I do not
believe in belief. But this is an age of faith, where one is surrounded by so
many militant creeds that in self-defense, one has to formulate a creed of
one’s own. Tolerance, good temper, and sympathy are no longer enough in a world
which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world were ignorance
rules, and science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp.
Tolerance, good temper, and sympathy — well, they are what matter really, and
if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long.
But for the moment they don’t seem enough, their action is no longer stronger
than a flower, battered beneath a military jackboot. They want stiffening, even
if the process coarsens them. Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a
sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I
dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My
lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands
not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are
admitted. My motto is “Lord, I disbelieve — help thou my unbelief.”
I have, however, to live in an age
of Faith — the sort of thing I used to hear praised and recommended when I was
a boy. It is damned unpleasant, really. It is bloody in every sense of the
word. And I have to keep my end up in it. Where do I start?
With personal relationships. Here is
something comparatively solid in a world full of violence and cruelty. Not
absolutely solid... We don’t know what other people are like. How then can we
put any trust in personal relationships, or cling to them in the gathering
political storm? In theory we can’t. But in practice we can and do. Though A is
unchangeably A or B unchangeably B, there can still be love and loyalty between
the two. For the purpose of loving one has to assume that the personality is
solid, and the “self” is an entity, and to ignore all contrary evidence. And
since to ignore evidence is one of the characteristics of faith, I certainly
can proclaim that I believe in personal relationships.
Starting from them, I get a little
order into the contemporary chaos. One must be fond of people and trust them if
one isn’t to make a mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they
shouldn’t let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must myself
be as reliable as possible. And this I try to be. But reliability isn’t a
matter of contract... It is a matter for the heart. In other words, reliability
is impossible unless there is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth,
though they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even when they
are politicians, want to keep faith. And one can, at all events, show one’s own
little light here, one’s own poor little trembling flame, with the knowledge
that it’s not only the only light that is shining in the darkness, and not the
only one which the darkness doesn’t comprehend. Personal relations are despised
today. They are regarded as bourgeois luxuries, as products of a time of fair
weather which has now passed, and we are urged to get rid of them, and to
dedicate ourselves to some movement or cause instead. I hate the idea of dying
for a cause, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying
my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice
may scandalise the ... reader... It wouldn’t have shocked Dante, though. Dante
places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circles of Hell because they had chosen
to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome. Probably
one won’t be asked to make such an agonizing choice. Still there lies at the
back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may
one day be required to suffer, and there is even a terror and hardness in this
creed of personal relationships, urbane and mild though it sounds. Love and
loyalty to an individual can run counter to the claims of the state. When they
do — down with the state, say I, which means that the state will down me.
This brings me along to Democracy,
"Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives".
Democracy is not
a beloved Republic really, and never
will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government,
and to that
extent it deserves our support. It
does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all
types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into
the bossers and the bossed - as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I
admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or
discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get
more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great
or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested
scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people",
who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for
instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express
themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and
the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy.
Democracy has another merit. It
allows criticism, and if there is not public criticism there are bound to be
hushed-up scandals.
That is why I believe in the press,
despite all its lies and vulgarity, and why I believe in Parliament. Parliament
is often sneered at
because it is a Talking Shop. I
believe in it because it is a talking shop. I believe in the Private Member who
makes himself a
nuisance. He gets snubbed and is
told that he is cranky or ill-informed, but he does expose abuses which would
otherwise
never have been mentioned, and very
often an abuse gets put right just by being mentioned. Occasionally, too, a
well-meaning
public official starts losing his
head in the cause of efficiency, and thinks himself God Almighty. Such
officials are particularly
frequent in the Home Office. Well,
there will be questions about them in Parliament sooner or later, and then they
will have to
mind their steps. Whether Parliament
is either a representative body or an efficient one is questionable, but I
value it because it
criticizes and talks, and because
its chatter gets widely reported. So two cheers for Democracy: one because it
admits variety
and two because it permits
criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.
Only Love the
Beloved Republic deserves that. What
about Force, though? While we are trying to be sensitive and advanced and
affectionate and tolerant, an unpleasant question pops up: does not all society
rest upon force? If a government cannot count upon the police and the army, how
can it hope to rule? And if an individual gets knocked on the head or sent to a
labour camp, of what significance are his opinions?
This dilemma does not worry me as
much as it does some. I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the
great creative
actions, all the decent human
relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the
front. These
intervals are what matter. I want
them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them
"civilization ". Some people
idealize force and pull it into the
foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as
possible. I
think they make a mistake, and I
think that their opposites, the mystics, err even more when they declare that
force does not
exist. I believe that it exists, and
that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out
sooner or later, and then
it destroys us and all the lovely
things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate
reason that the strong
are so stupid. Consider their
conduct for a moment in The Nibelung's Ring. The giants there have the guns, or
in other words
the gold; but they do nothing with
it, they do not realize that they are all-powerful, with the result that the
catastrophe is delayed and the castle of Valhalla, insecure but glorious,
fronts the storms. Fafnir, coiled round his hoard, grumbles and grunts; we can
hear him under Europe today; the leaves of the wood already tremble, and the
Bird calls its warnings uselessly. Fafnir will destroy us, but by a blessed
dispensation he is stupid and slow, and creation goes on just outside the
poisonous blast of his breath.
The Nietzschean would hurry the
monster up, the mystic would say he did not exist, but Wotan, wiser than
either, hastens to
create warriors before doom declares
itself. The Valkyries are symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they
represent the
human spirit snatching its
opportunity while the going is good, and one of them even finds time to love.
Bruennhilde's last song
hymns the recurrence of love, and
since it is the privilege of art to exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims
the love which is
eternally triumphant, and feeds upon
freedom and lives.
So that is what I feel about force
and violence. It is, alas ! the ultimate reality on this earth, but it does not
always get to
the front. Some people call its
absences "decadence"; I call them "civilization" and find
in such interludes the chief justification for the human experiment. I look the
other way until fate strikes me. Whether this is due to courage or to cowardice
in my own case I cannot be sure. But I know that, if men had not looked the
other way in the past, nothing of any value would survive. The people I respect
most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both
assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on
eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing-holes for
the human spirit. No millennium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no
better and stronger League of Nations will be instituted; no form of
Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world
or integrity to the individual; no "change of heart" will occur. And
yet we need not despair, indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history
shows us that men have always insisted on behaving creatively under the shadow
of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scientific and domestic
stuff for the sake of doing it, and that we had better follow their example
under the shadow of the aeroplanes.
Others, with more vision or courage
than myself, see the salvation of humanity ahead, and will dismiss my
conception of civilization as paltry, a sort of tip-and-run game. Certainly it
is presumptuous to say that we cannot improve, and that Man, who has only been
in power for a few thousand years, will never learn to make use of his power.
All I mean is that, if people continue to kill one another as they do, the
world cannot get better than it is, and that, since there are more people than
formerly, and their means for destroying one another superior, the world may
well get worse. What is good in people - and consequently in the world - is
their insistence on creation, their belief in friendship and loyalty for their
own sakes; and, though violence remains and is, indeed, the major partner in
this muddled establishment, I believe that creativeness remains too, and will
always assume direction when violence sleeps. So, though I am not an optimist,
I cannot agree with Sophocles that it were better never to have been born. And
although, like Horace, I see no evidence that each batch of births is superior
to the last, I leave the field open for the more complacent view. This is such
a difficult moment to live in, one cannot help getting gloomy and also a bit
rattled, and perhaps short-sighted.
In search of a refuge, we may
perhaps turn to hero-worship. But here we shall get no help, in my opinion.
Hero-worship is a
dangerous vice, and one of the minor
merits of a democracy is that it does not encourage it, or produce that
unmanageable type
of citizen known as the Great Man.
It produces instead different kinds of small men - a much finer achievement.
But people who
cannot get interested in the variety
of life, and cannot make up their own minds, get discontented over this, and
they long for a
hero to bow down before and to
follow blindly. It is significant that a hero is an integral part of the
authoritarian stock-in-trade
today. An efficiency-regime cannot
be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as
plums have to
be put into a bad pudding to make it
palatable. One hero at the top and a smaller one each side of him is a
favourite arrangement,
and the timid and the bored are
comforted by the trinity, and, bowing down, feel exalted and strengthened.
No, I distrust Great Men. They
produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I
always feel a
little man's pleasure when they come
a cropper. Every now and then one reads in the newspapers some such statement
as: "The
coup d'etat appears to have failed,
and Admiral Toma's where-abouts is at present unknown." Admiral Toma had
probably
every qualification for being a
Great Man - an iron will, personal magnetism, dash, flair, sexlessness - but
fate was against him, so
he retires to unknown whereabouts instead
of parading history with his peers. He fails with a completeness which no
artist and
no lover can experience, because
with them the process of creation is itself an achievement, whereas with him
the only possible achievement is success.
I believe in aristocracy, though -
if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of
power, based upon
rank and influence, but an
aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are
to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is
a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true
human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and
chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are
sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without
being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they
can take a joke. I give no examples - it is risky to do that - but the reader
may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet
and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type
should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old
Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my
aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies
are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do
not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive,
considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the
first three qualities I will let him in! On they go - an invincible army, yet
not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen,
the Best People - all the words that
describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and
again Authority,
seeing their value, has tried to net
them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or
the Chinese
Civil Service or the Group Movement,
or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when
the door
is shut, they are no longer in the
room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's
affections, and their
kingdom, though they never possess
it, is the wide-open world.
With this type of person knocking
about, and constantly crossing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to
feel, the experiment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure. But it
may well be hailed as a tragedy, the tragedy being that no device has been
found by which these private decencies can be transmitted to public affairs. As
soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because
the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never
pays. For instance, the man who is selling newspapers outside the Houses of
Parliament can safely leave his papers to go for a drink, and his cap beside
them: anyone who takes a paper is sure to drop a copper into the cap. But the
men who are inside the Houses of Parliament - they cannot trust one another
like that, still less can the Government they compose trust other governments.
No caps upon the pavement here, but suspicion, treachery and armaments. The
more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink ; the
nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past,
they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many
women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events
restrained by taboos. It is a humiliating outlook - though the greater the
darkness, the brighter shine the little lights, reassuring one another,
signalling: "Well, at all events, I 'm still here. I don't like it very
much, but how are you?" Unquenchable lights
of my aristocracy! Signals of the
invincible army ! "Come along - anyway, let's have a good time while we
can." I think they signal that too.
The Saviour of the future - if ever
he comes - will not preach a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy,
he will make
effective the goodwill and the good
temper which are already existing. In other words, he will introduce a new
technique. In
economics, we are told that if there
was a new technique of distribution there need be no poverty, and people would
not
starve in one place while crops were
being ploughed under in another. A similar change is needed in the sphere of
morals and
politics. The desire for it is by no
means new; it was expressed, for example, in theological terms by Jacopone da
Todi over six
hundred years ago. "Ordena
questo amore, tu che m'ami, "he said ; "O thou who lovest me set this
love in order." His
prayer was not granted, and I do not
myself believe that it ever will be, but here, and not through a change of
heart, is our
probable route. Not by becoming
better, but by ordering and distributing his native goodness, will Man shut up
Force into its
box, and so gain time to explore the
universe and to set his mark upon it worthily. At present he only explores it
at odd moments,
when Force is looking the other way,
and his divine creativeness appears as a trivial by-product, to be scrapped as
soon as the
drums beat and the bombers hum.
Such a change, claim the orthodox,
can only be made by Christianity, and will be made by it in God's good time:
man
always has failed and always will
fail to organize his own goodness, and it is presumptuous of him to try. This
claim - solemn
as it is - leaves me cold. I cannot
believe that Christianity will ever cope with the present world-wide mess, and
I think that such
influence as it retains in modern society
is due to the money behind it, rather than to its spiritual appeal. It was a
spiritual
force once, but the indwelling
spirit will have to be restated if it is to calm the waters again, and probably
restated in a non-
Christian form. Naturally a lot of
people, and people who are not only good but able and intelligent, will
disagree here; they
will vehemently deny that
Christianity has failed, or they will argue that its failure proceeds from the
wickedness of men, and
really proves its ultimate success.
They have Faith, with a large F. My faith has a very small one, and I only
intrude it because
these are strenuous and serious
days, and one likes to say what one thinks while speech is comparatively free;
it may not be free
much longer.
The above are the reflections of an
individualist and a liberal who has found liberalism crumbling beneath him and
at first felt
ashamed. Then, looking around, he
decided there was no special reason for shame, since other people, whatever
they felt, were
equally insecure. And as for
individualism - there seems no way of getting off this, even if one wanted to.
The dictator-hero can
grind down his citizens till they
are all alike, but he cannot melt them into a single man. That is beyond his
power. He can order
them to merge, he can incite them to
mass-antics, but they are obliged to be born separately, and to die separately,
and, owing
to these unavoidable termini, will
always be running off the totalitarian rails. The memory of birth and the
expectation of
death always lurk within the human
being, making him separate from his fellows and consequently capable of
intercourse with
them. Naked I came into the world,
naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I
am naked
under my shirt, whatever its colour.
This passage is from Forster’s 1938 essay
titled ‘Two Cheers for Democracy’
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was a
noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group.
Edward Morgan Forster was born in London
on January 1, 1871 as the son of an architect, who died before his only child
was two years old. Forster's childhood and much of his adult life was dominated
by his mother and his aunts. Forster's years at Tonbridge School as a teenager
were difficult - he suffered from the cruelty of his classmates. Forster
attended King's College, Cambridge (1897-1901), where he met members of the
later formed Bloomsbury group. After graduating he travelled in Italy and
Greece with his mother, and on his return began to write essays and short
stories for the liberal Independent Review. In 1905 Foster spent several months
in Germany as tutor to the children of the Countess von Armin.
His first novel, Where Angels Fear
To Tread appeared in 1905. In the following year he lectured on Italian art and
history for the Cambridge Local Lectures Board. The Longest Journey appeared in
1907 followed by A Room With A View (1908), based partly on the material from
extended holidays in Italy with his mother. Forster also wrote during the
pre-war years a number of short stories, which were collected in The Celestial
Omnibus (1914). Most of them were symbolic fantasies or fables.
Howards End (1910) was a story that
centered on an English country house and dealt with the clash between two
families, one interested in art and literature, the other only in business. The
book brought together the themes of money, business and culture. Forster then
embarked upon a new novel with a homosexual theme, Maurice which was revised
several times during his life, and finally published posthumously in 1971.
Between the years 1912 and 1913
Forster travelled in India. From 1914 to 1915 he worked for the National
Gallery in London. Following the outbreak of World War I, Forster joined the
Red Cross and served in Alexandria, Egypt. In 1921 Forster returned to India,
working as a private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas. India was the scene
of his masterwork A Passage To India (1924), an account of the country under
British rule. It was Forster's last novel - and for the remaining 46 years of
his life he devoted himself to other activities.
Forster wrote two biographies
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickenson (1934) and Marianne Thornton (1956). The essay
collections Abinger Harvest and Two Cheers for Democracy appeared in 1936 and
1951. The Hill of Devi a portrait of India with commentary appeared in 1953.
Another posthumous publication was the collection of short stories The Life to
Come (1972).
Forster contributed reviews and
essays to numerous journals, most notably the Listener and he was an active
member of PEN. In 1934 he became the first president of the National Council
for Civil Liberties, and after his mother's death in 1945, he was elected an
honorary fellow of King's and lived there for the remainder of his life. In
1949 Forster refused a knighthood. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1953
and in 1969 he accepted an Order of Merit. Forster died on June 7, 1970.
No comments:
Post a Comment