would, in such a case, spend the granted days entirely as you ought.
Neither in numbering the errors, or deploring the pleasures of the
past; nor in grasping at vile good in the present, nor vainly lamenting
the darkness of the future; but in an instant and earnest execution of
whatever it might be possible for you to accomplish in the time, in
setting your affairs in order, and in providing for the future comfort,
and--so far as you might by any message or record of yourself,--for the
consolation, of those whom you loved, and by whom you desired to be
remembered, not for your good, but for theirs. How far you might fail
through human weakness, in shame for the past, despair at the little
that could in the remnant of life be accomplished, or the intolerable
pain of broken affection, would depend wholly on the degree in which
your nature had been depressed or fortified by the manner of your past
life. But I think there are few of you who would not spend those last
days better than all that had preceded them.
85. If you look accurately through the records of the lives that have
been most useful to humanity, you will find that all that has been done
best, has been done so;--that to the clearest intellects and highest
souls,--to the true children of the Father, with whom a thousand years
are as one day, their poor seventy years are but as seven days. The
removal of the shadow of death from them to an uncertain, but always
narrow, distance, never takes away from them their intuition of its
approach; the extending to them of a few hours more or less of light
abates not their acknowledgment of the infinitude that must remain to be
known beyond their knowledge,--done beyond their deeds: the
unprofitableness of their momentary service is wrought in a magnificent
despair, and their very honour is bequeathed by them for the joy of
others, as they lie down to their rest, regarding for themselves the
voice of men no more.
86. The best things, I repeat to you, have been done thus, and
therefore, sorrowfully. But the greatest part of the good work of the
world is done either in pure and unvexed instinct of duty, "I have
stubbed Thornaby waste," or else, and better, it is cheerful and helpful
doing of what the hand finds to do, in surety that at evening time,
whatsoever is right the Master will give. And that it be worthily done,
depends wholly on that ultimate quantity of worth which you can measure,
each in himself, by the test I have just given you. For that test,
observe, will mark to you the precise force, first of your absolute
courage, and then of the energy in you for the right ordering of things,
and the kindly dealing with persons. You have cut away from these two
instincts every selfish or common motive, and left nothing but the
energies of Order and of Love.
87. Now, where those two roots are set, all the other powers and desires
find right nourishment, and become to their own utmost, helpful to
others and pleasurable to ourselves. And so far as those two springs of
action are not in us, all other powers become corrupt or dead; even the
love of truth, apart from these, hardens into an insolent and cold
avarice of knowledge, which unused, is more vain than unused gold.
88. These, then, are the two essential instincts of humanity: the love
of Order and the love of Kindness. By the love of order the moral energy
is to deal with the earth, and to dress it, and keep it; and with all
rebellious and dissolute forces in lower creatures, or in ourselves. By
the love of doing kindness it is to deal rightly with all surrounding
life. And then, grafted on these, we are to make every other passion
perfect; so that they may every one have full strength and yet be
absolutely under control.
89. Every one must be strong, every one perfect, every one obedient as a
war horse. And it is among the most beautiful pieces of mysticism to
which eternal truth is attached, that the chariot race, which Plato uses
as an image of moral government, and which is indeed the most perfect
type of it in any visible skill of men, should have been made by the
Greeks the continual subject of their best poetry and best art.
Nevertheless Plato's use of it is not altogether true. There is no black
horse in the chariot of the soul. One of the driver's worst faults is in
starving his horses; another, in not breaking them early enough; but
they are all good. Take, for example, one usually thought of as wholly
evil--that of Anger, leading to vengeance. I believe it to be quite one
of the crowning wickednesses of this age that we have starved and
chilled our faculty of indignation, and neither desire nor dare to
punish crimes justly. We have taken up the benevolent idea, forsooth,
that justice is to be preventive instead of vindictive; and we imagine
that we are to punish, not in anger, but in expediency; not that we may
give deserved pain to the person in fault, but that we may frighten
other people from committing the same fault. The beautiful theory of
this non-vindictive justice is, that having convicted a man of a crime
worthy of death, we entirely pardon the criminal, restore him to his
place in our affection and esteem, and then hang him, not as a
malefactor, but as a scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is,
that we send a child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of
walnuts, for fear that other children should come to steal more of our
walnuts. And we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand
families, because we think swindling is a wholesome excitement to trade.
90. But all true justice is vindictive to vice, as it is rewarding to
virtue. Only--and herein it is distinguished from personal revenge--it
is vindictive of the wrong done;--not of the wrong done _to us_. It is
the national expression of deliberate anger, as of deliberate gratitude;
it is not exemplary, or even corrective, but essentially retributive; it
is the absolute art of measured recompense, giving honour where honour
is due, and shame where shame is due, and joy where joy is due, and pain
where pain is due. It is neither educational, for men are to be educated
by wholesome habit, not by rewards and punishments; nor is it
preventive, for it is to be executed without regard to any consequences;
but only for righteousness' sake, a righteous nation does judgment and
justice. But in this, as in all other instances, the rightness of the
secondary passion depends on its being grafted on those two primary
instincts, the love of order and of kindness, so that indignation
itself is against the wounding of love. Do you think the +mênis
Achilêos+ came of a hard heart in Achilles, or the "Pallas te hoc
vulnere, Pallas," of a hard heart in Anchises' son?
91. And now, if with this clue through the labyrinth of them, you
remember the course of the arts of great nations, you will perceive that
whatever has prospered, and become lovely, had its beginning--for no
other was possible--in the love of order in material things associated
with true +dikaiosunê+: and the desire of beauty in material
things, which is associated with true affection, _charitas_, and with
the innumerable conditions of gentleness expressed by the different uses
of the words +charis+ and _gratia_. You will find that this love
of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature, and though
it can long co-exist with states of life in many other respects
unvirtuous, it is itself wholly good;--the direct adversary of envy,
avarice, mean worldly care, and especially of cruelty. It entirely
perishes when these are wilfully indulged; and the men in whom it has
been most strong have always been compassionate, and lovers of justice,
and the earliest discerners and declarers of things conducive to the
happiness of mankind.
92. Nearly every important truth respecting the love of beauty in its
familiar relations to human life was mythically expressed by the Greeks
in their various accounts of the parentage and offices of the Graces.
But one fact, the most vital of all, they could not in its fulness
perceive, namely, that the intensity of other perceptions of beauty is
exactly commensurate with the imaginative purity of the passion of love,
and with the singleness of its devotion. They were not fully conscious
of, and could not therefore either mythically or philosophically
express, the deep relation within themselves between their power of
perceiving beauty, and the honour of domestic affection which found
their sternest themes of tragedy in the infringement of its laws;--which
made the rape of Helen the chief subject of their epic poetry, and which
fastened their clearest symbolism of resurrection on the story of
Alcestis. Unhappily, the subordinate position of their most revered
women, and the partial corruption of feeling towards them by the
presence of certain other singular states of inferior passion which it
is as difficult as grievous to analyse, arrested the ethical as well as
the formative progress of the Greek mind; and it was not until after an
interval of nearly two thousand years of various error and pain, that,
partly as the true reward of Christian warfare nobly sustained through
centuries of trial, and partly as the visionary culmination of the faith
which saw in a maiden's purity the link between God and her race, the
highest and holiest strength of mortal love was reached; and, together
with it, in the song of Dante, and the painting of Bernard of Luino and
his fellows, the perception, and embodiment for ever of whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report;--that, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
men might think on those things.
93. You probably observed the expression I used a moment ago, the
_imaginative_ purity of the passion of love. I have not yet spoken, nor
is it possible for me to-day, to speak adequately, of the moral power of
the imagination: but you may for yourselves enough discern its nature
merely by comparing the dignity of the relations between the sexes, from
their lowest level in moths or mollusca, through the higher creatures in
whom they become a domestic influence and law, up to the love of pure
men and women; and, finally, to the ideal love which animated chivalry.
Throughout this vast ascent it is the gradual increase of the
imaginative faculty which exalts and enlarges the authority of the
passion, until, at its height, it is the bulwark of patience, the tutor
of honour, and the perfectness of praise.
94. You will find farther, that as of love, so of all the other
passions, the right government and exaltation begins in that of the
Imagination, which is lord over them. For to _subdue_ the passions,
which is thought so often to be the sum of duty respecting them, is
possible enough to a proud dulness; but to _excite_ them rightly, and
make them strong for good, is the work of the unselfish imagination. It
is constantly said that human nature is heartless. Do not believe it.
Human nature is kind and generous; but it is narrow and blind; and can
only with difficulty conceive anything but what it immediately sees and
feels. People would instantly care for others as well as themselves if
only they could _imagine_ others as well as themselves. Let a child fall
into the river before the roughest man's eyes;--he will usually do what
he can to get it out, even at some risk to himself; and all the town
will triumph in the saving of one little life. Let the same man be shown
that hundreds of children are dying of fever for want of some sanitary
measure which it will cost him trouble to urge, and he will make no
effort; and probably all the town would resist him if he did. So, also,
the lives of many deserving women are passed in a succession of petty
anxieties about themselves, and gleaning of minute interests and mean
pleasures in their immediate circle, because they are never taught to
make any effort to look beyond it; or to know anything about the mighty
world in which their lives are fading, like blades of bitter grass in
fruitless fields.
95. I had intended to enlarge on this--and yet more on the kingdom which
every man holds in his conceptive faculty, to be peopled with active
thoughts and lovely presences, or left waste for the springing up of
those dark desires and dreams of which it is written that "every
imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is evil continually." True,
and a thousand times true it is, that, here at least, "greater is he
that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." But this you can
partly follow out for yourselves without help, partly we must leave it
for future enquiry. I press to the conclusion which I wish to leave with
you, that all you can rightly do, or honourably become, depends on the
government of these two instincts of order and kindness, by this great
Imaginative faculty, which gives you inheritance of the past, grasp of
the present, authority over the future. Map out the spaces of your
possible lives by its help; measure the range of their possible agency!
On the walls and towers of this your fair city, there is not an ornament
of which the first origin may not be traced back to the thoughts of men
who died two thousand years ago. Whom will _you_ be governing by your
thoughts, two thousand years hence? Think of it, and you will find that
so far from art being immoral, little else except art is moral; that
life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality:
and for the words "good" and "wicked," used of men, you may almost
substitute the words "Makers" and "Destroyers." Far the greater part of
the seeming prosperity of the world is, so far as our present knowledge
extends, vain: wholly useless for any kind of good, but having assigned
to it a certain inevitable sequence of destruction and of sorrow. Its
stress is only the stress of wandering storm; its beauty the hectic of
plague: and what is called the history of mankind is too often the
record of the whirlwind, and the map of the spreading of the leprosy.
But underneath all that, or in narrow spaces of dominion in the midst of
it, the work of every man, "qui non accepit in vanitatem animam suam,"
endures and prospers; a small remnant or green bud of it prevailing at
last over evil. And though faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin,
the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness into garden ground;
by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely
sustained and vitally expanded, and although with strange vacillation,
in the eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and also the night,
there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on towards the
perfect day.
96. And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that
the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. Nay!
_more_, if it may be, in labour; in our strength, rather than in our
weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the six
days, and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the choice
of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward or repose. With the
multitude that keep holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone
up to the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked for what we fancied
would be mercy; but for the few who labour as their Lord would have
them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing.
Surely goodness and mercy shall _follow_ them, _all_ the days of their
life; and they shall dwell in the house of the Lord--FOR EVER.
LECTURE IV
THE RELATION OF ART TO USE
97. Our subject of enquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in
which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical
requirements of human life.
Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form to
knowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanently
visible to us things which otherwise could neither be described by our
science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulness and
worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, furniture
and lodging. In the first of these offices it gives precision and charm
to truth; in the second it gives precision and charm to service. For,
the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, it is a law of nature
that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and with the thing we have
made; and become desirous therefore to adorn or complete it, in some
dainty way, with finer art expressive of our pleasure.
And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you to-day is this close
and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must
first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving
Form to truth.
98. Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on the
ground that I have attached too much importance to art as representing
natural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And I wish,
in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to assert to
you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, that the entire
vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of
use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful or impressive it may be in
itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper
inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects,--either
_to state a true thing_, or to _adorn a serviceable one_. It must never
exist alone--never for itself; it exists rightly only when it is the
means of knowledge, or the grace of agency for life.
99. Now, I pray you to observe--for though I have said this often
before, I have never yet said it clearly enough--every good piece of
art, to whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first
essentially the evidence of human skill and the formation of an actually
beautiful thing by it.
Skill, and beauty, always then; and, beyond these, the formative arts
have always one or other of the two objects which I have just defined to
you--truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neither the skill
nor their beauty will avail; only by these can either legitimately
reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outline of shadow that
we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspect of life; and all
the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the cup and the platter,
and they end in a glorified roof.
Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, and
Likeness; and in the architectural arts, Skill, Beauty, and Use; and you
_must_ have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and all
the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one of these
elements.
100. For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are
founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill,
photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main
nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get
everything by grinding--music, literature, and painting. You will find
it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding.
Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley first;
and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, we have lost
our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I was trying to make
clear to you in my last address, and which long ago I tried to express,
under the head of ideas of power. The entire sense of that, we have
lost, because we ourselves do not take pains enough to do right, and
have no conception of what the right costs; so that all the joy and
reverence we ought to feel in looking at a strong man's work have ceased
in us. We keep them yet a little in looking at a honeycomb or a
bird's-nest; we understand that these differ, by divinity of skill, from
a lump of wax or a cluster of sticks. But a picture, which is a much
more wonderful thing than a honeycomb or a bird's-nest,--have we not
known people, and sensible people too, who expected to be taught to
produce that, in six lessons?
101. Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is
the highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or
utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this desire
for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always leads in
great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any exception.
They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will permit themselves
in ugliness; but they will never permit themselves in uselessness or in
unveracity.
102. And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much
more, their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three motives
in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He rejoices in
showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in learning what
painter's work really is, will one day rejoice also, even to
laughter--that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, in
watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth its
will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. He
rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he will
never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is
unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all
his invention are held by him subordinate,--and the more obediently
because of their nobleness,--to his true leading purpose of setting
before you such likeness of the living presence of an English gentleman
or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon for ever.
103. But farther, you remember, I hope--for I said it in a way that I
thought would shock you a little, that you might remember it--my
statement, that art had never done more than this, never more than given
the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it very seldom
does so much as this; and the best pictures that exist of the great
schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of very simple
and no wise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and
impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures
scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light and
shade, as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that is
child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their
real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it is never
elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man or woman,
and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highest soul, but
often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; or perhaps not
even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to the poor best of
it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to put before you in your
Standard series, the best art possible, I am obliged, even from the very
strongest men, to take portraits, before I take the idealism. Nay,
whatever is best in the great compositions themselves has depended on
portraiture; and the study necessary to enable you to understand
invention will also convince you that the mind of man never invented a
greater thing than the form of man, animated by faithful life. Every
attempt to refine or exalt such healthy humanity has weakened or
caricatured it; or else consists only in giving it, to please our fancy,
the wings of birds, or the eyes of antelopes. Whatever is truly great in
either Greek or Christian art, is also restrictedly human; and even the
raptures of the redeemed souls who enter, "celestemente ballando," the
gate of Angelico's Paradise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet
most pure, mirth of Florentine maidens.
104. I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely
questionable to those of my audience who are strictly cognisant of the
phases of Greek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is
accurately marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But
the reason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was in
subduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by general
laws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if this
ethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthy
portraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended in
Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, and
flattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because she became
true in sight, but because she became vile at heart.