THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18888, 31 December 1926, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY

(SPECIALLY WKITTIK 70R TST rBZSSj fiy A. H. Grinlixg. CXCYIII—ON MAKING A NEWSTART. Nothing is more perplexing than making a new start and especially if tho attempt bo mure-deliberate than spontaneous. Tho beginning of a New Year is the favourite time for such an experiment; which is the reason why Now Year resolutions so often end in a dismal failure. When, however, a man openly proclaims his intention of making a new start and invites his friends to witness the process, an interest, is generated of unusual dimensions. "The time had come,'' says Mr J. Middloton Hurry in the preface to "The Life of Jesus." "when it had become urgent upon me to make up my mind about Jesii.-." And in the introductory chapter to his book on "Keats and Shakespeare'' Mr Murry writes: "When tho invitation to deliver the lectur*- on which this book is planned reached me, my mind was full of a subject, which is not easy to ucoenne: .1 will call it briefly the history of the human soul since the Renaissance. For Koiao years there had been gradually forming in my mind a conception of the main movement nf tho human soul since that great moment when tho human mind, which is not the same thing as the human soul, or the two heroes of this book, would never have been what they were, broke away from tho bondage of a religion become a formalism, and entered upon that adventure of which we arc the inheritors. 1 mean the adventure of the individual mind exploring tho universe for truth. Tho process of that adventure, which is not yet at an end, and which in a sense may be only beginning, had gradually come to shape itself in my mind as a movement from tho rejection of religion to the rettieco\ery of religion, or rather from the rejection of a religion petrified by its own formalism to tho rediscovery of ihe essential reality of religion."

.Mr Middleton Murry is fairly widely known as the husband of Katharine Mansfield, and as the editor of a littlo monthly magazino called "The Adelphi." Ho is also the author of a number of books of dramatic and literary criticism, not forgetting one or two novels, and a book of verse. His first book, "Still Life," was published in 1917. I have not read it, but a subsequent story, "The Things We Are," published "five years later, is a great favourite of mine. Mr Boston, the hero of the story, was a man who essaved with more or less' success to make a fresh start in life. My first acquaintance with Mr .Murry dates back nearly ten years, when I read and enjoyed his critical study of Fyodor Dostoevsky. And Dostoevsky is an outstanding example of a man whom the force of circumstances compelled to make a fresh start. Arrested in 1849, he was sent to Siberia and was not allowed to return to St. Petersburg for ten years. Nothing daunted, embarrassed by heavy debts, and stricken by sickness, that fresh start issued in a series of books, which have placed Dostoevsky in the front rank of Russian writers.

Mr Murry argues that, Dostoevsky, whether by deliberate purpose, or by unconscious instinct set himself in his works to annihilate the sense of time, which is an essential to the representation of life. Mr Murry's comments on this jwint are as follows:—"Ho (Dostoevsky) was obsessed by the vision of eternity. Therefore he could not represent life. For a man who is obsessed by this awful and tremendous vision to represent life is impossible. It is an activity which demands a fundamental acceptance of life. But how should a man whoso eye saw life as something which was cold and dead and infinitely email represent liter 1 It was to him a mere mockery, and to represent it a barren labour. How could lie busy himself with delineating that which at moments he believed did not exist, in recording words which became suddenly lost in tho silence of eternity:'"

i Six years after ho had written his j study of Dostoevsky, Katherine Mans- ! fiold died, and Mr Murry made a new start. To appreciate the nature of that l>esh beginning, it is only necessary to compare the tono of his books published before 1923. viz. "The Evolution of an Intellectual," "Aspects of Literature." "Countries of the Mind," and "Pencillings" with the two books recently written, "Keats and Shakespeare" and ''The Story of Jesus." For instance, in an article called "The Question," written in March, 1919, Mr Murray says:—"After all, we may say bravely, these years of war have shattered our illusions. Wo may not be, we certainly are not, happy as- we once were; wo do not know in what we believe, and we do not like to look into tho matter too closely, for fear we should find in the recesses something which we do not care to look upon, much less own as our own. . . We have at least the merit of knowing more or less exactly what we arc. Wo have no illusions, and we go on living." Which leads up to following comment: —

• What have we gained by tho destruction of our illusions? Jto«t men will live on their old illusions, and tho few, among whom we count ourselves, will create for themselves new ones. \Ve have learned what men are, how powerless is th«ir reason, and how feeble and lukewarm their sympathy; wo recognise that we resemble tliem, and, it may be, we, are determined to keep our sympathy quick and our instincts disciplined. But the moment will come when even if wo Are not renegade to our determination, we shall weary of seeing in men what they really are, and we shall see them perfect instead of, perhaps, perfectible. We shall count promijo for performance in ourselves and in others, simply because that is the easier war. Indeed, the only way to live is by recreating an illusion.

Tracing Mr Slurry's progression towards the point at which he determined to make a new start, there is something in his essay on Amiel, written in August, 1921. which arrests attention. 'Not until the twentieth century is fully aware of the nineteenth," lie declares, li and has asserted itself to put a value on its achievement, will it have the strength for an achievement i>f its own. . . . The nineteenth century was complex and titanic .... a century difficult to comprehend by reason of the magnitude of the peaks rliiit rove from it. . . . From the days of TioiiKseau until the end of the nineteuith century the European mind was concent rated upon a moral problem, ft is sometimes said that the nineteenth century was the century of science: hut it was the moral, the religious, in a 'word the human interest of science which riveted men's minds. They waited on tip-toe to see what light science would cast on the problem of man's place in the universe." Mr Murry rounds off in a striking picture:—

The problem of the nineteenth century «-.is the problem of morality without institutions. The institution of the State vri3 reduced to a matter of majorities, and progressively worse educated majorities, the institution of the Church to a depart-

incut of the otato or nn antiquarian roiic. Relieion slid morality mitrlu poeM'oly be ptycholpjricnl needs, but they mi?hl prove io bo psychological illusions, or at least r.o more than psychological habits evolved ior the better protection of the triumphant herd; c?rtain!y the structure of the universe ar.d the prnces.'ce of animal lite provided no endorsement for them. This eariti and all that was therein »« a trivial incident in the incomprehensible coeintc adventure. How were men to iive? Where was a saclioncd principle of conduct to be found? In pursuit oi the answer arose that company of "God-seeker?, to use the simple and impressive Russian name—Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Nictische, Hardv, or their fellow;., like Baudelnir© or Stendhal, who affected the stoic part and turned an impassive face on the chaotic and incomprehensible world. Whatever their differences, those r_: re a V figure* oi the nineteenth century were occupied with a tingle problem; to discover a morality.

Writing in W22 on "The New Humanism'' Mr Mur.r.v imagines a

stern observer saying, ''Tito ns<' in literature, in art generally, is onc_ ot dissolution and disintegration. 'Die creative forces which woro on the verge of maturing before the war liavo been blighted by it; while those which emerged dtirim: the war are either listless or nihilistic, or both. The war, like a knife, cut the thread of the English tradition. At the moment it seems impossible that it should be tied together again. There is no point of departure, no solid rock of social or religious security on which the present generation can begin to build. 1* rom the highest ability to the lowest it is infected by a desire lor crude or refined sensationalism. This is the age, in literature, of scraps without coherence, of boredom which can bo relieved only by the braying of a jazz band, of a frenzied eagerncas to uncover our father's nakedness and our own." Mr Murry inclines to believe this a truepicture, not of England alone, but ot Russia,' France. Germany, and even of America. And this because a great part of the youth of the world is given over to an exasperated cynicism. And Mr Murry mentions that there are those who look for an antidote in a forthcoming religions revival.

It irmy perhaps be considered fanciful to regard Mr Minry's hooks on Keats. .Shakespeare, and Jesus as horalding the manner of the- coming o; this religious revival. All who have followed .Mr Murry's writings in ''The Adelphi" vvili recognise the fact that, profoundly affected by the death ot Katherine Mansfield, ho has been striving to find a sure foundation upon which he may build. It is surely more than a mere coincidence that the two journals promoted for other than commercial considerations, and which carry on a precarious existence, aro "G.K.'s Weekly," edited by Mr 0. l\. Chesterton, and which advocates consistently the Roman Catholic viewpoint, and "The Adelphi," edited by Mr Murry, and enthused by the new religious spirit. When Mr Murry's book on Keats and Shakespeare is carefully studied it will be seen to herald the direction From which the new revival will spring, a revival necessitating an entirely new start. An extract from the chapter on "Soul Making" will given an indication of the writer's way of thinking:

For some reason the Western mind has become very complacent, in its knowledge. Possibly we have good right to be complacent in the knowledge of the external world. But there is not the slightest reason to suppose that we know more about the internal world of the human soul than did our misty forefathers thousands of years ago. 1 believe that we do not know' so much; that we know in truth far less; that in this realm at least—and it is an important one—our ignorance is abysmal and our pretensions childish. By our presumption we shut ourselves off from knowledge. We do not believe, we cannot believe, that poetry ha 8 something to tell us of importance to our lives. We Uugh at tho old theory of direct inspiration, without pausing to think whether it meant anything, and whether tho belief that the poet (the yatea sacer) brought men a message from God, has not a profound symbolio significance which is not adequately replaced by the conception of him as "abnormal, or at best as the incalculable provider Oi eorne exotic thrill called an "Aesthetic emotion. Our modern rationality, which is bo deep in our bonee that we are scarcely conscious of it will reduce everything to its own terms'. There is no God, it saya, therefore the poet cannot bo inspired by Him! There is no super-rational truth, therefore the poet cannot declare it.

Mr Hurry avers that he holds, and has indeed been forced, into quit© a different r."i |oso P"J- He has a !\. m " htinctive and ineradicable conviction that pure poetry is not to life, but on the contrary is more exactly relevant to it than any other creation of th 6 human spirit. He has proved by experience that pure poetry contains a revelation, and he would far rather stand with the ancients m their belief that the poet is directly inspired bv God, than with the modern idea that "the poet is a.- lusus naturre, and poetry an amusing accident. He holds that the fundamental cause ot inadequacy of tho modern theory to the actual reality of experience lies in ignorance of the nature of the human soul. "This is the price, he exclaims, "we have paid for the enlightenment of the Renaissance. For it, is all very well to turn God out of the universe rather than suffer a parody of the Divine reality to remain; but if you turn out God, without taking upon yourself the full responsibility for what you have done, you run the risk of turning out also that secular human faculty which finds its exercise and purpose in the apprehension of the Divine reality. Remove God from the universe, and you may very well remove a faculty from the human soul."

The path which Mr Murry is treading, now that he has made a new start is indicated in some pregnant v.'ords: "Knowledge of God is acceptance of life. But the meaning becomes overlaid and hidden in the of theology and the multiplication of ceremonies. The accidental and outI ward parts of religion suffocate its inward life. The fundamental truth that tho knowledgo of God is a consummation of the progress of the individual soul, that 'the Kingdom of Heaven is within us,' is always forgotten, and the Church becomes a temporality. Therefore, true men rebel against it. Sometimes they can rebel, like Francis of Assisi, and remain within the Church, and revolutionise it for a moment into reality; or, like Christ himself, they can rebel and found a new Church; and sometimes, as at the Renaissance, they rebel against the whole conception of a Church, as something which must inevitably deny the freedom of the individual to fulfil his own destiny. For we must remember that in the long history of human civilisation which we know, a Church, in our sense of the word, is a comparatively modern invention; it is a temporary expedient which will become permanently inexpedient. But the truth which' is expressed in religion remains. The rebels rediscover it, if tliev r.re true men. and .they rediscover it by a path which the Church against which thev rebel has long since left, the path of loyalty to their complete humanitv: and they rediscover the reality which the Church has lost." '