



Produced by Ruth Hart




[Note: I have made the following spelling changes:  qualites which
strike to qualities which strike, revelled in to reveled in, proteges to
proteges, voluptuous femininty to voluptuous femininity, tyrrannise
to tyrannise, Montagus to Montagues, Zarathrustra to Zarathustra,
antiChrist to anti-Christ, Car nous voulous to Car nous voulons,
Gelent votre chair to Gelent votre chair, slips in in to slips in,
irrresponsible a temperament to irresponsible a temperament,
common occurences to common occurrences, philanthrophy to
philanthropy, demogorgon to Demogorgon, somethings which palls
upon us to something which palls upon us, never encounted to never
encountered, Arimathaea to Arimathea, the the contemptuous libels
to the contemptuous libels, lapsed soul to lapsed soul, philsophical
motto to philosophical motto, sybilline to sibylline, pseudo-latin to
pseudo-Latin, and ninteenth century to nineteenth century.]



SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS
ESSAYS ON BOOKS AND SENSATIONS

JOHN COWPER POWYS


1916
G. ARNOLD SHAW
NEW YORK


Copyright, 1916, by G. Arnold Shaw
Copyright in Great Britain and the Colonies


DEDICATED
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
BERNARD PRICE O'NEILL


CONTENTS

The Art of Discrimination   3
Montaigne                  17
Pascal                     47
Voltaire                   63
Rousseau                   83
Balzac                    107
Victor Hugo               133
Guy de Maupassant         149
Anatole France            171
Paul Verlaine             197
Remy de Gourmont          225
William Blake             257
Byron                     279
Emily Bronte              313
Joseph Conrad             337
Henry James               367
Oscar Wilde               401
Suspended Judgment        425



THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION

The world divides itself into people who can discriminate and
people who cannot discriminate. This is the ultimate test of
sensitiveness; and sensitiveness alone separates us and unites us.

We all create, or have created for us by the fatality of our
temperament, a unique and individual universe. It is only by
bringing into light the most secret and subtle elements of this
self-contained system of things that we can find out where our lonely
orbits touch.

Like all primordial aspects of life the situation is double-edged and
contradictory.

The further we emphasise and drag forth, out of their reluctant
twilight, the lurking attractions and antipathies of our destiny, the
nearer, at once, and the more obscure, we find ourselves growing, to
those about us.

And the wisdom of the difficult game we are called upon to play,
lies in just this very antinomy,--in just this very contradiction--that
to make ourselves better understood we have to emphasise our
differences, and to touch the universe of our friend we have to travel
away from him, on a curve of free sky.

The cultivation of what in us is lonely and unique creates of
necessity a perpetual series of shocks and jars. The unruffled nerves
of the lower animals become enviable, and we fall into moods of
malicious reaction and vindictive recoil. And yet,--for Nature makes
use even of what is named evil to pursue her cherished ends--the
very betrayal of our outraged feelings produces no unpleasant effect
upon the minds of others. They know us better so, and the sense of
power in them is delicately gratified by the spectacle of our
weakness; even as ours is by the spectacle of theirs.

The art of discrimination is the art of letting oneself go, more and
more wilfully; letting oneself go along the lines of one's unique
predilections; letting oneself go with the resolute push of the
inquisitive intellect; the intellect whose role it is to register--with
just all the preciseness it may--every one of the little discoveries we
make on the long road.

The difference between interesting and uninteresting critics of life,
is just the difference between those who have refused to let
themselves be thus carried away, on the stream of their fatality, and
those who have not refused. That is why in all the really arresting
writers and artists there is something equivocal and disturbing when
we come to know them.

Genius itself, in the last analysis, is not so much the possession of
unusual vision--some of the most powerful geniuses have a vision
quite mediocre and blunt--as the possession of a certain demonic
driving-force, which pushes them on to be themselves, in all the
fatal narrowness and obstinacy, it may be, of their personal
temperament.

The art of discrimination is precisely what such characters are born
with; hence the almost savage manner in which they resent the
beckonings of alien appeals; appeals which would draw them out of
their pre-ordained track.

One can see in the passionate preference displayed by men of real
power for the society of simple and even truculent persons over that
of those who are urbanely plastic and versatile, how true this is.

Between their own creative wilfulness and the more static obstinacy
of these former, there is an instinctive bond; whereas the tolerant
and colourless cleverness of the latter disconcerts and puzzles them.

This is why--led by a profound instinct--the wisest men of genius
select for their female companions the most surprising types, and
submit to the most wretched tyranny. Their craving for the sure
ground of unequivocal naturalness helps them to put up with what
else were quite intolerable.

For it is the typical modern person, of normal culture and playful
expansiveness, who is the mortal enemy of the art of discrimination.

Such a person's shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is
more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry
which has the recklessness of genuine passion behind it.

Not to like or to dislike people and things, but to tolerate and
patronise a thousand passionate universes, is to put yourself out of
the pale of all discrimination. To discriminate is to refine upon one's
passions by the process of bringing them into intelligent
consciousness. The head alone cannot discriminate; no! not with all
the technical knowledge in the world; for the head cannot love nor
hate, it can only observe and register.

Nor can the nerves alone discriminate; for they can only cry aloud
with a blind cry. In the management of this art, what we need is the
nerves and the head together, playing up to one another; and,
between them, carrying further--always a little further--the silent
advance, along the road of experience, of the insatiable soul.

It is indeed only in this way that one comes to recognise what is,
surely, of the essence of all criticism; the fact, namely, that the
artists we care most for are doing just the thing we are doing
ourselves--doing it in their own way and with their own inviolable
secret, but limited, just as we are, by the basic limitations of all flesh.

The art of discrimination is, after all, only the art of appreciation,
applied negatively as well as positively; applied to the flinging away
from us and the reducing to non-existence for us, of all those forms
and modes of being, for which, in the original determination of our
taste, we were not, so to speak, born.

And this is precisely what, in a yet more rigorous manner, the artists
whose original and subtle paths we trace, effected for themselves in
their own explorations.

What is remarkable about this cult of criticism is the way in which it
lands us back