Frank Chouteau Brown - "Letters and Lettering"

A. F. Winnington Ingram - "The After glow of a Great Reign"

Booth Tarkington - "In the Arena"

Jessie Graham Flower - "Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

What Is and What Might Be

E >> Edmond Holmes >> What Is and What Might Be




The wild _bullace_ is, I believe, the ancestor of many of our yellow
_plums_. In other words, bullacehood can develop into plumhood, and
even into the perfection of plumhood. Similarly human nature can
develop into something so high above the normal level of human nature
that it might almost seem to belong to another _genus_. But there is
a difference between the two cases. The bullace ideal is in the
individual bullace tree. So, in a sense, is the plum ideal. But the
latter cannot be realised, or even approached, by the individual
bullace tree. It cannot be realised, or even approached, by the
bullace species except through a long course of culture and breeding.
Is it the same with Man? Let us take English rusticity as a
particular type of human nature,--the equivalent of bullacehood for
the purpose of argument. This is a distinct type, and may be said
to have its own ideal.[37] Emerging from this, and gradually
transforming it, is the ideal of human nature, the ideal for Man as
Man. As the bullace ideal is to the plum ideal, so is the ideal of
English rusticity to the ideal of human nature. But whereas the plum
ideal cannot be realised in any appreciable degree by the individual
bullace, the human ideal can be realised in a quite appreciable
degree by the individual English rustic. There have always been and
will always be isolated cases to prove that this is so,--cases of men
of quite humble origin who have attained to high degrees of mental
and spiritual development. These have hitherto been regarded as
exceptional cases. But Egeria has convinced me that under favourable
conditions the _average_ child can become the rare exception, and
attain to what is usually regarded as a remarkably high degree of
mental and spiritual development. Innocent joy, self-forgetfulness,
communal devotion, heartfelt goodwill, gracious manners--to speak of
spiritual development only--are characteristics of _every_ Utopian
child. What are we to infer from this? The bullace ideal is
realisable (under favourable conditions) by each individual bullace
tree,--but the plum ideal is not. The English rustic ideal is
realisable by each individual rustic child. _But so is the human
ideal in Utopia._

But what of the children who do not belong to Utopia? What would have
happened to the Utopian children if there had been no Egeria to lead
them into the path of self-realisation? They would have lived and
died ordinary English rustics,--healthy bullaces, but in no respect
or degree plums. Egeria has convinced me that the average child,
besides being born mentally and spiritually healthy, has immense
capacity on every side of his being. The plum ideal is the true
nature of the plum, but is not the true nature of the bullace. But
Egeria has convinced me that the human ideal--the divine self--is the
true nature of each of us, even of the average rustic child; and she
has also convinced me that each of us can go a long way towards
realising that ideal. Had there been no Egeria in Utopia, the
Utopians would have lived and died undeveloped, having arrived at a
maturity of a kind, the maturity of the bullace as distinguished from
that of the plum, but having failed to realise in any appreciable
degree what the Utopian experiment has proved to be their true
nature. What then? Is this the end of the average man? Will Nature
admit final defeat? The curve of a man's life, as it sweeps round
from birth to death, passes through the point of apparent maturity;
but the real nature of the man has never ripened, and when he
descends into the grave he is still the embryo of his true self.
Will the true self never be realised? Never, if death is indeed the
end of life. But in that case the man will have failed to fulfil the
central purpose of Nature, and, alone among her children, will have
escaped from the control of her all-pervading law of growth.

It is in their desire to keep Man in line with the rest of Nature's
children that so many thinkers and scientists in the West forbid him
to look beyond the horizon of the grave. But in truth it is only by
being allowed to look beyond that horizon that Man can be kept in
line with the rest of Nature's children; for if death means
extinction to him, as it means (or seems to mean) to the beetle or
the fly, he will have lived to no purpose, having failed to realise
in any appreciable degree what every other living thing realises
within its appointed limits,--the central tendencies of his being.
That a living thing, an average specimen of its kind, should within
the limits of a normal life fail completely to realise those
potentialities which are distinctive of its real nature,--fail so
completely that the very existence of those potentialities might, but
for an occasional and quite exceptional revelation, have remained
unsuspected,--is entirely at variance with what we know of the ways
and works of Nature. Yet failure to realise his true manhood is,
outside the confines of Utopia, the apparent lot of nine men out of
ten. An entire range of qualities, spiritual and mental, which
blossom freely in the stimulating atmosphere of Utopia, and which
must therefore exist in embryo in every normal child, fail to
germinate (or at best only just begin to germinate) within the
lifetime of the average non-Utopian.[38] The inference to be drawn
from these significant facts is that the apparent limits of Man's
life are not the real limits; that the one earth-life of which each
of us is conscious, far from being the whole of one's life, is but a
tiny fragment of it,--one term of its ascending "series," one day in
its cycle of years. In other words, the spiritual fertility of the
average Utopian child, taken in conjunction with the spiritual
sterility of the average non-Utopian child (and man), points to the
conclusion which the thinkers of the Far East reached thousands of
years ago,--that for the full development of human nature a plurality
of lives is needed, which will do for the individual soul what
generations of scientific breeding and culture will do for the
bullace that is to be transformed into a plum.

This is one lesson which Utopia has taught me. There is another which
had also been anticipated by the thinkers of the Far East. If under
exceptionally favourable conditions certain spiritual and mental
qualities are able to blossom freely in the space of a few years,
which under normal conditions would remain undeveloped during a
lifetime of seventy or eighty years, may we not infer that there is a
directer path to spiritual maturity than that which is ordinarily
followed? May we not infer that there are ways of living, ways into
which parents and teachers can lead the young, which, if faithfully
followed, will allow the potencies of Man's higher nature to evolve
themselves with what we, with our limited experience, must regard as
abnormal celerity, and which will therefore shorten appreciably Man's
journey to his goal?[39] And if there is a directer path to spiritual
maturity than that which is ordinarily followed, is not the name for
it _Self-realisation_?

I will not pursue these speculations further. But, speaking for
myself, I will say that the vista which the idea of self-realisation
opens up to me goes far beyond the limits of any one earth-life or
sequence of earth-lives, and far, immeasurably far, beyond the limits
of the sham eternity of the conventional Heaven and Hell.

But even if there is the fullest provision in Nature (whether by a
spiral ascent through a long chain of lives, or by some directer
path) for the final development in each individual man of the
potencies of perfect manhood, for the final realisation of the divine
or true self,--what then? What does it all mean? Why are we to follow
the path of self-realisation? What is the purpose of the cycle of
existence? There is an answer to this obstinate question,--an answer
which explains nothing, and yet is final, in that it leaves nothing
to be explained. The expansive energies and desires, to yield to
which is our wisdom and our happiness, are ever transforming
themselves, as we yield to them, into the might and the ardour of
Love. And for love there is no final resting-place but the sea of
Divine Love from which it came. "_Amor ex Deo natus est, nec potest
nisi in Deo requiescere._"


FOOTNOTES:

[25] There is of course an intermediate class of vicious
tendencies, which may be described as apparent rather than actual,
and which are caused partly by immaturity, partly by environment.
Many of the "naughtinesses" of school children belong to this class.

[26] The _physical_ aspect is, of course, of incalculable
importance. My only reason for ignoring it is that I am not competent
to deal with it. The _aesthetic_ aspect is also of incalculable
importance; but I know so little about music or art, that I must
limit my treatment of this aspect to pointing out that until the
musical and artistic instincts of the masses are systematically
trained in our elementary schools, through the medium of free
self-expression on the part of the children, we shall have neither a
national music nor a national art.

[27] Workshops, for the use of the engineering classes, are,
I believe, attached to the "Modern Side" of some of our Great Public
Schools; but I doubt if there is one among the Great Public Schools,
or even among the Preparatory Schools which lead up to them, in which
"hand-work" is part of the _normal_ curriculum.

[28] I know a youth who recently attended Science lectures
for two years at one of the most famous of our Great Public Schools,
and at the end of that time had not the faintest idea what branch of
Science he had been studying. Science is, I believe, seriously taught
in the Great Public Schools to those who wish to take it seriously;
but, if taught at all, it is certainly not taught seriously to the
rank and file of the boys who belong to the "Classical side" of their
respective schools.

[29] See also footnote 2 to page 270.

[30] When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, there was one at
least of my friends who took a genuine delight in the literary
masterpieces of Greece and Rome,--the delight, not of a fastidious
scholar but of a born lover of good literature. He got a "Third" in
Classical "Mods," and was "gulfed" in "Greats." "Serve him right,"
his "dons" must have said, for I am afraid he cut their lectures.
[Greek: hos apoloito kai allos hotis toiauta ge rhezoi.]

[31] _Stanzas on the Grande Chartreuse_, by Matthew Arnold.

[32] When I apply the epithet "irrational" to the outcry at
Ephesus, I am thinking of the mob, not of the silversmiths. The
latter knew what they were about.

[33] Having said so much in disparagement of the mental
training given in the great Public Schools and the older
Universities, let me now try to make my peace with my old school and
my University by expressing my conviction that those who are studying
the "Humanities," whether at school or college, _and finding pleasure
in their studies_, are receiving the best education that is at
present procurable in England. An old Oxonian may perhaps be allowed
to make public profession of his faith in the special efficacy of
that course of study which is known familiarly as "Greats," the
examination in which is, of all examinations, the most difficult to
cram for and the most profitable to read for.

It is scarcely necessary for me to add that in the older
Universities, as in the great Public Schools, many valuable educative
influences are at work outside the lecture-room. For one thing, the
undergraduates, who come from all parts of the world, are always
educating one another. For another thing, the "atmosphere" of Oxford
and Cambridge does much for the mental and spiritual development of
those who are able to respond to its stimulus. Even the _genius loci_
is educative, in its own quiet, subtle way. But it would be an
impertinence on my part to labour this point. It is because Oxford
and Cambridge educate their _alumni_ in a thousand ways, the worth of
which no formal examination can test or measure, that they stand
apart from all other Universities.

[34] I mean by the "lower self," not the animal base of
one's existence, but the ordinary self _claiming to be the true
self_, and so rising in rebellion against its lawful lord.

[35] In other words, it might conceivably take the form of
_clan_ warfare, highly organised and waged on a world-wide field; and
we learn from the history of the Highlands of Scotland and of Old
Japan that of all forms of warfare the most cruel and relentless,
with the exception of that which is waged in the name of religion, is
the warfare between clan and clan.

[36] There is such a thing as communal egoism, when a man
regards the community or society to which he belongs as a kind of
"possession," to be paraded and bragged about, just as in personal
love there is such a thing as egoism _a deux_. But the communal
instinct which is generated by self-realisation readily purges itself
of every egoistic taint.

[37] I mean by the "ideal" the true nature of the given
species and the true self of each individual specimen.

[38] When I compare the average Utopian with the average
non-Utopian, I am of course thinking of the "masses," not of the
"classes." If the comparison is to have any value, the conditions in
the two cases must be fairly equal. Mentally, the "classes" are, on
the whole, more highly developed (thanks to their more favourable
environment) than the "masses." Spiritually and morally, they are
perhaps on a par with them.

[39] This was the idea which inspired the Founder of
Buddhism, and led him to formulate a scheme of life, in virtue
of which he takes rank (as it seems to me) as the greatest
educationalist, as well as the greatest moralist, that the world
has ever known.


THE END

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