THE NEW IDEAL.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 78, 8 May 1914, Page 5

THE NEW IDEAL.

LITERATURE OR LUCRE?

There are many mean maxims which are current coin, but I think the meanest of all is the maxim which declares that nothing succeeds like success, says James Douglas in the "Express." In literature especially I hate, loathe, and detest this despicable maxim. It has done more harm to literature than any other doctrine of the devil. I have always revered Mr Henry James as the great living witness against its validity; and I am not surprised to learn from his "Notes of a Son and Brother" that in the eyes of his father mere success was an abomination. All that the world deems success was to the elder Henry James nothing and less than nothing. He did not care a straw about what his sons were going to do. All that .he cared for was what they were going to be. The worship of success has poisoned the fount of literature, and to-day Henry James and Thomas Hardy stand almost alone as guardians of the dead tradition that regarded success as the bait offered by Satan to the artist, and that prized sincerity as a jewel worth all the bribes offered by the vendor of success.

CANKER OF THE AGE

It is admitted by most serious thinkers that the idolatry of money is the canker of the age in which we live; and it is not astonishing that it should corrupt literature as well as other fields of human energy. Dean Inge tells us that "nothing but a queer sort of religious self-mortification could induce many persons to chose the life which the successful business man had to lead." He acknowledges that "when the money-maker w&s an honest merchant, subduing the earth and really creating wealth to the public advantage, his work could be, and often was; an instrument of valuable moral discipline." But he goes on to argue that "now that the financier had dethroned the merchant, now that wealth was appropriated rather than created, the connection between religious austerity and business was almost dissolved, and there was the unedifying spectacle, so common in America', of the unscrupulous speculator who made his home in his office, while his wife squandered his ill-gotten gains in vulgar and senseless extravagance." He tells us "that the older asceticism left the treasure of the earth untouched, and the newer form had not only brutalised and defaced Nature, but had squandered its mineral and vegetable resources with a wanton recklessness which all future generations would call accursed." Now I propose to show that this immoral or a-moral asceticism is also brutalising and defacing literature, and is squandering the imaginative and intellectual resources of mankind with equally wanton recklessness.

"MONEY IN HEAPS."

There is an article in the current number of the "Author," which I, as a member of the Society of Authors, have read with a bitter sense of shame and disgust. It preaches to young writers the hideous gospel that everything should be prostituted to the aim of making money. This article is ' a sign of the times, and that it is not negligible is demonstrated by the appearance of > Mr Arnold Bennett in the character of an advocate of the same horrible gospel. Mr Bennett has avowed himself as the author of a book called "The Truth About an Author," and as he is one of the most successful authors of our time," The challenge he has issued must be taken up without hesitation, for if it be allowed to go without repudiation it will hasten the process [of debasement and degradation which is going on. Mr Bennett promulgates the gospel of success in these words:—

My aim in writing plays, whether alone, or in collaboration, has always been strictly commercial. I wanted

money in heaps, and I wanted advertisement for my books. He says he has a "profound belief in the efficacy of cutting a dash," and he describes how he "cut a dash" in the presence of "an influential friend" to whom he talked about "prices per thousand." By "cutting a dash" you "extort respect. You are ticketed in the retentive brains of literary shahs as a success." There is the gospel of success, naked and unashamed. The young writer is counselled to make success not only his chief but his sole end and aim. He is advised to subordinate everything to the business of making money in heaps. He is urged to be "strictly commercial" in his aspirations. In short, the career of literature is placed on a level with the career of the financier-ascetic who sacrifices everything to the soul-destroying aim of appropriating rather than creating wealth. LITERARY ASCETICISM.

I admit that Mr Bennett preaches the gospel of literary aseeticisin in its extremest form. His picture of the literary life is a picture of religious selfmortification. But what is the end-and aim of the new literary ascetic? It is the pursuit of money as a god in itself. It is not the attainment of success as a veans of securing the power to increase the store of things that are in themselves good and lovely and beautiful. It is not the aggrandisement of the individual for the sake of altruistic ideals. It is solely and wholly the selfish gratification of the lust of lucre and the greed of gold.

ENEMIES OF SOCIETY. If this doctrine be established, then literature will be permanently debased, and men of letters will be sunk to the position of predatory wild beasts who prey upon society. They will become in a very real sense the most formidable enemies of society. For the tilings which they traffic in are more precious than gold or diamonds, ©il or rubber, seeing that they are living things, being the thoughts and aspirations and dreams of humanity. The man of letters cannot serve both God and Mammon. Whether as historian, as poet, as dramatist, as novelist, as essayist, or as critic, he is a servant of truth, not in any cant sense of the word, but in its deep abiding meaning. If his aims be "strictly commercial," he is bound to sacrifice in some degree the clear sincerity of his vision, for at every step the impulse of veracity will conflict with the need to tickle the long ear of the multitude. For my part, I prefer the ascetic austerity of the stoical artist like Henry James or George Gissing, who goes his own lonely way without envying the "best sellers," who sell their souls for cash and let go all the credit of artistic independence. And we must warn the young writer that he cannot make the btst of both worlds, that he cannot have his cake and eat it, too, that he cannot wallow in "strictly commercial aims" without losing j.ot only his own self-respect, but also the crown of parsley that is placed upon the head of the artist with a conscience and with a higher aim than

venal success and pecuniary reward. Can we imagine Milton writing "Paradise Lost" with "strictly commercial" aims, or Keats writing his "Ode to a Grecian Urn" in order to make "money in heaps"?