The sublime paradox of the
spiritual life is repeated in all true development of personal gift and power.
In order to find his life a man must first lose it; in order to keep his soul a
man must first give it. The beginning of all education is self-conscious; at
the start every effect must be calculated, every skill, method, or dexterity
carefully studied. Training involves a rigid account of oneself based on
searching self-knowledge. To become an effective speaker one must know his
defects of bearing, gesture, voice; one must bring his whole personality into
clear light, and study it as if it were an external thing; one must become
intensely self-conscious. The initiation to every art is through this door of
rigid scrutiny of self and entire surrender of self to the discipline of minute
study and exacting practice. The pianist knows the artistic value of every
note, and strikes each note with carefully calculated effect. The artist gives
himself up to a patient study of details, and is content with the monotony of
laborious imitation; subjecting every element of material and manner to the
most thorough analysis. The first stage in the education
of the true worker is self-conscious; the final stage is self-forgetful. No man
can enter the final stage without passing through the initial stage; no man can
enter the final stage without leaving the initial stage behind him. One must
first develop intense self-consciousness, and then one must be able to forget
and obliterate himself. One must first accept the most exacting discipline of
the school, and then one must forget that schools exist. The apprentice is the
servant of detail; the master is the servant of the idea: the first accepts
methods as if they were the finalities of art; the second uses them as mere
instruments. Tennyson's attention was once called to certain very subtle vowel
effects in one of his later poems; he promptly said that he had not thought of
them. That was undoubtedly true, for he had become a master; but there was a
time, in his days of apprenticeship, when he had studied the musical qualities
and resources of words with the most searching intelligence. The transition
from apprenticeship to mastery is accomplished when a man passes through
self-consciousness into self- forgetfulness, when his knowledge and skill
become so much a part of himself that they become instinctive. When the artist
has gained, through calculation, study, and, practice, complete command of
himself and his materials, he subordinates skill to insight, and makes his art
the unconscious expression of his deepest nature. When this stage is reached
the artist can pour his whole soul into his work almost instinctively; his
skill and methods have become so completely a part of himself that he can use
them almost without being conscious of them. This ability to transform skill
into character, to make instinct do the work of intelligence, to pass from
intense self-consciousness into self- forgetfulness, is the supreme test to
which every artist must subject himself let him sustain this test and his place
is secure. To find one's life in the deepest sense, to bring out and express
one's personality, a man must lose that life; that is to say, he must have the
power of entire self-surrender. When the inspiration comes, as it does come to
all creative spirits, a man must be able to surrender himself to it completely.
When the hour of vision arrives the prophet has no time or thought to waste on
himself; if he is to speak, he must listen with intense and utter stillness of
soul. In the degree in which a man masters his art does he attain unconsciousness of self. Great artists have sometimes been great egotists, but not in their greatest hours or works. And in so far as their egotism has touched their art it has invariably limited its range or diminished its depth and power; for in those moments in which the vision is clearest a man is always lifted above himself. He escapes for the moment the limitations which ordinarily encircle him as the horizon encircles the sea. |
/1 
