The New Freewoman: No. 9, Vol. 1, October 15th 1913.
by Dora Marsden
THERE can be not a shadow of doubt that whatever person or persons first applied the terms "Strike" or "Striking" to the species of industrial phenomena now observable in Dublin and elsewhere did the "workers" and all the poor in spirit-and pocket-a serious disservice. The folly of those who ask "What's in a name," is not far to seek, since the nearest approach to thinking effected by the majority of persons is nothing more than the making of a loose association between the images which a given term may call up. Consider this term "Strike "-a truly tragic misnomer since the complete difference between the industrial lions and the corresponding baa-lambs is held to reside in the attitude which they respectively adopt towards the "Strike." Those who follow the "Strike" are the militant Army, the rebels who storm the rich men's citadels. All this, one must presume, because "striking" has in other connections the meaning of "hitting." But there is no hitting in a Strike, except in the inverted sense it is the Strikers who are hit, by the police-batons no less than by the created circumstances. Which anyone who has been in a strike-area knows.
The "Strike" is essentially a passive thing, almost somnolent in its passivity. It is a cessation from work, a very leisurely, ordinary, and prosaic affair which anyone may do at pleasure. There is nothing except the individual preference of the artist, or the energetic person to make a man work, providing he makes arrangements for the consequences. There is nothing unusual or extraordinary in not working. The extraordinary thing is that so many people work. Of course, work or play, men need to eat: the extraordinary thing to accomplish therefore would be for heretofore "workers" to cease work and still to eat. That is what the people against whom they are measuring themselves have accomplished in advance. The rich need not work and yet they have what they need. They have already possessed themselves of other men's products in abundance. That is the only way in which one may eat and yet not work. The rich believe this is the correct thing to do. They consider themselves of so much importance that they must get what they can. They recognise no "what they ought." The "ought" is a virtue, and, rich as they are, they realise that virtues are luxuries which only the poor can afford. The poor can afford them because they see no impropriety in being poor. "So that virtue be upheld, let their mean persons fall," that is the creed of the poor. It fits like a hand into a glove into the creed of the rich, "That which upholds me is my virtue: virtues are those things which serve me." The rich man is in the happy position of approving of both sides-that is why the teachers and preachers come from the rich: they can be so genuine and strong in their exhortations with both kinds, their own, and that of the poor. The poor are malcontents. Their own creed won't work, and the other works too well. Nevertheless they still approve their own, and disapprove of that of the rich, and spend their time "arguing"-that futile process. They, the poor, attempt by this airy means to persuade the rich to adopt the poor man's creed; the rich are very well satisfied with the creed they have. It is so useful, that they must needs forego the poor man's, which is so very effective as ornament. In vain therefore the poor try to convert the "predatory" into the "honest," taking no account of the fact that they bespeak honesty's benefits in a manner like those sick, who sell nostrums for health.
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Belfast and Dublin at the present moment give a very apt illustration of how the two creeds work, of the two sorts of people-the servers and the served, the yielders and the takers, those whose actions are controlled by their ideas and those whose actions are controlled by their wants, the associates of Mr. Larkin and those of Sir Edward Carson. Mr. Larkin is engaged in stating the "rights" of his case; Sir Edward Carson prepares to establish his right or wrong, and in the supremely effectual way. He recognises that the "rights" of the case are nothing: all depends on the strength of the defendants. Mr. Larkin understands an idea: Sir Edward Carson understands men. One relies on thought-mists: the other on trial by combat. The Carson kind of person, could we imagine him in a position analogous to that of Mr. Larkin, as for instance with a provisionless army in a hostile country, would solve it in the only genuine way-not by ideas but by power. The Dublin situation stands thus: Starving people: food in the city. To the Carson kind, no ideas are involved in such a situation. It resolves itself into a knowledge of facts and their relation: in this case-the quickest route to the bread-shops. The Larkinites would be smashing arguments what time the Carsonites would be smashing shop-fronts. The "workers" argue that they have a "moral right" to the products of their labour. But it is talk and moonshine. They do not believe it. If they do, their starving condition displays an extraordinary cowardice. If they consider such products theirs, why do they not possess themselves of them?
We may not overlook the fact that to do so it would be necessary for them to make preparations sufficient to empower them to do it effectually. It is a fact however which for all except "born " servants goes without saying. The arming in Ulster, or anywhere where men and women have been in earnest illustrates the truism that ends imply means. Written in words these things are stupid. When a situation is genuine, either as in Ulster as a sport, or in Dublin as a dreaded necessity, no words should be required save to announce their completion.
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There exists at the present time a class of social thinkers, who, while despising the ways and works of the politicians, nevertheless make up an entire propaganda on expressions of despisings and criticisms of these "nothings." We are too well aware of the intellectual haplessness of such thinkers to be in any danger of imitating their quaint practice. What is unworthy is unworthy-even of consideration. The first reference therefore to a politician as such, in THE NEW FREEWOMAN, or to his works, is still to be made. If then, we mention the name of Sir Edward Carson, it will readily be believed that such mention has no reference whatsover to that gentleman's connection with an empty parliamentarian question as to whether an Ulsterman's masters shall be situated in London or in Dublin when they turn on him the coercion-screw. We know that he can be assured they will do it equally well in either place and that he would be quite as profitably engaged if he were fighting to retain the right to swallow plum stones.
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However, Sir Edward Casson, his "cause" apart, presents a biting commentary on the intelligence of these our times. He has taken its measure and proclaimed it nil. He thereupon proceeds to give a complete, fully illustrated demonstration of the nature of government, confident that these our people will be no whit the wiser. He is quite well aware that all the "lean kind," the "workers" and the "women" will be quite as much at a loss to find a meaning for things at the end as at the beginning. That they will say, "We are armed only with stones and hammers, and he uses rifles. But we are imprisoned while he is free." He knows they will never fall upon the answer, which is "Because." They will never realise that rebels armed with stones will be clapped in prison, but that rebels armed with rifles will be treated with the respect due to such, and be invited to a conference; that the "wrong" adequately defended, for government swiftly becomes a "right," while all the "right" in the universe defended by pebbles and moral phrases weighs with them exactly the weight of the pebbles. Very properly, right being might.
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It is a fact much to be commiserated that the advising of the down-trodden is invariably assumed by the humanitarian and morally-minded-their deadliest enemies. It appears almost inevitable it should be so, since the normal brand of egoists will have little to gain from them and they are not sufficiently sensitive to be conscious of what they lose by them. It should not however be hopeless to expect the advent of some super-egoist-one sufficiently sensitive of the value of living power to be mortally offended by the forced companionship of the - ineffectual. It should not be hopeless to expect that some delicately proud aristocrat, some poet, should be inconvenienced by the sight of wretchedness to the point of expounding the rich men's code, which is not the close possession of the rich. It cannot be that the lean ones will for ever be so sunk in virtue that they cannot understand facts when made clear to them; that the only way to abolish undue depredations is to abolish the non-predatory; that the poor are the cause of the rich; that when "everyone sees to it that he is a somebody, no one can be anybody"; certainly one could not be a capitalist.
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From pointing out that it is "ideas" of honesty, property, right, order, law and what-not which clutter the path and entangle the feet of workers in the plight of the Dublin strikers, preventing them from securing their necessary bread, we pass to a consideration of "ideas" in general, any and all ideas. It appears that our remarks on the subject which appeared in these comments a month ago, and which to our mind were explicit and clear, have been quite misunderstood. It behoves us to be clearer and more explicit still. All ideas are bad: good, i.e., attractive ideas worse than the silly and repellant, because they win more attention and allegiance; ideas which are considered big are worse than those called little; and the least is too big exactly by its own size. Minds which evolve ideas are diseased; they are moving in the direction in which madness lies. An idea is a label with nothing to it: a preoccupation with nothing. The greatest idea in the world has as much value- and no more- in the life of men as there is in a game of draughts. It is amusing for the sport in the thing , and it has the same amount of relevancy to the business of life. When men try to fit their lives into their ideas and identify themselves with them they are like chess players trying to become chess men. When the teachers and preachers say, "Advance, Justice," and Mr. Smith steps forward, or "Forward, Liberty," and Mr. Jones goes forward, this metamorphosis has taken place. The single concepts are the different pieces; the general ideas are the organised games. In their totality they are "make-believe and mumming," and the further men get away from them the nearer they get to real things. A thought, i.e., an idea, is not a real thing: its existence is verbal, like that of a dragon or snark.
When therefore Mr. Benj. R. Tucker challenges us, as he did in our last issue, to find him an idea born in America bigger than Proudhon's outlined Social Contract, we are inclined to give it up. It is a thing difficult to accomplish, for not only is Proudhon's idea "big" in itself, but it is of the kind which Americans, being young in social experiment, are likely to judge bigger still. It is, in fact, a very dragon, big and very impossible in everything except words. If we outlined a scheme for building a block of flats as high as St. Paul's with lily-stalks for materials, and carefully went into the joys of living therein, and assessed the penalty for occupants who damaged the joinery, may we say, we should consider we were doing something very similar to that which Proudhon does in outlining the social contract. It need not be asserted in the pages of THE NEW FREEWOMAN that we consider Proudhon was a blazing light in a dark age, but the passage quoted by Mr. Tucker, we think, shows him at his worst. If it were the boyish essay of a youth in his teens, with the instinct of the pedagogue, we should put a pencil through half of it as bombast and fustian. The half left would consist of adjectives and prepositions. It is the kind of things which overpowers our mental digestion. We are aware that some of our American friends think that we quibble overmuch about terms, and we sympathise with them to the extent that in so doing we disturb a very amusing sport. There is nothing more amusing than rhetoric when one has the swing of it. It is as jolly and as chest-swelling as getting drunk, and without the consequences. However, this journal is not run in the interests of sport. We expect from it a return of definite advantages, of which not the least are life data expressed in terms of the mobile. By being critical of the static, we at least create a void which in itself will force the production of a more accurate substitute. We point out that the entire commerce of any journal is wholly in terms, and writers who proffer expressions in questionable media make matters as difficult as in business, traders would, who tendered doubtful coin.
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While handling the question of "ideas" it is worthwhile referring to "Temporary Opinion," their despised poor relation. It explains much, especially the fact that it is held in general disrepute. The reason it is held in bad odour by the common sense of men is usually held to be because of its "temporariness." A prejudice which is opinion made permanent wins greater respect, while in opinion etherialised still further, lifted high above Time and Space, we recognise the Idol Perfected, the Platonic idea. The truth of the matter is that the emphasis of disrespect has been alloted to the wrong partner in the couplet. It is not the lack of temporariness that offends, it is the fact that it is opinion. To be "of an opinion" is to be still in the grip of an uncompleted process; it is to be "still thinking." Now to think is to hesitate; awaiting the verification of a fact. One half of the thinking process is to arrest action: to hold the thinker in hesitation, doubt and unaction, a deplorable condition for the common sense man. "Temporary opinion" therefore is disreputable because it points to a task begun and left incomplete. We think in order not to think. We think in order to know. The man who "opines" something in the presence of a person requiring facts is in low esteem. A business firm says it requires a "man with ideas." It does nothing of the sort. It would pack him to the right-about in an hour's time. What it wants as opposed to what it says, is a man who already knows facts, or knows how to get them, and who can arrange a series of actions well in accord with them-a matter very different from "having ideas. " Most people have had the misfortune to meet the "man with ideas," all complete with a century of suggestions founded on nothing-the happy guesser. He does not venture far within the precincts of the physical scientists; they know too much to suffer an interruption in the shape of an "I think," which a little work in the laboratory would turn into "I know." It is on the fringe of the mental and moral sciences that he finds his untrammelled hunting-ground. There, there exists little or nothing in the shape of definite knowledge to hamper him in his flights. He thinks himself into the empyrean in the course of a morning, and will "construct" a social commonwealth within the limits of a newspaper article. He is however falling somewhat out of esteem. If the Freewoman lives he will be as extinct as the dodo within a generation.
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We shall have gone far towards rounding the Verbal Age to finality when we recognise that there exists nothing save things and the relations between things, and that all words which purport to express anything other-any "thought "-avail for nothing but gratuitous illusion and irrevelance. The first thing of which we have any knowledge-the only thing of which we have first-hand knowledge-is the life within ourselves. We call it our soul, meaning thereby an individuated entity thrown out free by the stream of living energy. The soul is not a thought, and has nothing to do with thought.
It is a "thing" as electricity running along a wire is a thing, with movements, consciousness, repulsions, attractions, making excursions and returning to its shell through the apertures for entry and exit it has made; a thing which forages, feeds, dissipates or grows, by means we can learn if we keep watch.
It is this thing, a soul, which it is the province of art as distinct from science, to make chart of. The difference between science and art is not a difference of method but of subject matter. Art is the scientific spirit applied to soul, observing, collating, noting. The reason "art" so called, sprawls itself out in spectacular incompetence is because art does not know itself. It is in a position analogous to that in which science was, when astronomy was astrology, chemistry alchemy, and mathematics witchcraft, that is, when scientists looked at facts but with a preconceived idea, a thought, interpolated between facts and their intelligence of them. So inferior artists look at the soul-when they look at it at all- with a notion interposed between it and them.
Moreover, artists no more than other men have escaped the tendency to look for, in soul, the same characteristics which the scientist found in "material" things, and not finding them, they have concocted them. Hence the concepts. A poet concerning himself with ideas is a sad spectacle; so ill-employed, busily propagating illusions. It is when we consider how little grip art has on the world's life that we comprehend the difference between the major and minor artists, a difference which has nothing to do with the length and profusion of their work, or their esteem with posterity, but simply with what is called their superior powers of creation. The meaning of "creative " is worth thinking over, since the creative artist can no more create his material than the scientist can create his. The creative artist is one in whom life beats strongly; whose emotions, instead of being so feeble that he is capable of mistaking them for something else, are so strong and defined that they secure their right description. Most men feel very little to which they would be capable of supplying articulate expression, and most poets are like most men. The major artists are major men, and their "works" are a consequence. They are the expression of an energy which is either unknown or known only in rare flashes to ordinary men. Their works "bear true witness." Being what they are in themselves, the difficulty would be for them to produce "works" which were other; whereas the merely artistic are in the position of a witness who tries to make a clear statement from the shreds of an only half-heard tale. The difference as a consequence is one of truthfulness and sincerity. Their effect is not merely to describe the true, but by so doing to explode the false. Hence, art comes as a flail to a concept-based morality. Men will continue to jog along, higgledy-piggledy, hugger-mugger as they do, by the dim gleam of the artist which resides in us all, until the major artist arrives. He will make life-clear-or clearer because life in him glows clearly.
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There is one aspect of life which more than any other awaits the treatment of the Major Poet-the one quite inaccurately, to our mind, called Sex. The "Sex-psychologist" should be a poet, not a physical scientist. The meaning of all this confusion of sex can be read out of-a strong heart. It will never be found in the retailment of the pathetic small pranks of the emotionally mad. The matter awaits another Lucretius to unravel the nature of the thing we call Soul. It can be done. Anyone who has read the works of the sex pathologists, German and other, must after rallying from the shock-of the appalling "terms "-far more terrifying than the things themselves-be struck by the fact that all and any of these "perversions" are incipient in a clear-eyed child not in her teens. It is question begging to call the matter sex; it is an unrest and discontent in the soul itself; its diagnosis belongs neither to the scientist nor the doctor: it belongs to the poet. For which reason, there appears unwisdom in the attempt to make out a new sex-"type" in what is called the Uranian-a term of more than ambiguous content, as defined by those who use it. As we are concerned to break down the conception of "types of individuals," we cannot be expected to look too friendlily upon an attempt to create another of doubtful accuracy. If it be friendship which Uranianism is meant to cover, friendship is the most normal thing in the world; felt or desired by men and women in proportion to their vigour and vitality. Friends need no propaganda on their behalf. They hold life's lucky-packets and are not slow to say so.
If however it relates to a physiological idiosyncracy, it may be an advantage or disadvantage according to its possessor's power to turn it. In the happier case it is a matter for felicitation, and in the unhappy a matter for kindness which from most men and most women is forthcoming. If, finally, it means what a correspondent has called "gratuitous vice," it belongs to that category of life's unexplained facts, which await the knowledge of life only the great in heart, the major poet, can bring. The Uranian propagandists are very far from explicit: we wonder if they are conscious that they appear to use in an unwarranted way the happy fortune and repute of the first and second class in its more distinguished members, to cast a romantic glow over the unhappy plight of the third and the rest of the second. Indeed, it appears to be this kink in the character of the Uranian propaganda which offends the mind far more than anything in the least attractive features to be found in homosexuality. In any case, men and women should be counted qualified to bespeak their own emotions. We should learn the things of love and friendship from those who feel them, not as a propaganda or a plaint for protection from the police, but as the irrepressible expression of an emotion of which they are proud.