Intentions | Page 2

am afraid that we are
beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken
to teaching--that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. In the
meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave
me to correct my proofs.
CYRIL. Writing an article! That is not very consistent after what you have just said.
VIVIAN. Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people
who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of
practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word 'Whim.'
Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to,
there may be a new Renaissance of Art.
CYRIL. What is the subject?
VIVIAN. I intend to call it 'The Decay of Lying: A Protest.'
CYRIL. Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that habit.
VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of
misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different
from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb
irresponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine
lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to
produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the
politicians won't do. Something may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle
of the Sophist has fallen on its members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are
delightful. They can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh
from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant
verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were
clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not
ashamed to appeal to precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out.
Newspapers, even, have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon. One feels
it as one wades through their columns. It is always the unreadable that occurs. I am afraid
that there is not much to be said in favour of either the lawyer or the journalist. Besides,
what I am pleading for is Lying in art. Shall I read you what I have written? It might do
you a great deal of good.
CYRIL. Certainly, if you give me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what magazine do you
intend it for?

VIVIAN. For the Retrospective Review. I think I told you that the elect had revived it.
CYRIL. Whom do you mean by 'the elect'?
VIVIAN. Oh, The Tired Hedonists, of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are
supposed to wear faded roses in our button-holes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult
for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures.
CYRIL. I should be black-balled on the ground of animal spirits, I suppose?
VIVIAN. Probably. Besides, you are a little too old. We don't admit anybody who is of
the usual age.
CYRIL. Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each other.
VIVIAN. We are. This is one of the objects of the club. Now, if you promise not to
interrupt too often, I will read you my article.
CYRIL. You will find me all attention.
VIVIAN (reading in a very clear, musical voice). THE DECAY OF LYING: A
PROTEST.--One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace
character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as an art,
a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the
form of fact; the modem novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.
The Blue-Book is rapidly becoming his ideal both for method and manner. He has his
tedious document humain, his miserable little coin de la creation, into which he peers
with his microscope. He is to be found at the Librairie Nationale, or at the British
Museum, shamelessly reading up his subject. He has not even the courage of other
people's ideas, but insists on going directly to life for everything, and ultimately, between
encyclopaedias and personal experience, he comes to the ground, having drawn his types
from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, and having acquired an amount
of useful information from which never, even in his most meditative moments, can he
thoroughly free himself.
'The lose