The Proper Study

Introduction

D. H. Lawrence often produced works seen as quasi-autobiographical, referring to many of Lawrence’s life events and reflecting on his beliefs. His mother, Lydia Beardsall, was deeply religious and well-educated, logically swaying her son’s beliefs and interests. She funded much of Lawrence’s education, and her influence can be seen within his writings. Many of his narratives involved young men attempting to escape their smothering mothers. His short story, “The Proper Study” (1923) reflects the influence of his mother’s religious beliefs and his introspective exploration of how to study humanity. He philosophized that the body and soul could reveal more about wisdom. Contrary to the aesthetic seekers like James, Conrad, and Ford, he did not adhere to the rules and instead, experimented with form in this short story.

John Middleton Murry, editor of The Blue Review, Rhythm and The Adelphi, was inspired by Lawrence’s commitment to modernism and subsequently, their continued association inspired many notable works. Even after his fallout with Murry in 1918, Lawrence submitted his work to be published in the various periodicals Murry produced in his lifetime. In 1923, after the death of his wife, Katherine Mansfield, Murry began publishing the periodical The Adelphi. The periodical reflected his obsession with the sanctity of art and his search for a pseudo religious brotherhood . “The Proper Study” reflects the paradoxical relationship humanity has with understanding itself which both Lawrence and Murry strove to understand. Comparably, Murry’s eventual involvement in socialism and commune living demonstrated his passion for reflection and political involvement.

Lawrence's story represents the era of British modernism well  because of its experimentation with form and interpretation of the traditional study of humanity—humans' relationship to other beings and to deity. Although the piece may be interpreted to conform more closely to the expectations of creative nonfiction, “The Proper Study” reflects Lawrence playing with form and ideology. The expectation of a short story to include narrative components is discarded—rather, the narrator of “The Proper Study” asks the reader rhetorical questions and explores various theories, using an inclusive “we” and colloquial-esque dialogue.

In 1923, Lawrence approached the end of his life. He died of illness in 1930 but suffered from malady his whole life. As he approached his last years, he delved into a new exploration of form and commentary on religion and humanity. He comes to a conclusion that the study of man is not simple, but the mixed imagery in the short story allows for some poetic license in the interpretation of the piece. This short story demonstrates Lawrence’s efforts to explore sensation, intuition, and psychoanalysis. The meta-cognitive analysis described by the narrator shows his exploration of religion and legacy as a modernist writer. His Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious discuss criticisms of Freudian studies and reveal more about his concepts of humanity. In Fantasia of the Unconscious, Lawrence writes, “This pseudo-philosophy of mine…is deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The novels and poems come unwatched out of one’s pen. And then the absolute need which one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one’s experiences as a writer and as a men…”. Written in the early 1920’s, Lawrence explores these same values and ideologies in “The Proper Study.”

Transcription

If no man lives for ever, neither does any precept. And if even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea, so also does the weariest wisdom. And there it 1s lost. Also incorporated.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.^[1] Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man: Epistle II” (I, 1-2).

It was Alexander Pope who absolutely struck the note of our particular epoch: not Shakespeare or Luther or Milton. A man of first magnitude never fits his age perfectly.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan.

The proper study of mankind is Man-with a, capital M:

This stream of wisdom is very weary now: weary to death. It started such a gay little trickle, and is such a spent muddy ebb by now. It will take a big sea to swallow all its alluvia.

"Know then thyself." All right! I'll do my best. Honestly I'll do my best, sincerely to know myself. Since it is the great commandment to consciousness of our long era, let us be men, and try to obey it. Jesus gave the emotional commandment, "Love thy neighbour." ^[2]Matthew 19:19; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27 (KJT Holy Bible) . But the Greeks set the even more absolute motto, in its way, a more deeply religious motto: " Know thyself."

Very well! Being man, and the son of man, I find it only honourable to obey. To do my best. To do my best to know myself. And particularly that part, or those parts of myself that have not yet been admitted into consciousness. Man is nothing, less than a tick stuck in a sheep's back, unless he adventures. Either into the unknown of the world, of his environment. Or into the unknown of himself.

Allons!^[3]French, “Let’s go” the road is before us. Know thyself! Which means, really, know thine own unknown self. It' s no good knowing something you know already. The thing is to discover the tracts as yet unknown. And as the only unknown now lies deep in the passional soul, allons! the road is before us. We write a novel or two, we are called erotic or depraved or idiotic or boring. What does it matter, we go the road just the same. If you see the point of the great old commandment, Know thyself, then you see the point of all art.

But knowing oneself, like knowing anything else, 1s not a process that can continue to infinity, in the same direction. The fact that I myself am only myself makes me very specifically finite. True, I may argue that my Self is a mystery that impinges on the infinite. Admitted. But the moment my Self impinges on the infinite, it ceases to be just myself.

The same is true of all knowing. You start to find out the chemical composition of a drop of water, and before you know where you are, your river of knowledge is winding very unsatisfactorily into a very vague sea, called the ether. You start to study electricity, you track the wretch down till you get some mysterious and misbehaving atom of energy or unit of force that goes pop under your nose and leaves you with the dead body of a mere word.

You sail down your stream of knowledge, and you find yourself absolutely at sea. Which may be safety for the weary river, but is a sad look-out for you, who are a land animal.

Now all science starts gaily from the inland source of I Don't Know. Gaily it says: I don't know, but I'm going to know. It' s like a little river bubbling up cheerfully in the determination to dissolve the whole world in its waves. And science, like the little river, winds wonderingly out again into the final I Don't Know of the ocean.

All this is platitudinous as regards science. Science has learned an uncanny lot, by the way.

Apply the same to the Know Thyself motto. We have learned something by the way. But as far as I'm concerned, I see land receding, and the great ocean of the last I Don't Know enveloping me.

But the human consciousness is never allowed finally to say: "I Don't Know." It has got to know, even if it must metamorphose to do so.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan.

Now as soon as you come across a Thou Shalt Not commandment, you may be absolutely sure that sometime or other, you'll have to break this commandment. You needn't make a practice of breaking it. But the day will come when you'll have to break it. When you'll have to take the name of the Lord Your God in vain, and have other gods, and worship idols, and steal, and kill, and commit adultery, and all the rest.^[4]Refers to Exodus 20:3-17 (KJT Holy Bible). A day will come. Because, as Oscar Wilde says What's a temptation for, except to be succumbed to!^[5]Refers to a passage of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

There comes a time to every man when he has to break one or other of the Thou Shalt Not commandments. And then is the time to Know Yourself just a bit different from what you thought you were.

So that in the end, this Know Thyself commandment brings me up against the Presume-Not-God-to-Scan fence. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan.

It's a dilemma. Because this business of knowing myself has led me slap up against the forbidden enclosure where, presumably, this God mystery is kept in corral. It isn't my fault. I followed the road. And it leads over the edge of a precipice on which stands up a signboard: Danger! Don't go over the edge!

But I've got to go over the edge. The way lies that way.

Flop! Over we go, and into the endless sea. There drown.

No! Out of the drowning something else gurgles awake. And that's the best of the human consciousness. When you fall into the final sea of I Don't Know, then, if you can but gasp Teach Me, you turn into a fish, and twiddle your fins and twist your tail and grope in amazement, in a new element.

That's why they called Jesus: The Fish. Pisces.^[6] Jesus Christ and the astrological sign, Pisces, are often connected by the theory of astrological age. This also could refer to Jesus’ admonition to his apostles in Mark 1:17 and Matthew 4:19 to be made “fishers of men.” Because he fell, like the weariest river, into the great Ocean that is outside the shore, and there took on a new way of knowledge.

The Proper Study is Man, sure enough. But the proper study of man, like the proper study of anything else, will in the end leave you no option. You'll have to presume to study God. Even the most hard-boiled scientist, if he is a brave and honest man, is landed in this unscientific dilemma. Or rather, he is all at sea in it.

The river of human consciousness, like ancient Ocean, goes in a circle. It starts gaily, bubblingly, fiercely from an inland pool, where it surges up in obvious mystery and Godliness, the human consciousness. And here is the God of the Beginning, call him Jehovah or Ra or Ammon or Jupiter or what you like. One bubbles up in Greece, one in India, one in Jerusalem.^[7]Each refers to a major religion’s chief God. Respectively: Christianity and Judaism; Egyptian; a variation of the Egyptian deity or the Greek equivalent; Roman. From their various God-sources the streams of human consciousness rush variously down. Then begin to meander and to doubt. Then fall slow. Then start to silt up. Then pass into the great Ocean, which is the God of the End.

In the great ocean of the End, most men are lost. But Jesus turned into a fish, he had the other consciousness of the Ocean which is the divine End of us all. And then like a salmon he beat his way up stream again, to speak from the source.

And this is the greater history of man, as distinguished from the lesser history, in which figures Mr. Lloyd George and Monsieur Poincare.^[8] Lloyd George was prime minister during and after the First World War. Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician and physicist.

We are in the deep, muddy estuary of our era, and terrified of the emptiness of the sea beyond. Or we are at the end of the great road, that Jesus and Francis and Whitman walked.^[9] May refer to Walt Whitman, an American essayist of the 19^th century. We are on the brink of a precipice, and terrified at the great void below.

No help for it. We are men, and for men there is no retreat. Over we go.

Over we must and shall go, so we may as well do it voluntarily, keeping our soul alive; and as we drown in our terrestrial nature, transmogrify into fishes. Pisces. That which knows the Oceanic Godliness of the End.

The proper study of mankind is man. Agreed entirely! But in the long run, it becomes again as it was before, man in his relation to the deity. The proper study of mankind is man in his relation to the deity.

And yet not as it was before. Not the specific deity of the inland source. The vast deity of the End. Oceanus whom you can only know by becoming a Fish. Let us become Fishes, and try.

They talk about the sixth sense. They talk as if it were an extension of the other senses. A mere dimensional sense. It's nothing of the sort. There is a sixth sense right enough. Jesus had it. The sense of the God that is the End and the Beginning. And the proper study of mankind is man in his relation to this Oceanic God.

We have come to the end, for the time being, of the study of man in his relation to man. Or man in his relation to himself. Or man in his relation to woman. There is nothing more of importance to be said, by us or for us, on this subject. Indeed, we have no more to say.

Of course, there is the literature of perversity. And there is the literature of little playboys and playgirls, not only of the western world. But the literature of perversity is a brief weed. And the playboy playgirl stuff, like the movies, though a very monstrous weed, won't live long.

As the weariest river winds by no means safely to sea, all the muddy little individuals begin to chirrup: Let's play! Let's play at something! We're so godlike when we play.

But it won't do, my dears. The sea will swallow you up, and all your play and perversions and personalities.

You can't get any more literature out of man in his relation to man. Which, of course, should be writ large, to mean man in his relation to woman, to other men, and to the whole environment of men: or woman in her relation to man, or other women, or the whole environment of women. You can't get any more literature out of that. Because any new book must needs be a new stride. And the next stride lands you over the sandbar in the open ocean, where the first and greatest relation of every man and woman is to the Ocean itself, the great God of the End, who is the All-Father of all sources, as the sea is father of inland lakes and springs of water.

But get a glimpse of this new relation of men and women to the great God of the End, who is the Father, not the Son, of all our beginnings: and you get a glimpse of the new literature. Think of the true novel of St. Paul, for example. Not the sentimental looking-backward Christian novel, but the novel looking out to sea, to the great Source, and End, of all beginnings. Not the St. Paul with his human feelings repudiated, to give play to the new divine feelings. Not the St. Paul violent in reaction against worldliness and sensuality, and therefore a dogmatist with his sheaf of Shalt-Nots ready. But a St. Paul two thousand years older, having his own epoch behind him, and having again the great knowledge of the deity, the deity which Jesus knew, the vast Ocean God which is at the end of all our consciousness.

Because, after all, if chemistry winds wearily to sea in the ether, or some such universal, don't we also, not as chemists but as conscious men, also wind wearily to sea in a divine ether, which means nothing to us but space and words and emptiness? We wind wearily to sea in words and emptiness.

But man is a mutable animal. Turn into the Fish, the Pisces of man's final consciousness, and you'll start to swim again in the great life which is so frighteningly godly that you realize your previous presumption.

And then you realize the new relation of man. Men like fishes lifted on a great wave of the God of the End, swimming together, and apart, in a new medium. A new relation, in a new whole.