Compared with the immediate practical responsibility of the scientist, the {{U}}(1) {{/U}} of the artist must seem puny. The decision which faces {{U}}(2) {{/U}} is not one of practical action: of course he will try to throw this {{U}}(3) {{/U}} into the scale, and that weight, if he is a writer or {{U}}(4) {{/U}} a painter of genius, may have its effect. For the novelist—in our society the only artist who has a mass audience and at the same time effective economic control of the means of addressing {{U}}(5) {{/U}}—the hope of some decisive influence is a reasonable {{U}}(6) {{/U}}. For him, since he takes of all artists {{U}}(7) {{/U}} is probably the largest portion of his culture as material, there is no {{U}}(8) {{/U}} escape from the necessity for treating the content of his work seriously than {{U}}(9) {{/U}} is for the social psychologist he is coming so closely to resemble. The dichotomy which people have tried to establish between artistic proficiency and {{U}}(10) {{/U}} content is becoming unbearable to almost all sensitive minds. I doubt if it has ever been real— we might have admired Shelley as {{U}}(11) {{/U}} if he had been indifferent to such things as war and tyranny, though I doubt it; certainly {{U}}(12) {{/U}} he been indifferent we should never have been led by {{U}}(13) {{/U}}.
There is no Hippocratic oath in literature, and I am not attempting to draw {{U}}(14) {{/U}} up. As far as I am concerned, the artist is a human being writ large and his {{U}}(15) {{/U}} are the ethics of any human being. Perhaps I can best illustrate {{U}}(16) {{/U}} seems to me the new {{U}}(17) {{/U}} of those duties of assertion and refusal from one writer, and I do not {{U}}(18) {{/U}} it is without significance that this {{U}}(19) {{/U}} projects the whole situation of choice into a scientific parable, the {{U}}(20) {{/U}} of a pestilence: a {{U}}(21) {{/U}} many human {{U}}(22) {{/U}} are called to fight against, called not by any supernatural {{U}}(23) {{/U}} but by the simple fact that the fight against a plague is {{U}}(24) {{/U}} like a biological human {{U}}(25) {{/U}}.