Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump Part 9

I admit the difficulty of following Boon in this. I admit, too, that I am puzzled about his Mind of the Race. Does he mean by that expression a Great Wisdom and Will that must be, or a Great Wisdom and Will that might be?

But here he goes on with the topic of Hallery again.

"I invented Hallery to get rid of myself, but, after all, Hallery is really no more than the shadow of myself, and if I were impersonal and well bred, and if I spoke behind a black screen, it would still be as much my voice as ever. I do not see how it is possible to prevent the impersonal things coming by and through persons; but at any rate we can begin to recognize that the person who brings the message is only in his way like the messenger-boy who brings the telegrams. The writer may have a sensitive mind, the messenger-boy may have nimble heels; that does not make him the creator of the thing that comes. Then I think people will be able to listen to such lectures as this of Hallery's without remembering all the time that it's a particular human being with a white face and a lisp.... And perhaps they will be able to respect literature and fine thought for the sake of the general human mind for which they live and for the sake of their own receptiveness...."

-- 3

And from that Boon suddenly went off into absurdities.

"Should all literature be anonymous?" he asks at the head of a sheet of notes.

"But one wants an author's name as a brand. Perhaps a number would suffice. Would authors write if they remained unknown? Mixed motives.

Could one run a church with an unsalaried priesthood? But certainly now the rewards are too irregular, successful authors are absurdly flattered and provoked to impossible ambitions. Could we imitate the modern const.i.tutional State by permitting limited ambitions but retaining all the higher positions inaccessible to mere enterprise and merit? Hereditary Novelists, Poets, and Philosophers, for example. The real ones undistinguished. Hereditary Historians and Scientific Men are already practical reality. Then such mischievous rewards and singlings out as the n.o.bel Prize could be distributed among these Official Intellectuals by lot or (better) by seniority. It would prevent much heartburning...."

These last notes strike me as an extraordinary declension from the, at least, exalted argument of the preceding memoranda. But they do serve to emphasize the essence of--what shall I call it?--Boonism, the idea that there is a great collective mental process going on in many minds, and that it is impertinent and distracting to single out persons, great men, groups and schools, coteries and Academies. The flame burns wide and free. It is here; it is gone. You had it; you have it not. And again you see it plainly, stretching wide across the horizon....

-- 4

But after these sc.r.a.ppy notes about Jealousy and how people protect their minds against ideas, and especially the idea which is G.o.d, and against the mental intrusions of their fellow-creatures conveying ideas, I understand better the purport of that uninvited society, which he declared insisted upon coming to the Great Conference upon the Mind of the Race, and which held such enthusiastic and crowded meetings that at last it swamped all the rest of the enterprise. It was, he declared, to the bitter offence of Dodd, a society with very much the same att.i.tude towards all impersonal mental activities that the Rationalist Press a.s.sociation has to Religion, and it was called the Royal Society for the Discouragement of Literature.

"Why 'Royal'?" I asked.

"Oh--obviously," he said....

This Royal Society was essentially an organization of the conservative instincts of man. Its aim was to stop all this thinking....

And yet in some extraordinary way that either I did not note at the time or that he never explained, it became presently the whole Conference! The various handbills, pamphlets in outline, notes for lectures, and so forth, that accompanied his notes of the Proceedings of the Royal Society may either be intended as part of the sectional proceedings of the great conference or as the production of this hostile organization. I will make a few extracts from the more legible of these memoranda which render the point clearer.

-- 5

Publishers and Book Distributors

(_Comparable to the Priest who hands the Elements and as much upon their Honour._)

The Publisher regrets that the copy for this section is missing, and fears that the substance of it must be left to the imagination of the reader. This is the more regrettable as the section was probably of a highly technical nature.

-- 6

The Young Reviewer

Here, again, Mr. Boon's notes are not to be found, and repeated applications to Mr. Bliss have produced nothing but a vague telegram to "go ahead."

-- 7

The Schoolmaster and Literature

"Essentially the work of the schoolmaster is to prepare the young and naturally over-individualized mind for communion with the Mind of the Race. Essentially his curriculum deals with modes of expression, with languages, grammar, the mathematical system of statement, the various scientific systems of statement, the common legend of history. All leads up, as the scholar approaches adolescence, to the introduction to living literature, living thought, criticism, and religion. But when we consider how literature is taught in schools----"

Here the writing leaves off abruptly, and then there is written in very minute letters far down the page and apparently after an interval for reflection--

"Scholastic humour

_O G.o.d!_"

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

Wilkins makes Certain Objections

-- 1

Wilkins the author began to think about the Mind of the Race quite suddenly. He made an attack upon Boon as we sat in the rose-arbour smoking after lunch. Wilkins is a man of a peculiar mental const.i.tution; he alternates between a brooding sentimental egotism and a brutal realism, and he is as weak and false in the former mood as he is uncompromising in the latter. I think the attraction that certainly existed between him and Boon must have been the attraction of opposites, for Boon is as emotional and sentimental in relation to the impersonal aspects of life as he is pitiless in relation to himself.

Wilkins still spends large portions of his time thinking solemnly about some ancient trouble in which he was treated unjustly; I believe I once knew what it was, but I have long since forgotten. Yet when his mind does get loose from his own "case" for a bit it is, I think, a very penetrating mind indeed. And, at any rate, he gave a lot of exercise to Boon.

"All through this book, Boon," he began.

"What book?" asked Dodd.

"This one we are in. All through this book you keep on at the idea of the Mind of the Race. It is what the book is about; it is its theme.

Yet I don't see exactly what you are driving at. Sometimes you seem to be making out this Mind of the Race to be a kind of G.o.d----"

"A synthetic G.o.d," said Boon. "If it is to be called a G.o.d at all."

Dodd nodded as one whose worst suspicions are confirmed.

"Then one has to a.s.sume it is a continuing, coherent mind, that is slowly becoming wider, saner, profounder, more powerful?"

Boon never likes to be pressed back upon exact statements. "Yes," he said reluctantly. "In general--on the whole--yes. What are you driving at?"

"It includes all methods of expression from the poster when a play is produced at His Majesty's Theatre, from the cheering of the crowd when a fireman rescues a baby, up to--Walter Pater."

"So far as Pater expresses anything," said Boon.

"Then you go on from the elevation this idea of a secular quasi-divine racial mental progress gives you, to judge and condemn all sorts of decent artistic and literary activities that don't fall in or don't admit that they fall in...."

"Something of that idea," said Boon, growing a little testy--"something of that idea."

"It gives you an opportunity of annoying a number of people you don't like."

"If I offend, it is their fault!" said Boon hotly. "Criticism can have no friends.h.i.+ps. If they like to take it ill.... My criticism is absolutely, honest.... Some of them are my dearest friends."