Censorship and Art | Page 8

majorities of their fellow-countrymen! And we
incur this appalling risk for the want of a single, or at the most, a
handful of Censors, invested with a simple but limitless discretion to
excise or to suppress entirely such political utterances as may seem to
their private judgments calculated to cause pain or moral disturbance in
the average man. The masses, it is true, have their protection and
remedy against injudicious or inflammatory politicians in the Law and
the so-called democratic process of election; but we have seen that
theatre audiences have also the protection of the Law, and the remedy
of boycott, and that in their case, this protection and this remedy are not
deemed enough. What, then, shall we say of the case of Politics, where
the dangers attending inflammatory or subversive utterance are greater
a million fold, and the remedy a thousand times less expeditious?
Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as the basic principle of
Justice underlying the civic rights of dramatists. Then, let "Censorship
for all" be their motto, and this country no longer be ridden and
destroyed by free Institutions! Let them not only establish forthwith
Censorships of Literature, Art, Science, and Religion, but also place
themselves beneath the regimen with which they have calmly fettered
Dramatic Authors. They cannot deem it becoming to their regard for
justice, to their honour; to their sense of humour, to recoil from a
restriction which, in a parallel case they have imposed on others. It is
an old and homely saying that good officers never place their men in
positions they would not themselves be willing to fill. And we are not
entitled to believe that our Legislators, having set Dramatic Authors
where they have been set, will--now that their duty is made plain--for a
moment hesitate to step down and stand alongside.
But if by any chance they should recoil, and thus make answer: "We
are ready at all times to submit to the Law and the People's will, and to
bow to their demands, but we cannot and must not be asked to place
our calling, our duty, and our honour beneath the irresponsible rule of
an arbitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the generality he may
chance to be!" Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you ever hear of that

great saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!'"
For it is but fair presumption that the Dramatists, whom our Legislators
have placed in bondage to a despot, are, no less than those Legislators,
proud of their calling, conscious of their duty, and jealous of their
honour.
1909.

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
It was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try and
gather these few thoughts. So golden and sweetly hot it was, that they
came lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or responsible than the
swoop of the very swallows; and, as in a play or poem, the result is
conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew would be the nature of
my diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed words. But, after all--I
thought, sitting there--I need not take my critical pronouncements
seriously. I have not the firm soul of the critic. It is not my profession
to know 'things for certain, and to make others feel that certainty. On
the contrary, I am often wrong-- a luxury no critic can afford. And so,
invading as I was the realm of others, I advanced with a light pen,
feeling that none, and least of all myself, need expect me to be right.
What then--I thought--is Art? For I perceived that to think about it I
must first define it; and I almost stopped thinking at all before the
fearsome nature of that task. Then slowly in my mind gathered this
group of words:
Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through
technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the
individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion.
And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal
emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.
Impersonal emotion! And what--I thought do I mean by that? Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires me
with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however
brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in
itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble
bath. If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?" Impulse of
acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" Impulse of inquiry; or:
"Which would be the right end for my head?" Mixed impulse of inquiry

and acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to it as a