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Title: Journalism & Literature Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1915 Language: en Topics: egoism, journalism, literature, The Egoist Source: Retrieved on 09/26/2021 from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr521423/ Notes: Originally published in The Egoist Volume II Number 11 (November 1, 1915). Title is unofficial and derived from the text.
An enthusiastic chemical research student was explaining to me the other
day how a School of Chemistry justifiably falls into disrepute when it
shows itself willing to allow its activities to be affected by demands
and problems immediately arising out of the world of commerce. To a mild
question as to whether chemical inquiry so inspired might not be as
fruitful in results as any arrived at along the path of "general"
inquiry my enthusiast answered, "No." The two fields, though they
overlapped at points, were quite distinct—their animating interest poles
apart, and to identify them was to do damage to the first interests of
both. The chemical discoveries by which commercial enterprise had been
most effected had been by-products of general inquiry, rich drops from a
broad stream whose own richness was the precondition of the droppings
being what they were. Moreover, commercial undertakings can, and do,
employ their own research-workers to pick up and glean for their own
special interests; which is as should be: direct means adapted to set
ends: purposes reputable in their own sphere appropriately subserved.
But it was not appropriate that the activities of a School of Chemistry
should be diverted into the service of any or all of such immediate
ends. It has its own ends to serve: to assuage and whet afresh an
everlasting curiosity in the "What" and "How" and "WHY" of things, and
its highest utility lies in serving that. Its soul is curiosity and its
reward Knowledge and an intenser curiosity and a deeper interest. Its
end is never to arrive at an end: never to rest on achievements
sufficiently long to exploit them commercially—which length of time as
it seems is just coincident with that required to wean interest from
science to profits. So that while each scientist is more than scientist
and has purposes which are immediate ends—even money-making—in so far as
curiosity about the behaviour of substances is a Master-passion, it must
remain jealously separate from, and alien in spirit to, the common
spirit bent on "making good" commercially: jealous just because it is
rare while the commercial spirit is everywhere. Only in this and that
sheltered valley to which other kinds of interest have retired in order
to survive does another kind of spirit dominate. And there—just because
it is rare—it is forbidden to the baser kind to be frail; if it is to
survive, it must there remain dominant. Hence, it is an ominous sign for
science when scientists are found ready to embroil the cool critical
spirit of research in the feverish scramble after profits: even honest
profits. . . . Thus my scientific friend, who seemed to have the
argument fluent enough. And it had a not unconvincing sound,
particularly to one who did not know what there is to be known of the
history of science. But it must be confessed that it was not the force
of the remarks as applied to chemistry which made the arguments
impressive. It was not even the irony of the commentary it suggests,
that only because some men have interests about which they care more
than about money do the interests which inspire other men to care more
about money than about anything else achieve existence. It was rather
when this story about chemistry and profits suggested an analogy between
philosophy and journalism that it suddenly became sufficiently alive to
seem worth transcribing here.
---
Life is only bankrupt when keeping on living does not seem worth the
effort it entails. The fear of death or the horror of an imminent
prospect of death do not come on the same level for comparison with a
distaste for life: indeed the sole factor which invests these former
with their element of tragedy is the assumption that they exist in
conjunction with an ardent love of life. That millions of lives are
being brought daily face to face with death does not therefore really
affect the instinct of those who continue to five in comparative safety
to be at pains to make their life pay its way in satisfactions. That
which made life valuable before the war, if it be possible to preserve
it during the war, is more than ever worth the preserving. To allow
one's attention to become ensnared in affairs which are all made up of
action and yet to occupy the role of the "inactive," begets a weariness
of its own quite apart from any sense of depression which might arise
out of the affairs themselves; so that to attempt to maintain the
pleasures which still remain at their full quality becomes a service for
the "inactive" eminently "worthy." If one were commander-in-chief or a
modest private one would assuredly win the war, but being neither, nor
yet anything between, attending to one's own business seems a reasonable
preoccupation, while the steady obliteration of the dividing line
between Journalism and Literature (Journalism and Philosophy: it is the
same thing) is a task lying to hand; especially so, since it is by no
means unlikely that a full recognition by the authorities of the
disasters which this obliteration invites will not be a prerequisite of
any successful dealing with the war: though, up to date, the process
which before the war had gone far, since has merely become the more
complete.
---
Journalism is the interested persuasion, by means of literary forms, of
the general public to back or ban such purposes as seem good to those at
whose instigation the persuasive effort is set in motion. Those who
sketch the plan which "persuasion" is to follow may engage and pay
"journalists" who are better able than they to manipulate the forms: or
they may have the means and talents to carry out their verbal plans
themselves. The feature which makes journalism into journalism is—not
that it is bought and sold—but that it is subsidiary to ends beyond
itself. All journalism is "interested": the servant of an interest and
purpose; of the needs of a passing day and the moods of a changing
person. It exploits literary form to further some particular enterprise.
It is not literature though it exploits literature: not philosophy
though it exploits it. That the material in which it shapes itself and
in the use of which the manipulators are adept happens to be language
brings journalism as near to literature as ability to mix paint brings
the house-painter to the artist; both are reputable craftsmen but
different: both require some ability: both have recognized uses—at least
the house-painter has: and both work in paint. What the difference
between the two exploiters of paint is can perhaps best be shown by the
difference in their attitudes towards the permanence of their work. The
housepainter would feel more than depressed if he thought his effects
likely to last for ever, or even for a lifetime; while the artist would
give the study of a lifetime in order to lend a slightly added
durability to his paint. The house-painter looks to the contents of his
paint-pot to provide him with a job. He has nothing he values
particularly to put into his painting; he spreads paint out under the
direction of some one who wants a surface concealed by means of it. The
artist out of his paint seeks to contrive a web which shall enmesh for
all time some fact of feeling which he, at least, thinks worth holding
in memory. The difference is that one is using a form as a contrivance
to perpetuate something which he thinks valuable: the other is
expressing what there is for him to express by flourishing the form
itself. So with literature: literature is the transparent vase in which
are preserved permanent features of the Human Mind. The desire to secure
permanence for their work no matter how mistaken they may have been in
the means they adopted to attain to it, is an essential characteristic
of the writers of literature. Milton, for instance, deliberately
selected the theological theme as a setting for his quota of
observations about Man to men, on account of what he considered its
strong promise of durability of interest. That probably it is this very
choice which has made "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" unknown
books save in their passages of strong human revelation merely proves
how difficult it is to disguise fustian, and that "beliefs" and direct
human observations do not come on the same level of durability. This
distinction between journalism and literature once frankly recognized:
literature being—as to form—that which is most favourable to permanence
and as to substance an accretion of the growing stock of unravelled
human motives; journalism being a subsidiary form, one amongst many
turned to assist, as may be, a passing purpose and taking its character
from the end it serves; this distinction once openly recognized, the
undue contempt which journalism receives becomes as meaningless as the
contempt for house-painting, while it makes possible a more jealous care
in fostering single-heartedness in literature. Journalism has received
and earned contempt only because it has pretended to be inspired by the
purpose which inspires literature, and so has courted judgment by
standards intended for work which aspires to be judged as literature.
Judged by such standards it is not possible for journalism or the
journalist to escape condemnation. Inevitably, the journalist who merely
does honestly what he is employed to do is written down a mean hack;
whereas the commis voyageur who presses on his picked public his
employer's Pills, Pianos, Shoddy Goods, Tinned Goods, what not, i« a
respectable person. The newspaper-proprietor is accounted a cunning
defacer of "The Truth": a suborner of facile knaves to the detriment of
the "Good of All"—that universal stalking-horse controversy—as compared
on the other hand with the manufacturer, meat-merchant and the like, who
are accounted the backbone of the community and embodiment of its free
tradition. Yet each is bent on increasing his "influence," one in one
market one in another: the medium at least of the journalist being more
patent and obvious if his means are more subtle. What manner of man
among you being in business and finding that his ambition—any one of the
million ends upon which men do set their ambition—is furthered by a
favourable Public Opinion would not set to work to influence that
Opinion to the fullest extent he could? What maker of goods but sends
out his agents to influence the market for them or company-promoter who
fails to issue an attractive prospectus ? This making of distinctions
where none exist comes from confusing journalism with literature, and
what journalists say with something which is called "Truth."
---
The development of controversy as an instrument of attack and defence is
the most complex and the most engaging achievement of the human mind,
and the complex study which its buried springs and its devious ways and
methods present constitutes the province of the philosopher. It is the
scrutiny of the motives which keep the countless controversies moving:
the language of purposes—journalism—which makes philosophy the most
fascinating as well as the most important of human interests, given a
taste and zeal for it. Yet this interest has little to show for itself.
Perhaps because there is little demand for its products. It is not
popular: there is too much journalism and too many interests to be
displeased to make the digging-out of any save the more graceful half of
human motives welcome. The other half—when they appear—are received not
as Philosophy but as Diabolism: things which should never have found
utterance. And its unpopularity apart, human motives make distracting
material to work in, and most would-be philosophers—would-be genuine
ones that is—fall victims to their own material. Setting out to study
"controversialists" they are captured by this and that particular
controversy. The main stream of their interests is swallowed up in their
localized warfare and little is left for the study of Man, the
controversial animal. The explorer finds it more profitable and even
more entertaining to take up company-promoting than to continue
searching for treasure. It is more profitable, and the world is so made
that men must put themselves in touch with profits somewhere: and since
explorers by nature are few and returns upon exploration are almost nil,
it is not surprising that these "human" researchers all turn
propagandists: become journalists: trim speech to a set purpose: and
beat the big drum. For of the two purposes of speech—speech the
instrument of Revelation and the instrument of Seduction— journalism in
its main intention knows only one. Journalism is always persuasive and
seductive. Though superficially it may seem at times to set itself to
"reveal" when it gives "News": it will invariably be found that the
"News" has been given that "turn" which best accommodates it with the
journal's main interests. Such "News" as is too difficult to be so
turned promptly ceases to be "News"—and ceases to need chronicling.
Journalism is indeed the skilled art of manipulating emphasis. The
journalist is out to secure the adhesion of the people, and since the
people accept that which is emphatically asserted and love the Strong
Assertion and no less the maker of it, regulation of emphasis becomes
his main business, and he learns how to let it fall just where it suits
best the interest of those who employ him. If he can make himself
conspicuous as a wielder of sufficiently strong emphasis he so wins the
people's good will not only for the interest he furthers but also for
himself. Popularity as well as profit and the excitement which comes of
conflict is on the side of journalism: it is not strange that the
journalist is nowhere to seek in any branch of "literature."
---
Very obviously clear is it therefore that it is not that journalists
consider literature "higher" and "better" than journalism that they slur
the dividing line between the two. They do not any more than the
millionaire who has made a fortune out of some scientific invention
thinks that the scientist pottering about at a bench with test-tubes is
anything more than a simple and probably rather silly fellow. In fact
the majority would agree that most of literature is barely reputable and
much of it heinous. Once thoroughly a journalist always a journalist:
even when such a one believes himself to be writing literature. For
evidence of which we only need observe the "propagandist" drama: the
"propagandist" novel: the propagandist "philosophy; and the
"reporterist" poetry. "Propagandist" in terms of craftsmanship is just
"journalistic." The Parson is clinching the "moral" of his sermon in the
Philosophy, and the "Social Reformer" is dabbing the ornamentation on
his speeches in the Drama and what not: tracts they are, all of them.
Why then this growing obliteration? It is simply a trick of the trade: a
"confidence" trick. It is a far from easy task to beg support from
people for one's own benefit: it puts one at a disadvantage. It deprives
the people, moreover, of the comforting flattery that one's striving is
solely in their interests; it quickens their suspicions and awakens
their intelligence. Hence the attempt to identify journalism with
literature which enables journalists to assume the garb of disseminators
of an "Impartial Truth." For little as there is of it, people have
sensed what is the role of literature and have identified it in its
clearest and most concentrated form with philosophy and are ready to
accept its verdicts for "Truth." That there is a philosophy which is not
philosophy: a body of observations set up to pass for "Truth" which are
not observations of human motives at firsthand but rather obscured
exploitations of motives in the service of some interest—of the Church,
the State, of Academic Tradition and the like, has gone far to render
"Truth" an obfuscated, indefinable, and therefore useless term; without
being able, however, wholly to efface a vague sense of that for which it
stands. The instinct persists that there must exist a genuine
philosophy: outcome of a sheer curiosity in the motives of Man: which is
keen and alert to distinguish those ways and words which are involuntary
expressions of himself and those which are but shields to cover and
defend himself, and which is likewise unrelated to any desire to trip
him up and seize an advantage. It is the fruit of such curiosity which
roughly is accepted as "Truth" and the form which preserves it is
literature—good or feeble literature according to the strength of the
curiosity which inspires it, the industry and time devoted to it, and
the ceaselessness of the pruning of its form to clothe it in
transparency. As it seems: what the specific form which a philosopher
gives his contribution is, depends upon the amount of passion there is
in his curiosity. If he cares sufficiently, he will give the most
transparent and economized and accordingly the most permanent form to
it: that of Poetry. If he is sure enough of the character of the "raw
material" he has analysed out, he will risk throwing it back into a
synthesis and re-creating man: as in Drama. If he is too occupied, or
too careless, or has so much material on his hands that he prefers to
put it all out at the expense of leaving it "in the rough" it will
remain as Philosophic Prose. But whatever form literature finally takes
it is in its substance, Philosophy: curiosity about human nature: a
laying bare of the springs of the human mind. Which explains why any
great anxiety about Forms—particularly in young writers—always seems to
bear with it its suspicions. Form—even in its perfection—is not
something extraneous to its substance. It grows up with, springs out of
and is the index of the substance's own quality. Given the one in
sufficient degree and the other follows inevitably. The laziest fellow
will exert himself when he knows of a certainty that he is working to
unearth a hidden treasure, and a man with something vital to say will
take the necessary pains about the saying of it.
---
It is therefore because the bona fides of literature are more acceptable
and not because literature's mission is held to be "better" or its
quality "higher," that journalism has sought to identify itself with it.
And it is the same cause which explains the unspoken convention which
all controversialists are at one in observing, that the one factor in
controversy which gives it character and meaning—the personal bias of
the controversialists—shall be ignored. For to have it acknowledged
would deprive both sides of the role of the indignantly righteous and
destroy the assumption that journalism nominally is "disinterested."
Whence the shriek of each against its rival of "Interested," "Venal,"
carrying the inference —true enough, as far as it goes, since each side
stands for "Infection" of "Leper" and "Plague-spot" would be robbed of
its relevance and emphasis. To acknowledge that all sides are
"interested": that journalism is nothing but the language of
"interests," would be to deflate the journalistic balloon and defeat the
purpose for which it was created: the persuading of the public that only
in a spirit of immaculate disinterestedness and in the sole interests of
the "Public Good" is so much wordy service set in motion. And not only
as a stalking horse does literature lend its uses to journalism. As far
as he is acquainted with it the journalist draws upon the funded
knowledge "of human nature which literature provides and uses it as far
as it suits the immediate interest of his propaganda. All his knowledge
of all the world he draws in to further his end. Some one in The Egoist
the other day made the remark that the great struggle: the
unintermittent warfare ever going on was that which the Individual wages
against the Many: the One against the Whole. The skilful journalist
could both teach and demonstrate how the Many provides the
foraging-ground for the One. As the garden to the Bee, the Many is to
the One: his chiefest source of sustenance, to the extent that he is
able to suck out nutriment rather than poison. Which ability in the One
depends upon his knowledge. Lacking knowledge and foraging far he is
likely to find the Many dangerous: which is precisely what happens to
journalists—and their proprietors—who having cut off the springs of a
literature at length find themselves in urgent need of one.
---
Of the foregoing, a no mean writer of literature, and a journalist as
able as the disadvantage of being a writer of literature permits one to
be—Mr. G. K. Chesterton, shall provide the perfect illustration. Mr.
Chesterton recently, in a journal edited by his brother, wrote an
article in defence of his friend, attacking a newspaper which was
running a rival propaganda and which, to boot, had attacked his friend,
and—to boot yet again—whose owner was being attacked by the said brother
in a sensational campaign calculated to achieve inter alia for the said
journal of the said brother a very well-merited "business"
advertisement. Which seems quite a nice collection of "interested" items
to inspire any article. If we give the names: Mr. Cecil Chesterton the
brother, Mr. Belloc the friend, Lord Northcliffe the news vendor; and
the items: the Daily Mail the offender, the New Witness for the defence
and return onslaught, Mr. Belloc's war-lectures, G. K.'s own sound
literary reputation, the "Good—and Gone—old Times," the "Servile State"
and the "New Bad Ones," we are in possession of the "argument" and of
the Dramatis Personse. Let Mr. G. K. Chesterton, journalist, after a
prelude concerning buttercups, daisies, Dickens, Pantomime, and the
Ultimate Good, speak: his subject: "Truth and the Transformation Scene."
"Before the Harlequinade, there came a thing called a Transformation
Scene, in which the scenes grew thin and other scenes shone through
them, so that one had the delightful sensation of being in two places at
once. . . . In front let us say there would be the interior of the
widow's cottage with a Dutch clock, a three-legged stool, a mangle, a
bedstead, a table or a what not. And you would become gradually aware
that the scene was also the Demon's Cave, with a Demon carousing with
the Nightmare Queen and glittering cohorts of goblins. The Dutch clock
was still there and yet it was less solid than the Demon King. The
mangle was still there and yet it was more thin and spectral than the
Nightmare. All the facts grew faint as fables and the fables became
facts. Moreover it was a great part of the unreason and the vertigo of
the vision that the two complete nowhere corresponded to each other even
by accident. . . . Now it is this sense of the two scenes utterly
distinct and yet simultaneous which I have when I look at the modern
press and modern politics: and see the realities which are the
background of modern life gradually glowing and growing through the thin
sheets of our modern newspapers. There is the same utter separateness
and dislocation between the two designs." With an air of ineffable
impartiality the writer proceeds, "It has nothing to do with which world
is the better, it is solely a matter of which is becoming the more real.
You may like widows or you may prefer demons. . . . The England of
to-day is still divided into those who are still looking at Scene One,
and those who are already looking at Scene Two. Or rather they can both
see both, but they cannot believe both. The front still shows the
British Constitution . . . but behind is the goblin's kitchen and the
Servile State. Among those who see it there is all kinds of comment: but
they see it. The New Age sees it, and the New Witness, and in its way
even the New Statesman. But the Spectator does not, and the Pink'Un does
not, and the Times does not, or pretends that it does not."
---
In the passage quoted, it is the remark "It has nothing to do with which
world is the better: it is solely a matter of which is becoming the more
real. You may like widows or you may prefer demons," which illuminates
the method of journalism. Less of the heroic indignation which so
becomes a journalist, and a little more of the interest and amusement in
himself which Mr. Chesterton shows elsewhere, would have made it obvious
to him that everything as far as the meaning of his article at least was
concerned, depended upon "which you preferred"; and he himself
acknowledges as much when, having to recover his position, he points out
a little lower down the page that though we "see both" we cannot
"believe both." At the outset in framing the article, the sole reason
which caused him to fix upon the simile of the "Transformation Scene"—a
most ingenious one—was to assist him to divide the world into two parts:
the Goblins he preferred—all his own friends; and the Widows he couldn't
abide: those whom he and his friends were inclined to dislike. His
prejudices favourable or unfavourable from the architecture of his
world: his sole conception of what is "real." He says, "Some of us, he
(Mr. Belloc) being one, are interested in things as they really are."
Really are! He means "things as he would like them." His Oncoming
Scene—his real world, the "true" world, the world of fight and right
are—all his personal friends, those of the New Witness, the New Age, the
New Statesman even: "even" because this maintains the sinning faith
which seeks to inaugurate that Servile State which vexes him so, but
which must "even" be included because it is not possible to exclude
Friend Shaw. Those whom he loves not he leaves without even a world to
live in. "I could not debate with the Mail writer because I do not
believe in the very existence of the world in which he lives." "Not
believe in" = have no liking for. "Could not debate" = would not debate.
No one supposes that he could not—if he tried—with kindness and a
motherly patience, to explain to the hapless scribbler who is left with
no world to live in why the world as it "is" for Mr. Belloc "is," while
the world as it is for Lord Northcliffe just—"is'nt" ! But Mr.
Chesterton is very annoyed indeed, and he won't. For the time being, he
is so bent on championing "the responsible human being who is working
for the 'Truth'" that he prefers to lose all his community of
intelligence with the same sort of being "who is working for the Trust."
He would not even consider that perhaps both after their own fashion are
working for themselves. To the finish, he sticks to the disparate worlds
of his Transformation Scene, though it is maybe a sign of a returning
breadth of human interest that causes him to get his metaphors mixed.
"The skeleton begins to shine through the cupboard, and what was the
house of men opens inward into the house of devils." Well! well! it does
make one think about the desirability of the shoemaker sticking to his
last. Mr. Chesterton has neither the cunning nor the maliciousness: not
perhaps the "hardness" which is required to work that sort of thing into
the form in which it would be really effective for his own or really
damaging to the opposing side. Mr. Belloc could manipulate it far
better. He merely deserts the service of "Truth" to lend its prestige to
dubious uses which lower it as inevitably as the prestige of science
would be lowered by a scientist of repute who lent his prestige to
bolster up the fortunes of some dubitable commercial undertaking.
Which ruminations are set forth as a caution: for the guidance mainly
of—the "Egoist."
D. M.