D.H. Lawrence
English writer and part-time pen-pal and associate of Bertrand Russel, who he liked to troll and criticize, and whom deeply disliked him and his antagonism.
"Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far less free. The freest are perhaps least free.
Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.
And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.
Because the deepest self is way down, and the conscious self is an obstinate monkey. But of one thing we may be sure. If one wants to be free, one has to give up the illusion of doing what one likes, and seek what IT wishes done.
...
American consciousness has so far been a false dawn. The negative ideal of democracy. But underneath, and contrary to this open ideal, the first hints and revelations of IT. IT, the American whole soul.
You have got to pull the democratic and idealistic clothes oft American utterance, and see what you can of the dusky body of IT underneath.'
Henceforth be masterless.'
Henceforth be mastered."
--"Studies in American Literature"
"My dear Russell,
I didn’t like your letter. What’s the good of living as you do, anyway. I don’t believe your lectures are good. They are nearly over, aren’t they?
What’s the good of sticking in the damned ship and haranguing the merchant-pilgrims in their own language. Why don’t you drop overboard? Why don’t you clear out of the whole show?
One must be an outlaw these days, not a teacher or preacher. One must retire out of the herd & then fire bombs into it. You said in your lecture on education that you didn’t set much count by the unconscious. That is sheer perversity. The whole of the consciousness and the conscious content is old hat—the millstone round your neck.
Do cut it—cut your will and leave your old self behind. Even your mathematics are only dead truth: and no matter how fine you grind the dead meat, you’ll not bring it to life again.
Do stop working & writing altogether and become a creature instead of a mechanical instrument. Do clear out of the whole social ship. Do for your very pride’s sake become a mere nothing, a mole, a creature that feels its way & doesn’t think. Do for heavens sake be a baby, & not a savant any more. Don’t do anything any more—but for heavens sake begin to be—start at the very beginning and be a perfect baby: in the name of courage.
Oh, and I want to ask you, when you make your will, do leave me enough to live on. I want you to live forever. But I want you to make me in some part your heir.
We have got to clear out of this house in a week’s time. We are looking for another house. You had better come & live near us : but not if you are going to be a thinker and a worker, only if you are going to be a creature, an infant …
My love to you. Stop working and being an ego, & have the courage to be a creature.
Yours,
D. H. Lawrence"
“Pacifism had produced in me a mood of bitter rebellion, and I found Lawrence equally full of rebellion. This made us think, at first, that there was a considerable measure of agreement between us...it was only gradually that we discovered that we differed from each other more than either differed from the Kaiser.”
--Bertrand Russel
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