A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom.For while men are and should be various,there must be some communication between them if they are to get any pleasure out of their variety.And an intellectual formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not depend on mere blood,class,or capricious sympathy.If we all stark with the agreement that the sun and moon exist,we can talk about our different visions of them.The strong-eyed man can boast that he sees the sun as a perfect circle.The shortsighted man may say (or if he is an impressionist,boast)that he sees the moon as a silver blur.The colour-blind man may rejoice in the fairy-trick which enables him to live under a green sun and a blue moon.But if once it be held that there is nothing but a silver blur in one man's eye or a bright circle (like a monocle)in the other man's,then neither is free,for each is shut up in the cell of a separate universe.
But,indeed,an even worse fate,practically considered,follows from the denim of the original intellectual formula.Not only does the individual become narrow,but he spreads narrowness across the world like a cloud;he causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed.For what happens is this:that all the shortsighted people come together and build a city called Myopia,where they take short-sightedness for granted and paint short-sighted pictures and pursue very short-sighted policies.
Meanwhile all the men who can stare at the sun get together on Salisbury Plain and do nothing but stare at the sun;and all the men who see a blue moon band themselves together and assert the blue moon,not once in a blue moon,but incessantly.So that instead of a small and varied group,you have enormous monotonous groups.Instead of the liberty of dogma,you have the tyranny of taste.
Allegory apart,instances of what I mean will occur to every one;perhaps the most obvious is Socialism.Socialism means the ownership by the organ of government (whatever it is)of all things necessary to production.If a man claims to be a Socialist in that sense he can be any kind of man he likes in any other sense--a bookie,a Mahatma,a man about town,an archbishop,a Margate nigger.Without recalling at the moment clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities,it is obvious that a clear-headed Socialist (that is,a Socialist with a creed)can be a soldier,like Mr.Blatchford,or a Don,like Mr.Ball,or a Bath-chairman like Mr.Meeke,or a clergyman like Mr.Conrad Noel,or an artistic tradesman like the late Mr.William Morris.
But some people call themselves Socialists,and will not be bound by what they call a narrow dogma;they say that Socialism means far,far more than this;all that is high,all that is free,all that is:etc.,etc.
Now mark their dreadful fate;for they become totally unfit to be tradesmen,or soldiers,or clergymen,or any other stricken human thing,but become a particular sort of person who is always the same.When once it has been discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic formula,it is also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one particular kind of clothes,reading one particular kind of books,hanging up one particular kind of pictures,and in the majority of cases even eating one particular kind of food.For men must recognise each other somehow.These men will not know each other by a principle,like fellowcitizens.They cannot know each other by a smell,like dogs.So they have to fall back on general colouring;on the fact that a man of their sort will have a wife in pale green and Walter Crane's "Triumph of Labour"hanging in the hall.
