[36] E.g., _Should Such a Faith Offend?_, by the Bishop of Birmingham;
_I Believe in God_, by Maude Royden; _The Impatience of a Parson_, by
H. R. L. Sheppard.
_The Plight of Our Arts_
FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
I
Any expression of a humanistic society through the arts depends upon
the acceptance by the artist of some sort of central authority. The
authority is not that of official organisations or written codes; it is
rather that of approved traditional ideals in which both the artist and
the laity believe. In their application to the work of art, such ideals
appear concretely as accredited conventions. In a humanistic society,
these conventions assume no burdensome or arbitrarily authoritative
form. They represent merely a body of successful experience--ways
that have been tried and found good. The accepted convention tells
the artist how he must begin; it does not tell him how he must end.
It does, however, warn him off from any too abrupt breaking with
tradition, and from any too urgent assertion of his individual taste
save in so far as that taste finds sanction in precedent and in opinion
other than his own. Right here is the stone of stumbling. The humanist
artist willingly admits that his own genius is not his final authority.
He checks its impulses by the practice and teaching of other geniuses,
and by the degree of acceptance which its expression commands from
competent criticism and patronage. It is not enough that he shall have
expressed just himself; it matters quite as much that he shall have
communicated himself to a fit public with whom he shares a confidence
in the guiding conventions of his art and in ideals mutually honoured.
On the side of the artist, this relation will indicate a procedure of
delicate adjustment. The accepted conventions of his art and the ideals
of the society for which he works, will of course not fit him precisely
any more than a ready-made suit fits perfectly either the artist or
layman. The practical problem of the humanist artist, then, will be
how far he shall reshape himself to the expectations of his public;
and how far he may change these expectations in a sense favourable to
his individual bent. And this implies chiefly a very superior sort of
judgment and common sense. The humanist artist will feel that it is a
vain thing to have expressed himself, however gorgeously, if nobody
knows that he has expressed himself, and he will also admit that the
mere feelingful and urgent self gains richness and value only when it
is measured by other selves in society.
On the side of society and patronage, a humanised art would imply
in practice a central authority lightly and genially imposed, a
just offishness towards the artists who too overtly repudiated the
tradition, withal a somewhat sceptical hopefulness towards experiment
and innovation, a hospitable desire to understand the artist even when
his communication is obscure, a wish to have its own ideals expressed
through the arts. In short a humanised society co-operates with the
artist to a degree difficult even to imagine to-day. It provides him
with incentive, furnishes most of his æsthetic notions, helps him to
realise himself through opportune criticism and companionship, thus
taking an active part in what is the essential thing--the formation of
his spirit.
So far I have dealt in convenient abstractions which are in part
misleading. I have made the reciprocal relation between the artist and
public too conscious, much more conscious than it has been in history.
I shall presently try to correct the error by appealing to precedents
concretely in given time and place. However, the over-emphasis on
consciousness as producing mutuality between artist and public may
well be pragmatically justified. It seems unlikely that our society
will simply gravitate towards humanism. On the contrary, if we are to
achieve a humanistic social balance, it will apparently be done only
through much taking of thought, on the part of both the enlightened
laity and the intelligent artist. So the analysis I have tried to make
of the mutually helpful relation of artist and layman in a humanised
world, though it overstresses the conscious element in this reciprocity
in seeming disregard of past history, may for that very reason suggest
a programme for history yet to be realised.
Programmes, however, are entirely valueless except as they rest soundly
on dynamic states of mind. Our problem as humanists is to create a
state of mind in which neither artist nor layman will exaggerate
the worth of his idiosyncrasy, nor yet follow the general drift
unthinkingly. We are trying to make a man who is a friendly critic both
of himself and of the society in which he moves, a man who accepts
the growing complexity of living as offering him fascinating and
profitable problems of adjustment. To maintain this hope in the face
of the chicken-and-lobster-eating motorist, the radio fan, the devotee
of the “talkies,” the sycophant artist who bows to base authority, and
the behaviourist artist who admits none but that of his own glands--to
keep the hope of making humanists in the face of the daily American
spectacle requires an audacity which even the Expressionist might
envy. But we contributors to this symposium have actually seen a few
humanists made, have helped a little to make them perhaps; and we are
dealing with spiritual values which transcend ordinary statistics.
A few thousand genuine humanists in America would make our society
humanistic; a hundred humanist painters, sculptors, architects,
musicians, and men of letters would make our art solidly humanistic.
In this hope we keep our tiny banner up beside the hoardings that
promise to beautify our teeth, remove our corns, clothe our bodies
appealingly, or incase the relentlessly exposed legs of our women in
silk as durable as filmy.