Personality in LiteratureScott-James, R. A. (Rolfe Arnold)
Philosophy
Personality in Literature
Scott-James, R. A. (Rolfe Arnold)
English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Literature
Doughty has made it hard for them; but if they do, they
are repaid. Not everyone will tolerate the finesse of Mr. Henry James;
but among those who can understand him, assuredly Mr. James is in very
good company.
VI
SPECIALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND JUSTICE
In the play called _Justice_, Mr. Galsworthy attacked the professional
mechanism of English law in much the same way as the late William
James attacked professional philosophy. These two kinds of specialism,
or departmentalism, may therefore conveniently be treated together;
for I may leave Mr. Galsworthy and William James to conduct the
attack, contenting myself with the task of linking up their forces.
Both Professor James and Mr. Galsworthy appealed against the
machine--the one against the machine of thought which is divorced from
common perception, the other against the machine of the law which has
no contact with the needs of persons. "We," said William James,
meaning the Pragmatists, or the Humanists, "turn to the great unpent
and unstayed wilderness of truth as we feel it to be constituted, with
as good a conscience as rationalists are moved by when they turn from
our wilderness into their neater and cleaner intellectual abodes." In
_Justice_ the young advocate who appears for the defence is not so
much pleading for the client under the law, as arraigning the present
legal system, setting up a new conception of law based upon common
sense, human insight, and a morality finer than legalism.
"Gentlemen," he says, "men like the defendant are destroyed daily
under our laws for want of that human insight which sees them as they
are, patients, and not criminals.... Justice is a machine that, when
someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself. Is
this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act
which at the worst was one of weakness?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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