This is certain, that God is Love. How, else, could He have created the Universe?
150
"God is Love"
When Jesus said, "God is Love," He denned a religion of Becoming. Was it not necessarily so? For Love is not something which may choose to create; it must create, it is fundamentally the will and the power to create. And Eternal Love, or God, is, therefore, eternal creation, eternal change, eternal Becoming. Consequently, there is no ultimate goal, no Perfection, except that which is realized at every moment in the self-expression of Love. A vision? A nightmare? Well, it depends whether one is in favour of Life, or of Death; whether one lives, or is lived. And, therefore, whether religion is subjective, or objective? Whether God is within us, or outside us? For so long as God is within us, we must create. That should be our Becoming!
151
Love and Mr. Galsworthy
The art of Mr. Galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing—half impersonal portrayal, half personal plea, the Art pour l'Art of a social reformer—and the subjects he chooses are so controversial—the abuses of society—that it is hard to place him as an artist. When "The Dark Flower" appeared, however, we thought we had him. Here was a great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, Love. Alas! even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the reformer. Well, that itself, perhaps, told us something! However that may be, we do get here Mr. Galsworthy's conception of Love. It is an inadequate conception, a realist's conception: Love, with the meaning left out. The ardours, the longing, the disappointment and anguish—all the symptoms—of Love are given; but not a hint that Love has any significance beyond the emotions it brings: that which redeems Love, creation, is ignored altogether! Mr. Galsworthy has seen that Love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty: it is the ultimate thing to him. Well, that is perhaps the most that could be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend Love! In this book are all the symptoms of Humanitarianism—pity for every one, reform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient reason for abolishing or palliating things: a creed thrice inadequate, thrice shallow, thrice blind. Love would find relief from suffering in creation. But one feels that Mr. Galsworthy would abolish Life if he could. Humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of Life, for in Life suffering is integral.
152
Mr. Thomas Hardy
In Mr. Hardy's conception of Love, unlike Mr. Galsworthy's, the contingency of creation is never absent; but to him creation is not a justification of the pangs of Love. It is an intensification of them; it is Love's last and worst indignity. But even when Love does not bestow this ultimate insult of creation, it cannot resist the satisfaction of torturing its victims; it is wanton and irrelevant in its distribution of pain. Mr. Hardy's books are filled with the torments of Love. Was it not fitting that he should aim his main indictment of Life against it, seeing that it is the trick whereby the blunder of Life is perpetuated? And so Mr. Hardy is certainly a decadent; but he is a great decadent—one of those who by the power of their denial of Life seem to make Life more profound and tragic, and inspire the healthy artists to an even greater love and reverence for it.