stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can
be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot
remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable
crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all
beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her
sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of
every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide
and fair, of every herb that sips the dew; and under the green avenues
of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the Sun, she
must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of distant
nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed from
despairing into peace.
30. You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if
you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask of
you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and
yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish.
I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged need: but it
is the fatallest form of error in English youths to hide their hardihood
till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in disdain of purpose,
till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, but by careless
selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull following of good,
that the weight of national evil increases upon us daily. Break through
at least this pretence of existence; determine what you will be, and
what you would win. You will not decide wrongly if you will resolve to
decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless pleasure and loyal
suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. But your trial is
not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused wreck among the
castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin those who know not
either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I say, and the taking
of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the resolving to share in
the victory which is to the weak rather than the strong; and the binding
yourselves by that law, which, thought on through lingering night and
labouring day, makes a man's life to be as a tree planted by the
water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;--
"ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,
ET OMNIA, QUÆCUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."
LECTURE II
THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION
31. It was stated, and I trust partly with your acceptance, in my
opening lecture, that the study on which we are about to enter cannot be
rightly undertaken except in furtherance of the grave purposes of life
with respect to which the rest of the scheme of your education here is
designed. But you can scarcely have at once felt all that I intended in
saying so;--you cannot but be still partly under the impression that the
so-called fine arts are merely modes of graceful recreation, and a new
resource for your times of rest. Let me ask you, forthwith, so far as
you can trust me, to change your thoughts in this matter. All the great
arts have for their object either the support or exaltation of human
life,--usually both; and their dignity, and ultimately their very
existence, depend on their being "μετὰ λόγου ἀληθοῦς," that is
to say, apprehending, with right reason, the nature of the materials
they work with, of the things they relate or represent, and of the
faculties to which they are addressed. And farther, they form one united
system from which it is impossible to remove any part without harm to
the rest. They are founded first in mastery, by strength of _arm_, of
the earth and sea, in agriculture and seamanship; then their inventive
power begins, with the clay in the hand of the potter, whose art is the
humblest but truest type of the forming of the human body and spirit;
and in the carpenter's work, which probably was the early employment of
the Founder of our religion. And until men have perfectly learned the
laws of art in clay and wood, they can consummately know no others. Nor
is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at
first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read
them rightly,--that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and
that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent
representations of useful wooden structures. On these two first arts
follow building in stone,--sculpture,--metal work,--and painting; every
art being properly called "fine" which demands the exercise of the full
faculties of heart and intellect. For though the fine arts are not
necessarily imitative or representative, for their essence is in being
+peri genesin+--occupied in the actual _production_ of beautiful
form or colour,--still, the highest of them are appointed also to relate
to us the utmost ascertainable truth respecting visible things and moral
feelings: and this pursuit of _fact_ is the vital _element_ of the art
power;--that in which alone it can develop itself to its utmost. And I
will anticipate by an assertion which you will at present think too
bold, but which I am willing that you should think so, in order that you
may well remember it,--THE HIGHEST THING THAT ART CAN DO IS TO SET
BEFORE YOU THE TRUE IMAGE OF THE PRESENCE OF A NOBLE HUMAN BEING. IT HAS
NEVER DONE MORE THAN THIS, AND IT OUGHT NOT TO DO LESS.
32. The great arts--forming thus one perfect scheme of human skill, of
which it is not right to call one division more honourable, though it
may be more subtle, than another--have had, and can have, but three
principal directions of purpose:--first, that of enforcing the religion
of men; secondly, that of perfecting their ethical state; thirdly, that
of doing them material service.
33. I do not doubt but that you are surprised at my saying the arts can
in their second function only be directed to the perfecting of ethical
state, it being our usual impression that they are often destructive of
morality. But it is impossible to direct fine art to an immoral end,
except by giving it characters unconnected with its fineness, or by
addressing it to persons who cannot perceive it to be fine. Whosoever
recognises it is exalted by it. On the other hand, it has been commonly
thought that art was a most fitting means for the enforcement of
religious doctrines and emotions; whereas there is, as I must presently
try to show you, room for grave doubt whether it has not in this
function hitherto done evil rather than good.
34. In this and the two next following lectures, I shall endeavour
therefore to show you the grave relations of human art, in these three
functions, to human life. I can do this but roughly, as you may well
suppose--since each of these subjects would require for its right
treatment years instead of hours. Only, remember, _I_ have already given
years, not a few, to each of them; and what I try to tell _you_ now will
be only so much as is absolutely necessary to set our work on a clear
foundation. You may not, at present, see the necessity for _any_
foundation, and may think that I ought to put pencil and paper in your
hands at once. On that point I must simply answer, "Trust me a little
while," asking you however also to remember, that--irrespectively of any
consideration of last or first--my true function here is not that of
your master in painting, or sculpture, or pottery; but to show you what
it is that makes any of these arts _fine_, or the contrary of _fine_:
essentially _good_, or essentially _base_. You need not fear my not
being practical enough for you; all the industry you choose to give me,
I will take; but far the better part of what you may gain by such
industry would be lost, if I did not first lead you to see what every
form of art-industry intends, and why some of it is justly called right,
and some wrong.
35. It would be well if you were to look over, with respect to this
matter, the end of the second, and what interests you of the third, book
of Plato's Republic; noting therein these two principal things, of which
I have to speak in this and my next lecture: first, the power which
Plato so frankly, and quite justly, attributes to art, of _falsifying_
our conceptions of Deity: which power he by fatal error partly implies
may be used wisely for good, and that the feigning is only wrong when it
is of evil, "+ean tis mê kalôs pseudêtai+;" and you may trace
through all that follows the beginning of the change of Greek ideal art
into a beautiful expediency, instead of what it was in the days of
Pindar, the statement of what "could not be otherwise than so." But, in
the second place, you will find in those books of the Polity, stated
with far greater accuracy of expression than our English language
admits, the essential relations of art to morality; the sum of these
being given in one lovely sentence, which, considering that we have
to-day grace done us by fair companionship,[3] you will pardon me for
translating. "_Must it be then only with our poets that we insist they
shall either create for us the image of a noble morality, or among us
create none? or shall we not also keep guard over all other workers for
the people, and forbid them to make what is ill-customed, and
unrestrained, and ungentle, and without order or shape, either in
likeness of living things, or in buildings, or in any other thing
whatsoever that is made for the people? and shall we not rather seek for
workers who_ CAN TRACK THE INNER NATURE OF ALL THAT MAY BE SWEETLY
SCHEMED; _so that the young men, as living in a wholesome place, may be
profited by everything that, in work fairly wrought, may touch them
through hearing or sight--as if it were a breeze bringing health to them
from places strong for life?_"
[Footnote 3: There were, in fact, a great many more girls than
University men at the lectures.]
36. And now--but one word, before we enter on our task, as to the way
you must understand what I may endeavour to tell you.
Let me beg you--now and always--not to think that I mean more than I
say. In all probability, I mean just what I say, and only that. At all
events I do fully mean _that_; and if there is anything reserved in my
mind, it will be probably different from what you would guess. You are
perfectly welcome to know all that I think, as soon as I have put before
you all my grounds for thinking it; but by the time I have done so, you
will be able to form an opinion of your own; and mine will then be of no
consequence to you.
37. I use then to-day, as I shall in future use, the word "Religion" as
signifying the feelings of love, reverence, or dread with which the
human mind is affected by its conceptions of spiritual being; and you
know well how necessary it is, both to the rightness of our own life,
and to the understanding the lives of others, that we should always keep
clearly distinguished our ideas of Religion, as thus defined, and of
Morality, as the law of rightness in human conduct. For there are many
religions, but there is only one morality. There are moral and immoral
religions, which differ as much in precept as in emotion; but there is
only one morality, WHICH HAS BEEN, IS, AND MUST BE FOR EVER, AN INSTINCT
IN THE HEARTS OF ALL CIVILISED MEN, AS CERTAIN AND UNALTERABLE AS THEIR
OUTWARD BODILY FORM, AND WHICH RECEIVES FROM RELIGION NEITHER LAW, NOR
PLACE; BUT ONLY HOPE, AND FELICITY.
38. The pure forms or states of religion hitherto known, are those in
which a healthy humanity, finding in itself many foibles and sins, has
imagined, or been made conscious of, the existence of higher spiritual
personality, liable to no such fault or stain; and has been assisted in
effort, and consoled in pain, by reference to the will or sympathy of
such purer spirits, whether imagined or real. I am compelled to use
these painful latitudes of expression, because no analysis has hitherto
sufficed to distinguish accurately, in historical narrative, the
difference between impressions resulting from the imagination of the
worshipper, and those made, if any, by the actually local and temporary
presence of another spirit. For instance, take the vision, which of all
others has been since made most frequently the subject of physical
representation--the appearance to Ezekiel and St. John of the four
living creatures, which throughout Christendom have been used to
symbolise the Evangelists.[4] Supposing such interpretation just, one of
those figures was either the mere symbol to St. John of himself, or it
was the power which inspired him, manifesting itself in an independent
form. Which of these it was, or whether neither of these, but a vision
of other powers, or a dream, of which neither the prophet himself knew,
nor can any other person yet know, the interpretation,--I suppose no
modestly-minded and accurate thinker would now take upon himself to
decide. Nor is it therefore anywise necessary for you to decide on that,
or any other such question; but it is necessary that you should be bold
enough to look every opposing question steadily in its face; and modest
enough, having done so, to know when it is too hard for you. But above
all things, see that you be modest in your thoughts, for of this one
thing we may be absolutely sure, that all our thoughts are but degrees
of darkness. And in these days you have to guard against the fatallest
darkness of the two opposite Prides;--the Pride of Faith, which imagines
that the nature of the Deity can be defined by its convictions; and the
Pride of Science, which imagines that the energy of Deity can be
explained by its analysis.
[Footnote 4: Only the Gospels, "IV Evangelia," according to St. Jerome.]
39. Of these, the first, the Pride of Faith, is now, as it has been
always, the most deadly, because the most complacent and
subtle;--because it invests every evil passion of our nature with the
aspect of an angel of light, and enables the self-love, which might
otherwise have been put to wholesome shame, and the cruel carelessness
of the ruin of our fellow-men, which might otherwise have been warmed
into human love, or at least checked by human intelligence, to congeal
themselves into the mortal intellectual disease of imagining that
myriads of the inhabitants of the world for four thousand years have
been left to wander and perish, many of them everlastingly, in order
that, in fulness of time, divine truth might be preached sufficiently to
ourselves: with this farther ineffable mischief for direct result, that
multitudes of kindly-disposed, gentle, and submissive persons, who might
else by their true patience have alloyed the hardness of the common
crowd, and by their activity for good balanced its misdoing, are
withdrawn from all such true services of man, that they may pass the
best part of their lives in what they are told is the service of God;
_namely, desiring what_ _they cannot obtain, lamenting what they cannot
avoid, and reflecting on what they cannot understand_.[5]
[Footnote 5: This concentrated definition of monastic life is of course
to be understood only of its more enthusiastic forms.]
40. This, I repeat, is the deadliest, but for you, under existing
circumstances, it is becoming daily, almost hourly, the least probable
form of Pride. That which you have chiefly to guard against consists in
the overvaluing of minute though correct discovery; the groundless
denial of all that seems to you to have been groundlessly affirmed; and
the interesting yourselves too curiously in the progress of some
scientific minds, which in their judgment of the universe can be
compared to nothing so accurately as to the woodworms in the panel of a
picture by some great painter, if we may conceive them as tasting with
discrimination of the wood, and with repugnance of the colour, and
declaring that even this unlooked-for and undesirable combination is a
normal result of the action of molecular Forces.
41. Now, I must very earnestly warn you, in the beginning of my work
with you here, against allowing either of these forms of egotism to
interfere with your judgment or practice of art. On the one hand, you
must not allow the expression of your own favourite religious feelings
by any particular form of art to modify your judgment of its absolute
merit; nor allow the art itself to become an illegitimate means of
deepening and confirming your convictions, by realising to your eyes
what you dimly conceive with the brain; as if the greater clearness of
the image were a stronger proof of its truth. On the other hand, you
must not allow your scientific habit of trusting nothing but what you
have ascertained, to prevent you from appreciating, or at least
endeavouring to qualify yourselves to appreciate, the work of the
highest faculty of the human mind,--its imagination,--when it is toiling
in the presence of things that cannot be dealt with by any other power.
42. These are both vital conditions of your healthy progress. On the one
hand, observe that you do not wilfully use the realistic power of art
to convince yourselves of historical or theological statements which you
cannot otherwise prove; and which you wish to prove:--on the other hand,
that you do not check your imagination and conscience while seizing the
truths of which they alone are cognizant, because you value too highly
the scientific interest which attaches to the investigation of second
causes.
For instance, it may be quite possible to show the conditions in water
and electricity which necessarily produce the craggy outline, the
apparently self-contained silvery light, and the sulphurous blue shadow
of a thunder-cloud, and which separate these from the depth of the
golden peace in the dawn of a summer morning. Similarly, it may be
possible to show the necessities of structure which groove the fangs and
depress the brow of the asp, and which distinguish the character of its
head from that of the face of a young girl. But it is the function of
the rightly-trained imagination to recognise, in these, and such other
relative aspects, the unity of teaching which impresses, alike on our
senses and our conscience, the eternal difference between good and evil:
and the rule, over the clouds of heaven and over the creatures in the
earth, of the same Spirit which teaches to our own hearts the bitterness
of death, and strength of love.
43. Now, therefore, approaching our subject in this balanced temper,
which will neither resolve to see only what it would desire, nor expect
to see only what it can explain, we shall find our enquiry into the
relation of Art to Religion is distinctly threefold: first, we have to
ask how far art may have been literally directed by spiritual powers;
secondly, how far, if not inspired, it may have been exalted by them;
lastly, how far, in any of its agencies, it has advanced the cause of
the creeds it has been used to recommend.
44. First: What ground have we for thinking that art has ever been
inspired as a message or revelation? What internal evidence is there in
the work of great artists of their having been under the authoritative
guidance of supernatural powers?
It is true that the answer to so mysterious a question cannot rest alone
upon internal evidence; but it is well that you should know what might,
from that evidence alone, be concluded. And the more impartially you
examine the phenomena of imagination, the more firmly you will be led to
conclude that they are the result of the influence of the common and
vital, but not, therefore, less Divine, spirit, of which some portion is
given to all living creatures in such manner as may be adapted to their
rank in creation; and that everything which men rightly accomplish is
indeed done by Divine help, but under a consistent law which is never
departed from.
The strength of this spiritual life within us may be increased or
lessened by our own conduct; it varies from time to time, as physical
strength varies; it is summoned on different occasions by our will, and
dejected by our distress, or our sin; but it is always _equally human_,
and _equally Divine_. We are men, and not mere animals, because a
special form of it is with us always; we are nobler and baser men, as it
is with us more or less; but it is never given to us in any degree which
can make us more than men.
45. Observe:--I give you this general statement doubtfully, and only as
that towards which an impartial reasoner will, I think, be inclined by
existing data. But I shall be able to show you, without any doubt, in
the course of our studies, that the achievements of art which have been
usually looked upon as the results of peculiar inspiration have been
arrived at only through long courses of wisely directed labour, and
under the influence of feelings which are common to all humanity.
But of these feelings and powers which in different degrees are common
to humanity, you are to note that there are three principal divisions:
first, the instincts of construction or melody, which we share with
lower animals, and which are in us as native as the instinct of the bee
or nightingale; secondly, the faculty of vision, or of dreaming, whether
in sleep or in conscious trance, or by voluntarily exerted fancy; and
lastly, the power of rational inference and collection, of both the laws
and forms of beauty.
46. Now the faculty of vision, being closely associated with the
innermost spiritual nature, is the one which has by most reasoners been
held for the peculiar channel of Divine teaching: and it is a fact that
great part of purely didactic art has been the record, whether in
language, or by linear representation, of actual vision involuntarily
received at the moment, though cast on a mental retina blanched
by the past course of faithful life. But it is also true that
these visions, where most distinctly received, are always--I speak
deliberately--_always_, the _sign of some mental limitation or
derangement_; and that the persons who most clearly recognise their
value, exaggeratedly estimate it, choosing what they find to be useful,
and calling that "inspired," and disregarding what they perceive to be
useless, though presented to the visionary by an equal authority.
47. Thus it is probable that no work of art has been more widely
didactic than Albert Dürer's engraving, known as the "Knight and
Death."[6] But that is only one of a series of works representing
similarly vivid dreams, of which some are uninteresting, except for the
manner of their representation, as the "St. Hubert," and others are
unintelligible; some, frightful, and wholly unprofitable; so that we
find the visionary faculty in that great painter, when accurately
examined, to be a morbid influence, abasing his skill more frequently
than encouraging it, and sacrificing the greater part of his energies
upon vain subjects, two only being produced, in the course of a long
life, which are of high didactic value, and both of these capable only
of giving sad courage.[7] Whatever the value of these two, it bears more
the aspect of a treasure obtained at great cost of suffering, than of a
directly granted gift from heaven.
[Footnote 6: Standard Series, No. 9.]
[Footnote 7: The meaning of the "Knight and Death," even in this
respect, has lately been questioned on good grounds.]
48. On the contrary, not only the highest, but the most consistent
results have been attained in art by men in whom the faculty of vision,
however strong, was subordinate to that of deliberative design, and
tranquillised by a measured, continual, not feverish, but affectionate,
observance of the quite unvisionary facts of the surrounding world.
And so far as we can trace the connection of their powers with the moral
character of their lives, we shall find that the best art is the work of
good, but of not distinctively religious men, who, at least, are
conscious of no inspiration, and often so unconscious of their
superiority to others, that one of the greatest of them, Reynolds,
deceived by his modesty, has asserted that "all things are possible to
well-directed labour."
49. The second question, namely, how far art, if not inspired, has yet
been ennobled by religion, I shall not touch upon to-day; for it both
requires technical criticism, and would divert you too long from the
main question of all,--How far religion has been helped by art?