A modern symposiumDickinson, G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes)
Philosophy
A modern symposium
Dickinson, G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes)
Great Britain -- Social conditions; Social problems
"Of that fate, did he but know it, brain is the lord, to fashion a
palace fit for the soul to inhabit. Yet still, after centuries of
stumbling, reason is no more than the furtive accomplice of habit and
force. Force creates, habit perpetuates, reason the sycophant
sanctions. And so he drifts, not up but down, and Nature watches in
anguish, self-forbidden to intervene, unless it be to annihilate. If
he is to drive, and drive straight, reason must seize the reins; and
the art of her driving is the art of Politics. Of that art, the aim is
perfection, the method selection. Science is its minister, ethics its
lord. It spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition.
Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the
past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the
angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on
her money-bags at Westminster.
"Or, shall I say, it is Hercules with the Augean stable to cleanse, of
which every city is a stall, heaped with the dung of a century; with
the Hydra to slay, whose hundred writhing heads of false belief, from
old truth rotted into lies, spring inexhaustibly fecund in creeds,
interests, institutions. Of which the chief is Property, most cruel
and blind of all, who devours us, ere we know it, in the guise of
Security and Peace, killing the bodies of some, the souls of most, and
growing ever fresh from the root, in forms that but seem to be new,
until the root itself be cut away by the sword of the spirit. What
that sword shall be called, socialism, anarchy, what you will, is small
matter, so but the hand that wields it be strong, the brain clear, the
soul illumined, passionate and profound. But where shall the champion
be found fit to wield that weapon?
"He will not be found; he must be made. By Man Man must be sown. Once
he might trust to Nature, while he was laid at her breast. But she has
weaned him; and the promptings she no longer guides, he may not blindly
trust for their issue. While she weeded, it was hers to plant; but she
weeds no more. He of his own will uproots or spares; and of his own
will he must sow, if he would not have his garden a wilderness. Even
now precious plants perish before his eyes, even now weeds grow rank,
while he watches in idle awe, and prates of his own impotence. He has
given the reins to Desire, and she drives him back to the abyss. But
harness her to the car, with reason for charioteer, and she will grow
wings to waft him to his goal. That in him that he calls Love is but
the dragon of the slime. Let him bury it in the grave of Self, and it
will rise a Psyche, with wings too wide to shelter only the home. The
Man that is to be comes at the call of the Man that is. Let him call
then, soberly, not from the fumes of lust. For as is the call, so will
be the answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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