evalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The
first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child
just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up
as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea
of being the King or Uncle William will leap to his lips. But it is
generally suggested by the hat he has already let fall over his nose,
from far deeper motives. Tommy does not assume the hat primarily because
it is Uncle William's hat, but because it is not Tommy's hat. It is a
ritual investiture; and is akin to those Gorgon masks that stiffened the
dances of Greece or those towering mitres that came from the mysteries
of Persia. For the essence of such ritual is a profound paradox: the
concealment of the personality combined with the exaggeration of the
person. The man performing a rite seeks to be at once invisible and
conspicuous. It is part of that divine madness which all other creatures
wonder at in Man, that he alone parades this pomp of obliteration and
anonymity. Man is not, perhaps, the only creature who dresses himself,
but he is the only creature who disguises himself. Beasts and birds do
indeed take the colours of their environment; but that is not in order
to be watched, but in order not to be watched; it is not the formalism
of rejoicing, but the formlessness of fear. It is not so with men, whose
nature is the unnatural. Ancient Britons did not stain themselves blue
because they lived in blue forests; nor did Georgian beaux and belles
powder their hair to match an Arctic landscape; the Britons were not
dressing up as kingfishers nor the beaux pretending to be polar bears.
Nay, even when modern ladies paint their faces a bright mauve, it is
doubted by some naturalists whether they do it with the idea of escaping
notice. So merry-makers (or Mummers) adopt their costume to heighten
and exaggerate their own bodily presence and identity; not to sink it,
primarily speaking, in another identity. It is not Acting—that
comparatively low profession-comparatively I mean. It is Mummery;
and, as Mr. Kensit would truly say, all elaborate religious ritual is
Mummery. That is, it is the noble conception of making Man something
other and more than himself when he stands at the limit of human things.
It is only careful faddists and feeble German philosophers who want to
wear no clothes; and be "natural" in their Dionysian revels. Natural
men, reall