Part 10 (1/2)
”Onybody kens that,” he said; ”they grow Yer hair and yer nails grow at nichts, and that's why ye need a shave in the mornin'!”
”What if you don't drearub,” said Jake shortly
On thinking it over I feel that Jake's theory throws so's theory of the libido
IV
Thiswhen I aan to think about the word Crank What is a Crank? Usually the naetarian diet, wear sandalsor so in that line A Crank therefore is someone who differs from the crowd, and I am led to conclude that the Crank not only differs fro to Sir Martin Conway the crowd has no head; it can only feel
Hence it comes that the main feature of a crowd is its emotion When we study the street crowd, the mob, this fact is evident; but can we say the same of other crowdsthe Public School crowd, the Church, the Miners, the Doctors? I think so The anger that Alec Waugh's book, _The Looht-out anger; it came from the public school ee at the anti-vivisectionists is not an intellectual rage; it is simply a professional eht to be in a co about Re-incarnation I had no special views on the subject, but I soon foundthe crowd that was sceptical about Re-incarnation The reason was that the leader of the anti-reincarnation crowd happened to be a -and-bone ot into a scrap in a public house they would support each other simply out of a professional crowd emotion
That the crowd has no head is evident e read the popular papers or see the popular films The most successful papers are those that touch the passions of theto introduce the ”cat” for criminals, as a means to stem the crime wave I sat down and wrote an article on the subject, pointing out that this was a going back to the days of barbarism when lunatics hipped behind the cart's tail I ical treat my plea on the fact that cris of thea poor ht to analyse his ht it a jolly good article, and when a prominent Sunday paper returned the manuscript toSunday when the same paper blared forth an article by Horatio Bottomley His title was: ”Wanted--the Cat!”
My article was htful, more humane, more scientific Why, then, was it suppressed? The answer is simple: it did not fit in with the passions of the crowd It becomes clear why our best public reat thinkers They must keep in touch with the crowd; they must express the emotions of the crowd
The attitude of the crowd to the anti-crowd person, the Crank, is never one of contemptuous indifference It is always distinctly hostile If I travel by tube from Hampstead to Piccadilly without a hat the other travellers stare at me with mild hostility Why? Conway, in _The Crowd in Peace and War_, an excellent book, says that this hostility comes from fear A crowd is always afraid of another crowd, because the only force that can destroy a crowd is a rival crowd Every individual who differs from the herd is suspect because he is perhaps the nucleus of a rival crowd That is why the world always crucifies its Christs
The Crank School, then, is a school where anti-crowd people send their children It is the school _par excellence_ of the Intelligentsia The tendency of every Crank School is to exaggerate the difference between the crank and the crowd; hence its adoption of an ideal and its concomitant crazes I cannot for the life ofhair, Grecian dress, and sandals, just as I cannot see why art should attach itself to huge bow-ties, long hair, and foot-long cigarette holders
The Crank School holds up an ideal It plasters its walls with busts of Walt Whits bad reproductions of Botticelli round the walls; it sings songs to Freedom; it rhapsodises about Beethoven and Bach The children of the Crank Schools are, I rejoice to say, not cranks They leave the boredonore the pictures of Whitman and Blake and study _The Picture Show_ or _Funny Bits_ Many of thehly of Charlie Chaplin than of Williaain that I rejoice in this; it serves the Crank School people jolly well right I cannot see by what right educators force what they consider good taste down the children's throats That is a return to the old way of authority, of treating the child's mind as a blank slate If the Crank Schools are to ih moral purpose tone and come down to earth They must realise that Charlie Chaplin and _John Bull_ have their place in education just as Shakespeare and Beethoven have their place We do not want to turn out cranks ill form a new superior croant to turn out men and women ill readily join the conventional crowd and help it to reach better ideals
This question of good taste is a sore one with ood taste on any child; the child must forood taste and to become a very superior cultivated person, but I know that the huar, music-hall, Charlie Chaplin part of such a person's make-up is not annihilated; it is merely repressed into the unconscious
I have a theory that each of us has a definite ah, some of it low, or, to phrase it differently, some of it animal, some of it spiritual We can repress one part, and then we become either a saint or a sinner; the better way is to be both saint and sinner, to look life straight in the face, conde _A Doht, and he looked up and said: ”Look here, you've got an awful lot of sords in this book!”
”That,” I said, ”has a cause, Mac They aren't really sords; the world has grown out of being shocked at a 'da to admit that there are more damns and hells than is usual They are sy was a crime punishable with the strap They are sie is from a like cause When you foozle on the first tee there is no earthy reason why you should say 'hell' rather than 'Onions'!
But if onions had been taboo when you were a child you would find yourself using the word as a swear The curse word is the link that joins your foozle with the nursery; whenever you curse you regress, that is, you go back to the infantile”
”But,” said Mac, ”you don'twere perrown up?”
”I don't think they would,” I said ”Nor would there be any unprintable stories if we had a frank sex education It's a sad fact, Mac, but nine-tenths of humour is due to early suppression and repression”
”Seeh, ”that if everybody were psycho-analysed, the world would be a pretty dull place”
A few days ago I found a pot of light paint in Mac's workshop, and, impelled by heaven only knohat unconscious process, I painteddry, I rode forth into an unsympathetic world Women came to their doors to stare at hter When I reached the village of Cordyke the school was coht it a good instance of crowd psychology; I was different frohter and derision