TO the uneducated, filling in forms of any kind is a considerable task. The curt official demands puzzle them; the various particulars they are asked to give do not readily come to hand; and, not least, the actual business of writing, unfamiliar as it is, seems very long and wearisome. It is no wonder then that the uneducated detest printed forms, and even extend their dislike to the official bodies that issue such things and compel honest labouring men to scratch their heads over them. But it is curious that this dislike is shared by many of us who are not entirely without letters, who can write our names and addresses and what not with tolerable facility and despatch. We have not the same reason for our distaste as the man to whom the feel of a pen is strange; and with our superior knowledge, such as it is, it would seem that we have less excuse, for at least we can understand that such things as forms may be necessary in a world given over to figures and tabulation. Our distaste for the business, then, seems irrational and nothing more nor less than a characteristically English prejudice. Where there are definite grounds for our objection, such as a mistrust of the official motive in collecting information, or a feeling that we are being compelled unnecessarily to take trouble and so forth, it is not mere prejudice; but with most of us, grounds or no grounds, the feeling remains; and whether this filling in of forms appears to be urgent and necessary or not, we approach it, according to our mood, with something like irritation or depression. There are people, of course, who do not feel in this way, people who take kindly to all the methods of the bureaucrat, who revere an official form whether it is reasonable or not, and love organisation and routine for their own sakes. When a person comes to believe that humanity will yet be saved by double-entry and the card-index system, the beauty and significance of an official form, correctly filled in and neatly docketed, is put beyond question. We imagine that to one of Mr. Sidney Webb’s admirers, the very sight of a printed form with inviting blank spaces will call forth the genuine aesthetic emotion; to such a one a form is not only desirable in itself but also beautiful because it exists as a symbol of a whole vision of life, namely, that ordered system, rigid with its hierarchy of officials in which some minds find their earthly paradise. When a man holds such doctrines he has become mystical and is past arguing with; our objection to bureaucratic paraphernalia, its forms and dockets and what not, is nothing to him but the grimacing and babbling of the half-witted. On this question of the value of forms, there are plainly two parties that can neither come to terms nor yet agree to ignore each other. We stand on each side of a great gulf, staring across, and occasionally making half-witted, menacing cries and gestures. Let us keep to our own side.

If our dislike of forms has little or nothing in common with that of the uneducated, who merely hate the unfamiliar task of recording; and if it seems to exist with sufficiently reasonable grounds, we must either bring to light reasons yet hidden or confess ourselves the victims of a stupid prejudice. It may be, of course, that we dislike forms for the same reason that our opponents, the official-minded, adore them, namely, because they can be taken as symbols of a certain kind of life for which we, on our part, have no admiration. But this will not explain our irritation at having to set down a few paltry particulars on demand: the real reason cuts more deeply, for it is a personal matter, unconnected with our social and political views. Unlike the lovers of forms, who have arid minds and are devoid of fancy, we on our side are for the most part full-minded, expansive, imaginative fellows, and in this can be found the reason for our dislike. We are asked to give an account of ourselves, but not a genuine account of ourselves, the kind we deliver to an old friend over the last few pipes and the dying fire; that kind of account we would give with pleasure at any seasonable hour to any fairly sympathetic listening official. No, our names, ages, occupations, and so forth, must be set down in various ruled columns on pieces of blue paper (usually of poor quality), which shall hereafter stand in our stead. But no piece of paper, blue, buff, or virgin white, can stand in our stead. No mere handful of facts can represent our unique and exquisite selves. If all the facts had to be given, we might be able to do something with them; they might gradually take shape into something like a personality; but to be compelled to give only a few, and those not the most essential, so that the beggarly total shall be sent abroad to represent us, this is to be subjected to a pitiless process of abstraction. It is an affront to the spirit. And it is useless to argue that the few facts demanded are sufficient for the particular official purpose for which they are required. Purpose or no purpose, we are human beings, and if we are to be made known to other human beings, let us be visible in all our colour and light. John Smith, Rosedene, Leicester Road, Cashier, 53 years of age, and the rest, is a libellous travesty of old Jack Smith, who always smokes a cherry-wood pipe and is the best amateur rose-grower in the East Midlands. Glancing at such a colourless list of petty details as—Henry Robinson, Coal Merchant’s Clerk, aged 27, Single, who would imagine it was meant to represent young Robinson who is so often seen about with the fair-headed girl from the Post Office, who has a temperament and is known to be the author of the greatest blank-verse tragedy of the time, a work so far above its age that no theatrical manager will look at it? Think of—William Shakespeare, Stratford and London, age 35, Married, Three Children, Occupation—Player; or William Wordsworth, Rydal Mount, Distributor of Stamps, Married, Church of England, and so on; these things are at once grotesque and pitiful. A man in prison is simply known by a number, and it is said that this alone tends to make him lose some of his self-respect. So, too, when we find ourselves subjected to this bowelless process, when we are bending over the printed forms and staring dully at their stupid demands, something of the same kind is happening to us as we answer question after question; we feel our personality evaporating as it were; the lines growing more angular and the colours fading; until what is left is not even a caricature, not even a flickering shadow of our real essential selves. And all the while we know that we carry with us a personality, richly deft and fantastically coloured, something as opulent as the Indies and as mysterious as China. Hence the irritation, the depression, the half instinctive revolt, the protest that does not even find words for itself. And we shall do well as the forms come snowing down upon us, to recognise the revolt and assert the protest, for it may be that when we come to the end of filling in these things, we shall find ourselves to be nothing better than the paltry details we have so often set down: we shall have lost our souls.