We philosophise, most
of us, about anything but life; and one of the reasons why
published sermons have such vast sales is because, however clumsily
and conventionally, it is with life that they try to deal.
This kind of specialising is not recognised as a technical form of
it at all, and yet how far nearer and closer and more urgent it is
for us than any other kind. I have a hope that we are at the
beginning of an era of plain-speaking in these matters. Too often,
with the literary standard of decorum which prevails, such self-
revelations are brushed aside as morbid, introspective,
egotistical. They are no more so than any other kind of
investigation, for all investigation is conditioned by the
personality of the investigator. All that is needed is that an
observer of life should be perfectly candid and sincere, that he
should not speak in a spirit of vanity or self-glorification, that
he should try to disentangle what are the real motives that make
him act or refrain from acting.
As an instance of what I mean by confession of the frankest order,
dealing in this case not only with literature but also with
morality, let me take the sorrowful words which Ruskin wrote in his
Praeterita, as a wearied and saddened man, when there was no longer
any need for him to pretend anything, or to involve any of his own
thoughts or beliefs in any sort of disguise.
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