I make the
contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the
interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions
of his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly prized
distinctions, how dangerous sometimes that secondary mental power
which multiplies them. It sobers and clarifies human thinking a
little, perhaps, to reflect on how thin a line separates the sublime
and the ridiculous, the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the
fool, the genius and the freak.
Now, with this selfish individualism which we call naturalism we shall
have much to do, for it plays an increasing role in the modern
world; it is the neo-paganism which we may see spreading about us.
Sophistries of all kinds become the powerful allies of this sort of
moral and aesthetic anarchy. Its votaries are those sorts of
rebels who invariably make their minds not their friends but their
accomplices. They are ingenious in the art of letting themselves go
and at the same time thinking themselves controlled and praiseworthy.
The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially
both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to
submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those
restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and
corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44