The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.
Having already shown that the aspirations of man, made in the image of
his God, are always directed toward that wondrous background from which
all life projects--the Infinite, we now propose to make a few remarks
upon the manifestation of some of the remaining attributes revealed to
him, and which he is forever striving to incarnate in the works of art.
Beauty, in its proper expression, must be allied to or suggest the
Infinite, for in it alone can ceaseless _variety_ be united with
absolute _unity_. Unity is an essential characteristic of life itself;
variety resolving itself into unity, and unity expanding itself into
variety, mark all that God has made. As a necessary consequence of the
position we have assumed, viz.: 'That art is not a servile copy, but
rather a creation of man in the Spirit of Nature,' _Variety and Unity_
must characterize every great work of art, as they mark every work of
the Creator. Let us take any of the humblest things which He has made, a
flower, for example: Unity, Order, Proportion, and Symmetry are in all
its fragile leaves--the Great Over-Soul seems to have lingered lovingly
over the elaboration of its idea, and stamped upon its fragrant leaves,
perishing and trivial as they may seem, the secrets of Infinity! With
what variety it is marked! How many shades in the gradations of the
color! What infinitesimal changes in the direction of the gentle
curvature of the rounded lines! what richness in the details! what
subtle and penetrating tenderness in the perfume! _Love_, _Infinity_,
_Unity_, _Order_, _Proportion_, _Symmetry_, mark all the Divine Works:
_Unity_, _Order_, _Proportion_, _Symmetry_, _Love_, as manifested in the
careful rendering of the subject in hand, with the suggestion of that
mystic Infinite in which all being is cradled, and from which all art is
nurtured, should, on their lower level in their finite degree, mark
every work of art. But to our subject: the divine attribute of unity,
and its manifestation in and through the finite.
All things, except God, receive externally some perfection from other
things. We will not now consider the unity of His mystical Trinity, but
rather dwell upon the necessity of His inherence in all things, without
which no creature could retain existence for a moment. We speak of His
comprehensive unity because it is an object of hope to men; it is that
of which Christ thought when he said: 'Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall believe on me through their word: that
they may be all One, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee.' There
is no matter, no spirit, that is not capable of unity of some kind with
other creatures, in which unity is found their several perfections, and
which is a source of joy for all who see it. The Unity of Spirits is
partly in their sympathy, partly in their giving and taking, and ever in
their love, their inseparable dependency on each other and _always_ on
their Maker--not like the cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary
mountains, but the living peace of trust, the living power of
confidence, _of hands that hold each other and are still_! Who has not
felt the strength of united love? In the sudden emotion common to
humanity which we all experience at the sight of suffering, and which
brought tears from the Holy One on the death of Lazarus, in the strange
shivering which we feel pervade our souls at the shrill cry of anguish,
do we not recognize more than a simple resemblance of nature--do we not
feel that the _race_ is really _One_, that a common grief again unites
it, that in this _oneness_ we are all justly partakers in the sin of
Adam, that in this _oneness_ we may partake of the glory of the Brother
who died to _unite_ the finite with the Infinite?
It is to this essential _unity_ of the race that the dramatist owes much
of his power; for let him but strike the common strings of grief and
love, and the crowd at once show by their words, their gestures, their
looks, and often by their tears, their earnest sympathy. Even at the
spectacle of an imaginary grief their hearts are moved, the sorrow
thrills through every soul; if the poet has been true to nature, they
feel that his imaginary characters are but part and parcel of themselves
in their woe. Thus the emotion excited by dramatic representations has
its source in the very root of our being, the _unity_ of our common
nature, in our common brotherhood; consequently, neither in the
instincts of the body nor the caprices of the poetic fancy. If the poet
would not break the bond, let him respect the _unities_ of nature,
whatever view he may take of those of convention. It is to this
wonderful unity with our common nature that the greatest of all
uninspired writers, Shakspeare, owes his universal acknowledgment, his
unequalled power.
If, as we have labored to teach, matter always symbolizes mind, we
should expect to find it also pervaded with the unity pertaining to its
lower rank, and so indeed we find it. In its noblest form the unity of
matter is that organization of it which builds it into living temples
for the indwelling spirits, those houses not made with hands--the bodies
of noble men, of fair and loving women.
In a lower form, it gives that sweet and strange affinity which adds the
glory of orderly arrangement to its elements, gifting them with the fair
variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into crystal, and
separates the waters above the firmament from those below. It is the
walking and clinging _together_ that gives power to the winds, weight to
the waves, heat to the sunbeams, and stability to the mountains. It is
the 'clinging together' which throws our syllables into words, gives
metre to poetry, and melody and harmony to sound. Indeed, the clinging
together of sounds, as seized by the ear in _time_, with the ever
forming and living ebb and flow of widely different rhythms, exerting
the most mysterious influences upon the soul, is not less remarkable
than its more familiar history in space.
Manifold, indeed, would be the generalizations of the different species
of unity, for it is the secret link of all being.
We have the unity of separate things subjected to one and the same
influence, as the unity of clouds as they are driven by parallel winds,
or ordered by electric currents: there is the unity of myriads of sea
waves, of the bending and undulating of forest masses.
In creatures capable of will, there would be the unity of acts
controlled, in all their apparent variety, by its directing power; and
the unity of emotions in the masses, when swayed by some common impulse.
There is also the unity of the origin of things arising from one source,
always suggesting their common brotherhood: in matter this is manifested
in the unity of the branches of the trees, of the petals and starry rays
of flowers, of the beams of light, of heat, &c., &c.; in spiritual
creatures it is their filial relation to Him from whom they have their
being.
There is the unity of sequence, which is that of things which form links
in chains, steps in ascent, and stages in journeys; this, in matter, is
the unity of communicable forces in their continuance and propagation
from one thing to another; it is the passing upward and downward of
beneficent effects among all things; it is the melody of sounds; the
beauty of continuous lines; and orderly successions of motions and
times. In spiritual creatures, it is their own constant building up by
true knowledge and consecutive efforts to higher perfection, and the
singleness and straightforwardness of their tendencies to more complete
union with God.
There is the unity of membership, which is the union of things
separately imperfect into a perfect whole; this is the great unity of
which all other unities are but parts and means. In matter it is the
consistency of bodies, the harmony of sounds;--with spiritual beings, it
is their love, happiness, and life in God. But this unity cannot subsist
between things _similar_ to each other. Two or more equal or like things
cannot be members the one of the other, nor can they form one or a whole
thing. _Two_ they must remain both in nature and in our conception
unless they are united by a _third_. Thus the arms, which are like each
other, remain always two arms in our conception, and could not be united
by a third arm, but must be linked by something which is not an arm, and
which, imperfect without them as they without it, will, with them, form
one perfect body. Nor is unity even thus accomplished without a
difference and opposition of direction in the setting on of members.
Therefore, among things which are to have membership with each other,
there must be difference or variety; and though it is possible that many
like things may be made members of one body, yet it is very remarkable
that this stricture appears rather characteristic of the lower creatures
than the higher, as the many legs of the caterpillar, and the arms and
suckers of Radiata seem to prove. As we rise in the order of being the
number of similar members becomes less; their structure appearing based
on the principle of two things united by a third;--a constant type even
in matter of the Triune Existence.
Out of the necessity of _unity_ arises that of _variety_, a necessity
vividly felt, because it lies at the surface of things, and is assisted
by our love of change and the power of contrast. It were a mistake to
suppose that mere variety, without a linking principle of unity, is,
necessarily, either agreeable or beautiful.
'All are needed by each one,
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I could not bring home the river and sky;--
He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my seaborn treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.'
It is not mere unrelated variety which charms us, for a forest of all
manner of trees is poor in its effect, while a mass of one species of
trees is sublime;--the swan, with its purity of unbroken whiteness, is
one of the most beautiful of creatures. It is, indeed, only harmonious
and chordal variety, that variety which is necessary to secure and
extend unity (for the greater the number of objects which by their
differences become members of one another, the more extended and sublime
is their unity), which is essentially beautiful. _Variety_ is never so
conspicuous as when united with some intimation of _unity_. For example,
the perpetual change of clouds is monotonous in its very dissimilarity,
nor is difference ever striking where no connection is implied; but if
through a range of barred clouds crossing half the heavens, all governed
by the same forces, and falling into one general form, there be yet a
marked and evident dissimilarity between each member of the great
mass--one more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next
more gracefully bent--each broken into differently modelled and
variously numbered groups,--the _variety_ is doubly striking because
contrasted with the perfect _unity_ and _symmetry_ of which it forms a
part.
Now, of that which is thus necessary to the perfection of things, all
types and suggestions must be beautiful in whatever way they may suggest
or manifest it. To the perfection of beauty in lines, colors, forms,
masses, or multitudes, the appearance of unity is absolutely essential.
Let the artist look to it, that our pictures may gain expression; our
music cease to weary us through the unceasing dissimilarity of its
parts, highly adorned arabesques running into each other, graceful, but
without significance, without any perceptible principle of unity in the
jarring '_motifs_;' and our poems have some certain theme, that their
highly wrought details may not confuse and bewilder the spirit always in
search of some central unity. Like the burning sands which, clinging not
together in any sweet union of fellowship, blind and confuse us with
their drifting masses, are all such essays in art; for an idea capable
of quickening an artistic creation must be vitally One, and every great
work, notwithstanding its variety and the manifold complexity of its
parts, must form a Whole.
The _association of ideas_, upon which is based the _unity_ of the
continuous life of the individual, with the pervading sense of personal
identity, has been aptly called the '_cohesion of the moral world_.' It
is not less powerful, less irresistible, than that of the physical
world. The association of ideas is a constituent and necessary phase of
the _unity_ of our mental and moral being, the indispensable condition
of all development, whether of mind or soul. Without the power of
association, the intellect would strive in vain to construct consecutive
trains of thought; it would indeed be condemned to eternal infancy,
because, as it ascertained new relations, those already acquired would
escape, and a labor constantly renewed would be requisite to regain
them. Without association of ideas, no voluntary virtue would be
possible; and at the end of long years of effort and self-restraint, we
would have gained no additional control over the course of our impetuous
passions.
The fact that much of the difference in intellectual capacity so
strongly characterizing different individuals arises from their various
powers over the flow and logical association of ideas, has scarcely
elicited the attention it so well deserves. It is of immense importance
in the history of mental development. If an individual connects his
ideas with difficulty, or can continue to chain them in rational
sequence only with the most laborious efforts, he will have either a
dull and heavy, or flighty and illogical, mind.
If another has great trouble in modifying or arranging the association
of ideas which arise spontaneously in the soul, he will suffer himself
to be ruled by them, in place of exercising rational domination over
them; he will pursue every chimera; he will trust every impulse; he will
but dream, even when he tries to think; and will be of a weak and
fickle, but obstinate and self-opinionated, intellect. His whole
exhaustive logic will consist in clothing in exact and reiterated
assertions the heterogeneous order in which ideas are arbitrarily,
accidentally, and spontaneously associated in his own imagination.
Another will associate his ideas in logical sequence, yet with startling
rapidity; in a manner and through subtle relations quite unknown to
common men, incapable of such vivid, rational, and consequential
combinations; and will, in consequence, be a man of clear and vivid
intellect.
The wonderful faculty of improvisation so often seen in Italy, is an
example of the power of appropriate and rapid association. There is no
doubt that this power is susceptible of development and cultivation, and
that much that is brilliant in intuition is lost through the want of it.
In spite of this, no system has as yet been devised for its culture. Let
him who would labor for the real improvement of humanity think of it,
write for it, and aid us in its development: as the law of _internal
unity_ with regard to the immense range of possible associations is so
vital to our moral well being, so essential to our intellectual sanity,
let our deepest thinkers devote themselves to its culture in the race!
We may distinctly trace the intuitive strivings of the human spirit for
_unity_ even in the theology of nations without revelation. In one of
the ancient fragments of Greek poetry known as Orphic Hymns, we find
them thus articulated:
'Jupiter is the First and Last; Jupiter is man and immortal
Virgin; Jupiter is the base of Earth and Heaven; Jupiter is the
living breath of all beings; Jupiter is the source of Fire; the
root of the Sea; Jupiter is the Sun and Moon; Jupiter is King
of the universe; He created all things; He is a Living Force; a
God; the Heart of all that is;--a supernal Body which embraces
all bodies, fire, water, earth, air, night, day, with Metis the
first Generatrix, and Love, full of magic. All that is, is
contained in the immense Body of Jupiter.'
The reader will not fail to observe how much this Greek hymn resembles
in its spirit the extract we have already given him from the Vedas; how
closely it coincides with the transcendental philosophy of the Hindoos.
But the idea of God, vague and indeterminate apart from revelation, soon
lost its _pantheistic_ unity in the wildest _polytheistic_ variety. The
primitive idea of unity, passing through the distorting prism of the
fallen and corrupt human imagination, was divided, decomposed, clothed
in a thousand colors and forms to allure and satisfy the senses. Thus
there was no part of nature without its appropriate god, invested with
supreme power over the class of being subjected to its care. No one had
ever seen any one of these gods, but the people had no doubt of their
existence. Names in close accordance with their separate functions were
given them; these names became symbols destined to represent the
different active principles of the physical world.
Thus in their literary and sacred language they substituted the names of
Jupiter, Hyades, Hamadryads, Apollo, for those of Air, Fountains,
Forests, and Sun. Nature almost disappeared under this traditionary
language, which, giving play to the lighter fancy, chilled the
imagination, and singularly limited the view. Indeed, it so amused and
allured the fancy by its diversity that the mind scarcely cared to rise
from this fantastic and grotesque world to seek the sublime principles
of Infinity, of Unity. If the ancients had regarded nature as a vast
system of signs designed to manifest the ideas of the Great Artist; if
they had at all understood the marvellous Unity of the Divine Works, it
would have been worse than idle in them to have invented a language
which thus lowered nature, robbing it of its solemn majesty, its august
dignity. As all these divinities had the human figure, God was banished
from His own universe, man everywhere substituting his own personality.
Speaking of the great dearth of vivid descriptions of natural scenery
among the ancients, Chateaubriand says: 'It must not be supposed that
men as full of sensibility as the ancients wanted eyes to see nature, or
talent to depict it, if some powerful cause had not blinded and misled
them; this cause was their mythology, which, peopling the universe with
graceful phantoms, robbed creation of its solemnity, of its sublime
repose. Christianity came--and fauns, satyrs, and wanton nymphs
disappeared; the grottos regained their holy silence; the dim woods
their mystic reveries; the vast forests their vague and sublime
melancholy; the streams overturned their petty urns to drink only from
the mountain tops, to pour forth only the waters of the abyss. The true
and One God, in reappearing in His own mystical works, again breathed
through the voice of nature the secret thrill of His perfect Unity, His
incomprehensible Infinity.'
'Earth outgrows the mythic fancies
Sung beside her in her youth;
And those debonaire romances
Sound but dull beside the truth.
Phoebus' chariot race is run!
Look up, poets, to the Sun!
Pan, Pan is dead.
'Christ hath sent us down the angels;
And the whole earth and the skies
Are illumed by altar candles
Lit for blessed mysteries;
And a Priest's hand through creation
Waveth calm and consecration--
And Pan is dead.
'O brave Poets, keep back nothing;
Mix not falsehood with the whole!
Look up Godward! speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul!
Hold, in high poetic duty,
Truest truth, the fairest Beauty!
Pan, Pan is dead.'
As we have already intimated, Pantheism is the negation of the Divine
Personality in order to arrive at Unity; Polytheism is the negation of
the Divine Unity, which is fractioned and divided that its multitudinous
action may be conceived. The light fancy was delighted with such
divisions, resulting in varied gods and goddesses; but the soul could
find no satisfaction for its deeper needs in such conceptions; urged on
by its secret instincts, it sought to recompose the broken unity of the
divine nature.
All government requires a Head; and when an attempt was made to apply
the heterogeneous qualities and contradictory powers of the gods to the
regulation of society--when it was necessary to find in an Olympus
filled with quarrels and scandals, a steady Power capable of directing
the destinies of a great people toward a single aim--men were again
forced to recompose the fractioned Unity, to form an idea of one God
superior to those with whom they had peopled earth and heaven. They
were thus forced upon the conception of a Being superior to Jupiter, who
subjected all the gods to his inflexible laws; and giving wings to those
instincts of dread always present in the soul of a fallen race, they
invented an invisible Divinity who never manifested himself to men; who
dwelt in inaccessible and dreadful regions, in which an inscrutable
Horror forever reigned; and through this new Terror, Unity was again
brought into the design of creation, for all beings were, in despite of
themselves, forced to fulfil the decrees of its pitiless will. All
struggle was vain, all effort useless, prayer was without avail, and
human anguish utterly unheeded by this terrific phantom of irresistible
and crushing Power without a heart!
It is this dread idea which, pervading the pages of Eschylus, gives them
that peculiar character of simplicity and grandeur, with which no other
tragedies are marked in a like degree. Such was the source of the
inspiration of classic tragedy, the spring of that stern and severe
poetry which throws the lurid hues of a melancholy so profound upon the
pallid and affrighted face of humanity. Man, struggling with all the
gloomy energy of despair against this vague but formidable Horror, which
no virtue or agony could conciliate--this dark Fate, the creation of his
own misled and perverted intuitions--and vainly seeking to escape from
the inflexible circle which he had traced around himself, is an object
which cannot fail to awaken the deepest pity. He asks from his fellow
men, from nature, from the gods, the meaning of the dire enigma of life.
Alas! they leave him to struggle in the stony hands of an unbending
Fate! no reply is ever given to his wild demand, and the 'veil of Isis
is never raised!' The world quivered under some strange anathema; a
mystic malediction wreathed its thorns round the anguished heads of men;
even in the midst of their festivals, when seeming to drink deep of joy
from the brimming cup of life, the invisible hand of a Gorgon Fate was
forever felt tracing upon their walls the decrees of a dark,
inscrutable, inflexible, and terrible destiny!
Yet there are poets among us, who would willingly return to the days of
Paganism, and resuscitate the gods of Greece!
'Get to dust as common mortals,
By a common doom and track!
Let no Schiller from the portals
Of that Hades call you back,
Or instruct us all to weep:
Everlasting be your sleep!
Pan, Pan is dead!'
''Twas the hour when one in Zion
Hung for Love's sake on a cross--
When His brow was chill with dying,
And His soul was faint with loss;
When His priestly blood dropped downward;
And His kingly eyes looked homeward--
Then Pan was dead!'
The Prometheus of the rock, the Tantalus of the fable, man, plunged in
this world of woe with his lips thirsty for happiness, stretches out his
hand to pluck the bitter Dead-Sea fruits of this earth. With his
profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving for the Absolute, he
seizes madly upon every object which suggests their image to him; the
foul fiend, adapting his temptations to the nature of the tempted, still
whispers, as into the ear of the mother of mankind: 'Ye shall be as
gods;'--but the phenomenal flies before him, and he everywhere falls
upon the thorns closely hedging in the narrow circle of the actual.
Without Faith, the artist is among the most miserable of men, for
through the illimitable horizons of the Infinite, genius catches secrets
which it can never fully utter; symbolic signs, whose sense it cannot
articulate; while the voice of the invisible Love loads every breeze.
What profound and mournful aspirations for that _Unknown_ which the
mortal may not see, surge through the soul of the imaginative!
'E'en the flowing azure air
Thou hast charmed for his despair.'
While the artist strives to incorporate with the works which their
presence shall render immortal, suggestions of Infinity, of Unity, let
him hopefully turn to the Author of all Beauty for true inspiration and
peace.
As satisfaction and response to the longings of the spirit, the Gospel
has brought Life and Immortality to light. The assurance that 'God is
Love' responds to the inmost wish of the soul. The problem of antiquity,
the possible Union of the finite with the Infinite, has been solved in
the most marvellous manner. No longer are we oppressed with the loss of
all personal identity, all moral responsibility, as in pantheism; nor
confused by the debasing fractioning of the Divine Unity, as in
polytheism; nor bound hand and foot under the crushing despotism of a
pitiless Fate;--but in the Glorified Humanity of Christ these perplexing
problems of the soul are answered, and the incomprehensible union of the
Infinite and finite at last accomplished, He took our nature upon Him
that Infinite Love might pass through all degrees of suffering, even to
the last dying gasp of agony, to release us from the horrors of the
'second death.' Every human feeling is known to Him, but in infinite
purity; the Real and Ideal are in equal perfection. Far higher, indeed,
than the most sublime conception that uninspired thought could ever have
engendered; human, yet far above humanity; ruling all ages; winning all
adoration; sublime in tender simplicity--behold the meek Lamb of God,
the Holy Son of the Blessed Virgin!
Oh, eternal, immaculate Beauty! if in this world Thou but sufferest us
to divine Thy Perfections; if Thou hast given us ephemeral delights
which always escape our eager grasp at the very moment we dream of their
full enjoyment; if the flower fades so fast--the days of spring are so
fleeting; if nature, like a thick veil thrown between this world and the
next, suffers but a few rays of Thy glory to pierce its folds, while it
keeps us from Thee even in kindling the flame of desires which it never
satisfies--it is because Thou knowest that in the inexhaustible richness
of Thy Being there are everlasting fountains to quench the insatiate
thirst of the human soul, when in the bosom of infinite splendor we may
contemplate and adore Thee forever and ever!
'That they _all_ may be _One_, as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee:
that they also may be _one_ in us.'
Oh, inconceivable and glorious Unity! What wonder that thy types on
earth are so full of meaning--so rich in delight!