The New Mythology of John Cowper Powys

the self ‘has gathered together from outside by means of which it has quickened itself in its grandiose culture.’*

The ability to achieve this Powys calls the ‘art of humility.’ But he is not thinking of humility either as a virtue or in the sense in which it is so often used, as self-abasement. Powys is not interested in virtue and he certainly does not want to abase the self. The ‘art of humility’ is the art of shedding all that makes us think about ourselves and prevents us from experiencing and enjoying the present moment. And he considers that sensation is one of the best cures for pride. So too is our ability to laugh at ourselves and to see ourselves as ridiculous without feeling put down by it.

But what about other people? Are they merely to be considered as a hindrance to our self-enjoyment? Do we not owe any duty to society? Powys will have none of it and refuses to compromise. After affirming that to be a true philosopher implies selfishness, he cries as though in exasperation ‘What the devil would you have a self be but selfish?’4® Above all he rejects the notion that we ought to love other people. He abhors all this holy talk about the sacredness of love. All that we owe to others is to treat them according to the Kantian maxim as ‘selves’ equally with ourselves, that is, according to Powys with ‘natural ordinary human kindness and natural ordinary human goodness.’** “The truth is,’ he says, ‘that we would be much kinder to people on ordinary occasions and much more stoical and cheerful in our dealings with people, if we boldly and honestly defended to ourselves in our secret soul this absolute necessity of hardening our hearts.’*” He is speaking, not to the indifferent, for these need no admonishment to harden their hearts, but to those who are likely to be “carried away’ by their pity. In the Meaning of Culture he issues a warning: ‘Tt does remain .. . one of the saddest of human spectacles when natures, obviously predestined to delicate and exquisite appreciation of the imaginative life, are betrayed, year after year, by their unselfish warmth of heart, into frittering away the unreturning hours listening to the egocentric confessions of others, in giving to others their nervous sympathy, their emotional energy, their very life force.’4®

I have already said enough about Powys’s scepticism for you