Complete Works

because they spring from profounder than the logic of a deliberate theory suggestive by acquiring learning, let us say, or by lessons drawn from analysed practice. And no one need quarrel for such a view with an artist for whom self-expression must, by definition, be the principal object, if not the only raison d’etre, of his existence. He will naturally take for his own, for better or worse, all the characteristics of his work; since all of them, intended or not intended, make up the individuality of his self-expression.
    I suspect there are moments when what a man most values in his work — I mean even a man of action — is precisely the part the general mystery of things plays in its shaping: the discovery of those qualities that have “just happened” in that obscure region where honest success or honourable failure is unconsciously elaborated. But there are moments too when one’s idealism (for idealism is practical and sane and the enemy of things that “just happen” and suchlike mysteries) prompts one to take up a different, more precise view of one’s achievement — whatever it may be.
    I must have been in one of those moments that the suggestion of a selected volume of my shorter stories came before me from my old friend and publisher, Mr. F.N. Doubleday, who is an idealist and who would simply hate to let anything “just happen” in his business. His business, to my mind, consists, mainly, in being the intermediary between certain men’s reveries and the wide-awake brain of the rest of the world. Stated like this it seems a strangely fantastic occupation; yet his ways of carrying it on are always of a practical sort. I have learned to trust his conclusions implicitly on that ground. Also, for reasons of a deeper personal kind, having nothing to do with business, his words have great weight with me. But in order to reconcile my own idealism to the notion of taking the stories out of their natural surroundings, out of their native atmosphere as it were, some principle of selection had to be found. The only one that offered
    itself with any chance of being acceptable was the principle of classification by subject; one that, whatever its disadvantages, has at least the advantage of being immune from the infection of illusions.
    But I soon found that for a writer whose simple purpose had ever been the sincere rendering of his own deeper and more sympathetic emotions in the face of his belief in men and things — the philosopher’s ‘Vain appearances” which yet have endured, poignant or amusing, for so many ages, moving processionally towards the End of the World, which when it comes will be the vainest thing of all — the principle was not so easy in its application as it seemed to be at first sight. Though I have been often classed as a writer of the sea I have always felt that I had no specialty in that or any other specific subject. It is true that I have found a full text of life on the sea, long before I thought of writing a line or even felt the faintest stirring towards self-expression by means of the printed word. Sea life had been my life. It had been my own self-sufficient, self-satisfying possession. When the change came over the spirit of my dream (Calderon said that “Life is a Dream”) my past had, by the very force of my work, become one of the sources of what I may call, for want of a better word, my inspiration — of the inner force which sets the pen in motion. I would add here “for better or worse,” if those words did not sound horribly ungrateful after so many proofs of sympathy from the public for which this particular Preface is destined.
    As a matter of fact I have written of the sea very little if the pages were counted. It has been the scene, but very seldom the aim, of my endeavour. It is too late after all those years to try to keep back the truth; so I will confess here that when I launched my first paper boats in the days of my literary childhood, I aimed at an element as restless, as dangerous, as changeable as the sea, and even more vast; — the unappeasable ocean of human life. I trust this grandiloquent image will be accepted with an indulgent smile of the kind that is accorded to the lofty ambitions of well-meaning beginners. Much time has passed since, and I can assure my readers that I have never felt more humble than I do today while I sit tracing these words and that I see now, more clearly than ever before, that
    indeed those were but paper