The more one reads of modern novels, the more one realizes that, in this individualistic age, there are no individuals left. People, men, women, and children, are not thinking their own thoughts, they are not feeling their own feelings, they are not living their own lives.
The moment the human being becomes conscious of himself, he ceases to be himself. The reason is obvious. The moment any individual creature becomes aware of its own individual isolation, it becomes instantaneously aware of that which is outside itself, and forms its limitation. That is, the psyche splits in two, into subjective and objective reality. The moment this happens, the primal integral I, which is for the most part a living continuum of all the rest of living things, collapses, and we get the I which is staring out of the window at the reality which is not itself. And this is the condition of the modern consciousness, from early childhood.
In the past, children were supposed to be “innocent.” Which means that they were like the animals, not split into subjective and objective consciousness. They were one living continuum with all the universe. This is the essential state of innocence, of naivete, and it is the persistence of this state all through life, as the basic state of consciousness, which preserves the human being all his life fresh and alive, a true individual. Paradoxical as it may sound, the individual is only truly himself when he is unconscious of his own individuality, when he is unaware of his own isolation, when he is not split into subjective and objective, when there is no me or you, no me or it in his consciousness, but the me and you, the me and it is a living continuum, as if all were connected by a living membrane.
As soon as the conception me or you, me or it enters the human consciousness, then the individual consciousness is supplanted by the social consciousness. The social consciousness means the cleaving of the true individual consciousness into two halves, subjective and objective, “me” on the one hand, “you” or “it” on the other. The awareness of “you” or of “it” as something definitely limiting “me,” this is the social consciousness. The awareness of “you” or of “it” is a continuum of “me” — different, but not separate: different as the eye is different from the nose — this is the primal or pristine or basic consciousness of the individual, the state of “innocence” or of naivety.”
This consciousness collapses, and the real individual lapses out, leaving only the social individual, a creature of subjective and objective consciousness, but of no innocent or genuinely individual consciousness. The innocent or radical individual consciousness alone is unanalysable and mysterious; it is the queer nuclear spark in the protoplasm, which is life itself, in its individual manifestation. The moment you split into subjective and objective consciousness, then the whole thing becomes analysable, and, in the last issue, dead.
Of course, it takes a long time to destroy the naive individual, the old Adam, entirely, and to produce creatures which are completely social in consciousness, that is, always aware of the “you” set over against the “me,” always conscious of the “it” which the “I” is up against. But it has happened now in even tiny children. A child nowadays can say: Mummy’. — and his fatal consciousness of the cleft between him and Mummy is already obvious. The cleavage has happened to him. He is no longer one with things: worse, he is no longer at one with his mother even. He is a tiny, forlorn little social individual, a subjective-objective little Consciousness.
The subjective-objective consciousness is never truly individual. It is a product. The social individual, the me-or-you, me-or-it individual, is denied all naive or innocent or really individual feelings. He is capable only of the feelings, which are really sensations, produced by the reaction between the “me” and the “you,” the “I” and the “it.” Innocent or individual feeling is only capable when there is a continuum, when the me and the you and the it are a continuum.
Man lapses from true innocence, from the at-oneness, in two ways. The first is the old way of greed or selfishness, when the “me” wants to swallow the “you” and put an end to the continuum that way. The other is the way of negation, when the “I” wants to lapse out into the “you” or the “it,” and so end all responsibility of keeping up one’s own bright nuclear cell alive in the tissue of the universe. In either way, there is a lapse from innocence and a fall into the state of vanity, ugly vanity. It is a vanity of positive tyranny, or a vanity of negative tyranny. The old villains-in-the-piece fell into the vanity of positive tyranny, the new villains-in-the-peace, who are still called saints and holy persons, or at worst, God’s fools, are squirming in the vanity of negative tyranny. They won’t leave the continuum alone. They insist on passing out into it. Which is as bad as if the eye should insist on merging itself into a oneness with the nose. For we are none of us more than a cell in the eye-tissue, or a cell in the nose-tissue or the heart-tissue of the macrocosm, the universe.
And, of course, the moment you cause a break-down in living tissue, you get inert Matter. So the moment you break the continuum, the naivete, the innocence, the at-oneness, you get materialism and nothing but materialism.
Of course, inert Matter exists, as distinct from living tissue: dead protoplasm as distinct from living, nuclear protoplasm. But the living tissue is able to deal with the dead tissue. Whereas the reverse is not true. Dead tissue cannot do anything to living tissue, except try to corrupt it and make it dead too. Which is the main point concerning Materialism, whether it be the spiritual or the carnal Materialism.
The continuum which is alive can handle the dead tissue. That is, the individual who still retains his individuality, his basic atoneness or innocence or naivete, can deal with the material world successfully. He can be analytical and critical upon necessity. But at the core, he is always naive or innocent or at one.
The contrary is not true. The social consciousness can only be analytical, critical, constructive but not creative, sensational but not passionate, emotional but without true feeling. It can know, but it cannot be. It is always made up of a duality, to which there is no clue. And the one half of the duality neutralizes, in the long run, the other half. So that, whether it is Nebuchadnezzar or Francis of Assisi, you arrive at the same thing, nothingness.
You can’t make art out of nothingness. Ex nihilo nihil fit! But you can make art out of the collapse towards nothingness: the collapse of the true individual into the social individual.
Which brings us to John Galsworthy with a bump. Because, in all his books, I have not been able to discover one real individual — nothing but social individuals. Ex nihilo nihil fit! You can’t make art, which is the revelation of the continuum itself, the very nuclear glimmer of the naive individual, when there is no continuum and no naive individual. As far as I have gone, I have found in Galsworthy nothing but social individuals.
Thinking you are naive doesn’t make you naive, and thinking you are passionate doesn’t make you passionate. Again, being stupid or limited is not a mark of naivety, and being doggedly amorous is not a sign of passion. In each case, the very reverse. Again, a peasant is by no means necessarily more naive, or innocent, or individual than a stockbroker, nor a sailor than an educationalist. The reverse may be the case. Peasants are often as greedy as cancer, and sailors as soft and corrupt as a rotten apple.