we are clearing our minds of one
cant, of allowing them to be invaded by another; and I think I have seen
cases where the determination not to be moral of malice prepense has
been so great that it has toppled over into a determination to be
immoral of malice prepense. Now, the question is, whether Maupassant and
some of Maupassant's admirers are not somewhat in this case? It is
surely impossible for any impartial critic to contend that the unlucky
novelist's devotion to the class of subjects referred to, and his manner
of handling them, did not amount to what has been pedantically, but
accurately, termed an "obsession of the _lupanar_." Now, it seems to me
that all obsession, no matter of what class or kind, is fatal, or, at
least, injurious, to the artist. It is almost impossible that he should
keep his judgment and his taste cool and clear under it; it is almost
impossible that his poring shall not turn into preaching. And I think it
not much less hard to defend Maupassant from the charge of having become
a kind of preacher in this way, and so a heretic of instruction, just as
much as if he had taken to theology, dogmatic or undogmatic. Perpetual
representation amounts to inculcation.[514]

So, again, in reference to the apologies for Maupassant's pessimism. I
cannot see how it can be contended that the perpetual obtrusion of a
life-philosophy of any special kind is other than a fault in art. I have
no particular objection to pessimism as such; I suppose most people who
have thought and felt a good deal are nearer to it than to its opposite;
and, though both opposites bore me when they are obtruded, I think
rose-pink and sky-blue bore me rather more than the various shades of
grey and brown and black. I admit further that, but for the pessimist
_diathesis_, we might not have had that peculiar tragedy in which he
has been admitted to excel. But it seems to me that the creative artist,
as such, and as distinguished from the critical, has no more business to
display--to _arborer_--a life-philosophy, than he has to display a
philosophy of any other kind. Signs of it may escape him at times; but
they should be escapes, not deliberate exhibitions. He is to see life
whole as far as he can; and it is impossible that he should see it whole
if he is under the domination of any 'ism to the extent that Maupassant
was under the domination of this. In the one supreme artist (I am
talking, of course, throughout of the art of letters