WHAT embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism. It is comparatively of little consequence that you occasionally break out and abuse other people, so long as you do not absolve yourself. The former is a natural collapse of human weakness; the latter is a blasphemous assumption of divine power. And in the modern world, where everybody is quarrelling about the urgent necessity of peace, nobody notices how this notion has really poisoned the relations of nations and men. Thus the Irishman would never have minded the English saying he was mad; or even that he was murderous and slanderous and cruel. There was something to be said for the assertion; and Irishmen were often ready, if not to admit it about themselves, at least to admit it about each other. The trouble began when the Englishman advanced the obviously ludicrous proposition that he himself was sane; that he was practical and sensible and well-balanced. No wonder a whole nation went wild at so fantastic a fancy as that. What the Prussian said about the French or the other Latins was simply ignorance: the ignorance found only among the seriously educated. It was what the Prussian said about the Prussian, that made half the world smell afar off something that stank with spiritual pride. The moral is the same about much milder and more amiable things; indeed it is rather specially true about mild and amiable things. The trouble with the philanthropist is not that he does not love all men moderately, but rather that he generally loves one man too well. And, contemplating the sort of philanthropist who is also an egoist, I am tempted to recommend him to try being a man-hater, that men may more easily love him. I am tempted to say to him: Hate men as a sort of holiday; beat and kick them for a reasonable interval; burn down their houses, in moderation, and lay waste all civilization within reasonable limits: But do not be kind merely to exhibit your own kindness; for that is an insult that is never forgiven. When you are helping people, pray for a spirit of humility; I had almost said, when you are helping them, pray for an appearance of helplessness. The deadly word ‘patronage’ is, like so many such, a word that has decayed from a much nobler meaning. But in this sense we may find another significance in the old conception of patron saints. It may mean that a man has jolly well got to be a saint, before he ventures to be a patron.
Now this is the first thing to note in all the fuss about modern fashion; about Jazz and Cocktails and Bright Young Things. In all the talk on both sides, hardly anybody has attempted what I am going to attempt. here; a criticism by some standard other than the habits of the critic; a judgment that is not merely a justification of the judge. We all know the kind of judge or police magistrate who does say complacently about some educational or domestic problem, “Well, I was treated like that” or, “I myself went to that sort of school.” And in the awful silence that follows, every prisoner, policeman and spectator resists the overpowering impulse to point dramatically and say, “And behold the deplorable result!” In short, the trouble arises from the aged merely praising their own age; just as the rising generation is only praising its own generation. Neither is of the slightest value as judgment, for both are only blowing their own trumpets; and the great Trumpeter is silent.
There are two kinds of old gentlemen who generally write on this subject. Perhaps the more common (in every sense of the word) is the old gentleman who praises the young people, in order to prove that he is really a young gentleman. He will show everybody that he also is a bright young thing; and we need not now enquire how many are bright enough to think him a silly old goat. The other type of man does not pretend to be youthful, but he does judge everything youthful by the fashions of his own youth. I think him the more respectable because the more realistic of the two. But he is not realistic enough; because he does not realistically criticise his own youth and his own type or class or epoch; or, in effect, himself. He is always talking about vanished simplicities or supposed simplicities, which “were good enough for him.” It seldom occurs to him to ask whether he was good enough for them.
Now it is easy to fall into either of these follies; and I also appear here only in the humble capacity of an old fool. But I propose even in my second childhood, to be the sort of fool who seek after wisdom; and what I wish to do here is to establish some sort of standard which shall be related to the wisdom of the ages, and not to the quarrel of the generations. I would try to remove these things from the test of time, and subject them to the test of truth. It is not merely a question of what old people did when they were young; it is quite as much a question of what young people will do when they are old enough to know better. The ideal is quite as likely to be in the future as in the past; only it is silly to suppose that it must be in the present. But the point is that when the critic calls the present good or bad, he ought to be comparing it with The ideal and not with the rather dismal reality called himself.
Next, we may note that both these old gentlemen are sentimentalists; but rather especially the young old gentleman, who so often accuses the old-fashioned old gentleman of sentiment. There is much more of mere gush in the person who excites himself about the Woman with a Future than in the person who rather prides himself on being a Man with a Past. For the one old fool is swept off his feet by the mere sight of youth from the outside; the other at least by the experience of youth from the inside. The other may be a bore with a tendency to moralise; but it is not quite so much of a bore as the tendency to immoralise; or to moralise against morality. It is not easy to find a worse bore than the Bright Old Thing when he actually trots about grinning and congratulating people on being divorced, as the other used to congratulate them on being married. His argument has the very soul of monotony because it is the essence of tautology. It consists entirely of saying that Polyanna is a modern girl, and therefore believes in modern ideas of dress or drink or general behaviour. Which is about as intellectually helpful as saying that Pongo is a monkey and therefore eats like a monkey and drinks like a monkey, and gives (on the whole) a very good imitation of a monkey. It does not even begin an intelligent enquiry about whether it is best for us to be monkeys or to be modern. Sometimes he sinks to the senile depth of saying that vows belonged to the Victorian age, or that constancy went out with crinolines. Which is about as logical as saying that the multiplication table was made of mahogany, or that the mathematical idea of triangles went out with three-cornered hats. But we need no longer poke about in the dregs and sediment of the poor old sentimentalist’s mind. The point is that he is quite as unintellectual, in his notion of the New Morality, as the very stupidest of the other sort could ever have been in his defence of the Old Morality. The other old gentleman (who is often a rather better educated old gentleman) may have an alarming tendency to say suddenly: 0 tempora, 0 mores. But both are only thinking about the times and neither is really thinking about the morals.
This is what is missed both by the Bright Old Thing and the Dull Old Thing, who is sometimes sufficiently preferable to be called the Dear Old Thing: that it is possible for an independent mind to criticise many recent social changes, quite without any question of sentimentalism, and sometimes without any question of morality. They can be judged as we judge any historic changes in manners and in the arts of life; and they may be quite impartially condemned, as we condemn any old historic decline in those manners or those arts. We can give impersonal reasons for our criticisms Or condemnation, just as we give impersonal reasons for thinking the Silver Age less than the Golden Age or the Spain of the eighteenth century less than the Spain of the sixteenth. That is quite different from the petty personal matter of proving the England of the twentieth century less than the England of the nineteenth, merely because some of us happened to be born in the nineteenth. I was not born in the time of Charles the First any more than in the time of Charles the Second. But that does not prevent me from thinking that the dress and demeanour of a Cavalier by Van Dyck is both nobler and more natural than that of a courtier by Kneller. I try to judge it by standards of eternal common sense, as I should judge ancient Greeks or Egyptians. That is the kind of criticism of the new fads or fashions which is really needed. That is the kind of criticism that is entirely neglected. And that kind of criticism is so much neglected, that I have been driven, in my last doddering or dying moments, to do it myself.
I propose in these few essays to deal in turn with some of these fashions, which everybody is talking about and nobody is thinking about. I propose to compare the Modern Girl not with the Old Girl but with the Girl; not to contrast her with Queen Victoria but with Venus Verticordia and immortal Beauty. I propose to compare modern dancing, not with the polka as performed by Lord Palmerston, but with the ancient ritual of the Dance, as probably performed by Adam and Eve. If I should be so unwise as to say anything about bobbing or shingling, it would not be to contrast it with the ringlets of Miss Letitia Landon, but to contrast it with the more or less recognisable institution of Hair; which was worn without either expedient by Eve or Lady Godiva. While doing justice to what I think excellent in many modern expedients, I would suggest that several of the expedients do not answer even their own purpose of expediency. I think, for instance, that the time has come when advertisement should be criticised. So far, advertisement has only been advertised. I should like to point out that what is called Publicity is often the very opposite of making things public. I should like to point out that this age, which is chattering about Psychoanalysis, is entirely neglecting elementary Psychology. But I write this preface only to insist on one point; that I do not criticise Jazz because I am an exquisitely elegant waltzer; or attempt to regulate the fashions because I regard myself as an eternal fashion-plate. On these points I can call on many witnesses to clear my character.
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