took him at once into a corner and showed him Italian photographs by Coburn. We dispersed93 early.
I walked with Britten along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea Bridge--he lodged94 on the south side.
"Mrs. Millingham's a dear," he began.
"She's a dear."
"I liked her demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too safe."
"She was worked up," I said. "She's a woman of faultless character, but her instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic--when she gives them a chance."
"So she takes it out in hansom cabs."
"Hansom cabs."
"She's wise," said Britten....
"I hope, Remington," he went on after a pause, "I didn't rag your other guests too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments--Remington, those chaps are so infernally not--not bloody95. It's part of a man's duty sometimes at least to eat red beef and get drunk. How is he to understand government if he doesn't? It scares me to think of your lot--by a sort of misapprehension--being in power. A kind of neuralgia in the head, by way of government. I don't understand where YOU come in. Those others--they've no lusts96. Their ideal is anaemia. You and I, we had at least a lust97 to take hold of life and make something of it. They--they want to take hold of life and make nothing of it. They want to cut out all the stimulants98. Just as though life was anything else but a reaction to stimulation99!"...
He began to talk of his own life. He had had ill-fortune through most of it. He was poor and unsuccessful, and a girl he had been very fond of had been attacked and killed by a horse in a field in a very horrible manner. These things had wounded and tortured him, but they hadn't broken him. They had, it seemed to me, made a kind of crippled and ugly demigod of him. He was, I began to perceive, so much better than I had any right to expect. At first I had been rather struck by his unkempt look, and it made my reaction all the stronger. There was about him something, a kind of raw and bleeding faith in the deep things of life, that stirred me profoundly as he showed it. My set of people had irritated him and disappointed him. I discovered at his touch how they irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his rather old coat, his rather battered101 hat, his sturdier shorter shape, and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied New Liberalism and Progressivism.
"It has the same relation to progress--the reality of progress--that the things they paint on door panels in the suburbs have to art and beauty. There's a sort of filiation.... Your Altiora's just the political equivalent of the ladies who sell traced cloth for embroidery102; she's a dealer103 in Refined Social Reform for the Parlour. The real progress, Remington, is a graver thing and a painfuller thing and a slower thing altogether. Look! THAT"--and he pointed100 to where under a boarding in the light of a gas lamp a dingy104 prostitute stood lurking105--"was in Babylon and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anything of the sort after this Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes from Altiora Bailey! Remington!--it's foolery. It's prigs at play. It's make-believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of things, aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything of life at all, shirk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean rooms and talk big over your bumpers106 of lemonade while the Night goes by outside--untouched. Those Crampton fools slink by all this,"--he waved at the woman again--"pretend it doesn't exist, or is going to be banished107 root and branch by an Act to keep children in the wet outside public-houses. Do you think they really care, Remington? I don't. It's make-believe. What they want to do, what Lewis wants to do, what Mrs. Bunting Harblow wants her husband to do, is to sit and feel very grave and necessary and respected on the Government benches. They think of putting their feet out like statesmen, and tilting108 shiny hats with becoming brims down over their successful noses. Presentation portrait to a club at fifty. That's their Reality. That's their scope. They don't, it's manifest, WANT to think beyond that. The things there ARE, Remington, they'll never face! the wonder and the depth of life,--lust, and the night-sky,--pain."
"But the good intention," I pleaded, "the Good Will!"
"Sentimentality," said Britten. "No Good Will is anything but dishonesty unless it frets110 and burns and hurts and destroys a man. That lot of yours have nothing but a good will to think they have good will. Do you think they lie awake of nights searching their hearts as we do? Lewis? Crampton? Or those neat, admiring, satisfied little wives? See how they shrank from the probe!"
"We all," I said, "shrink from the probe."
"God help us!" said Britten....
"We are but vermin at the best, Remington," he broke out, "and the greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust. We are damned, we are meant to be damned, coral animalculae building upward, upward in a sea of damnation. But of all the damned things that ever were damned, your damned shirking, temperate111, sham59-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly112 damnedest." He paused for a moment, and resumed in an entirely different note: "Which is why I was so surprised, Remington, to find YOU in this set!"
"You're just the old plunger you used to be, Britten," I said. "You're going too far with all your might for the sake of the damns. Like a donkey that drags its cart up a bank to get thistles. There's depths in Liberalism--"
"We were talking about Liberals."
"Liberty!"
"Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?"
"What does any little lot know of liberty?"
"It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the stars. And lust, Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I know them? with all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and trampled113, the dear eyes and the brain that loved and understood--and my poor mumble114 of a life going on! I'm within sight of being a drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure by most standards! Life has cut me to the bone. But I'm not afraid of it any more. I've paid something of the price, I've seen something of the meaning."
He flew off at a tangent. "I'd rather die in Delirium115 Tremens," he cried, "than be a Crampton or a Lewis...."
"Make-believe. Make-believe." The phrase and Britten's squat116 gestures haunted me as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room and stood before my desk and surveyed papers and files and Margaret's admirable equipment of me.
I perceived in the lurid117 light of Britten's suggestions that so it was Mr. George Alexander would have mounted a statesman's private room....
3
I was never at any stage a loyal party man. I doubt if party will ever again be the force it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Men are becoming increasingly constructive118 and selective, less patient under tradition and the bondage119 of initial circumstances. As education becomes more universal and liberating120, men will sort themselves more and more by their intellectual temperaments122 and less and less by their accidental associations. The past will rule them less; the future more. It is not simply party but school and college and county and country that lose their glamour123. One does not hear nearly as much as our forefathers124 did of the "old Harrovian," "old Arvonian," "old Etonian" claim to this or that unfair advantage or unearnt sympathy. Even the Scotch125 and the Devonians weaken a little in their clannishness126. A widening sense of fair play destroys such things. They follow freemasonry down--freemasonry of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays in England by propitiatory symbols outside shady public-houses....
There is, of course, a type of man which clings very obstinately127 to party ties. These are the men with strong reproductive imaginations and no imaginative initiative, such men as Cladingbowl, for example, or Dayton. They are the scholars-at-large in life. For them the fact that the party system has been essential in the history of England for two hundred years gives it an overwhelming glamour. They have read histories and memoirs128, they see the great grey pile of Westminster not so much for what it is as for what it was, rich with dramatic memories, populous129 with glorious ghosts, phrasing itself inevitably130 in anecdotes131 and quotations132. It seems almost scandalous that new things should continue to happen, swamping with strange qualities the savour of these old associations.
That Mr. Ramsay Macdonald should walk through Westminster Hall, thrust himself, it may be, through the very piece of space that once held Charles the Martyr133 pleading for his life, seems horrible profanation134 to Dayton, a last posthumous135 outrage136; and he would, I think, like to have the front benches left empty now for ever, or at most adorned137 with laureated ivory tablets: "Here Dizzy sat," and "On this Spot William Ewart Gladstone made his First Budget Speech." Failing this, he demands, if only as signs of modesty138 and respect on the part of the survivors139, meticulous140 imitation. "Mr. G.," he murmurs141, "would not have done that," and laments142 a vanished subtlety143 even while Mr. Evesham is speaking. He is always gloomily disposed to lapse144 into wonderings about what things are coming to, wonderings that have no grain of curiosity. His conception of perfect conduct is industrious145 persistence146 along the worn-down, well-marked grooves147 of the great recorded days. So infinitely148 more important to him is the documented, respected thing than the elusive149 present.
Cladingbowl and Dayton do not shine in the House, though Cladingbowl is a sound man on a committee, and Dayton keeps the OLD COUNTRY GAZETTE, the most gentlemanly paper in London. They prevail, however, in their clubs at lunch time. There, with the pleasant consciousness of a morning's work free from either zeal150 or shirking, they mingle3 with permanent officials, prominent lawyers, even a few of the soberer type of business men, and relax their minds in the discussion of the morning paper, of the architecture of the West End, and of the latest public appointments, of golf, of holiday resorts, of the last judicial151 witticisms152 and forensic153 "crushers." The New Year and Birthday honours lists are always very sagely154 and exhaustively considered, and anecdotes are popular and keenly judged. They do not talk of the things that are really active in their minds, but in the formal and habitual155 manner they suppose to be proper to intelligent but still honourable156 men. Socialism, individual money matters, and religion are forbidden topics, and sex and women only in so far as they appear in the law courts. It is to me the strangest of conventions, this assumption of unreal loyalties157 and traditional respects, this repudiation158 and concealment159 of passionate161 interests. It is like wearing gloves in summer fields, or bathing in a gown, or falling in love with the heroine of a novel, or writing under a pseudonym162, or becoming a masked Tuareg....
It is not, I think, that men of my species are insensitive to the great past that is embodied163 in Westminster and its traditions; we are not so much wanting in the historical sense as alive to the greatness of our present opportunities and the still vaster future that is possible to us. London is the most interesting, beautiful, and wonderful city in the world to me, delicate in her incidental and multitudinous littleness, and stupendous in her pregnant totality; I cannot bring myself to use her as a museum or an old bookshop. When I think of Whitehall that little affair on the scaffold outside the Banqueting Hall seems trivial and remote in comparison with the possibilities that offer themselves to my imagination within the great grey Government buildings close at hand.
It gives me a qualm of nostalgia164 even to name those places now. I think of St. Stephen's tower streaming upwards165 into the misty166 London night and the great wet quadrangle of New Palace Yard, from which the hansom cabs of my first experiences were ousted167 more and more by taxicabs as the second Parliament of King Edward the Seventh aged168; I think of the Admiralty and War office with their tall Marconi masts sending out invisible threads of direction to the armies in the camps, to great fleets about the world. The crowded, darkly shining river goes flooding through my memory once again, on to those narrow seas that part us from our rival nations; I see quadrangles and corridors of spacious169 grey-toned offices in which undistinguished little men and little files of papers link us to islands in the tropics, to frozen wildernesses170 gashed172 for gold, to vast temple-studded plains, to forest worlds and mountain worlds, to ports and fortresses173 and lighthouses and watch-towers and grazing lands and corn lands all about the globe. Once more I traverse Victoria Street, grimy and dark, where the Agents of the Empire jostle one another, pass the big embassies in the West End with their flags and scutcheons, follow the broad avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace, witness the coming and going of troops and officials and guests along it from every land on earth.... Interwoven in the texture174 of it all, mocking, perplexing, stimulating175 beyond measure, is the gleaming consciousness, the challenging knowledge: "You and your kind might still, if you could but grasp it here, mould all the destiny of Man!"
4
My first three years in Parliament were years of active discontent. The little group of younger Liberals to which I belonged was very ignorant of the traditions and qualities of our older leaders, and quite out of touch with the mass of the party. For a time Parliament was enormously taken up with moribund176 issues and old quarrels. The early Educational legislation was sectarian and unenterprising, and the Licensing177 Bill went little further than the attempted rectification178 of a Conservative mistake. I was altogether for the nationalisation of the public-houses, and of this end the Bill gave no intimations. It was just beer-baiting. I was recalcitrant179 almost from the beginning, and spoke180 against the Government so early as the second reading of the first Education Bill, the one the Lords rejected in 1906. I went a little beyond my intention in the heat of speaking,--it is a way with inexperienced man. I called the Bill timid, narrow, a mere sop45 to the jealousies181 of sects182 and little-minded people. I contrasted its aim and methods with the manifest needs of the time.
I am not a particularly good speaker; after the manner of a writer I worry to find my meaning too much; but this was one of my successes. I spoke after dinner and to a fairly full House, for people were already a little curious about me because of my writings. Several of the Conservative leaders were present and stayed, and Mr. Evesham, I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with that engaging friendliness183 of his, and gave me at the first chance an approving "Hear, Hear!" I can still recall quite distinctly my two futile184 attempts to catch the Speaker's eye before I was able to begin, the nervous quiver of my rather too prepared opening, the effect of hearing my own voice and my subconscious185 wonder as to what I could possibly be talking about, the realisation that I was getting on fairly well, the immense satisfaction afterwards of having on the whole brought it off, and the absurd gratitude186 I felt for that encouraging cheer.
Addressing the House of Commons is like no other public speaking in the world. Its semi-colloquial methods give it an air of being easy, but its shifting audience, the comings and goings and hesitations187 of members behind the chair--not mere audience units, but men who matter--the desolating188 emptiness that spreads itself round the man who fails to interest, the little compact, disciplined crowd in the strangers' gallery, the light, elusive, flickering189 movements high up behind the grill60, the wigged190, attentive191, weary Speaker, the table and the mace192 and the chapel-like Gothic background with its sombre shadows, conspire193 together, produce a confused, uncertain feeling in me, as though I was walking upon a pavement full of trap-doors and patches of uncovered morass194. A misplaced, well-meant "Hear, Hear!" is apt to be extraordinarily195 disconcerting, and under no other circumstances have I had to speak with quite the same sideways twist that the arrangement of the House imposes. One does not recognise one's own voice threading out into the stirring brown. Unless I was excited or speaking to the mind of some particular person in the house, I was apt to lose my feeling of an auditor196. I had no sense of whither my sentences were going, such as one has with a public meeting well under one's eye. And to lose one's sense of an auditor is for a man of my temperament121 to lose one's sense of the immediate197, and to become prolix198 and vague with qualifications.
5
My discontents with the Liberal party and my mental exploration of the quality of party generally is curiously199 mixed up with certain impressions of things and people in the National Liberal Club. The National Liberal Club is Liberalism made visible in the flesh--and Doultonware. It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale200, shiny, marbled style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel engravings, busts201, and full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; and its spacious dining-rooms, its long, hazy202, crowded smoking-room with innumerable little tables and groups of men in armchairs, its magazine room and library upstairs, have just that undistinguished and unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal note. The pensive203 member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of foreign speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent204 whites his roving eye catches profiles and complexions205 that send his mind afield to Calcutta or Rangoon or the West Indies or Sierra Leone or the Cape206....
I was not infrequently that pensive member. I used to go to the Club to doubt about Liberalism.
About two o'clock in the day the great smoking-room is crowded with countless207 little groups. They sit about small round tables, or in circles of chairs, and the haze208 of tobacco seems to prolong the great narrow place, with its pillars and bays, to infinity209. Some of the groups are big, as many as a dozen men talk in loud tones; some are duologues, and there is always a sprinkling of lonely, dissociated men. At first one gets an impression of men going from group to group and as it were linking them, but as one watches closely one finds that these men just visit three or four groups at the outside, and know nothing of the others. One begins to perceive more and more distinctly that one is dealing210 with a sort of human mosaic211; that each patch in that great place is of a different quality and colour from the next and never to be mixed with it. Most clubs have a common link, a lowest common denominator in the Club Bore, who spares no one, but even the National Liberal bores are specialised and sectional. As one looks round one sees here a clump212 of men from the North Country or the Potteries213, here an island of South London politicians, here a couple of young Jews ascendant from Whitechapel, here a circle of journalists and writers, here a group of Irish politicians, here two East Indians, here a priest or so, here a clump of old-fashioned Protestants, here a little knot of eminent214 Rationalists indulging in a blasphemous215 story SOTTO VOCE. Next them are a group of anglicised Germans and highly specialised chess-players, and then two of the oddest-looking persons--bulging216 with documents and intent upon extraordinary business transactions over long cigars....
I would listen to a stormy sea of babblement217, and try to extract some constructive intimations. Every now and then I got a whiff of politics. It was clear they were against the Lords--against plutocrats--against Cossington's newspapers--against the brewers.... It was tremendously clear what they were against. The trouble was to find out what on earth they were for!...
As I sat and thought, the streaked218 and mottled pillars and wall, the various views, aspects, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, the partitions of polished mahogany, the yellow-vested waiters, would dissolve and vanish, and I would have a vision of this sample of miscellaneous men of limited, diverse interests and a universal littleness of imagination enlarged, unlimited219, no longer a sample but a community, spreading, stretching out to infinity--all in little groups and duologues and circles, all with their special and narrow concerns, all with their backs to most of the others.
What but a common antagonism220 would ever keep these multitudes together? I understood why modern electioneering is more than half of it denunciation. Let us condemn221, if possible, let us obstruct222 and deprive, but not let us do. There is no real appeal to the commonplace mind in "Let us do." That calls for the creative imagination, and few have been accustomed to respond to that call. The other merely needs jealousy223 and bate224, of which there are great and easily accessible reservoirs in every human heart....
I remember that vision of endless, narrow, jealous individuality very vividly225. A seething226 limitlessness it became at last, like a waste place covered by crawling locusts227 that men sweep up by the sackload and drown by the million in ditches....
Grotesquely228 against it came the lean features, the sidelong shy movements of Edward Crampton, seated in a circle of talkers close at hand. I had a whiff of his strained, unmusical voice, and behold229! he was saying something about the "Will of the People...."
The immense and wonderful disconnectednesses of human life! I forgot the smoke and jabber230 of the club altogether; I became a lonely spirit flung aloft by some queer accident, a stone upon a ledge43 in some high and rocky wilderness171, and below as far as the eye could reach stretched the swarming231 infinitesimals of humanity, like grass upon the field, like pebbles233 upon unbounded beaches. Was there ever to be in human life more than that endless struggling individualism? Was there indeed some giantry, some immense valiant234 synthesis, still to come--or present it might be and still unseen by me, or was this the beginning and withal the last phase of mankind?...
I glimpsed for a while the stupendous impudence235 of our ambitions, the tremendous enterprise to which the modern statesman is implicitly236 addressed. I was as it were one of a little swarm232 of would-be reef builders looking back at the teeming237 slime upon the ocean floor. All the history of mankind, all the history of life, has been and will be the story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual lives--an effort of insidious238 attraction, an idea of invincible239 appeal. That something greater than ourselves, which does not so much exist as seek existence, palpitating between being and not-being, how marvellous it is! It has worn the form and visage of ten thousand different gods, sought a shape for itself in stone and ivory and music and wonderful words, spoken more and more clearly of a mystery of love, a mystery of unity72, dabbling240 meanwhile in blood and cruelty beyond the common impulses of men. It is something that comes and goes, like a light that shines and is withdrawn241, withdrawn so completely that one doubts if it has ever been....
6
I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of the club up in town for a night or so. My mind would be busy with speculations242 about him, about his home, his family, his reading, his horizons, his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came up. I would fill in the outline of him with memories of my uncle and his Staffordshire neighbours. He was perhaps Alderman This or Councillor That down there, a great man in his ward18, J. P. within seven miles of the boundary of the borough243, and a God in his home. Here he was nobody, and very shy, and either a little too arrogant244 or a little too meek245 towards our very democratic mannered but still livened waiters. Was he perhaps the backbone247 of England? He over-ate himself lest he should appear mean, went through our Special Dinner conscientiously248, drank, unless he was teetotal, of unfamiliar249 wines, and did his best, in spite of the rules, to tip. Afterwards, in a state of flushed repletion250, he would have old brandy, black coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the brandy and have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that stiff dignity of self-indulgence, and wonder, wonder....
An infernal clairvoyance251 would come to me. I would have visions of him in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying252, sometimes being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance furtively253 at his domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen254 his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee. We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only in rare moods of bitter penetration255 that we pierce down to the baser lusts, the viler256 shames, the everlasting257 lying and muddle-headed self-justification of the dull.
I would turn my eyes down the crowded room and see others of him and others. What did he think he was up to? Did he for a moment realise that his presence under that ceramic258 glory of a ceiling with me meant, if it had any rational meaning at all, that we were jointly259 doing something with the nation and the empire and mankind?... How on earth could any one get hold of him, make any noble use of him? He didn't read beyond his newspaper. He never thought, but only followed imaginings in his heart. He never discussed. At the first hint of discussion his temper gave way. He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments260 and quite irrational262 moral rages. Yet withal I would have to resist an impulse to go over to him and nudge him and say to him, "Look here! What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and the empire and mankind? You know--MANKIND!"
I wonder what reply I should have got.
So far as any average could be struck and so far as any backbone could be located, it seemed to me that this silent, shy, replete263, sub-angry, middle-class sentimentalist was in his endless species and varieties and dialects the backbone of our party. So far as I could be considered as representing anything in the House, I pretended to sit for the elements of HIM....
7
For a time I turned towards the Socialists264. They at least had an air of coherent intentions. At that time Socialism had come into politics again after a period of depression and obscurity, with a tremendous ECLAT266. There was visibly a following of Socialist265 members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft felt hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to casual advances a little surprisingly in rich North Country dialects. Members became aware of a "seagreen incorruptible," as Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Address, a slender twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and speaking with a fire that was altogether revolutionary. This was Philip Snowden, the member for Blackburn. They had come in nearly forty strong altogether, and with an air of presently meaning to come in much stronger. They were only one aspect of what seemed at that time a big national movement. Socialist societies, we gathered, were springing up all over the country, and every one was inquiring about Socialism and discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities with particular force, and any youngster with the slightest intellectual pretension267 was either actively268 for or brilliantly against. For a time our Young Liberal group was ostentatiously sympathetic....
When I think of the Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain evening gatherings270 at our house....
These gatherings had been organised by Margaret as the outcome of a discussion at the Baileys'. Altiora had been very emphatic271 and uncharitable upon the futility272 of the Socialist movement. It seemed that even the leaders fought shy of dinner-parties.
"They never meet each other," said Altiora, "much less people on the other side. How can they begin to understand politics until they do that?"
"Most of them have totally unpresentable wives," said Altiora, "totally!" and quoted instances, "and they WILL bring them. Or they won't come! Some of the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their table manners. They just make holes in the talk...."
I thought there was a great deal of truth beneath Altiora's outburst. The presentation of the Socialist case seemed very greatly crippled by the want of a common intimacy273 in its leaders; the want of intimacy didn't at first appear to be more than an accident, and our talk led to Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance and easy intercourse274 afoot among them and between them and the Young Liberals of our group. She gave a series of weekly dinners, planned, I think, a little too accurately275 upon Altiora's model, and after each we had as catholic a reception as we could contrive276.
Our receptions were indeed, I should think, about as catholic as receptions could be. Margaret found herself with a weekly houseful of insoluble problems in intercourse. One did one's best, but one got a nightmare feeling as the evening wore on.
It was one of the few unanimities of these parties that every one should be a little odd in appearance, funny about the hair or the tie or the shoes or more generally, and that bursts of violent aggression277 should alternate with an attitude entirely defensive278. A number of our guests had an air of waiting for a clue that never came, and stood and sat about silently, mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not discover their distinctive279 Open-Sesames. There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last; the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment261, and replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals went about puzzled but polite to the gathering269 we had evoked280. The Young Liberals' tradition is on the whole wonderfully discreet281, superfluous282 steam is let out far away from home in the Balkans or Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bunting Harblow, and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats indicative of the House, or in what is sometimes written of as "faultless evening dress," stood about on those evenings, they and their very quietly and simply and expensively dressed little wives, like a datum283 line amidst lakes and mountains.
I didn't at first see the connection between systematic284 social reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects should appear to be supported solely286 by odd and exceptional personalities287. On one of these evenings a little group of rather jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no particular reason in a large circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could judge, in the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipper288. It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentleman before the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains289 of an anchovy290 sandwich from his protruded291 tongue--visible ends of cress having misled him into the belief that he was dealing with doctrinally permissible292 food. It was not unusual to be given hand-bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had the advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too neatly293 dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver. So that his hands got fuller and fuller. A relentless35, compact little woman in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive black dress has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and care in evading294 her.
Mingling295 with the more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan Socialists, bulging with bias296 against temperance, and breaking out against austere297 methods of living all over their faces. Their manner was packed with heartiness298. They were apt to choke the approaches to the little buffet299 Margaret had set up downstairs, and there engage in discussions of Determinism--it always seemed to be Determinism--which became heartier300 and noisier, but never acrimonious301 even in the small hours. It seemed impossible to settle about this Determinism of theirs--ever. And there were worldly Socialists also. I particularly recall a large, active, buoyant, lady-killing individual with an eyeglass borne upon a broad black ribbon, who swam about us one evening. He might have been a slightly frayed302 actor, in his large frock-coat, his white waistcoat, and the sort of black and white check trousers that twinkle. He had a high-pitched voice with aristocratic intonations303, and he seemed to be in a perpetual state of interrogation. "What are we all he-a for?" he would ask only too audibly. "What are we doing he-a? What's the connection?"
What WAS the connection?
We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We tried to get something like a representative collection of the parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the various exponents304 of Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinkers into one room. Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared for ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished again; there was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr. Tumpany. Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new comforter, and Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members. And on our side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, Crampton, Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as they possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to mingle or dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening was a failure. Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists one had supposed friendly. I could not have imagined it was possible for half so many people to turn their backs on everybody else in such small rooms as ours. But the unsaid things those backs expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence305 in the various organs of the various sections of the party next week.
I talked, I remember, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal party. I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vividly in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which gave me at last a clue to the whole business. He behaved exactly like a man in possession of valuable patent rights, who wants to be dealt with. He had an air of having a corner in ideas. Then it flashed into my head that the whole Socialist movement was an attempted corner in ideas....
8
Late that night I found myself alone with Margaret amid the debris307 of the gathering.
I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and weary, came and leant upon the mantel.
"Oh, Lord!" said Margaret.
I agreed. Then I resumed my meditation308.
"Ideas," I said, "count for more than I thought in the world."
Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she was accustomed to wait for clues.
"When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them," I explained.... "A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out of the obvious common sense of our present conditions. It's as impersonal309 as science. All these men--They've given nothing to it. They're just people who have pegged310 out claims upon a big intellectual No-Man's-Land--and don't feel quite sure of the law. There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness.... If we professed311 Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of them! They'd feel it was burglary...."
"Yes," said Margaret, looking into the fire. "That is just what I felt about them all the evening.... Particularly Dr. Tumpany."
"We mustn't confuse Socialism with the Socialists," I said; "that's the moral of it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a mistake in dates or something, and went back and annihilated312 everybody from Owen onwards who was in any way known as a Socialist leader or teacher, Socialism would be exactly where it is and what it is to-day--a growing realisation of constructive needs in every man's mind, and a little corner in party politics. So, I suppose, it will always be.... But they WERE a damned lot, Margaret!"
I looked up at the little noise she made. "TWICE!" she said, smiling indulgently, "to-day!" (Even the smile was Altiora's.)
I returned to my thoughts. They WERE a damned human lot. It was an excellent word in that connection....
But the ideas marched on, the ideas marched on, just as though men's brains were no more than stepping-stones, just as though some great brain in which we are all little cells and corpuscles was thinking them!...
"I don't think there is a man among them who makes me feel he is trustworthy," said Margaret; "unless it is Featherstonehaugh."
I sat taking in this proposition.
"They'll never help us, I feel," said Margaret.
"Us?"
"The Liberals."
"Oh, damn the Liberals!" I said. "They'll never even help themselves."
"I don't think I could possibly get on with any of those people," said Margaret, after a pause.
She remained for a time looking down at me and, I could feel, perplexed by me, but I wanted to go on with my thinking, and so I did not look up, and presently she stooped to my forehead and kissed me and went rustling313 softly to her room.
I remained in my study for a long time with my thoughts crystallising out....
It was then, I think, that I first apprehended314 clearly how that opposition315 to which I have already alluded316 of the immediate life and the mental hinterland of a man, can be applied317 to public and social affairs. The ideas go on--and no person or party succeeds in embodying318 them. The reality of human progress never comes to the surface, it is a power in the deeps, an undertow. It goes on in silence while men think, in studies where they write self-forgetfully, in laboratories under the urgency of an impersonal curiosity, in the rare illumination of honest talk, in moments of emotional insight, in thoughtful reading, but not in everyday affairs. Everyday affairs and whatever is made an everyday affair, are transactions of the ostensible self, the being of habits, interests, usage. Temper, vanity, hasty reaction to imitation, personal feeling, are their substance. No man can abolish his immediate self and specialise in the depths; if he attempt that, he simply turns himself into something a little less than the common man. He may have an immense hinterland, but that does not absolve320 him from a frontage. That is the essential error of the specialist philosopher, the specialist teacher, the specialist publicist. They repudiate41 frontage; claim to be pure hinterland. That is what bothered me about Codger, about those various schoolmasters who had prepared me for life, about the Baileys and their dream of an official ruling class. A human being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby321 and inevitably, though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence--a quack322. These are attempts to live deep-side shallow, inside out. They produce merely a new pettiness. To understand Socialism, again, is to gain a new breadth of outlook; to join a Socialist organisation285 is to join a narrow cult5 which is not even tolerably serviceable in presenting or spreading the ideas for which it stands....
I perceived I had got something quite fundamental here. It had taken me some years to realise the true relation of the great constructive ideas that swayed me not only to political parties, but to myself. I had been disposed to identify the formulae of some one party with social construction, and to regard the other as necessarily anti-constructive, just as I had been inclined to follow the Baileys in the self-righteousness of supposing myself to be wholly constructive. But I saw now that every man of intellectual freedom and vigour323 is necessarily constructive-minded nowadays, and that no man is disinterestedly324 so. Each one of us repeats in himself the conflict of the race between the splendour of its possibilities and its immediate associations. We may be shaping immortal325 things, but we must sleep and answer the dinner gong, and have our salt of flattery and self-approval. In politics a man counts not for what he is in moments of imaginative expansion, but for his common workaday, selfish self; and political parties are held together not by a community of ultimate aims, but by the stabler bond of an accustomed life. Everybody almost is for progress in general, and nearly everybody is opposed to any change, except in so far as gross increments326 are change, in his particular method of living and behaviour. Every party stands essentially327 for the interests and mental usages of some definite class or group of classes in the exciting community, and every party has its scientific-minded and constructive leading section, with well-defined hinterlands formulating328 its social functions in a public-spirited form, and its superficial-minded following confessing its meannesses and vanities and prejudices. No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way of life, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit329 no class is indisposed to co-operate in the unlimited socialisation of any other class. In that capacity for aggression upon other classes lies the essential driving force of modern affairs. The instincts, the persons, the parties, and vanities sway and struggle. The ideas and understandings march on and achieve themselves for all--in spite of every one....
The methods and traditions of British politics maintain the form of two great parties, with rider groups seeking to gain specific ends in the event of a small Government majority. These two main parties are more or less heterogeneous330 in composition. Each, however, has certain necessary characteristics. The Conservative Party has always stood quite definitely for the established propertied interests. The land-owner, the big lawyer, the Established Church, and latterly the huge private monopoly of the liquor trade which has been created by temperance legislation, are the essential Conservatives. Interwoven now with the native wealthy are the families of the great international usurers, and a vast miscellaneous mass of financial enterprise. Outside the range of resistance implied by these interests, the Conservative Party has always shown itself just as constructive and collectivist as any other party. The great landowners have been as well-disposed towards the endowment of higher education, and as willing to co-operate with the Church in protective and mildly educational legislation for children and the working class, as any political section. The financiers, too, are adventurous-spirited and eager for mechanical progress and technical efficiency. They are prepared to spend public money upon research, upon ports and harbours and public communications, upon sanitation331 and hygienic organisation. A certain rude benevolence332 of public intention is equally characteristic of the liquor trade. Provided his comfort leads to no excesses of temperance, the liquor trade is quite eager to see the common man prosperous, happy, and with money to spend in a bar. All sections of the party are aggressively patriotic333 and favourably334 inclined to the idea of an upstanding, well-fed, and well-exercised population in uniform. Of course there are reactionary335 landowners and old-fashioned country clergy336, full of localised self-importance, jealous even of the cottager who can read, but they have neither the power nor the ability to retard337 the constructive forces in the party as a whole. On the other hand, when matters point to any definitely confiscatory338 proposal, to the public ownership and collective control of land, for example, or state mining and manufactures, or the nationalisation of the so-called public-house or extended municipal enterprise, or even to an increase of the taxation339 of property, then the Conservative Party presents a nearly adamantine bar. It does not stand for, it IS, the existing arrangement in these affairs.
Even more definitely a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate interest is to raise wages, shorten hours of labor319, increase employment, and make better terms for the working-man tenant340 and working-man purchaser. Its leaders are no doubt constructive minded, but the mass of the following is naturally suspicious of education and discipline, hostile to the higher education, and--except for an obvious antagonism to employers and property owners--almost destitute341 of ideas. What else can it be? It stands for the expropriated multitude, whose whole situation and difficulty arise from its individual lack of initiative and organising power. It favours the nationalisation of land and capital with no sense of the difficulties involved in the process; but, on the other hand, the equally reasonable socialisation of individuals which is implied by military service is steadily342 and quite naturally and quite illogically opposed by it. It is only in recent years that Labour has emerged as a separate party from the huge hospitable343 caravanserai of Liberalism, and there is still a very marked tendency to step back again into that multitudinous assemblage.
For multitudinousness has always been the Liberal characteristic. Liberalism never has been nor ever can be anything but a diversified344 crowd. Liberalism has to voice everything that is left out by these other parties. It is the party against the predominating interests. It is at once the party of the failing and of the untried; it is the party of decadence345 and hope. From its nature it must be a vague and planless association in comparison with its antagonist346, neither so constructive on the one hand, nor on the other so competent to hinder the inevitable347 constructions of the civilised state. Essentially it is the party of criticism, the "Anti" party. It is a system of hostilities348 and objections that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul. It is a gathering together of all the smaller interests which find themselves at a disadvantage against the big established classes, the leasehold349 tenant as against the landowner, the retail350 tradesman as against the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconformist as against the Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising hospitable publican, the man without introductions and broad connections against the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men against the fewer prevailing351 men. It has no more essential reason for loving the Collectivist state than the Conservatives; the small dealer is doomed352 to absorption in that just as much as the large owner; but it resorts to the state against its antagonists353 as in the middle ages common men pitted themselves against the barons354 by siding with the king. The Liberal Party is the party against "class privilege" because it represents no class advantages, but it is also the party that is on the whole most set against Collective control because it represents no established responsibility. It is constructive only so far as its antagonism to the great owner is more powerful than its jealousy of the state. It organises only because organisation is forced upon it by the organisation of its adversaries355. It lapses356 in and out of alliance with Labour as it sways between hostility357 to wealth and hostility to public expenditure358....
Every modern European state will have in some form or other these three parties: the resistent, militant359, authoritative360, dull, and unsympathetic party of establishment and success, the rich party; the confused, sentimental109, spasmodic, numerous party of the small, struggling, various, undisciplined men, the poor man's party; and a third party sometimes detaching itself from the second and sometimes reuniting with it, the party of the altogether expropriated masses, the proletarians, Labour. Change Conservative and Liberal to Republican and Democrat246, for example, and you have the conditions in the United States. The Crown or a dethroned dynasty, the Established Church or a dispossessed church, nationalist secessions, the personalities of party leaders, may break up, complicate361, and confuse the self-expression of these three necessary divisions in the modern social drama, the analyst362 will make them out none the less for that....
And then I came back as if I came back to a refrain;--the ideas go on--as though we are all no more than little cells and corpuscles in some great brain beyond our understanding....
So it was I sat and thought my problem out.... I still remember my satisfaction at seeing things plainly at last. It was like clouds dispersing363 to show the sky. Constructive ideas, of course, couldn't hold a party together alone, "interests and habits, not ideas," I had that now, and so the great constructive scheme of Socialism, invading and inspiring all parties, was necessarily claimed only by this collection of odds364 and ends, this residuum of disconnected and exceptional people. This was true not only of the Socialist idea, but of the scientific idea, the idea of veracity365--of human confidence in humanity--of all that mattered in human life outside the life of individuals.... The only real party that would ever profess306 Socialism was the Labour Party, and that in the entirely one-sided form of an irresponsible and non-constructive attack on property. Socialism in that mutilated form, the teeth and claws without the eyes and brain, I wanted as little as I wanted anything in the world.
Perfectly366 clear it was, perfectly clear, and why hadn't I seen it before?... I looked at my watch, and it was half-past two.
I yawned, stretched, got up and went to bed.
9
My ideas about statecraft have passed through three main phases to the final convictions that remain. There was the first immediacy of my dream of ports and harbours and cities, railways, roads, and administered territories--the vision I had seen in the haze from that little church above Locarno. Slowly that had passed into a more elaborate legislative367 constructiveness368, which had led to my uneasy association with the Baileys and the professedly constructive Young Liberals. To get that ordered life I had realised the need of organisation, knowledge, expertness, a wide movement of co-ordinated methods. On the individual side I thought that a life of urgent industry, temperance, and close attention was indicated by my perception of these ends. I married Margaret and set to work. But something in my mind refused from the outset to accept these determinations as final. There was always a doubt lurking below, always a faint resentment, a protesting criticism, a feeling of vitally important omissions369.
I arrived at last at the clear realisation that my political associates, and I in my association with them, were oddly narrow, priggish, and unreal, that the Socialists with whom we were attempting co-operation were preposterously370 irrelevant to their own theories, that my political life didn't in some way comprehend more than itself, that rather perplexingly I was missing the thing I was seeking. Britten's footnotes to Altiora's self-assertions, her fits of energetic planning, her quarrels and rallies and vanities, his illuminating attacks on Cramptonism and the heavy-spirited triviality of such Liberalism as the Children's Charter, served to point my way to my present conclusions. I had been trying to deal all along with human progress as something immediate in life, something to be immediately attacked by political parties and groups pointing primarily to that end. I now began to see that just as in my own being there was the rather shallow, rather vulgar, self-seeking careerist, who wore an admirable silk hat and bustled371 self-consciously through the lobby, and a much greater and indefinitely growing unpublished personality behind him--my hinterland, I have called it--so in human affairs generally the permanent reality is also a hinterland, which is never really immediate, which draws continually upon human experience and influences human action more and more, but which is itself never the actual player upon the stage. It is the unseen dramatist who never takes a call. Now it was just through the fact that our group about the Baileys didn't understand this, that with a sort of frantic372 energy they were trying to develop that sham expert officialdom of theirs to plan, regulate, and direct the affairs of humanity, that the perplexing note of silliness and shallowness that I had always felt and felt now most acutely under Britten's gibes373, came in. They were neglecting human life altogether in social organisation.
In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth of statesmanship. It has been the chronic374 mistake of statecraft and all organising spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out the whole--or at any rate completely think out definite parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate375 and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy376 and evasions378 of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution379, training, pruning380, secretive education; and all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good intentions they have not hesitated to conceal160 fact, suppress thought, crush disturbing initiatives and apparently381 detrimental382 desires. And so it is blunderingly and wastefully383, destroying with the making, that any extension of social organisation is at present achieved.
Directly, however, this idea of an emancipation384 from immediacy is grasped, directly the dominating importance of this critical, less personal, mental hinterland in the individual and of the collective mind in the race is understood, the whole problem of the statesman and his attitude towards politics gain a new significance, and becomes accessible to a new series of solutions. He wants no longer to "fix up," as people say, human affairs, but to devote his forces to the development of that needed intellectual life without which all his shallow attempts at fixing up are futile. He ceases to build on the sands, and sets himself to gather foundations.
You see, I began in my teens by wanting to plan and build cities and harbours for mankind; I ended in the middle thirties by desiring only to serve and increase a general process of thought, a process fearless, critical, real-spirited, that would in its own time give cities, harbours, air, happiness, everything at a scale and quality and in a light altogether beyond the match-striking imaginations of a contemporary mind. I wanted freedom of speech and suggestion, vigour of thought, and the cultivation385 of that impulse of veracity that lurks386 more or less discouraged in every man. With that I felt there must go an emotion. I hit upon a phrase that became at last something of a refrain in my speech and writings, to convey the spirit that I felt was at the very heart of real human progress--love and fine thinking.
(I suppose that nowadays no newspaper in England gets through a week without the repetition of that phrase.)
My convictions crystallised more and more definitely upon this. The more of love and fine thinking the better for men, I said; the less, the worse. And upon this fresh basis I set myself to examine what I as a politician might do. I perceived I was at last finding an adequate expression for all that was in me, for those forces that had rebelled at the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the secrecies387 and suppressions of my youth, at the dull unrealities of City Merchants, at the conventions and timidities of the Pinky Dinkys, at the philosophical388 recluse389 of Trinity and the phrases and tradition-worship of my political associates. None of these things were half alive, and I wanted life to be intensely alive and awake. I wanted thought like an edge of steel and desire like a flame. The real work before mankind now, I realised once and for all, is the enlargement of human expression, the release and intensification390 of human thought, the vivider utilisation of experience and the invigoration of research--and whatever one does in human affairs has or lacks value as it helps or hinders that.
With that I had got my problem clear, and the solution, so far as I was concerned, lay in finding out the point in the ostensible life of politics at which I could most subserve these ends. I was still against the muddles391 of Bromstead, but I had hunted them down now to their essential form. The jerry-built slums, the roads that went nowhere, the tarred fences, litigious notice-boards and barbed wire fencing, the litter and the heaps of dump, were only the outward appearances whose ultimate realities were jerry-built conclusions, hasty purposes, aimless habits of thought, and imbecile bars and prohibitions392 in the thoughts and souls of men. How are we through politics to get at that confusion?
We want to invigorate and reinvigorate education. We want to create a sustained counter effort to the perpetual tendency of all educational organisations towards classicalism, secondary issues, and the evasion377 of life.
We want to stimulate393 the expression of life through art and literature, and its exploration through research.
We want to make the best and finest thought accessible to every one, and more particularly to create and sustain an enormous free criticism, without which art, literature, and research alike degenerate394 into tradition or imposture395.
Then all the other problems which are now so insoluble, destitution396, disease, the difficulty of maintaining international peace, the scarcely faced possibility of making life generally and continually beautiful, become--EASY....
It was clear to me that the most vital activities in which I could engage would be those which most directly affected the Church, public habits of thought, education, organised research, literature, and the channels of general discussion. I had to ask myself how my position as Liberal member for Kinghamstead squared with and conduced to this essential work.
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1
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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unstable
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| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
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mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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complicating
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| 使复杂化( complicate的现在分词 ) | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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auspices
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| n.资助，赞助 | |
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meritoriously
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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unanimity
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| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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insurgence
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| n.起义；造反；暴动；叛乱 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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ostensible
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| adj.(指理由)表面的，假装的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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propitiatory
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| adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的 | |
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touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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30
depreciated
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| v.贬值，跌价，减价( depreciate的过去式和过去分词 )；贬低，蔑视，轻视 | |
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31
obituary
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| n.讣告，死亡公告；adj.死亡的 | |
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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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complexities
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| 复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物 | |
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relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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37
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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39
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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41
repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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42
repudiates
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的第三人称单数 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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43
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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44
mentor
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| n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导 | |
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45
sop
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| n.湿透的东西，懦夫；v.浸，泡，浸湿 | |
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lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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47
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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playwrights
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| n.剧作家( playwright的名词复数 ) | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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51
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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52
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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53
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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54
conversationally
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| adv.会话地 | |
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55
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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dissent
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| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
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57
succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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58
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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59
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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60
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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61
conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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62
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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63
bleakness
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| adj. 萧瑟的, 严寒的, 阴郁的 | |
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64
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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65
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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66
magisterial
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| adj.威风的，有权威的；adv.威严地 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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68
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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69
exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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conducive
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| adj.有益的，有助的 | |
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71
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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72
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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73
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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74
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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75
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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77
confirmations
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| 证实( confirmation的名词复数 )； 证据； 确认； （基督教中的）坚信礼 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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81
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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82
hoof
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| n.(马，牛等的)蹄 | |
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83
mandate
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| n.托管地；命令，指示 | |
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84
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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vacuity
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| n.(想象力等)贫乏，无聊，空白 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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brooked
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| 容忍，忍受（brook的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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stimulants
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| n.兴奋剂( stimulant的名词复数 )；含兴奋剂的饮料；刺激物；激励物 | |
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stimulation
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| n.刺激，激励，鼓舞 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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bumpers
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| （汽车上的）保险杠，缓冲器( bumper的名词复数 ) | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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frets
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| 基质间片； 品丝（吉他等指板上定音的）( fret的名词复数 ) | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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114
mumble
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| n./v.喃喃而语，咕哝 | |
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115
delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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116
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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117
lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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118
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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119
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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120
liberating
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| 解放，释放( liberate的现在分词 ) | |
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121
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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122
temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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123
glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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124
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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125
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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126
clannishness
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127
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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128
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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129
populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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130
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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131
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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132
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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133
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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134
profanation
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| n.亵渎 | |
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135
posthumous
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| adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的 | |
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136
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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137
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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138
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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139
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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140
meticulous
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| adj.极其仔细的，一丝不苟的 | |
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141
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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142
laments
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| n.悲恸，哀歌，挽歌( lament的名词复数 )v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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143
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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144
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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145
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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146
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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147
grooves
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| n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏 | |
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148
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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149
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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150
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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151
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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152
witticisms
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| n.妙语，俏皮话( witticism的名词复数 ) | |
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153
forensic
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| adj.法庭的，雄辩的 | |
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154
sagely
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| adv. 贤能地，贤明地 | |
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155
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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156
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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157
loyalties
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| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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158
repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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159
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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160
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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161
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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162
pseudonym
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| n.假名，笔名 | |
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163
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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164
nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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165
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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166
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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167
ousted
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| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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168
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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169
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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170
wildernesses
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| 荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权） | |
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171
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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172
gashed
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| v.划伤，割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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173
fortresses
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| 堡垒，要塞( fortress的名词复数 ) | |
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174
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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175
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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176
moribund
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| adj.即将结束的，垂死的 | |
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177
licensing
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| v.批准，许可，颁发执照( license的现在分词 ) | |
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178
rectification
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| n. 改正, 改订, 矫正 | |
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179
recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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180
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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181
jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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182
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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183
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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184
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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185
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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186
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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187
hesitations
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| n.犹豫( hesitation的名词复数 )；踌躇；犹豫（之事或行为）；口吃 | |
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188
desolating
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| 毁坏( desolate的现在分词 )； 极大地破坏； 使沮丧； 使痛苦 | |
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189
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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190
wigged
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| adj.戴假发的 | |
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191
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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192
mace
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| n.狼牙棒，豆蔻干皮 | |
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193
conspire
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| v.密谋，（事件等）巧合，共同导致 | |
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194
morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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195
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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196
auditor
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| n.审计员，旁听着 | |
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197
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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198
prolix
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| adj.罗嗦的；冗长的 | |
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199
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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200
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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201
busts
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| 半身雕塑像( bust的名词复数 )； 妇女的胸部； 胸围； 突击搜捕 | |
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202
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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203
pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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204
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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205
complexions
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| 肤色( complexion的名词复数 )； 面色； 局面； 性质 | |
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206
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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207
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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208
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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209
infinity
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| n.无限，无穷，大量 | |
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210
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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211
mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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212
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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213
potteries
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| n.陶器( pottery的名词复数 )；陶器厂；陶土；陶器制造（术） | |
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214
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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215
blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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216
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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217
babblement
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| 模糊不清的言语，胡说，潺潺声 | |
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218
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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219
unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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220
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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221
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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222
obstruct
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| v.阻隔，阻塞(道路、通道等)；n.阻碍物，障碍物 | |
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223
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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224
bate
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| v.压制；减弱；n.（制革用的）软化剂 | |
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225
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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226
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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227
locusts
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| n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 )；贪吃的人；破坏者；槐树 | |
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228
grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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229
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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230
jabber
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| v.快而不清楚地说；n.吱吱喳喳 | |
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231
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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232
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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233
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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234
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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235
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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236
implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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237
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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238
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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239
invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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240
dabbling
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| v.涉猎( dabble的现在分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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241
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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242
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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243
borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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244
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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245
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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246
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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247
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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248
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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249
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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250
repletion
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| n.充满，吃饱 | |
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251
clairvoyance
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| n.超人的洞察力 | |
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252
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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253
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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254
stiffen
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| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
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255
penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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256
viler
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|
| adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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257
everlasting
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|
| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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258
ceramic
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| n.制陶业，陶器，陶瓷工艺 | |
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259
jointly
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| ad.联合地，共同地 | |
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260
resentments
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| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
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261
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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262
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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263
replete
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| adj.饱满的，塞满的；n.贮蜜蚁 | |
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264
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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265
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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266
eclat
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| n.显赫之成功，荣誉 | |
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267
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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268
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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269
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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270
gatherings
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|
| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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271
emphatic
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|
| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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272
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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273
intimacy
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|
| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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274
intercourse
|
|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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275
accurately
|
|
| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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276
contrive
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|
| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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277
aggression
|
|
| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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278
defensive
|
|
| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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279
distinctive
|
|
| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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280
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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281
discreet
|
|
| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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282
superfluous
|
|
| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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283
datum
|
|
| n.资料；数据；已知数 | |
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284
systematic
|
|
| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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285
organisation
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|
| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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286
solely
|
|
| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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287
personalities
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|
| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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288
slipper
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|
| n.拖鞋 | |
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289
remains
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|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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290
anchovy
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|
| n.凤尾鱼 | |
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291
protruded
|
|
| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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292
permissible
|
|
| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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293
neatly
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|
| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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294
evading
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|
| 逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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295
mingling
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|
| adj.混合的 | |
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296
bias
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|
| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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297
austere
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|
| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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298
heartiness
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|
| 诚实，热心 | |
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299
buffet
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|
| n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台 | |
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300
heartier
|
|
| 亲切的( hearty的比较级 )； 热诚的； 健壮的； 精神饱满的 | |
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301
acrimonious
|
|
| adj.严厉的，辛辣的，刻毒的 | |
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302
frayed
|
|
| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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303
intonations
|
|
| n.语调，说话的抑扬顿挫( intonation的名词复数 )；（演奏或唱歌中的）音准 | |
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304
exponents
|
|
| n.倡导者( exponent的名词复数 )；说明者；指数；能手 | |
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305
virulence
|
|
| n.毒力，毒性；病毒性；致病力 | |
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306
profess
|
|
| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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307
debris
|
|
| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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308
meditation
|
|
| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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309
impersonal
|
|
| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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310
pegged
|
|
| v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的过去式和过去分词 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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311
professed
|
|
| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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312
annihilated
|
|
| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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313
rustling
|
|
| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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314
apprehended
|
|
| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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315
opposition
|
|
| n.反对，敌对 | |
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316
alluded
|
|
| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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317
applied
|
|
| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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318
embodying
|
|
| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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319
labor
|
|
| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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320
absolve
|
|
| v.赦免，解除（责任等） | |
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321
thereby
|
|
| adv.因此，从而 | |
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322
quack
|
|
| n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子 | |
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323
vigour
|
|
| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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324
disinterestedly
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325
immortal
|
|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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326
increments
|
|
| n.增长( increment的名词复数 )；增量；增额；定期的加薪 | |
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327
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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328
formulating
|
|
| v.构想出( formulate的现在分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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329
albeit
|
|
| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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330
heterogeneous
|
|
| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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331
sanitation
|
|
| n.公共卫生，环境卫生，卫生设备 | |
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332
benevolence
|
|
| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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333
patriotic
|
|
| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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334
favourably
|
|
| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
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335
reactionary
|
|
| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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336
clergy
|
|
| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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337
retard
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|
| n.阻止，延迟；vt.妨碍，延迟，使减速 | |
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338
confiscatory
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|
| 没收的，充公的 | |
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339
taxation
|
|
| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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340
tenant
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|
| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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341
destitute
|
|
| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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342
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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343
hospitable
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|
| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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344
diversified
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|
| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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345
decadence
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|
| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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346
antagonist
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|
| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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347
inevitable
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|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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348
hostilities
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|
| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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349
leasehold
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|
| n.租赁，租约，租赁权，租赁期，adj.租(来)的 | |
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350
retail
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|
| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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351
prevailing
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|
| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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352
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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353
antagonists
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|
| 对立[对抗] 者，对手，敌手( antagonist的名词复数 )； 对抗肌； 对抗药 | |
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354
barons
|
|
| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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355
adversaries
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|
| n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 ) | |
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356
lapses
|
|
| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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357
hostility
|
|
| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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358
expenditure
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|
| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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359
militant
|
|
| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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360
authoritative
|
|
| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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361
complicate
|
|
| vt.使复杂化，使混乱，使难懂 | |
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362
analyst
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|
| n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家 | |
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363
dispersing
|
|
| adj. 分散的 动词disperse的现在分词形式 | |
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364
odds
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|
| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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365
veracity
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|
| n.诚实 | |
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366
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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367
legislative
|
|
| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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368
constructiveness
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|
| 组织，构造 | |
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369
omissions
|
|
| n.省略( omission的名词复数 )；删节；遗漏；略去或漏掉的事（或人） | |
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370
preposterously
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|
| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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371
bustled
|
|
| 闹哄哄地忙乱，奔忙( bustle的过去式和过去分词 )； 催促 | |
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372
frantic
|
|
| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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373
gibes
|
|
| vi.嘲笑，嘲弄（gibe的第三人称单数形式） | |
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374
chronic
|
|
| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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375
legislate
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| vt.制定法律；n.法规，律例；立法 | |
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376
obduracy
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| n.冷酷无情，顽固，执拗 | |
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377
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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378
evasions
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| 逃避( evasion的名词复数 )； 回避； 遁辞； 借口 | |
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379
persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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380
pruning
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| n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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381
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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382
detrimental
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| adj.损害的，造成伤害的 | |
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383
wastefully
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| 浪费地，挥霍地，耗费地 | |
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384
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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385
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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386
lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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387
secrecies
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| 保密（secrecy的复数形式） | |
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388
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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389
recluse
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| n.隐居者 | |
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390
intensification
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| n.激烈化，增强明暗度；加厚 | |
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391
muddles
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| v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的第三人称单数 )；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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392
prohibitions
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| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
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393
stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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394
degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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395
imposture
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| n.冒名顶替，欺骗 | |
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396
destitution
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| n.穷困，缺乏，贫穷 | |
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