ABSTRACT
PROFESSIONALISM is a dull, ugly word; but it means dull, ugly things, a perversion of the higher activities of man, of art, literature, religion, philosophy; and a perversion to which we are all apt to be blind. We know that in these activities specialization is a condition of excellence. As Keats said to Shelley, in art it is necessary to serve both God and Mammon; and as Samuel Butler said, “That is not easy, but then nothing that is really worth doing ever is easy.” The poet may be born, not made; but no man can start writing poetry as if it had never been written before. In every art there is a medium, and the poet, like all other artists, learns from the poets of the past how to use his medium. Often he does this unconsciously by reading them for delight. He first becomes a poet because he loves the poetry of others. And the painter becomes a painter because he loves the pictures of others. Each of them is apt to begin— As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. So the artist insists to himself upon the value of hard work. He is impatient of all the talk about inspiration; for he knows that, though nothing can be done without it, it comes only with command of the medium. And this command, like all craftsmanship, is traditional, handed down from one generation to another. Any kind of expression in this imperfect world is as difficult as virtue itself. For expression, like virtue, is a kind of transcendence. In it the natural man rises above his animal functions, above living so that he may continue to live; he triumphs over those animal functions which hold him down to the earth as incessantly as the attraction of gravity itself. But, like the airman, he can triumph only by material means, and by means gradually perfected in the practice of others. Yet there is always this difference, that in mechanics anyone can learn to make use of an invention ; but in the higher activities, invention, if it becomes mechanical, destroys the activity itself, even in the original inventor. The medium is always a medium, not merely a material; and if it becomes merely a material to be manipulated, it ceases to be a medium.
