The Movement of Modern Literature – 2 117But on the other hand an equally strong characteristic of
the modern mind is its growing subjectivity, an intense con-
sciousness of the I, the soul or the self, not in any mystic
withdrawal within or inward meditation, or not in that pre-
eminently, but in relation to the whole of life and Nature. This
characteristic distinguishes modern subjectivism from the natu-
ral subjectivity of former times, which either tended towards an
intense solitary inwardness or was superficial and confined to a
few common though often strongly emphasised notes. Ancient
or mediaeval individuality might return more self-assertive or
violent responses to life, but the modern kind is more subtly
and pervasively self-conscious and the stronger in thought and
feeling to throw its own image on things, because it is more
precluded from throwing itself out freely in action and living.
This turn was in fact an inevitable result of an increasing force
of intellectualism; for great intensity of thought, when it does
not isolate itself from emotion, reactive sensation and aesthetic
response, as in science and in certain kinds of philosophy, must
be attended by a quickening and intensity of these other parts
of our mentality. In science and critical thought, where this iso-
lation is possible, the objective turn prevailed, — though much
that we call critical thought is after all a personal construction,
a use of the reason and the observation of things for a view of
what is around us which, far from being really disinterested and
impersonal, is a creation of our own temperament and a satisfac-
tion of our intellectualised individuality. But in artistic creation
where the isolation is not possible, we find quite an opposite
phenomenon, the subjective personality of the poet asserting
itself to a far greater extent than in former ages of humanity.
Goethe himself, in spite of his theory, could not escape from
this tendency; his work, as he himself recognised, is always an
act of reflection of the subjective changes of his personality, a
history of the development of his own soul in the guise of objec-
tive creation. From the work of a poet like Leconte de Lisle who
attempted with the most deliberate conscientiousness a perfect
fidelity to the ideal of an impersonal artistic objectiveness, there
disengages itself in the mass an almost poignant impression of