Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/141

 When we depart from the "great tradition," when we abandon in our own souls the arduous pursuit of the ideal perfection, when we seek only in a "dream of solitary disdain" to affirm and "brand" upon our work the uniqueness of our own essence, then we are likely to flatter ourselves that we are becoming "original" and are manifesting "genius." Mr. Brownell, after some comparison of current specimens of "originality" with the classifications of recent scientific investigators, warns us that this unique disdainful ego, in which we exhibit such overweening pride, is likely to slip rather ignominiously into some large category of psychopathology, group complexes, or mob-psychology. It isn't so terribly difficult to be queer. We are born that way.

The difficult thing is to be normal. We have to achieve normality. It is quite a different thing from "normalcy," which is merely some one's old coat. Normality bears to normalcy about the same relation that the living and perfect body of an athlete bears to an old coat. The way to be the most original man is to seek to be the most normal man; it is the most difficult path, and therefore the path least followed, least likely to be hit upon by chance. It is the path demanding the upgirt loin, the unsleeping heart, and eyes fixed upon the beauty which dwells among the rocks, high above the reek and stench of our self-seeking oblations. Self-denial as an end in itself? No. Self-denial as a means to begin the ascent of those heights "where Orpheus and where Homer are"; self-denial as the first step toward the level of workmanship that resists time and toward the level of feeling which rewards the work: