Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic. Douglas James

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      “How hateful is the word ‘experience’ in the mouth of the littérateur. They all seem to think that this universe exists to educate them, and that they should write books about it. They never look on a sunrise without thinking what an experience it is; how it is educating them for bookmaking. It is this that so often turns the true Nature-worshipper away from books altogether, that makes him bless with what at times seems such malicious fervour those two great benefactors of the human race, Caliph Omar and Warburton’s cook.

      In Thoreau there was an almost perpetual warring of the Nature instinct with the Humanity instinct. And, to say the truth, the number is smaller than even Nature-worshippers themselves are aware – those in whom there is not that warring of these two great primal instincts. For six or eight months at a time there are many, perhaps, who could revel in ‘utter solitude,’ as companionship with Nature is called; with no minster clock to tell them the time of day, but, instead, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle in the morning, the shifting of the shadows at noon, and the cawing of rooks going home at sunset. But then to these, there comes suddenly, and without the smallest warning, a half-recognized but secretly sweet pleasure in looking at the smooth high-road, and thinking that it leads to the city – a beating of the heart at the sound of the distant railway-whistle, as the train winds its way, like a vast gliding snake, to the whirlpool they have left.

      In order to realize the folly of the modern Carlylean heresy of work, it is necessary to realize fully how infinitely rich is Nature, and how generous, and consequently what a sacred duty as well as wise resolve it is that, before he ‘returns unto the ground,’ man should drink deeply while he may at the fountain of Life. Let it be enough for the Nature-worshipper to know that he, at least, has been blessed. Suppose he were to preach in London or Paris or New York against this bastard civilization, and expatiate on Nature’s largess, of which it robs us? Suppose he were to say to people to whom opinion is the breath of life, ‘What is it that this civilization of yours can give you by way of compensation for that of which it robs you? Is it your art? Is it your literature? Is it your music? Is it your science?’ Suppose, for instance, he were to say to the collector of Claudes, or Turners, or David Coxes: ‘Your possessions are precious undoubtedly, but what are even they when set against the tamest and quietest sunrise, in the tamest and quietest district of Cambridge or Lincoln, in this tame and quiet month, when, over the treeless flat you may see, and for nothing, purple bar after purple bar trembling along the grey, as the cows lift up their heads from the sheet of silver mist in which they are lying? How can you really enjoy your Turners, you who have never seen a sunrise in your lives?’ Or suppose he were to say to the opera-goer: ‘Those notes of your favourite soprano were superb indeed; and superb they ought to be to keep you in the opera-house on a June night, when all over the south of England a thousand thickets, warm with the perfumed breath of the summer night, are musical with the gurgle of the nightingales.’ Thoreau preached after this fashion, and was deservedly laughed at for his pains.

      Yet it is not a little singular that this heresy of the sacredness of work should be most flourishing at the very time when the sophism on which it was originally built is exploded; the sophism, we mean, that Nature herself is the result of Work, whereas she is the result of growth. One would have thought that this was the very time for recognizing what the sophism had blinded us to, that Nature’s permanent temper – whatever may be said of this or that mood of hers – is the temper of Sport, that her pet abhorrence, which is said to be a vacuum, is really Work. We see this clearly enough in what are called the lower animals – whether it be a tiger or a gazelle, a ferret or a coney, a bat or a butterfly – the final cause of the existence of every conscious thing is that it should sport. It has no other use than that. For this end it was that ‘the great Vishnu yearned to create a world.’ Yet over the toiling and moiling world sits Moloch Work; while those whose hearts are withering up with hatred of him are told by certain writers to fall down before him and pretend to love.

      The worker of the mischief is, of course, civilization in excess, or rather, civilization in wrong directions. For this word, too, has to be newly defined in the Dictionary before mentioned, where you will find it thus given: – Civilization: a widening and enriching of human life. Bastard or Modern Western Civilization: the art of inventing fictitious wants and working to supply them. In bastard civilization life becomes poorer and poorer, paltrier and paltrier, till at last life goes out of fashion altogether, and is supplanted by work. True freedom is more remote from us than ever. For modern Freedom is thus defined: the exchange of the slavery of feudality for the slavery of opinion. Thoreau realized this, and tried to preach men back to common-sense and Nature. Here was his mistake – in trying to preach. No man ever yet had the Nature-instinct preached into him.”