V
USES AND ABUSES
Considering the great pleasantness, let alone the various uses, of the mental habits I have summed up as Intelligence, it is surprising there should not yet be more of it forthcoming. It has, at present, a way of giving out suddenly in individuals and nations, just when its mixture of light-hearted scepticism and steady hopefulness would seem most needed. By which inadequacy of its supply I am confirmed in the suspicion that Intelligence is a much more recent human accomplishment than the Past’s other achievements in art and poetry and wit and humour would lead us to expect. Indeed, the deserved prestige of that Past, and the consequent survival of its educational and religious traditions and institutions, is very likely what has so strangely delayed the advent of modern Intelligence. And it is their dwindling, itself partly attributable to nascent Intelligence, which has delivered our intellectual activities from sundry blind alleys and sloughs of despond, like those presided over by the terrible, and most unintelligent, word Salvation. For Intelligence, one of whose virtues is abolishing Fear, is itself stifled by the obsession of danger in this world or the next: are we not seeing the most naturally intelligent of all countries fallen into incredible self-defeating stupidity through its present mania for “Security”? It is, of course, evident that, apart from the decay of religious and classical superstition, the growth of Intelligence in our own days has been enormously fostered by increase both of scientific knowledge and of civic liberty, and also, as far as it goes, of well-being; also of opportunities for variety of impression at least for the well-to-do classes. And one hopes there may be other kinds of yet unforeseen novelties coming to Intelligence’s assistance in the Future. Yet, the chief obstacles once removed, my hope is chiefly in what one might call Intelligence’s own natural proliferation. One intelligent mode of thought inevitably leads to another, and puts out of action an unintelligent one. Every intelligent book adds, let us hope, to the intelligence of at least one reader; so that we could almost do without the tremendous launchings-forth of the great challengers, Ruskin, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Nietzsche; even of the more purely beneficent (because lighter-hearted) stirrers-up of thought like Bernard Shaw.
Believing, therefore, in such spontaneous multiplication of Intelligence, I do not find much use for the methods, whereof that one is but an extreme example which is attributed to the late Dr. Metchnikoff, proposing (it is said) to increase the output of genius by judicious doses of syphilitic virus. Surely, the supply of raw genius would be fairly adequate if only we could put it to the best use? And the best use of genius is not, in my opinion, the practical application of science to methods of reciprocal slaughter and devastation. Nor even its application to easier locomotion, intercourse and the cheapening of food, heat and light, except to the extent which would secure more health, more leisure and more opportunity all round; certainly at present not the case. And, speaking for myself, the best use of genius and the most necessary application of science, seems to be teaching people what Descartes called (whatever his precise meaning) the méthode de bien conduire son esprit; at least to the slight degree of not letting obsolete shibboleths and new-fangled catchwords carry us, as they did ten years ago, headlong into the disasters we were trying to avoid.
The next best thing to be done with our existing supply of genius might be to train it to check, by application of common sense and a little modesty, certain ailments inherent in its own constitution, namely: exaggeration, contrariness and, of course, megalomania. Such self-purification, on the part of persons of genius or what passes for such, would save the rest of us the disheartening task of throwing half of their sayings onto the scrap-heap, and of picking out of the scrap-heap some of the sayings of rival persons of genius consigned thereunto at their bidding. There is quite enough to be done in the way of selection, assimilation and elimination (since all understanding means that) without setting such Intelligence as we have to play scavenger to wasteful or slatternly genius.... And yet, and yet.... May not those trashinesses of genius, and the scavengering entailed thereby, be that which secures to Intelligence its highest activities, and in so far fulfils one of Genius’s chief missions? For, after all, Intelligence is the living, changing mass of unprofessional thought, the averaged, habitual thought of the majority of us. And is not the chief use of all such genius as is not set aside in science or in art, rather to make the rest of us think, than to furnish us with ready-made thoughts, however true or sublime? Nay, I would hazard the supposition that it was because the men of the Past were presented with such a mass of ready-made thoughts, creeds, philosophies, and moral formulæ (think of Deuteronomy!) all given for perfect and definitively valid, that there did not appear till so late in the day just what I have called Intelligence, which alone could give that without which the greatest genius is solitary and barren: an audience, a reader, a mind able to carry on the thinking and, in so far, able to eliminate the deciduous, the rubbishy elements of the thought already offered to it.
The consideration of this loss which mankind may have suffered through the notion that thoughts must be accepted ready-made rather than transformed into one’s own, and that, consequently, men must be set apart to do the thinking (as the priests once did the praying and sacrificing) for others; this consideration is at the bottom of my present hatred of the idea (which I shared in my youth) that exceptionally gifted persons should consecrate themselves into a caste, ministers, maybe, of a new religion, chosen vessels for a new-fangled deity.
And since we are discussing the reciprocal uses of Genius and of mere Intelligence (Genius ever stimulating Intelligence, Intelligence ever keeping Genius within the bounds of sense and of decency), allow me to set my face against all those oligarchies of genius and virtue which every Utopian philosopher from Plato to Comte, from Renan to H. G. Wells, has wanted to foist on dull, driven Mankind. And let us take to heart the reductio ad absurdum of all such schemes in the latest and hugest joke of our one great laughing philosopher, when he shows us the world governed by bald, toothless and passionless sages, who, even without having reached the years of Methuselah, have long survived the age when every decent person should retire to his or her coffin.
And before leaving the subject of the services (sometimes scarcely desired) which Genius may need at the humble hands of Intelligence, let me point out how our men of genius or thereabouts (“Creative Intellects” is the official expression) have latterly taken over one of the most remunerative and mischievous employments of all obsolete priesthoods, to wit: of frightening believers with bogies of their manufacture. For, just as the Torments of Hell and the Pitfalls of Sin formerly supplied matter for all the learning and eloquence of centuries of Divines, so nowadays encyclopædic science and journalistic emphasis are being applied to making our flesh creep with prophecies of Perils. There is Peril from black, brown, yellow races; from Semites, Mongols, Latins (in “Nordic” countries), Teutons (in Latin countries), Celts all over Anglo-Saxondom, Jews throughout the globe; Bolsheviks, Fascists and Junkers, International Communism and International Finance, Militarism which was put an end to by the War, besides our old friends Jesuits and Freemasons. There is Peril from the multiplication of Idiots and the multiplication of Supermen; Peril from depopulation and Peril from overpopulation, from unsexed women and over-sexed women; Peril from over-much altruism, and Peril from insufficient altruism. Perils which I cannot even remember, but by whose side those of War, Pestilence and Famine are, of course, too familiar to be noticed. Indeed, it is characteristic of this latter-day apocalypse that none of the prophets of disaster prophesied the War and the Fruits of Victory, except, if I remember correctly, Mr. H. G. Wells, who, however, once the War had been declared, enlisted at once for the Fleet Street Front and bid us unsheath the Sword of Peace for the final extermination of Militarism....
Therefore, it strikes me that in view of this multifold reincarnation of the spirit of prophecy in our Men of Science and of Letters, some increase of Intelligence may well be needed to steady our nerves and allow us to recognize the real dangers of which, heaven knows, there are plenty requiring to be faced with ... well, the far-too-little Intelligence already at our disposal. For, possibly because it is not “creative” (and creation usually implies chaos and refuse-heaps), Intelligence is especially preservative and sheltering. It is the natural purifier and tidier-up where Genius and Stupidity, disrupting and corrupting by turns, have between them played the deuce with our poor mortal heritage. And in the face of the millionfold sacrifices of self and others which Ideals and Heroisms have once again presented to our foolish admiration, I would go so far as to add that Intelligence is often more humane than Sentiment, and, oftener still, more beneficent than what we call Virtue.
From the misapplications of our Science, the exaggerations and lunacies of our Genius, and the havoc wrought by our higher instincts, we therefore need to be saved, not by Reason, which is always too long in getting under weigh, but by Intelligence, active, alacritous and ubiquitous, afraid neither of being laughed at nor of laughing at others.... But even as I stammer out this old-fashioned demand for Salvation, the name of Proteus sounds suddenly in the ear of my spirit. How can I tell what Proteus may next be—perhaps already is—changing into? And after prating about Intelligence being one-half light-hearted scepticism and one-half steady confidence, am I going to join the mixed choir, ecstatic or growling, of prophesying optimists and pessimists?