THE MORAL CRITICISM OF FINE ART
There are certain human activities which not only are of special
interest on their own account, but also hold a position of pre-eminence
in civilization. Such are science, philosophy, the love of nature,
politics, friendly intercourse, and fine art. The last of these
activities enjoys a peculiar distinction because it is monumental. It
not only calls into play all of the more refined capacities, but also
records itself in permanent and worthy form. Hence the fine art of any
period comes to be taken as an index of its remove from savagery.
In submitting fine art to moral criticism, I shall use it as the best
representative of the whole class of activities which I have just
described. If we have not been wholly astray in our analysis of the
good, it should appear that these activities owe their pre-eminence not
to their bare quality or tone, but to their humanity, that is, to their
connection with a harmonious, just, and progressive state of society.
{172}
It is hard for a moralist to approach such a subject without timidity,
especially if he is concerned with his reputation for enlightenment.
For there are many who think that it is a mark of intellectual
emancipation to abandon moral standards altogether when dealing with
the fine arts. Life itself, they remind us, is only the greatest of
the fine arts; and if life can be called beautiful, the last word has
been said. The man of taste and delicate sensibility is thus empowered
to overrule the moralist, and replace with his ideal of grace and
symmetry the harsh and clumsy scruples of conscience. Now it is
doubtless true that when life is good, it is also beautiful; a life in
which every activity is true, in which the medium of opportunity is
formed to accord with the most noble purpose, may well exhibit a
superlative grace and symmetry. But to be beautiful, life must be good
_in its own way_; and the principles which define that way are the
principles of morality. Furthermore, in order that life shall be
beautiful it must be made an object of perception or contemplation;
while, in order to be good, it must be lived. And the principles which
define the living of life are moral.
The confusion of goodness with beauty is, therefore, doubly
stultifying. On the one hand, it substitutes for the moral conception
of value conceptions that morally are indeterminate. For {173} grace
and symmetry may be exhibited by life on any plane whatsoever, provided
only that it acquires stability. Indeed, one who aims above all things
to make his life beautiful, ought consistently to abandon the moral
effort to bring life to its maximum of fulfilment, and cultivate
perfection of form within the sphere of least resistance. It is
proverbial that many lower forms of life are more beautiful than man,
but it is not always seen that these are the stationary forms of life,
wholly lacking in that principle of rational reconstruction which is
the condition of moral goodness. On the other hand, the confusion of
goodness with beauty tends to substitute appreciation for action, and
thus to make of life a spectacle rather than an enterprise. Thus to
replace ethical with aesthetic conceptions is to take the heart out of
morality. Beauty is precisely as relevant to moral goodness as it is
to truth; and if investigators were taught to devise the prettiest
theory imaginable, the result would be no more fatal to knowledge than
is aesthetic sentimentalism to life. To think conformably with reality
is knowledge, and to act conformably with all interests is life. If
beauty is to be added unto truth and goodness, it must come as the
natural sequel to a single-minded fidelity to these motives.
But even if it be true that moral standards are absolutely independent
of the standards proper {174} to art, it is not yet clear that the
moralist is justified in regarding his standards as more fundamental
than those of art. He may be politely but positively informed that he
is not to trespass. Now I feel that, after what has preceded, I am
fortified against the charge of impertinence. Art is subject to moral
criticism, because morality is nothing more nor less than the law which
determines the whole order of interests, within which art and every
other good thing is possible. It will scarcely be denied that art is
an expression of interest, that both its creation and its enjoyment are
activities, moods, or phases of life; and it follows that before this
specific interest can be safely or adequately satisfied, it is
necessary to fulfil the general conditions that underlie the
satisfaction of all interests. It is as absurd to speak of art for
art's sake as it is to speak of drinking for drinking's sake, if you
mean that this interest is entitled to entirely free play. Art, like
all other interests, can flourish only in a sound and whole society,
and the law of soundness and wholeness in life is morality.
The claim of art to exemption from moral criticism is commonly due to
one or both of these two forms of misapprehension.
In the first place, it is assumed that morality, too, is a special
interest; and that if the artist or connoisseur lets the moralist
alone, it is no more {175} than fair that the moralist should let him
alone.
But this assumption is false; as false as though the athlete were to
chafe at the warnings of his medical adviser on the ground that general
health was irrelevant to endurance or strength or agility. Now,
doubtless, an athlete may for a time neglect his general health with no
noticeable diminution of his skill; but that is only because he already
possesses the health to abuse. It still remains true that the
principles of health which the trainer represents are the principles
upon which his skill is fundamentally based. Nature has made him
healthy according to these principles, and he simply does not recognize
his debt to them. Similarly, art may flourish in spite of the neglect
of social and individual well-being, so that the pleadings of the moral
advocate seem irrelevant; but this is possible only because the social
order is already established, and the personality formed, according to
the very principles which the moralist is announcing. Art may
dissipate moral health, but it nevertheless lives only by virtue of
such a source of supply. The basal condition of art is not the element
of social evil or morbid temperament that may attract attention, but
the measure of soundness that nevertheless remains.
The second misapprehension that lends plausibility to the excuses of
art is the assumption that {176} the moralist is proposing to
_substitute_ his canons for those of art. Now it is entirely true that
moral insight in no way equips one for connoisseurship. There is a
special aptitude and training that enables one to discriminate in such
matters. But the moralist is judging art _on moral grounds_. Hence he
does not say, "I see that your painting is ugly"; but he does say, "I
see that your painting, which you esteem beautiful (and I take your
word for it), is _bad_." In the same way the moralist does not say to
the self-indulgent man, "I see that you are not having a good time"
(the self-indulgent man is likely to know better); but he says, "I see
that it is bad for you to be having this particular kind of good time."
In other words, for the moralist larger issues are at stake, and he is
considering these on the grounds proper to them. He is charged with
defining and applying the principles which determine the good of
interests on the whole; and while his conclusions can never replace
those of the expert within a special field, they will always possess
authority to overrule them.
II
Since we are to be occupied mainly with the bearing of art on morality,
I wish so far as possible to avoid debatable questions concerning the
origin and ultimate meaning of art. But we {177} cannot proceed
without agreeing on a use of terms. I shall attempt, therefore, to
give a straightforward and empirical account of that which comes to be
called art in the history of civilization.[1]
We have already had occasion to observe that from the very beginning
life adapts the environment to its uses; that is, gives to matter and
to mechanical processes a new form in which these fulfil interest.
Thus an area of land deforested and cultivated, or two stones so hewn
and fitted as to afford a grinding surface, take on the imprint of the
human need for food. Now such reorganizations of nature as the farm or
the mill, however crude they may be, are works of art in the broadest
sense. And in this same sense all the tools, furniture, and panoply of
civilization, from the most primitive to the most highly evolved,
whatever without exception owes its form to its fulfilment of an
interest, may with entire propriety be called art.
In the great majority of cases the work of art after being made is
_used_; that is, it becomes an instrument in the making of something
else. Such art is called useful or _industrial art_. But it sometimes
happens that the work of art is valued, not as an instrument in the
ordinary practical sense, but simply as an object to be experienced.
In the Scriptural account of creation it is said that "God saw
everything that he had {178} made, and, behold, it was good." When the
products of activity are thus found good in the beholding of them they
become works of _fine art_.
It would be improper sharply to divorce these two motives, or to make
one any more original than the other. The interest in the exercise of
the sensibilities, or other powers of apprehension, is doubtless as
primitive as any of the special interests of the organism; and it is
improbable that man ever made anything without getting some
satisfaction from looking at it or handling it or feeling it. Commonly
the same object is both useful and beautiful; as was the case with the
primitive religious dance, which at the same time indulged a taste for
rhythm and served as a means of propitiating the gods.
But the motive of fine art becomes clearer when it is purer. Objects
are then made with explicit reference to the interest taken in
apprehending them. I do not mean that they cannot on that account be
useful, for without doubt utility itself contributes to beauty; but
only that they owe their form primarily to the aesthetic interest. The
motive of fine art in its purity appears when special materials are
selected on account of their plasticity and their appeal to the more
highly developed senses. Fine arts that employ one medium are now
separated and perfected through the cultivation of expert proficiency.
{179} Thus there arise such arts as painting and music, one of which
gives form to light and appeals to the eye, while the other gives form
to sound and appeals to the ear. In this way society comes to acquire
and accumulate objects which are designed, either wholly or in part,
with reference to the special aesthetic interest. They are the
creatures of this interest, and their place in life is determined by
it. To understand their importance and to estimate their moral value
it is therefore necessary to isolate this interest and examine it with
some care.[2]
By the aesthetic interest I mean to refer to the interest that is taken
in the work of fine art by the observer. There is undoubtedly a
special interest in creation, but it is of relatively small importance.
Even the artist is controlled largely by the interest in observing his
own work; and art is a serious social concern only because of its
appeal to the unlimited number of persons who may enjoy it without
having any hand in the making. Now, in the passing allusion which I
have made to the aesthetic interest, I have already used the term which
is most convenient for purposes of general definition. The aesthetic
interest is _the interest in apprehension_. What I mean by this will
become clear when I compare it with two other interests which may also
be taken in the content of experience. There is, in the first {180}
place, what is called the practical interest, that is, the interest in
an object on account of what can be done with it by manipulation or
combination with other objects. Secondly, there is the theoretical
interest in the structure of reality, manifesting itself in the
exploration of the object and its context. Now the interest in
apprehension is not an interest in what can be done with the object,
nor in its real structure, but in _the present conscious reaction to
it_. One may take all three of these interests in the same object.
Thus if I pluck the flower and take it home to my wife, I give evidence
of a practical interest in it; if I kneel down and examine it
carefully, I suggest the botanist; while if I continue to gaze at it
where it lies, it would appear that I enjoy simply looking at it. It
is this interest simply in looking at things, in just the perceiving,
feeling, thinking, or imagining them, that I mean to sum up as the
interest in apprehension, or the aesthetic interest. When objects
excite this interest, when, that is, any state or process of
consciousness of which they are the content tends to be prolonged for
its own sake, they are said to be beautiful. And objects which are
deliberately and artificially invested with a peculiar capacity to
excite this interest are works of fine art.
I shall not undertake to explain the interest in apprehension further
than to describe certain {181} typical forms which it assumes. These
forms will serve not only to illustrate its general meaning, but also
to amplify that meaning in a manner that will prove important when we
come to the discussion of moral questions. The forms which I shall
mention are by no means exhaustive of the possible forms of the
interest in apprehension, while the order that I shall follow is only
roughly the order of increasing complexity.
There is, in the first place, an interest in _sensation_. I do not, of
course, mean to assert that any state of purely sensuous enjoyment is
possible; but only that the senses have a certain bias of their own
which will modify every state in which they are called into play.
There is a delight of the eye and ear, a pleasantness to the touch, an
agreeableness of taste and smell, wholly without reference to anything
beyond. The arts which employ any of these senses must satisfy their
bias, however much they may appeal to higher faculties; nothing which
rankly offends them can by any possible means be made beautiful. Thus
painting must be charming in color, and music in tone; and certain
colors and tones are charming for no deeper reason than that which
makes certain foods palatable.
The interest in _perception_[3] assumes special prominence in the great
visual art of painting. For the process of perception is most
elaborated {182} in connection with the sense of vision, this being
peculiarly the human organ of watchfulness and orientation. The
interest in perception is the interest in completing the sensation or
rounding it into an object or situation with the aid of thought and
imagination. In painting, as most commonly in life, the stimulus is
visual--texture, perspective, or a quality of light.
The _emotional_ form of apprehension plays the predominant part in
representations of human action, in music, and in the appreciation of
nature. It is in this latter connection that we can, I think, best
understand it; and I propose for purposes of illustration to record an
experience of my own.
I walked one night on the deck of a steamer plying between New York and
Bermuda, and gave myself up wholly to the aspect of nature. The moon
shone brightly half-way between the horizon and zenith, and opened a
path of light from where I stood to the uttermost distance. With
half-closed eyes I watched the hard lustre of the waves, or turned from
this to the smooth roll of the foam turned up by the steamer's prow.
And I remember that I seemed to dwell upon these things with an instant
relish, like that with which my lungs devoured the fresh and plentiful
air. But when I looked towards the moon along the path of light, there
was something that stirred me more deeply. The prospect of an endless
journey opened {183} out before me, like an invitation to live, or a
fulness of opportunity. And I seemed to leap in response, rejoicing in
my power. But I did not act; it was as though I already achieved and
possessed. Presently I turned from the path of light to the blackness
that beset it on every side. In this blackness there seemed to lurk
every kind of unknown danger; I was moved with a sense of helplessness,
and shrank from the thought of being deserted there. And yet though I
was afraid, the fear never seemed to _possess_ me, but always to be
possessed _by_ me, as mine to prolong and exult in as I would.
Now I think that the interpretation of my dream is this. Deeply
implanted in the organism are certain co-ordinated responses such as
courage and fear, or such as love, hate, combativeness, pity, and
emulation. They may owe their present form to habit, but they are all
rooted in instinct, and so call the body into play as a unit.[4]
Primarily they are plans of action, through which the organism promptly
deals with practical emergencies. But it is possible for man to detach
himself from overt motor relations with his environment; and in this
case these responses return as it were into the body and reverberate
there, taking on a purely emotional form which may be valued for
itself. Thus courage and fear may lead to no act of bravery or
caution, but {184} remain simply _experiences_ of courage and fear,
promoted and treasured by the imagination. Nature will probably remain
the object which evokes these responses most keenly, because nature is
the hereditary environment towards which they were originally directed.
But human action is scarcely less moving. Hence dramatic art, or the
representation of social and moral confrontations, will both arouse and
prolong the old passions, thus evoking a deeper and more massive
response than the play of the senses.
I fully recognize that the value of dramatic art is by no means limited
to its emotional appeal. I contend only that it does make such an
appeal, and that it owes to that appeal, to its evoking of sympathy,
love, or hate, to its stirring of incipient action, the peculiar
intensity and reverberance of the enjoyment which it affords. The same
holds true, I think, of poetry generally, where this deals with life.
The case of music is more doubtful. It is generally agreed that the
enjoyment of music has never been adequately accounted for, albeit it
is probably more ancient than man. But that music does arouse the
great emotions, and owe its popularity mainly to that fact, can
scarcely be questioned. It is only necessary to add that over and
above this appeal, as well as its appeal to the ear and to an
intellectual apprehension of its technical forms, it seems to {185} be
capable of developing emotions of its own; that is, experiences which
do not coincide with the instinctive emotions, but which have a like
massiveness and organic reverberation. It may be, as Walter Pater
insists, that in this respect "all art constantly aspires towards the
condition of music." [5] But this does not contradict the fact that
such arts _are_ emotionally stimulating, will always stir men as men
are capable of being stirred, and in society at large will make their
main appeal to the fundamental and constant emotions, cultivating the
enjoyment of love, fear, and the other elemental passions for the very
poignancy and thrill of them.
For the intellectual type of apprehension I propose to employ the term
_discernment_. I mean the apprehension of an _idea_ when conveyed by
some sensuous medium; the finding or recovery of some unity of thought
in a perceptual context. When discernment in this sense is directly
agreeable without any ulterior motive, it is a special case of the
aesthetic interest. From this interest the representative or pictorial
element in art derives its value.
Let me illustrate my meaning by referring to what Taine says of Greek
sculpture:
Here we have the living body, complete and without a veil, admired and
glorified, standing on its pedestal without scandal and exposed to all
eyes. {186} What is its purpose, and what idea, through sympathy, is
the statue to convey to spectators? An idea which, to us, is almost
without meaning because it belongs to another age and another epoch of
the human mind. The head is without significance; unlike ours it is
not a world of graduated conceptions, excited passions, and a medley of
sentiments; the face is not sunken, sharp, and disturbed; it has not
many characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is generally in
repose. . . . The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not require
violent and surprising effects to stimulate weary attention or to
irritate an uneasy sensibility. A blooming and healthy body, capable
of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and
noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony
of lines happily commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could
dwell on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned to his organs
and to his condition and endowed with every perfection within these
limits; they demanded nothing more and nothing less; anything besides
would have struck them as extravagance, deformity, or disease. Such is
the circle within which the simplicity of their culture kept them.[6]
In other words, Greek art expressed the rare quality of Greek life; its
naturalism, its compactness, its clearness. And it did so
instinctively both to the artist and the spectator. We are not to
think that because, in order to understand ancient art, it may be
necessary for us first to obtain a conception of life and then to match
it in art, this is essential to its appreciation. On the contrary, the
object of art is not beautiful {187} until it flashes the idea upon us,
communicating an ideal unity that is not intellectually articulate at
all. This must always be the effect upon contemporaries, in whom the
idea is so assimilated as to be unconscious. But the idea is there
none the less; and the full beauty cannot exist for any one who is
incapable of discerning the idea, and rejoicing in the apprehension of
it.
The incomparable excellence of Greek sculpture is due to a type of
genius in which clearness of mind and delicacy of touch are united.
Among the Greeks the term infinite was a term of disparagement; they
thought roundly and cleanly, thus preferring ideas to vague surmises.
This was their first gift. And, adding to it a sensitiveness to form,
they were enabled to _express themselves_, without redundancy and
exaggeration, bringing whatever medium they employed into accord with
the idea. It is this felicity and luminousness that gives to the art
of the Greeks a peculiar appeal to the intelligence. For the mind
delights in definiteness and light.
But the Greek conception of life belongs to an age preceding the advent
of what has proved to be the European religion. And Christianity has
so reconstructed the experience of the average man through its
sensitiveness to pain, and its emphasis on what is called "the inner
life," that I want further to illustrate the meaning of {188}
discernment in art, by referring to the representation of the spirit of
the Renaissance in the painting of Leonardo da Vinci. I quote the
following from Pater's description of "La Gioconda":
The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is
expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to
desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are
come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out
from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of
strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it
for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful
women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into
which the soul with all its maladies has passed. All the thoughts and
experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which
they have of power to refine and make expressive the human form, the
animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reveries of the middle age
with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the
pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks
among which she sits; like the vampire, which has been dead many times,
and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep
seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange
webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of
Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to
her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the
delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged
the eyelids and the hands.[7]
The power of Renaissance painting is not wholly a matter of color,
texture, modelling, and composition; for though it contains these and
many {189} sensuous and perceptual values besides, it conveys through
them with surpassing truth and delicacy ideas as evasive as they are
subtle and profound. There is an ecstasy of mind in the discernment of
these ideas, and a blend of emotion that follows in their train, both
of which are conditioned by insight; that is, by a process that is
neither sensuous, perceptual, nor emotional merely, but, in an
additional sense, intellectual.
The interest in apprehension may thus be exhibited and satisfied in
divers ways, differing according to the special processes of
consciousness which they call into play. And while it may be crude or
cultivated, it is safe to say that in all of its modes it is present to
some degree in every individual human life. The simple-minded person
who hisses the villain of the melodrama, and he who takes pleasure in
the inevitableness of the Greek tragedy, are exhibiting the same
interest in the emotions evoked by the spectacle of life. There is
only a difference of training and sophistication between the man who
enjoys a cheap chromo for the color or the "likeness," and one who
appreciates Velasquez's treatment of light or the characterization of
Franz Hals.
In the enjoyment of the highest forms of art these various modes of
apprehension will be united, each so contributing to the enhancement of
the {190} rest that it is impossible sharply to divide them. Nor do I
venture any opinion as to which of these modes, if any, is fundamental
in the different arts or in fine art as a whole. It is sufficient for
our purposes to know that art does exercise and develop human nature in
all of these ways.
We are now in a position to define a programme of criticism. Art
thrives because it fulfils a complex and multiform interest. It is
supported by an interest which it supplies with its proper objects.
Hence it falls within the circle of life where questions of prudence,
justice, and good-will are paramount. But, because moral
considerations must thus in the nature of the case take precedence over
purely aesthetic considerations, this proves nothing whatsoever
concerning the way in which this precedence should be established. It
was Plato's belief that society should employ a rigorous censorship,
and banish the offending poet:
We will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful
being; but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as
he is in our State--the law will not allow them. And so when we have
anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we
shall send him away to another city.[8]
But there is another way of protecting society from whatever may be the
evil effects of art, and that is to educate the individual and the
{191} community in their use of art. This would mean, in place of a
regulation of the supply, a regulation of the demand. It would mean
that the aesthetic interest itself, like every other interest within
the moral economy, should be so controlled as to make it as conducive
as possible to health and abundance of life. The exercise or
cultivation of the interest in art would then, like the love of nature
or of social intercourse, be unlimited so far as its objects were
concerned, but limited through its relation to other interests within
the individual or community purpose. But with this difference
concerning the proper remedy, the present inquiry will coincide in its
intent and presuppositions with that model of all moral criticisms, the
_Republic_ of Plato. What are the possibilities for life of this
aesthetic interest or love of art? How is it liable to abuse or
excess? What is its bearing on other interests, and how far does it
tend to make life gracious and happy, without destroying its balance or
compromising its truth? These are the questions on which I hope that I
may be able to throw some light by calling attention to the following
characteristics possessed by the aesthetic interest: _self-sufficiency,
pervasiveness, vicariousness, stimulation of action, fixation of
ideas,_ and _liberality_.[9]
{192}
III
It has long been pointed out that the aesthetic interest, unlike the
bodily appetites, is _self-sufficient_, in that it is capable of being
evenly sustained. It depends on no antecedent craving, and has no
definite periodic limit of satiety. It engages the capacities that
are, on the whole, the most docile and the least liable to progressive
fatigue, while through its own internal variety it is guarded against
monotony. Consequently the aesthetic interest is peculiarly capable of
being continued and developed through a lifetime, providing a constant
and increasing source of satisfaction.
Furthermore, the aesthetic interest is resourceful, easily supplying
itself with the objects which it uses. It follows that it contributes
to independence, being like the "speculative activity" of
Aristotle,[10] in giving the individual a means of happiness in himself
without the aid of his fellows or the favor of fortune. Since the
aesthetic interest is in these ways self-sufficient, its continuous
return of good being guaranteed, it is one of the safest of investments.
But every special interest is a source of danger in direct proportion
to its isolation. Its very self-sufficiency may serve to promote a
narrow concentration, a blindness to ulterior interests {193} and wider
possibilities. This undue dwelling on the given material of life may,
as we have seen in an earlier chapter, attach to any interest; but the
aesthetic interest is peculiarly liable to it. This is due to the fact
that, in so far as an object appeals to the aesthetic interest, it
tends not to develop, but to retain some fixed aspect in which the
apprehension of it is agreeable. The various practical interests
ramify indefinitely through the dynamic relations of objects, and
through the handling of objects common to a variety of interests. Once
engaged in what is called "active life" one tends to be drawn into the
main current of enterprise and made aware of the larger issues. And
the theoretical interest also tends to lead beyond itself; for it
prompts the mind to examine the whole nature of objects, and to explore
their context without limit in the hope of completer truth. But the
aesthetic interest readily acquires equilibrium, and feels no
inducement to leave off an activity which, though its limits may be
narrow, is free and continuous within them. Plato accused art of being
essentially imitative, and so of confirming the vulgar respect for the
surface aspect of things.[11] It is truer, I think, to say that the
aesthetic interest is quiescent, tending to perpetuate experience in
any form that is found pleasant, and without respect either to
practical exigencies or to the order of truth. {194} Hence this
interest on account of its very self-sufficiency offers a passive
resistance to the formal principles of moral organization--to prudence,
purpose, justice, and good-will.
IV
The aesthetic interest is the good genius of the powers of
apprehension, making them fruitful in their own kind. Now the powers
of apprehension are engaged during all the waking hours, and if they
can be taught to mediate a good of their own, that good will _pervade_
the whole of life. It is through the cultivation of the aesthetic
interest that there is most hope of redeeming the waste places, of
giving to intervals and accidental juxtapositions some graciousness and
profit. With all the world to see and contemplate, and with the eye
and mind wherewith to contemplate them, there is a limitless abundance
of good things always and everywhere available. Let me quote Arthur
Benson's account of this discovery:
The world was full of surprises; trees drooped their leaves over
screening walls, houses had backs as well as fronts; music was heard
from shuttered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. There were a
thousand pretty secrets in the ways of people to each other. Then,
too, there were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied wall. One had
but to clap one's hands and cry out, and there was a fluttering {195}
of innumerable wings; life was as full of bubbles, forming, rising into
amber foam, as a glass of sparkling wine.[12]
To this delight which the casual environment affords a sensitive
observer, art may add through a decorous furnishing of city and house.
Or the instruments of other interests may be made to give pleasure of
themselves, so that there may be no long periods of deferred reward.
Thus to the hire of manual labor may be added the immediate
compensation which comes from a love of the tools, or from the
satisfaction taken in the aspect of work done; to physical exercise may
be added the love of nature, to scholarship the love of scientific
form, and to social intercourse the love of personal beauty or of
conversation. In these ways, and in countless ways beside, the
aesthetic interest may multiply the richness of life.
Society is, on the whole, protected against the danger of overemphasis
on the aesthetic interest, through the habitual subordination of it in
public opinion to standards of efficiency. Men commonly believe, and
are justified in so believing, that a life delivered wholly to the
aesthetic interest is frivolous; amusing itself with "bubbles" and
"amber foam," while supported by a community in whose graver and more
urgent concerns it takes no part. Probably no one has {196} done more
than Pater to persuade men of the present generation that it is worth
while to "catch at any exquisite passion, . . . or any stirring of the
senses"; and yet he is not a prophet in our day. Is it possibly
because in that same famous conclusion to the _Renaissance_ he said,
"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end," [13]
and thus exposed himself to misunderstanding, if not to refutation, at
the hands of any one of average moral enlightenment? The moral lesson
is one that none have escaped, and that only a few are permitted to
forget. This lesson has taught with unvarying reiteration that acts
are to be judged by their consequences; that all purposes are
constructive, and so far as wise fitted into the building of
civilization; that experience itself, in Pater's sense, is possible
only as a fruit of experience. A life in which the aesthetic interest
unduly dominates, in which action is transmuted into pulses of
sensation, and the means of efficiency into the ends of contemplation,
is an idle life, protected from the consequences of its own impotency
only by the constructive labor of others. He who from prolonged gazing
at the spoon forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and
cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The
instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the
using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the
achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the
cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for
vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose with decay.
V
It has always been recognized that there is a peculiar massiveness or
depth in aesthetic satisfaction, as though it somehow carried with it
the satisfaction of all interests. And this is not due merely to the
fact that other interests tend to fall away or remit their claims; it
is due besides to the fact that other interests may in a sense actually
be fulfilled in the aesthetic interest. In other words, this interest
serves a vicarious function, transmuting other interests into its own
form, and then affording them a fulfilment which they are incapable of
attaining when exercised in their own right.
This occurs when other interests, such as love or personal ambition,
are imagined or represented, and thus made objects of agreeable
apprehension. There is in this a compensation for failure, without
which life would be stripped of one of its main barriers against
despair. Those whom circumstance has provided no opportunity for the
fulfilment of interests so ingenerate as maternal love or heroic
action, may, in a way, make themselves whole {198} through the
contemplation of these things; for the contemplation of them engages
the same instincts, arouses the same emotions, but without requiring
the existence of their objects. The prolongation of arduous and
uncertain effort is compensated through the imaginative anticipation of
success, or through the apprehension of some symbol of perfect
fruition. It is through this happy illumination of struggle with a
vision of fulfilment, that mankind is reconciled to such tasks as
civilization and spiritual wholeness; tasks in which great efforts
produce small results, and of which the end is not seen.
Now it remains true, of course, that such vicarious fulfilment is not
real fulfilment; and to suppose it to be, is one of the most serious
errors for which the aesthetic interest is responsible. The man who,
with clenched hands and quickened pulse, is watching some image of
himself as it triumphs over obstacles and arrives at the summit of his
ambition, may and doubtless does _feel_ like Alexander, but he
nevertheless has not conquered the world; and if he thinks he has, he
will probably never conquer any of it. It must be remembered that the
vicarious aesthetic fulfilment of interests is the easiest fulfilment
of them; and that it may, therefore, become a form of self-indulgence
and a source of false complacency. A sanguine imagination is one of
the {199} chief causes of worldly failure; an exaggerated interest in
representations of virtue is a common cause of irresponsibility and of
hypocrisy. William James, in a passage that is frequently quoted,
calls attention also to the danger of acquiring a chronic emotionality.
The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the
play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is
the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale.
Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are
neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in
a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the
character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass
without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition
is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an
emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards in _some_ active
way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world--speaking
genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if
nothing more heroic offers--but let it not fail to take place.[14]
But not only is it possible through the exaggeration of the aesthetic
interest to substitute apparent achievement for real achievement; it is
possible to extract solace from the contemplation of failure itself.
Is there any one who has not met the man who is actually made buoyant
by his consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate
should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that
all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted
head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and
abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from
the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus
to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like
enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of
sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of
others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless,
though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale,
precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is
fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of
savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their
picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with
images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in
which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic,
sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme
of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the
insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.
{201}
VI
That a beautiful object commonly _stimulates_ a motor response is
beyond question. Even when it does not appeal to any definite emotion
it is _generally_ stimulating, through its affording to the natural
powers at some point an unusual harmony with their environment. And
when there is a definite emotional appeal, there is a tendency to act.
For, as we have seen, originally the fundamental emotions were all
co-ordinated reactions to the environment, enlisting the whole organism
to cope with some practical emergency. That the emotions should become
_mere_ emotions is due to the modification of instinct by habit.
Whatever, then, arouses the emotions does in some degree stir to
action. So that one of the most important moral uses of art is its
alliance with other interests in order to intensify their appeal, in
order to make them more instantly moving. Art is a means of enlivening
dormant impulses; as music is a means of rekindling the love of country
or the love of God, so that men may be brought to take up arms with
enthusiasm or endure reverses without complaint.
But this motor excitement which art stimulates may be morally
indeterminate; that is, it may be capable of being discharged in any
way that accident or bias may select. In other words, {202} art may
communicate power without controlling its use, thus merely increasing
the disorder and instability of life. Or it may serve to exaggerate
the appeal of the present interest, until it becomes ungovernable and
obscures ulterior interests. This tendency to promote dissoluteness is
the most serious charge which Plato brings against the arts. After
referring to the unseemly hilarity to which men are incited by the
comic stage, he adds:
And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other
affections, of desire and pain and pleasure which are held to be
inseparable from every action--in all of them poetry feeds and waters
the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule instead of
ruling them as they ought to be ruled, with a view to the happiness and
virtue of mankind.[15]
In an earlier passage Plato discusses types of music in relation to
action, the Lydian which is sorrowful, and the Ionian which is
indolent; showing that selection must be made if men are not to be at
the mercy of random influences. It is not necessary, as Plato would
have it, to banish Lydian and Ionian harmonies from society; but within
one's personal economy, within the republic of one's own soul, one must
prefer with Plato those stirrings of the emotions which support and
re-enforce one's moral purpose:
Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, which
will sound the word or note {203} which a brave man utters in the hour
of danger and stem resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is
going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at
every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and
another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when
there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by
prayer, or man by instruction and advice. . . . These two harmonies I
ask you to leave: the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom,
the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the
strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.[16]
VII
Where art is not employed directly to incite action, it may still be
indirectly conducive to action through _fixing_ ideas and inclining the
sentiments towards them. This is probably its most important moral
function. The ideas which are of the greatest significance for conduct
are ideas which receive no adequate embodiment in the objects of
nature. Every broad purpose and developed ideal requires the exercise
of the constructive imagination. But the immediate images of the
imagination are fluctuating and transient, and need to be supported
through being embodied in some enduring medium. Thus monuments serve
as emblems of nationality; or, as in the thirteenth century, all the
arts may unite to represent and suggest the objects of religious {204}
faith. Poetry and song have always served as means of incarnating the
more delicate shadings of a racial ideal; and every man would be a poet
if he could, and trace the outline of that hope which stirs him and
which is not the hope of any other man.
But it must be made clear that art does more than make ideas definite
and permanent. It inclines the sentiments towards them. The great
power of art lies in its function of making ideas alluring. Now
whatever is loved or admired is, in the long run, sought out, imitated,
and served. Understanding this, the ancient Athenians sought to
educate the passions, and employed music to that end. This is
Aristotle's justification of such a course:
Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and
loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much
concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right
judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble
actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness,
and also of courage and temperance and of virtues and vices in general,
which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our
own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a
change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations
is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.[17]
The simple and incontestable truth of these statements is a standing
condemnation of the {205} usual environment of youth. Virtue consists,
as much as it ever did, "in rejoicing and loving and hating aright";
but the guidance of these sentiments to their proper objects is left
almost wholly to chance. It is by making the good also beautiful, by
illuminating the modes of virtue with jewels, and endearing them to the
imagination, that the moral reason may be re-enforced from early days
by high spirits. It should be a task of education, using this means
either in the home or the school or the city at large, to inculcate a
right habit of admiration.
If art is to serve a moral end in fixing and embellishing ideas, it
must be _true_. What I mean by this most important qualification I
must now endeavor to make plain. Art, in so far as it is a means of
representation, deals either with physical nature, as in landscape and
figure painting, or with types and incidents of human life, as in
dramatic painting and in the greater part of poetry. In either case it
may, like thought, either reflect or distort the structure of reality.
Now the real structure of human life is moral; consisting only in a
variety of instances of the one law that _the wages of sin is death_.
To represent life otherwise is to falsify it, precisely as to represent
bodies without solidity and gravity is to falsify physical nature. But
in representing physical nature art does not, as science does, {206}
formulate merely its geometrical or dynamical skeleton; to do so would
be contrary to the intent of art to represent things in their
perceptual concreteness. Similarly art does not represent abstract
virtues. Nevertheless, if it is not to depart from the truth art must,
at the same time that it conveys the color and vividness of life, also
conform to its proper laws, and demonstrate the consequences of action
as they are. And the same standard of clearness and fidelity, which
requires that great art shall reveal nature as it is, not to the
superficial or imitative observer but to the thoughtful and penetrating
mind, requires also that it shall throw into relief the profounder and
more universal forces of life.
Great art, therefore, is of necessity enlightening. But it is possible
that untruth should parade in the dress and under the auspices of art,
and so work to the confusion of the moral consciousness. If art were
only realistic in the full sense, an unequivocal representation of the
laws of life, it would invariably justify and support the moral will;
it would be idealistic. It is the art of desultory and irresponsible
fancy that is a source of danger. There is a species of romantic art
that is guarded by its very excess of fantasy; it being impossible to
mistake it for a representation of life. But where romantic art is not
thus clear in its motive, it becomes what is called "sensational" {207}
art, in which the wages of sin are not paid; in which imprudence,
infidelity, and a mean ambition are made to yield success, freedom, and
glorious achievement. The realities are violated, with the consequence
that resolve is weakened and the intelligence bewildered.
Since art may be true or untrue, it may also be universal or
particular, profound or superficial, in its apprehension of reality.
This difference has operated to define a scale of importance in art, so
far as the interest of society is concerned. There is at least a
measure of truth in Taine's graduated scale by which he estimates the
greatness of art according as it represents the fashion of the day, the
type of the generation, the type of the age, the type of the race, or
man himself in his immutable nature.[18] That art will be the most
effective instrument of moral enlightenment which reflects the
experience of mankind in the basal and constant virtues, giving quality
and distinction to truths which might otherwise suffer from their very
homeliness and familiarity.
There is a kindred consideration to which Tolstóy, undiscerning as he
is in most of his criticism of art, has very justly called attention.
In the broad sense, art is liable to untruth from reflecting
exclusively the bias of a certain temperament. The following
description {208} of a class of contemporary dramas is not wholly inapt:
They either represent an architect, who for some reason has not
fulfilled his former high resolves and in consequence of this climbs on
the roof of a house built by him and from there flies down headlong; or
some incomprehensible old woman, who raises rats and for some unknown
reason takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns it; or some
blind people, who, sitting at the sea-shore, for some reason all the
time repeat one and the same thing; or a bell which flies into a lake
and there keeps ringing.[19]
That a tendency to cultivate acquaintance with the curious and rare,
and communicate it to a narrow group of initiated persons, is
characteristic of modern times, and that on the whole it is a symptom
of decadence, Tolstóy has, I believe, proved. At any rate, the effect
of such a tendency in art can not fail to be morally injurious, since
life is not represented proportionately. Art has much to do with the
vogue and prestige of ideas. Thus, for example, though the
problem-play may be faithful to life where it deals with life, if the
stage be given over wholly to this form of drama, there will almost
inevitably result a false conception of the degree to which the
incidents selected are representative of social conditions on the whole.
There is one further source of moral error in connection with this
function of art. Because art can not only fix ideas but also make them
{209} alluring, it may invest them with a fictitious value. I refer to
what is only a different aspect of that sentimentalism or chronic
emotionalism to which I have already called attention. Not only is it
possible that men should be brought through the aesthetic interest to
replace action with emotion; they may also persuade themselves that the
higher principles of life owe their validity to some quality that is
discerned immediately in the apprehension of them. But purpose,
justice, and good-will are essentially principles of organization;
their virtue is their provident working. To regard them only as images
with a value inhering in their bare essence, is to forfeit their
benefits. Verbalism, formalism, mysticism, are given a certain false
charm and semblance of self-sufficiency by the cultivation and exercise
of the aesthetic interest. Hence morality and religion must here
resist its enticements, and never cease to remind themselves that
theirs is the task of acknowledging all interests according to their
real inwardness, and of banishing cruelty and blindness in their behalf.
VIII
Finally, art serves to _liberalize_ life, to make it expansive and
generous in spirit. This is possible because, in the first place, art
is unworldly. I mean simply that the enjoyment of beauty is not {210}
a part of ambition; that it does not call into play those habits of
calculation and forms of skill that conduce to success in livelihood or
the gaining of any of the proximate ends of organized social life. It
frees the mind from its harness and turns it out to pasture. I suppose
that every one has had that experience of spiritual refreshment which
occasionally comes when one has gone body and soul _out of doors_, or
when one is delivered over to the enchantment of sober and elevating
music, and suddenly made aware of the better things that have been long
forgotten. Such experiences are a moral inspiration. It is as though,
the clamor of the world being for the moment shut out, one hears at
last the voices that speak with authority. For an instant the broad
sweep of truth flashes upon eyes that have been too intently watchful
of affairs near at hand. The good-will can be sustained only by a mind
that now and then withdraws itself from its engagements, and expands
its view to the full measure of life. For the momentary inhibiting of
the narrower practical impulses, and the evoking of this quiet and
contemplative mood, the love of nature and the love of art are the most
reliable means.
But art promotes liberality of spirit in an even more definitely moral
sense. For art, like all forms of culture, and like the service of
humanity, {211} provides for the highest type of social intercourse.
The aesthetic interest is one of those rare interests which are common
to all men without being competitive. All men require bread, but since
this interest requires exclusive possession of its objects, its very
commonness is a source of suspicion and enmity. Similarly all men
require truth and beauty and civilization, but these objects are
enhanced by the fact that all may rejoice in them without their being
divided or becoming the property of any man. They bring men together
without rivalry and intrigue, in a spirit of good-fellowship.
"Culture," says Matthew Arnold, "is not satisfied till we _all_ come to
a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be
imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched
with sweetness and light."
'This,' he continues, 'is the _social idea_; and the men of culture are
the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who
have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from
one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of
their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh,
uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it,
to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned,
yet still remaining the _best_ knowledge and thought of the time, and a
true source, therefore, of sweetness and light.'[20]
{212}
Art, both in the creation and in the enjoyment of it, is thus true to
the deepest motive of morality. It is a remoulding of nature to the
end that all may live, and that they may live abundantly.
IX
I have sought to place before you what art may contribute to life. It
will have become plain that while art is the natural and powerful ally
of morality, it does not itself provide any guarantee of proper
control; in the interests of goodness, on the whole, no man can
surrender himself to it utterly. The good-will is not proved until, as
Plato said, it is _tried with enchantments_, and found to be strong and
true. Goodness can not be cast upon a man like a spell; it is a work
of rational organization, and can not be had without discipline,
efficiency, and service. But it is for art to surround life with fit
auspices; to create an environment that reflects and forecasts its best
achievements, thus both making a home for it and confirming its
resolves.
Having modelled this moral criticism of art upon the method of Plato, I
shall conclude with his familiar summary of all the wisdom and
eloquence that there is in the matter:
Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true
nature of beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in the land of
health, amid fair sights {213} and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of
fair works, will visit the eye and ear, like a healthful breeze from a
purer region, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into
harmony with the beauty of reason.[21]
{214}