Those who can receive that lesson, that is to say, those in whom it
can expand and ramify to the fulness and complexity which is its very
essence. For it happens frequently enough that we learn only a portion
of this truth, which by this means is distorted into error. We accept
the æsthetic instinct as a great force of Nature; but, instead of
acknowledging it as our master, as one of the great lords of life, of
whom Emerson spoke, we try to make it our servant. We attempt to get
congruity between the details of our everyday existence, and refuse to
seek for congruity between ourselves and the life which is greater
than ours.
A friend of mine, who had many better ways of spending her money, was
unable one day to resist the temptation of buying a beautiful old
majolica inkstand, which, not without a slight qualm of conscience,
she put into a very delightful old room of her house. The room had an
inkstand already, but it was of glass, and modern. "This one is in
harmony with the rest of the room," she said, and felt fully justified
in her extravagance. It is this form, or rather this degree, of
æstheticism, which so often prevents our realising the higher æsthetic
harmonies. In obedience to a perception of what is congruous on a
small scale we often do oddly incongruous things: spend money we ought
to save, give time and thought to trifles while neglecting to come to
conclusions about matters of importance; endure, or even cultivate,
persons with whom we have less than no sympathy; nay, sometimes, from
a keen sense of incongruity, tune down our thoughts and feelings to
the flatness of our surroundings. The phenomenon of what may thus
result from a certain æsthetic sensitiveness is discouraging, and I
confess that it used to discourage and humiliate me. But the
philosophy which the prophetess of Mautineia taught Socrates settles
the matter, and solves, satisfactorily what in my mind I always think
of as the question of the majolica inkstand.
Diotima, you will remember, did not allow her disciple to remain
engrossed in the contemplation of one kind of beauty, but particularly
insisted that he should use various fair forms as steps by which to
ascend to the knowledge of ever higher beauties. And this I should
translate into more practical language by saying that, in questions
like that of the majolica inkstand, we require not a lesser
sensitiveness to congruity, but a greater; that we must look not
merely at the smaller, but at the larger items of our life, asking
ourselves, "Is this harmonious? or is it, seen in some wider
connection, even like that clumsy glass inkstand in the oak panelled
and brocade hung room?" If we ask ourselves this, and endeavour to
answer it faithfully--with that truthfulness which is itself an item
of _consistency_--we may find that, strange as it may seem, the glass
inkstand, ugly as it is in itself, and out of harmony with the
furniture, is yet more congruous, and that we actually prefer it to
the one of majolica.
And it is in connection with this that I think that many persons who
are really æsthetic, and many more who imagine themselves to be so,
should foster a wholesome suspicion of the theory which makes it a
duty to accumulate certain kinds of possessions, to seek exclusively
certain kinds of impressions, on the score of putting beauty and
dignity into our lives.
Put beauty, dignity, harmony, serenity into our lives. It sounds very
fine. But _can_ we? I doubt it. We may put beautiful objects,
dignified manners, harmonious colours and shapes, but can we put
dignity, harmony, or beauty? Can we put them into an individual life;
can anything be put into an individual life save furniture and
garments, intellectual as well as material? For an individual life,
taken separately, is a narrow, weak thing at the very best; and
everything we can put into it, everything we lay hold of for the sake
of putting in, must needs be small also, merely the chips or dust of
great things; or if it have life, must be squeezed, cut down, made so
small before it can fit into that little receptacle of our egoism,
that it will speedily be a dead, dry thing: thoughts once thought,
feelings once felt, now neither thought nor felt, merely lying there
inert, as a dead fact, in our sterile self. Do we not see this on all
sides, examples of life into which all the dignified things have been
crammed and all the beautiful ones, and which despite the statues,
pictures, poems, and symphonies within its narrow compass, is yet so
far from dignified or beautiful?
But we need not trouble about dignity and beauty coming to our life so
long as we veritably and thoroughly _live_; that is to say, so long as
we try not to put anything into our life, but to put our life into the
life universal. The true, expanding, multiplying life of the spirit
will bring us in contact, we need not fear, with beauty and dignity
enough, for there is plenty such in creation, in things around us, and
in other people's souls; nay, if we but live to our utmost power the
life of all things and all men, seeing, feeling, understanding for the
mere joy thereof, even our individual life will be invested with
dignity and beauty in our own eyes.
But furniture will not do it, nor dress, nor exquisite household
appointments; nor any of the things, books, pictures, houses, parks,
of which we can call ourselves owners. I say _call_ ourselves: for can
we be sure we really possess them? And thus, if we think only of our
life, and the decking thereof, it is only furniture, garments, and
household appointments we can deal with; for beauty and dignity cannot
be confined in so narrow a compass.