The Soul of Man
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Oscar Wilde >> The Soul of Man
Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE SOUL OF MAN
The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of
Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us
from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the
present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost
everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science,
like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like
M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate
himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of
others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it,
and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own
incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the
whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of
people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism--
are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by
all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's
intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on
the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy
with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they
very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of
remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure
the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are
part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping
the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by
amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the
difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on
such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic
virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just
as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves,
and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those
who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it,
so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do
most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we
have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem
and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming
forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic
impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the
ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are
perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private
property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from
the institution of private property. It is both immoral and
unfair.
Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will
be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up
unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and
absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will
not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a
frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work,
tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or
whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors
of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a
night's unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in
the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost
comes no one will practically be anything the worse.
Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply
because it will lead to Individualism.
Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by
converting private property into public wealth, and substituting
co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper
condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material
well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give
Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full
development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something
more is needed. What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism
is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic
power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are
to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be
worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence
of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a
certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either
under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to
choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and
gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the
men of science, the men of culture--in a word, the real men, the
men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a
partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many
people who, having no private property of their own, and being
always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the
work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to
them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable,
degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them
there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation,
or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their
collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But
it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is
poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the
infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him,
crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is
far more obedient.
Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under
conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of
a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not
culture and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements
would be quite true. The possession of private property is very
often extremely demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the
reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In
fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went
about the country saying that property has duties. They said it so
often and so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say
it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true.
Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its
possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless
claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If
property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties
make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of
it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much
to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for
charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor
are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented,
disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.
Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial
restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some
impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise
over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the
crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated
at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being
discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such
surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been
made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the
poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the
poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man
who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to
practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be
ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should
decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the
rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As
for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to
take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty,
discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and
has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the
virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot
possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy,
and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be
extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting
laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation,
as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise
some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost
incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by
such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.
However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is
simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and
exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no
class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to
be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve
them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators
is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering,
meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of
the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That
is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without
them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards
civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence
of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire
on their part that they should be free. It was put down entirely
through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston
and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of
slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was,
undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began
the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves
themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but
hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the
slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely
free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted
the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in
the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was
killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the
Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of
feudalism.
It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For
while under the present system a very large number of people can
lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and
happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, or a system of
economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at
all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should
be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by
enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left
quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must be
exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for
him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others.
And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.
I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously
propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house
to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight
hours. Humanity has got beyond that stage, and reserves such a
form of life for the people whom, in a very arbitrary manner, it
chooses to call criminals. But I confess that many of the
socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted
with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion. Of course,
authority and compulsion are out of the question. All association
must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that
man is fine.
But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less
dependent on the existence of private property for its development,
will benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer
is very simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few
men who have had private means of their own, such as Byron,
Shelley, Browning, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been
able to realise their personality more or less completely. Not one
of these men ever did a single day's work for hire. They were
relieved from poverty. They had an immense advantage. The
question is whether it would be for the good of Individualism that
such an advantage should be taken away. Let us suppose that it is
taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How will it
benefit?
It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions
Individualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more
intensified than it is now. I am not talking of the great
imaginatively-realised Individualism of such poets as I have
mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent and
potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private
property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by
confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism
entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man
thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that
the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not
in what man has, but in what man is.
Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an
Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the
community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred
the other part of the community from being individual by putting
them on the wrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so
completely has man's personality been absorbed by his possessions
that the English law has always treated offences against a man's
property with far more severity than offences against his person,
and property is still the test of complete citizenship. The
industry necessary for the making money is also very demoralising.
In a community like ours, where property confers immense
distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other
pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes
it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and
tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he
wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will
kill himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really,
considering the enormous advantages that property brings, one is
hardly surprised. One's regret is that society should be
constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove
in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and
fascinating, and delightful in him--in which, in fact, he misses
the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing
conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be--
often is--at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that
are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so,
or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his
ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds
himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now,
nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing
should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what
is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no
importance.
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,
beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in
accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that
is all.
It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a
personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we
never have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect
man. But how tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a
man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Caesar was very perfect, but his perfection travelled by too
dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan.
Yes; the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were
the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the
empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the
weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a perfect
man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not
wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities
have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been
wasted in friction. Byron's personality, for instance, was
terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy,
and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always
intensify strength: they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was
never able to give us what he might have given us. Shelley escaped
better. Like Byron, he got out of England as soon as possible.
But he was not so well known. If the English had had any idea of
what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on him with
tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they
possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and
consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in
Shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of
the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we
see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a
tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or
dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And
yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom.
Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have
nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes
from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be
always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It
will love them because they will be different. And yet while it
will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing
helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very
wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men
desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none
the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor
care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit
any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority.
Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often
of them. And of these Christ was one.
'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world.
Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.
And the message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself.' That is
the secret of Christ.
When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just
as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not
developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that
allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and
the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is
an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear
ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome
dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy,
pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong
there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and
in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of
life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely
more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and
pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant,
was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.
Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies
in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is
inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want
to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches
cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely
precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so
shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try
also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid
preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal
property hinders Individualism at every step.' It is to be noted
that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily
good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been
true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished
people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is
only one class in the community that thinks more about money than
the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing
else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is
that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even
through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the
wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly
good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of
the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the
ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, 'You
should give up private property. It hinders you from realising
your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your
personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of
you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really
want.' To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them
to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things.
What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When
they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is
inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to
trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man
takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show
that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them,
they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things
people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public
opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual
violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to
fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can
be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be
untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are
not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way.
Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be
estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be
worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad,
without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against
society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.
There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the
history of her love, but that love must have been very great; for
Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she
repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later
on, a short time before his death, as he sat at a feast, the woman
came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried
to interfere with her, and said that it was an extravagance, and
that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on
charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind.
Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material
needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual
needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and
by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make
itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a
saint.
Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism
annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of
private property, marriage in its present form must disappear.
This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and
makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a
form of freedom that will help the full development of personality,
and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful,
and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of
family life, although they existed in his day and community in a
very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?' he
said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one
of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, 'Let the
dead bury the dead,' was his terrible answer. He would allow no
claim whatsoever to be made on personality.