The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews by Rebecca West

Author:Rebecca West [West, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Educational, Essays, Literary Criticism, Non-Fiction, Reviews, Writing
ISBN: 9780860685043
Google: Z_AonwEACAAJ
Amazon: 0860685047
Publisher: Virago
Published: 1987-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

VI

To sum up:

Because of this train of thought it appears to me less of a maniacal delusion on my part to feel as I do that Ulysses and Ingres’ portrait of a young man in a snuff-coloured coat are necessities to me, though I obviously cannot eat them, or use them for clothing, or shelter or fuel, and have absolutely no use for such information as they afford me concerning Dublin Jews and mid-nineteenth-century Frenchmen. I find it not hard to believe that the organism, having caused an organ to make itself within it, which is called the cortex, whose business it is to pick out of the whole complexity of the environment those units which are of significance, and to integrate those units into an excitatory complex that shall set its instinctive reflexes working, should find itself in consequence overburdened with experiences created by this organ, which in their crude state are as unprofitable to it as the whole complexity of its environment and its reflexes would be without this organ; and that the organism, being on the whole satisfied with the way the cortex works, causes another to make itself on much the same lines, to perform the same analytic and excitatory functions, which shall similarly make experience profitable to the individual.

This organ is collective and partially external. The conditioned reflexes maintained and established by an individual cortex sets up an experience which is objectified by him and communicated to other cortices, whose experiences are immediately modified by contact with it as well as by their own incessantly arriving experiences, so that they receive another and new experience, which they also objectify and communicate with like effect on all within the same sphere of communication. The individual may carry through the business of analysis and synthesis and communication himself, which is the way of the creative artist; or he may lend his energy to the business of communicating the excitatory complex conducted by a creative artist, which is the way of the interpretative artist; or he may simply accept these communications, ignoring some and using others as a guide for his behaviour, which is the way of the non-artist.

The working of this organ is called Science when it deals with man’s experience of controllable material, that does not tell lies to the observer; and it is called Art when it deals with man’s experience of uncontrollable material that can tell lies to the observer and has to be circumvented in the exercise of this gift before one can get the truth. This circumvention is contrived by the use of empathy, which is our power of projecting ourselves into the destiny of others by fantasy, and which we employ in different ways to suit the different arts. This power we enjoy because our psychical uniqueness is due solely to the uniqueness of our circumstances and of an element in ourselves that chooses which of our psychical mechanisms we shall use, arid not to uniqueness in our outfit of psychical mechanisms.

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