when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take
one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become
King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go
to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the
existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of
the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense.
For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with
"Thou shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that "Thou shalt not" is only
one of the necessary corollaries of "I will." "I will go to the Lord
Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me." Anarchism adjures us to be
bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is
impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is
limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a
giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative
way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you
will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you
step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can
free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of
their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but
do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of
his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as
a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their
three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes
to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the
Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were
loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case
with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive
example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute
the _thing_ he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat.
The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.