The New Immoralism
THE COMMONWEAL A W~kly R~iem d Literature, The Arts, and Public Affalrs. Volume V New York, Wednesday, February 9, 1927 Number I4 CONTENTS The New Immoralism...
...In so far as Catholic opinion is concerned, this has been done by the age-old Index--a method for the moral surveillance of literature which, though it has never been universally effective, is perfectly right in principle and at least relatively valuable in practice...
...This detail from fairly recent news is stressed here only because it happens to be so characteristic of a certain attitude toward ethical standards...
...The "new immoralism" is the logical extremist retort to ethics, but in its turn it is about as dependable a rallying cry for an army of new Jeremy Colliers and Carrie Nations as could well be imagined...
...In short, these sporadic attempts to deal with a real civic problem have been characterized by a complete loss of the faculty to distinguish, to judge, to apply a general philosophic rule to an individual case...
...37o The Alphabet...
...The dossier for both sides could be copied from forgotten books...
...and the too stern righteousness of a father is sometimes visited upon the heads of his children...
...How odd it seems occasionally that the "golden mean" is the least original and the most unique of the mental habits of mankind l To forestall the inevitable conflict between intransigeant points of view is the task of genuine ethi...
...When we do combine to celebrate the triumphs of virtue, we shall find that the little successes of grossness have faded away...
...that co6peration between the two mu~t be established...
...Dicta of safetywwhat is meant by censorship-need to be established and respected...
...In other words, there is an anti-social test which creative individualism must pass if it wishes to live...
...But in all truth it should have been apparent to any academic soul that a moralist of the stature of Shakespeare altered an older and coarser play into the fairly commendable altair known as Romeo and Juliet...
...Mary Katharine Reely 378 The Creed of the Critics...Alfred G. Brickel 379 Jacques Copeau...
...George N. Shuster 38I Thoughts for a Young Girl (verse...
...384 Books...
...The Puritan simply barred all fiction and drama...
...367 "Pure Poetry...
...and when he died there were none to continue his work excepting camp-followers devoid of notable gifts, so that the field was at the disposal of his adversaries...
...The problem of moral health in the creative personality must remain a matter of general concern...
...R. A. McGowan, Theodore Maynard, Grenville Vernon, George N. Shuster, Waiter V. Anderson, Gouverneur Paulding, Frederick H. Martens, Thomas Walsh 386 The Quiet Corner...
...Then, too, the fact that this disdainful attitude toward ethics should seem novel is merely another symptom of continuing American provincialism...
...Borghild Lundberg Lee 38I The Play...
...Therefore the effort to preserve the balance, to make prevalent a nice adjustment of values, is perennially necessary...
...Nothing is more widely lamented by those who are familiar with social history than the passing of that old serenity of temper which once seemed identified with Christendom...
...and his inspiration is so much a matter of insight into reality that it cannot well be curbed to suit the purposes of the moralist...
...The permanent test of common sense will force anyone to admit that at least some things promulgated in the name of art must be hidden or destroyed if the community is to prosper...
...Volume V New York, Wednesday, February 9, 1927 Number I4 CONTENTS The New Immoralism...
...If this is true of general public practice, whether political or social, it is even more correct in the world of art and letters...
...And thereby it paves the way for a reaction quite as blind and undiscerning as itself...
...the emergence of a definite and widely criticized national type quite antipathetic to the artistic mind...
...But the point that more can be accomplished by honoring the man who is healthy than by pummeling him who has succumbed to disease is always most important...
...The present debate is therefore not startling...
...The room that should normally be set apart by society for "the free play of choice" is here forever being restricted to a narrow strip of drill-ground, the order governing which is a perennial "squad right...
...It might have been borne in mind that on the whole the moral personages of the eighteenth century were reasonably successful in transforming the gayer shades of Restoration fun into a respectable hue which has remained popular ever since...
...the application of the Nordic rule to the problems of immigration...
...365 Week by Week...
...J. C. 0'Connell 372 The Senator from Alabama . . Solomon Juneau 374 National Drama Week...
...37 t Politics in the Sunny South...
...In a very interesting book, M. Victor Giraud comments understandingly upon a mistake made by Bossuet, the great theologian of the seventeenth century: "By the prestige of his genius, his eloquence and his authority, Bossuet made men believe that his peremptory intransigeance was the perfect expression of the orthodox mind...
...Thomas Walsh, Henry Morton Robinson, Medora C. Addison, Elizabeth Case, H. C. Barr0wesDonald, Jessie Lemont 383 Communications...
...During many years we have been professing the conviction that broadax battling between capital and labor was merely destructive of both...
...It may, of course, be true that the Professor is likely to say almost anything...
...In the jubilant acclaim of what is good and honorable lies the supreme antidote to the new immoralism...
...It magni...
...In practice, these questions are so compIex that it is safe to say no adequate solution has been found for them...
...Perhaps the inference is properly that whenever old-fashioned citizens behold Professor Erskine's examiners of decency enjoying themselves immensely, they will understand the reason and be governed accordingly...
...That there should be some question of the propriety of moral verdicts about art or literature is relatively understandable...
...Its value will be appreciated if it is compared with the expedients adopted by sporadic outbursts of ethical indignation in the world at large...
...If we were familiar with the history of our European ancestors, whose blood in us stirs to the same old loyalties and rebellions, we should know that the days of sophistry and prurient humanism are immemorial...
...The creator of beauty follows laws which are essentially di~erent from the commandments governing conduct...
...Morality needs to learn the gentle arts of persuasion...
...But these old truths, recognized and professed by monastic teachers who discerned quite clearly the problems of building and writing in their own day, cannot be twisted to suit an extravagant individualistic indif[erence to the public health...
...R. Dana Skinner 382 Poems...
...391 THE NEW IMMORALISM NE hopes that Professor John Erskine was misquoted in a recent report averring he had assured a New York audience that a moralist is unable to distinguish an indecent play from a decent one, and fundamentally incapable of introducing such changes as make for ethical health...
...ties a perfectly legitimate concept of art to an extent which obliterates other equally genuine and necessary concepts...
...Nevertheless, it is well that public opinion should establish theoretical standards and align itself according to them as satisfactorily as possible...
...The measurement of right and wrong (even in the domain of public conduct) according to objective standards by men who consider these of importance, is voted a flagrant impertinence...
...The vices of one generation are fostered by the graceless virtues of another...
...Technically he is dedicated to the perfection of line and rhythm...
...366 THE COMMONWEAL February 9, 1927 The limitations of this problem are very clearly marked...
...The solution of the liquor problem sponsored by the Eighteenth Amendment is just one instance of a national tendency to wipe out all intermediate points of view...
...On behalf of varied cults of beauty and freedom, it refuses to recognize the existence of moral principle...
...Under such conditions it is, perhaps, inevitable that the creative, artistic consciousness should spurn existing ethical dictatorships...
...and that out of this co6peration the welfare of both would come...
...cal philosophy in all generations...
...Ernest F. Boddington 376 Divorce as a Pastime...
...certain other groups have even gone so far as to ban all literature...
...What can censorship do, and how must it assume its task...
...The tangled, twisted, exaggerated visions of the present are judged properly when one compares them with the smile of Chartres or--on a much lower plane--the perceptive humor of the Chaucerian books...
...but if the remark outlined above leads to any conclusion it is this rather absurd one: Only the immoral (or at best those covered by that happy term, the "unmoral,") are capable of detecting decency or of bringing it into existence...
...If this is sensible taIk about economics, why would not something like it be sensible talk about aesthetics...
...That is precisely why the thing we venture to call the "new immoralism" is so truly dangerous...
...Though one cannot regard with indifference the excesses of those who know no law or the niggardliness of those for whom one letter of the rule is everything, it remains salutary to weigh all with reasoned constructive charity so that the error of too violent effort may be circumflected to its proper goal...
...There are many other public examples: the decision to avoid all international complications by simply not being international at all...
...Elisabeth Marbury 377 Epitaph (verse...
...Thereby, and immediately, the problem of censorship is created...
...THE COMMONWEAL A W~kly R~iem d Literature, The Arts, and Public Affalrs...
...If this work has been less successfully accomplished in the United States than anywhere else, it is probably the result of lack of preparation for the life of art on the one hand, and of narrowly concentrated moral inheritances on the other...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 14
