science become continually more logical and investigative; and once that
they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a very
few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old
imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly
taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant persons. And at
this point the fate of the people absolutely depends on the degree of
moral strength into which their hearts have been already trained. If it
be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the taking its old
gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it, will indeed make
it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit shake its will, nor
alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally disposed to become
drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had been previously restrained
from indulging these dispositions by their fear of God, will, of course,
break out into open vice, when that fear is removed. But the heads of
the families of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfect
delights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a Father in
heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will assuredly not seek
relief from the discomfort of their orphanage by becoming uncharitable
and vile. Also the high leaders of their thought gather their whole
strength together in the gloom; and at the first entrance to this Valley
of the Shadow of Death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face of
him, and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. "Metus omnes, et
inexorabile fatum,... strepitumque Acherontis avari." This is the
condition of national soul expressed by the art, and the words, of
Holbein, Duerer, Shakspeare, Pope, and Goethe.
51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of darkness
approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are only
maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; the
moment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the race
falls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliest
vices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane
sin is developed; and half a century is sometimes enough to close in
hopeless shame the career of the nation in literature, art, and war.
52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perished
from the practically active national mind of France and England. No
statesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence
out of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literal
authority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for
their contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the
face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, her
resolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore,
founded on religion and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete
and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history
of mankind; and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture
living, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing
the nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England.
53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational series,
as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola Pisano in
the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have given the
pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that pulpit is
dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and the
cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its fragments now put
together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to you. You may
partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by the eagle's
head, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo Santo (Edu.,
No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs (Edu., No. 103, more carefully
studied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrations in due time.
Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the Cathedral of
Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and Holy Field, with
the main purpose of the principal building lately raised for the people
of London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but we have
constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming
educational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class,
is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the Crystal
Palace.
54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discovered
style of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our best
popular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice of
Fairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production of
fairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the
bosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of
Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals,
inlaid color designs of its facade, embossed panels of its Baptistery
font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a
school of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period
of four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the
world, in description of Form, and expression of Thought.
55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vast
discrepancy in the character of these two buildings.
In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa was a colossal image of
Christ, in colored mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as possible,
the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon; and in
the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan on the
attributes of the God in whom he believed.
In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the
building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times
greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by
English designers, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in
preparation for their solemnities in honor of the birthday of Christ, in
December 1867 or 1868.
That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, some
twelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by the
mechanism which is our pride, every half-minute opened its mouth from
ear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these
periodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by the
illuminated inscription underneath, "Here we are again."
56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of the
English populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival of
its year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you
that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by
collecting within this building (itself devoid absolutely of every kind
of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are
continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it
together,) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past
work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians,
miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[15] here thrust into unseemly
corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion of
heterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in
weariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steam
wheelbarrows or cheap toyshops; and most of all in beer and meat, the
corks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal
flooring of the English Fairy Palace.
57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a building
prepared only for the amusement of the people can typically represent
the architecture or sculpture of modern England. You may urge that I
ought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is
executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper
classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now
criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I
have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general.
I will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation.
58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture,
which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by
men of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius to
produce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts
of painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can
carve a satisfactory bust.
59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just,
in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to our
two greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and the
statue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I
hope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, I am using
only the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments,
that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But consider
how much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting
the two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our two
greatest heroes.
60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual
study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years
past; especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of
bodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in
portraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion; we
have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have
the most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and
comparative; and we have bribes for the reward of success, large in the
proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered to
the artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, and the
stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotest
corners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of
occasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particular
to praise.
Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the
faculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measure can
be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately swallow up
in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand years, and
produce, as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to call
'nothing'?
61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive on the evidence presented
by our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, we
must endeavor to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools of
sculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in the
actual service of vice.
I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor of
any scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the last
three hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enough
to attract public attention.
Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn,
more or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but too
gladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxurious
classes, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyful
fiends and angry fates for the ruin of our civilization.
If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of true
sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you consider these
facts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will find
that they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture in
modern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, is
literally one of corrupt and dishonorable death, as opposed to bright
and fameful life.
62. And now, will you bear with me while I tell you finally why this is
so?
The cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;
though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of
your early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, in
Oxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in nowise care for the
history of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties.
You still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interested
only in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of
Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of modern
European youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture
and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the
divinest workmanship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and
Mediaeval Christendom.
63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and of
worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadly
Idolatry which are now all but universal in England.
The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Fantasm of Wealth;
worship of which you will find the nature partly examined in the
thirty-seventh paragraph of my 'Munera Pulveris'; but which is briefly
to be defined as the servile apprehension of an active power in Money,
and the submission to it as the God of our life.
64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginative
faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what we
chiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and the
apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Book
whose primal commands we refuse to obey.
No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful idolatry
than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority of English
religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens were of
old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the water,--the
Word of God which came to the prophets, and comes still forever to all
who will hear it (and to many who will forbear); and which, called
Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies of
heaven,--that this 'Word of God' may yet be bound at our pleasure in
morocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasseled
ribbons to mark the passages she most approves of.
65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and England is
little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successful
in the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidens
falsely religious; the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity.
Not from all the marble of the hills of Luini will such a people ever
shape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all the
treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, for
their own descendants, any inheritance but shame.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Glance forward at once to Sec. 75, read it, and return to this.
[12] There is a primary and vulgar sense of 'exhibited' in Lucian's
mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.
[13] In the Greek, 'ambrosial.' Recollect always that ambrosia, as food
of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is
ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called 'ambrosial'
because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the
23d Psalm, the stillness of waters.
[14] I have italicized this final promise of blessedness, given by the
noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's fifth Latter-day
Pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.
[15] "Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast
of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage,
of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is
represented by a repetition of casts from one mold, of which the design
itself is entirely conjectural.
LECTURE III.
IMAGINATION.
_November, 1870._
66. The principal object of the preceding Lecture, (and I choose rather
to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in
defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and
false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a
spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking
phase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] give the general
term of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols
which may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,
spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying
the actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,
in reality, of the forms we attribute to them.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, on
vases of the Phidian time, (sufficiently represented in the following
wood-cut,) no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this was
painted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as the
Arabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he think
that this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged
his hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the goddess
herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever so
beautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under the
form of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow,
when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but it
did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any of
these forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her own
aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, at
all events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heart
the facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom,
perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physical
dominion over the air which is the life and breath of all creatures, and
clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and raiment of falling
dew.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of Agriculture, in
which the wings of the chariot represent the winds of Spring, and its
crested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twisted
root piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it, we are
in still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an
actual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to observe that
in all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinction
from idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence, of
the Spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity to
conceive the one, or compel the other.
69. Farther--and for this statement I claim your attention still more
earnestly. As no nation has ever attained real greatness during periods
in which it was subject to any condition of Idolatry, so no nation has
ever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching and
maintaining a passionate Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than
that of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite
real and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us.
And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under the
name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of just
policy have vanished from us,--and that totally,--for this double
reason; that we are, on one side, given up to idolatries of the most
servile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last Lecture,--while,
on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise of
faithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth which
remain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the
origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source of
the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms.
70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture has
perished more totally than any other, because the object of that art is
exclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. It is
essentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent of
the highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as they
exhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to
humanity. It deals with the "particula undique desecta" of the animal
nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples'
contemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [Greek:
pelos], or, lower still, the [Greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, by
Athena's help, into forms of power;--([Greek: to men holon architekton
autos en syneirgazeto de toi kai he 'Athena empneousa ton pelon kai
empsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata;])[17]--but it has nothing whatever
to do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful (as
of clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill,
except in expressing the noblest conditions of life.
These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of our
day, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do I wish you to
do so. By placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, I do not
doubt but that I shall gradually prove to you the nature of all
excelling and enduring qualities; but to-day I will only confirm my
assertions by laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves
on the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly
authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come.
71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of the
myth of Athena in my 'Queen of the Air,' you cannot but have been
surprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I did
not, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths;
and is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as
the goddess of Art-Wisdom.
You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinking
of it, as revolting. It is, indeed, one of the most painful and childish
of sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us,
this story satisfied the fancy of the Athenian people in their highest
state; and if it did not satisfy, yet it was accepted by, all later
mythologists: you may also remember I told you to be prepared always to
find that, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the
symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend of the birth of
Athena is the central myth of all that the Greeks have left us
respecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as it
seemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us on
these matters. We may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, if
anywhere.
72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that I
cannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but I will take
main points. Athena is born in the island of Rhodes; and that island is
raised out of the sea by Apollo, after he had been left without
inheritance among the gods. Zeus[18] would have cast the lot again, but
Apollo orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; and
not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises out
of the sea.
Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos,
especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the first
process in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated to
the nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek:
sophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism
existing in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light
on the earth, giving lovely form and color at once, (compare the use of
it by Dante, as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven); and
remember that, therefore, the rose is, in the Greek mind, essentially a
Doric flower, expressing the worship of Light, as the Iris or Ion is an
Ionic one, expressing the worship of the Winds and Dew.
73. To understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of Athena, we
must again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by the
hand. Before you can cultivate land, you must clear it; and the
characteristic weapon of Hephaestus,--which is as much his attribute as
the trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you
would have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-ax--the double-edged
[Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut
down the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval and
agricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by this weapon,
with which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mind
this agriculturally laborious character of Hephaestus, even when he is
most distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfect
epithet for him, "avidus," expresses at once the devouring eagerness of
fire, and the zeal of progressive labor, for Horace gives it to him when
he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his cleaving
the forehead of Zeus with the ax, and giving birth to Athena, signifies
indeed, physically, the thrilling power of heat in the heavens, rending
the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far more deeply it
signifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labor; until, out of the
chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spirit
of Wisdom.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]