The theory of evolution became acceptable only when it was demonstrated to the satisfaction of the religionists what at first did not seem apparent to them, that it interfered neither with a belief in a personal God, Christianity nor the immortality of the soul.
Literary men who are advanced are admired often for qualities that do not constitute their real greatness. The conservatives praise the daring poet for his style, after he has made his way; or they select a few of the minor ideas he champions and ignore the greater ones. They will not accept the Hardy who wrote Jude the Obscure, but the Hardy of Far From the Maddening Crowd; they will admire the early harmless lyrics of John Davidson instead of the profound testaments and later plays, whose real greatness was shown by Dr. Hayim Fineman in his monograph on John Davidson.[G] They praise Swinburne for his melody, Ibsen for his technique and Shaw for his wit, but can see no intellectual value either in the Songs Before Sunrise, or Peer Gynt, or Man and Superman. They overlook the value of Byron's Don Juan or Cain, because these works contain ideas that hurt most, and instead they lavish compliments on harmless descriptions like the address to the ocean, or the account of the battle of Waterloo. They like Shelley's lyrics and see nothing in his ideas.
The "conspiracy of silence" that has often greeted many great men was at times unconscious. People are not prone by nature to investigate something which might bring painful results. They prefer to let it alone altogether. The motive of ignoring a great book is founded on one of displeasure. Hence morbid and pessimistic books, revolutionary ideas, iconoclastic views on religion, morals or philosophy, new discoveries in science, encounter opposition. We do not want to be disturbed in our complacency. For the disturbance is, after all, made by those who do not fit into the old order; their own discoveries are defence processes. But gradually it is seen that these writers express universal wants.
The opposition met by all investigations in the subject of sex, is an example of man's effort to thrust painful things out of sight. The barrier raised against Freud himself rises largely from three leading ideas of his, those on the sexual significance of symbols in dreams and the attributing of neurosis to sexual causes, and the theory that the infant has a sexual life of its own. In spite of his broad use of the term sexual and his many demonstrations of the truth of these ideas, man does not want to believe them. Jung and Adler, who lay little stress on the sexual element, have made the theory of psychoanalysis acceptable to many; but Freud objects to the use of the word psychoanalysis by disciples who have taken out of his theory something he considers essential.
CHAPTER XIV
KEATS'S PERSONAL LOVE POEMS