Part 9

Both the strength and the weakness of Mr. Shaw spring from a defect--his lack of Love. Freedom from illusion is his strength. He possesses common sense minus common sentiment; that, and probably nothing more; and that gives to his thought an appearance of subtlety, though it is not really subtle. Thus, his common sense tells him that Love is essentially creation. He sees through the illusions which Love spins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at all. Love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions; but who knows Love that knows not Love's illusions? Still, it is to his honour that he has conceived Love as creation. His weakness consists in that his attitude to Love is purely intellectual. He lacks Love more than any other man of his time. In grappling with the great problems of existence, it is not Love but the very absence of Love that has been his most useful weapon; and so he has seen much, but grasped nothing, created nothing. And because he has never loved, he can never be called an artist. For how can one who has not loved idealize? And how can one who has not idealized be an artist? In Mr. Shaw, Nature has gone out of her way to create the very antithesis of the artist.

What Nietzsche said about Socrates is true of Mr. Shaw even in a higher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and has usurped the place of his instincts. Without Love, he yet affirms creation. What can be his reason for doing so? Why should he wish Life to persist if he does not love Life? Is it in order that people might still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? Or so that exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual conflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy and weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? We know that Mr. Shaw regards the brain as an end--the purpose of Life being to perfect a finer and finer brain--and we know, too, that to Mr. Shaw the highest joy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting. Knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire Life to continue so that controversy might continue? Well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of Love. He himself lacks Love:--Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the Christian praises what he is not but would fain be? And his love of Love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness"? And himself, a Romantic?

155

_Mr. H. G. Wells_

How much has Mr. Wells's scientific training had to do with his conception of Love? As a student of biology, it was natural he should see Love as sex. In all his theories, indeed, there is more of the scientist than of the artist. Scientific certainly, is his simple acceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it with generation, and of both with Love. The innocence of the scientist and not of the artist is his, an innocence Darwinian, not Goethean. And so, although his purpose is fine--to restore in his books an innocent conception of sexual Love--in doing so, his biology always runs away with his art. For he would render sex significant by reading it into all creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument more than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! But this robs both creation and sex of their significance. The way to restore an innocent conception of sexual Love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it as part of the universal Becoming, by carrying it away on the great purifying stream of Becoming. In spite of his genius, and still more of his cleverness, Mr. Wells here began at the wrong end. But it is doubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic power and elevation to express in art this conception of Love. Within the limits of Realism, especially of "physiological Realism," it certainly cannot be expressed. Nothing less than the symbolic may serve for it.

156

_The Idealism of Love_

The writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have pushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love idealizes the subject. None knows better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine, particularly, was a shameless offender in this way. A woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic attitude. But even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! Yes! love has such power that it idealizes everything--even the subject!

157

_Love and Becoming_

The great Heraclitus propounded the doctrine of Becoming. Everything changes, is built up and dissolved; "stability" is only a little sluggishness in the flux of things. Zeus, the great child, the divine artist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement: all the worlds are his playthings. This conception of the Universe is innocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same time terrifying. And that because all meaning is left out of it; for all things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in the end terrifying.

Nietzsche, the modern counterpart of Heraclitus, re-affirmed this doctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative Love: that is his chief distinction. Certainly, those who do not comprehend Nietzsche's Love do not comprehend Nietzsche. It is the key to his religion of Becoming. Becoming without Love is meaningless; Love without Becoming is meaningless. But, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each redeems the other. But have things a meaning in themselves? Is it not Man that forever interprets and interprets? Very well. But is not a thing incomplete without its interpretation? Is not its interpretation a part of it?

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_Static Values_

Stagnant waters become noisome after a while. And stagnant values? Certainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have been born: in Perfection, Sin; in Justice, Guilt. It was when human judgments were apotheosized and became Eternal Justice that guilt was insinuated into the core of Life. A falsehood, a presumption! What man found necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation, that, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict of God Himself. And when Life did not operate in conformity with this law, it was Life that must needs be guilty--a very ingenious method of world-vilification! It was human vanity that created the eternal verities. And how much have we suffered from them! For the deification of Things meant the diabolization of Man, nay, of Life itself. The metaphysician who created Heaven created Hell at the self-same moment; but, ever since, it has been Hell that has given birth to the metaphysicians. Being _condemns_ Becoming, and pollutes all Life with sin. So in the pools of Being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and our preference for a doctrine of Becoming may be at bottom a hygienic preference.

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_The God of Becoming_

Love is the God of Becoming. All the other gods are static gods, changeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. But Love belongs altogether to the future. It is the deity of those who would create a future.

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_Utopias_

It is sympathy that has built the Utopias. On every one of them is written, "Conflict and suffering are bad." Utopia is nothing but a place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of exhaustion. The thing that is omitted from it is always Love, for Love would shatter all Utopias and leave them behind. In Nowhere Man no longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand; for what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are mingled. And Love calls Man to that fate.

What we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal of Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static. Utopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into _his_ future. To attain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. Only ideals of this kind are unassailable by Love.

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_"Primacy of Things"_

If we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we can know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the creative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. For does not belief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a Utopia? And therefore in something antagonistic to Love? The metaphor of static Perfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is time we superseded it by another. Or is it still, as it has always been, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? Even if it is Love that drives us on?

Progress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as a pursuit of Perfection--might not that take us a long way? Did Nietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection is something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of progress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set of values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by the criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love does that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's goal? The Superman is something that must be surpassed!

162

_Perfection_

When men write largely of Perfection, as if it were a concept every one could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean. Do they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which they believe? Does X believe in a Christian and Y in a Nietzschean perfection? As a rule, conceptions of Perfection are offshoots of the morality prevalent at any given time. And, for action, people's conception of Perfection is much more important than Perfection itself. Therefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, Perfection is something still to be discovered! As for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient in it, or rest? Is it an ideal of Life, or a thing impossible, self-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise existence? The first question to be asked.

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_Goals_

When people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal Becoming which has no goal in Being, what they express is their longing for rest. It is unendurable, they feel, that Life, creation, change, should travel on their way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and Being is conjured up. Hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages, but eternal termini. But a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but the peak from which to descry our next goal. And so on eternally? Well, why not? Finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought of eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. We have not fully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument against Life. What we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! When we have learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary part of Life, and Becoming will be as desirable to us as Being now. And not till then shall we be _fit_ for immortality.

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_Love and Sympathy_

Love and Hatred are not the true opposites, but Love and Sympathy. Love is creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate not yet dead, and the living still unborn. And it is also, therefore, the hatred of the one for the other. True, this hatred may not be of individuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? It is naïve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is less _wicked_ than hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case! The former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the latter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. Hatred is contained in and is an aspect of Love; it is Love seen as destruction. Well, only Love has a right to Hatred, for only Love can create.

Sympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and would bid what should be living remain forever unborn. For in death and in birth alike there is pain. Sympathy--that is, Sympathy with the _necessary_ suffering of existence--is a far greater danger than Hatred.

165

_The Humanitarians_

Hatred only to things, not to men; Love only to men, not to things: the formula of the half-and-half.

166

Love and the Virtues

Love is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she requires them. For how without them could she suffer to create, and endure the pain of Becoming? Everything dynamic must become virtuous. The soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from Sympathy. Sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static, for movement is pain, and pain, of the devil--if Sympathy will admit a devil! Its virtues are all in bad training.

167

_The Other Side_

He ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid of it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him.

168

_Love and Danger_

The fear that danger might perish--the immortal fear of Nietzsche--need cause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative Love will continue to exist. For Love is the great source of danger, and of the heroic in action and thought. If military wars were to disappear from the earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated and voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an individual task. Perhaps in the distant future nations will become more pacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nations _in order_ that individuals may have a free arena in which to carry on their great contests--"without powder," as Nietzsche said. The battles, born of Love, of the Brands and Zarathustras, not those of the Napoleons: that is what creative Love would envisage! But this prophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even a conjecture!

169

_Fellowship and Love_

Fellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by Sympathy, and that which is an expression of Love. Men unite for the mere satisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the struggle for more remote things--an aspiration or a vision. This latter thing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends Man what nobility he has--it was Love that gave it to him. Fellowship is the sublime attempt to complete the figure of Man. My friend is he who possesses the qualities which I lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me. Fellowship should enrich _all_ who partake of it, make their highest qualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their defects. But the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy the name of Friendship. Sympathy is its parent.

170

_The Paradox_

It is possible to live nobly without Happiness, but not without Love. Love, however, confers the highest happiness. Is it because Love is indifferent to Happiness that Happiness flutters around it, and caresses it with its wings?

171

_Moral Indignation_

We should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation of Life, for it is merely destructive. To destroy that which we cannot re-create in a better form is a crime. Only Love should condemn, for only Love can create. To bring the good into existence, or prepare the way of those who can create the good--that should be our only form of condemnation. In what consists the passion of the moral fanatic? In respect for the law, that it should not be violated. So he would extirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy all life, and have no power to create it anew. No wonder he is gloomy: the vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien.

172

_Morality and Love_

Into what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make the choice of morality! He sees that both great types of morality, the humanitarian and the military, the Hedonistic and the Spartan, lead in the end to Nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by hardening. The former becomes too sensitive to endure Life; the latter, too insensible to feel it. Yet they were to serve Life; but they soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted themselves as something higher than Life; they become "absolute," and a stumbling-block to existence. And this was because they were not founded in the beginning upon the very principle of Life, which is Love, but upon accidentals. The conflict between Morality and Love has accordingly been a conflict between the forces of Death and of Life: for "works" without Love are dead. Morality should be but the discipline which Love imposes upon itself in order to create. It should crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative countenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude, joy, temperance. This morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian morality sprung from Sympathy.

173

_Paradise Regained_

If Life is but an expression of creative Love, then a morality founded upon Love must be the only true morality. And, moreover, in it ethics and the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped.

174

_Love and Knowledge_

If in all Life there is change, creation, Becoming, and if in our lives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we call Love, must not Love be a necessary part of our knowledge of Life? Observation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us much _about_ Life, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give us immediate knowledge. Is it possible to know Life? If Life be the expression of Love----! Upon that "if" depends everything. For if it is justified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence. Perhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that undiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. The comprehension of Life through Love! The profoundest of intuitions? The maddest of dreams?

175

_Proverb and Commentary_

Love is blind, but it is with excess of light.

176

_Bad Thoughts_

She was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought of God, delicate, spontaneous and finished. There was nothing misshapen in body or soul; Love did well to create such a being. But the others, the crooked, blind and defiled! Are these the bad thoughts of God? From whence do they come? Whither do they go? Conceived in darkness, born for destruction?

177

_Love and Sympathy_

We must not think of Love as a mere concept. For it is something more real than Life itself: the very Life of Life, the very soul of Becoming. It is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending the distinction of spiritual and physical. We must not conceive Love as a thing akin to Sympathy. It is not humanitarian or even human; it is a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides of the ocean. Nevertheless, it is within Man, just as it is within the stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and purifying force; beyond Good and Evil as the dew and the lightning are. This is the power that is known by Man in his moments of love. He is then free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new, joyful and innocent. But seldom does he attain this knowledge: his moments of exultation are brief. Yet Love has not on that account lost any of its potence. Man may decay and become corrupt; but Love remains unalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption.

178

_Multum in Parvo_

You are but a drop in the ocean of Life. True: but it is in the ocean _of Life!_

179

_Love and the Senses_

When one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. In Love alone is the dream of Goethe, Heine, and the moderns realized: here the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in perfect innocence. For Love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in which it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul.

180

_Love and Innocence_

Life takes us back to its bosom when we love. The heavens, the earth and the race of men no longer appear things external and hostile, against which we must arm ourselves. We return from exile in personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and plunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places. The "external" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the inside, we gaze through its eyes. For the very principle of Life, of which all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by us. Our personality has been emancipated. This feeling of universal comprehension is called Innocence.

181

_Love and the Fall_

Has the fable of the Fall still another interpretation for us? Was the Fall of Man the fall from Love? When the feeling of universal comprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense arose. And Sin was the child of this Individualism. To the first man bereft of Love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at him with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home. No longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror, hatred and despair. To protect himself against existence, he created Love's substitute, morality. And with morality arose sin, and perished innocence.

182

_Love and its Object_

Nietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of Love as a narrowly egoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to every one else. There is too much of the philosopher and too little of the psychologist in this observation. For mankind cannot be loved, Life cannot be loved, until One has been loved. Only lovers can generate such wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their enemies, all the world. To love one is to love all.

183

_Freedom in Love_

In true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. Is it because the lovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a pulse in the very heart of Life? If Love is the principle of Life, then in Love alone is perfect freedom. Ethics and instinct become one. This is the road that leads beyond good and evil: Man must learn to love.

184

_Love and the Sensualists_

On those who affirm Life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation laid. Their lives must be innocent: Life must be to them a sustained act of worship. How many of them have been lacking just here! Heine failed, in spite of his real nobility. Goethe, however, attained unity and sincerity; and Nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and innocence. They were neither of them mere "writers." Nor must we be: there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is possible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. For they confuse and defile everything.

185

_Free Will_

Only those who have knowledge of Becoming can know what the freedom of the will is. Freedom--that is to will Becoming with all its suffering, voluntarily to go on the way which Fate and the highest Life direct us. Slavery--that is to deny Becoming, to cling to the static, and to be dragged along the stream of change. To be dragged, not to remain stationary; for men by taking thought cannot gain immunity from change. Their will and their desires avail them nothing. For the stream of Becoming is unchangeable in its power. It is Man that changes. When he affirms Becoming, he is enlarged; when he denies it, he is straitened.

186