Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/118



ERTAIN contemporary critics of literature, when accused of attempting to elevate their individual prejudices into assertions of superior insight, do not wholly deny this charge but insist that self-glorification is the natural and necessary source of all expression. The artist, to them, must inevitably adopt a proudly and firmly upstanding rôle and gratify, in this way, his insistent desire for self-respect. In a broad sense the motive-power of all human acts and words is self-glorification. People must forever shape their expressions in a manner that will reassure them of their right to existence; must continually assign at least a minimum value to these expressions. This fundamental urge toward achieving the striking—something that other men besides the creator will look at and listen to—is the mother of all human movement. But, in some individuals, it exists as a subconscious minimum, and in others it rises to a conscious maximum.

In other words, the degree in which it is present determines whether it i1s to become a vital and specific element in a human being's actions and voices. In some persons it utterly dominates; in others it struggles for authority, with varying success; and in a few it is merely a passive fundamental, having the same indirect and weakened effect upon their creations that the earth has upon the top-most leaf of a tree. Here the substance of this fundamental is neutralized by its division into many exploring shades—neutralized until it no longer serves as an active influence but dwindles to a passive source.

Man is born not only with a desire for self-glorification but with a longing to evade this self-worship. The exact amount of this opposite longing determines whether he is to resolve into an artist or a financier, and the exact degree in which it resides in his art-activities will decide whether he is to strive for variations in self-satisfaction or for different shades of searching and unpretentious unrest. Every element in man dwells side by side with a contradictory quality and each is continually striving to slay the other. This battle rarely,