The sun., 1918-09-29

the making of money, the money which shall be
an evidence of his mastery; every on begin
ming work and for the duration of the work must
fix his mind ntently and exclusively on the service
of morality, the great master whose slave he is in
the execution of an 1nvisibl. Purpose. And no
dare let his moral purpose expose itself in his
work, for to do that is to do presumptuous and
sacrilegious thing. The Great Moralizer, who has
in his hands each little one of is workers. holds his
Purpose invisible to US how then We venture
to make visible what He keeps invisible how can
we have the audacity to practise technique that
He Himself does not employ
For He made the world and all that is in it. And
He made it with moral end in view as we most Of
us believe. But not the wisest of us pretends that
that moral object is clearly visible. 1t does not
disclose itself to us directly; We are aware Of it
only indirectly; and are influenced by it forever
more. If the world was made, who are we that
thinl ourselves so much more adroit than Him as
to be able to expose boldly what He wells and to
reveal what He hath hidden?
There are those, of course, who no moral ex-
PLANTATION of the universe; but they not always
consistent There is that famous passage of JOSEPH
CONRAD in which he declines the ethical view and
says he would fondly regard the panorama of crea-
ton as pure spectacle-the marvellous spectacle
being, perchance, moral end in itself And yet no
man ever wrote with deeper manifestation and
more perfect concealment of his moral purpose than
CONRAD for exactly the thing to which all his tales
are passionate witnesses is the Of fidelity, of
loyalty, of endurance-above ALL the of fidel-
ity-that exists in mankind. Man, in the Conradist
view is a creature Of an ineXhaustibe loyalty to
himself and to his fellows. This inner and utter
fidelity it is which makes the whole legend Of Lord
JIM which is the despairing cry that rings out at
the last in Victory, which reaches lyric heights in
Youth, which is the profound pathos Of The End OF
the Tether, which, in its corruption by an lncor-
ruptible metal, the silver of the mine, forms the
dreadful tragedy of Nostromo An immortal, Con-
RAD, but not the admiring and passive spectator he
efficiently declares himself to be!
These Serve No Master.
Have we covered all the cases? Obviously not. 1t
is no more possible to deal with all the authors who
20 wrong than it is to call all the sinners to re-
pentancc. But sin is primarily question between
the sinner and his own conscience and the errors of
authors are invariably questions between the au-
thors and the public The public is the best
science many author has; and the substitution
of private self justification for public vindica-
ton has seldom been a markedly successful under
taking in human history. Yet there is class Of
writers for whom no public vindicatiOn is possible;
who affect, indeed to it; who set themselves
up as little gods. They the worshippers of Art.
They arc the ones who not only do not admit but
who deliberately deny moral purpose in anything;
who think that something they call pure Beauty
is the sole end of existence of work. of life and is
alone to be worshipped. 1t is a cult of BAAL
For these Artists despise money and in despis-
ing money they cheaper themselves and become
creatures of barter They sheer at morality and
reject it Immediately the world disappears: "And
the earth was without form, and void They
demoraze honest people with whom they come in
contact by demolishng the possibly imperfect but
really workable standards which govern normal
lives--and never replacing them What is their
Beauty? 1t is what each one of them thinks beau
tifu What is their Art? 1t is what each cold little
selfish soul among them chooses to call Art. What
is their achievement Selfdestructon. They are
the spiritual suicides they the moral detectives
they the outcasts of humanity the lepers among
tho uorEnrc off no world For tbcu, thoro nom bo