The Individual or the Herd?

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 261, 4 August 1928, Page 17

The Individual or the Herd?

Democracy and the Drama

THE idea of democracy is greatly blown upon these days, and the more socialistic the world becomes the more will the idea of democracy be blown upon (observes an anonymous contributor to the St. Martin's Review). Mussolini has established a severe dictatorship in Italy amid tumultuous cheers from Bernard Shaw. Lenin and Trotsky established a still severer dictatorship in Russia amid rather chastened cheers from H. G. Wells. Mussolini was a Socialist and may, for all I know, still call himself one. Lenin and Trotsky used to get down on their knees every night and mumble ardent prayers to old Daddy Marx, the Bogey Man. In the Irish Free State democracy has almost been abolished: in the United States it never began to be. The corporations o Cork and Dublin were suppressed by the Government. So were many o the County and Urban and Rural District Councils. Boards of Guardians do not now exist in the Irish Free State. The people are occasionally allowed to take part in a general election, sometimes as many as two in a mon but as the alternative to Cosgrave appears to be De Valera, the pnvi ege seems scarcely worth possessing. Democracy, in short, is out of favour In politics. It never was in favour in any artistic enterprise. In the theatre, whether it be the theatre of the spoken word or the theatre of the silent action, we discover that the idea of democracy is ruinous to art. The fact that a play is extremely popular is almost certainly a sign that it is “Abie’s Irish Rose” has lately concluded a run which exceeded that of Chu Chin Chow.” The moving-pictures are made on the assumption that t e majority of those who will see them are half-witted. Musical comedy, which makes the widest appeal of all stage entertainments, becomes less intelligent as time flies. The first musical comedies seem, by comparison with the latest, to be masterpieces of wit'and sense. But anyone who says so is certain to be assailed by'tbeir defenders as (a) a reactionary who belittles the present in favour of the past, or (b) a highbrow, or (c) a prig. I have difficulty in understanding the state of mind of people who argue in that fashion. Mme is. I hope, a realistic mind. I judge what. I see, not with any preconceptions about the past or the present, but solely in regard to its worth and by comparison with what 1 know, to be good in the accumulated treasure of the world. The man who believes that everything done in the past is superior to everything done now is clearly an ass, but so is the man who believes that everything done now is superior to everything done in the past. - I take it that we are to.be judged in the future by our survival value as a generation. If we achieve nothing but an immense amount- of efficientlyorganised but perishable goods, then the efficiency with which we achieved them will not count for very much when they are compared with the more durable but less efficiently-organised goods of our ancestors. I do not doubt that “Abie’s Irish Rose” and “Chu Chin Chow” can, in the matter of efficiency, knock spots off the works of Sophocles and Shakespeare-Shakespeare.-indeed, wns often a. very ramshackle sort of an author—but “Abie’s Irish Rose” and “Chu Chin Chow” are already dead and will soon be damned, while the works .of Sophocles and Shakespeare continue to stir the imagination and kindle the spirit. The reaction against democracy is, I believe, due to the realisation among us that the individual is of moie importance than the crowd. There are certain things that we must do in common. We cannot, for example, each possess our own private roads and drains, and it'.is inexpedient that we should each make our own electric light. ’ But there are-certain other things’that we-mwst endeavour, -if we are to live, to.do for. .ourselves. Thinking, for example. Community brains and standardised? idl'ns reduce ..thinking to a matter of mass production

and end in the ruin of the state. The more diversity of mind there is in the community the more vital and vigorous is the community. I do not think of heaven as a place where everybody shares the same opinion, but as a place where everybody agrees to differ; for it is out of the immense differences of mankind that the unity of God is achieved. Drama deals with conflict. It deals with the effect on dissimilar persons of a single experience. The blow , which fells one man rouses another. Mr. Galsworthy’s Falder goes to prison and is paralysed by his experience. Mr. Shaw’s Margaret goes to prison and is made glorious by her experience. It is clear to me that there can be no drama in a community where there is no difference or disputation, and therefore I am in revolt against any system of government which attempts to eliminate differences and disputations and to cast all men in the same mould. If democracy—though this may not be true of it—means that mankind shall be governed on the assumption that all men are alike, it is very probable .that the persons appointed to government will do their best to make all men alike. The herd instinct is to throw out of the herd the odd fellow. Government, is made easy for the governors when there is one law for everybody and those who are discommoded by it must either give in or get out. But I do not believe that all men are alike, except, perhaps, in' their need for salvation. I believe that all men are. essentially different, and that the business of our governors is to discover a way of enabling these masses of totally dissimilar persons to live ; together in some sort of agreement. The religious life, when it is truly lived, achieves that result. In times of disaster men manage, on the whole, to discover the way in which to pool their differences and make a unity out of them. The purpose of drama, to me, is to enable a single soul to reveal itself to a multitude of souls, not so that' it'may be made to resemble them,'nor so that they may be made to resemble it, but in order that the range of human understanding may be extended. In a fine society, in which the individual worth is recognised, the multitudes catch glimpses in the plays of heroic souls and are (Stimulated by these glimpses to make heroes of themselves, but in a tod democratic society where the mind is directed towards the small similarities and the little points of contact, the mind is depressed by continual reference to mean abilities, paltry ambitions and dull resemblances. The great dramatist is a great aristocrat. He declines to think what the herd thinks, and insists on the right to think for himself and to think aloud for himself. And because he insists upon that right, even when death is the penalty for exercising it, he confers upon the rest of mankind the right to think, too. That is the amazing paradox. For the democratic compulsion to think as everybody thinks means the death of thought. If anyone doubts this, let him or her look around- the. London stage and note what is worth seeing and what is not worth seeing. The mail who most insistently claimed the right to think for himself was first of all derided and howled down, while his plays were performed in back rooms or in hole-and-corner theatres. To-day, having asserted his right to think for himself and conferred upon a multitude of people the right to think for themselves, he is now regarded as a venerable old gentleman whose plays must not be missed by anybody. His name is Shaw, and there is no country in the world where his work is not frequently performed. Does anyone who reads this imagine that Bernard Shaw is a democrat? There never was a more autocratic man in the . whole history of literature. Your democratic authors, your herd-hunters, your give-plea sure-to-the-greatest-multitude dramatists were writing musical comedies and revues a year or two ago. To-day, they, are compiling scenarios for moving-pictures. To-morrow, they will be dead.