Impressions and Comments | Page 9

that came
before him. For here we are in the presence of a great tradition which a
long series of artists have in succession wrought, each adding a little
that expressed the noblest insight of his own soul at its highest and best
moments, and the newest acquirement of his technical skill. Raphael
broke up painting, as later on Beethoven broke up music. Not that that
blow destroyed the possibility of rare and wonderful developments in
special directions. But painting and music alike lost for ever the radiant
beauty of their prime and its unconscious serenity.
In a certain sense, if one thinks, it is the ripeness of Raphael's
perfection which falls short of Perfection. In all Perfection that satisfies
we demand the possibility of a Beyond which enfolds a further
Perfection. It is not the fully blown rose which entrances us, but rather
that which in its half-blown loveliness suggests a Perfection which no
full-blown rose ever reached. In that the rose is the symbol of all vitally
beautiful things. Raphael is the full-blown rose; the only Beyond is
Dissolution and the straggling of faded petals.
October 17.--"War, that simple-looking word which lightly comes
tripping from the lips of unthinking men, and even women." So writes a
famous war-correspondent, a man in the midst of war and telling of war
as it really is. Now hear a woman war-correspondent, writing about this
same war: "I was so proud to see the first gun fired on Wednesday. ... I
liked to hear the shells swishing. ... To women keen on this war it

seems almost too good to be true." That is not an extract from one of
the poignant satires of Janson. This woman, who writes of war as a girl
might write of her first long frock, is an actual woman, a
war-correspondent, with a special permit to be at the front. We are told,
moreover, that she is, at the same time, actively nursing the wounded in
the hospital.
To those psychologists who like large generalisations, how this figure
must appeal as a type of the ancient conventional conception of what
women are supposed to be--Incarnate Devils, Angels of Mercy, blended
together.
October 18.--Stanley Hall has lately pointed out how much we have
lost by eliminating the Devil from our theology. He is the inseparable
Companion of God, and when faith in the Devil grows dim God fades
away. Not only has the Devil been the Guardian of innocent pleasure,
of the theatre, of dancing, of sports, Hall observes, but he preserved the
virility of God. "Ought not we to rehabilitate and reinstall the Devil?"
There is much psychological truth in this contention, even for those
who are not concerned, with Stanley Hall, for the maintenance of
orthodox Christian theology. By eliminating one of the Great Persons
from our theology we not only emasculate, we dissolve it. We cannot
with impunity pick and choose what we will dispense with and what we
will preserve in our traditional myths. Let us take another sacred myth,
as it may well have been, "Jack and the Bean Stalk." Suppose that our
refined civilised impulses lead us to reject Jack, the reckless,
mischievous, and irresponsible youth, who, after a brief but
discreditable career on earth, climbed up into the clouds and
fraudulently deprived the Great Giant in the sky of his most precious
possessions. But if the revolted moral sense rejects Jack, is it likely that
even the Great Giant himself will much longer retain our faith?
In any case it must still be said that mere grandeur, creativeness, the
apotheosis of virtue and benevolence, fail to constitute an adequate
theological symbol for the complex human animal. Man needs to deify
not only his moments of moral subjection and rectitude, but his
moments of orgy and revolt. He has attained the height of civilisation,

not along the one line only, but along both lines, and we cannot even be
sure that the virtue line is the most important. Even the Puritan Milton
("a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it," as Blake said)
made Satan the real hero of his theological epic, while the austere
Carducci addressed a famous ode to Satan as the creator of human
civilisation. And if you suspect that European culture may be only an
eccentric aberration, then let us wander to the other side of the world,
and we find, for instance, that the great Hawaiian goddess Kapo had a
double life--now an angel of grace and beauty, now a demon of
darkness and lust. Every profound vision of the world must recognise
these two equally essential aspects of Nature and of Man; every vital
religion must embody both aspects in superb and ennobling symbols. A
religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil