The novel, where
it was not unconditionally banned altogether as a thing disturbing and
unnecessary, was regarded as a thing subordinated to the teaching of the
priest or pastor, or whatever director and dogma was followed. Its
modest moral confirmations began when authority had completed its
direction. The novel was good--if it seemed to harmonise with the graver
exercises conducted by Mr. Chadband--and it was bad and outcast if Mr.
Chadband said so. And it is over the bodies of discredited and
disgruntled Chadbands that the novel escapes from its servitude and
inferiority.
Now the conflict of authority against criticism is one of the eternal
conflicts of humanity. It is the conflict of organisation against
initiative, of discipline against freedom. It was the conflict of the
priest against the prophet in ancient Judaea, of the Pharisee against
the Nazarene, of the Realist against the Nominalist, of the Church
against the Franciscan and the Lollard, of the Respectable Person
against the Artist, of the hedge-clippers of mankind against the
shooting buds. And to-day, while we live in a period of tightening and
extending social organisation, we live also in a period of adventurous
and insurgent thought, in an intellectual spring unprecedented in the
world's history.
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