satisfaction: “It is in its æsthetic value that the justification of the
scientific theory is to be found, and with it the justification of the
scientific method.” I should like to pose to S. at this point the
question of whether a theory that disregarded facts would have equal
value for science with one which agreed with facts. I suppose he would
say No; and yet, so far as I can see, there would be no purely æsthetic
reason why it should not. The æsthetic value of a theory would surely
depend solely on the perfection and complexity of the unity attained,
and I imagine that many systems of scholastic theology, and even some
more recent systems of metaphysic, have only this æsthetic value. I
suspect that the æsthetic value of a theory is not really adequate to
the intellectual effort entailed unless, as in a true scientific theory
(by which I mean a theory which embraces all the known relevant facts),
the æsthetic value is reinforced by the curiosity value which comes in
when we believe it to be true. But now, returning to art, let me try to
describe rather more clearly its analogies with science.
Both of these aspects--the particularising and the generalising--have
their counterparts in art. Curiosity impels the artist to the
consideration of every possible form in nature: under its stimulus he
tends to accept each form in all its particularity as a given,
unalterable fact. The other kind of intellectual activity impels the
artist to attempt the reduction of all forms, as it were, to some common
denominator which will make them comparable with one another. It impels
him to discover some æsthetically intelligible principle in various
forms, and even to envisage the possibility of some kind of abstract
form in the æsthetic contemplation of which the mind would attain
satisfaction--a satisfaction curiously parallel to that which the mind
gets from the intellectual recognition of abstract truth.
If we consider the effects of these two kinds of intellectual activity,
or rather their exact analogues, in art, we have to note that in so far
as the artist’s curiosity remains a purely intellectual curiosity it
interferes with the perfection and purity of the work of art by
introducing an alien and non-æsthetic element and appealing to
non-æsthetic desires; in so far as it merely supplies the artist with
new motives and a richer material out of which to build his designs, it
is useful but subsidiary. Thus the objection to a “subject picture,” in
so far as one remains conscious of the subject as something outside of,
and apart from, the form, is a valid objection to the intrusion of
intellect, of however rudimentary a kind, into an æsthetic whole. The
ordinary historical pictures of our annual shows will furnish perfect
examples of such an intrusion, since they exhibit innumerable appeals to
intellectual recognitions without which the pictures would be
meaningless. Without some previous knowledge of Caligula or Mary Queen
of Scots we are likely to miss our way in a great deal of what passes
for art to-day.
The case of the generalising intellect, or rather its analogue, in art
is more difficult. Here the recognition of relations is immediate and
sensational--perhaps we ought to consider it as curiously akin to those
cases of mathematical geniuses who have immediate intuition of
mathematical relations which it is beyond their powers to prove--so that
it is by analogy that we may talk of it at all as intellectual. But the
analogy is so close that I hope it may justify the use I here suggest.
For in both cases the utmost possible generalisation is aimed at, and in
both the mind is held in delighted equilibrium by the contemplation of
the inevitable relations of all the parts in the whole, so that no need
exists to make reference to what is outside the unity, and this becomes
for the time being a universe.
It will be seen how close the analogies are between the methods and aims
of art and science, and yet there remains an obstinate doubt in the mind
whether at any point they are identical. Probably in order to get much
further we must wait for the psychologists to solve a number of
problems; meanwhile this at least must be pointed out--that, allowing
that the motives of science are emotional, many of its processes are
purely intellectual, that is to say, mechanical. They could be performed
by a perfectly non-sentient, emotionless brain, whereas at no point in
the process of art can we drop feeling. There is something in the common
phraseology by which we talk of _seeing_ a point or an argument, whereas
we _feel_ the harmony of a work of art; and for some reason we attach a
more constant emotional quality to feeling than to seeing, which is so
constantly used for coldly practical ends.
From the merest rudiments of pure sensation up to the highest efforts of
design each point in the process of art is inevitably accompanied by
pleasure; it cannot proceed without it. If we describe the process of
art as a logic of sensation, we must remember that the premises are
sensations, and that the conclusion can only be drawn from them by one
who is in an emotional state with regard to them. Thus a harmony in
music cannot be perceived by a person who merely hears accurately the
notes which compose it--it can only be recognised when the relations of
those notes to one another are accompanied by emotion. It is quite true
that the recognition of inevitability in thought is normally accompanied
by a pleasurable emotion, and that the desire for this mental pleasure
is the motive force which impels to the making of scientific theory. But
the inevitability of the relations remains equally definite and
demonstrable whether the emotion accompanies it or not, whereas an
æsthetic harmony simply does not exist without the emotional state. The
harmony is not _true_ (to use our analogy) unless it is felt with
emotion.
None the less, perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with
the highest pleasure in scientific theory. The emotion which accompanies
the clear recognition of unity in a complex seems to be so similar in
art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are
psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both
processes. This unity-emotion in science supervenes upon a process of
pure mechanical reasoning; in art it supervenes upon a process of which
emotion has all along been an essential concomitant.
It may be that in the complete apprehension of a work of art there
occurs more than one kind of feeling. There is generally a basis of
purely physiological pleasure, as in seeing pure colours or hearing pure
sounds; then there is the specifically æsthetic emotion by means of
which the necessity of relations is apprehended, and which corresponds
in science to the purely logical process; and finally there is the
unity-emotion, which may not improbably be of an identical kind in both
art and science.
In the art of painting we may distinguish between the unity of texture
and the unity of design. I know quite well that these are not really
completely separable, and that they are to some extent mutually
dependent; but they may be regarded as separate for the purpose of
focussing our attention. Certainly we can think of pictures in which the
general architecture of the design is in no way striking or remarkable
which yet please us by the perfection of the texture, that is to say,
the ease with which we apprehend the necessary relationship of one
shape, tone or colour with its immediately surrounding shapes, tones or
colours; our æsthetic sense is continually aroused and satisfied by the
succession of inevitable relationships. On the other hand, we know of
works of art in which the unity and complexity of the texture strike us
far less than the inevitable and significant relationship of the main
divisions of the design--pictures in which we should say that the
composition was the most striking beauty. It is when the composition of
a picture, adequately supported as it must be by significance of
texture, reveals to us the most surprising and yet inevitable
relationships that we get most strongly the final unity-emotion of a
work of art. It is these pictures that are, as S. would say of certain
theories, the most significant for contemplation. Nor before such works
can we help implicitly attributing to their authors the same kind of
power which in science we should call “great intellect,” though perhaps
in both the term “great imaginative organisation” would be better.
THE ART OF THE BUSHMEN[9]
In the history of mankind drawing has at different times and among
different races expressed so many different conceptions, and has used
such various means, that it would seem to be not one art, but many. It
would seem, indeed, that it has its origins in several quite distinct
instincts of the human race, and it may not be altogether unimportant
even for the modern draughtsman to investigate these instincts in their
simpler manifestations in order to check and control his own methods.
The primitive drawing of our own race is singularly like that of
children. Its most striking peculiarity is the extent to which it is
dominated by the concepts of language. In a child’s drawing we find a
number of forms which have scarcely any reference to actual appearances,
but which directly symbolise the most significant concepts of the thing
represented. For a child, a man is the sum of the concept’s head (which
in turn consists of eyes, nose, mouth), arms, hands (five fingers),
legs, feet. Torso is not a concept which interests him, and it is,
therefore, usually reduced to a single line which serves to link the
concept-symbol head with those of the legs. The child does, of course,
know that the figure thus drawn is not like a man, but it is a kind of
hieroglyphic script for a man, and satisfies his desire for expression.
Precisely the same phenomenon occurs in primitive art; the symbols for
concepts gradually take on more and more of the likeness to appearances,
but the mode of approach remains even in comparatively advanced periods
the same. The artist does not seek to transfer a visual sensation to
paper, but to express a mental image which is coloured by his conceptual
habits.
Prof. Loewy[10] has investigated the laws which govern representation in
early art, and has shown that the influence of the early artist’s ideas
of representation persist in Greek sculpture down to the time of
Lysippus. He enumerates seven peculiarities of early drawing, of which
the most important are that the figures are shown with each of their
parts in its broadest aspect, and that the forms are stylised--_i.e._
present linear formations that are regular or tend to regularity.
Of the first of these peculiarities Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture,
even of the latest and most developed periods, afford constant examples.
We see there the head in profile, the eye full face, the shoulders and
breast full face, and by a sudden twist in the body the legs and feet
again in profile. In this way each part is presented in that aspect
which most clearly expresses its corresponding visual concepts. Thus a
foot is much more clearly denoted by its profile view than by the
rendering of its frontal appearance--while no one who was asked to think
of an eye would visualise it to himself in any other than a full-face
view. In such art, then, the body is twisted about so that each part may
be represented by that aspect which the mental image aroused by the name
of the part would have, and the figure becomes an ingenious compound of
typical conceptual images. In the case of the head two aspects are
accepted as symbolic of the concept “head,” the profile and the
full-face; but it is very late in the development of art before men are
willing to accept any intermediate position as intelligible or
satisfactory. It is generally supposed that early art avoids
foreshortening because of its difficulty. One may suppose rather that it
is because the foreshortened view of a member corresponds so ill with
the normal conceptual image, and is therefore not accepted as
sufficiently expressive of the idea. Yet another of the peculiarities
named by Prof. Loewy must be mentioned, namely, that the “conformation
and movement of the figures and their parts are limited to a few typical
shapes.” And these movements are always of the simplest kinds, since
they are governed by the necessity of displaying each member in its
broadest and most explicit aspect. In particular the crossing of one
limb over another is avoided as confusing.
Such in brief outline are some of the main principles of drawing both
among primitive peoples and among our own children. It is not a little
surprising then to find, when we turn to Miss Tongue’s careful copies
of the drawings executed by the Bushmen of South Africa[11] that the
principles are more often contradicted than exemplified. We find, it is
true, a certain barbaric crudity and simplicity which give these
drawings a superficial resemblance to children’s drawings or those of
primitive times, but a careful examination will show how different they
are. The drawings are of different periods, though none of them probably
are of any considerable antiquity, since the habit of painting over an
artist’s work when once he was forgotten obtained among the bushmen no
less than with more civilised people. These drawings are also of very
different degrees of skill. They represent for the most part scenes of
the chase and war, dances and festivals, and in one case there is an
illustration to a bushman story and one figure is supposed to represent
a ghost. There is no evidence of deliberate decorative purpose in these
paintings. The figures are cast upon the walls of the cave in such a way
as to represent, roughly, the actual scenes.[12] Nothing could be more
unlike primitive art than some of these scenes. For instance, the battle
fought between two tribes over the possession of some cattle, is
entirely unlike battle scenes such as we find in early Assyrian reliefs.
There the battle is schematic, all the soldiers of one side are in
profile to right, all the soldiers of the opposing side are in profile
to left. The whole scene is perfectly clear to the intelligence, it
follows the mental image of what a battle ought to be, but is entirely
unlike what a battle ever is. Now, in the Bushman drawing, there is
nothing truly schematic; it is difficult to find out the soldiers of the
two sides; they are all mixed up in a confused hurly-burly, some
charging, others flying, and here and there single combats going on at a
distance from the main battle. But more than this, the men are in every
conceivable attitude, running, standing, kneeling, crouching, or turning
sharply round in the middle of flight to face the enemy once more.
In fact we have, in all its confusion, all its indeterminate variety and
accident, a rough silhouette of the actual appearance of such a scene as
viewed from above, for the Bushman makes this sacrifice of actual
appearance to lucidity of statement--that he represents the figures as
spread out over the ground, and not as seen one behind another.
Or take again Plate XI of Miss Tongue’s album; the scene is the Veldt
with elands and rheboks scattered over its surface. The animals are
arranged in the most natural and casual manner; sometimes in this case
part of one animal is hidden by the animal in front; but what strikes
one most is the fact that extremely complicated poses are rendered with
the same ease as the more frequent profile view, and that momentary
actions are treated with photographic verisimilitude. See Figs. 1 and 2.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
Another surprising instance of this is shown in Fig. 3, taken from Plate
XIX of Miss Tongue’s book, and giving a rhebok seen from behind in a
most difficult and complicated attitude. Or again, the man running in
Fig. 5. Here is the silhouette of a most complicated gesture with
foreshortening of one thigh and crossing of the arm holding the bow over
the torso, rendered with apparent certainty and striking verisimilitude.
Most curious of all are the cases of which Fig. 4 is an example, of
animals trotting, in which the gesture is seen by us to be true only
because our slow and imperfect vision has been helped out by the
instantaneous photograph. Fifty years ago we should have rejected such a
rendering as absurd; we now know it to be a correct statement of one
movement in the action of trotting.
Another point to be noticed is that in primitive and in children’s art
such features as eyes, ears, horns, tails, since they correspond to
well-marked concepts, always tend to be drawn disproportionately large
and prominent. Now, in the Bushman drawings, the eye, the most
significant of all, is frequently omitted, and when represented bears
its true proportion to the head. Similarly, horns, ears, and tails are
never exaggerated. Indeed, however faulty these drawings may be, they
have one great quality, namely, that each figure is seen as a single
entity, and the general character of the silhouette is aimed at rather
than a sum of the parts. Those who have taught drawing to children will
know with what infinite pains civilised man arrives at this power.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
By way of contrast to these extraordinary performances of the Bushman
draughtsman, I give in outline, Fig. 6, the two horses of a chariot on
an early (Dipylon) Greek vase. The man who drew it was incomparably more
of an artist; but how entirely his intellectual and conceptual way of
handling phenomena has obscured his vision! His two horses are a sum of
concept-symbols, arranged with great orderliness and with a decorative
feeling, but without any sort of likeness to appearance. Mr. Balfour, in
his preface to Miss Tongue’s book, notices briefly some of these
striking characteristics of the Bushman drawings. He says:--
“The paintings are remarkable not only for the realism exhibited by so
many, but also for a freedom from the limitation to delineation in
profile which characterises for the most part the drawings of primitive
peoples, especially where animals are concerned. Attitudes of a kind
difficult to render were ventured upon without hesitation, and an
appreciation even of the rudiments of perspective is occasionally to be
noted, though only in a crude and uncertain form. The practice of
endeavouring to represent more than could be seen at one time, a habit
so characteristic of the art of primitive peoples as also of civilised
children, is far less noticeable in Bushman art than might have been
expected from the rudimentary general culture of these people, and one
does not see instances of _both_ eyes being indicated upon a profile
face, or a mouth in profile on a full face, such as are so familiar in
the undeveloped art of children and of most backward races.”
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
Since, then, Bushman drawing has little analogy to the primitive art of
our own races, to what can we relate it? The Bushmen of Australia have
apparently something of the same power of transcribing pure visual
images, but the most striking case is that of Palæolithic man. In the
caves of the Dordogne and of Altamira in Spain, Palæolithic man has left
paintings which date from about 10,000 B.C., in which, as far as mere
naturalism of representation of animals goes, he has surpassed anything
that not only our own primitive peoples, but even the most accomplished
animal draughtsmen have ever achieved. Fig. 7 shows in outline a bison
from Altamira. The certainty and completeness of the pose, the perfect
rhythm and the astonishing verisimilitude of the movement are evident
even in this. The Altamira drawings show a much higher level of
accomplishment than those of the Bushmen, but the general likeness is so
great as to have suggested the idea that the Bushmen are descendants of
Palæolithic man who have remained at the same rudimentary stage as
regards the other arts of life, and have retained something of their
unique power of visual transcription.
Whether this be so or not, it is to be noted that all the peoples whose
drawing shows this peculiar power of visualisation belong to what we
call the lowest of savages; they are certainly the least civilisable,
and the South African Bushmen are regarded by other native races in
much the same way that we look upon negroes. It would seem not
impossible that the very perfection of vision, and presumably of the
other senses[13] with which the Bushmen and Palæolithic man were
endowed, fitted them so perfectly to their surroundings that there was
no necessity to develop the mechanical arts beyond the elementary
instruments of the chase. We must suppose that Neolithic man, on the
other hand, was less perfectly adapted to his surroundings, but that his
sensual defects were more than compensated for by increased intellectual
power. This greater intellectual power manifested itself in his desire
to classify phenomena, and the conceptual view of nature began to
predominate. And it was this habit of thinking of things in terms of
concepts which deprived him for ages of the power to see what they
looked like. With Neolithic man drawing came to express man’s thought
about things rather than his sensations of them, or rather, when he
tried to reproduce his sensations, his habits of thought intervened, and
dictated to his hand orderly, lucid, but entirely non-naturalistic
forms.
How deeply these visual-conceptual habits of Neolithic man have sunk
into our natures may be seen by their effects upon hysterical patients,
a statement which I owe to the kindness of Dr. Henry Head, F.R.S. If the
word “chest” is mentioned most people see a vague image of a flat
surface on which are marked the sternum and the pectoral muscles; when
the word “back” is given, they see another flat or almost flat surface
with markings of the spine and the shoulder-blades; but scarcely any
one, having these two mental images called up, thinks of them as parts
of a continuous cylindrical body. Now, in the case of some hysterical
patients anæsthesia is found just over some part of the body which has
been isolated from the rest in thought by means of the conceptual image.
It will occur, for instance, in the chest, but will not go beyond the
limits which the conceptualised visual image of a chest defines. Or it
will be associated with the concept hand, and will stop short at the
wrists. It is not surprising, then, that a mode of handling the
continuum of natural appearance, which dictates even the behaviour of
disease, should have profoundly modified all artistic representations
of nature since the conceptual habit first became strongly marked in
Neolithic man. An actual definition of drawing given by a child may be
quoted in this connection, “First I think and then I draw a line round
my think.”
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]