They are, as I
have shown, besotted by moral concepts, a moral engrossment, a delusion
of moral infallibility. In their view of the arts they are still unable
to shake off the naive suspicion of the Fathers.[77] A work of the
imagination can justify itself, in their sight, only if it show a moral
purpose, and that purpose must be obvious and unmistakable. Even in
their slow progress toward a revolt against the ancestral Philistinism,
they cling to this ethical bemusement: a new gallery of pictures is
welcomed as "improving," to hear Beethoven "makes one better." Any
questioning of the moral ideas that prevail--the principal business, it
must be plain, of the novelist, the serious dramatist, the professed
inquirer into human motives and acts--is received with the utmost
hostility. To attempt such an enterprise is to disturb the peace--and
the disturber of the peace, in the national view, quickly passes over
into the downright criminal.
These symptoms, it seems to me, are only partly racial, despite the
persistent survival of that third-rate English strain which shows itself
so ingenuously in the colonial spirit, the sense of inferiority, the
frank craving for praise from home.
Pages:
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305