In this manner can we learn from art the chief secret of life: the
secret of action and reaction, of causal connection, of suitability of
part to part, of organism, interchange, and growth.
And when I say _learn_, I mean learn in the least official and the
most efficacious way. I do not mean merely that, looking at a statue
like the Hermes, a certain fact is borne in upon our intelligence, the
fact of all vitality being dependent on harmony. I mean that perhaps,
nay probably, without any such formula, our whole nature becomes
accustomed to a certain repeated experience, our whole nature becomes
adapted thereunto, and acts and reacts in consequence, by what we call
intuition, instinct. It is not with our intellect alone that we
possess such a fact, as we might intellectually possess that twice two
is four, or that Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII., knowing
casually what we may casually also forget; we possess, in such a way
that forgetting becomes impossible, with our whole soul and our whole
being, re-living that fact with every breath that we draw, with every
movement we make, the first great lesson of art, that vitality means
harmony. Let us look at this fact, and at its practical applications,
apart from all æsthetic experience.
All life is harmony; and all improvement in ourselves is therefore,
however unconsciously, the perceiving, the realising, or the
establishing of harmonies, more minute or more universal. Yes, curious
and unpractical as it may seem, harmonies, or, under their humbler
separate names--arrangements, schemes, classifications, are the chief
means for getting the most out of all things, and particularly the
most out of ourselves.
For they mean, first of all, unity of means for the attaining of unity
of effect, that is to say, incalculable economy of material, of time,
and of effort; and secondly, unity of effect produced, that is to say,
economy even greater in our power of perceiving and feeling: nothing
to eliminate, nothing against whose interruptions we waste our energy,
our power of becoming more fit in the course of striving.
When there exists harmony one impression leads to, enhances another;
we, on the other hand, unconsciously recognise at once what is doing
to us, what we in return must do; the mood is indicated, fulfilled,
consummated; in plenitude we feel, we are; and in plenitude of feeling
and being, we, in our turn, _do_. Neither is such habit of harmony, of
scheme, of congruity, a mere device for sucking the full sweetness out
of life, although, heaven knows, that were important enough. As much
as such a habit husbands, and in a way multiplies, life's sweetness;
so likewise does it husband and multiply man's power. For there is no
quicker and more thorough mode of selecting among our feelings and
thoughts than submitting them to a standard of congruity; nothing more
efficacious than the question: "Is such or such a notion or proceeding
harmonious with what we have made the rest of our life, with what we
wish our life to be?" This is, in other words, the power of the
_ideal_, the force of _ideas_, of thought-out, recognised habits, as
distinguished from blind helter-skelter impulse. This is what welds
life into one, making its forces work not in opposition but in
concordance; this is what makes life consecutive, using the earlier
act to produce the later, tying together existence in an organic
fatality of _must be_: the fatality not of the outside and the
unconscious, but of the conscious, inner, upper man. Nay, it is what
makes up the _Ego_. For the _ego_, as we are beginning to understand,
is no mysterious separate entity, still less a succession of
disconnected, conflicting, blind impulses; the _ego_ is the congruous,
perceived, nay, thought-out system of habits, which feels all
incongruity towards itself as accidental and external. Hence, when we
ask which are the statements we believe in, we answer instinctively
(logic being but a form of congruity) those statements which accord
with themselves and with other statements; when we ask, which are the
persons we trust? we answer, those persons whose feelings and actions
are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of
others. And, on the contrary, it is in the worthless, in the
degenerate creature, that we note moods which are destructive to one
another's object, ideas which are in flagrant contradiction; and it is
in the idiot, the maniac, the criminal, that we see thoughts
disconnected among themselves, perceptions disconnected with
surrounding objects, and instincts and habits incompatible with those
of other human beings. Nay, if we look closely, we shall recognise,
moreover, that those emotions of pleasure are the healthy, the safe
ones, which are harmonious not merely in themselves (as a musical note
is composed of even vibrations), but harmonious with all preceding and
succeeding pleasures in ourselves, and harmonious, congruous, with the
present and future pleasures in others.