The basis of Morris's social creed was an unchanging faith in the essential dignity of the nature of man. The trickeries and jealousies that beset our commercial phase of civilization he refused to accept as being fundamental in humanity, thinking of them rather as ill habits imposed upon humanity by some cruel sport of circumstance that made men forgetful of their own better instincts. He did not suppose that habits that had been slowly assimilated could be put off in a moment of violent reaction, but he never doubted if once men could be brought to consider the real purpose of traffic and social community, and so free themselves from a tyranny that endured only because part of its method was to carry its victims along in a continuous necessity of adjusting themselves to the immediate moment without allowing them to pause for reflection and see life in its completeness, that then these habits would inevitably be set aside. His desire always was that men should at least be allowed to prove themselves freely. From the turbulent passions and sorrows inseparable from humanity he asked no escape, taking them gladly as the darker threads in the many-coloured web of our heritage, but he denounced fiercely the doctrine that, finding men forced into daily betrayal of themselves, blandly announced that here was proof of their radical meanness and unworth. For the people who told him that before he could hope for the world of his imagining he must change human nature, he had a fine contempt. That this cleaner life was realizable on earth, and that without any revolutionary excesses, he showed as clearly in the work of his own life as any one man could do. He conducted a large business enterprise profitably and in open competition, but he did not degrade labour in employing it. He accepted the normal conditions of society in public and family life, but he did not allow them to cramp or violate his own personality. He realized fully that a great social fabric is not constructed out of mere unreason, and he had no wish to destroy systems that had been evolved from perfectly sound impulses; the thing that he fought against with all his extraordinary power was their abuse. Principles of exchange and of labour for the common good were a necessary complement of his belief that a man must get from his labour two things: joy in the work itself and the means whereby to live; but he knew that the real significance of these principles had been forgotten. His life was an active endeavour to impress it once again on the mind of the people, and in his poetry was the same endeavour embodied in creative imagination.
Writing of the northern stories Morris said, 'Well, sometimes we must needs think that we shall live again; yet if that were not, would it not be enough that we helped to make this unnameable glory, and lived not altogether deedless? Think of the joy we have in praising great men, and how we turn their stories over and over, and fashion their lives for our joy: and this also we ourselves may give to the world.' It was curiously prophetic of that which we feel about Morris himself. His life, his art, the figure of the man, all fit into the outlines of a heroic story such as those that he loved. He gave, indeed, to the world in this manner and in large measure. And he added generously to the joy that we have in praising great men.
THE END
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH