The Absolute

Philosophy Distilled From Contemporary Theatre
[Contemporary theatre is despised for its unconcern with realities. When an " ideas "-play is presented. managers wag their heads and sigh " the public will not stand for it."
The Flashing Stream, Charles Morgan's philosophic play (Lyric), has achieved popular success wildly beyond that of most " easy" theatres. Our dramatic critic wrote enthusiastically of it after its first night (Cantouc. HERALD, September 9).
Here is Robert Speaight (Thomas Becket of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, and biographer of his saintly predecessor will remind you of his identity), not to criticise the play but to discuss the Catholic philosophy that is at the back of The Flashing Stream.] THE author of The Flashing Stream* has never quailed before the altitudes of philosophy, and he has always shown, both in his novels and his criticism, a primary concern that people should think correctly. Charles Morgan is in continual quest of the absolute, and for that reason alone deserves the serious
consideration of Catholics. It is rare, indeed, to find a writer who so boldly proclaims his belief in God, and holds the Person and the sayings of Jesus Christ in such reverend and scrupulous regard.
Mr. Morgan would hardly, I think, describe himself as a Christian; still less would he commit himself absolutely to any one Christian denomination. If he were asked which types of humanity he ranked the highest, he would answer, I fancy, without the least hesitation: " The artist, the scholar, and the saint." if he were pressed to say which of these he put first, he would probably reply that each was doing the same work in a different way; and in defence of his proclaimed aversion to the contemporary political crusades he would point out that neither in Russia nor in Germany have these three types the audience to listen or the liberty to speak.
The indictment is a fair one, and provokes the further question as to what it is they hold in common. Mr. Morgan will answer in a flash : " Singleness of mind," and his play and preface are alike concerned with that reply. The Catholic will not follow him all the way. When he writes; " None can say to what end man was brought into this world nor what the destiny of the race may he, yet there are great spirits who live not for their present ease but in quest of an impersonal end, as though a runner should spend himself in a relay race for an unknown, and by him, unattainable prize," the Catholic will answer that he knows very well for what purpose he was brought into the world, but he will at least recognise a heroic quality in Mr. Morgan's ultimate agnosticism. I say " ultimate," because Mr. Morgan so often gives the illusion of faith and seems to be moved by it; yet he does not believe, as theology understands that word. The chief emphasis of his credo is on the Spirit of Man, and his Deity remains undefined. Reason and intuition are at war in him, and he allows Ferrers in the play to speak of reason with what a Catholic would regard as dangerous contempt.
INTO THE SECOND PLACE
I think his attitude is best described in " The Fountain," where von Narwitz says that the " secret of life consists in putting oneself in the second place "; not in respect of God or Man, but " absolutely."
Yet there seems to be a contradiction here. Mr. Morgan writes nobly in his preface of that alternative to escapism or despair which is within the reach of all. " Of a woman at her cradle, of a man of science at his instruments, of a seaman at his wheel, or a ploughman at his furrow, of young and old, when they love and when they worship—the remedy of a single mind, active, passionate and steadfast, which has upheld the spirit of man through many tyrannies and shall uphold it still." All these put themselves in the second place to whatever is their particular vocation. Von Narwitz had no vocation except the supreme vocation of suffering, but be submitted himself to it day by day with the concentration of a great nature, as if he had been created for no other end but that. His " absolutely " had, in practice, little meaning. He suffered with a Christian clarity of purpose and a Christian refusal of self-pity.
It is among the marks of Mr. Morgan's high intelligence that he is capable of worshipping the " absolute," even though he may call it by other names than the Holy and Undivided Trinity. He sees the necessity for an ultimate obedience and an imperative discipline, and he is only concerned, as the Catholic, too, is concerned, to draw a distinction between Absolutism true and false.
The modern danger is that men shall Want too little liberty, not that they shall want too much. The Christian knows that there can be no liberty without love and no love without bondage. That is the ideal of marriage, of which Mr. Morgan seems to have a very perfect comprehension; it is also the ideal of monasticism, which he understands equally well. One might only question his assumption that the attainment of concentration is a "disciplinary and mechanical process."
HE HAS AQUINAS FOR ALLY
A large part of the preface is devoted to a consideration of celibacy, and in the foreword Mr. Morgan makes a chivalrous but, I should have thought, a hardly necessary defence of his heroine, because she enjoys the experience of sex. I do not think that Mr. Morgan's audience will be half as surprised or shocked by this con
fession of hers as he supposes. Karen Selby is like most women of thirty, neither virgin nor wanton, and I think that more people than Mr. Morgan imagines recognise an intermediate zone between " Belgrave Square and the shady side of Burlington Street "—to borrow his First Lord of the Admiralty's witty phrase. Mr. Morgan writes: " I differ from many of my contemporaries in believing that the sexual act is an act of consequence and, at the same time, that it is not in itself evil."
Certainly no Catholic will differ from Mr. Morgan over this, and they will be at one with him in his protest against a perverted Puritanism and a cynical promiscuity. He quotes several high Anglican authorities, including Goudge, Levertoff and Gore, in support of his attitude, and he could have found several rather less timid allies among Catholics — preeminently, perhaps, St, Thomas Aquinas and St. Thomas More. Catholic teaching is quite firm about sex, but Catholics, like most other people, tend to be jumpy about it.
For one thing is quite certain. The right use of sex and the right abstention from it are matters which require such delicate balance and control that men will usually deviate in one direction or another from the Golden Mean, whatever their religious convictions.
Yet the Golden Mean is not, after all, the Christian ideal. Our first business is not the living of life in all its fullness; our first business is with holiness. The humanist paradise is an attractive goal for those with beauty and brains and wealth, but holiness may be attained by the poor and the paralytic.
There are times when Mr. Morgan seems to realise this, when the open aristocracy of the spiritual and ascetic ideal compels his admiration. He admits that " celibacy ' for the kingdom of heaven's sake ' is justly credited among the supreme renouncernents," and that " a discipline chosen by masters of the spiritual life is not scorned except by upstarts and fools." He goes on. however, to say that " the splendour of celibacy is a desperate splendour; its denials are wounds." The splendour of the Cross Was also a desperate splendour; nor was it reached without wounds. The Cross is the expectation of Christians, and " to support it without spiritual pride " equally "requires a genius of humility." Mr. Morgan quotes Jesus very fairly to his purpose and interprets reasonably, I think, His attitude to carnal sin. But he does not go far enough. He seems to forget that He was crucified.
THE HIGHER STATE OF CELIBACY
To Christians, Jesus is even more important for what He was and for what He did than for what He said; but for Mr. Morgan, who would perhaps deny His Divinity, His teaching has a primary value. Mr. Morgan can see no evidence that Jesus thought celibacy the higher state; yet it is surely not insignificant that the great Exemplar of mankind was Himself without sexual experience. He was, indeed, merciful to the carnal sinner, and rated the sins of the harlot below the sins of the Pharisee; He gave His blessing to marriage and forbade divorce; but He exacted celibacy from His disciples.
Mr. Morgan may or may not be right in identifying " singleness of mind " with Christ's " purity of heart," and it would be blasphemous to suggest that this great virtue is the perquisite of celibates. But one cannot escape from the fact that the great lovers of Jesus in history—a St. John, a St. Paul, a St Francis, a St. Ignatius, a St. Teresa. , a St. Catherine, a St. Jerome—have all / lived a celibate life from their conversions. That there are noble exceptions J do not deny—a St. Thomas More or a St. Elizabeth of Hungary—nor do I deny that the
vocation to celibacy is exceptional. I freely admit its dangers. But it does seem to be a general condition for the closest vision of God, and the Church's instinct to accord it the higher place is, therefore, demonstrably a true one.
This puts no premium on coldness of temperament and still less on that want of charity which is so frequent a corollary to it. It simply puts a premium on that nonattachment. which, in Mr. Morgan's words, is " the power to value " something, " to convert it while present to the purpose of singleness, and to forego it at any time without an agony of denial."
Different souls require different treatment, but there are surely some at least for whom, again to quote Mr. Morgan, " the freedoms of the spirit are not attained by violence of the will but by an infinite patience of the imagination."
arras masking stream, a play with a prefaetorv esany. by Charles Morgan (Macmillan 6s.) At the Lyric Theatre.