Chapter V

Thus our most gifted American dramatist, together with other finer spirits of to-day, is unable to accept traditional modes or satisfy the desire for admiration and worship. Romanticism, in identifying man with nature, hastened the decay of a heroic tradition which it at first attempted to foster; and under scientific naturalism the decay ended in dissolution. Whether the author uses a so-called “naturalistic” technique after Ibsen or Maupassant; or whether, like Wedekind or Jeffers or Cabell, he seeks other modes of expression, so long as he thinks of man as in no way superior to the outer world or different from it, he is none the less subject to the naturalistic point of view.[41]

Recently, to be sure, certain developments of science have given rise to hopes of mysticism within a naturalistic monism. The argument, so far as an unscientific reader understands it, seems to run thus: Einstein has offered proof that time and space form a continuum and that events are “relative.” Studies of the atom have upset orthodox conceptions of physics, and physicists themselves are beginning to talk about matter in terms that sound for all the world like Bishop Berkeley. Science admits a mysterious enveloping Unknown.

The new hypotheses, of course, merely re-enforce the acknowledgment of ultimate mystery which thoughtful people have always made. The novelty of the new mysticism is that it builds not on theology or metaphysics but mathematics and laboratory experiment. The next step in its argument is the dubious one.

If science grants an enveloping Unknown, the man who would explain that Unknown in terms of his desires is as likely to be right as one who explains it in inhuman terms. And if there is a chance that one’s desires may be true, it needs no psychologist to assure us that plenty of people will immediately assume that they are true. For them science seems to justify mysticism and open the door for the hosts of dreams, so long shut out of a rationalistic universe. But the weakness of such wishful thinking seems obvious; and to the humanist the whole argument is beside the point because it would vindicate human values by naturalistic data.

If some scientists are nowadays growing mystical, it is not therefore logical to deny the facts that their controlled experiments have demonstrated. The dilemma of modern tragedy remains very real. There is no refuge in obscurantism through return to illusions which science has shattered. Reason denies the objective reality of our dreams; and so long as the honest man accepts a monism which identifies man with nature, he can find no justification for tragic exaltation.

The humanist, however, denies the necessity for this identification. Without in the slightest degree disparaging the truth or worth of physical knowledge he maintains that the realm of value has significant validity when taken as distinct from the realm of fact. The realm of value belongs to man; that of fact, to outer nature. One depends on the other, but the two are different.

Value depends on the operation of physical laws, but it remains value. The fallacy of the naturalist has been the assumption that to explain the cause of a thing is to explain away its value. Human emotions may be caused on the naturalistic plane by the secretion of endocrine glands or what not; on the human plane they remain what they were to Homer or Shakespeare. It is interesting to know about chromosomes and Mendelian laws, about biochemistry and vital machinery; but human values remain the same. Whatever the findings of science, man humanly speaking is still what he always was: comic, pitiful, despicable--now and then sublime.

The humanist is concerned with the realm of values, and thus is concerned with ethical laws. The lives of all men progress under these laws; and the endeavours of great men have been to discover and formulate them. To the humanist it seems evident that literary art, dealing as it does with human actions, must deal with ethical laws, which are the foundation of conduct. And it would seem obvious folly to attempt to divorce literature from them.

Romantic art as recreation is a blessing to jaded mortals; and naturalistic art at its best is, within its limits, penetrating. But to the humanist it seems that both types of art have failed in dealing with ethical laws. The romantic is always an extremist, demanding perfection, or denying the existence of goodness. The naturalist has become so absorbed in the mechanism of the instrument that he has become deaf to its music. The humanist desires emotional satisfaction; he desires to face the truth. But he also wishes to preserve a normal humanity in which human values are central. Though hearing the revelations of science, he keeps his ear attuned to the music of humanity. Though enjoying the thrills of liberated feeling, he is unwilling to purchase them at the expense of moderation or proportion. He believes not in prohibition but in temperance.

Ethical laws are what make man human, and it is these that the artist must ponder. And to find guidance he cannot do better than follow Arnold’s advice--not less sound for being tiresomely familiar--to know the best that has been thought and said in the world. He must break with the contemporary tradition of romantic scorn for tradition; he must seek to become a part of the great tradition, by knowing the best. To become a part of it does not mean to attempt mere imitation; it means that the artist will be forevermore dissatisfied with pettiness or insincerity in himself, and will have a lofty but possible standard by which to measure his work.

Those who work in the “modern temper” are unable to discover a worthy heroism to exalt. But if one turns to the records of classic art, he will find a nobility of spirit no less admirable to-day than in the past. His response will be an evidence of the existence of heroism, a proof of its reality in human nature. It will be a proof of its reality, of course, not in perfection but in aspiration. And if one looks about him he will find the same aspiration in living men and women. He will find it even expressed in deeds--imperfectly, humanly. If he should be artist enough to give adequate expression to what he feels and sees, he could rise above the dilemma against which naturalism has forced our modern literature.

Cynicism will, to be sure, urge that every man finds what he looks for, and to look for greatness will lead to a denial of evident imperfections. The humanist professes himself not unaware of the latter. Long before naturalist novelists pictured the _bête humaine_, Christianity declared man innately evil; but unlike naturalism, Christianity believed man capable of redemption by Grace. The humanist as such is not concerned with theology, and is content to believe that Grace, however it comes, is sometimes found. He is inclined to doubt that it comes only to those who have joined a church; he is inclined to believe that nobility is found now and again in all sorts and conditions of men. But the main thing is that it exists; and no artist who does not see the good with the evil sees life steadily and whole.

To follow the narrow path between cynicism and romantic idealisation; to recognise the imperfections in man and the inevitable domination of physical force over the individual, and yet to preserve admiration for the indomitable spirit which drives the individual to will and to do nobly; and finally to find adequate means of artistic expression--that is the task of one who would write great tragedy. Though hard, it is still possible. Only when the artist follows lofty standards can he hope to control and guide his own efforts toward sublimity. While humanism offers him no magic key to success, it offers him hope, and a discipline.

FOOTNOTES

[37] I have considered the tragic emotions more fully in an article, “Melodrama and Tragedy,” _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, September, 1928.

[38] Since this paper was written my attention has been called to “Humanism and Tragedy,” an admirable article by Mr. F. McEachran (_Nineteenth Century and After_, July, 1929). Based on Professor Babbitt’s three levels of human conduct, naturalistic, human, and religious, Mr. McEachran’s thesis is that tragedy, since it demands an assumption of human dignity, cannot develop in a naturalistic age like the present, and is difficult in a religious one. The age of Pericles, of Elizabeth, and of Louis XIV were humanistic; they were followed by naturalistic decadence in which man and nature were equated and tragedy became impossible. Mr. McEachran’s “human dignity” and my “heroism” seem equivalent.

[39] It is to be noted, as further illustration of the anti-heroic tendency of modern thought, that critics have sought to explain Hamlet as not a hero but a psychopath. What Shakespeare wished his audience to feel, however, seems open to no doubt.

[40] From _Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems_, Boni & Liveright, 1925.

[41] Should I remind the reader that in thus generalising I admit exceptions? One such, whom I have discussed elsewhere (_Sewanee Review_, April, 1929) is, in my opinion, Joseph Conrad.

_An American Tragedy_

ROBERT SHAFER