1. in_ernet_dli_2015_170761_2015_170761_Scheherazade-Or-The-Future-Of-The-English-Novel

SCHEHERAZADE

OR

THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

For a full list of this Series see the end

of this Book

SCHEHERAZADE

OR

THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

BY

JOHN CARRUTHERS

LONDON :

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.

New York : E. P. DUTTON & Co.

Now the Vizier had two daughters ;

the elder of whom was named Scheherazade ; and the

younger, Dunyazade . The former had read

various books of histories, and the lives of

preceding kings, and stories of past generations :

it is asserted that she had collected together a

thousand books of histories, relating to pre-

ceding generations and kings, and works of

the poets. . .

Her father, the Vizier, then took her to the

King, who, when he saw him, was rejoiced, and

said, Hast thou brought me what I desired ?

He answered, Yes . When the King, there-

fore, introduced himself to her, she wept ; and

he said to her, What aileth thee ?

She answered,

O King, I have a young sister, and I wish to

take leave of her . So the King sent to her ;

and she came to her sister, and embraced her,

and sat near the foot of the bed ; and after she

had waited for a proper opportunity, she said,

By Allah ! O my sister, relate to us a story

to beguile the waking hour of our night. Most

willingly, answered Scheherazade, if this virtuous

King permit me . And the King, hearing these

words, and being restless, was pleased with the

idea of listening to the story ; and thus, on the

first night of the thousand and one, Scheherazade

commenced her recitations.

Made and Printed in Great Britain by

M. F Robinson & Co., Ltd , The Library Press, Lowestoft

SCHEHERAZADE

OR

THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

§ I

To forecast the future of any art is a chancy undertaking at best. A new writer, a new painter, a new musician appears unheralded and, tiresome creature that he is, goes and does the very thing that critics have declared he shouldn't, or couldn't. Happily, the critics do not always live to see it. Dr Johnson, for example, did not live to see the appearance of The Lyrical Ballads, less than twenty years after his declaration concerning Pope :

New sentiments and new images others may produce ; but to attempt any further improvements of versification will be dangerous. Art and diligence have now

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done their best, and what shall be added

will be the effort of tedious toil and need-

less curiosity.

Perhaps it was just as well ; for he

would have been sadly put out, not

only by the new sentiments and new

images, but also by the further improve-

ments in versification that Coleridge at

least inaugurated. We all know, too,

how annoyed the critics were by Keats

and Flaubert, Cézanne and Wagner and

Debussy ; and over Mr Joyce and Mr

Epstein and the Sitwells controversy

still rages. In any attempt to predict

the English novel of to-morrow, we do

well to be cautious.

But not, surely, to be over-cautious.

There are professors and belle-lettrists

of no little retrospective acumen who

meet all inquiries about the future with

mystery-mongering of the crudest kind.

(The London Mercury is their favourite

journal.) Genius, they say, is quite

unpredictable : be content with what is

past and present ; don’t trouble your-

self with what is to come—till it comes.

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But that is only fear of being afterwards proved wrong, one of the commonest academic vices ; and genius is a word employed chiefly to conceal our ignorance and to beg three-fourths of our questions. The development of an art is not wholly erratic and haphazard, and the future, if only we can discern it, lies already in the present. Why not look for it ? Why not, in order to make a guess at the probable course of English fiction in the next quarter of a century, scrutinize the English fiction of to-day in the hope of distinguishing its growing points from its dead ends ? What does it matter if some of the growing points unaccountably wither, and a few of the seeming dead ends unaccountably revive ?

§ 2

And first let us clear out of the way the notion that English fiction to-day

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is composed entirely of dead ends. This notion is not so rare as we might think. It appears to have been held, for instance, by an anonymous writer in The New Statesman for 5th March, 1927, who concluded an enthusiastic and on the whole discriminating review of the English translation of Jew Süss with the following remarkable sentence :

However, it is difficult to find serious fault with a publisher who in the desert of our own post-war literature brings us a book like this.

Desert ! Was ever word more inappropriately chosen in the haste of rounding off a column ? Jungle, thicket, flood, spate, swamp, morass—if you like. Any of these words, though perhaps a little strong, would not have been wholly unsuitable. But desert ? Surely not. Our post-war literature, and especially its fiction, may be rank, undisciplined, luxurious, and sometimes extravagant, but heaven knows there is plenty of it, and of what there is

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very little can be justly described as

parched or barren.

As against this anonymous reviewer

so magnanimous as not to find serious

fault with Mr Martin Secker, let me

quote M. Abel Chevalley, who, being

French, is not likely to suffer from

national bias in our favour.

Les pages qui précèdent auraient été

écrites en vain si l'impression n'en restait

que le roman britannique est l'un des genres

les plus vivants, les plus vivaces, dans la

littérature du monde entier. Je n'ai point

caché sa principale faiblesse : défaut

général de composition et de concentration

surabondance, suractivité, surproduction.

Mais cette sorte de faiblesse n'est pas à la

portée de tous. C'est la pauvreté de l'opu-

lence, la rançon de la liberté. Quels trésors

d'observation, quelle richesse de sujets, de

types, de procédés, quelle fidélité quasi-photo-

graphique dans la plupart de ces oeuvres,

mêmes les moins 'bonnes', quels trésors

de vie elles recèlent et révèlent ; combien

étriquée paraît dans son ensemble la pro-

duction romanesque des autres littératures ;1

1 'Le roman anglais de notre temps' (1921),

p. 245.

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Superabundance, superactivity, super-production-if these words were applicable in 1921, are they not equally so to-day ?

The average number of novels published each year since 1918 in England and the United States may be, and I believe is, rather less than the average for the years between 1900 and 1914. That is neither here nor there. What is important is that far more of those being published each year are good, and far less, unmitigated rubbish ; and moreover, that the average level of the good is steadily rising. The number of men and women of high talent whose best work is being cast into the novel form is very great ; as witness Walter de la Mare, Norman Douglas, E. M. Forster, David Garnett, Stephen Hudson, Aldous Huxley, C. E. Montague, R. H. Mottram, Liam O'Flaherty, and T. F. Powys ; · Stella Benson, Rose Macaulay, May Sinclair, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf ; Sherwood Anderson, James Branch Cabell, Willa Cather,

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E. E. Cummings, John dos Passos,

Sinclair Lewis, and Edith Wharton ;

and young writers not yet established

like H. E. Bates, Margaret Kennedy,

Pauline Smith, Ruth Suckow, and

Silvia Townsend Warner.1 From all

these we have learned to expect a higher

level of competence in their craft than

from similar writers in the first ten

years of the century. And we get it.

Which of them, except possibly Mr

Sinclair Lewis, would dare to write now

in the slovenly manner of Mr Wells

and Mr Bennett at their worst ?

Which, except occasionally Mr Montague and

Mr Cabell, would dare to be so slick

and vapid as Mr Galsworthy when he

wrote The White Monkey and The

Silver Spoon ?

Yet there is something to be said for

our anonymous reviewer's opinion, all the same.

Our post-war novelists do

not make a desert, but the mischief is

1 I have deliberately omitted from this list

all authors whose reputation was made before

the war

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that none of them make a masterpiece either. Ever and again one of their

books seems to miss being a·master-

piece by only the breadth of a thumb-

nail. Think of Mr Joyce's Ulysses,

some of Mr Lawrence's long-short

stories, Mr Douglas's South Wind, Mr

Huxley's Uncle Spencer (also a long-

short), and Mrs Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.

Reading any of these books for the

first time, we may well grow excited

and cry out that this at last is what we

have looked for and hoped for, that

this at last is the real thing. But alas !

it never has been. When the book has

been read and laid aside for a month or

two, we know in our hearts that we

have suffered disappointment again,

that the indubitable masterpiece of

English post-war fiction is still to

write. These novels are good, some of

them very good, others, like Ulysses,

diabolically influe::ial ; but not one of

them has been quite good enough to

take its place in the canon along with

The Egoist, The Return of the Native,

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Lord Jim, Maurice Guest, Tonobungay,

The Old Wives' Tale, and the first three

parts of The Forsyte Saga.

Why is it ? Why have none of these

writers, most of whom have technical

ability equal if not superior to that of

Joseph Conrad, Mr Hardy, and Mr

Wells, and all of whose worst books are

better than the worst of Joseph Conrad,

Mr Hardy, and Mr Wells, yet been

able to surpass the late Victorians and

the Edwardians at their best ?

It is not enough to answer : ' All a

question of genius in the authors'.

That tells us nothing, and, besides, it

doesn't happen to be true. In genius

(whatever that may mean exactly)

Mr Joyce is not inferior to Conrad, nor

Mr Lawrence to Mr Bennett, nor Mrs

Woolf to Mr Galsworthy.

Nor is it enough (though certainly a

better answer) to say that the best

contemporary writers;whether in prose

or in verse, are more speculative and

experimental than their predecessors

at the beginning of the century, more

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suspicious of literary traditions, more eager to try out new forms, more exacting in their standards of success. All that is true enough. The growing points in contemporary literature are to be found : in poetry in the work of Dr Robert Bridges( the most astounding of laureates), ' H.D ', Mr Robert Graves, Mr T. S. Eliot, Mr Richard Aldington and Miss Edith Sitwell, rather than in the work of Mr W. H. Davies, Mr Edmund Blunden, Mr J. C. Squire, and Mr Edward Shanks ; and in prose fiction in the work of Mrs Woolf, rather than in that of Mr Hugh Walpole. The future undoubtedly lies with those who are to-day dissatisfied and experimental, and who, just for that reason, cannot produce for us work that is itself satisfying. Again and again in literary history the same process may be seen at work : first, experimentation by writers who seem to later generations to have been of the second rank, but who might easily have appeared in the first rank had they not been forced to

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dissipate their energies on problems of method ; then the writers of indubit-

able first rank who take over the established forms as they stand, and

write masterpieces therein; then the hosts of mediocre writers who also

accept the forms without question, and wear them threadbare ; and then—

well, then the process begins all over again. Consider the rise, glory and

decline of Elizabethan drama from Gorboduc to Middleton's Anything for

a Quiet Life, of Restoration comedy from Shadwell to Cibber, of Russian

prose fiction from Gogol to Gorky. And so it is with the English novel of to-day.

The established forms dating from last century are stereotyped and rather

badly worn, and they no longer satisfy the writers who count ; but the new

forms are still unsettled, still matters for discussion and controversy and

trying out. Our fiction (like our poetry) is unmistakably transitional.

This, however, is only to push the question farther back. What is it

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transitional from ? What is it transitional to ? Why should our post-war novelists in England and . America, especially in England, be dissatisfied and experimental ? - The complete answers to these questions cannot be given in a paragraph. Indeed, to make them really complete, we should have to undertake a far more searching analysis of contemporary life and the literary history of the last fifty years in Europe and America than is possible within an essay of this kind. But this is plain : genius apart, the reasons why English and American post-war fiction falls short of the highest standards are to be found, partly in the spiritual condition of post-war England and America and partly in the oddly confusing literary and scientific influences that have been brought to bear on post-war novelists. Let us summarily consider these in turn.

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§ 3

We have got so used to the cliché that the age we live in is one of disillusionment, cynicism, agnosticism, and the like—a characteristically jazz age, in fact—that we are liable either to accept it without troubling to think of its implications, or to deny it outright from sheer cussedness. When we grow desperately weary, as all of us do from time to time, of jazz and modernism, sex and anthropology, the poems of Mr Eliot and the savagery of Mr Wyndham Lewis, we tend to comfort ourselves with the thought that the bulk of our people are untouched by all this clamour, bustle and absurdity, that it is only a small part of the nation, a few hundreds perhaps in London, shouting across the Atlantic to a few hundreds in New York, who are vocal and ridiculous in their disenchantment.

' We emancipated people have got into

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the habit of thinking we're the world,' says Michael Mont to Fleur in The White Monkey; ' well ! we aren't ; we're an excrescence, small, and noisy. We talk as if all the old values and prejudices had gone ; but they've no more gone, really, you know, than the rows of villas and little grey houses . . . I'm a bit fed up with the attitude of our crowd. If emancipation were true, one could stick it ; but it's not. There isn't ten per cent difference between now and thirty years ago . . . Our lot think they're the tablecloth, but they're only the fringe.'

And most of us fall into Michael's state of mind now and then. Human nature, we say, doesn't change from generation to generation ; or, if it does, the change is so gradual that we needn't take account of it. Human nature is much the same now as it was ten, fifteen, twenty thousand years ago, when Crô-Magnon magicians covered the roofs of their caves with paintings of the bison and wild boar. How foolish, then, to make-believe that we to-day are vastly different from our

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fathers'and grandfathers in the nine-teenth century !

Human nature does not change. No,

but human nurture does, and very

rapidly ; and it is with nurture we have

chiefly to deal. Nature alone will not

take us far ; in a pure state it does

not long outlast the cradle. Literary

critics are given to talking a great deal

of nonsense about it. They say, for

example, that art, and especially poetry,

the drama, and fiction, must concern

itself with ' the elements of human

nature ' and not with the accidents of

a particular age and civilization. As

if art could ! Why, no one yet knows

what the elements of human nature are ;

how many of them there are ; what

their relationships may be enter sc ; and

how far they grow, atrophy or combine

under the pressure of experience. The

psychologists are still vigorously dis-

puting whether they ought to be

termed instincts, emotions, dispositions,

G factors, S factors, or what not, and,

until this dispute is settled, no one else

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need bother his head very deeply about it. Whatever the elements of human nature turn out to be in the end, they can never concern the artist directly ; for they will always remain general, vague, and abstract, convenient tools for thought, but never more than implicit in the concrete realization that the artist seeks to achieve. And that concrete realization, let us make no mistake about it, needs must be given in terms of nurture, that is to say, in terms of some particular age and civilization.

Now, though it is sometimes a relief to sentimentalists like Mr Galsworthy, and Mr Stanley Baldwin, and President Coolidge, to pretend that our present age is not very different from those that have preceded it, that all appearances to the contrary are due to our focussing on a trivial minority of vocal and conspicuous people in London and Vienna, Paris and New York, and that therefore the social and political formulas of yesterday will still serve with little

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modification for to-day, this relief is purchased at the sacrifice of truth. Jazz is universal. Disillusionment does not lie merely on the surface of our civilization, it has eaten right through. Michael Mont's crowd may be only a fringe, and rather a ragged one at that ; but the tablecloth itself is moth-eaten and ready to split into holes at a touch. The warp of every civilization is its convictions, and the warp of ours has got worn out rather suddenly in many vital places.

Consider religion. Thirty years ago, most of the leading minds in Europe and America were agnostic, and freely admitted it ; now, about two-thirds of these nations are agnostic, whether they freely admit it or not.1 And the

1 It is said that 100,000 churches in the United States had to close down last year, and, as I write, there comes into my hand the report of an address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by the Lord High Commissioner, in which address he is said to have called attention to 'the appalling fact' that much more than one-third of the population belongs to no church at all.

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remaining third is going Catholic or Fundamentalist, the violence of this reaction being as significant a mark of the essentially irreligious character of our age as any we could look for.

Consider morals and manners. Few of us (perhaps none) pick up and lay down a sexual relationship with the casualness of characters in Mr D. H Lawrence’s or Mr Aldous Huxley’s novels. But whoever imagines that sexual conventions are as strong in the majority of people to-day as they were in 1900, deceives himself. Virtually all of us are ready to question one or more (usually more) of the sexual conventions of the nineteenth century, even when from timidity or the wish for a quiet life we are reluctant to carry out experiments on our own private account. The enfranchisement of women has made that inevitable. Nor has the interest in so-called sex novels all been worked up by catch-penny novelists, as some of the parsons would make out, or provoked by fanat-

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ical psycho-analysts with a kink in the brain; the readers themselves demand that a great deal of sexual experimentation shall be carried on for them vicariously in the pages of books.1

As with sex, so with dress, smoking, dancing, alcohol, and the like : standards and conventions are not much more certain in a Perthshire village than in Chelsea or St John's Wood.

And again the violent reactions are fully as significant—Prohibition, Anti-cigarette Leagues, and Boston and New York Societies for the Suppression of Good Literature and Similar Vices.

Consider politics. How many in England except Members of Parliament and their political agents now believe very seriously in the House of Commons? Lord Grey of Fallodon may continue to proclaim his faith in democratic representative government ; most of

1 The same thing happened, though necessarily on a smaller scale, affecting fewer people, in the years 1660-1700 See Mr Bonamy Dobree's admirable book on Restoration Comedy.

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us respect him for sincerity but decline

to share his faith. As for Washington

and the American Constitution, they

have become two of the world's best

standing jokes. Politics in the narrow

sense no longer attracts more than

third-rate intellects, since nearly every-

body has found it out for the sometimes

degrading and generally silly game that

it is. Hence again the violent reactions

in Communism, Fascism, industrial

action, and so forth. When England

and America cannot contrive to put

any better brains than Mr Baldwin's

and President Coolidge's into No. 10

Downing St. and the White House, is

it surprising that most of us should

either become contemptuously indiffer-

ent or take to preaching revolution, red

or black ?

Our age, then, is riddled with disbelief.

Though few of us are disillusioned

and agnostic about everything, all

of us are disillusioned and agnostic

about some things, and most, about a

good many. And who can wonder ?

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The process began long before the war ;

it was already noteworthy enough in

the later nineteenth century to be

given a label, fin de siècle. But the war,

and even more the peace, rapidly

accelerated it. Had it not been for

the war, we might still be reasonably

certain that the man in the street

believed in quite a number of things ;

as matters stand now, the only one we

can be certain that he does believe in

is the money in his pocket. And why,

when all is said, should he believe in

anything less tangible ? He has seen

a few million lives tossed away for

no reason that he or anyone else

has yet been able to discover ; he

has met millionaire shipowners, and

officers engaged on war propaganda,

and fighting parsons, and bellicose

base-commandants, and has seen all

of them wearing the Order of the

British Empire or some other decora-

tion more expensive to procure ; and,

oddest experience of all, he has read or

listened to the speeches of Mr Lloyd

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George and been able to compare promise with performance. What illusions could we expect him to have left ? What comment on the world could we expect from him save : 'The whole damned show is a blind and uncontrollable machine grinding men into dust. Why bother ?',

Clearly, such a state of things cannot last indefinitely. If it did, our civilization would crumble to bits and disappear. And indeed, there are already signs, for those who are willing to see them, that it is passing. Most of the old convictions are gone beyond recovery, but their place is being slowly taken by new ones, which some people who belong essentially to Victorian times mistakenly acclaim as just the old convictions happily revived.1

§ 4

How does all this affect literature, and more particularly the novel, our

1 See below, § 7.

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immediate concern ?—In three ways : in content, form, and spiritual quality.

The effect on content is obvious enough. The novels of to-day directly mirror the conditions of religious, moral and political instability in which we all perforce live. Hence their freedom of incident and speech. Almost any incident may now be related, almost anything may now be said—and only printers' readers correcting proofs appear to be much upset about it. Do such incidents happen, are such naughty-naughty words used in life ? If so, print them ! That seems to be the only rule we are now bound by.

A manifest gain, this. A gain in sincerity and frankness, virtues always to be prized. But not an unmixed gain, since it has made possible the publication of novels of the Naughty-Sentimental kind, like Mr Michael Arlen's and Mr Alec Waugh's, and of the Brutal-Sentimental kind, like Mr T. F. Powys's. Both kinds are negligible

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in the history of literature, but Mr Powys is much too good a writer to be lightly passed over, and it is a thousand pities that he should have damned himself, at least for the time being, by an attitude. His later books read like malicious parodies on his earlier.

Other arts can, other arts do, turn their backs on the world as it is revealed to the eye of the practical man. We no longer ask that music should imitate anything ; and painting and sculpture in their turn are being rapidly enfranchised from the tyranny of 'Nature'. A similar trend, away from representation and towards the abstract, may be discerned in poetry, drama, and the cinema ; the last two of which are free to borrow devices from the visual and plastic arts and so to stimulate the enjoyment due to visual and plastic rhythms. Not so the novel. The moment the novelist turns his back on life he forfeits his title. Qua novelist, he is concerned only with men and

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women*who live according to the stand-

ards of a concrete and confusing world,

and not*according to the standards of

a delightful but abstract pattern.

Whether he likes it or not, he must

represent. If he finds the world rather

a dismal, or rather a disgusting, place

-as well he may sometimes-two

alternatives only are open to him :

either to turn satirist and stay within

the convention of fiction, or to give up

the writing of fiction altogether. He

cannot hold on to the world of every-

day with one hand and grope about for

some kind of fairyland with the other.

At least, he cannot do it successfully—

as the failures of Mr Walter de la Mare,

Mr E. M. Forster, and Mr David Garnett

prove. Fairyland is a delicious place

to escape into, provided you have the

right sort of mind to enjoy a sojourn

there ; but you must escape, you must

let go your hold on the world of every-

day, if only for the moment. You

cannot have both together. Your

celestial omnibus may freely ply for

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hire in any heaven of your imagining,

but ít must not call to set down passeng-

gers at Golder's Green and* Putney.

And the mischief about our present age

is that, no matter how we hate it, not

one of us can really let go his hold on

it. We take Golder's Green and Putney

along with us to indict our very dreams

of heaven.

So much for the content of literature.

What of the form ? Here, our dis-

illusionment in practical affairs has

already begun to exert a marked

influence on poetry, the drama (such

as it is), and perhaps the short story ;

but on the novel, hardly at all. Poets,

dramatists, and short-story writers have

endeavoured to compensate for con-

fusion in life by a tightening up of

pattern in art, just as the painters, the

sculptors, the musicians, and a few of

the architects, are doing. And that is

all to the good. Novelists ought to be

consciously doing the same, but few of

them are, and none of them boldly

enough. Which is one of the reasons—

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I believe, the chief reason—why they are not giving us the masterpieces.1

Most important of all, however—for in the end everything hinges on this—the disillusionment of our age has resulted in a marked decline of spiritual quality in our fiction. It is often said that the best writers of any age are in advance of it. And so they are. But by the best writers we generally mean the best poets, the best philosophers, and the best scientists ; but not necessarily, or even usually, the best novelists. Donne, Milton, Blake, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley ; Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Señor Unamuno ; Galileo, Leibnitz, Newton, Pasteur, and Herr Einstein : these were all definitely in advance of their age. But Fielding and Jane Austen, Scott and Thackeray, Turgenev and Henry James : these were not. The very nature of the novelist’s art binds him to the present with bonds other writers are free from.

1 For a fuller discussion of this point see the concluding section of this essay.

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He is first an observer, then a recorder.

He must be not only in the world, but of it ; for how else should he gain the

sympathy and understanding without which all his art is vain ?

If his thought ranges far beyond that of his con-

temporaries, if his sensibility is pain-

fully keener than theirs, and if. his

conduct breaks through most, or even

many, of their well-established con-

ventions, he will probably turn poet or

philosopher, mystic or revolutionary ;

and almost certainly he will discon-

tinue writing novels. Witness Tolstoy.

But if, as nearly always is the case, he

remains in essentials a man of his time,

the prevailing thought and temper of

his time will determine the spiritual

quality of his work.

For, if a novelist's work is to be

significant and not merely entertaining,

it is necessary that he should be a man

of strong and comprehensive beliefs.

It is not enough that his mind be

capacious, with windows open to all

the floating ideas of his day and genera-

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tion ; he must, like every other writer

who aims at more than ephemeral

popularity, organise these discrete ideas

into a stable attitude towards the

world, an attitude that readers can at

least feel behind his work, even though

neither he nor they can define it in

terms of logic. This is his philosophy

of life, and a novelist without a philoso-

phy of life may safely be ignored.

This philosophy of his need not be

orthodox, need not, that is to say,

conform at all closely to the standard

philosophy of his age as held by the

man in the strect. It may, of course,

Fielding and Richardson, different

though they were from each other in

many respects, were both orthodox

enough ; so were Sterne, Smollett, Jane

Austen, Scott, Balzac, and Thackeray.

Mr Hardy was not. If you like, Mr

Hardy was an exception, and one of

the most striking of recent times, to the

rule that the novelist is seldom far in

advance of his age : to which cause may

be attributed the long delay before his

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work was generally recognised; and the wrath it still excites in obsolete minds like Mr Chesterton's. But it is important to remember that Mr Hardy was always a poet. And now that his poems have been published we can see more clearly that his philosophic attitude was the direct outcome of nineteenth-century science impinging on a poetic mind of singular depth and sensibility. It was not the attitude of the man in the street fifty years ago, though it is very nearly that of the man in the street to-day. But it was the prevailing attitude of the best scientific minds of fifty years ago—a tragic apprehension of the world as ruled by mechanical forces utterly indifferent to man's aims and desires. According to this philosophy, to man remains the duty of resisting and enduring, since only so can he affirm his own ideals of truth and justice, charity and honour. Nevertheless the forces against which he sets himself are stronger than he, and in the end they will break him,

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not from enmity or with conscious purpose, but unwittingly, mechanically, as a machine will break whatever living thing gets caught within its smoothly running wheels. The Immanent Will labours

all-unknowingly

Like one whom reveries numb.

It works unconsciously, as heretofore, Eternal artistries in Circumstance, Whose patterns, wrought by rapt aesthetic rote, Seem in themselves Its single listless aim, And not their consequence.

And man may be likened to Egdon Heath :

A place perfectly accordant with man's nature–neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly : neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame ; but, like man, slighted and enduring ; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy immobility.

With this philosophy of life let us compare that of another novelist, later born than Mr Hardy but earlier dead,

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Joseph Conrad. For all their dis-similarity in most respects, these two men were strangely alike in their fundamental attitude towards the world ; though in Conrad, no doubt, we may trace a certain melodramatic intolerance of fate that is lacking from the maturer and more equable English-man, and a tendency, perhaps more Slavonic than English, perhaps more pelagian than terrestrial, to personify the forces of nature and endow them with a purposive malignancy which is denied to Mr Hardy's ' raptly magni-potent Will '. In this connection one remembers particularly the atmosphere with which Conrad invests the finest of his long-short stories, Heart of Darkness, and many of his purplest passages about the sea.

In Conrad, however, as in Mr Hardy, the burden of emphasis is thrown, not on the blind mechanical fate which thwarts man's worthiest endeavours, but on man the faithful and enduring, who is thwarted. And this, after all,

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is a point of supreme importance.

So sombre a creed as theirs might well

seem unpropitious for a novelist, whose

chief concern is with our human passions

and desires, our human hopes and fears.

If it is our destiny to be thwarted and

broken, if human values are merely

human, with no applicability beyond

the narrow range of mankind, if the

forces that rule the world know, and

can know, nothing of love and hate,

good and evil, joy and sorrow, then why

trouble to record the doings of the

impotent creatures that we are ?

Because, say both writers, human values

are supremely worth proclaiming, for

their own sake, irrespective of their

ultimate success or failure in the world.

Faithful and enduring, man may be

broken by God, yet in his very defeat

attain to a nobility that a blind and

mechanical God can never approach.

Such a creed used to be called pessi-

mistic, and perhaps when compared to

the smug optimism of ' God's in his

heaven, all’s right with the world ', it

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is. But it is also exultant. And it is

this note of triumph, sounding like a

ground bass through all the best work

of both writers, that distinguishes them

most impressively from those who have

come after them.

For, with the passage of time, the

philosophic attitude of Mr Hardy, so

repellant to the ordinary man of his

age, has become very nearly a common-

place to the ordinary man of ours. And

with this change has gone a shifting of

emphasis. The mechanical nature of

the world has been accepted, but the

note of exultant defiance on behalf of

humanity has grown faint. The post-

war novelist, if he touches on ultimate

problems at all, does so in a different

spirit, a lighter spirit. He appears,

maybe, rather humbler. He is not so

sure as Conrad that human affairs are

worthy of respect. He says, in effect :

' Who are we, febrile, shiftless creatures

that we are, to set ourselves up to

judge and oppose the machine ? ' But

this apparent humility is not often

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genuine; when it is not actually a

fashionable and empty pose, it is the

outcome of indifference and laziness.

Nothing really matters, so why make a

fuss and defy a mechanical God ?

§ 5

The contrast between the prevailing

temper of late Victorians and that of

our post-war novelists on both sides

of the Atlantic may be pointed in

another way still—by noting the in-

trusion of satire into fiction and its

steady growth therein down to the

present day. Neither Hardy nor

Conrad was a satirist by intention or

habit. Samuel Butler was, and his

influence, reinforced by that of his

disciple, Mr Bernard Shaw, has been

very great on writers of the twentieth

century ; many of his ideas, in fact,

have passed so completely into the

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stuff of our thinking that we cannot always detect their origin. Besides,

of the three most important Edwardian novelists, Mr Wells, Mr Galsworthy, and

Mr Bennett, the first two were unmistakable satirists, always with one

sociological axe or another to grind, and always apt to grind it at the wrong time

and so diminish the aesthetic quality

of their books. On this point Mr Wells

himself has been pleasantly frank.

' Personally ', he says, in his preface to

Mr Swinnerton's Nocturne, ' I have no

use at all for life as it is, except as raw

material. It bores me to look at things

unless there is also the idea of doing something with them . . . In the books I have

written, it is always about life being altered I write, or about people developing

schemes for altering life. And I have

never once " presented " life. My apparently most objective books are criticisms

and incitements to change.'

To which Mrs Woolf has objected that

novels constructed on that plan leave

a sense of incompleteness. ' In order

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to complete them it seems necessary

to do sonething—to join a society, or,

more desperately, to write a cheque.'

Whereas in great novels, she says,

everything is within the book.1

This raises an issue that is not unim-

portant, namely: How far is satire

permissible in fiction? Satire is a

weapon of offence, a 'practical' weapon ;

the driving force behind it is the

desire Mr Wells freely confesses to,

the desire to get life altered in some

more or less specific ways. One at

least of the motives in the mind of

Aristophanes when he wrote The Clouds

was to diminish the prestige of Socrates

and the Sophists in contemporary

Athens ; Dryden wrote and published

the first part of Absalom and Achitophel

to inflame public feeling against

Shaftesbury, and, incidentally, to pay

off a number of old private scores ;

Jonathan Swift, soured by the failure

of his ambitions in England, wrote the

1 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown,' p. 12

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first two books of Gulliver's Travels to

score off the English politicians and

churchmen who had refused to do any-

thing for him; Samuel Butler wrote

Erewhon to show up half the alleged

virtues of Victorian England. Always

and of necessity there is an extrinsic

purpose behind satire, that is to say, a

purpose not contained within the book

itself; and no definition so narrow

as to exclude The Clouds, Absolom and

Achitophel, The Dunciad, Gulliver's

Travels, The Vision of Judgement, and

Erewhon from the canon of great

literature, is worth wasting time on.

Only Croceans—now, happily, a

rapidly diminishing band of second-rate

academics—will deny that literature

may serve a practical as well as an

aesthetic purpose; the test being:

Does the book remain aesthetically

satisfying after its practical purpose

has been fulfilled or superseded? And

some of Mr Wells's novels and Mr

Shaw's plays will stand this test; others

will not; but in either event it is not

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the mere presence or absence of satiric motives that decides the issue.

The most notable of Mr Wells's followers to-day is Mr Sinclair Lewis,

a writer difficult to classify except as a satirist, and who, as a novelist, can

be called modern more by courtesy than by right. But for the accidents

that his only important books, Babbitt and Martin Arrowsmith, were published

after the war and dealt in the main with post-war themes, it would be more

appropriate to classify him with authors of the pre-war generation ; since neither

in manner nor in spirit is he really up to date.

In manner, he is copious without subtlety, and phonographic without

resonance. In spirit, he is no thorough-paced agnostic ; he believes very

passionately in certain human values, simple and genuine human values ; and

just because he believes in them, attacks with all the ridicule and in-

vective at his command the institutions, customs and fixed habits of America

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that are trying to crush these values

out. As a satirist, he may be effective ;

he has been, in the past, and probably

will be again—if only he will keep his

temper, which he lost in writing Elmer

Gantry. As a novelist he can hardly be

ranked very high, and his influence on

the novel as a form of art is negligible.

Nearly all contemporary novelists,

however, are satiric in their degree.

And the contrast between Mr Sinclair

Lewis on the one hand, and, say,

Mr Norman Douglas and Mr Aldous

Huxley on the other, is startling in its

revelation of the difference between the

age that is past and the age that we

actually live in. Mr Aldous Huxley is

the typical, or perhaps we should say,

most fashionable, exponent of con—

temporary accidie. Whereas Mr Lewis

has convictions, some of them very

definite, others none the less fierce for

being rather indefinite, it is difficult to

say what, if anything, Mr Huxley could

be found convinced of. His normal

attitude can be summed up in the

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question : Is there anything, living or dead, spiritual or sensual, which isn't humbug ? 'Consider well your neighbour, what an imbecile he is,' says Mr Norman Douglas somewhere. And that is exactly what Mr Huxley has been doing for the last eight years. By now he is debonair, hardly ever savage, but graceful, interrogative, ironically amused that human beings should behave as foolishly as they do, well-mannered without being friendly or warm-hearted, and withal singularly honest about himself. No one can justly accuse him of posing. Having considered his neighbour and found what an imbecile the fellow is, he is always ready to turn round and consider himself and make the same discovery. His latest volume of essays he has entitled Jesting Pilate—and there is something terrifyingly appropriate in the title. He is disillusionment embodied. Hence his popularity with the intelligentsia.

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' God is a spirit, a spirit, a spirit,' says Miss Thriplow to herself in one of the cleverest and most amusing passages of Those Barren Leaves. ' She tried to picture something huge and empty, but alive. A huge flat expanse of sand, for example, and over it a huge blank dome of sky ; and above the sky everything would be tremulous and shimmering with heat—an emptiness that was yet alive. A spirit, an all-pervading spirit. God is a spirit. Three camels appeared on the horizon of the sandy plain and went lolloping along in an absurd ungainly fashion from left to right. Miss Thriplow made an effort and dis-missed them. God is a spirit, she said aloud. But of all animals camels are really almost the queerest ; when one thinks of their frightfully supercilious faces, with their protruding under lips like the last Hapsburg kings of Spain . . . No ; God is a spirit, all-pervading, everywhere. All the universes are made one in him. Layer upon layer . . . A Neapolitan ice floated up out of the darkness.'

And so on for another page and a half.

This quotation may be taken to measure the difference between the spiritual attitude of most of us to-day

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—for we are all made one in Miss Thriplow—and that of Mr Hardy in the age that is past. Mr Hardy dis-

believed in God as a spirit, and so, of course, does Miss Thriplow—who is a post-war novelist. But whereas

Mr Hardy's disbelief possessed him, Miss Thriplow's is only one among many other entertaining philosophical

problems to be juggled with in bed. If you like, Mr Hardy was obsessed with God, whereas Miss Thriplow is

obsessed with the fear of obsessions.

Thus, the final effect left on the reader by all Mr Huxley's books is profound dissatisfaction that a man

so clever, so genial, with so marked a sense of style—don't we all wish we had it ?—so admirable an ear for

words, so genuine a talent, should have written nothing of lasting value except one short and one long-short story.1

It is puzzling. But the truth seems

1 'Young Archimedes' and 'Uncle Spencer in the volume entitled Little Mexican.

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to be this: a novelist must, not be entirely without convictions, for he must, at the very least, believe in human beings. And Mr Huxley does not. For all his brilliance, he has created only one character that can stand on its own feet. Except for Uncle Spencer, all the characters in his books are like stage masks that he slips behind and talks very prettily through. Calamy, Cardan, Chelifer, Mrs Aldwinkle, Lypiatt, Mercaptan, Gumbril Senior, Gumbril Junior, Mrs Viveash, and the rest—remove the author, and down they topple like the sheets of pasteboard they are. Like Mr Lewis, Mr Huxley dislikes shams, but he has none of the American's prophetic fire in him. (Prophetic fire is rather démodé.) Looking open-eyed at the world, he sees it remarkably full of shams, and records what he sees with all the polite good humour that is lacking from Elmer Gantry. Yet he remains incapable of understanding, and so

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of sympathising with, the human beings who deceive themselves and endeavour to deceive others. Himself, he is honest, surprisingly so. He does not pretend to be what he isn't. And occasionally, as in Antic Hay, he allows himself a kind of simulated anger at the spectacle of others less honest than he. Yet he never gets any further than simulated anger. He cannot even hate properly. He strips human beings of their fine clothes and compels them to stand naked and shamefaced before the reader; he cannot, or will not, go deeper than their skins and comprehend the workings of their hearts. He is sentimentally afraid of being sentimental. And so, as Mr Edwin Muir has very justly said, his art remains one of exposure, not one of comprehension.

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§ 6

So far we have considered certain general characteristics of the age that have found expression in contemporary fiction, and we have now to consider certain literary and scientific influences that have more specifically affected its technique.

The first and most important of these is the psychological influence, which derives from several different sources, both literary and scientific. Beginning, no doubt, with Flaubert,1 it did not gain much weight in English fiction till the later period of Henry James, the period of What Maisie Knew (1898), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1905). I do not know whether this Henry James—

1 Stendhal has come direct to England only very lately. Hitherto he has come only indirectly, through other French writers and through the Russians.

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who shc̣uld be clearly distinguished

from his earlier self, author of The

American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878),

and The Portrait of a Lady (1881)—is

much read nowadays; I imagine not.

But his influence on writers has been

strong—and still is, even when they

are totally unaware of it. He was,

if not the first, certainly the most

deliberate, of the novelists who

virtually abolished the story, reduced

events to the barest minimum, and

concerned themselves with minute

analysis of inner consciousness. It was

he, too, who most unflinchingly

maintained ‘the point of view’.

Readers of What Maisie Knew, for

example, are permitted to discover

only what she knew, and to discover

it only in the slow, roundabout,

effortful ways in which she discovered

it. And clearly, what she knew was

not really of the least importance,

except because it was her knowledge,

and because it had profound emotional

effects on her. Not events, but the

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causes and repercussions of events

in consciousness-that was what the

later Henry James regarded as the prime

business of the novelist. Analysis

and explanation, then more analysis and

explanation-that was the formula.

Then came Joseph Conrad, who

acknowledged his indebtedness to

James, and borrowed something

of his method. What he borrowed

from this source was the least valuable

of what appears in his books, because

its chief results were prolixity,

confusion, and that tortuous manner

of writing a story within a story and

then another story within that, which

makes Chance one of the most intoler-

able novels ever written by a man

of genius. Conrad had too little of

the chill, detached, scientific clarity

of vision that alone makes the detailed

analytical method bearable in fiction ;

his poetic imagination-stimulated

by his close study of Turgenev-his

extraordinary sensitivity to atmos-

phere, and his inherent tendency

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towards mystery, cut right across the tradition of Henry James and made nonsense of it. If we, the readers, do not always understand Henry James's characters, we are nevertheless persuaded that he does. In reading Conrad we have no like source of comfort. Conrad's straight-forward men are unsurpassed—Tom Lingard, Almayer, Nostromo, Schomberg, for instance. But his mysterious women remain mysterious, to him as much as to us. What do we know of Doña Rita at the end of The Arrow of Gold? What does her author know? He tries to see her through the eyes of Mills, that shadowy but effective Englishman who begins and ends the book; the eyes of J.K. Blunt, ‘américain, catholique, et gentilhomme’ who lives by his sword and his self-esteem; the eyes of Blunt's intriguing mother, who is admirable; the eyes of Rita's angular sister Thérèse; and the eyes of M. George, who is love-bewitched. And at the end has he

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really seen her at all? Neyer once.

The next influence that struck English fiction, this time rather overwhelmingly, was that of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, indisputably the two greatest psychological novelists in European literature. Tolstoy was the earlier known in England, and will be found ultimately to have had the more powerful and lasting effect; but immediately, that is, for the period 1900-1920, Dostoevsky was the more important. Though Crime and Punishment had been translated into English as far back as 1885, and Dostoevsky's other novels were known to some readers through translations into French, it was not until Mrs Garnett's masterly translations began to appear in 1912 that English writers in general awoke to the significance of the author of The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.1 The first result of this awaken-

1 Time brings its revenges, indeed ! Dostoevsky's death in 1881 was not even referred to in the London Press.

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ing was oddly perverse. The greatness

of Dostoevsky as a novelist—his

astounding insight into human motive,

his strong sense of drama, his mastery

in dialogue, his power of integrating

diverse and often contradictory revela-

tions of character into concrete figures

as real and unique in their own pecu-

liar world as Tolstoy's in the actual

world we live in—was for the most

part overlooked. He was taken as

first and foremost a great thinker.

His ideas were discussed, wrangled

over, and fervently preached by

disciples. And in so far as his practice

in the craft of fiction was considered

at all, it was hastily assumed that he

had dealt yet another blow, and

possibly the final one, at form, or plot ;

whereas in fact he had a much stronger

sense of plot than Tolstoy. Of the

two writers, Tolstoy was the more

analytical and formless, Dostoevsky

the more intensely dramatic. But

formless 'slices of life' became

fashionable, and at the same time

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was fostered a new interest, due also in large measure to Dostoevsky, in morbid, abnormal, or actually pathological states of mind. One way or another, the waters of the English novel were rather badly muddied for a time.

Not long after, came the flood of psycho-analysis, which muddied them still further. Few English novelists had paid much attention to academic psychology, unless in a desultory way to the writings of William James, which were always so much easier and more illuminating to read than the later novels of his brother.1 And no wonder academic psychology in English had been mainly ignored, since, apart from William James, it had always been

1 'William James rendit facile, a-t-on dit, l'étude de la métaphysique, et Henry James a rendu difficile l'étude du roman La boutade n'est pas sans vérité Mais il serait plus exact encore de dire que William a passé sa vie à substituer l'abstrait, l'expérience à l'explication, tandis que Henry s'efforçait d'expliquer le concret par l'abstrait, et la vie par le mécanisme ' Chevalley, op cit, p 105

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rather poor stuff. The consequence was, however, that when the works of

Freud and Jung, Ferenczi and Adler,

reached England and America in

translation, novelists seldom had the

necessary training in scientific method

or the necessary acquaintance with

psychological principles already estab-

lished, to receive the new hypotheses

of the unconscious with critical dis-

crimination. Psycho-analysis became

for a time an appalling craze, and

writers either succumbed to it, as to

an epidemic of influenza, or reacted

against it with blind and ridiculous

enmity. Even now, when the craze

appears to be safely over, it is difficult

for critics to keep a cool pen. So

many good novels have been spoiled

by the needless intrusion of psycho-

analytic ideas, imperfectly assimilated

or only too perfectly assimilated,1

1 Perhaps nothing could have saved Mr D H.

Lawrence from himself, but it is a thousand pities

that he should have chanced to pass through a

psycho-analytic phase in his development ;

because at one time he looked like being the

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that we are apt to deny the immense

contributions which Freud has made

to our knowledge of human nature,

and the very real debt which every

contemporary novelist ought to ac-

knowledge to him. If the best of

psycho-analysis—and the best is none

so minute a part of it, after all—

cannot be taken up into the mental

equipment of the novelist of to-day

and to-morrow, so much the worse

for him ; he will be the poorer without

it.

Another contemporary psychologist

whose influence, both direct and

indirect, on English and American

writers must be taken into account,

is Dr William McDougall. Though

less original than is often supposed,

he has succeeded in popularising a

system of psychology based on instincts

greatest novelist of our generation One is

forced, likewise, to regret the psycho-analytic

influence on Mr J D Beresford, Miss May Sinclair,

and Miss Rebecca West.

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and primary emotions, which derives unmistakably from James, Ribot, H. R. Marshall, and Shand, which has held its own remarkably well for nearly twenty years, and which, once it has been modified by notions drawn from psycho-analysis and the newer Gestalt psychology of Kohler and Koffka, will probably continue to hold its own for some twenty more. With the details of this system we are not concerned here. It is enough to note that its relative simplicity, its frank revolt against intellectualism, its air of being in complete accord with the main findings of modern biology, together with the ease and felicity of Dr McDougall's exposition, have caused it to be readily accepted by writers who are not professed psychologists but willingly borrow from professed psychologists whatever can be helpful in fiction. And this behaviour psychology—which must be sharply distinguished from Behaviourism, an American heresy of no literary, and not

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much scientific, importance — has proved both helpful and harmful. It has simplified many of the issues for the novelist, but unhappily it has simplified some of them too much. Acting in conjunction with psycho-analysis, it has induced certain contemporary authors to think, and to construct their characters, in terms of crude and abstract nature, which is relatively general and undifferentiated, instead of in terms of concrete nurture, which is always complex and individual. By this means they have managed to create only lifeless types, intended to illustrate the dominance of some instinct, primary emotion, repressed complex, or what not. And when such simplification goes along with the search for abnormalities, the method becomes curiously self-destructive. ' One gets the impression ', says Mr Gould very justly, ' that the oddity, instead of showing So-and-So to be concretely and individually So-and-So, merely shows So-and-So to be as odd

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as everybody else, and odd in the same way as everybody else.'1

It is nonsense to maintain, as is still done by some dear old academics (probably Oxonians), that a knowledge of psychology, the science, is harmful to the novelist. Other things being equal, the more thoroughly he has studied it, as expounded to-day by Freud, McDougall, Spearman, Janet, Piéron, Woodworth, Kohler, etc., the better novelist he is likely to be. But he must absorb it, and having done so, transform it into the terms of his own art. There is no reason why he should not see an individual in the light of a theory. Dostoevsky constantly did. But he must, like Dostoevsky, see the individual, and not just the theory. Science uses examples to vivify generalizations; an art may use generalizations to winnow the concrete example of its inessential chaff.

To these scientific influences must be

1 The English Novel of To-day, p. 38.

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added that of three recent novelists

of remarkable powers, the late Marcel

Proust, Mr James Joyce, and Miss

Dorothy Richardson. It so happened

that all three began to write about

the same time, just before the war ;

and that each worked out his or her

method independently of the others.

Yet, with minor differences, all three

are aiming at the same thing, and in

much the same way : the entirely

frank revelation in detail of their

own inner consciousness. Miss Richardson has never had a large public, and

probably never will ; she is less important than the other two, and her work

has been overshadowed by theirs. Mr

Joyce has enjoyed a succès de scandale,

owing to the banning of his Ulysses

in England and the vituperation with

which he has been assailed by moralistic English critics ; for the moment,

and for English fiction, he is the most

important of the three, though it is

unlikely he will remain so much longer.

Proust has had a succès d'estime,

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despite his dullness ; it is fashionable

to praise him, and to pretend that

one has read him.

Mr Joyce, I said, is the most import-

ant of the three–for the moment.

Every contemporary novelist in

England and America must have read

Ulysses, and tried to understand just

what its author was getting at ; and

most have imitated it in some degree,

for good or for ill, and more or less

wittingly. There is no escaping it.

For Mr Joyce is not only a very great

writer, with a more complete command

of English as a literary medium and a

more profound gift for Aristophanic

and Rabelaisian comedy than any

writer since Shakespeare ; he exerts,

besides, the uncanny fascination of

the extremist. Though few can write

objectively so well as he, when he

wants to–think of the magnificent

opening of Ulysses–he no longer wants

to, he no longer believes in objectivity

as a literary means. He is the complete

subjectivist. As we have seen, there

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has been in European fiction during

the last fifty or more years a persistent

tendency away from objectivity and

towards the ever more minute and

analytic exposition of mental life ;

and Mr Joyce has carried this tendency

as far as it apparently can go, that is

to say, considerably farther than it

can go with safety. He affects to

surrender himself utterly to the stream

of consciousness, this being, on his

view, the only trustworthy source of

truth. Ideas and images as they occur

are set down. Whether they are

relevant or not to the eye of reason

matters nothing, since the eye of

reason is itself suspect. Selection

in accordance with some previously

thought-out plan is eschewed, for

selection, too, is a rational, and there-

fore a cozening, operation. Real life

is not arranged according to plan ;

it just happens. And so art must be

allowed to just happen likewise. The

story, already jettisoned by Henry

James, neglected by Tolstoy, encrusted

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with speculation by Dostoewsky, twisted and contorted beyond recognition by Conrad, would, if Mr Joyce had his way, be buried irrecoverably fathoms deep in the wastes of the unconscious. And overboard after it would go grammar, punctuation, capital letters, and every other convention which appears to restrict the flow of the divine unreason.

This reads like a parody. I wish it were. No exposition of Mr Joyce's method in Ulysses—to say nothing of his later outbreaks in the manner made familiar by Miss Gertrude Stein—could be madder than the book itself ; which, for the rest, is colossal, a colossal failure to be the masterpiece of our day and generation. Mr Joyce has powers in comparison with which those of any six other contemporary novelists added together hardly count ; but they are powers juxtaposed and summed, not organized. He believes so unreservedly in chaos that he tries to represent it, whereas, if art

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means anything at all, it means the

resolution of chaos into order.

A summary statement like this of

the chief tendencies that have helped

to make our post-war fiction what it

is, would be incomplete without refer-

ences to Chehov, and to the reaction

that has set in against the sociological

methods of Mr Wells, Mr Galsworthy,

and Mr Bennett. It might seem that

Chehov had influenced only the short

story. That, undoubtedly, he has done.

Indeed, one might almost say that he

has refashioned the short story for

good. But certain post-war authors

have adapted his method, or some-

thing very like it, to the writing of

novels also; so that, instead of a

continous narrative of interconnected

events, or a series of careful and

detailed psychological analyses of men-

tal processes, they give us a succession

of vivid and revealing but seemingly

disconnected episodes—such episodes

as Baudelaire had in mind when he

wrote :

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Dans certains états de l'ame presque sur-naturels, la profondeur de la vie toute entière se révèle dans le spectacle, si ordinaire qu'il sont, qu'on a sous les yeux. Il en devient le symbole.1

Perhaps the best examples in English are to be found in Mrs Woolf's Jacob's Room, which is too discrete to be successful, Mrs Dalloway, which is a masterpiece of its kind, and To the Lighthouse, which is disappointing only because it does not mark a definite advance on Mrs Dalloway in the same or a different kind. For we have been led to expect a continuous advance in the work of Mrs Woolf.

Her changes of method and the growth of her peculiar powers, from The Voyage Out and Night and Day, through Monday and Tuesday, to the three later novels, have been startling. It would seem that, having gone as far as she could in the psychological manner

1 I owe this quotation and its application to Chehov, to Mr Middleton Murry's Discoveries. See especially pp 141 ff.

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of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and been

plainly dissatisfied with the results,

she had then set herself to try out

the manner of Chehov and Katherine

Mansfield. And this manner, not-

withstanding all appearances to the

contrary, is poetical rather than psycho-

logical. It depends, not on detached,

intellectual analysis of mental pro-

cesses, but on the rigorous selection of

details of high emotional potentiality.

Thoughtful readers have puzzled and

puzzled to explain how it is that

Mrs Woolf can make quite ordinary

life so thrilling, so enthralling ; how

it is that she can hold our interest

through page after page in which hardly

anything happens, and in which even

the things that do happen are trivial

in the extreme. Clarissa Dalloway

goes to buy the flowers for her party,

sews her green dress, says Thank

you to Lucy her maid ; Peter Walsh

tramps up Whitehall, dawdles in

Regent's Park, dines at his hotel ;

Mrs Ramsay walks into the village

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with the unpleasant young man Tansley: and it all seems important ! It is important, not in itself, but in the moods and interpenetrating emotions which Mrs Woolf uses it to evoke. She works embroideries on the commonplace, but it is the embroideries, and not their commonplace ground, that delight us.

It is Mrs Woolf, too, who has most openly expressed the reaction against the sociological methods of the Edwardians. In her Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown she begins by accepting a dictum of Mr Bennett's that 'the foundation of good fiction is character-creating and nothing else.' Then she quarrels with Mr Bennett, Mr Wells, and Mr Galsworthy because they have failed to do this very thing that matters supremely. She says:

Mrs Brown is human nature, Mrs Brown changes only on the surface . . . and not one of the Edwardian writers has so much as looked at her. They have looked very

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powerfully, searchingly, and sympathetically out of the window ; at factories, at Utopias, even at the decoration and upholstery of the railway carriage ; but never at her, never at life, never at human nature . . . They have laid an enormous stress upon the fabric of things. They have given us a house in the hope that we may be able to deduce the human beings who live there. To give them their due, they have made that house much better worth living in. But if you hold that novels are in the first place about people, and only in the second place about the houses they live in, that is the wrong way to set about it.

An overstatement, certainly, as we should expect in a paper read before a university society and intended to provoke argument. And the implication that might be drawn from it, that Mrs Woolf herself works on the opposite method, looking directly at Mrs Brown and neglecting ' the fabric of things,' is untrue. She is much too good a novelist to do anything of the kind. Indeed, the background of London on a summer's day is all-

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important in Mrs Dalloway. It is

not the virtual hero of the book, as

New York is the virtual hero of Mr

John dos Passos's Manhattan Trans-

fer; but the characters of Clarissa,

Hugh Whitbread, Peter Walsh, Lucrezia

Warren Smith, Doris Kilman, and the

rest, emerge from the background

and fade into it again, and between

'the fabric of things' and the fabric

of human nature there is no hard

and fast division.

The dissatisfaction with the methods

of the Edwardians, however, which

many of us feel, and which Mrs Woolf

has only exaggerated a little in order

to provoke discussion, is significant

in this, that it proves but another

indication of the trend of modern

fiction from objective to subjective,

from outer semblance to alleged inner

reality.

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or

The

Future

of

the

English

Novel

§ 7

Such being the principal tendencies that have gone to mould the English novel of to-day, what have we reason to expect from the English novel of to-morrow ? Much—but only on one condition. The material lying ready to hand is rich and varied, and of technical ability to shape it there is enough and to spare. One is tempted to say that never before in the history of English or American literature has the material been so rich or the general level of craftsmanship so high. But one thing is lacking, and until that is supplied all of us who are writing novels to-day are only marking time. What we need and must have, if any of our work is to live for more than a publishing season, is a new philosophical synthesis, a new imaginative

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attitude towards the world. Nothing else will serve.

Fortunately, we need not just fold our hands and wait. The new philosophical synthesis has already been sketched for us, and all we have to do is to lay hold on it intellectually, and then transform it into terms of the creative imagination. The chief of our troubles is that most of us are hopelessly obsolete in our knowledge of science. We are still bogged fast in the dreary mechanical theories of the nineteenth century. The most advanced in appearance and their own estimation are in fact the most backward: the present philosophy of Mr Joyce could hardly have been farther out of date and more reactionary, had he remained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church; and between the philosophy of President Coolidge (supposing him to have one) and that of Mr John dos Passos, there is uncommonly little to choose. For the plain fact is that mechanistic

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materialism, the philosophical creed

that served the turn of Mr Thomas

Hardy because he reacted against

it with passionate defiance on behalf

of mankind, and which contemporary

writers accept rather with boredom

than with passion of any sort, is dead,

stone dead. The leading thinkers of

to-day, in metaphysics, psychology,

biology, physiology, and mathematical physics, have just quietly killed

it and passed on ; and the only people

old-fashioned enough to believe that

it still lives are parsons (who got left

behind in the seventeenth century

and have never caught up since),

chemists (always the worst educated

and therefore the most bigoted of the

scientists), surgeons (who are much

too busy getting fortunes and titles to

remember any science worth speaking

of), 'advanced' poets anthropologically inclined like Mr T. S. Eliot, and

'advanced' prose-writers fast becoming incoherent like Mr James Joyce and

Miss Gertrude Stein.

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Let the novelists of to-day once realize this, and realize, besides, all the aesthetic significance that lies behind the alternative philosophy now being presented to us in one or another of its aspects by Professors Alexander, Lloyd Morgan, Whitehead, J. S. Haldane, McDougall, Kohler, Koffka, Eddington, and Rutherford—and English and American fiction will be transformed. A veritable second Renaissance in thought is in progress, here and now, under our noses ; and novelists, backward and complacent though they are, cannot remain unaware of it much longer. Compared to it, all the work of Proust, Mr Joyce, Mr Eliot, Mr Conrad Aiken, Mr Sherwood Anderson, and Mr Carl Sandburg, is merest trifling with antiquated themes and methods. For the philosophy that is being propounded now—we may call it indifferently the philosophy of purpose, or of emergent evolution, or of organic realism, or, best of all perhaps, of form (Gestalt)—

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is overwhelming in its implications.

Imaginatively apprehended, it changes

our whole attitude towards the world ;

it displaces mechanism by purpose

in vital affairs ; it reaffirms values that

nineteenth-century science did its best

to annihilate ; most important of all

for literature, it reinstates the soul.

Form, shape, pattern, organic pur-

pose—is not this precisely what the

novel of to-day so manifestly lacks ?

Give the novelist, instead of a feeble,

hesitant and rather shamefaced ' sense

of form,' the burning conviction that

form is the first principle of life, nay

more, of the world as a whole, and

what will he not be able to do ?

Henry

James, Tolstoy, Dotoevsky, Professor

Freud, Mr Joyce, Miss Richardson,

and, to a smaller extent, Marcel Proust,

have encouraged him to neglect in-

herent form, or plot, to abolish the

story, to concentrate upon the inner

life of relatively isolated characters.

Analysis, analysis, analysis—that has

been the wellnigh unvarying formula.

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The gain in subtlety and psychological understanding has been immense, and whatever happens, must be preserved for the future. We shall never go back to plain, untutored objectivity. But extreme subjectivity, aiming sincerely at truth, has missed it again and again, and that for two reasons. It has fostered the twin delusions, that a mind consists of its assembled parts, like a motor-car engine which can be taken to pieces and put together again; and that a single mind can be revealed in isolation from its fellows and unrelated to its inorganic surroundings. Stress the concept of organism instead of the concept of Cartesian matter, as the ultimate category of the world, and both these delusions are at once shown up. And that is exactly what is now being done. The concept of organism, which till recently was extended downwards in the scale of existence to cover nothing more elementary than plants, is now being used as the only possible concept to

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explain happenings in the inorganic world. The prophecy of Samuel Butler :

Death is being defeated at all points. No sooner do we think that we have got a bona fide barrier than it breaks down. The divisions between varieties, species, genus, all gone ; between instinct and reason, gone ; between animals and plants, gone ; between man and the lower animals, gone ; so, ere long, the division between organic and inorganic will go and will take with it the division between mind and matter.1—

this prophecy, which at the time it was written must have sounded like another boutade by the enfant terrible of literature and science, is now being literally fulfilled. A revolutionary change indeed ! The world of matter, acting and reacting in space and time according to the mechanical laws of Newtonian physics, is discerned now to be no more than an abstract and temporary construction of the human intelligence, convenient for certain

1 Note Books, p. 78.

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practical affairs, like engineering, but highly inconvenient or positively false for certain others, like biology or religion or economics or the comprehension of atomic structure.

Now, in the first place, an organism, how lowly soever, is more than the sum of its parts,1 and its principle of coherence and endurance is its pattern. Without enduring pattern it would be the prey of environment, and its existence would be impossible ; with enduring pattern it is able to deal uniformly with its environment, and by impressing itself upon this, attain, and retain, its identity. And in the second place, no organism is isolated. Its unity, its coherence, is not merely intrinsic, but extrinsic also ; it is interfused with other organisms. Pattern is not private only, but dependent on the interaction between the thing patterned and other things similarly

1 As General Smuts has pointed out (in ‘Holism and Evolution) even water is something more than two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen.

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or differently patterned in space-time. 'Concrete fact', says Professor Whitehead, 'is process'.

Its primary analysis is into underlying activity of prehension, [by which term Professor Whitehead means 'uncognitive apprehension', or, if you like, unconscious patterning], and into realized prehensive events. Each event is an individual matter of fact issuing from an individualisation of the substrate activity. But individualisation does not mean substantial independence. . . . We can be content with a provisional realism in which nature is conceived as a complex of prehensive unifications. . . . A prehension is a process of unifying. Accordingly, nature is a process of expansive development, necessarily transitional from prehension to prehension. What is achieved is thereby passed beyond, but it is also retained as having aspects of itself present to prehensions which lie beyond it.1

Apply this, not as cold metaphysics intellectually apprehended, but as hot conviction seized and impregnated by

1 'Science and the Modern World,' pp. 99, 101, 102.

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imagination, to the art of fiction, and at once the flat inadequacy of our contemporary novels is exposed. Contemporary novelists do not believe with all their heart in the whole, the comprehensive pattern which is made up of lesser patterns interlocking and interfusing, no one of which is sacrificed to any other but each one of which finds its reality and fulfilment in the others; they don't believe in it for fiction, because they don't believe in it for life. Even so delicate and beautiful a piece of work as Mrs Dalloway fails to stand the test. Mr Edwin Muir has said of Mrs Virginia Woolf that she is virtually alone among modern novelists in meeting her characters 'on the level,' on the same plane, without a barrier of irony, veiled hostility, or open disgust. 'She might walk into her novels and be at home in them.'1 We may doubt that. Into The Voyage Out and Night and Day,

1 Edwin Muir, Transition, p. 67.

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yes, she might walk into these ; but

not into Mrs Dalloway or To the

Lighthouse. For no mortal can walk

into a flat canvas and be at home

there. The beauty of Mrs Dalloway

is the beauty of a two-dimensional

picture, 'composed ' according to the

standards of pictorial art ; it is fragile

and delighthful, as a beautiful picture

is ; but it lacks entirely just that

four-dimensional solidity which human

beings live in, that four-dimensional

solidity reproduced in a novel by Mr

Hardy, and, most wonderfully of all,

in a novel by Tolstoy. Look only

full-face at Clarissa and the other

characters grouped about her, and you

are charmed with the subtle beauty of

the portraiture ; yet you cannot

walk round and view them from the

varying angles of real life.

How could you, on the method Mrs

Woolf has adopted ? Faithful to con-

temporary tradition, she has not con-

structed a story. Several different

stories, disconnected but juxtaposed,

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emerge fitfully in the course of the book,

by means of a sensitive process of feel-

ing backwards-the same sensitive and

deliberate recherche du temps perdu

that was undertaken so memorably

by Proust. And though we may ad-

mire the brilliance and the delicacy

of this searching for the past, with

its sure and subtle manipulation of

visual images and prose cadences to

evoke the appropriate emotions ;

though we may declare, as I do, that

there is nothing finer than this in post-

war fiction ; and though we may be

sure that something of the same power

will be carried forward into the novels

of to-morrow ; yet in the end we must

admit that by this method not even

Mrs Woolf can make life real and signifi-

cant in the way it has been made real

and significant in the past by novelists

of lower gifts. None of the several

stories in Mrs Dalloway is shaped into

a concrete pattern, nor is any necessary,

because organic, connection between

them to be found. There is no orderly

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progression according to plan in time,

or—to adopt the modern philosophical

term that means so much more than

it appears to—in space-time. And the

reason seems plain. In this and other

good contemporary novels the author

has consciously or unconsciously

accepted the belief, the product of

incomplete and abstract scientific

theory, that life does not progress

according to plan, but just happens.

As one of the characters in To the

Lighthouse expresses it, a little

mournfully

What was it then? What did it mean?

Could things thrust their hands up and

grip one; could the blade cut; the fist

grasp? Was there no safety? No learn-

ing by heart of the ways of the world?

No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle,

and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower

into the air? Could it be, even for elderly

people, that this was life?—startling,

unexpected, unknown.

Well, the belief that life is only

startling, unexpected, unknown, only

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a leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air, is a delusion. People in real life may be permitted to suffer from it, and so may characters in books ; but novelists may not. Plan, shape, form, organic pattern, call it what you will—that is the ultimate fact about life, and not until novelists apprehend it, not until their apprehension of it possesses them like a mystical revelation of truth, will their work attain to classic rank.

There might be lovers [we are still among the thoughts of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse] whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.

There might be ? There must be. This, just this, must be the aim of the novelist of to-morrow. It will be, for he will have rid himself of

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the false beliefs oppressing the novelist of to-day, that the wholeness of things is 'not theirs in life,' and that all attempts to achieve wholeness in art must remain at best a sort of pretty-pretty deception. He will believe instead that in shaping his creation into an organic pattern he is working in the very spirit of life itself, and that the 'globed compacted things' he makes contain the same kind of reality, the same kind of truth, as he can find all round him in the world of hard, unadulterate fact. He will know that he selects only in order to reveal what is.

Does this mean a turning away again from the subjective to the objective in point of method? Not necessarily. But if it did, what then? Fine work has been done in the object-ive manner in the past; indeed, is being done nōw by some of our contemporaries, notably by Miss Willa Cather in America. Consider, for example, this passage from A Lost

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Lady—how effective it is in its stark objectivity, how little it would be improved by the intrusion of any psychological analysis :

The sky was burning with the soft pink and silver of a cloudless summer dawn. The heavy, bowed grasses splashed him to the knees. All over the marsh, snow-on-the-mountain, globed with dew, made cool sheets of silver, and the swamp milkweed spread its flat, raspberry-coloured clusters. There was an almost religious purity about the fresh morning air, the tender sky, the grass and flowers with the sheen of early dew upon them. There was in all living things something limpid and joyous—like the wet, morning call of the birds, flying up through the unstained atmosphere. Out of the saffron east, a thin, yellow, wine-like sunshine began to gild the fragrant meadows and the glistening tops of the grove. . . .

Under the bluffs that overhung the marsh he came upon thickets of wild roses, with flaming buds, just beginning to open. Where they had opened, their petals were stained with that burning rose-colour which is always gone by noon—a dye made of sunlight and morning and moisture, so intense that it cannot possibly

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last . . . must fade, like ecstasy. Niel

took out his knife and began to cut the

stiff stems, crowded with red thorns.

He would make a bouquet for a lovely

lady. . . . He would leave them just

outside one of the French windows of her

bedroom. When she opened her shutters

to let in the light, she would find them

—and they would perhaps give her a

sudden distaste for coarse worldlings like

Frank Ellinger.

After tying his flowers with a twist of

meadow grass, he went up the hill through

the grove and softly round the still house

to the north side of Mrs Forrester's own

room, where the door-like green shutters

were closed. As he bent to place the

flowers on the sill, he heard from within

a woman's soft laughter; impatient,

indulgent, teasing, eager. Then another

laugh, very different, a man's. And it

was fat and lazy—ended in something like

a yawn.

Niel found himself at the foot of the

hill on the wooden bridge, his face hot,

his temples beating, his eyes blind with

anger. In his hand he still carried the

prickly bunch of wild roses. He threw

them over the wire fence into a mudhole

the cattle had trampled under the bank

of the creek.

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There is no need to suppose, however,

that the novel of to-morrow will as a

rule be starkly objective to this degree.

On the contrary, it will almost certainly

carry forward all the psychological

subtlety and power of analysis that

we find in the novel of to-day. But

in it analysis will be checked and limited

by the design of the whole, will be

always controlled by the primary need

for synthesis.

William James used to call attention

to the failure of English to distinguish

between scire and cognoscere, savoir

and connaître, wissen and kennen.

We know the transcendental deduction

of the categories and the quantum

theory, and we also know the house-

fly when we see it; we know our near

relatives, and we also know the man

we met yesterday for the first time

and spoke but three words to. Obvious-

ly, knowledge ranges from the maximum

of understanding to mere recognition,

and other languages have felt a need

for more than one word to cover

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all its degrees. And so James in his urbane way stressed the distinction between what he called 'knowledge-by-acquaintance' and 'knowledge-about,' a distinction which, admittedly, is only one of degree. Now, it is a strange fact of human experience that too much knowledge-about, if it is exclusively analytical, destroys knowledge-by-acquaintance, because it destroys the thing we were acquainted with. And thus has it happened in only too many psychological novels of to-day and yesterday. Novelists have been so eager to provide knowledge about their characters that they have dissected them out of existence. On a mechanical theory of mind this should not be possible, since the parts have only to be assembled again, and there you are! Yet it is not only possible, but common. And, as we know by experience, most of our reactions to real people and to people in books depend on our knowledge of them by acquaintance. And

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so they ought to, on any reasonable theory of mind. An organism—and mind is the highest form of organic development that we have experience of—is more than the sum of its parts, and each part being as it were representative of the whole, we need not indefinitely accumulate them in order to get to know it. We may know it, as we say, by intuition. Thus, in writing fiction, the novelist will no longer need to pile detail upon detail till the accumulated weight breaks down our patience. There is no advantage in enormously long books like, for instance, Mr Maurice Baring's C. and Cat's Cradle or Mr Brett Young's recent Portrait of Clare. So long as each part, be it of the book or of a character in the book, is made truly significant of the whole, a very few parts will suffice to give us the necessary knowledge—by-acquaintance, which is important, and too many will bore us without appreciably enlarging our knowledge-about, which

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in any case is much less important.

Accordingly, we may guess that novels

in future will tend to be shorter than

they have been in the immediate past.

Only writers indisputably of the first

rank will be allowed to take their

time, and even they, obviously, will

have to prove that they cannot say

what they have to say more effect-

ively in 80,000 words than in 300,000.

Knowledge-by-acquaintance is gained

most rapidly, and knowledge-about

is established most securely, by con-

trasts and comparisons. And this

fact, too, many contemporary novelists

seem to have forgotten. They tend

to write all the time about the same

kind of people, instead of throwing

one into sharp and striking contrast

with another. Hence their dreariness.

But above all, the organic view

of life, applied to the art of fiction,

will mean a fresh insistence on the

story, on plot. Not on the old, arbitrary,

artificial plot, glued to the surfaces

of pasteboard figures ; not on plot

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as understood by the average reader or writer of detective novels. Rightly understood, plot is what the characters do to one another; that is, plot is form par excellence in the novel. What the characters do to one another depends on three factors: on what they are, in and for themselves; on what they are as ingredients of their environment; and on what they are by reason of the environment's ingression into them. What they are, in and for themselves, will no longer serve alone as material to make novels out of, because, taken alone, it is incomplete, abstract, and to that extent untrue. Mrs Woolf may have done well to complain that the Edwardians missed the essential Mrs Brown by looking only at the house she lived in. But it is even easier to miss the essential Mrs Brown by not looking at her hotse at all. Her house is an ingredient in the enduring pattern that we call Mrs Brown; and so are Mr Brown her husband,

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and Johnny Brown her son, and the milkboy who delivers her morning milk, and the lawyer who makes her will, and the undertaker who finally buries her ; and so too are the war memorial that she passes (fortunately without looking at it) every day, and the Sunday newspapers that she reads, and the ugly tombstone with which her sorrowing husband disfigures her grave. Mrs Woolf is much too good a novelist to ignore all this in practice. She is always hinting at the nearly invisible threads that bind one character to another and each to the inorganic environment : that is one reason why she is the most important of our post-war novelists. But nearly invisible threads are not enough. The pattern inherent in life, depending on the interrelations of the individual patterns that are individual hæman beings, must be made visible and significant by creative selection. That, first and last, is the novelist’s job.

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And the point of view, if it means,

as with Henry James and his followers,

the point of view of a single character

in the book-that, too, must be

abandoned, and for the same reason

as before. The pattern in only one

aspect is false; the true pattern

combines different aspects, different

prehensions, no one of which must be

sacrificed to any other.

Whichever way we turn, to this

we come back in the end: the

imperative need for organic pattern.

The lack of it in our post-war culture,

and accordingly in our post-war

fiction, makes all our technical skill

in matters of detail a mere whistling

of jigs to a milestone. It will be

manifest in the English and American

fiction of to-morrow. We can be

certain of that. And we can be

reasonably certain, too, of the kind

of agents it will need, and find-

reincarnations of Scheherazade, the

Teller of Stories.

TO-DAY AND

TO-MORROW

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[ 2 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

VOLUMES READY

Daedalus, or Science and the Future. By J. B. S. Haldane, Reader in Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. Seventh impression.

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Callinicus, a Defence of Chemical Warfare. By J. B. S. Haldane. Second impression.

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Icarus, or the Future of Science. By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. Fourth impression

" Utter pessimism " — Observer. " Mr Russell refuses to believe that the progress of Science must be a boon to mankind."—Morning Post. " A stimulating book, that leaves one not at all discouraged."—Daily Herald.

What I Believe. By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. Third impression.

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[3]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Tantalus, or the Future of Man. By F. C. S. Schiller, D.Sc., Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Second impression.

" They are all (Daedalus, Icarus, and Tantalus) brilliantly clever, and they supple-ment or correct one another."—Dean Inge, in Morning Post. " Immensely valuable and infinitely readst."—Daily News. " I he book of the week."—Spectator.

Cassandra, or the Future of the British Empire. By F. C. S. Schiller, D.Sc.

" We commend it to the complacent of all parties."—Saturday Review. " The book is small, but very, very weighty ; brilliantly written, it ought to be read by all shades of politicians and students of politics."—York-shire Post. " Yet another addition to that bright constellation of pamphlets."—Spectator.

Quo Vadimus ? Glimpses of the Future. By E. E. Fournier d'Albe, D.Sc., Second Impression.

" A wonderful vision of the future. A book that will be talked about."—Daily Graphic. " A remarkable contribution to a remarkable series."—Manchester Dispatch. " Interesting and singularly plausible."—Daily Telegraph.

Thrasymachus, the Future of Morals. By C. E. M. Joad, author of " The Babbitt Warren," etc. Second impression.

" His provocative book."—Graphic. ' Written in a style of deliberate brilliance.' —Times Literary Supplement. " As outspoken and unequivocal a contribution as could well be imagined. Even those readers who dissent will be forced to recognize the admirable clarity with which he states his case. A book that will startle."—Daily Chronicle.

[4]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Lysistrata, or Woman's Future and Future Woman. By Anthony M. Ludovici, author of " A Defence of Aristocracy," etc. Second Impression. " A stimulating book. Volumes would be needed to deal, in the fullness his work provokes, with all the problems raised."—Sunday Times. " Pro-feminine but anti-feministic." —Scotsman. " Full of brilliant common-sense."—Observer.

Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge. By Mrs Bertrand Russell. With a frontispiece. Third impression.

An answer to Lysistrata. " A passionate vindication of the rights of woman."— Manchester Guardian. " Says a number of things that sensible women have been wanting publicly said for a long time."—Daily Herald.

Hephaestus, the Soul of the Machine. By E. E. Fournier d'Albe, D.Sc.

" A worthy contribution to this interesting series. A delightful and thought-provoking essay."—Birmingham Post. " There is a special pleasure in meeting with a book like Hephaestus The author has the merit of really understanding what he is talking about." —Engineering. " An exceedingly clever defence of machinery."—Architects' Journal.

The Passing of the Phantoms : a Study of Evolutionary Psychology and Morals. By C. J. Patten, Professor of Anatomy, Sheffield University. With 4 Plates.

" Readers of Dædalus, Icarus and Tantalus, will be grateful for an excellent presentation of yet another point of view."—Yorkshire Post. " This bright and bracing little book." Literary Guide. " Interesting and original." —Medical Times.

[5]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

The Mongol in our Midst : a Study of Man and his Three Faces. By F. G. Crookshank, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 28 Plates. Second Edition, revised.

" A brilliant piece of speculative induction." —Saturday Review. " An extremely interesting and suggestive book, which will reward careful reading "—Sunday Times. " The pictures carry fearful conviction."—Daily Herald.

The Conquest of Cancer. By H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S. Introduction by F. G. Crookshank, M.D.

" Eminently suitable for general reading. The problem is fairly and lucidly presented. One merit of Mr Wright's plan is that he tells people what, in his judgment, they can best do, here and now "—From the Introduction.

Pygmalion, or the Doctor of the Future. By R. McNair Wilson, M.B.

" Dr Wilson has added a brilliant essay to this series"—Times Literary Supplement. " This is a very little book, but there is much wisdom in it "—Evening Standard. " No doctor worth his salt would venture to say that Dr Wilson was wrong."—Daily Herald.

Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man. By H. S. Jennings, Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins University.

" This volume is one of the most remarkable that has yet appeared in this series Certainly the information it contains will be new to most educated laymen. It is essentially a discussion of . . . heredity and environment, and it clearly establishes the fact that the current use of these terms has no scientific justification."—Times Literary Supplement. "An exceedingly brilliant book."—New Leader.

[ 6 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Narcissus : an Anatomy of Clothes. By Gerald Heard. With 19 illustrations.

" A most suggestive book."—Nation.

" Irresistible. Reading it is like a switchback journey. Starting from prehistoric times we rocket down the ages."—Daily News

" Interesting, provocative, and entertaining." —Queen.

Thamyris, or Is There a Future for Poetry? By R. C. Trevelyan.

" Learned, sensible, and very well-written." —Affable Hawk, in New Statesman.

" Very suggestive." — J. C. Squire, in Observer.

" A very charming piece of work, I agree with all, or at any rate, almost all its conclusions."—J. St Loe Strachey, in Spectator.

Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence. By Vernon Lee, author of " Satan the Waster," etc.

" W should like to follow the author's sugge-tions as to the effect of intelligence on the future of Ethics, Aesthetics, and Manners. Her book is profoundly stimulating and should be read by everyone."—Outlook.

" A concise, suggestive piece of work."—Saturday Review.

Timotheus, the Future of the Theatre. By Bonamy Dobrée, author of"Restoration Drama," etc.

" A witty, mischievous little book, to be read with delight."—Times Literary Supplement.

" This is a delightfully witty book." —Scotsman.

" In a subtly satirical vein he visualizes various kinds of theatres in 200 years' time. His gay little book makes delightful reading."—Nation.

[ 7 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Paris, or the Future of War. By Captain

B. H. Liddell Hart.

"A companion volume to Callinicus.

A gem of close thinking and deduction."

—Observer. "A noteworthy contribution to

a problem of concern to every citizen in this

country."—Daily Chronicle. "There is some

lively thinking about the future of war in

Paris, just added to this set of live-wire

pamphlets on big subjects."—Manchester

Guardian.

Wireless Possibilities. By Professor

A. M. Low. With 4 diagrams.

"As might be expected from an inventor

who is always so fresh, he has many inter-

esting things to say."—Evening Standard.

"The mantle of Blake has fallen upon the

physicists. To them we look for visions, and

we find them in this book."—New Statesman.

Perseus : of Dragons. By H. F. Scott

Stokes. With 2 illustrations.

"A diverting little book, chock-full of ideas

Mr Stokes' dragon-lore is both quaint and

v.rious."—Morning Post. "Very amusingly

written, and a mine of curious knowledge for

which the discerning reader will find many

uses."—Glasgow Herald.

Lycurgus, or the Future of Law. By

E. S. P. Haynes, author of "Concerning

Solicitors," etc.

"An interesting and concisely written book."

—Yorkshire Post. "He roundly declares that

English criminal law is a blend of barbaric

violence, medieval prejudices and modern

fallacies. . . . A humane and conscientious

investigation."—T P.'s Weekly. "A thought-

ful book—deserves careful reading."—Law

Times.

[8]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Euterpe, or the Future of Art. By Lionel R. McColvin, author of " The Theory of Book-Selection."

" Discusses briefly, but very suggestively, the problem of the future of art in relation to the public."—Saturday Review. " Another indictment of machinery as a soul-destroyer . . . Mr Colvin has the courage to suggest solutions."—Westminster Gazette. " This is altogether a much-needed book."—New Leader.

Pegasus, or Problems of Transport. By Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, author of " The Reformation of War," etc. With 8 Plates.

" The foremost military prophet of the day propounds a solution for industrial and unemployment problems. It is a bold essay . . . and calls for the attention of all concerned with imperial problems."—Daily Telegraph. " Practical, timely, very interesting and very important."—J. St Loe Strachey, in Spectator.

Atlantis, or America and the Future. By Colonel J. F. C. Fuller.

" Candid and caustic "—Observer. " Many hard things have been said about America, but few quite so bitter and caustic as these." —Daily Sketch. " He can conjure up possibilities of a new Atlantis "—Clarion.

Midas, or the United States and the Future. By C. H. Bretherthon, author of " The Real Ireland," etc.

A companion volume to Atlantis. " Full of astute observations and acute reflections this wise and witty pamphlet, a provocation to the thought that is creative."—Morning Post. " A punch in every paragraph. One could hardly ask for more 'meat.'"—Spectator.

[9]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Nuntius, or Advertising and its Future.

By Gilbert Russell.

" Expresses the philosophy of advertising concisely and well."—Observer. " It is doubt-

ful if a more strai htforward exposition of the part advertising plays in our public and

private life has been written."—Manchester

Guardian.

Birth Control and the State : a Plea

and a Forecast. By C. P. Blacker,

M.C., M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

" A very careful summary "—Times Literary

Supplement. " A temperate and scholarly

survey of the arguments for and against the

encouragement of the practice of birth control."

—Lancet. " He writes lucidly, moderately,

and from wide knowledge; his book un-

doubtedly gives a better understanding of the

subject than any other brief account we know.

It also suggests a policy."—Saturday Review.

Ouroboros, or the Mechanical Extension

of Mankind. By Garet Garrett.

" This brilliant and provoking little book."

—Observer "A significant and thoughtful

essay,"—Spectator. " A brilliant writer, Mr

Garrett is a remarkable man. He explains

something of the enormous change the machine

has made in life."—Daily Express.

Artifex, or the Future of Craftsmanship.

By John Gloag, author of " Time,

Taste, and Furniture."

" An able and interesting summary of the

history of craftsmanship in the past, a direct

criticism of the present, and at the end his

hopes for the future. Mr Gloag's real con-

tribution to the future of craftsmanship is

his discussion of the uses of machinery."

—Times Literary Supplement.

[ 10 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Plato's American Republic. By J. Douglas Woodruff. Third impression.

"Uses the form of the Socratic dialogue with devastating success A gently malicious wit sparkles in every page"—Sunday Times.

"Having deliberately set himself an almost impossible task, has succeeded beyond belief."—Saturday Review. "Quite the liveliest even of this spirited series"—Observer.

Orpheus, or the Music of the Future. By W. J. Turner, author of "Music and Life." Second impression.

"A book on music that we can read not merely once, but twice or thrice Mr Turner has given us some of the finest thinking upon Beethoven that I have ever met with."—Ernest Newman in Sunday Times. "A brilliant essay in contemporary philosophy."—Outlook. "The fruit of real knowledge and understanding"—New Statesman.

Terpander, or Music and the Future. By E. J. Dent, author of "Mozart's Operas."

"In Orpheus Mr Turner made a brilliant voyage in search of first principles. Mr Dent's book is a skilful review of the development of music It is the most succinct and stimulating essay on music I have found . . ."—Musical News. "Remarkably able and stimulating."—Times Literary Supplement "There is hardly another critic alive who could sum up contemporary tendencies so neatly."—Spectator.

Sibylla, or the Revival of Prophecy. By C. A. Mace, University of St. Andrew's.

"An entertaining and instructive pamphlet."—Morning Post "Places a nightmare before us very ably and wittily "—Spectator. "Passages in it are excellent satire, but on the whole Mr Mace's speculations may be taken as a trustworthy guide . . . to modern scientific thought."—Birmingham Post.

[ II ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Lucullus, or the Food of the Future. By Olga Hartley and Mrs C. F. Leyel, authors of "The Gentle Art of Cookery."

" This is a clever and witty little volume in an entertaining series, and it makes enchanting reading."—Times Literary Supplement.

" Opens with a brilliant picture of modern man, living in a vacuum-cleaned, steam-heated, credit-furnished suburban mansion ' with a wolf in the basement '—the wolf of hunger. This banquet of epigrams."—Spectator.

Procrustes, or The Future of English Education. By M. Alderton Pink.

" Undoubtedly he makes out a very good case."—Daily Herald. " This interesting addition to the series."—Times Educational Supplement. " Intends to be challenging and succeeds in being so. All fit readers will find it stimulating."—Northern Echo.

The Future of Futurism. By John Rodker.

" Mr Rodker is up-to-the-minute, and he has accomplished a considerable feat in writing on such a vague subject, 92 extremely interesting pages."—T. S. Eliot, in Nation.

" There are a good many things in this book which are of interest "—Times Literary Supplement.

Pomona, or the Future of English. By Basil de Sélincourt, author of " The English Secret", etc.

" The future of English is discusssed fully and with fascinating interest."—Morning Post. " Full of wise thoughts and happy words."—Times Literary Supplement. " His later pages must stir the blood of any man who loves his country and her poetry. J. C. Squire, in Observer. " His finely-conceived essay."—Manchester Guardian.

[ 12 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Balbus, or the Future of Architecture

By Christian Barman, editor of " The

Architects' Journal ".

" A really brilliant addition to this already

distinguished series. The reading of Balbus

will give much data for intelligent prophecy,

and incidentally, an hour or so of excellent

entertainment."—Spectator. " Most readable

and reasonable. We can recommend it

warmly."—New Statesman. " This intriguing

little book."—Connoisseur.

Apella, or the Future of the Jews. By

A Quarterly Reviewer,

" Cogent, because of brevity and a magni-

ficent prose style, this book wins our quiet

praise. It is a fine pamphlet, adding to the

value of the series, and should not be missed."

—Spectator. " A notable addition to this

excellent series. His arguments are a provoca-

tion to fruitful thinking "—Morning Post.

The Dance of Çiva, or Life's Unity and

Rhythm. By Collum.

" It has substance and thought in it. The

author is very much alive and responsive to

the movements of to-day which seek to unite

the best thought of East and West, and dis-

cusses Mussolini and Jagadis Bose with

perspicacity."—Spectator.

Lars Porsena, or the Future of Swearing

and Improper Language. By Robert

Graves. Second impression.

" Goes uncommonly well, and deserves to."

—Observer. " Not for squeamish readers."

—Spectator. " No more amusingly unexpected

contribution has been made to this series.

A deliciously ironical affair."—Bystander.

" His highly entertaining essay is as full as

the current standard of printers and police

will allow."—New Statesman. " Humour and

style are beyond criticism."—Irish Statesman.

[ 13 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Socrates, or the Emancipation of Mankind. By H. F. Carlill.

" Devotes a specially lively section to the herd instinct."—Times. " 'Emancipation' comes through knowledge The process making for this freedom is described with wit and sanity in Socrates."—Scotsman. " Deals with the trend of modern psychology in a way that grips the interest. We trust it will gain a wide circulation."—Clarion.

Delphos, or the Future of International Language. By E. Sylvia Pankhurst.

" Equal to anything yet produced in this brilliant series Miss Pankhurst states very clearly what all thinking people must soon come to believe, that an international language would be one of the greatest assets of modern civilization "—Spectator. " A most readable book, full of enthusiasm, an important contribution to this thorny subject."

—International Language.

Gallio, or the Tyranny of Science. By J. W. N. Sullivan, author of "A History of Mathematics."

" So packed with ideas that it is not possible to give any adequate résumé of its contents " —Times Literary Supplement. " His remarkable monograph, his devastating summary of materialism, his insight into the puerilities of many psycho-analysts . . . This pocket Novum Organum "—Spectator.

Apollonius, or the Future of Psychical Research. By E. N. Bennett, author of " Problems of Village Life," etc.

" A sane, temperate and suggestive survey of a field of inquiry which is slowly but surely pushing to the front "—Times Literary Supplement. " His exposition of the case for psychic research is lucid and interesting "—Scotsman. " Displays the right temper, admirably conceived, skilfully executed "—Liverpool Post.

[ 14 ]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Aeolus, or the Future of the Flying

Machine. By OLIVER STEWART.

" Both his wit and his expertness save him

from the nonsensical-fantastic. There is

nothing vague or sloppy in these imaginative

forecasts."—Daily News. " He is to con-

gratulated. His book is small, but it is so

delightfully funny that it is well worth the

price, and there really are sensible ideas

behind the jesting."—Aeroplane.

Stentor, or the Press of To-Day and

To-Morrow. By DAVID OCKHAM.

" This provocative volume, of which the chief

point is the growing danger of newspaper com-

bines."—Liverpool Post. " What pleases me

most is his protests against ' bastard journal-

ism.'"—Financial News.

Rusticus, or the Future of the Country-

side. By MARTIN S. BRIGGS, F.R.I.B.A.

" Any attempt to stem the tide of ugliness

which is sweeping over our countryside

deserves our gratitude, and it is with especial

pleasure that we hail the appearance of

Rusticus, a brief but vigorous onslaught on

our stupidity Few of the fifty volumes [of

this series] capture our imagination as does

this one "—Daily Telegraph.

Janus, or the Conquest of War. By

WILLIAM McDOUGALL, M.B., F.R.S.

Reviews all the chief causes of war and

shows their roots to lie in the fear of aggression.

Surveys all the more important suggestions

for the avoidance of war, and shows them to

be either impossible, useless, or dangerous.

Finally recommends an international air-force

as the only remedy and answers all objections

to it.

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

NEARLY READY

Vulcan, or the Future of Labour. By Cecil Chisholm.

This stimulating book considers industry from the point of view of methods of efficiency and industrial organization.

Clio, or the Future of History. By André Maurois.

A whimsical and fantastic picture of the world in the not-so-far distant future, showing the power of a world press organization.

Hymen, or the Future of Marriage. By Norman Haire.

IN PREPARATION

Caledonia, or the Future of the Scots. By G. M. Thomson.

Lares et Penates, or the Future of the Home. By H. J. Birnstingl.

Bacchus, or the Future of Wine. By P. Morton Shand.

Mercurius, or the World on Wings. By C. Thompson Walker.

The Future of Chemistry. By T. W. Jones.

The Future of India. By T. Earle Welby.

The Future of Films. By Ernest Betts.

[16]