record of our own experience is seen in the popularity of those
pictures whose subjects are familiar and can be immediately
recognized. On a studio wall was once hanging a "Study of Brush,"
showing the play of sunlight through quivering leaves. A visitor
asked the painter why he did not put some chickens in the
foreground. To her the canvas was meaningless, for she had never
seen, had never really seen, the sunlight dancing on burnished leaves.
The chickens, which she had seen and could recognize, were the
element of the familiar she required in order to find any significance
in the picture.
This tendency, of which the demand for chickens is a rudimentary
manifestation, is the basis of all appreciation. The artist's revelation
of the import of life we can receive and understand only as we have
felt a little of that import for ourselves. Color is meaningless to a
blind man, music does not exist for the deaf. To him who has never
opened his eyes to behold the beauty of field and hill and trees and
sky, to him whose spirit has not dimly apprehended something of
that eternal significance of which these things are the material
visible bodying forth, to such a the work of the master is only so
much paint and canvas. The task of the appreciator, then, is to
develop his capacity to receive and enjoy.
That capacity is to be trained by the exercise of itself. Each new
harmony which he is enabled to perceive intensifies his power to
feel and widens the range of his vision. The more beauty he
apprehends in the world, so much the more of universal forces he
brings into unity with his own personality. By this extension of his
spirit he reaches out and becomes merged in the all-embracing life.
If the conception be true that a supreme unity, linking all seemingly
chaotic details, ultimately brings them into order, and that this unity,
which is spiritual, penetrates every atom of matter, fusing everything
and making all things one; then the appreciator will realize that the
significance of art is for the spirit The beauty which the artist reveals
is but the harmony which underlies the universal order; and he in his
turn must apprehend that beauty spiritually.
From this truth it follows that the condition of aesthetic enjoyment,
or in other words the appreciation of beauty, is detachment of spirit
and remoteness from practical consequences. The classic illustration
of the truth is the saying of Lucretius, that it is sublime to stand on
the shore and behold a shipwreck. It is sublime only as one's
personal interests and feelings are not engaged. It would not be
sublime if it were possible for the spectator to aid in averting the
catastrophe; it would not be sublime if one's friends were aboard the
ship. One is able to appreciate beauty only as one is able to detach
one's self from what is immediate and practical, and by virtue of this
detachment, to apprehend the spiritual significance. The sublimity of
the shipwreck lies in what it expresses of the impersonal might of
elemental forces and man's impotence in the struggle against nature.
That sublimity, which is one manifestation of beauty, is of the spirit,
and by the spirit it must be apprehended.
To illustrate this truth by a few homely examples. A farmer looking
out on his fields of tossing wheat, drenched in golden sunlight,
exclaims, "Look, isn't that beautiful!" What he really means is: "See
there the promise of a rich harvest, and it is mine." If the fields
belonged to his neighbor, his feelings towards them would be quite
different. No, their _beauty_ is to be seen and felt only by him
whose mind is free of thoughts of personal enrichment and who thus
can perceive the harmony with life of golden sunshine and nature's
abundant gifts. The farmer could not see beyond the material and its
value to him as material. But beauty lies deeper than that, for it is
the expression of spiritual relations.
Two men are riding together in a railway carriage. As the train
draws into a city, they pass a little group of tumble-down houses,
brown and gray, a heap of corners thrown together. One man thinks:
"What dreary lives these people must lead who dwell there." The
other, with no such stirring of the sympathy, sees a wonderful
"scheme" in grays and browns, or an expressive composition or
ordering of line. Neither could think the thoughts of the other at the
same time with his own. One feels a practical and physical reaction,
and he cannot therefore at that moment penetrate to the meaning of
these things for the spirit; and that meaning is the harmony which
they express.
From the tangle of daily living with its conflict of interests and its
burden of practical needs, the appreciator turns to art with its power
to chasten and to tranquillize. In art, he finds the revelation in fuller
measure of a beauty which he has felt but vaguely. He realizes that
underlying the external chaos of immediate practical experience
rests a supreme and satisfying order. Of that order he can here and
now perceive but little, hemmed in as he is by the material world,
whose meaning he discerns as through a glass, darkly. Yet he keeps
resolutely on his way, secure in his kinship with the eternal spirit,
and rewarded by momentary glimpses of the "broken arcs" which he
knows will in the end take their appointed places in the "perfect
round."
V
THE ARTIST
Out of chaos, order. Man's life on the earth is finite and fragmentary,
but it is the constant effort of his spirit to bring the scattering details
of momentary experience into an enduring harmony with his
personality and with that supreme unity of which he is a part.
The man who out of the complex disarray of his little world effects a
new harmony is an artist. He who fashioned the first cup, shaping it
according to his ideal,--for no prototype existed,--and in response to
his needs; he who, taking this elementary form, wrought upon it
with his fingers and embellished it according to his ideal and in
response to his need of expressing himself; he, again, who out of the
same need for expression adds to the cup anything new: each of
these workmen is an artist. The reproduction of already existing
forms, with no modification by the individual workman, is not art.
So, for example, only that painter is an artist who adds to his
representation of the visible world some new attribute or quality
born of his own spirit Primitive artisan, craftsman, painter, each
creates in that he reveals and makes actual some part, which before
was but potential, of the all-embracing life.
As the artist, then, wins new reaches of experience and brings them
into unity, he reveals new beauty, new to men yet world-old. For the
harmony which he effects is new only in the sense that it was not
before perceived. As, in the physical universe, not an atom of matter
through the ages is created or destroyed, so the supreme spiritual life
is constant in its sum and complete. Of this life individuals partake
in varying measure; their growth is determined by how much of it
they make their own. The growth of the soul in this sense is not
different from man's experience of the physical world. The child is
born: he grows up into his family; the circle widens to include
neighbors and the community; the circle widens again as the boy
goes away to school and then to college. With ever-widening sweep
the outermost bound recedes, though still embracing him, as he
reaches out to Europe and at length compasses the earth, conquering
experience and bringing its treasures into tribute to his own spirit.
The things were there; but for the boy each was in turn created as he
made it his own. So the artist, revealing new aspects of the supreme
unity, creates in the sense that he makes possible for his fellows a
fuller taking-up of this life into themselves.
It may be said that he is the greatest artist who has felt the most of
harmony in life,--the greatest artist but potentially. The beauty he
has perceived must in accordance with our human needs find
expression concretely, because it is only as he manifests himself in
forms which we can understand that we are able to recognize him.
Though a mute, inglorious Milton were Milton still, yet our human
limitations demand his utterance that we may know him. So the
artist accomplishes his mission when he communicates himself. The
human spirit is able to bring the supreme life into unity with itself
according to the measure of its own growth made possible through
expression.
The supreme life, of which every created thing partakes,--the stone,
the flower, the animal, and man,--is beauty, because it is the
supreme harmony wherein everything has its place in relation to
every other thing. This central unity has its existence in expression.
The round earth, broken off from the stellar system and whirling
along its little orbit through space, is yet ever in communication
with the great system; the tree, with its roots in the earth, puts forth
branches, the branches expand into twigs, the twigs burst into leaves
whose veins reach out into the air; out of the twigs spring buds
swelling into blossoms, the blossoms ripen into fruit, the fruit drops
seed into the earth which gave it and springs up into new trees. The
tree by its growth, which is the putting forth of itself or expression,
develops needs, these needs are satisfied, and the satisfying of the
needs is the condition of its continued expansion.
Man, too, has his existence in expression. By growth through
expression, which is the creation of a new need, he is enabled to take
up more into himself; he brings more into the unity of his
personality, and thus he expands into the universal harmony.
The unity which underlies the cosmos--to define once more the
conception which is the basis of the preceding chapters--is of the
spirit. The material world which we see and touch is but the symbol
and bodying forth of spiritual relations. The tranquillizing, satisfying
power of art is due to the revelation which art accomplishes of a
spiritual harmony which transcends the seeming chaos of instant
experience. So it comes about that harmony, or beauty, which is of
the spirit, is apprehended by the spirit. That faculty in the artist by
which he is able to perceive beauty is called _temperament._ By
temperament is to be understood the receptive faculty, the power to
feel, the capacity for sensations, emotions, and "such intellectual
apprehensions as, in strength and directness and their immediately
realized values at the bar of an actual experience, are most like
sensations." The function of temperament is to receive and to
transmit, to interpret, to create in the sense that it reveals. In the
result it is felt to be present only as the medium through which the
forces behind it come to expression.
Art, the human spirit, temperament,--these terms are general and
abstract. Now the abstract to be realized must be made concrete. Just
as art, in order to be manifest, must be embodied in the particular
work, as the statue, the picture, the building, the drama, the
symphony, so the human spirit becomes operative in the person of
the individual, and temperament may be best studied in the character
of the individual artist.
As temperament is the receptive faculty, the artist's attitude toward
life is what Wordsworth called "wise passiveness,"--Wordsworth,
the poet of "impassioned contemplation." Keats, too,--and among
the poets, whose vision of beauty was more beautiful, whose grasp
on the truth more true?--characterizes himself as "addicted to
passiveness." It is of temperament that Keats is writing when he says
in a letter: "That quality which goes to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously, is _Negative Capability_ ." In another letter he writes:--
"It has been an old comparison for our urging on--the Beehive;
however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the
Bee--for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than
giving--no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The
flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee--its leaves
blush deeper in the next spring--and who shall say between Man and
Woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like
Jove than to fly like Mercury--let us not therefore go hurrying about
and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently
from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our
leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive--budding patiently
under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect
that favours us with a visit--sap will be given us for meat and dew
for drink. . . .
"O fret not after knowledge--I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge--I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep."
Still again he says: "The Genius of Poetry must work out its own
salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by
sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must
create itself."
A nature so constituted, a nature receptive and passive, is
necessarily withdrawn from practical affairs. To revert to Keats as
an example, for Keats is so wholly the artist, it is his remoteness
from the daily life about him that makes him the man of no one
country or time. His poetry has a kind of universality, but
universality within a definite sphere, and that sphere is the world of
things lovely and fair. In a playful mood Keats writes to his sister:
"Give me Books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little
music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know . . . and I can
pass a summer very quietly without caring much about Fat Louis, fat
Regent or the Duke of Wellington." These are trivial words; but they
serve to define in some measure the artistic temperament.
For this characteristic remoteness from affairs the artist is sometimes
reproached by those who pin their faith to material things. Such are
not aware that for the artist the only reality is the life of the spirit.
The artist, as Carlyle says of the Man of Letters, "lives in the inward
sphere of things, in the True, Divine and Eternal, which exists
always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial: his being is in
that." Temperament constitutes the whole moral nature of the artist.
"With a great poet," says Keats, "the sense of beauty overcomes
every consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration." It is the
standard which measures the worth of any act. It is conscience, too;
for the functions performed by conscience in the normal moral life
of the man of action are fulfilled by the artist's devotion to his ideal;
his service to his art is his sole and sufficient obligation.
And where the man of action looks to find his rewards in the
approval of his fellow men, the artist cares to please himself. The
very act of expressing is itself the joy and the reward. To this truth
Keats again stands as witness: "I feel assured," he says, "I should
write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful,
even if my night's labours should be burnt every Morning and no
eye ever shine upon them." And still again: "I value more the
privilege of seeing great things in loneliness than the fame of a
prophet." Not that the artist does not crave appreciation. His
message fails of completeness if there is no ear to hear it, if it does
not meet a sympathy which understands. But the true artist removes
all shadow of petty vanity and becomes, in Whitman's phrase, "the
free channel of himself." He is but the medium through whom the
spirit of beauty reveals itself; in thankfulness and praise he but
receives and transmits. That it is given him to see beauty and to
interpret it is enough.
It is by virtue of his power to feel that the artist is able to apprehend
beauty; his temperament is ever responsive to new harmonies. By
force of his imagination, which is one function of his temperament,
he sends his spirit into other lives, absorbs their experience and
makes it his own, and ultimately identifies himself with world forces
and becomes creator. In a lyric passage in a letter Keats exclaims:--
"The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the
more divided and minute domestic happiness. . . . I feel more and
more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in
this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone
than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my
Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body-guard--then
'Tragedy with sceptered pall comes sweeping by.' According to my
state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with
Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily. Or I throw my whole being into
Troilus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost soul upon the
Stygian Banks staying for waftage,' I melt into the air with a
voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone."
This power to penetrate and to identify was exercised with peculiar
directness and plenitude by Walt Whitman, prophet of the
omnipotence of man. To find the burden of his message formulated
in the single phrase one may turn to his Poems quite at random.
"My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the
whole earth."
"I inhale great draughts of space,--
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
mine.
. . . . .
All seems beautiful to me."
Of the artist may be affirmed what Whitman affirms of the
Answerer:--
"Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and
tongue,
He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men,
and any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he
sees how they join."
As the artist sends out his spirit through the world, as he becomes
the channel of universal and divine influences, so he is admitted to
new and ever new revelations of beauty. And stirred by the glorious
vision, he brings that beauty to earth, communicating it to his
fellows and making them partakers of it, as he gives his feeling
expression. Thus finding utterance as the prophet of God, he
consummates his mission and takes his place in the world order.
Herein he has his being, for life is expression; and each new
harmony which he makes manifest is the medium of his fuller
identification with the universal life.
So it is that the artist is the supreme interpreter, the mediator
between man and beauty. His work is a work of joy, of gratitude, of
worship. He is the happy servant of God, His prophet, through
whom He declares Himself to the children of men.