still remains to me is contained in some
moment of surrender, abasement, and humiliation. I can, at any rate,
merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and, accepting all
that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it.

People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far
more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more out of
myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than ever I asked.
Indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from
too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time
contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society
for help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have been
from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can
there ever be put forward for having made it? Of course once I had put
into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, 'Have
you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now
appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised
to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result
is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such
ignoble instruments, as I did.

The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art.
Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and
the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He
is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind,
mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force
when he meets it either in a man or a movement.

People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil
things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then,
from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach
them they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. The danger was
half the excitement. . . . My business as an artist was with Ariel. I
set myself to wrestle with Caliban. . . .

A great friend of mine--a friend of ten years' standing--came to see me
some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what
was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite
innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what
he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite
charges that was quite untrue and transferre