Part I

NIETZSCHE AND ART

by

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

Author of 'Who is to be Master of the World?'

"Rien n'est beau que le vrai, dit un vers respecté; et moi, je lui

réponds, sans crainte d'un blasphème: Rien n'est vrai sans beauté."

--Alfred de Musset.

CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.

LONDON

1911

[Illustration: Sekhet (Louvre)]

Preface

"We philosophers are never more delighted than when we are taken for

artists."[1]

In this book, which embodies a course of lectures delivered in a

somewhat condensed and summarized form at University College, London,

during November and December, 1910, I have done two things. I have

propounded Nietzsche's general Art doctrine, and, with the view of

illustrating it and of defining it further, I have also applied its

leading principles to one of the main branches of Art.

As this has not been done before, either in English or in any

Continental language, my book is certainly not free from the crudeness

and inadvertences which are inseparable from pioneer efforts of this

nature. Nevertheless it is with complete confidence, and a deep

conviction of its necessity, that I now see it go to print; for,

even if here and there its adventurous spirit may ultimately require

modification, I feel certain that, in the main, time itself, together

with the help of other writers, will fully confirm its general thesis,

if I should be unable to do so.

Sooner or later it will be brought home to us in Europe that we

cannot with impunity foster and cultivate vulgarity and mob qualities

in our architecture, our sculpture, our painting, our music and

literature, without paying very dearly for these luxuries in our

respective national politics, in our family institutions, and even

in our physique. To connect all these things together, and to show

their inevitable interdependence, would be a perfectly possible though

arduous undertaking. In any case, this is not quite the task I have

set myself in this work. I have indeed shown that to bestow admiration

on a work of extreme democratic painting and at the same time to be

convinced of the value of an aristocratic order of society, is to

be guilty of a confusion of ideas which ultimately can lead only to

disastrous results in practical life; but further than this I have not

gone, simply because the compass of these lectures did not permit of my

so doing.

Confining myself strictly to Nietzsche's æsthetic, I have been content

merely to show that the highest Art, or Ruler Art, and therefore the

highest beauty,--in which culture is opposed to natural rudeness,

selection to natural chaos, and simplicity to natural complexity,--can

be the flower and product only of an aristocratic society which, in its

traditions and its active life, has observed, and continues to observe,

the three aristocratic principles,--culture, selection and simplicity.

Following Nietzsche closely, I have sought to demonstrate the

difference between the art which comes of inner poverty (realism, or

democratic art), and that which is the result of inner riches (Ruler

Art).

Identifying the first with the reflex actions which respond to external

stimuli, I have shown it to be slavishly dependent upon environment

for its existence, and, on that account, either beneath reality

(Incompetence), on a level with reality (Realism), or fantastically

different from reality (Romanticism). I have, moreover, associated

these three forms of inferior art with democracy, because in democracy

I find three conditions which are conducive to their cultivation,

viz.--(1) The right of self-assertion granted to everybody, and the

consequent necessary deterioration of world-interpretations owing to

the fact that the function of interpretation is claimed by mediocrity;

(2) the belief in a general truth that can be made common to all, which

seems to become prevalent in democratic times, and which perforce

reduces us to the only truth that can be made common to all, namely

Reality; and (3) a democratic dislike of recognizing the mark or stamp

of any _particular_ human power in the things interpreted, and man's

consequent "return to Nature" untouched by man, which, once again, is

Reality.

Identifying Ruler Art, or the Art of inner riches, with the function of

giving, I have shown it to be dependent upon four conditions which are

quite inseparable from an aristocratic society, and which I therefore

associate, without any hesitation, as Nietzsche does, with Higher Man,

with Nature's rare and _lucky strokes_ among men. These conditions are

--(1) Long tradition under the sway of noble and inviolable values,

resulting in an accumulation of will power and a superabundance of good

spirits; (2) leisure which allows of meditation, and therefore of that

process of lowering pitchers into the wells of inner riches; (3) the

disbelief in freedom for freedom's sake without a purpose or without an

aim; and (4) an order of rank according to which each is given a place

in keeping with his value, and authority and reverence are upheld.

In the course of this exposition, it will be seen that I have to lay

realism also at the door of Ruler Art; but I am careful to point out

that, although such realism (I call it _militant realism_ in respect

to the art both of the Middle Ages and of the later Renaissance, as

well as of Greece) is a fault, of Ruler Art which very much reduces

the latter's rank among the arts; it is nevertheless above that other

realism of mediocrity which, for the want of a better term, I call

_poverty realism_. (See Lecture II, Part II, end.)

In order firmly to establish the difference between the Ruler and

Democratic styles I ought, perhaps, to have entered with more

thoroughness than I have done into the meditative nature of the one,

and the empirical nature of the other. This, apart from a few very

unmistakable hints, I have unfortunately been unable to do. I found

it quite impossible to include all the detail bearing upon the main

thesis, in this first treatise; and, though I have resolved to discuss

these important matters very soon, in the form of supplementary essays,

I can but acknowledge here that I recognize their omission as a blemish.

The wide field covered by this book, and the small form in which I

was compelled to cast it, have thus led to many questions remaining

inadequately answered and to many statements being left insufficiently

substantiated. In the end I found it quite impossible to avail myself

even of a third of the material I had collected for its production,

and I should therefore be grateful if it could be regarded more in the

light of a preliminary survey of the ground to be built upon, rather

than as a finished building taking its foundation in Nietzsche's

philosophy of Art.

With regard to all my utterances on Egypt, I should like the reader

kindly to bear only this in mind: that my choice of Egyptian art, as

the best example of Ruler Art we possess, is neither arbitrary nor

capricious; but, because it is neither arbitrary nor capricious, it

does not follow that I regard a return to the types of Egypt as the

only possible salvation of the graphic arts. This would be sheer

Romanticism and sentimentality. "A thousand paths are there which have

never yet been trodden; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of

life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man's world" (_Z._,

I, XXII.).

It is rather the spirit which led to this Egyptian Art, which I regard

as so necessary to all great achievements, either in legislation, art,

or religion; and whether this spirit happens to be found on the banks

of the Nile, in the Vatican, or in Mexico. I point to it merely as

something which we ought to prize and cherish, and which we now possess

only in an extremely diluted and decadent form. It is the spirit which

will establish order at all costs, whose manner of exploiting higher

men is to look upon the world through their transfiguring vision, and

which believes that it is better for mankind to attain to a high level,

even in ones, twos, or threes, than that the bulk of humanity should

begin to doubt that man can attain to a high level at all.

This spirit might produce any number of types; it is not necessary,

therefore, that the Egyptian type should be regarded as precisely the

one to be desired. I do but call your attention to these granite and

diorite sculptures, because behind them I feel the presence and the

power of that attitude towards life which the ancient Pharaohs held and

reverenced, and which I find reflected in Nietzsche's Art values.

* * * * *

In quoting from German authorities, where I have not been able to

give reference to standard English translations, I have translated

the extracts from the original myself, for the convenience of English

readers; while, in the case of French works, I have deliberately given

the original text, only when I felt that the sense might suffer by

translation.

I should now like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Oscar Levy, who

has always been ready to place his valuable time and wide knowledge at

my disposal whenever I have expressed the smallest desire of consulting

him on any difficult point that may have arisen during the preparation

of these lectures. And I should also like to acknowledge the help

afforded me by both Mr. J. M. Kennedy and Dr. Mügge,--the one through

his extensive acquaintance with Eastern literature, and the other

through his valuable bibliography of works relating to Nietzsche's life

and philosophy.

It only remains for me to thank the Committee and the Provost of

University College, Gower Street, for their kindness, and for the

generous hospitality which they have now extended to me on two separate

occasions; and, finally, to avail myself of this opportunity in order

to express my grateful recognition of the trouble taken on my behalf by

Professor Robert Priebsch and Mr. Walter W. Seton of London University,

on both occasions when I had the honour of delivering a course of

lectures at their College.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

February 1911.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche's Gesämmelte Briefe, vol. 111, p. 305.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

PART I

Anarchy in Modern Art

The State of Modern Art

The Fine Arts:

1. The Artists

2. The Public

3. The Critics

4. Some Art-Criticisms

PART II

Suggested Causes of the Anarchy in Modern Art

1. Morbid Irritability

2. Misleading Systems of Æsthetic

3. Our Heritage:--

(a) Christianity

(b) Protestantism

(c) Philosophical Influences

(d) The Evolutionary Hypothesis

LECTURE II

Government in Art--Nietzsche's Definition of Art

PART I

Divine Art and the Man--God

1. The World "Without Form" and "Void"

2. The First Artists

3. The People and their Man-God

4. The Danger

5. The Two Kinds of Artists

PART II

Deductions from Part I--Nietzsche's Art Principles

1. The Spirit of the Age incompatible with Ruler Art

2. A Thrust parried. Police or Detective Art defined

3. The Purpose of Art Still the Same as Ever

4. The Artist's and the Layman's View of Life

5. The Confusion of the Two Points of View

6. The Meaning of Beauty of Form and of Beauty of Content in Art

7. The Meaning of Ugliness of Form and of Ugliness of Content in Art

8. The Ruler-Artist's Style and Subject

PART III

Landscape and Portrait Painting

1. The Value "Ugly" in the Mouth of the Dionysian Artist

2. Landscape Painting

3. Portrait Painting

LECTURE III

Nietzsche's art principles in the history of art

PART I

Christianity and the Renaissance

1. Rome and the Christian Ideal

2. The Pagan Type appropriated and transformed by Christian Art

3. The Gothic Building and Sentiment

4. The Renaissance

PART II

Greece and Egypt

1. Greek Art

(a) The Parthenon

(b) The Apollo of Tenea

(c) The Two Art-Wills of Ancient Greece

(d) Greek Painting

2. Egyptian Art

(a) King Khephrën

(b) The Lady Nophret

(c) The Pyramid

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sekhet (_Louvre_) Frontispiece

The Marriage of Mary, by Raphael (_Brera, Milan_)

Saskia, by Rembrandt (_Dresden Royal Picture Gallery_)

The Canon of Polycleitus (_Rome_)

The Apollo of Tenea (_Glyptothek, Munich_)

The Medusa Metope of Selinus (_Palermo_)

King Khephrën (_Cairo Museum_)

The Lady Nophret (_Cairo Museum_)

Abbreviations Used in Referring to Nietzsche's Works

E. I. =     The Future of our Educational Institutions.

B. T. =     The Birth of Tragedy.

H. A. H. =     Human All-too-Human.

D. D. =     Dawn of Day.

J. W. =     Joyful Wisdom.

Z. =     Thus spake Zarathustra.

G. E. =     Beyond Good and Evil.

G. M. =     The Genealogy of Morals.

C. W. =     The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner.

T. I. =     The Twilight of the Idols.

A. =     Antichrist.

W. P. =     The Will to Power.

The English renderings given in this book are taken from the

Complete and Authorized Translation of Nietzsche's Works

edited by Oscar Levy.

(This edition in 18 volumes is entirely being made available

at Project Gutenberg too, also with a linked index to all works

as last volume, and will be completed soon.--Transcriber's Note.)

Nietzsche and Art

Lecture I[1]

Part I

Anarchy in Modern Art

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord

did there confound the language of all the earth: and from

thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all

the earth."--_Genesis_ xi. 9.

"Concerning great things," said Nietzsche, "one should either be

silent, or one should speak loftily:--loftily, that is to say,

cynically and innocently."[2]

Art is a great thing. Maybe it is the greatest thing on earth.

Wherever and whenever Nietzsche speaks about it he always does so

loftily, and with reverence; while his position as an anchorite, and

as an artist who kept aloof from the traffic for fame, allowed him to

retain that innocence in his point of view, which he maintains is so

necessary in the treatment of such a subject.

As the children of an age in which Art is rapidly losing its prestige,

we modern Europeans may perhaps feel a little inclined to purse our

lips at the religious solemnity with which Nietzsche approaches this

matter. So large a number of vital forces have been applied to the

object of giving us entertainment in our large cities, that it is now

no longer a simple matter to divorce Art altogether in our minds from

the category of things whose sole purpose is to amuse or please us.

Some there are, of course, who would repudiate this suggestion

indignantly, and who would claim for Art a very high moral purpose.

These moralists apart, however, it seems safe to say, that in the

minds of most people to-day, Art is a thing which either leaves them

utterly unmoved, or to which they turn only when they are in need of

distraction, of decoration for their homes, or of stimulation in their

thought.

Leaving the discussion of Nietzsche's personal view of Art to the next

lecture, I shall now first attempt, from his standpoint, a general

examination of the condition of Art at the present day, which, though

it will be necessarily rapid and sketchy, will, I hope, not prove

inadequate for my purpose.

Before I proceed, however, I should like to be allowed to call your

attention to the difficulties of my task. As far as I am aware, mine is

the first attempt that has been made, either here or abroad, to place

an exhaustive account of Nietzsche's Art doctrine before any audience.

But for one or two German writers, who have discussed Nietzsche

--the artist--tentatively and hesitatingly, I know of no one who has

endeavoured to do so after having had recourse to all his utterances

on the subject, nor do I know of anybody who has applied his æsthetic

principles to any particular branch or branches of Art. It is therefore

with some reason that I now crave your indulgence for my undertaking

and beg you to remember that it is entirely of a pioneer nature.

Many of you here, perhaps, are already acquainted with Nietzsche's

philosophy, and are also intimately associated with one of the branches

of Art. Nevertheless, let me warn you before I begin, that you may have

to listen to heresies that will try your patience to the utmost.

I also am intimately associated with one of the branches of Art, and my

traditions are Art traditions. I can well imagine, therefore, how some

of you will receive many of the statements I am about to make; and I

can only entreat you to bear with me patiently until the end, if only

with the hope that, after all, there may be something worth thinking

about, if not worth embracing, in what you are going to hear.

Two years ago, in this same hall, I had the honour of addressing an

audience on the subject of Nietzsche's moral and evolutionary views,

and, since then, I have wondered whether I really selected the more

important side of his philosophy for my first lectures. If it were

not for the fact that the whole of his thought is, as it were, of one

single piece, harmoniously and consistently woven, I should doubt that

I had selected the more vital portion of it; for it is impossible to

overrate the value of his Art doctrine--especially to us, the children

of an age so full of perplexity, doubt and confusion as this one is. In

taking Nietzsche's Art principles and Art criticism as a basis for a

new valuation of Art, I am doing nothing that is likely to astonish the

careful student of Nietzsche's works.

Friends and foes alike have found themselves compelled to agree upon

this point, that Nietzsche, whatever he may have been besides, was at

least a great artist and a great thinker on Art.

On the ground that he was solely and purely an artist some have even

denied his claim to the title Philosopher. Among the more celebrated

of modern writers who have done this, is the Italian critic Benedetto

Croce;[3] while Julius Zeitler declares that "Nietzsche's artistic

standpoint should be regarded as the very basis of all his thought,"

and that "no better access could be discovered to his spirit than by

way of his æsthetic."[4]

Certainly, from the dawn of his literary career, Art seems to have

been one of Nietzsche's most constant preoccupations. Even the general

argument of his last work, _The Will to Power_, is an entirely artistic

one; while his hatred of Christianity was the hatred of an artist

long before it became the hatred of an aristocratic moralist, or of a

prophet of Superman.

In _The Birth of Tragedy_, a book in which, by the bye, he declares that

there can be but one justification of the world, and that is as an

æsthetic phenomenon,[4] we find the following words--

"To the purely æsthetic world interpretation ... taught in this book,

there is no greater antithesis than the Christian dogma, which is

_only_ and will be only moral, and which, with its absolute standards,

for instance, its truthfulness of God, relegates--that is, disowns,

convicts, condemns--Art, all Art, to the realm of falsehood. Behind

such a mode of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine, must

be hostile to Art, I always experienced what was _hostile to life_, the

wrathful vindictive counter will to life itself: for all life rests on

appearance, Art, illusion, optics, and necessity of perspective and

error."[5]

Nietzsche's works are, however, full of the evidences of an artistic

temperament.

Who but an artist, knowing the joy of creating, for instance, could

have laid such stress upon the creative act as the great salvation from

suffering and an alleviation of life?[6] Who but an artist could have been

an atheist out of his lust to create?

"For what could be created, if there were Gods!" cries Zarathustra.[7]

But, above all, who save an artist could have elevated taste to such

a high place as a criterion of value, and have made his own personal

taste the standard for so many grave valuations?

"And ye tell me, my friends," says Zarathustra, "that there is to be no

dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste

and tasting!

"Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and

alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about

weight and scales and weighing!"[8]

But it is more particularly in Nietzsche's understanding of the

instinct which drove him to expression, and in his attitude towards

those whom he would teach, that we recognize the typical artist, in

the highest acceptation of the word--that is to say, as a creature of

abundance, who must give thereof or perish. Out of plenitude and riches

only, do his words come to us. With him there can be no question of

eloquence as the result of poverty, vindictiveness, spite, resentment,

or envy; for such eloquence is of the swamp.[9] Where he is wrath, he

speaks from above, where he despises his contempt is prompted by love

alone, and where he annihilates he does so as a creator.[10]

"Mine impatient love," he says, "floweth over in streams, down towards

the sunrise and the sunset. From out silent mountains and tempests of

affliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys.

"Too long have I yearned and scanned the far horizon. Too long hath the

shroud of solitude been upon me: thus have I lost the habit of silence.

"A tongue have I become and little else besides, and the brawling of a

brook, falling from lofty rocks: downward into the dale will I pour my

words.

"And let the torrent of my love dash into all blocked highways. How

could a torrent help but find its way to the sea!

"Verily, a lake lies within me, complacent and alone; but the torrent

of my love draws this along with it, down--into the ocean!

"New highways I tread, new worlds come unto me; like all creators I

have grown weary of old tongues. No longer will my spirit walk on

worn-out soles.

"Too slow footed is all speech for me:--Into thy chariot, O storm, do I

leap! And even thee will I scourge with my devilry.

"Thus spake Zarathustra."[11]

[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 1st, 1910.

[2] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 1.

[2] Æsthetic (translation by Douglas Ainslie), p. 350.

[3] Nietzsches Æsthetik, p. 5.

[4] _B. T._, p. 183.

[5] _B. T._, pp. 9, 10.

[6] _Z._, II, XXIV.

[7] _Z._, II, XXIV.

[8] _Z._, II, XXXV. See also La Bruyère's reply to his countrymen's

popular belief, "des goûts et des couleurs on ne peut discuter," in Les

Caractères: Des ouvrages de l'esprit, Aph. 10.

[9] _Z._, III, LVI.

[10] _Z._, II, XXXIV.

[11] _Z._, II, XXIII.

The State of Modern Art.

The Art of to-day, unholy and undivine as the Tower of Babel, seems to

have incurred the wrath of a mighty godhead, and those who were at work

upon it have abandoned it to its fate, and have scattered apart--all

speaking different tongues, and all filled with confusion.

Precisely on account of the disorder which now prevails in this

department of life, sincere and honest people find it difficult to show

the interest in it, which would be only compatible with its importance.

Probably but few men, to-day, could fall on their knees and sob at

the deathbed of a great artist, as Pope Leo X once did. Maybe there

are but one or two who, like the Taiko's generals, when Teaism was in

the ascendancy in Japan, would prefer the present of a rare work of

art to a large grant of territory as a reward of victory;[12] and there

is certainly not one individual in our midst but would curl his lips

at the thought of a mere servant sacrificing his life for a precious

picture.

And yet, says the Japanese writer, Okakura-Kakuzo, "many of our

favourite dramas in Japan are based on the loss and subsequent recovery

of a noted masterpiece."[13]

In this part of the world to-day, not only the author, but also the

audience for such dramas is entirely lacking.

The layman, as well as the artist, knows perfectly well that this

is so. Appalled by the disorder, contradictoriness, and difference

of opinion among artists, the layman has ceased to think seriously

about Art; while artists themselves are so perplexed by the want of

solidarity in their ranks, that they too are beginning to question the

wherefore of their existence.

Not only does every one arrogate to himself the right to utter his word

upon Art; but Art's throne itself is now claimed by thousands upon

thousands of usurpers--each of whom has a "free personality" which

he insists upon expressing,[14] and to whom severe law and order would be

an insuperable barrier. Exaggerated individualism and anarchy are the

result. But such results are everywhere inevitable, when all æsthetic

canons have been abolished, and when there is no longer anybody strong

enough to command or to lead.

"Knowest thou not who is most needed of all?" says Zarathustra. "He who

commandeth great things.

"To execute great things is difficult; but the more difficult task is

to command great things."[15]

Direct commanding of any sort, however, as Nietzsche declares, has

ceased long since. "In cases," he observes, "where it is believed that

the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after

attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together

of clever gregarious men: all representative constitutions, for

example, are of this origin."[16]

Although, in this inquiry, the Fine Arts will be the subject of

my particular attention, it should not be supposed that this is

necessarily the department in modern life in which Nietzsche believed

most disorder, most incompetence, and most scepticism prevails. I

selected the Fine Arts, in the first place, merely because they are the

arts concerning which I am best informed, and to which the Nietzschean

doctrine can be admirably applied; and secondly, because sculpture and

painting offer a wealth of examples known to all, which facilitates

anything in the way of an exposition. For even outsiders and plain men

in the street must be beginning to have more than an inkling of the

chaos and confusion which now reigns in other spheres besides the Fine

Arts. It must be apparent to most people that, in every department

of modern life where culture and not calculation, where taste and

not figures, where ability and not qualifications, are alone able to

achieve anything great--that is to say, in religion, in morality, in

law, in politics, in music, in architecture, and finally in the plastic

arts, precision and government are now practically at an end.

"Disintegration," says Nietzsche,"--that is to say, uncertainty--is

peculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound

faith.... All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice

which still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the

mild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind--soon, where we are walking,

no one will any longer be able to stand!"[17]

We do not require to be told that in religion and moral matters,

scarcely any two specialists are agreed--the extraordinarily large

number of religious sects in England alone needs but to be mentioned

here; in law we divine that things are in a bad state; in politics even

our eyes are beginning to give us evidence of the serious uncertainty

prevailing; while in architecture and music the case is pitiable.

"If we really wished, if we actually dared to devise a style of

architecture which corresponded to the state of our souls," says

Nietzsche, "a labyrinth would be the building we should erect. But," he

adds, "we are too cowardly to construct anything which would be such a

complete revelation of our hearts."[18]

However elementary our technical knowledge of the matter may be, we, as

simple inquirers, have but to look about our streets to-day, in order

to convince ourselves of the ignominious muddle of modern architecture.

Here we find structural expedients used as ornaments,[19] the most rigid

parts of buildings, in form (the rectangular parts, etc.), placed

near the roof instead of in the basement,[20] and pillars standing

supporting, and supported by, nothing.[21] Elsewhere we see solids

over voids,[22] mullions supporting arches,[23] key-stones introduced into

lintels,[24] real windows appearing as mere holes in the wall, while the

ornamental windows are shams,[25] and pilasters resting on key-stones.[26]

And, everywhere, we see recent requirements masked and concealed behind

Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque embellishments,

thrown together helter-skelter, and with a disregard of structural

demands which must startle even the uninitiated.[27]

Our streets are ugly in the extreme.[28] Only at night, as Camille

Mauclair says, does the artificial light convert their hideousness

into a sort of lugubrious grandeur,[29] and that is perhaps why, to the

sensitive artistic Londoner, the darkness of night or the pale glow of

the moon is such a solace and relief.

As to the state of modern music, this is best described perhaps, though

with perfectly unconscious irony, by Mr. Henry Davey, in the opening

words of his _Student's Musical History_.

"Music has indeed been defined," he says, "as 'sound with regular

vibrations,' other sounds being called noise. This definition," the

author adds, "is only suited to undeveloped music; modern music may

include noise and even silence."[30]

People are mistaken if they suppose that Nietzsche, in attacking

Wagner as he did, was prompted by any personal animosity or other

considerations foreign to the question of music. In Wagner, Nietzsche

saw a Romanticist of the strongest possible type, and he was opposed

to the Romantic School of Music, because of its indifference to form.

Always an opponent of anarchy, despite all that his critics may say

to the contrary, Nietzsche saw with great misgiving the decline and

decay of melody and rhythm in modern music, and in attacking Wagner

as the embodiment of the Romantic School, he merely personified the

movement to which he felt himself so fundamentally opposed. And in

this opposition he was not alone. The Romantic movement, assailed by

many, will continue to be assailed, until all its evil influences are

exposed.

"Since the days of Beethoven," says Emil Naumann, "instrumental

music, generally speaking, has retrograded as regards spontaneity of

invention, thematic working, and mastery of art form,"[31] and the same

author declares that he regards all modern masters as the natural

outcome of the Romantic era.[32]

Nietzsche has told us in his Wagner pamphlets what he demands from

music,[33] and this he certainly could not get from the kind of music

which is all the rage just now.

What it lacks in invention it tries to make up in idiosyncrasy,

intricacy, and complexity, and that which it cannot assume in the

matter of form, it attempts to convert into a virtue and a principle.[34]

"Bombast and complexity in music," says P. von Lind, "as in any other

art, are always a sign of inferiority; for they betray an artist's

incapacity to express himself simply, clearly, and exhaustively--three

leading qualities in our great heroes of music (_Tonheroen_). In this

respect the whole of modern music, including Wagner's, is inferior to

the music of the past."[35]

But of all modern musical critics, perhaps Richard Hamann is

the most desperate concerning the work of recent composers. His book on

Impressionism and Art entirely supports Nietzsche's condemnation of the

drift of modern music, and in his references to Wagner, even the words

lie uses seem to have been drawn from the Nietzschean vocabulary.[36]

Briefly what he complains of in the music of the day is its want of

form,[37] its abuse of discord,[38] its hundred and one different artifices

for producing nerve-exciting and nerve-stimulating effects,[39] its

predilection in favour of cacophonous instruments,[40] its unwarrantable

sudden changes in rhythm or tempo within the same movement,[41] its habit

of delaying the solving chord, as in the love-death passage of Tristan

and Isolde,[42] and, finally, its realism, of which a typical example is

Strauss's "By a Lonely Brook"--all purely Nietzschean objections!

Well might Mr. Allen cry out: "Oh for the classic simplicity of a

bygone age, the golden age of music that hath passed away!"[43] But

the trouble does not end here; for, if we are to believe a certain

organ-builder, bell-founder and pianoforte-maker of ripe experience, it

has actually descended into the sphere of instrument-making as well.[44]

[12] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Book of Tea_, pp. 112, 113.

[13] _The Book of Tea_, p. 112.

[14] See in this regard _B. T._, pp. 54, 55.

[15] _Z._, II. XLVI.

[16] _G. E._, p.121.

[17] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 55.

[18] _D. D._, Aph. 169.

[19] This is such a common fault that it is superfluous to give

particular examples of it, but the New War Office in Whitehall is a

good case in point.

[20] Local Government Board building; Piccadilly Hotel (Regent St.

side).

[21] Piccadilly Hotel (Piccadilly side), and the Sicilian Avenue,

Bloomsbury.

[22] New Scotland Yard.

[23] Gaiety Theatre; the new Y.M.C.A. building, Tottenham Court Road.

[24] Local Government Board.

[25] Gaiety Theatre.

[26] Marylebone Workhouse.

[27] See Fergusson's Introduction to his _History of Modern

Architecture_.

[28] See W. Morris's _Address on the Decorative Arts_, pp. 18, 19.

[29] _Trois crises de l'art actuel_, p. 243.

[30] _The Student's Musical History_, p. 1.

[31] _History of Music_, Vol. II, p. 927. See also _The Student's

Musical History_, by Henry Davey, p. 97. "Weakness of rhythm is the

main reason of the inferiority of the romantic composers to their

predecessors."

[32] _History of Music_, p. 1195. See also P. v. Lind, _Moderner

Geschmack und moderne Musik_, in which the author complains of the

excessive virtuosity, want of faith and science of modern music, while

on p. 34 he, too, calls all modern musicians romanticists.

[33] See especially _C. W._, pp. 59, 60.

[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 276.

[35] _Moderner Geschmack und moderne Musik_, p. 54.

[36] Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst.

[37] _Ibid_., pp. 53, 57.

[38] _Ibid_., p. 64.

[39] _Ibid_., p. 67.

[40] _Ibid_., p. 69.

[41] _Ibid_., p. 74.

[42] _Ibid_., p. 61.

[43] _The Fallacy of Modern Music_, p. 10.

[44] _A Protest against the Modern Development of Unmusical Tone_, by

Thomas C. Lewis.

The Fine Arts.--1. The Artists.

Turning, now, to Painting and Sculpture, what is it precisely that we

see?

In this branch of Art, chaos and anarchy are scarcely the words to use.

The condition is rather one of complete and hopeless dissolution. There

is neither a direction, a goal, nor a purpose. Slavish realism side

by side with crude conventions, incompetence side by side with wasted

talent, coloured photography side by side with deliberate eccentricity,

and scientific principles applied to things that do not matter in

the least: these are a few of the features which are noticeable at a

first glance. Going a little deeper, we find that the whole concept of

what Art really is seems to be totally lacking in the work of modern

painters and sculptors, and, if we were forced to formulate a Broad

definition for the painting and sculpture of our time, we should find

ourselves compelled to say that they are no more than a _field in which

more or less interesting people manifest their more or less interesting

personalities_.

There is nothing in this definition which is likely to offend the

modern artist. On the contrary, he would probably approve of it all

too hastily. But, in approving of it, he would confess himself utterly

ignorant of what Art actually is, and means, and purposes in our midst.

Or to state the case differently: it is not that the modern artist

has no notion at all of what Art is; but, that his notion is one

which belittles, humiliates and debases Art, root and branch.

To have gazed with understanding at the divine Art of Egypt, to have

studied Egyptian realism and Egyptian conventionalism; to have stood

doubtfully before Greek sculpture, even of the best period, and to have

known how to place it in the order of rank among the art-products of

the world; finally, to have learnt to value the Art of the Middle Ages,

not so much because of its form, but because of its content: these are

experiences which ultimately make one stand aghast before the work of

our modern men, and even before the work of some of their predecessors,

and to ask oneself into whose hands could Art have passed that she

should have fallen so low?

Whether one look on a Sargent or on a Poynter, on a Rodin or on a

Brock, on a Vuillard or on a Maurice Denis, on an Alfred East or on a

Monet, the question in one's heart will be; not, why are these men so

poor? but, why are they so modest?--why are they so humble?--why, in

fact, are their voices so obsequiously servile and faint? One will ask:

not, why do these men paint or mould as they do? but, why do they paint

or mould at all?

Ugliness, in the sense of amorphousness, one will be able to explain.

Ugliness, in this sense, although its position in Art has not yet been

properly accounted for, one will be able to classify perfectly well.

But this tremulousness, this plebeian embarrassment, this democratic

desire to please, above all, this democratic disinclination to assume

a position of authority,--these are things which contradict the

very essence of Art, and these are the things which are found in the

productions of almost every European school to-day.

But, as a matter of fact, to do artists justice, beneath all the

tremendous activity of modern times in both branches of the art we are

discussing, there is, among the thinking members of the profession,

a feeling of purposelessness, of doubt and pessimism, which is ill

concealed, even in their work. The best of these artists know, and

will even tell you, that there are no canons, that individuality is

absolute, and that the aim of all their work is extremely doubtful, if

not impossible to determine. There is not much quarrelling done, or

hand-to-hand scuffling engaged in; because no one feels sufficiently

firm on his own legs to stand up and oppose the doctrine that "there is

no accounting for tastes." A clammy, deathlike stillness reigns over

the whole of this seething disagreement and antagonism in principles.

Not since Whistler fired his bright missiles into the press has the

report of a decent-sized gun been heard; and this peace in chaos, this

silence in confusion, is full of the suggestion of decomposition and

decay.

"Art appears to be surrounded by the magic influence of death," says

Nietzsche, "and in a short time mankind will be celebrating festivals

of memory in honour of it."[45]

With but one or two brilliant exceptions, that which characterizes

modern painting and modern sculpture is, generally speaking, its

complete lack of Art in the sense in which I shall use this word in my

next lecture. This indeed, as you will see, covers everything. For the

present purpose, however, let it be said that, from the Nietzschean

standpoint, the painters and sculptors of the present age are deficient

in dignity, in pride, in faith, and, above all, in love.

They are too dependent upon environment, upon Nature, to give a

direction and a meaning to their exalted calling; they are too

disunited and too lawless to be leaders; they are in an age too chaotic

and too sceptical to be able to find a "wherefore" and a "whither" for

themselves; and, above all, there are too many pretenders in their

ranks--too many who ought never to have painted or moulded at all--to

make it possible for the greatest among them to elevate the Cause of

Art to its proper level.

No æsthetic canon is to be seen or traced anywhere; nobody knows one,

nobody dares to assert one. The rule that tastes cannot be disputed is

now the only rule that prevails, and, behind this rule, the basest,

meanest and most preposterous individual claims are able to make their

influence felt.

Certainly, it is true, there is no accounting for tastes; but, once

a particular taste has revealed itself it ought to be possible to

classify it and to point out where it belongs and whither it is going

to lead. Undoubtedly a man's taste cannot be taken from him, because

its roots are in his constitution; but, once he has identified himself

with a particular form of taste, it ought to be possible to identify

him too,--that is to say, to realize his rank and his value.

If it is impossible to do this nowadays, it is because there is no

criterion to guide us. It will therefore be my endeavour to establish a

criterion, based upon Nietzsche's æsthetic, and, in the course of these

lectures, to classify a few forms of taste in accordance with it.

Meanwhile, however, the inquiry into the present condition of the Fine

Arts must be continued; and this shall now be done by taking up the

public's standpoint.

[45] _H. A. H._, Vol. I, pp. 205, 206.

2. _The Public._

The man who goes to a modern exhibition of pictures and sculptures,

experiences visually what they experience aurally who stand on a

Sunday evening within sight of the Marble Arch, just inside Hyde Park.

Not only different voices and different subjects are in the air; but

fundamentally different conceptions of life, profoundly and utterly

antagonistic outlooks.

The Academy, The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and

Gravers, The Royal Society of British Artists, The New English Art

Club, The Salon des Artistes Français, and the Salon des Beaux Arts,

are all alike in this; and the International's scorn of the Academy,[46]

xvi or the Academy's scorn of it, is as ridiculous as the Beaux Arts'

scorn of the Salon, or vice versâ.

It is quite foolish, therefore, to inveigh against the public for their

bad taste, Philistinism and apathy. How can they be expected to know,

where there are no teachers? How can they be otherwise than apathetic

where keen interest must perforce culminate in confusion? How can they

have good taste or any taste at all, where there is no order of rank in

tastes?

We know the torments of the modern lay student of Art, when he asks

himself uprightly and earnestly whether he should say "yes" or "no"

before a picture or a piece of sculpture. We know the moments of

impotent hesitancy during which he racks his brains for some canon

or rule on which to base his judgment, and we sympathize with his

blushes when finally he inquires after the name of the artist, before

volunteering to express an opinion.

At least a name is some sort of a standard nowadays. In the absence of

other standards it is something to cling to; and the modern visitor to

an Art exhibition has precious little to cling to, poor soul!

Still, even names become perplexing in the end; for it soon occurs to

the lay student in question that, not only Millais, but also Leighton,

Whistler, Rodin, Frith, Watts, Gauguin, John, and Vuillard have names

in the Art world.

Now, it is generally at this stage that such a student of Art either

retires disconcerted from his first attempts at grappling with the

problem, and takes refuge in indifference; or else, from the depth of

his despair, draws a certain courage which makes him say that, after

all, _he knows what he likes_. Even if he does utter a heresy at times

against fashion or against culture, he knows what pleases him.

And thus is formed that large concourse of people who set up what they

like and dislike as the standard of taste.

It is in vain that painters and sculptors deplore the existence of this

part of their audience. It is they themselves who are responsible for

its existence. It is the anarchy in their own ranks that has infected

the bravest of their followers.

The taste of the masses, endowed with self-confidence in this way, is

now a potent force in European Art, and among those so-called artists

who do not suffer under the existing state of affairs, there are many

who actually conform and submit to this mob-rule. In my next lecture I

shall show how even the art-canons of the lay masses have been adopted

by some painters and sculptors in perfect good faith.

"Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, these petty people,"

says Zarathustra. "Thus we have at last given them power as well;--and

now they teach that 'good' is only what petty people call 'good.'"

It is on this account that many sincere and refined natures turn

reluctantly away from Art altogether nowadays, and begin to doubt

whether it serves any good purpose in the world at all. They grow weary

of the humbug of the studios, the affectation of gushing amateurs, and

the snobbery of the lionizing disciple of one particular school, and

doubt the honesty even of his leader. They grow timid and renounce

all judgment in Art, wondering whether any of it really matters. In

a gingerly fashion they still hold on to generally accepted views,--

views that time seems to have endorsed,--and thus they very often give

all their attention to the Old Masters.[48]

And yet, it is in thus turning away with contempt from modern Art, that

sincere people tacitly acknowledge how profoundly serious the question

is on which they have turned their backs. For, it is the horror of its

disorder that makes them disconsolate: they could continue facing this

disorder only if the matter were less important.

Passing over that unfortunately large percentage of up-to-date people,

in whose minds Art in general is associated with jewellery, French

pastry and goldfish, as a more or less superfluous, though pleasing,

luxury, the rest of the civilized world certainly feels with varying

degrees of conviction that Art has some essential bearing upon life;

and, though few will grant it the importance that Nietzsche claims for

it, a goodly number will realize that it is quite impossible to reckon

without it.

Now, if by chance, one of the last-mentioned people, having grown

disgusted at the prevailing degeneration of Art, should start out in

quest of a canon, or a standard whereby he might take his bearings in

the sea of confusion around him, what are we to suppose would await him?

Unfortunately, we know only too well what awaits him!

He may turn to the art-critics--the class of men which society

sustains for his special benefit in art matters,--or he may turn to

the philosophers. He may spend years and years of labour in studying

the Art and thought of Antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of the

Renaissance; but, unless he have sufficient independence of spirit to

distrust not only the Art, but every single manifestation of modern

life, and to try to find what the general corrosive is which seems to

be active everywhere, it is extremely doubtful whether he will ever

succeed in reaching a bourne or a destination of any sort whatsoever.

He will still be asking: "What is a good poem?" "What is good music?"

--and, above all, "What is a good picture or a good statue?"

We know the difficulties of the layman, and even of the artist in

this matter; for most of us who have thought about Art at all have

experienced these same difficulties.

The general need, then, I repeat, is a definite canon,[49] a definite

statement as to the aim and purpose of Art, and the establishment of an

order of rank among tastes. Once more, I declare that I have attempted

to arrive at these things by the principles of Nietzsche's Æsthetic;

but, in order to forestall the amusement which an announcement of this

sort is bound to provoke nowadays, let me remind you of two things:

_First_, that any artistic canon must necessarily be relative to a

certain type of man; and _secondly_, that the most that an establishment

of an order of rank among tastes can do for you, is to allow you the

opportunity of exercising some choice--a choice of type in manhood,

therefore a choice as to a mode of life, and therefore a choice of

values, and the customs and conditions that spring from them.

At present you have no such choice. You certainly have the option of

following either Rodin and Renoir, or Whistler and Manet, or Sargent

and Boldini, or John and Gauguin, or Herkomer and Lavery; but not one

of you can say, "If I follow the first couple I shall be going in such

and such a direction," or, "If I follow the second couple I shall be

travelling towards this or that goal,"--this you would scarcely be

able to say; neither could your leaders help you.

[46] For some amusing, and, at the same time, shrewd, remarks

concerning the International Society, I would refer the reader to Mr.

Wake _Cook's Anarchism in Art_ (Cassell & Co.). I agree on the whole

with what Mr. Wake Cook says, but cannot appreciate his remarks on

Whistler.

[47] _Z._, IV, LXVII.

[48] In a _Times_ leader of the 20th December, 1909, the writer puts

the case very well. After referring to the heated controversy which

was then raging round the Berlin wax bust that Dr. Bode declared to be

a Leonardo, the writer goes on to say: "... it is amusing to see how

the merit of the work is forgotten in the dispute about its origin. It

seems to be assumed that if it is by Leonardo it must be a great work

of art, and if by Lucas nothing of the kind.... This fact proves what

needs no proving, that there are many wealthy connoisseurs who buy

works of art not for their intrinsic merit, but for what is supposed to

be their authenticity.... This state of things reveals an extraordinary

timidity in buyers of works of art. If they all trusted their own

taste" [that is to say, if they had a taste of their own based upon

some reliable canon] "names would have no value. The intrinsic merit

of a work of art is not affected by the name it bears.... Yet in the

market the name of a great painter is worth more than the inspiration

of a lesser one.... Hence many people believe that it is far more

difficult to understand pictures than literature.... But there is no

more mystery about pictures than about literature. It is only the

market that makes a mystery of them, and the market does this because

it is timid." In other words: because it does not know.

[49] On this point see _Questionings on Criticism and Beauty_, by the

Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour. (Oxford University Press.) Mr. Balfour entirely

agrees that to-day we are driven to a kind of anarchy of individual

preferences, and he acknowledges that he is not satisfied to remain in

this position. He does not seem to recognize, however, how curiously

and almost perfectly this anarchy in Art coincides with a certain

anarchy in other departments of life, and thus, although it displeases

him, he sees in it no imminent danger, or no hint that Art and life

react in any way upon each other.

3. The Critics.

Now, to return to our lay-student of Art, let us suppose that he first

approaches the art-critics of the day for guidance. Will there be one

among these men who will satisfy him? Is there a single art-critic

either of the nineteenth or twentieth century who knew, or who knows,

his business?

It is possible to point to one or two, and even so, in doing this, one

is prompted more by a sense of kindness than by a sense of accuracy.

Some Continental critics, Camille Mauclair and Muther among them, and

here and there an English critic like R. A. M. Stevenson, occasionally

seem to hit a nail on the head; but as a rule, one can say with

Coventry Patmore: "There is little that is conclusive or fruitful in

any of the criticism of the present day."[50]

For the most part it is written by men who know absurdly little of

their subject, and who, if they do know it, are acquainted much more

with its chronological and encyclopædic than with its philosophical

side. There is not much conscience either, or much acumen, in these

men; and they are as a rule concerned with questions that are

irrelevant to the point at issue. Like a certain kind of insect, as

Nietzsche very justly remarks, they live by stinging; but their stings

serve no purpose save that of providing them with their food.[51]

They are, perhaps, less to blame than the artists themselves for the

state of affairs that exists to-day; but, while the artists have

betrayed only themselves, the critics have betrayed the reading

public. They have neither resisted nor condemned the flood of anarchy

that has swept over the art-world; they have rather promoted it in

every way in their power, abetting and applauding artists in their

lawlessness. In fairness to some of them, however, it should be said,

that in encouraging the confusion and disorder around them they very

often acted with almost religious sincerity. This reservation applies

to Ruskin, for instance, and to many other critics writing for the

better-class papers.

Lest this be considered as an overstatement of the case, hear what one

of these men himself actually says concerning his own profession! Mr.

Frank Rutter, writing in 1907, expressed himself as follows:--

"In olden days the press used to lead public opinion; now it meekly

follows because its courage has been sapped by servile cringing to

the advertiser, because its antics and sensational inaccuracy have

brought it into contempt. No longer commanding the authority of a

parent or guardian, it seeks to attract attention by the methods of the

cheap-jack. The few exceptions surviving only prove the rule."[52]

Finding themselves forced to speak of other things than "The Purpose of

Art," "The Standard of Beauty," and "The Canons of Art"--simply because

nobody now knows anything about these matters, or dares to assert

anything concerning them,--the better-class art-critics, feeling that

they must do something more than state merely their opinions concerning

the work under notice--in fact, that they must give their reasons for

their praise or blame--have lately been compelled to have recourse to

the only field that is open to them, and that is _technique_.

Now, while Mr. Clutton Brock seems perfectly justified in deprecating

these tactics on the part of some of his brother critics, and while

Mr. Rutter seems quite wrong in upholding them, the question which

naturally arises out of the controversy is: what is there left to the

critic to talk about?

If he is no longer able to judge of the general tendency and teaching

of a play, and if he is no longer able to regard it æsthetically,

what can he do but analyse the playwright's grammar, and seek out the

latter's split infinitives, his insufficient use of the subjunctive

mood, his Cockney idioms and Cockney solecisms?

We agree with Mr. Clutton Brock that ... "the public has no concern

with the process of production but only with the product"; and

that "if Art _were in a healthy state_[53] the public would know this

and would not ask for technical criticism." We also agree that "the

critic's proper business is with the product, not with the process of

production; to explain their own understanding and enjoyment of the

meaning and beauty of works of art, and not the technical means by

which they have been made."[54]

But, while we agree with all this, we cannot help sympathizing with the

late R. A. M. Stevenson and his admirer Mr. Frank Rutter; for their

dilemma is unique.

When Monsieur Domergue of the French Academy assured his friend

Beauzée confidentially that he had discovered that Voltaire didn't

know grammar, Beauzée very rightly replied with some irony: "I am much

obliged to you for telling me; now I know that it is possible to do

without it."[55]

And this is the only reply that ought to be made to any criticism which

analyses the technique of a real work of Art; since it is obvious,

that if technical questions are uppermost, the work is by implication

unworthy of consideration in all other respects.[56]

[50] _Principles in Art_, p. 4.

[51] _H. A. H_., Vol. II, Aph. 164.

[52] _The Academy_, August 24th, 1907. Article, "The Pursuit of Taste."

[53] The italics are mine.

[54] _The Academy_, Oct. 26th, 1907. Article, "The Hypochondria of Art."

[55] Monsieur de Saint Ange's Reception Speech, 1810.

[56] There is, however, a further excuse for Mr. Rutter and his school

of critics, and that is, that in an age like this one, in which

Amateurism is rampant, the critic very often performs a salutary office

in condemning a work on purely technical grounds. I, for my part,

am quite convinced that the morbid attention which is now paid to

technique is simply a result of the extraordinary preponderance of the

art-student element in our midst.

4. Some Art Criticisms.

In order further to establish my contention, it might perhaps be an

advantage to refer to some criticisms that have actually been made.

It will not be necessary to give more than one or two of these,

because everybody must know that similar instances could be multiplied

indefinitely; but while I shall limit the selection, I should not like

it to be thought that the cases I present are not absolutely typical.

Quite recently the art-world has been staring with something akin to

amazement, not unmingled here and there with indignation, at the work

of one Augustus John, in whose pictures they have found at once a

problem and an innovation.

Now, without for the present wishing to express any opinion at all upon

Mr. John's work, this at least seemed quite clear to me when I first

saw it; namely, that it challenged profound analysis. Unconsciously or

consciously, Mr. John seemed to re-question a whole number of things

afresh. The direction of Art, the purpose of Art, the essence of

Art, the value of Art--these are some of the subjects into which he

provoked me to inquire.

Here was an opportunity for the more wise among the critics to show

their wisdom. This was essentially a case in which the public required

expert guidance. Augustus John comes forward with a new concept of what

is beautiful. He says pictorially this and that is beautiful. Are we to

follow him or to reject him?

Hear one or two critics:--

Commenting upon one of Mr. Max Beerbohm's caricatures in the Spring

Exhibition of the New English Art Club, 1909, the Times critic writes

as follows--"Here an art-critic meets a number of Mr. John's strange

females with long necks and bent, unlovely heads, like a child's

copy of a Primitive; and the puzzled critic ejaculates, 'How odd

it seems that thirty years hence I may be desperately in love with

these ladies!' Odd, indeed, but perfectly possible," continues the

Timesexpert. "Some of us have learned, in twenty years, to find nature

in Claude Monet, and the time may come when the women in Mr. John's

'Going to the Sea,' or in the 'Family Group' at the Grafton, will seem

as beautiful as the Venus de Milo. The 'return of Night primeval and of

old chaos' may be nearer than we think." Then after paying Mr. John's

drawing a compliment, the writer continues: "But can any one, for

all that, whose mind is not warped by purely technical prepossession

in favour of a technician, say that the picture would not have been

enormously improved if the artist had thought more of nature and less

of his 'types' If Mr. John would throw his types to the winds, look

for a beautiful model, and paint her as she is, we should not have to

wait the thirty years of Mr. Max Beerbohm's critic, but might begin to

fall in love with her at once."[57]

And this, let me assure you, is a comparatively able criticism!

But, what guidance does it give? Why is it so timid and non-committing?

And, where it is committing, why is it so vague? The words "beautiful

model" mean absolutely nothing nowadays. How, then, can the critic

employ them without defining the particular sense in which he wishes

them to be understood?

I examined this picture of Mr. John's, as also the one at the Grafton.

Both of them were full of his personal solution of the deepest problems

associated with the ideas of Art and beauty; but how can we know

whether to accept these solutions unless they are made quite plain by

our critics? It may be suggested that Mr. John's solutions of these

problems is not sufficiently important. Why, then, discuss them at all?

The _Daily Telegraph_ also contained a so-called criticism of Mr. John.

After commenting, as the previous critic did, upon Mr. Max Beerbohm's

caricature and the words accompanying it, the writer proceeds: "How

true--to give the most obvious of all instances--with respect to

Wagner! And yet Mr. Max Beerbohm, the satirist, is as regards the

actual moment, not quite, quite up to date. To-day, for fear of

being accused of a Bœotian denseness, we hasten to acclaim, if not

necessarily to enjoy, Cézanne, Maurice Denis, the neo-Impressionists,

etc., etc."[58]

"For fear of being accused of Bœotian denseness!" Yes, that is the

whole trouble! Apparently, then, if we are to believe the _Daily

Telegraph_ critic, Mr. John has been acclaimed, simply in order that his

critics may escape the gibe of being classically dense!

Possessing neither the necessary knowledge, nor the necessary values,

nor yet the necessary certainty, to take up a definite stand for or

against, these critics "acclaim" novelty, in whatever garb it may come,

lest, perchance, their intelligence be for one instant doubted. Very

good!--at least this is a confession which reveals both their humility

and their honesty, and, since it entirely supports my contention, I am

entirely grateful for it.

But what ought to be said to the implied, ingenuous and perfectly

unwarrantable assumption, that that which posterity endorses must of

necessity have been right all along? Why should Wagner be vindicated

simply because an age subsequent to his own happens to rave about

him? Before such posthumous success can vindicate a man, surely the

age in which it occurs must be duly valued. In the event of its being

more lofty, more noble, and more tasteful than the age which preceded

it, then certainly posthumous fame is a vindication; but if the case

be otherwise, then it is a condemnation. In an ascending culture the

classic of yesterday becomes the primitive of to-morrow, and in a

declining culture the decadent of yesterday becomes the classic of

to-morrow. Thus in valuing, say, Michelangelo, it all depends whence

you come. If you come from Egypt and walk down towards him, your

opinion will be very different from that of the man who comes from

twentieth-century Europe and who walks up towards him.

But we are not ascending so rapidly or so materially--if we are

ascending at all--as to make posthumous success a guarantee of

excellence. In fact, precisely the converse might be true, and men

who are now quickly forgotten, may be all the greater on that account

alone. In any case, however, the matter is not so obvious as to allow

us to make the broad generalizations we do concerning it.

Perhaps, in order to be quite fair, I ought now to refer to other

critics, as well as to other criticisms concerning John written by the

critics already quoted. True, in the Times for October 14th, 1905,

there appears a more elaborate discussion of Mr. John's powers. (I say

more elaborate, but I mean more lengthy!) And the _Daily Telegraph_ has

also given us more careful views, as, for instance, in their issues of

October 17th, 1905, and November 23rd, 1909. I doubt, however, whether

it could be honestly said that one really understands any better how to

place Mr. John after having read the articles in question, though, in

making this objection, I should like it to be understood, that I regard

it as applying not only to the art-criticism of the two particular

papers to which I have referred, but to art-criticism in general.[59]

Most of what we read on this matter in the sphere of journalism is

pure badinage, and little besides--entertainingly and ably written

it is true, but generally very wide of the fundamental principles at

stake, and of that consciousness of dealing with a deeply serious

question, which the subject Art ought to awaken.

No one seems to feel nowadays that a picture, like a sonnet, like a

sonata, and like a statue, if it claim attention at all, should claim

the attention of all those who are most deeply concerned with the

problems of Life, Humanity, and the Future; and that every breath of

Art comes from the lungs of Life herself, and is full of indications as

to her condition.

When one says these things nowadays, people are apt to regard one as a

little peculiar, a little morbid, and perhaps a little too earnest as

well. Only two or three months ago, a certain critic, commenting upon a

sentence of mine in my Introduction to Nietzsche's _Case of Wagner_,[60]

in which I declared that "the principles of Art are inextricably bound

up with the laws of Life," assured the readers of the Nation that "the

plainest facts of everyday life contradict this theory of non-artistic

philosophers in their arm-chairs."[61] And thus the fundamental

questions are shelved, year after year, while Art withers, and real

artists become ever more and more scarce.

"I loathe this great city," cried Zarathustra.

"Woe to this great city!--And I would that I already saw the pillar of

fire in which it will be consumed!

"For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this

hath its time and its own fate."[62]

[57] _The Times_, May 22nd, 1909.

[58] _The Daily Telegraph_, May 31st, 1909.

[59] A further example of what I mean can be found in the _Morning

Post's_ article (4th April), on the International Society's 1910

Show. Here the writer's only comments on a Simon Bussy (No. 149),

which really required serious treatment, or no treatment at all, are:

"Could any English tourist at Mentone see that resort in the terms

of M. Bussy?" And his comments on an important Monet (No. 133) are:

"What happy Idler at Antibes other than a Frenchman could record

the particular impression of Monet (No. 133), even in enjoying the

hospitalities of Eilenroe?"

[60] Dr. Oscar Levy's Authorized English Edition of Nietzsche's

_Complete Works._

[61] _The Nation_, July 9th, 1910.

[62] _Z._, III, LI.

Part II

Suggested Causes Of The Anarchy In Modern Art

"... To them gave he power to become the sons of God, even

to them that do believe in his name."--_John_ i. 12.

And now, what are the causes of this depression and this madness in

Art? For Nietzsche was not alone in recognizing it. Many voices, some

wholly trustworthy, have been raised in support of his view.

It could only have been the unsatisfactory conditions, even in his

time, that made Hegel regard Art as practically dead; for, as Croce

and Monsieur Bénard rightly observe, Hegel's _Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_

are Art's dirge.[1] Schopenhauer's extraordinary misunderstanding

of Art, also, precisely like Plato's,[2] can be explained only by

supposing that the examples of Art which he saw about him misled his

otherwise penetrating judgment. Even Ruskin's vague and wholly confused

utterances on the subject are evidence of his groping efforts to find

his way in the disorder of his time. And, as to the voices of lesser

men, their name is legion.

Two eminent Englishmen of the last century, however, were both clear

and emphatic in their denunciation of the age in which they lived. I

refer to Matthew Arnold and William Morris. The former made a most

illuminating analysis of some of the influences which have conduced

to bring about the regrettable state of modern life, while William

Morris--less philosophical perhaps, and more direct, though totally

wrong in the remedies he advocates--bewailed Art's unhappy plight as

follows--

"I must in plain words say of the Decorative Arts, of all the arts,

that it is not merely that we are inferior in them to all who have

gone before us, but also that they are in a state of anarchy and

disorganization, that makes a sweeping change necessary and certain."[3]

There can be no doubt, therefore, that what Nietzsche saw was a plain

fact to very many thinking men besides; but, in tracing the conditions

to precise and definite causes, Nietzsche by far excelled any of his

contemporaries.

Before proceeding, however, to examine the more general causes that he

suggests, I should like to pause here a moment, in order to dispose

of one particular cause which, although of tremendous importance for

us moderns, can scarcely be regarded as having been active for a very

long period. I refer to the manner in which Nietzsche accounts for a

good deal that is incompetent and futile, in the Art of the present day

only, by pointing to a psychological misapprehension which is, alas,

but all too common. I should not have broken my general narrative with

the consideration of this particular cause, had it not been that I feel

sure it will help laymen, and artists as well, to account for much that

will still remain obscure, even after the more general causes have been

discussed.

[1] Benedetto Croce, _Æsthetic_ (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p.

308, and Monsieur Bénard's critical survey of Hegel's _Æsthetik_ in

_Cours d'Esthétique_, Vol. V. p. 493.

[2] On this point see Schelling, _Sämmtliche Werke_, Vol. V,

"Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums," pp. 346-47.

[3] _The Decorative Arts_, an address delivered before the Trades Guild

of Learning, p. 11.

1. Morbid Irritability.

Nietzsche recognized that this age is one in which Will is not merely

diseased, but almost paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women, youths

and girls, who are unable to resist a stimulus, however slight; who

react with excessive speed in the presence of an irritant, and who

bedeck this weakness and this irritability with all the finest gala

dresses and disguises that they can lay their hands on.[4]

In Determinism he saw the philosophical abstract of this fact; in our

novels and plays he saw its representation under the cloak of passion

and emotion; in the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment,

he saw it logged out in scientific garb, and in the modern artist's

dependence upon an appeal to Nature for inspiration--i. e. for a spur

to react upon, he recognized its unhealthiest manifestation.

"The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane," he says; "the strength

required in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most

seriously diseased."[5]

"Man unlearns the art of _doing_, and _all he does is to react_ to

stimuli coming from his environment."[6]

Speaking of the modern artist, he refers to "the absurd irritability of

his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences,

and deprives him of all calm reflection,"[7] and, while describing

Europeans in general, he lays stress upon their "spontaneous and

changeable natures."[8]

In calling our attention to these things, Nietzsche certainly laid his

finger on the root of a good deal for which the other more general

causes which I shall adduce fail to account.

There can be no doubt that this irritability does exist, and that it

causes large numbers of unrefined and undesirable men and women to

enter the arts to-day, who are absolutely mistaken in their diagnosis

of their condition. We are all only too ready to conceal our defects

beneath euphemistic interpretations of them, and we most decidedly

prefer, if we have the choice, to regard any morbid symptoms we may

reveal, as the sign of strength rather than of weakness. There is some

temptation, therefore, both for our friends and ourselves, to interpret

our natures kindly and if possible flatteringly; and, if we suffer

from a certain "sickly irritability and sensitiveness" in the presence

of what we think beautiful, we prefer to ascribe this to an artistic

temperament rather than to a debilitated will.

We are acquainted with the irascible nerve patient who pours his curses

on the head of a noisy child; and in his case we are only too ready to

suspect a morbid condition of the body. But when we ourselves, or our

young friends, or our brothers, sister, or cousins, suddenly display,

when still in their teens, a sort of gasping enthusiasm before a

landscape, a peasant child, or a sunset; when they show an inability

to bide their time, to pause, and to remain inactive in the presence

of what they consider beautiful, we immediately conclude from their

conduct, not that they have little command of themselves, but that they

must of necessity have strong artistic natures.

Our novels are full of such people with weak wills, so are our plays;

so, too, unfortunately, are our Art Schools.

We know the Art student who, the moment he sees what he would call "a

glorious view," or a "dramatic sunset or sunrise," hurls his materials

together helter-skelter and dashes off, ventre à terre, to the most

convenient spot whence he can paint it.

We have seen him seize the thing he calls an impression, his teeth

clenched the while, and his nostrils dilated. But how often does it

occur to us that such a creature has got a bad temper? How often do we

realize that he is irritable, self-indulgent, sick in fact?

Only in an age like our own could this ridiculous travesty of an artist

pass for an artist. It is only in our age that his neurotic touchiness

could possibly be mistaken for strength and vigour; and yet there are

hundreds of his kind among the painters and sculptors of the day.

Many a student's call to Art, at present, is merely a reminder, on the

part of Nature, that he should cultivate restraint and forbearance,

and should go in for commerce; for there is a whole universe between

such a man and the artist of value. Not that sensitiveness is absent

in the real artist; but it is of a kind which has strength to wait, to

reflect, to weigh, and, if necessary, to refrain from action altogether.

"Slow is the experience of all deep wells," says Zarathustra. "Long

must they wait ere they know what hath sunk into their depths."[9]

But the people I have just described have only a skin, and any itch

upon it they call Art.

No lasting good, no permanent value can come of these irascible people

who will be avenged on all that they call beauty, "right away";

who will, so to speak, "pay beauty out," and who cannot contain

themselves in its presence. They can but help to swell the ranks of the

incompetent, and even if they are successful, as they sometimes are

nowadays, all they do is to wreck the sacred calling in which they are

but pathological usurpers.

Now, in turning to the more general causes, we find that in accounting

for the prevailing anarchy in Europe and in countries like Europe,

and particularly in England and in countries like England, Nietzsche

pointed to the whole heritage of traditional thought which prevailed

and still does prevail in the civilized parts of the Western world,

and declared that it was in our most fundamental beliefs, in our most

unquestioned dogmas, and in our most vaunted birthrights that this

anarchy takes its source.

If Art had lost its prestige in our midst, and even its justification;

and if individualism, incompetence, eccentricity, mediocrity and doubt

were rife, we must seek the causes of all this neither in Diderot's

somewhat disappointing essay on painting, nor in the slur that Rousseau

had once cast upon the culture of man, nor in John Stuart Mill's

arguments in favour of individualism, nor yet in Spencer's declaration

that "the activities we call play are united with the æsthetic

activities by the trait that neither subserves in any direct way the

processes conducive to life."[10]

All these things are merely symptomatic. Diderot, Rousseau, John Stuart

Mill, and Spencer were only symptoms of still deeper influences which

have been at work for centuries, and those influences are to be sought

in the most vital values upon which our civilization is based.

[4] _G. E._, p. 145.

[5] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 36.

[6] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 63.

[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 258.

[8] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 339.

[9] _Z._, I, XII.

[10] _The Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 627.

2. Misleading Systems of Æsthetic.

It is perfectly true that from classic times onward the guidance

of European thought, on matters of Art, has been almost entirely

inadequate if not misleading. But for the subconscious motives of

artists and their spectators there seems to have been very little

comprehension of what Art actually means and aspires to, and even these

subconscious motives have been well-nigh stifled, thanks to the false

doctrines with which they have been persistently and systematically

smothered. Perhaps, however, the very nature of the subject condemns

it to false theoretical treatment; for it has almost always been at

the mercy of men who were not themselves performers in the arts. Of

the few artists who have written on Art, how many have given us an

adequate expression of what they themselves must have felt and aspired

to? Not one. Ghiberti, Vasari, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mengs, Hogarth

and Reynolds--to mention the most famous, teach us scarcely anything

at all concerning the essence of their life passion, and this is, as

Nietzsche observes, perhaps "a necessary fault; for," he continues,

"the artist who would begin to understand himself would therewith begin

to mistake himself--he must not look backwards, he must not look at

all; he must give.--It is an honour for an artist to have no critical

faculty; if he can criticize he is mediocre, he is modern."[11]

Still, the greater part of this faulty guidance may, in itself, be but

another outcome of the erroneous and rooted beliefs which lie even

deeper in the heart of life than Art itself, and for these beliefs we

must seek deep down in the foundations of European thought for the last

two or three hundred years. In fact, we must ask ourselves what our

heritage from by-gone ages has been.

Since Art is the subject of our inquiry, and "Art is the only task

of life,"[12] it seems moderately clear that everything that has tended

to reduce the dignity of Art must, in the first place, have reduced

the dignity of man. Is our heritage of thought of a kind that exalts

man, or is it of a kind that debases him? What are, in fact, its chief

characteristics?

[11] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 256.

[12] Ibid., p. 292.

3. Our Heritage.--A. Christianity.

We shall find that the one definite and unswerving tendency of the

traditional thought of Europe has been, first, to establish on earth

that equality between men which from the outset Christianity had

promised them in Heaven; secondly, to assail the prestige of man by

proving that other tenet of the Faith which maintains the general

depravity of human nature; and thirdly, to insist upon truth in the

Christian sense; that is, as an absolute thing which can be, and must

be, made common to all.

At the root of all our science, all our philosophy, and all our

literature, the three fundamental doctrines of Christianity: the

equality of all souls, the insuperable depravity of human nature, and

the insistence upon Truth, are the ruling influences.

By means of the first and third doctrines equality was established in

the spirit, and by means of the second it was established in the flesh.[13]

By means of the first, each individual, great or small, was granted an

importance[14] undreamt of theretofore,[15] while the lowest were raised

to the highest power; by means of the second, in which the pride of

mankind received a snub at once severe and merciless, the highest were

reduced to the level of the low, while the low were by implication

materially raised; and by means of the third, no truth or point of

view which could not be made general could be considered as a truth or

a point of view at all. Practically it amounted to this, that in one

breath mankind was told, first,

"Thy Lord for thee the Cross endured

To save thy soul from Death and Hell;"[16]

secondly, "Thou shalt have no other God before Me;" and thirdly,

"From Greenland's icy mountains

To India's coral strand,

... every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile."[17]

But in each case, as I have pointed out, it was the higher men who

suffered. Because they alone had something to lose. The first notion

--that of equality, threatened at once to make them doubt their own

privileges and powers, to throw suspicion into the hearts of their

followers, and to make all special, exceptional and isolated claims

utterly void. The third--the insistence upon a truth which could be

general and absolute, denied their right to establish their own truths

in the hearts of men, and to rise above the most general truth which

was reality; while in the second--the Semitic doctrine of general sin,

which held that man was not only an imperfect, but also a fallen being,

and that all his kind shared in this shame--there was not alone the

ring of an absence of rank, but also of a universal depreciation of

human nature which was ultimately to lead, by gradual stages, from a

disbelief in man himself to a disbelief in nobles, in kings and finally

in gods.[18]

At one stroke, not one or two human actions, but all human

performances, inspirations and happy thoughts, had been stripped of

their glory and condemned. Man could raise himself only by God's grace

--that is to say, by a miracle, otherwise he was but a fallen angel,

aimlessly beating the air with his broken wings.

These three blows levelled at the head of higher men were fatal to the

artist; for it is precisely in the value of human inspirations, in

the efficiency of human creativeness, and in the irresistible power

of human will, that he, above all, must and does believe. It is his

mission to demand obedience and to procure reverence; for, as we shall

see, every artist worthy the name is at heart a despot.[19]

Fortunately, the Holy Catholic Church intervened, and by its rigorous

discipline and its firm establishment upon a hierarchical principle,

suppressed for a while the overweening temper of the Christian soul,

and all claims of individual thought and judgment, while it also

recognized an order of rank among men; but the three doctrines above

described remained notwithstanding at the core of the Christian Faith,

and awaited only a favourable opportunity to burst forth and blight all

the good that the Church had done.

This favourable opportunity occurred in the person of Martin Luther.

The Reformation, in addition to reinstating, with all their evil

consequences, the three doctrines mentioned above, also produced a

certain contempt for lofty things and an importunate individualism

which has done nought but increase and spread from that day to this.

Individualism, on a large scale, of course, had been both tolerated and

practised in Gothic architecture, and on this account the buildings of

the Middle Ages might be said to breathe a more truly Christian spirit[20]

than most of the sculpture and the painting of the same period,

which are more hieratic.[21] But it was not until the Reformation

began to spread that the most tiresome form of individualism, which we

shall call Amateurism,[22] received, as it were, a Divine sanction;

and there can be no doubt that it is against this element in modern

life that not only Art, but all forces which aim at order, law and

discipline, will eventually have to wage their most determined and most

implacable warfare.

[13] The Judaic story of the fall of man is at bottom an essentially

democratic one. This absence of rank in sin had no parallel in the

aristocratic Pagan world. Likewise, in the manner of the fall, there

is a total absence of noble qualities. "Curiosity, beguilement,

seductibility and wantonness--in short, a whole series of pre-eminently

feminine passions--were regarded as the origin of evil." See _B. T._,

pp. 78, 79.

[14] Bury, _History of the Later Roman Empire_, Vol. I, p. 33.

[15] _A._, Aph. 43 and 64.

[16] _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, No. 435.

[17] _Ibid_., No. 522.

[18] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 312: "When it occurs to inferior men to doubt

that higher men exist, then the danger is great," etc. See, in fact,

the whole of Aph. 874.

[19] See _A._, Aph. 49: "The concept of guilt and punishment, inclusive

of the doctrine of 'grace,' of 'salvation,' and of 'forgiveness'--lies

through and through, without a shred of psychological truth. Sin,...

this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, was invented solely

for the purpose of making all science, all culture, and every kind of

elevation and nobility utterly impossible."

[20] Ruskin, _On the Nature of Gothic Architecture_ (p. 7), contrasting

the classic and Gothic style, says: "... In the mediæval, or especially

Christian, system of ornament, this slavery [_i.e._ the slavery imposed

by the classic canon] is done away with altogether; Christianity having

recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of

every soul."

[21] In a good deal of the painting and sculpture of the

pre-Renaissance period, too, signs were not lacking which showed that

the Christian ideal of truth was beginning to work its effects by

leading to a realism which I have classified in Lecture II as Police

Art. Of course, a good deal of this realism may also be accounted for

by the reasons which I suggest at the end of Part I of Lecture III;

be this as it may, however, as it is difficult to decide the actual

proportion of either of these influences, the weight of the Christian

doctrine of Truth must not be altogether overlooked in such productions

as Donatello's "Crucifixion" (Capella Bardi, S. Croce, Florence);

Masolino's "Raising of Tabitha" (Carmine, Florence); Masaccio's

Fresco (S. Maria del Carmine, Florence); Ucello's "Rout of S. Romano"

(Uffizi); Andrea del Castagno's "Crucifixion" (in the Monastery of the

Angeli, Florence); and the really beautiful statues of the Founders in

the Cathedral of Naumburg.

[22] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 297: "The terrible consequences of

'freedom'--in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every

problem. All order of rank is banished."

B. Protestantism.

For Protestantism was nothing more nor less than a general rebellion

against authority.[23] By means of it the right of private judgment

was installed once more, and to the individual was restored that

importance which Christianity had acknowledged from the first, and

which only the attitude of the Church had been able to modify. The

layman, with his conscience acknowledged to be the supreme tribunal,

was declared a free man, emancipated even from the law,[24] or, as

Luther said, "free Lord of all, subject to none."[25]

Now, not only the immortal soul of every individual became important;

but also every one of his proclivities, desires and aspirations. He was

told that he could be his own priest if he chose,[26] and that Christ had

obtained this prerogative for him. Megalomania, in fact, as Nietzsche

declares, was made his duty.[27]

"Let men so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards

of the mysteries of God."[28]

With these words St. Paul had addressed the Corinthians, and Luther did

not fail to base his strongest arguments upon the text.[29]

"Even the Reformation," says Nietzsche, "was a movement for individual

liberty; 'Every one his own priest' is really no more than a formula

for _libertinage_.As a matter of fact, the words, 'Evangelical freedom'

would have sufficed--and all instincts which had reasons for remaining

concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly

acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified."[30]

Was it at all likely that the formula, "Every one his own priest," was

going to lead to trouble only in ecclesiastical matters? As a matter of

fact we know that Luther himself extended the principle still further

in his own lifetime. By his radical alterations in the church service

Luther gave the laity a much more prominent place in Divine worship

than they had ever had before; for, in addition to the fact that the

liturgy as compiled by him was written almost entirely in the native

tongue, the special attention he gave to the singing of hymns[31]

allowed the people an opportunity of displaying their individual powers

to such an extent that it has even been said that "they sang themselves

into enthusiasm for the new faith."[31]

But these remarkable changes were only symbolic of the changes that

followed elsewhere; for, once this spirit of individual liberty and

judgment had invaded that department of life which theretofore had

been held most sacred, what was there to prevent it from entering and

defiling less sacred sanctuaries?

Bearing in mind the condition of the arts at the present day, and

taking into account a fact which we all very well know; namely, that

thousands upon thousands are now practising these arts who have

absolutely no business to be associated with them in any way, we are

almost inclined to forgive Protestantism and Puritanism their smashing

of our images, and their material iconoclasm; so light does this

damage appear, compared with the other indirect damage they have done

to the spirit of Art, by establishing the fatal precedent of allowing

everybody to touch and speak of everything--however sacred.

We may argue with Buckle that the English spirit is of a kind which

is essentially Protestant in temper; but this only seems to make the

matter worse.

When Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold point, the one to the evils of

Liberalism, and the other to the evils of anarchy, we know to what they

are referring. They are referring to the impossibility, nowadays, of

awakening reverence for anything or for anybody.

"May not every man in England say what he likes?" Matthew Arnold

exclaims. "But," he continues, "the aspirations of culture, which

is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say,

when they may say what they like, is worth saying.... Culture

indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the

rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense

of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw

person to like that."[32]

But what is fatal to culture is no less fatal to art, and thus we find

Nietzsche saying--

"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it becometh mob."[33]

If in the Europe, and especially in the England of to-day, everybody

has a right to every judgment and to every joy; if a certain slavish

truthfulness to nature and reality, rawness and ruggedness, have

well-nigh wrecked higher aspirations, and if everybody can press his

paltry modicum of voice, of thought, of draughtsmanship, of passion

and impudence to the fore, and thus spread his portion of mediocrity

like dodder over the sacred field of Art; it is because the fundamental

principles of the Christian faith are no longer latent or suppressed in

our midst; but active and potent--if not almighty.

It might almost be said that they have reared a special instinct--the

instinct of liberty and of taking liberties, without any particular aim

or purpose; and, by so doing, have thrown all virtue, all merit, all

ambition, not on the side of culture, but on the side of that "free

personality"[34] and rude naturalness, or truth to man's original savagery,

which it seems the triumph of every one, great or small, to produce.

No one any longer claims the kind of freedom that Pope Paul III claimed

for his protégé Benvenuto Cellini:[35] this would be too dangerous,

because, in a trice, it would be applied to all. Therefore the

insignificant majority get more freedom than is good for them, and the

noble minority are deprived of their birthright.

"Thus do I speak unto you in parable," cries Zarathustra, "ye who make

the soul giddy, ye preachers of _equality_! Tarantulas are ye unto me,

and secretly revengeful ones!

"But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light, therefore do I

laugh in your faces my laughter of the height.

"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of

virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!

"Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant frenzy of impotence crieth thus

in you for 'equality': your most secret tyrant longings disguise

themselves in words of virtue!"[36]

And now recapitulating a moment, what have we found our heritage to

consist of, in the realm of the religious spirit?

In the first place: a certain universal acknowledgment and claim of

liberty, which has no special purpose or direction, and which is too

fair to some and unfair to many. Secondly, a devotion to a truth that

could be general, which perforce has reduced us to vulgar reality;

thirdly, a prevailing depression in the value and dignity of man,

resulting from the suspicion that has been cast upon all authority

and all loftiness; and fourthly, a wanton desecrating and befingering

of all sanctuaries by anybody and everybody, which is the inevitable

outcome of that amateur priesthood introduced and sanctified by Martin

Luther.

[23] Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, Vol. II, p. 140:

"Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted, by

all unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was neither more

nor less than an open rebellion. Indeed, the mere mention of private

judgment, on which it was avowedly based, is enough to substantiate

this fact. To establish the right of private judgment was to appeal

from the Church to individuals," etc. (See also p. 138 in the same

volume.) _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, p. 166: "In the Edict of

Worms, Luther had been branded as a revolutionary, then as a heretic,

and the burden of the complaints preferred against him by the Catholic

humanists was, that his methods of seeking a reformation would be

fatal to all order, political or ecclesiastical. They painted him as

the apostle of revolution, a second Catiline." And p. 174: "The most

frequent and damaging charge levelled at Luther between 1520 and 1525

reproached him with being the apostle of revolution and anarchy, and

predicted that his attacks on spiritual authority would develop into a

campaign against civil order unless he were promptly suppressed."

[24] _A Treatise Touching the Libertie of a Christian_, by Martyne

Luther (translated from the Latin by James Bell, 1579. Edited by

W. Bengo' Collyer, 1817), p. 17: "So that it is manifest that to a

Christian man faith sufficeth only for all, and that he needeth no

works to be justified by. Now, if he need no works, then also he needs

not the law: if he have no need of the law, surely he is then free from

the law. So this also is true. The law is not made for the righteous

man, and this is the same Christian libertie."

[25] _Ibid_., p. 3.

[26] _Ibid_., p. 31.

[27] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 211.

[28] 1 Cor. iv. 1.

[29] Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.

[30] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 75.

[31] Emil Naumann, _History of Music_, Vol. II, p. 429: "With the

Catholics, hymns in the mother tongue were only used at processions

and on high festivals, and were then sung by the congregation only

at Christmas, Easter, and certain other high feast days. With these

exceptions, the Catholic congregational song consisted of short musical

phrases chanted by the priests, to which the people either responded,

or added their voices to the refrain sung by the choristers from the

altar. The part assigned to the people then was but a very subordinate

one." See also the Introduction to C. von Winterfeld's Sacred Songs of

Luther (Leipzig, 1840).

[32] _The Beginnings of Art_, by Ernst Grosse, pp. 299, 300; and

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.

[33] Culture and Anarchy (Smith, Elder, 1909), pp. 11, 12.

[34] _Z._, I, VII.

[35] E. I., pp. 54, 55.

[36] _Sandro Botticelli_, by Emile Gebhart (1907), p. 9: "Paul III âme

très haute, répond aux personnes qui lui dénoncent les vices de son

spirituel spadassin: 'Les hommes uniques dans leur art, comme Cellini,

ne doivent pas être soumis aux lois, et lui moins que tout autre.'"

C. Philosophical Influences.

Now, turning to our heritage in philosophy and science, do we find

that it tends to resist, or to thwart in any way the principles of our

religious heritage? Not in the slightest degree! At every point and

at every stage it has confirmed and restated, with all the pomp of

facts and statistics to support it, what the religious spirit had laid

down for our acceptance. It is superficial and ridiculous to suppose,

as Dr. Draper once supposed, that there has been a conflict between

Religion and Science. I take it that he means the Christian Religion

alone. Such a conflict has never taken place; what has taken place,

however, is a conflict between Science and the Catholic Church. The

Christian Religion and Science together, however, have never had any

such antagonism, and least of all in England, where, from the time of

Roger Bacon,[37] the first English Experimentalist, to the present

day, nothing has been left undone, no stone has been left unturned,

which might establish scientifically that which Christianity, as we

have seen, wished to establish emotionally.

Universal liberty, without a purpose or a direction; the free and

plebeian production of thoughts and theories divorced from all aim

or ideal, after the style in which children are born in the slums;

devotion to a truth that can be common to all; the depression of the

value and dignity of man, and a certain lack of reverence for all

things--these four aspirations of Christianity and Protestantism have

been the aspirations of science, and at the present moment they are

practically attained.

Unfortunately, it is in the nature of human beings to imitate success,

and England's success as a colonizing and constitutional nation has

undoubtedly been a potent force in spreading not only her commercial,

but also her philosophical views among all ambitious and aspiring

Western nations, who guilelessly took the evil with the good.

The empiricists, Francis Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, were among the first,

by their teaching, to level a decisive blow at genuine thought, at the

man who knows and who is the measure of all things;[38] and this they

did by arriving at a conception of knowledge and thought that converted

the latter into possessions which might be common to everybody--that is

to say, by reducing all knowledge to that which can be made immediately

the experience of all. This was the greatest blasphemy against the

human spirit that has ever been committed. By means of it, every one,

whatever he might be, could aspire to intellectuality and wisdom;

for experience belongs to everybody, whereas a great spirit is the

possession only of the fewest.

The Frenchmen, Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Maupertius, Condillac,

Diderot, d'Alembert, La Mettrie and Baron Holbach, were quick to

become infected, and in Germany, despite the essentially aristocratic

influence of Leibnitz,[39] Kant was the first to follow suit.

Begun in this way, English philosophical speculation, as Dr. Max

Schasler says, was forced to grow ever more and more materialistic[40]

in character, and, if "Science has already come very generally to

mean, not that which may be known, but only such knowledge as every

animal with faculties a little above those of an ant or a beaver can be

induced to admit," and if "incommunicable knowledge, or knowledge which

can be communicated at present only to a portion--perhaps a small

portion--of mankind, is already affirmed to be no knowledge at all,"[41]

it is thanks to the efforts of the fathers of English thought.

Hence Nietzsche's cry, that "European ignobleness, the plebeian ism of

modern ideas--is England's work and invention."[42]

But it is not alone in its vulgarization of the concept of knowledge,

or in its materialistic tendency, that English influence has helped

to reduce the dignity of man and to level his kind; the utilitarians

from Bentham to John Stuart Mill and Sidgwick, by taking the greatest

number as the norm, as the standard and measurement of all things, ably

reflected the Christian principle, of the equality of souls, in their

works, and, incidentally, by so doing, treated the greatest number

exceedingly badly. For what is mediocre can neither be exalted nor

charmed by values drawn from mediocrity, and is constantly in need of

values drawn from super-mediocrity, for its joy, for its love of life,

and for its reconciliation with drabby reality.[43]

[37] It is important here to note, first, that Roger Bacon was an

Aristotelian through his intimate study of the Arabian treatises on the

Greek philosopher, and, secondly, that although Greek speculation was

governed more by insight than experience, Aristotle forms a striking

exception to this rule.

[38] _G. E._, p. 210: "What is lacking in England, and has always been

lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd

muddle-head Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces

what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle--real

power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short,

philosophy."

[39] In reply to those who said, "Nothing exists in the intellect but

what has before existed in the senses," Leibnitz replied: "Yes, nothing

but the intellect."

[40] _Kritische Geschichte der Æsthetik_ (1872). Speaking of the

English Æstheticians, he says (p. 285), "The fact that there is no

decrease, but rather an increase of Materialism in their thought, no

purification in their meditation from the coarseness of experience,

but rather a gradual immersion in the same, may also be regarded as

characteristic of the development of the English spirit in general."

[41] Coventry Patmore, _Principles in Art_, p. 209.

[42] _G. E._, p. 213.

[43] Even J. S. Mill saw the flaw in his own teaching in this respect,

and acknowledged it openly. See his _Liberty_, chapter "The Elements of

Well-Being," paragraph 13.

D. The Evolutionary Hypothesis.

Finally, in the latter half of the last century, these two tendencies

at last reached their zenith, and culminated in a discovery which,

by some, is considered as the proudest product of the English mind.

This discovery, which was at once a gospel and a solution of all

world riddles, and which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from

Edinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypothesis as expounded by

Darwin and Spencer.

A more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depressing conception of

life and man cannot be conceived than this evolutionary hypothesis

as it was presented to us by its two most famous exponents; and its

immediate popularity and rapid success, alone, should have made it seem

suspicious, even in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.

And yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost everybody, save those,

only, whose interests it assailed.

How much more noble was the origin of the world as described even in

Genesis, Disraeli was one of the first to see and to declare;[44]

and yet, so strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means of

its popular proof through so-called facts, could become the common

possession of every tinker, tailor and soldier, that people preferred

to think they had descended from monkeys, rather than doubt such an

overwhelming array of data, and regard themselves still as fallen

angels.

In its description of the prime motor of life as a struggle for

existence; in its insistence upon adaptation to environment and

mechanical adjustment to external influences;[45] in its deification of a

blind and utterly inadequate force which was called Natural Selection;

and above all in its unprincipled optimism, this new doctrine bore the

indelible stamp of shallowness and vulgarity.

According to it, man was not only a superior monkey, but he was also

a creature who sacrificed everything in order to live; he was not

only a slave of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by his

surroundings; he was not only a coward, but a cabbage; and, with it

all, he was invoked to do nothing to assist the world process and his

own improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous teachers, that

"evil tended perpetually to disappear,"[46] and that "progress was

therefore not an accident, but a necessity."[47]

Thus not only was man debased, but we could now fold our arms

apathetically, and look on while he dashed headlong to his ruin.[48]

"No," said the evolutionists, "we do not believe in a moral order of

things, although our doctrine does indeed seem to be a reflection of

such an order; neither do we believe in God: but we certainly pin our

faith to our little idol Evolution, and feel quite convinced that it

is going to make us muddle through to perfection somehow--look at our

proofs!"

And what are these proofs? On all sides they are falling to bits, and

we are quickly coming to the conclusion that an assembly of facts can

prove nothing--save the inability of a scientist to play the rôle of a

creative poet.

Nietzsche was one of the first to see, that if Becoming were a reliable

hypothesis, it must be supported by different principles from those of

the Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in sketching out these

different principles.[49]

"These English psychologists--what do they really mean?" Nietzsche

demands. "We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same

task of pushing to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world,

and looking for the efficient, governing and decisive principle in that

precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would

be the most reluctant to find it--that is to say, in slothfulness of

habit, or in forgetfulness, or in blind and fortuitous mechanism and

association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex,

molecular, or fundamentally stupid,--what is the real motive power

which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction?"[50]

Not one of these advocates of mechanism, however, realized how

profoundly he was degrading man, and how seriously he had therefore

sullied all human achievement. In their scientific _réchauffé_ of the

Christian concept of man's depravity, they all had the most hearty

faith, and, as there was little in their over-populated and industrial

country to contradict their conclusions, they did not refrain from

passing these conclusions into law.

We can detect nothing in this greatest scientific achievement of the

last century which seriously resists or opposes our heritage in the

realm of the religious spirit. In their fundamentals, the two are one;

And when we take them both to task, and try to discover their influence

upon the world, we wonder not so much why Art is so bad, but why Art

has survived at all.

For, though for the moment we may exclude the influence of earlier

English thought upon general artistic achievement, at least the

degraded condition of Art at the present day cannot be divorced in this

manner from more recent English speculation, for even Mr. Bosanquet

counts Darwin and Lyell among those who have ushered in the new

renaissance of art in England![51]

"At present," says Nietzsche, "nobody has any longer the courage for

separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence

for himself and his equals,--for pathos of distance,... and even our

politics are morbid from this want of courage!"[52]

To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and

gods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised

resentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence

and reverence in general are the first needs of all?

We can only hope to find what we actually see, and that, as we all very

well know and cannot deny, is a condition of anarchy, incompetence,

purposelessness and chaos.

"Culture ... has a very important function to fulfil for mankind,"

said Matthew Arnold. "And this function is particularly important

in our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much

greater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical

and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But, above all,

in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because,

here, that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take

everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree.... The idea of

perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance

with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and

nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."[53]

We may trust that it is not in vain that men like Matthew Arnold and

Nietzsche raised their voices against the spirit of the age. And we may

hope that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up their cry.

In any case Nietzsche did not write in utter despair. His words do not

fall like faded autumn leaves announcing the general death that is

imminent. On the contrary, he saw himself approaching a new century,

this century, and he drew more than half his ardour from the hope

that we might now renounce this heritage of the past, the deleterious

effects of which he spent his lifetime in exposing.

"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones!" he says. "From the future winds are

coming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings

for fine ears.

"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a

people, and from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall

arise.

"Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already

a new odour lieth around it, an odour which bringeth salvation--and a

new hope."[54]

[44] See Froude's _The Earl of Beaconsfield_ (9th Edition), pp. 176,

177: "The discoveries of science are not, we are told, consistent with

the teachings of the Church.... It is of great importance when this

tattle about science is mentioned, that we should attach to the phrase

precise ideas. The function of science is the interpretation of nature,

and the interpretation of the highest nature is the highest science.

What is the highest nature? Man is the highest nature. But I must say

that when I compare the interpretation of the highest nature by the

most advanced, the most fashionable school of modern science with some

other teaching with which we are familiar I am not prepared to admit

that the lecture room is more scientific than the Church. What is the

question now placed before society, with a glib assurance the most

astounding? The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my

Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and

abhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the conscience

of humanity."

[45] See p. 37.

[46] Spencer, _Social Statics_ (Ed. 1892), p. 27.

[47] _Ibid_., p. 31.

[48] Two Christian principles are concealed here: 1. The depravity of

man. 2. Faith in a moral order of things.

[49] I have discussed this question, with as much detail as the space

would allow, in _Nietzsche, his Life and Works_, Chap. IV. (Constable's

Philosophies Ancient and Modern). See also my letter, "Nietzsche and

Science," in the _Spectator_ of 8th January, 1910.

[50] _G. M._, p. 17.

[51] _A History of Æsthetic_, p. 445.

[52] _A._, Aph. 43.

[53] _Culture and Anarchy_ (Smith, Elder, 1909), p. 10.

[54] _Z._, I, XXII.

Lecture II[1]

Government in Art. Nietzsche's Definition of Art

Part I

Divine Art and the Man-God

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,

and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and

have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of

the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the

earth."--Genesis i. 28.

Man has ceased from believing in miracles, because he is convinced that

the divine power of the miracle-worker has departed from him. At last

he has proclaimed the age of wonders to be at an end, because he no

longer knows himself capable of working wonders.

He acknowledges that miracles are still needed. He hears the

distressing cry for the super-natural everywhere. All about him to-day

he feels that wonders will have to be worked if the value of Life,

of his fellows, and of himself is to be raised, by however little;

and yet he halts like one paralyzed before the task he can no longer

accomplish, and finding that his hand has lost its cunning and that

his eye has lost its authority, he stammers helplessly that the age of

miracles has gone by.

Everything convinces him of the fact. Everybody, from his priest to

his porter, from his wife to his astrologer, from his child to his

neighbour, tells him plainly that he is no longer divine, no longer a

god, no longer even a king!

Not only has the age of miracles gone by; but with it, also, has

vanished that age in which man could conceive of god in his own image.

There are no gods now; because man himself has long since doubted that

man is godlike.

Soon there will be no kings,[2] finally there will be no greatness

at all, and this will mean the evanescence of man himself.

To speak of all this as the advance of knowledge, as the march

of progress, as the triumph of science, and as the glories of

enlightenment, is merely to deck a corpse, to grease-paint a sore, and

to pour rose-water over a cesspool.

If the triumph of science mean "The Descent of Man"; if the glories of

enlightenment mean, again, the descent of man; and if progress imply,

once more, the descent of man; then the question to be asked is: in

whose hands have science, enlightenment and the care of progress fallen?

This world is here for us to make of it what we will. It is a field of

yielding clay, in which, like sandboys, we can build our castles and

revel in our creations.

But what are these people doing? In building their castles they grow

ever more like beavers, and ants, and beetles. In laying out their

gardens they grow ever more like slugs, and worms, and centipedes. And

their joy seems to be to feel themselves small and despised.

Once, for instance, their sky was the mighty god Indra; the clouds were

his flock, and he drove his flock across his vast fields--blue and

fragrant with delicate flowers. Their fruitful rain was the milk which

their god Indra obtained from his herd of cows, and their seasons of

drought were times when the god Indra was robbed by brigands of his

flock.

Now, their sky is infinite space. Their clouds are masses of vapour in

a state of condensation more or less considerable, and their rain is

the outcome of that condensation becoming too considerable.

Not so many years ago their Heaven and their Earth were the father and

mother of all living things, who had become separated in order that

their offspring might have room to live and breathe and move. And thus

their mists were the passionate sighs of the loving wife, breathing her

love heavenwards; and the dew, the tearful response of her affectionate

and sorrowful spouse.

Now, their Heaven is a thing that no one knows anything at all about.

Their Earth is an oblate spheroid revolving aimlessly through a

hypothetical medium called ether; their mists are vaporous emanations;

while their dew is a discharge of moisture from the air upon substances

that have irradiated a sufficient quantity of heat.

Their Sun was once a god with long, shining streams of golden hair, of

which every year their goddess Night would rob him, thus leaving Winter

mistress of the earth.

Now, their sun is the central orb of their Solar system. It consists of

a nucleus, it is surrounded by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and

has a disease of the face called "spots."

The facts remain the same; the mist still rises, the dew still falls,

and the canopy of Heaven still spans the two horizons. Whatever the

interpretation of these phenomena may be, this at least is certain,

that they are still with us. But there is one thing that changes; one

thing that cannot remain indifferent to interpretation--even though

the facts do not alter,--and that is the soul of man.

A million times more sensitive to changes in interpretation than the

column of mercury is to changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man

rises or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of the meaning

which he himself puts into things; and, just as, in this matter, he may

be his own regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin.

[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910.

[2] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone by, because

people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol

of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends." See also

_Z._, III, LVI.

1. The World "without form" and "void."

For, in the beginning, the world was "without form" and "void," things

surrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably

the same number of impressions as they do now--and perhaps more--but

these impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither

calculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3] them to his

fellows.

Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the

things of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination,

organization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process,

however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs

of thinking man.

Everything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some

place; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the

terms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a

position relative to humanity.

Perhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of

every creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and

recorded.[4] But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied

primeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order

that he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his

impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a

thing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must

be given a name, a place, an order, a meaning--however arbitrary,

however fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic,

bewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5] organized,

classified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims

and needs of a particular kind of man.

Thus interpretation was the first activity of all to thinking humanity,

and it was human needs that interpreted the world.[6]

The love of interpreting and of adjusting--this primeval love and

desire, this power of the sandboy over his castles; how much of the

joy in Life, the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow in

Life, does not depend upon it! For we can know only a world which we

ourselves have created.[7]

There was the universe--strange and inscrutable; terrible in its

strangeness, insufferable in its inscrutability, incalculable in its

multifariousness. With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or a

shower might be anything to man--a godlike friend or a savage foe. The

dome of blue behind was also prodigious in its volume and depth, and

the stars upon it at night horrible in their mystery.

What, too, was this giant's breath that seemed to come from nowhere,

and which, while it cooled his face, also bent the toughest trees like

straws? The sun and moon were amazing--the one marvellously eloquent,

communicative, generous, hot and passionate: the other silent,

reserved, aloof, cold, incomprehensible.[8]

But there were other things to do, besides interpreting the stars, the

sun, the moon, the sea, and the sky above. There was the perplexing

multiplicity of changes and of tides in Life, to be mastered and

simplified. There was the fateful flow of all things into death and

into second birth, the appalling fact of Becoming and never-resting, of

change and instability, of bloom and of decay, of rise and of decline.

What was to be done?

It was impossible to live in chaos. And yet, in its relation to man

Nature was chaotic. There was no order anywhere. And, where there is

no order, there are surprises,[9] ambushes, lurking indignities. The

unexpected could jump out at any minute. And a masterful mind abhors

surprises and loathes disorder. His Will to Power is humiliated by

them. To man,--whether he be of yesterday, of to-day or of to-morrow--

unfamiliarity, constant change, and uncertainty, are sources of great

anxiety, great sorrow, great humiliation and sometimes great danger.

Hence everything must be familiarized, named and fixed. Values must

be definitely ascertained and determined. And thus valuing becomes a

biological need. Nietzsche even goes so far as to ascribe the doctrine

of causality to the inherent desire in man to trace the unfamiliar

to the familiar. "The so-called instinct of causality," he says, "is

nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at

finding something in it which is already known."[10]

In the torrent and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed

for the purpose of human orientation. In the avalanche of evolutionary

changes, pillars must be made to stand, to which man can hold tight for

a space and collect his senses. The slippery soil of a world that is

for ever in flux, must be transformed into a soil on which man can gain

some foothold.[11]

Primeval man stood baffled and oppressed by the complexity of his task.

Facts were insuperable as facts; they could, however, be overcome

spiritually--that is to say, by concepts. And that they must be

overcome, man never doubted for an instant--he was too proud for that.

For his aim was not existence, but a certain kind of existence--an

existence in which he could hold his head up, look down upon the world,

and stare defiance even at the firmament.

And thus all humanity began to cry out for a meaning, for an

interpretation, for a scheme, which would make all these distant and

uncontrollable facts their property, their spiritual possessions. This

was not a cry for science, or for a scientific explanation, as we

understand it; nor was it a cry for truth in the Christian sense.[12]

For the bare truth, the bare fact, the bald reality of the thing was

obvious to everybody. All who had eyes to see could see it. All who had

ears to hear could hear it. And all who had nerves to feel could feel

it. If ever there was a time when there was a truth for all, this was

the time; and it was ugly, bare and unsatisfying. What was wanted was a

scheme of life, a picture of life, in which all these naked facts and

truths could be given some place and some human significance--in fact,

some order and arrangement, whereby they would become the chattels

of the human spirit, and no longer subjects of independent existence

and awful strangeness.[13] Only thus could the dignity and pride of

humanity begin to breathe with freedom. Only thus could life be made

possible, where existence alone was not the single aim and desire.

"The purpose of 'knowledge,' "says Nietzsche, "in this case, as in

the case of 'good,' or 'beautiful,' must be regarded strictly and

narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order

that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its

conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and

constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility

of preservation--and _not_ some abstract or theoretical need to eschew

deception--stands as the motive force behind the development of the

organs of knowledge.... In other words, the measure of the desire

for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the _Will to Power_ grows

in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of

reality in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount into its

service."[14]

And thus "the object was, not to know, but to schematize, to impose as

much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs required."[15]

"The whole apparatus of knowledge," says Nietzsche, "is an abstracting

and simplifying apparatus--not directed at knowledge, but at the

appropriation of things."[16]

No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than

this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar,

familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the

spirit.[17]

Life without food and drink was bad enough; but Life without

nourishment for this spiritual appetite, this famished wonder,[18]

this starving amazement, was utterly intolerable!

The human system could appropriate, and could transform into man, in

bone and flesh, the vegetation and the animals of the earth; but what

was required was a process, a _Weltanschauung_, a general concept of

the earth which would enable man to appropriate also Life's other

facts, and transform them into man the spirit. Hence the so-called

thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and

conquest,[19] and the "will to truth" to a process of establishing

things, to a process of making things true and lasting.... Thus

truth is not something which is present and which has to be found and

discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its

name to a process, or better still, to the "will to overpower."[20]

For what is truth? It is any interpretation of the world which has

succeeded in becoming the belief of a particular type of man.[21]

Therefore there can be many truths; therefore there must be an order of

rank among truths.

"Let this mean Will to Truth unto you," says Zarathustra, "that

everything be made thinkable, visible, tangible unto man!

"And what ye have called the world, shall have first to be created by

you:[22] your reason, your image, your will, your love shall the world be!

And, verily, for your own bliss, ye knights of Knowledge!"[23]

"The purpose was to deceive oneself in a useful way; the means thereto

was the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which, the

confusing multifariousness of Life could be reduced to a useful and

wieldly scheme."[24]

This was the craving. Not only must a meaning, a human meaning, be

given to all things, in order to subordinate them to man's power; but

Life itself must also be schematized and arranged. And, while all

humanity cried aloud for this to be done, it was humanity's artists and

higher men who set to and did it.[25]

[3] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 72: "... Communication is necessary, and for

it to be possible, something must be stable, simple and capable of

being stated precisely."

[4] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 65.

[5] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Book of Tea_, p. 58: "Adjustment is Art."

[6] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 13. See also Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_,

Vol. I, p. 25. Speaking of interpretation, he says: "And this tendency

was notably strengthened by the suspicious circumstances of external

life, which awoke the desire for clearness, distinctness and a logical

sequence of ideas."

[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 21. See also Max Müller, _Introduction to the

Science of Religion_, pp. 198-207, _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19.

[8] Hegel, in his _Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_ (Vol. I, p. 406), says:

"If we should wish to speak of the first appearance of symbolic Art

as a subjective state, we should remember that artistic meditation in

general, like religious meditation--or rather the two in one--and even

scientific research, took their origin in wonderment."

[9] Hegel makes some interesting remarks on this point. See his

_Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_, Vol. I, p. 319. He shows that the extreme

regularity of gardens of the seventeenth century was indicative of

their owners' masterful natures.

[10] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 58. See also p. 11: "to 'understand' means

simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of

something old or familiar."

[11] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 88.

[12] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 26: "The prerequisite of all living things

and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith,

that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and

that there should be no doubt at all concerning values. Thus it is

necessary that something should be assumed to be true, _not_ that it is

true."

[13] Felix Clay, _The Origin of the Sense of Beauty_, p. 95: "The

mind or the eye, brought face to face with a number of disconnected

and apparently different facts, ideas, shapes, sounds or objects, is

bothered and uneasy; the moment that some central conception is offered

or discovered by which they all fall into order, so that their due

relation to one another can be perceived and the whole grasped, there

is a sense of relief and pleasure which is very intense."

[14] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 12.

[15] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 29.

[16] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 24.

[17] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 76. Hegel was also approaching this truth

when he said, in his introduction to the _Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_

(pp. 58, 59 of the translation of that Introduction by B. Bosanquet):

"Man is realized for himself by poetical activity, inasmuch as he

has the impulse, in the medium which is directly given to him, and

externally presented before him, to produce himself. This purpose he

achieves by the modification of external things upon which he impresses

the seal of his inner being. Man does this in order, as a free subject,

to strip the outer world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy, in

the shape and fashion of things, a mere external reality of himself."

[18] Hegel again seems to be on the road to Nietzsche's standpoint,

when he says: "Wonderment arises when man, as a spirit separated

from his immediate connection with Nature, and from the immediate

relation to his merely practical desires, steps back from Nature and

from his own singular existence, and then begins to seek and to see

generalities, permanent qualities, and absolute attributes in things"

(Vorlesungen über Æsthetik, Vol. I, p. 406).

[19] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 339. See also Hegel (_Vorlesungen über

Æsthetik_, p. 128): "The instinct of curiosity and the desire

for knowledge, from the lowest stage up to the highest degree of

philosophical insight, is the outcome only of man's yearning to make

the world his own in spirit and concepts."

[20] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 60.

[21] "Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of

living being cannot exist" (_W. P._, Vol. II, p. 20). See also _G.

E._, pp. 8, 9: "A belief might be false and yet life-preserving."

See also _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 36, 37: "We should not interpret

this _constraint_ in ourselves to imagine concepts, species, forms,

purposes, and laws as if we were in a position to construct a real

world; but as a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our

existence is ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable,

simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us."

[22] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 76.

[23] _Z._, II, XXIV. See also _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 33: "Truth is

the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach

consciousness; it is the will to classify phenomena according to

definite categories."

[24] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. M. See also Schelling, _System des

transcendentalen Idealismus_, p. 468, where the author says, "Science,

in the highest interpretation of this term, has one and the same

mission as Art."

[25] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 28, 90, 103.

2. The First Artists.

For it was then that man's strongest instinct became creative in

man's highest product--the artist--and the discovery was made that

the world, although "without form" and "void," as a fact, could be

simplified and made calculable and full of form and attractions, as a

valuation, as an interpretation, as a spiritual possession. With the

world at a distance from him, unfamiliar and unhuman, man's existence

was a torment. With it beneath him, inside him, bearing the impress of

his spirit, and proceeding from him, he became a lord, casting care to

the winds, and terror to the beasts around.

Man, the bravest animal on earth, thus conceived the only possible

condition of his existence; namely, to become master of the world.

And, when we think of the miracles he then began to perform, we cease

from wondering why he once believed in miracles, why he thought of God

as in his own image, and why he made his strongest instinct God, and

thereupon made Him say: "Replenish the earth and subdue it!"

It was therefore the powerful who made the names of things into law.[26]

It was their Will to Power that simplified, organized, ordered

and schematized the world, and it was their will to prevail which made

them proclaim their simplification, their organization, their order

and scheme, as the norm, as the thing to be believed, as the world of

values which must be regarded as creation itself.

These early artists conceived of no other way of subduing the earth

than by converting it into concepts; and, as time soon showed that

there actually was no other way, interpretation came to be regarded

as the greatest task of all.[27] Naming, adjusting, classifying,

qualifying, valuing, putting a meaning into things, and, above all,

simplifying--all these functions acquired a sacred character, and he

who performed them to the glory of his fellows became sacrosanct.

So great were the relief and solace that these functions bestowed upon

mankind, and so different did ugly reality appear, once it had been

interpreted by the artist mind, that creating and naming actually

began to acquire much the same sense. For to put a meaning into

things was clearly to create them afresh[28]--in fact, to create

them literally. And so it came to pass that, in one of the oldest

religions on earth, the religion of Egypt, God was imagined as a Being

who created things by naming them;[29] while, in the Judaic notion

of the creation of the world, which was probably derived from the

Egyptians themselves, Jehovah is also said to have brought things into

existence merely by pronouncing their names.[30]

The world thus became literally man's Work of Art,[31] man's Sculpture.[32]

Miracle after miracle at last reduced Nature to man's chattel, and it

was man's lust of mastership, his will to power, which thus became

creative in his highest specimen--the artist--and which, fighting for

"the higher worthiness and meaning of mankind,"[33]transfigured reality by

means of human valuations, and overcame Becoming by falsifying it as

Being.[34]

"We are in need of lies," says Nietzsche, "in order to rise superior to

reality, to truth--that is to say, in order to live.... That lies

should be necessary to life, is part and parcel of the terrible and

questionable character of existence. "Metaphysics, morality, religion,

science--all these things are merely different forms of falsehood,

by means of them we are led to believe in life. 'Life must inspire

confidence;' the task which this imposes upon us is enormous. In order

to solve this problem man must already be a liar in his heart. But he

must, above all, be an artist. And he is that. Metaphysics, religion,

morality, science--all these things are but an offshoot of his will to

Art, to falsehood, to a flight from 'truth,' to a denial of 'truth.'

This ability, this artistic capacity, _par excellence_, of man--thanks

to which he overcomes reality with lies--is a quality which he has in

common with all other forms of existence....

"To be blind to many things, to see many things falsely, to fancy

many things. Oh, how clever man has been in those circumstances in

which he believed that he was anything but clever! Love, enthusiasm,

'God'--are but subtle forms of ultimate self-deception; they are

but seductions to life and to the belief in life! In those moments

when man was deceived, when he befooled himself and when he believed

in life: Oh, how his spirit swelled within him! Oh, what ecstasies he

had! What power he felt! And what artistic triumphs in the feeling of

power!... Man had once more become master of 'matter'--master of

truth!... And whenever man rejoices, it is always in the same way:

he rejoices as an artist, his Power is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as

his power."[35]

"Subdue it!" said the Jehovah of the Old Testament, speaking to man,

and pointing to the earth: "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and

over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon

the earth."

This was man's original concept of his task on earth, and with it

before him he began to breathe at last, and to feel no longer a worm,

entangled in a mysterious piece of clockwork mechanism.

"What is it that created esteeming and despising and value and will?"

Zarathustra asks.

"The creating self created for itself esteeming and despising, it

created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself

spirit, as a hand to its will."[36]

To appraise a thing was to create it for ever in the minds of a people.

But to create a thing in the minds of a people was to create that

people too; for it is to have values in common that constitutes a

people.[37]

"Creators were they who created peoples, and hung one belief and one

love over them," says Zarathustra; "thus they served life."[38]

"Values did man stamp upon things only that he might preserve himself

--he alone created the meaning of things--a human meaning! Therefore

calleth he himself man--that is, the valuing one.

"Valuing is creating: listen, ye creators! Valuation itself is the

treasure and jewel of valued things.

"Through valuing alone can value arise; and without valuing, the nut of

existence would be hollow. Listen, ye creators!

"Change of values--that is, change of creators.[39]

"Verily a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me,

ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a yoke on the

thousand necks of this animal?"[40]

"All the beauty and sublimity with which we have invested real and

imagined things," says Nietzsche, "I will show to be the property and

product of man, and this should be his most beautiful apology. Man

as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power. Oh, the regal

liberality with which he has lavished gifts upon things!... Hitherto

this has been his greatest disinterestedness, that he admired and

worshipped, and knew how to conceal from himself that he it was who had

created what he admired."[41]

"Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power"--this man,

following his divine inspiration to subdue the earth and to make it

his, became the greatest stimulus to Life itself, the greatest bond

between earth and the human soul; and, in shedding the glamour of his

personality, like the sun, upon the things he interpreted and valued,

he also gilded, by reflection, his fellow creatures.

There is not a thing we call sacred, beautiful, good or precious, that

has not been valued for us by this man, and when we, like children,

call out for the Truth about the riddles of this world, it is not for

the truth of reality which is the object of Christianity and of science

for which we crave; but for the simplifications[42] and values of

this man-god, who, by the art-form, into which he casts reality, makes

us believe that reality is as he says it is.

If this man is lacking, then we succumb to the blackest despair. If he

is with us, we voluntarily yield to boundless joy and good cheer. His

function is the divine principle on earth; his creation Art "is the

highest task and the properly metaphysical activity of this life."[43]

[26] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 28; also C.E., p. 288. See also Schelling,

Sämmtliche Werke, Vol. V, "_Vorlesungen über die Methode des

akademischen Studiums_," p. 286: "The first origin of religion in

general, as of every other kind of knowledge and culture, can be

explained only as the teaching of higher natures."

[27] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 89: "The Will to Truth at this stage is

essentially the art of interpretation."

[28] Thus Schiller, in one of his happy moments, called beauty our

second creator (zweite Schöpferin).

[29] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 67.

[30] That those who successfully determined values even in

comparatively recent times should have been regarded almost universally

as enjoying "some closer intimacy with the Deity than ordinary

mortals," proves how very godlike and sacred the establishment of order

was thought to be. See Max Müller, _Introduction to the Science of

Religion_, p. 88.

[31] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 102.

[32] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 107.

[33] _H. A. H._, Vol. I, p. 154.

[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 108: "Art is the will to overcome Becoming,

it is a process of eternalizing." And p. 107: "To stamp Becoming with

the character of Being--this is the highest Will to Power." See also

_G. M._, p. 199.

[35] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 289, 290. See also H.A.H., Vol. I, p. 154.

[36] _Z._, I, IV.

[37] Schelling and Hegel both held this view; the one expressed it

quite categorically in his lectures on Philosophy and Mythology, and

the other in his _Philosophy of History_.

[38] _Z._, I, XI.

[39] _Z._, I, XV.

[40] _Z._, I, XVI.

[41] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 113.

[42] See Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, p. 46, who, speaking of

the old Ionian Nature-philosophers, says: "The bold flight of

their imagination did not stop at the assumption of a plurality of

indestructible elements; it never rested till it reached the conception

of a single fundamental or primordial matter as the essence of natural

diversity.... The impulse to simplification, when it had once been

aroused, was like a stone set in motion, which rolls continuously till

it is checked by an obstacle." See also Dr. W. Worringer, _Abstraktion

und Einfühlung_, p. 20.

[43] _B. T._, p. 20.

3. The People and their Man-God.

Think of the joy that must have spread through a wondering people like

the Greeks, when they were told that Earth, as the bride of Heaven, and

fertilized by his life-giving rain, became the mother not only of deep

eddying Ocean, but also of all that lives and dies upon her broad bosom!

Imagine the jubilation, the feeling of power and the sense of extreme

relief that must have filled the hearts of the ancient New Zealanders,

when the first great Maori artist arose and said to his brothers and

sisters that it was the god of the forests, Tane Mahuta, with his tall

trees that had wrenched the sky by force from mother Earth, where once

upon a time he used to crush her teeming offspring to death.[44]

With what superior understanding could they now gaze up into the

sky, and snap their fingers scornfully at its former azure mystery!

No wonder that the artist who could come forward with such an

interpretation became a god! And no wonder that in strong nations gods

and men are one! The fact that the explanation was not a true one,

according to our notions, did not matter in the least.

History not only reveals, but also proves that lies are not necessarily

hostile to existence.

For thousands of years the human race not only lived, but also

flourished with the lie of the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens on their

tongue.

For centuries men thrived and multiplied, believing that the lightning

was Jehovah's anger, and that the rainbow was Jehovah's reminder of a

certain solemn covenant by which He promised never again to destroy all

life on earth by a flood.

I do not wish to imply that these two beliefs are false. For my part,

I would prefer to believe them, rather than accept the explanations

of these phenomena which modern science offers me. Still, the fact

remains that these two Judaic explanations have been exploded by

modern science, though the question whether, as explanations, they are

superior to modern science, scarcely requires a moment's consideration.

At any rate they were the work of an artist, and when we think of the

joy they must have spread among wondering mankind, we cannot wonder

that such an artist was made a god. It was an artist, too, who created

the unchanging thing;[45] who created every kind of permanency, _i.e._

Stability out of Evolution, and among other unchangeable things, the

soul of man, which was perhaps the greatest artistic achievement that

has ever been accomplished.

And this Man-God who created Being--that is to say, a stable world,

a world which can be reckoned with, and in which the incessant

kaleidoscopic character of things is entirely absent--this same

Man-God who found the earth "without form" and "void," and whose

magnificent Spirit "moved upon the face of the waters"; when people

grew too weak to look upon him as their brother and God at the same

time,[46] was relegated to his own world, and from a great distance they

now pray to him and worship him and say: "For Thine is the Kingdom, the

Power and the Glory, For ever and ever. Amen."

"For ever and ever;" this was something they could not say of the world

as it is; and the thought of stability and of Being was a delight to

them.

It may be difficult for us to picture how great the rejoicings must

have been which followed upon every fresh ordering and arranging of the

universe, every fresh interpretation of the world in the terms of man.

Perhaps only a few people to-day, who are beginning to cast dubious

glances at Life, and to question even the justification of man's

existence, may be able to form some conception of the thrill that must

have passed through an ancient community, when one of its higher men

uprose and ordered and adjusted Life for them, and, in so ordering it,

transfigured it.

How much richer they must have felt! And how inseparable the two

notions "artist" and "giver" must have appeared to them!

"If indeed this is Life," they must have said; "if Life is really as he

orders it"--and his voice and eye allowed them to prefix no such "if"

with genuine scepticism--"then of a truth it is a well of delight and

a fountain of blessedness."

Thus Art--this function which "is with us in order that we may not

perish through truth,"[47] this "enhancement of the feeling of Life and

Life's stimulant,"[48] which "acts as a tonic, increases strength and

kindles desire"[49]--became the "great seducer" to earth and to the world;[50]

and we can imagine the gratitude that swelled in the hearts of men

for him whose function it was. How could he help but become a god!

Even tradition was not necessary for this. For at the very moment when

his creative spirit lent its glory to the earth, man must have been

conscious of his divinity or of his use as a mouthpiece by a Divinity.[50]

"O, Lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy heart!" sang the

ancient Hindus.

"Thou who knowest the place of the birds that fly through the sky, who

on the waters knowest the ships.

"Thou the upholder of order, who knowest the twelve months with the

offspring of each, and who knowest the month that is engendered

afterwards.

"Thou who knowest the track of the wind, of the wide, the bright, the

mighty; and knowest those who reside on high.

"Thou the upholder of order, Varuna, sit down among thy people, thou,

the wise, sit there to govern.

"From thence perceiving all wondrous things, thou seest what has been

and what will be done.

"Thou who givest to men glory, and not half glory, who givest it even

to our own selves.

"Thou, O wise god, art Lord of all, of heaven and earth!"[51]

We can follow every word of this heartfelt worship with perfect

sympathy now.

"Thou, the upholder of order, who knowest the twelve months with the

offspring of each"--this is no empty praise. It is the cry of those

who feel inexpressibly grateful to their great artist; to him who has

put some meaning, some order into the world.

And "Thou who givest men glory, and not half glory"--here is the

sincere recognition of a people who have been raised and who not only

rejoice in their elevation, but also recognize that it has been a

creative act--a gift and a blessing from one who had something to

give. For the soul of man is a million times more sensitive to changes

in interpretation than the column of mercury is to changes in the

atmosphere, and nothing can be more grateful than the soul of man when

it is raised, however little, and thereby glorified.

[44] See Max Müller, _India. What can it teach us?_ pp. 154. 155; also

pp. 150 and 151.

[45] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 88, 89: "Happiness can be promised only by

Being: change and happiness exclude each other. The loftiest desire

is thus to be one with Being. That is the formula for the way to

happiness."

[46] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 313.

[47] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 264.

[48] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244.

[49] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 252.

[50] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 290. See also p. 292: "Art is more divine

than truth."

[51] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 133. See also Schopenhauer, _Parerga und

Paralipomena_, Vol. II, Chap. XV, "_Ueber Religion_," para. 176, where

this view is ably upheld.

[52] Rig-Veda, I, 23.

4. The Danger.

Now, having reached this point, and having established--First: that

it is our artists who value and interpret things for us, and who put

a meaning into reality which, without them, it would never possess;

and, secondly: that it is their will to power that urges them thus to

appropriate Nature in concepts, and their will to prevail which gives

them the ardour to impose their valuation with authority upon their

fellows, thus forming a people; the thought which naturally arises is

this: The power that artists can exercise, and the prerogative they

possess, is one which might prove exceedingly dangerous; for while it

may work for good, it may also work very potently for evil. Does it

matter who interprets the world? who gives a meaning to things? who

adjusts and systematizes Nature? and who imposes order upon chaos?

Most certainly it matters. For a thousand meanings are possible, and

men may have a thousand been aiming for years, other interpretations

are still possible.

Listen to your artistic friend's description of the most trifling

excursion he has made, and then set your inartistic friend to relate

--say, his journey round the world. Whereupon ask yourself whether it

matters who sees things and who interprets life for you. The first,

even with his trifling excursion in his mind, will make you think

that life is really worth living, that the world is full, of hidden

treasure. The second will make you conclude that this earth is an

uninteresting monster, and that boredom can be killed only by the

dangers of motor racing, aerial navigation and glacier climbing.

"A thousand paths are there which never have been trodden," says

Zarathustra, "a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life. Still

unexhausted and undiscovered is mankind and man's world."[53]

This interpreting of Nature and this making and moulding of a people

might therefore have brilliant or sinister results. There are many who

wish to prevail; there are many who wish to lure their fellows on, and

not all are standing on a superior plane.

For though artists, as a rule, are men of strong propensities[54] and

surplus energy, there is an instinct of chastity in the best of them,[55]

which impels them to devote all their power to prevailing in concepts

rather than in offspring, and which makes them avoid precisely that

quarter whither other men turn when they wish to prevail.[56]

The question as to what kind of man it is who walks up to Life and

orders and values her for us, is therefore of the most extraordinary

importance. Nothing could be more important than this. Because, as we

have seen, the question is not one of truth in the Christian and modern

scientific sense. A belief is often life-preserving and still false

from the standpoint of reality.[57] It is a matter, rather, of

finding that belief, whether true or false, which most conduces to the

love of an exalted form of Life. And if we ask, Who is the man who is

interpreting life for us? What is he? What is his rank? we practically

lay our finger upon the very worth of our view of the world.

There is no greater delight or passionate love on earth for the artist

than this: to feel that he has stamped his hand on a people and on

a millennium, to feel that his eyes, his ears, and his touch have

become their eyes, and their ears, and their touch. There is no deeper

enjoyment than this for him: to feel that as he sees, hears and feels,

they also will be compelled to see, hear and feel. Only thus is he able

to prevail. A people becomes his offspring.[58]

While their elation and blessedness consisted in being raised in

concepts to his level, and in seeing the world through his artistic

prisms--in fact, in scoring materially by allowing him, their higher

man, to establish their type; it was his solitary and unfathomable

glory to prevail for ever through their minds, and to lay the

foundation of his hazar, his thousand years of life on earth, in the

spirit of his fellows.

Utilitarian, if you will, are both points of view: the one giving from

his abundance, simply because he must discharge some of his plenitude

or perish, found his meaning in giving. The others, stepping up on the

gifts bestowed, found their meaning in receiving.[59]

The artist, then, as the highest manifestation of any human community,

justifies his existence merely by living his life, and by imparting

some of his magnificence to the things about him. To use a metaphor of

George Meredith's, he gilds his retainers as the sun gilds, with its

livery, the small clouds that gather round it. This is the artist's

power and it is also his bliss. From a lower and more economical

standpoint, he justifies his life by raising the community to its

highest power; by binding it to Life with the glories which he alone

can see, and by luring it up to heights which he is the first to scale

and to explore.[60]

[53] _Z._, I, XXII.

[54] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243.

[55] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 259. Also _G. M._, p. 141.

[56] In this regard it is interesting to note that: "The Teutonic

'Kunst' (Art) is formed from _können_, and _können_ is developed from

a primitive Ich kann. Ich kann philology recognizes a preterite form

of a lost verb, of which we find the traces in Kin-d, a child; and the

form Ich kann, thus meaning originally, 'I begot,' contains the germ of

the two developments--_können_, 'to be master,' 'to be able,' and

'kennen' to know" (_Sidney Colvin_, in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,

9th Edition. Article, "Art").

[57] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 14. See also _G. E._, pp. 8, 9.

[58] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 368: "The great man is conscious of his

power over a people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily with

a people or with a century--this magnifying of his self-consciousness

as causa and voluntas is misunderstood as 'altruism': he feels driven

to means of communication: all great men are inventive in such means.

They want to form great communities in their own image; they would fain

give multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to

behold chaos."

[59] _W. P._, pp. 255, 256.

[60] Even Fichte recognizes this power in Art to stamp values

upon a people. See the Sämmtliche Werke, Vol, IV, p. 353: "Art converts

the transcendental standpoint into the general standpoint.... The

philosopher can raise himself and others to this standpoint only with

great effort. But the artistic spirit actually finds himself there,

without having thought about it; he knows no other standpoint, and

those who yield to his influence are drawn so imperceptibly over to

his side, that they do not even notice how the change takes place."

5. The Two Kinds of Artists.

Up to the present I have spoken only of the desirable artist, of him

who, from the very health and fulness that is in him, cannot look on

Life without transfiguring her; of the man who naturally sees things

fuller, simpler, stronger and grander[61] than his fellows.[62] When

this man speaks of Life, his words are those of a lover extolling his

bride.[63] There is a ring of ardent desire and deep longing in his speech,

which is infectious because it is so sincere, which is convincing

because it is so authoritative, and which is beautiful because it

is so simple.

Intoxicated[64] by his love, giddy with enthusiasm, he rhapsodizes

about her, magnifies her; points to vast unknown qualities and beauties

in her, to which he is the first to give some lasting names; and stakes

his life upon her myriad charms. This Dionysian artist, the prototype

of all gods and demi-gods that have ever existed on earth, exalts Life

when he honours her with his love; and in exalting her, exalts humanity

as well.[65]

For the mediocre, simply because they cannot transfigure Life in that

way, benefit extremely from looking on the world through the Dionysian

artist's personality. It is his genius which, by putting ugly reality

into an art-form, makes life desirable. Beneath all his dithyrambs,

however, there is still the will to power and the will to prevail--

just as these instincts are to be found behind the magnificats of the

everyday lover; but, in the case of the former, it is the power in the

spirit.

There is, however, another kind of man who walks towards Life to value

and to order her. The kind of man who, as we saw in my last lecture,

declares that "man is born in sin,"--"that depravity is universal,"

--"that nothing exists in the intellect but what has before existed

in the senses; "and that "every man is his own priest"; the man who

defines Life as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to

external relations"; and who says: "it is only the cultivation of

individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human

beings"; the man who declares that we are all equal, that there is one

truth for all, if only it can be found; and who thus not only kills all

higher men, but also deprives his fellow creatures of all the beauty

that these higher men have brought, and might still bring, into the

world; finally, the man who values humanity with figures and in the

terms of matter, who values progress in the terms of the engineer's

workshop, and who denies that Art can have any relation to Life.

This man is a sort of inverted Midas at whose touch all gold turns to

tinsel, all pearls turn to beads, and all beauty withers and fades, His

breath is that of the late autumn, and his words are hoarfrost. Having

nothing to give,[66] he merely robs things of the beauty that was once

laid in them, by insisting upon the truth of their reality; and he sees

Life smaller, thinner, weaker, and greyer than it is even to the people

themselves. He is the antithesis of the Dionysian artist. He comes from

the people, and very often from a substratum lower than they. How,

therefore, can he give the people anything they do not already possess?

He is a housewives have not already seen or felt? People have no use

for him, therefore, and whenever they are drawn to his side by his

seditious songs about equality, they find, when it is too late, that he

has made the world drabbier, uglier, colder, and stranger for them than

it was before.

This is the man who insists upon truth. Forgetting that truth is

ugly[67] and that humanity has done little else, since it first became

conscious, than to master and overcome truth, he wishes to make this

world what it was in the beginning, "without form" and "void," and to

empty things of the meaning that has been put into them, simply because

he is unable to create a world for himself.[68]

Aiming at a general truth for all, he is reduced to naked reality,

to Nature as it was before God's Spirit moved upon the face of the

waters, and this is his world of facts, stripped of all that higher

men have put into them. This man of science without Art, is gradually

reducing us to a state of absolute ignorance; for while he takes from

us what we know about things, he gives us nothing in return. How often

do we not hear people who are influenced by his science, exclaim that

the more they learn the less they feel they know. This exclamation

contains a very profound truth; for science is robbing us inch by inch

of all the groundfield-labourer among field-labourers, a housewife

among housewives--how could he point to any beauty or desire which

field-labourers and that was once conquered for us by bygone artists.[69]

Such a man, if he can be really useful in garnering and accumulating

facts, and in devising and developing novel mechanical contrivances,

ought in any case to be closeted apart, so that none of his breath

can reach the Art-made world. And when he begins valuing, all windows

and doors ought speedily to be barred and bolted against him. He is

the realist. It is he who sees spots on the sun's face; it is he who

denies that mist is the passionate sigh of mother Earth, yearning for

her spouse the sky; it is he who will not believe that the god of the

forest with his tallest trees separated the earth and the heavens

by force, and the explanations he gives of things, though they are

doubtless useful to him in his laboratory, are empty and colourless.

Granting, as I say, that he does anything useful in the department of

facts, let his profession at least be a strictly esoteric one. For his

interpretations are so often ignoble, in addition to being colourless,

that his business, like that of a certain Paris functionary, ought to

be pursued in the most severe and most zealous secrecy.

If the world grows ugly, and Life loses her bloom; if all winds are

ill winds, and the sunshine seems sickly and pale; if we turn our eyes

dubiously about us, and begin to question the justification of our

existence, we may be quite certain that this man, this realist, and his

type, are in the ascendancy, and that he it is who is stamping his ugly

fist upon our millennium.

For the function of Art is the function of the ruler. It relieves the

highest of their burden, so that mediocrity may be twice blessed,

and it makes us a people by luring us to a certain kind of Life. Its

essence is riches, its activity is giving and perfecting,[70] and while

it is a delight to the highest, it is also a boon to those beneath them.

The attempt of the Dionysian artist[71] to prevail, therefore, is

sacred and holy. In his efforts to make his eyes our eyes, his ears our

ears, and his touch our touch, though he does not pursue any altruistic

purpose, he confers considerable benefits upon mankind. Whereas

the attempt of that other man to prevail--the realist and devotee

of so-called truth--is barbarous and depraved. By his egoism he

depresses, depreciates and dismantles Life in great things as in small.

Woe to the age whose values allow his voice to be heard with respect!

There are necessary grey studies to be made, necessary uglinesses to

be described, perhaps. But let these studies and descriptions be kept

within the four walls of a laboratory until the time comes when, by

their collective means, man can be raised and not depressed by them.

Science is not with us to promulgate values. It is with us to be the

modest handmaiden of Art, working in secrecy until all its ugliness

can be collected, transfigured, and used for the purpose of man's

exaltation by the artist. It may be useful for our science-slaves,

working behind the scenes of Life, to know that the sky is merely our

limited peep into an infinite expanse of ether--whatever that is. But

when we ask to hear about it, let us be told as follows--

"O heaven above me! Thou pure! Thou deep! Thou abyss of light! Gazing

on Thee, I quiver with godlike desires.

"To cast myself up unto thy height--that is my profundity! To hide

myself in thy purity--that is mine innocence.

"We have been friends from the beginning, thou and I. Sorrow and horror

and soil we share: even the sun is common to us.

"We speak not to each other, for we know too many things. We stare

silently at each other; by smiles do we communicate our knowledge.

"And all my wanderings and mountain-climbings--these were but a

necessity and a makeshift of the helpless one. To fly is the one thing

that my will willeth, to fly into thee.

"And what have I hated more than passing clouds and all that defileth

thee!

"The passing clouds I loathe--those stealthy cats of prey. They take

from thee and me what we have in common--that immense, that infinite

saying of Yea and Amen.

"These mediators and mixers we loathe--the passing clouds.

"Rather would I sit in a tub, with the sky shut out; rather would I

sit in the abyss without a sky, than see thee, sky of Light, denied by

wandering clouds!

"And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold wires of

lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their

bellies.

"An angry drummer, because they bereave me of thy Yea and Amen I--

thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou bright, thou abyss of Light! And

because they bereave thee of my Yea and Amen.

"Thus spake Zarathustra."[72]

[61] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243: "Artists should not see things

as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger. To this

end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual

elation, must be peculiar to their lives." See also T. I., Part 10,

Aph. 8.

[62] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243. See also T. I., Part 10, Aph. 9.

[63] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 248.

[64] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 241: "The feeling of intoxication

(elation) is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to a sensation of surplus

strength." See also p. 254.

[65] Schelling also recognized the transfiguring power of Art;

but he traced it to the fact that the artist invariably paints Nature

at her zenith. See p. II, _The Philosophy of Art_ (translation by A.

Johnson): "Every growth of nature has but one moment of perfect beauty,

... Art, in that it presents the object in this moment, withdraws it

from time, and causes it to display its pure being in the form of

eternal beauty." This is making the natural object itself the adequate

source of its own transfiguration, and the theory overlooks the power

of the artist himself to see things as they are not.

[66] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244: "The sober-minded man, the tired

man, the exhausted and dried-up man, can have no feeling for Art,

because he does not possess the primitive force of Art, which is the

tyranny of inner riches."

[67] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 101.

[68] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 89: "The belief that the world which

ought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the unfruitful,

who do not wish to create a world. They take it for granted, they

seek for ways and means of attaining it. 'The will to truth' [in

the Christian and scientific sense] is the impotence of the will to

create."

[69] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 104: "The development of science tends

ever more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is

to do the _reverse_, and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the

unknown to the known. In short, science is laying the road to sovereign

ignorance, to a feeling that knowledge does not exist at all, that it

was merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing."

[70] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 263: "The essential feature in art is

its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and

plenitude. Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the

deification of existence."

[71] Fichte comes near to Nietzsche, here, with his idea of

the "beautiful spirit" which sees all nature full, large and abundant,

as opposed to him who sees all things thinner, smaller, and emptier

than they actually are. See Fichte's _Sämmtliche Werke_, Vol. IV, p.

354. See also Vol. III, p. 273.

[72] _Z._, III, XLVIII.