The Cult of the Rebel
I
IT is fashionable at the present time, particularly in certain intellectual circles, to admire the rebel. This admiration for defiant individuality is very clearly shown in two important activities, in the fine arts and in the new education; but it really underlies a great deal of our general attitude toward life, and may be responsible for a good deal of our trouble.
Its appearance in the fine arts is of interest, since art has always in the past been a kind of social mirror, reflecting faithfully the civilization which produced it. Historically this has been fully demonstrated and is quite accepted. The subtle-minded Greeks produced the delicate curves of the Parthenon and, later, slaughtered one another for a difference of one very little word in the creed. The legal-minded Romans introduced the ‘orders’ into architecture — authoritative and established schemes of decoration. The frivolous, clever, and superficial society of Louis XV produced an art as frivolous as itself. To-day, then, the fine arts should reflect, as clearly as in earlier times, the intellectual and emotional trend of modern culture. And to-day we regard a work of art as the product of an individual, as the expression of a personality, as a private creation. We think, I am afraid, of the fine arts as something quite apart from the general life, something which is of interest only to a few wealthy individuals who may amuse their leisure in the collection of pictures or of bric-a-brac.
Should we then conclude that to-day art no longer reflects our general life, as it always has done in the past? I do not think so. But it is difficult to see the mountain when you are climbing it. If we can, even partially, detach ourselves from our time, we shall find that art is still the same social mirror as before.
Yet a recent manifesto of modern art said, ‘Art is a private affair, the artist produces it for himself’; and a critic, discussing the work of a modern poet, writes, ‘The ordinary cultivated reader is ceasing to be able to read poetry. The poem exists, and can exist, only for an extremely limited public, equipped with special knowledge.’
According to this view, the arts have deserted our everyday life; they have taken up an attitude of separation, and, we must add, an attitude of revolt. This is a part of that revolt of the younger generation of which we have heard a good deal; those of us who revolted about forty years ago know quite well that it is no new thing.
II
Over a hundred years ago began the movement which is now known as the Romantic Movement. Its characteristics were a love of the picturesque, a love of movement and rhetoric and of strong, rather forced situations, and a very great admiration for the individual. It also had a strong tendency to produce myths, imaginary readings of history which supported its conclusions.
Rousseau is usually regarded as the prophet of romanticism, though it was certainly there before him. He denounced the hollow hypocrisies of society and upheld the virtues of the simple life. His particular myth was the ‘noble savage’ living a life of ideal freedom. That there never was such a savage was of little importance in this emotional revolt against the rather arid intellectualism of the eighteenth century.
The Romantic Movement spread over the civilized world; it took many forms and disguises, but through them all it shows this desire for strength and this tendency to exalt the individual, A hundred years ago, the Byronesque rebel wore a lofty brow, a flashing eye, a floating necktie, and a passionate love. To-day he is more likely to equip himself with a sophisticated scowl and a light-o’-love from the streets. He affects the cult of ugliness; writes ‘realistic’ novels, but despises realism in painting; and, as ever, worships strength. He is still a rebel; so far as the modern movement in art goes, we are still in the full tide of romanticism.
For, of course, the romantics love the rebel. He is the strong man who defies the outworn conventions of an effete society, who fights against tyranny and despotism. (What nice words!) He is the leader of the people against the tyrant; he is also the individual against the unthinking mob. He was, and is, always and inevitably ‘I’ in a striking and novel attitude. Of course he is quite sincere. The new disguise has always appeared as a new discovery, the fundamental sameness has remained unseen. Nothing annoys a ‘modern’ artist more than to have it suggested that he is ‘romantic.’ But he is.
Out of romanticism was born the modern attitude toward the artist.
Most people, when they think of the artist, think of him as a painter of pictures. He is an eccentric, Bohemian individual, of doubtful moral character, who spends his time dreaming in a disorderly studio accompanied by his favorite model, a girl of habits as abandoned as his own. This painful person is subject to fits of genius. When inspired, he will throw off masterpieces from which he never makes any profit, but which, if properly handled by a business man, will be worth thousands when the artist is dead. Such a business man is known as an ‘art patron.’
Murger’s famous work, Scenes de la vie de Bohème, did much to popularize this view of the artist. There is in it not one word of the honest craftsman engaged in making something which may be of use or may add to the value of our lives.
Many modern artists have done their best to live up to this romantic ideal. We may instance Paul Gauguin, the decorative painter, who died in 1903 after living a life of pseudo-savagery in Tahiti. He was the model romantic artist.
He was a stockbroker. He abandoned his business, he abandoned his wife and family, in order to devote himself to art. His biographer writes of him: ‘His life was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, the middle-class morality of the late nineteenth century. His art was to speak of a renewed world, a world where men could again walk, naked and unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities.’
This, in its rhetoric, is pure romanticism. Again we meet the noble savage of Rousseau. Gauguin went to Tahiti and attempted to live the free life of the noble savage. He found that the real savage was bound by conventions far stronger and more binding than those of the bourgeois society from which he fled.
To quote again from Gauguin’s biography: ‘He was a disillusioned cosmopolite, disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the pedantic and puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization.’ These are brave words, mainly in three or more syllables; but it is a little difficult to recognize in them a description of our own lives. Do we really live lives of ‘pedantic and puritanic hypocrisy’?
Of course Gauguin was not a cosmopolite at all. He was a very selfish and very bad-tempered man, and he was a rebel artist. It is worth noting that he never had any systematic training or instruction. He was ‘selftaught.’ It is an accepted doctrine that genius can only be injured by instruction.
Yet Gauguin was a real artist and his pictures have real beauty. It is because of this that it was worth while to take him as an example. But we may well ask if his talent would not have been increased by training and discipline.
III
The attitude of revolt, of separation from the hated bourgeois, became stronger in the early years of this century. During the past thirty years France has produced a whole series of rebel organizations — futurism, cubism, symbolism, Dadaism, surrealism. And every new group has issued a long manifesto or two, setting forth its aims in metaphysical language. Art is drowning in a thin philosophy.
The Dadaists propose, very simply, to abolish everything. A passage from their manifesto reads: ‘Thus was born Dada, out of a need of independence, of defiance for the community. Those who belong to us keep their freedom. We do not recognize any theory, we have had enough of cubistic and futuristic academies, laboratories of formal ideas.’
So does rebellion rebel against the rebels. This rejection of all rules and limitations is found in many writers on art to-day. Freedom from all external bonds could hardly be carried further.
Now the surrealists demand also freedom from internal bonds. The artist, they claim, is limited by all sorts of ideas learned when young, — inhibitions, phobias, repressions, and so on, — all bad. He must be freed from all this, and must write from his inner consciousness.
Surrealism in literature is described as ‘ pure psychic automatism . . . dictated by thought in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and without regard to any æthetic or moral preoccupations.’ We see very clearly the influence of Dr. Freud. We can now understand the admiration for the artistic efforts of young children. It is presumably uninfluenced by reason or a’sthetic preoccupation.
So the author sits down, pen in hand, and writes whatever comes. The theory of direct inspiration could hardly be carried further. We should get the free and untrammeled expression of the spirit. Actually, the results are rather depressing; the spirit is at times incoherent, the expression a little driveling.
Thus, savage African art and infants’ slate drawings are held up for our admiration; thus, each in his own way, writers like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce throw off the shackles of the English language.
A musical critic tells us that ‘the creative mind is independent of all past experiences. . . . Tradition, so far as the work of creation goes, is merely a bunch of rubbish.’ We are done with all tradition and all instruction; the creative mind is only injured by such things. As to the public who are expected to admire and to learn from the work of the artist, the accepted attitude is one of unlimited disdain.
Mr. Jacob Epstein is a sculptor of ability and power, even if one may not like his work. An admirer of his writes, ‘Abuse, from the pundits and the unthinking mob alike, has been the common lot of originally creative minds.’ This, of course, is quite false; we shall see presently to how great a degree ‘unrecognized genius’ is a myth.
Mr. Epstein himself is reported to have said that the public opinion of his work was of no importance and of no value. We recall the reported utterance of an American financier: ‘The public be damned.’ This attitude goes further than the fine arts — it is the artistic reflection of ‘rugged individualism.’
IV
Despite the resemblance suggested by this famous financial theory, we have grown accustomed to think of the fine arts as remote from ordinary life; so, in search of the rebel, we will now turn to an activity which we have all experienced — to education. Our libraries are full of books on the ‘new education.’ These expound systems somewhat varied, but all infinitely superior to that dreadful system, the ‘old education.’
At the outset we meet a very fine and well-developed myth, the MidVictorian myth. We have a MidVictorian papa, M. V. schoolmaster, M. V. school, and M. V. code of conduct and morals. These are hard, dry institutions — cruel, hypocritical, and stupid, engaged formerly in crushing unfortunate children into a uniform mould. We, who have been through this dreadful process, ought to be all as alike as peas. But we are not; we are all different. The great MidVictorian myth is just a myth, unconsciously evolved in order to give the modern reformer something to tilt against.
The new education proclaims the virtues of individuality, independence, freedom, and a breaking away from the bonds of tradition. Its bogy man is, now, not the bourgeois, but the academic mind. To quote from a modern philosopher on education: ‘The academic mind is incurious, unprogressive, and reactionary; every new branch of study, every new science, can only establish itself in the teeth of opposition.’
The new education condemns the past. To quote again: ‘The inherited culture of the race is nothing but the accumulated refuse of the past, a sort of secondhand-clothes shop in which are stored the mental garments which humanity has outgrown.’
The new education severely condemns all authority. To quote from a recent book on the Dalton Plan: ‘Coming under authority at too early a stage seriously militates against the natural development of the child, and thus injuriously affects the acquisition of a strong personality.’
Discipline of any kind is to be avoided. It induces an ‘inferiority complex,’ and this is a very bad thing; it also induces ‘inhibitions.’ Like the new artists, the new educators have quite a new vocabulary. Yet ‘inhibition,’which must bo avoided, is very like the old ‘conscience.’ ‘Suppression’ closely resembles the old ‘self-control’; and psychoanalysis is simply the confessional, conducted by a priest of psychology.
Perhaps it would hardly do to say that children were to be brought up without conscience or self-control, and were to confess at intervals lest they should fall into these bad habits. Yet many parents and teachers consider that no check should ever be placed upon the activities of a child. He must be free to learn or not to learn, to work or to play. Any constraint will interfere with the development of his individuality.
Now it may very soundly be argued that individuality is not a quality of childhood at all, but that it appears and grows with advancing years. The baby is most unindividual. Despite the cries of the mothers, I maintain that the younger a baby is the less individuality it shows. Boys want to be like each other. They are great hero worshipers, usually selecting the strongest, biggest, and dirtiest boy as a model. Boys do not want to be individuals — they want to be a gang. Some educators even complain of this, and actually endeavor to force ‘individuality’ on an unwilling small boy.
But old people tend to become individual, though they are often quite unaware of it. A certain English college was famous for its many quaint and eccentric dons. Two of these old gentlemen were overheard conversing as they crossed the quadrangle. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, John,’ said one, ‘that we never see any of those funny old fellows about that we used to see?’
So old people tend to become individual, and we may be thankful that t his often takes pleasant and lovable forms; but, alas, old people sometimes become crusty, pompous, and opinionated. They tend to develop a ‘superiority complex,’ and the new educators have not prepared us for this. Such are the unfortunate excesses of individuality, and possibly they sit more fittingly, if not more gracefully, upon the old than upon the young. They will at least not last quite so long. The Mid-Victorian papa certainly possessed a strong ‘superiority complex’; it has also been noticed in some of our young reformers.
Now if a tinge of pompousness can thus make its appearance at twentyfive, what will it be at fifty? It would be a dreadful thing if, in our effort to raise up a generation of free, uninhibited, brave reformers, with no complexes and a full individuality, we ended by producing a generation of Mid-Victorian papas. Their children have my sincere sympathy.
V
We have discussed the individual, and his brother, the rebel in art and in education. What is the latter’s place in the politics of life?
Popular admiration for the rebel is widespread. The heroes of romance are often rebels, particularly after the seventeenth century. We have Robin Hood, the outlaw, William Tell, the patriot rebel, and every land has its rebel heroes. Nor is the reason far to seek. Rebels are interesting; they have adventures and hairbreadth escapes; they are the underdog fighting the big bully. For the rebel of romance is always the moral superior of his oppressor. If history tells a different tale, history can be changed.
The William Tell incident is said to have occurred in 1296. Gessler, the tyrant governor of Uri, set his hat on a pole and ordered the people to salute it. Tell, hating tyranny and Gessler, refused, and the apple-shooting incident followed. The identical crossbow is still preserved in Zurich.
Unfortunately historical research has shown that there never was a governor called Gessler, there never was a William Tell, and the apple-shooting incident is told of at least half a dozen popular heroes long before 1296. The earlier versions of the story are not revolts against tyranny at all, but hero stories in which the hero performs a bragging feat. But, to supply the need of a hero myth among the freedomloving Swiss people, this older myth has been turned into a complete tyrant myth.
If Robin Hood ever existed, he was an outlaw, a plain bandit. Such men were common in the Middle Ages and were a constant menace. But Robin Hood, too, has been made into a rebel against tyranny, though the story represents him as eventually owning allegiance to the king. (This dates him earlier than the nineteenth century.) To-day the moral criminal is as popular as he ever was when Robin Hood roved Sherwood and put the Sheriff of Nottingham on the spot.
The admiration for the rebel is really a trait of childhood, and, as most healthy people retain something from childhood, so, I think, many of us would confess to a liking for the rebel. But when we think we know quite well that most rebels are merely misfits, they are not heroes at all. At times they are useful; probably every community should have a few rebels to bite it and keep it awake.
To-day in national affairs we hear a great deal of certain romantic ideals, of self-sufficiency, of ‘rugged individualism,’ and, above all, of freedom.
It might be interesting to trace the romantic ideal of ‘freedom’ to its beginnings. People thought very little of it in the Middle Ages. They do not seem to have wanted it, or even to have known that it existed. Their ideal was an ordered civilization of duties and loyalties culminating in the Emperor and the Pope, vicegerents of God. This is why Robin Hood yields to the king and is himself made an earl.
Freedom, glorious freedom, seems to have been discovered some time in the eighteenth century, and at first was regarded much as we to-day regard Bolshevism, as a rending of all decent life. Rousseau and the French Revolution made it popular, along with trousers. To-day we are thinking a great deal in terms of glorious freedom; possibly we are thinking a little too much in such terms. In the name of freedom we have rebellion, separatism, and national sovereignty — all the excesses of extreme nationalism. At a time when it is urgently necessary for the people of the world to help one another and to stand together, we have this fanatic nationalism and ever higher tariff walls.
We have even, in some parts of this continent, what amounts to tariff walls between one municipality and another. If some modern politicians had their way we should, politically, return to barbarism in a generation. Individuality in the person is national sovereignty in the nation, provincial rights in the province, state rights in the state.
All this intense nationality is supported by a fine patriotic mythology in our school history books. The nation is shown defying the tyrant and fighting for freedom in all the usual mythological attitudes. When the nation has grown big, of course it cannot do this any more. It then becomes the benevolent dispenser of civilization and motor cars to more backward peoples — until, to the big chap’s bewilderment, one of the more backward peoples denounces him as a tyrant, and the cycle begins over again.
Now there is something very chilly and unpleasant about pure cosmopolitanism. It is natural to love the place where one was born and bred, and that man is unfortunate who has no countryside of his own. We all think our own country the best in the world, and so it is, for each of us. The cosmopolite is a tasteless, flavorless creature.
Local customs, local speech and accent, local words and phrases; local dress, local arts and buildings; the cottages and churches of the countryside; local animals and plants and birds — these are the things in which we truly live. And, for each of us, these things are different. What a variety of good things does the world provide — some different associations, some different affections, for each of us! Here is the fullest material for individuality.
These are things so good that they cannot be sacrificed; yet so abused to-day are the once fine ideals of patriotism and nationality that we must coin a new word and call ourselves ‘localists.’ Localism is not inconsistent with international cooperation. As an illustration I may be allowed to point out that my own country, Scotland, has never lost its true local patriotism, though for many years it has been the partner of a neighboring people, to the advantage of both.
VI
But it is now time to say a word for the bugbears of the advanced movement, the bourgeoisie and academism.
We need not concern ourselves greatly to defend the bourgeoisie; they are very well able to take care of themselves. Almost every great movement that has ever taken place in human history has been the work of the middle classes. Most geniuses, scientific or artistic, have been bourgeois. Very little has really been contributed to our civilization by either the proletarian or the aristocrat.
All revolutions have been the work of the bourgeois. Cromwell was a country gentleman; so was George Washington. The leading figures of the French Revolution — Robespierre, Marat, and Dan ton — were bourgeois. Karl Marx and Lenin were bourgeois. Every stable culture which the world has known has been the work of the bourgeois.
Academism, the second bogy, is very unpopular to-day. The last reproach, the final blast of contempt, is to assert that So-and-so ‘has an academic mind.’ We are assured that the Royal Academy is an exhibition of mediocre pictures, Academicians are worn-out old fogies, the Paris Salon is an exhibition of skilled ineptitude, and all real ability is to be found outside their doors.
Our universities are continually being urged to discard their outworn pedantry and to get into touch with modern life. This is a little difficult, since we are also told that we university teachers are all very stupid and quite unfitted to cope with the conflicts of modern life. Perhaps, after all, it might be better if we tried our best to be academic.
For what is academism? Academism maintains that men do their best work as a community working within rules; that the greatest freedom is attained by the sacrifice of freedom; that tradition and the experience of the past have formulated the rules and are continually reformulating them; that individuality and even genius can find their fullest scope only within the discipline of tradition and the conventions of society.
The great art of the past has been almost entirely academic, and, curiously enough, those branches of it which are most admired by the modern artists are the most academic.
The art of ancient Egypt, particularly its sculpture, has deeply influenced much modern work, yet the artists who wrought it were subject to far stricter rules and conventions than any which we should to-day suggest.
In ancient Greece, the Parthenon is an academic monument; its famous sculptures are known to be the work of a school or guild of sculptors working under Phidias. They are not the work of an individual genius.
The art of Byzantium is much admired by the most advanced artists of to-day. It was strictly academic. Every scene, every figure, every color and attitude, was prescribed by tradition and published in an authoritative book for the guidance of the artist.
The great arts of the Middle Ages — Gothic architecture and sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, and stainedglass windows — all were the work of unnamed artists working in tradeunions. Gothic art ignores the individual; it is an academic art resting on tradition.
Only with the Renaissance do we meet with the individual ‘artist,’ and even here his place has been very much exaggerated. The ‘Old Masters’ are even more recent, for they are products of the art dealer and the auction sale. We know quite well that Rubens was the head of a large picture factory and employed a staff of skilled assistants, and the same seems to be true of most of the early Italian painters.
But it would never do to advertise a picture as the work of Rubens and Company, Inc. The modern collector demands a work of individual genius, and the modern critic gives it to him.
VII
In all the long history of the fine arts the rebel has no place; yet progress continued. These old academic schools absorbed their rebels and used them.
We are assured that society is incapable of recognizing its great men, that genius is always crushed and suppressed. This is simply not true. Genius has occasionally been suppressed for a time, a time of testing; more usually it has been fully recognized.
Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Christopher Wren, Turner, Sir Isaac Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Rutherford — the list of genius which has been most fully recognized goes on for as long as one can write. Known genius which suffered unrecognized is rare. Even Galileo, the oft-quoted example, was imprisoned not for his astronomical views but for his theological writings. Genius usually wins.
But genius is very rare, though many claims are made. We cannot found a whole system upon the genius; we must found it upon more ordinary men.
Now the most important and successful movement of modern times is definitely founded upon discipline and tradition and the use of a common stock of knowledge. Modern science follows the rules of academism. The young man who enters upon a scientific career enters a brotherhood in which his position will be determined by his ability and his power of working with his fellows. There is very little room for the rebel in modern science.
He must pass a strict apprenticeship; slowly he must learn the tradition of the past, the slowly gained knowledge of his predecessors. When he has mastered this, he may push forward himself and add his brick to the structure. He will get very little individual recognition, save from his fellows, but he rarely asks for more.
Yet this strict discipline of rules and proof and verification, this study of tradition, does not hinder the growth of individuality or crush the creative mind. Einstein and Rutherford are both individual and creative.
Indeed, the scientific world of today is in spirit the counterpart of the artistic world of the Middle Ages. Both had the long apprenticeship, the severe discipline, the respect for tradition, and neither of them had any room for the rebel. Finally, both were doing work of real value to the community and work which was at the very top of the culture of the day. The mediæval artist who painted Our Lady in a Book of Hours did not do so primarily to make the book beautiful; he was not thinking of spatial relations, rhythms, or significant form. He was making the book an aid to a good life. He was engaged in spiritual sanitation just as the modern bacteriologist is engaged in corporeal sanitation.
The scientific man is far nearer to the trade artist of the past than to the rebel artist of to-day. But the rebel artist is simply the reflection of the ruthless business and financial magnates who disregard all laws that do not suit them and bend all regulations to fit their own personalities.
I am aware that the advocates of unlimited individuality assert that modern science is narrow and will not admit into its sanctum any who have not entered by the correct way. To quote a modern philosopher: ‘The academic mind is incurious, unprogressive, and reactionary; every new branch of study, every new science, can only establish itself in the teeth of opposition. Look at the past struggle of psychology, look at the present struggle of investigators into the unconscious to obtain any foothold at our seats of learning.’
Certainly. It is only right that every new branch of study, every new science, should establish itself in the teeth of opposition. Only so can it be tested. Such opposition is the discipline, the test of intellectual integrity and honesty. Every new theory, every new statement, is only allowed to establish itself in the teeth of opposition in the scientific world. The danger, indeed, is rather that of admitting new developments too easily. Are we to let down the bars entirely and to admit any speculation without tests and without opposition? Our author is evidently thinking of psychical research. Are its methods as rigorous as those of the physicist and its facts as carefully sifted? And what of astrology, of magic, of palmistry, of a hundred other pseudo-sciences which lurk around our universities seeking shelter? They all have sincere and convinced believers. Are they to be welcomed in order that we may claim to be modern and progressive?
There are few things more foolish than this effort to be always a little ahead of the future. Really great men are naturally in front; they make no claim and no effort. We lesser folk may be content to follow.
Rebellion is in itself a sign of the inferior mind; as for individuality, it may very safely be left to take care of itself. We are all born different and no amount of training will ever interfere with that. The real danger is from overdeveloped individualism, selfishness, intolerance, and separatism. We have far too many rebels in our society to-day, and we are far too much inclined to admire them. Our politics are as disorganized as our pictures; our modern business is as big and as clumsy and as individual as our modern sculpture.