“To return to Forster is to be reminded that politics is tied to the fate of people, not theories. That same equivocal 'spirit which is half-afraid and half-thinking about something else' that he describes in another 1939 essay, 'Post-Munich,' was the same spirit that flooded me in November’s post-election days. His reflections on the value of culture during times of violence lend a brief flicker of hope to anyone who believes in art for art’s sake. And in WHAT I BELIEVE, the⋯⋯
Rhian Sasseen for BLARB - What He Believed: Revisiting E.M. Forster's Defense of Liberalism
What I Believe
(from: Forster, E.M. Two Cheers for Democracy)
I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there
are so many militant creeds that, in self-defence, one has to
formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and
sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by
religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules,
and Science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp.
Tolerance, good temper and sympathy - they are what matter
really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come
to the front before long. But for the moment they are not
enough, their action is no stronger than a flower, battered be-
neath a military jackboot. They want stiffening, even if the
process coarsens them. Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process,
a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as
possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake,
at all. Herein I probably differ from most people, who believe in
Belief, and are only sorry they cannot swallow even more than
they do. My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses
and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in
that Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My
motto is : "Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
I have, however, to live in an Age of Faith - the sort of epoch
I used to hear praised when I was a boy. It is extremely un-
pleasant really. It is bloody in every sense of the word. And I
have to keep my end up in it. Where do I start ?
With personal relationships. Here is something comparatively
solid in a world full of violence and cruelty. Not absolutely solid,
for Psychology has split and shattered the idea of a " Person", and
has shown that there is something incalculable in each of us,
which may at any moment rise to the surface and destroy our
normal balance. We don't know what we are like. We can't
know what other people are like. How, then, can we put any
trust in personal relationships, or cling to them in the gathering
political storm ? In theory we cannot. But in practice we can and
do. Though A is not unchangeably A, or B unchangeably B, there
can still be love and loyalty between the two. For the purpose of
living one has to assume that the personality is solid, and the
"self" is an entity, and to ignore all contrary evidence. And since
to ignore evidence is one of the characteristics of faith, I certainly
can proclaim that I believe in personal relationships.
Starting from them, I get a little order into the contemporary
chaos. One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not
to make a mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they should
not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I
must, myself, be as reliable as possible, and this I try to be. But
reliability is not a matter of contract - that is the main difference
between the world of personal relationships and the world of
business relationships. It is a matter for the heart, which signs no
documents. In other words, reliability is impossible unless there
is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth, though
they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even
when they are politicians,
want to keep faith. And one can, at all
events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trem-
bling flame, with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is
shining in the darkness, and not the only one which the darkness
does not comprehend. Personal relations are despised today. They
are regarded as bourgeois luxuries, as products of a time of fair
weather which is now past, and we are urged to get rid of them,
and to dedicate ourselves to some movement or cause instead. I
hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying
my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the
guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalize the
modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the
telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have
shocked Dante, though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the
lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their
friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome. Probably
one will not be asked to make such an agonizing choice. Still,
there lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard
for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer, and
there is even a terror and a hardness in this creed of personal
relationships, urbane and mild though it sounds. Love and
loyalty to an individual can run counter to the claims of the State.
When they do - down with the State, say I, which means that the
State would down me.
This brings me along to Democracy, "Even love, the beloved
Republic, That feeds upon freedom and lives". Democracy is not
a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful
than other contemporary forms of government, and to that
extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assump-
tion that the individual is important, and that all types are needed
to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the
bossers and the bossed - as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The
people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to
create something or discover something, and do not see life in
terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a
democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small,
or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested
scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary
people", who are creative in their pricate lives, bring up their
children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All
these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless
society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows
them most liberty is a democracy.
Democracy has another merit. It allows criticism, and if there
is not public criticism there are bound to be hushed-up scandals.
That is why I believe in the press, despite all its lies and vulgarity,
and why I believe in Parliament. Parliament is often sneered a
because it is a Talking Shop. I believe in it
because it is a talking
shop. I believe in the Private Member who makes himself a
nuisance. He gets snubbed and is told that he is cranky or ill-
informed, but he does expose abuses which would otherwise
never have been mentioned, and very often an abuse gets put
right just by being mentioned. Occasionally, too, a well-meaning
public official starts losing his head in the cause of efficiency, and
thinks himself God Almighty. Such officials are particularly
frequent in the Home Office. Well, there will be questions about
them in Parliament sooner or later, and then they will have to
mind their steps. Whether Parliament is either a representative
body or an efficient one is questionable, but I value it because it
criticizes and talks, and because its chatter gets widely reported.
So two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety
and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite
enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the
Beloved Republic deserves that.
What about Force, though? While we are trying to be sensitive
and advanced and affectionate and tolerant, an unpleasant ques-
tion pops up: does not all society rest upon force ? If a govern-
ment cannot count upon the police and the army, how
can it hope to rule ? And if an individual gets knocked on
the head or sent to a labour camp, of what significance are
his opinions ?
This dilemma does not worry me as much as it does some. I
realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative
actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the inter-
vals when force has not managed to come to the front. These
intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as
lengthy as possible, and I call them " civilization ". Some people
idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it,
instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I
think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the
mystics, err even more when they declare that force does not
exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent
it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then
it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But
it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong
are so stupid. Consider their conduct for a moment in
TheNibelung's Ring. The giants there have the guns, or in other words
the gold; but they do nothing with it, they do not realize that
they are all-powerful, with the result that the catastrophe is de-
layed and the castle of Valhalla, insecure but glorious, fronts
the storms. Fafnir, coiled round his hoard, grumbles and grunts;
we can hear him under Europe today; the leaves of the wood
already tremble, and the Bird calls its warnings uselessly. Fafnir
will destroy us, but by a blessed dispensation he is stupid and slow,
and creation goes on just outside the poisonous blast of his breath.
The Nietzschean would hurry the monster up, the mystic would
say he did not exist, but Wotan, wiser than either, hastens to
create warriors before doom declares itself. The Valkyries are
symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they represent the
human spirit snatching its opportunity while the going is good,
and one of them even finds time to love. Bruennhilde's last song
hymns the recurrence of love, and since it is the privilege of art to
exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims the love which is
eternally triumphant, and feeds upon freedom and lives.
So that is what I feel about force and violence. It is, alas !
the ultimate reality on this earth, but it does not always get to
the front. Some people call its absences "decadence"; I call
them "civilization" and find in such interludes the chief justifica-
tion for the human experiment. I look the other way until fate
strikes me. Whether this is due to courage or to cowardice in my
own case I cannot be sure. But I know that, if men had not
looked the other way in the past, nothing of any value would sur-
vive. The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal
and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of
them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working
and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing-holes for the
human spirit. No millennium seems likely to descend upon
humanity; no better and stronger Ieague of Nations will be
instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christi-
anity will bring peace to the world or integrity to the individual;
no "change of heart" will occur. And yet we need not despair,
indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history shows us that
men have always insisted on behaving creatively under the
shadow of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scien-
tific and domestic stuff for the sake of doing it, and that we had
better follow their example under the shadow of the aeroplanes.
Others, with more vision or courage than myself, see the salva-
tion of humanity ahead, and will dismiss my conception of civil-
ization as paltry, a sort of tip-and-run game. Certainly it is pre-
sumptuous to say that we
cannot improve, and that Man, who
has only been in power for a few thousand years, will never learn
to make use of his power. All I mean is that, if people continue to
kill one another as they do, the world cannot get better than it is,
and that, since there are more people than formerly, and their
means for destroying one another superior, the world may well
get worse. What is good in people - and consequently in the
world - is their insistence on creation, their belief in friendship
and loyalty for their own sakes; and, though Violence remains and
is, indeed, the major partner in this muddled establishment, I
believe that creativeness remains too, and will always assume di-
rection when violence sleeps. So, though I am not an optimist, I
cannot agree with Sophocles that it were better never to have
been born. And although, like Horace, I see no evidence that
each batch of births is superior to the last, I leave the field open
for the more complacent view. This is such a difficult moment to
live in, one cannot help getting gloomy and also a bit rattled, and
perhaps short-sighted.
In search of a refuge, we may perhaps turn to hero-worship.
But here we shall get no help, in my opinion. Hero-worship is a
dangerous vice, and one of the minor merits of a democracy is
that it does not encourage it, or produce that unmanageable type
of citizen known as the Great Man. It produces instead different
kinds of small men - a much finer achievement. But people who
cannot get interested in the variety of life, and cannot make up
their own minds, get discontented over this, and they long for a
hero to bow down before and to follow blindly. It is significant
that a hero is an integral part of the authoritarian stock-in-trade
today. An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes
stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to
be put into a bad pudding to make it palatable. One hero at the
top and a smaller one each side of him is a favourite arrangement,
and the timid and the bored are comforted by the trinity, and,
bowing down, feel exalted and strengthened.
No, I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity
around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a
little man's pleasure when they come a cropper. Every now and
then one reads in the newspapers some such statement as: "The
coup d'etat appears to have failed, and Admiral Toma's where-
abouts is at present unknown." Admiral Toma had probably
every qualification for being a Great Man - an iron will, personal
magnetism, dash, flair, sexlessness - but fate was against him, so
he retires to unknown whereabouts instead of parading history
with his peers. He fails with a completeness which no artist and
no lover can experience, because with them the process of crea-
tion is itself an achievement, whereas with him the only possible
achievement is success.
I believe in aristocracy, though - if that is the right word, and
if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon
rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the con-
siderate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all
nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret
understanding between them when they meet. They represent
the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer
race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in
obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others
as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being
fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and
they can take a joke. I give no examples - it is risky to do that -
but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of
person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going
further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an
ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old
Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not
feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their
bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we
register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a
major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and
plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first
three qualities I will let him in! On they go - an invincible army,
yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen,
the Best People - all the words that describe them are false, and
all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority,
seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the
Egyptian Priesthood or theChristian Church or the Chinese
Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy
stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door
is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of
them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their
kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.
With this type of person knocking about, and constantly cros-
sing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to feel, the experi-
ment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure. But it may
well be hailed as a tragedy, the tragedy being that no device has
been found by which these private decencies can be transrnitted
to public affairs. As soon as people have power they go crooked
and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power
lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays. For
instance, the man who is selling newspapers ourtside the Houses
of Parliament can safely leave his papers to go for a drink, and
his cap beside them: anyone who takes a paper is sure to drop a
copper into the cap. But the men who are inside the Houses of
Parliament - they cannot trust one another like that, still less can
the Government they compose trust other governments. No
caps upon the pavement here, but suspicion, treachery and
armaments. The more highly public life is organized the lower
does its morality sink ; the nations of today behave to each other
worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and
bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and
children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events
restrained by taboos. It is a humiliating outlook - though the
greater the darkness, the brighter shine the little lights, reassuring
one another, signalling: "Well, at all events, I 'm still here. I
don' t like it very much, but how are you ?" Unquenchable lights
of my aristocracy! Signals of the invincible army ! "Come along
- anyway, let's have a good time while we can. "I think they
signal that too.
The Saviour of the future - if ever he comes - will not preach
a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make
effective the goodwill and the good temper which are already
existing. In other words, he will introduce a new technique. In
economics, we are told that if there was a new technique of
distribution there need be no poverty, and people would not
starve in one place while crops were being ploughed under in
another. A similar change is needed in the sphere of morals and
politics. The desire for it is by no means new; it was expressed,
for example, in theological terms by Jacopone da Todi over six
hundred years ago. "Ordena questo amore, tu che m'ami, "
he said ; "O thou who lovest me set this love in order." His
prayer was not granted, and I do not myself believe that it ever
will be, but here, and not through a change of heart, is our
probable route. Not by becoming better, but by ordering and
distributing his native goodness, will Man shut up Force into its
box, and so gain time to explore the universe and to set his mark
upon it worthily. At present he only explores it at odd moments,
when Force is looking the other way, and his divine creativeness
appears as a trivial by-product, to be scrapped as soon as the
drums beat and the bombers hum.
Such a change, claim the orthodox, can only be made by
Christianity, and will be made by it in God's good time: man
always has failed and always will fail to organize his own good-
ness, and it is presumptuous of him to try. This claim - solemn
as it is - leaves me cold. I cannot believe that Christianity will
ever cope with the present world-wide mess, and I think that such
influence as it retains in modern society is due to the money
behind it, rather than to its spiritual appeal. It was a spiritual
force once, but the indwelling spirit will have to be restated if
it is to calm the waters again, and probably restated in a non-
Christian form. Naturally a lot of people, and people who are
not only good but able and intelligent, will disagree here; they
will vehemently deny that Christianity has failed, or they will
argue that its failure proceeds from the wickedness of men, and
really proves its ultimate success. They have Faith, with a large
F. My faith has a very small one, and I only intrude it because
these are strenuous and serious days, and one likes to say what
one thinks while speech is comparatively free; it may not be free
much longer.
The above are the reflections of an individualist and a liberal
who has found liberalism crumbling beneath him and at first felt
ashamed. Then, looking around, he decided there was no special
reason for shame, since other people, whatever they felt, were
equally insecure. And as for individualism - there seems no way
of getting off this, even if one wanted to. The dictator-hero can
grind down his citizens till they are all alike, but he cannot melt
them into a single man. That is beyond his power. He can order
them to merge, he can incite them to mass-antics, but they are
obliged to be born separately, and to die separately, and, owing
to these unavoidable termini, will always be running off the
totalitarian rails. The merrory of birth and the expectation of
death always lurk within the human being, making him separate
from his fellows and consequently capable of intercourse with
them. Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it!
And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked
under my shirt, whatever its colour.
-----
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這次還談到書要附索引才行。金恆鑣先生考我齊邦媛的
《巨流河》中哪處說到他。我說，不知道呢！他說，這就是台灣書多不做索引的缺點。
送他們走後，我拿出《巨流河》猛翻書：先在"齊邦媛紀事" (592-97)的1995年 (甲午戰爭百年)找到："赴山東威海衛參加兩岸"自然環境與文學"會議"，之後在頁488-90找到相關資訊。
"......但是"他們"和"我們"內心都明白，路是不同的了。....."還不是此時，也不是此地。" ("Not now, not here. ---E. M. Foster
《印度之旅》A Passage to India (1924) 結尾)
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