Obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. To say that no writer may use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." Each case must be determined by its inner spiritual truth.
In one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. What I maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often, both poisonous and untrue to life because their choice of words and, indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view: that, if only your figures are naked they must be true, that our bodies cannot lie. In angry revolt against the half-truths of the
past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole.
Let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words.
Let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. Almost certainly, if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; and also bad art. If you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, do not believe it.
Nearly always the most inexperienced youth feels straight. Once the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself.
VI
NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS.
One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize, that a man's mistress may be a nobler woman than his wife, the love between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading, and conversation.