are too many for him--they become merely a “lot.” But war and the
chase begin to teach him the relative value of numbers; and he finds
out that if one lot goes out to fight a bigger lot, the smaller lot
probably gets beaten; so that, before long, calculation of some sort
becomes necessary for the preservation of existence. He finds out also
(and this is where ornament begins to come in) that a certain amount of
wilful miscalculation has a beauty and a value of its own. So, after
going out to fight ten against ten, and defeating them, he comes back
and says to his wives and the surrounding communities by whom he wishes
to be held in awe--“My lot killed bigger lot--much, much bigger lot.”
And so, when he comes later on to set down his wilful miscalculations
in records of scripture, he provides delightful problems for the Bishop
Colensos of future ages--problems the undoing of which may shake to
the foundations the authority of documents which some mid-Victorian
school of Christianity has hitherto held to be divinely and verbally
inspired--not realising that the normal tendency of human nature is
to be decorative when writing its national history or when giving its
reasons for having plunged into war.
You begin now, then, to perceive (if you did not before), the
importance of ornamental association, even when confined to matters of
arithmetic; and the moral value to future ages not merely of calculated
truths but of calculated untruths.
But this merely figurative illustration of the quickness of the human
brain, in its primitive stage, to use mathematics to unmathematical
ends (or science to ends quite unscientific) does not bring us very far
upon the road to that self-realisation, in ornament rather than in use,
which I hope to make manifest by tracing to their most characteristic
forms of expression the higher grades of civilization.
And I shall hope, by and by, to show that you cannot be social without
also being ornamental; it is the beginning of that connecting link
which shall presently make men realise that life is one, and that all
life is good.
Take, to begin with, the earliest instruments by which primitive man
began raising himself from the ruck of material conditions; his
weapons--first of the chase, and then of war. No sooner had he proved
their use than he began to ornament them--to make them records,
trophies, and so--objects of beauty. He cannot stop from doing so;
his delight in the skill of his hands breaks out into ornament. It is
the same with the arts of peace, the work of the woman-primitive--she
moulds a pot, or weaves a square of material, and into it--the moment
she has accomplished the rudiments--goes pattern, beauty, something
additional and memorable that is not for use material, but for use
spiritual--pleasure, delight.
And that quite simple example, from a time when man was living the
life, as we should now regard it, of a harried and hunted beast--with
his emergence from surrounding perils scarcely yet assured to him--goes
on consistently up and up the scale of human evolution; and the more
strongly it gets to be established in social institutions, the more
noble is likely to be the form of civilization which enshrines it. And
the less it shows, the less is that form of civilization likely to be
worthy of preservation, or its products of permanent value to the human
race.
It is not the millionaire who leaves his mark on the world so that
hereafter men are glad when they name him; it is the “maker” who
has turned uses into delights; not the master of the money-market,
but the Master of Arts. The nearest thing we have on earth to that
immortality which so many look to as the human goal lies in those forms
of ornament--of embellishment over and above mere use--which man’s
genius has left to us in architecture, poetry, music, sculpture, and
painting. Nothing that stops at utility has anything like the same
value, for the revelation of the human spirit, as that which finds its
setting in the Arts--the sculptures of Egypt and Greece, the Gothic
and Romanesque cathedrals of France, England, Germany and Italy, the
paintings of the Renaissance, the masterpieces of Bach and Beethoven,
the poems and writings all down the ages of men comparatively poor in
monetary wealth, but rich beyond the dreams of avarice in their power
to communicate their own souls to things material and to leave them
there, when their own bodies have turned to dust. In the embellishment
they added to life they bestowed on the age in which they lived its
most significant commentary. There you will find, as nowhere else, the
meaning and the interpretation of the whole social order to which these
forms were as flower and fruit. Ancient Greece is not represented to us
to-day by its descendants in the flesh (as an expression of that life
they have ceased to exist) but by those works of art and philosophy
through which men--many now nameless--made permanent the vision of
delight to which, in the brief life of the flesh, they had become
heirs. The self-realisation of that age--all the best of it that we
inherit--comes to us through embodiment in forms transcending material
use.
Run your mind’s eye through the various peoples and nationalities of
Europe--of the world--and you will find that their characteristic
charm--that which is “racy” of their native soil, marking the
distinction between race and race, lies in the expression they have
given to life over and above use. If we had kept to use, race would
have remained expressionless. Race expresses itself in ornament; and
even among a poor peasant people (and far more among them than among
the crowded and over-worked populations of our great cities where
we pursue merely commercial wealth) comes out in a characteristic
appreciation of the superabundance of material with which, at some
point or another, life has lifted them above penury. In the great
civilizations it extends itself over a rich blend of all these, drawn
from far sources; and the more widely it extends over the material uses
of life, the higher and the more permanent are the products of that
form of civilization likely to be. What does it mean but this?--man is
out to enjoy himself.
Having said that, need I add that I put a very high interpretation upon
the word “joy”?
To that end--man’s enjoyment of life--all art is profoundly useful. I
put that forward in opposition to the specious doctrine of Oscar Wilde
that “all art is entirely useless.” But it is usefulness extended in a
new direction; leaving the material uses, by which ordinary values are
measured, it shifts to the spiritual; and by the spiritual I mean that
which animates, vitalizes, socializes.
To that end it may often be--and is generally the case--that, in the
material sense, art is a useless addition or refinement upon that which
was first planned merely for the service of man’s bodily needs. Yet
where the need is of a worthy and genuine kind, art never ceases to
rejoice at the use that is underlying it. This can be clearly seen in
architecture, where the beauty of design, the proportion, the capacity
of the edifice--though far transcending the physical need which called
it into being--remain nevertheless in subtle relation thereto, and give
to it a new expression--useless indeed to the body--but of this use to
the mind, that it awakens, kindles, enlivens, sensitizes--making it to
be in some sort creative, by perception of and response to the creative
purpose which evoked that form. You cannot enter a cathedral without
becoming aware that its embracing proportions mean something far more
than the mere capacity to hold a crowd; its end and aim are to inspire
in that crowd a certain mental attitude, a spiritual apprehension--to
draw many minds into harmony, and so to make them one--a really
tremendous fact when successfully achieved.
Now nothing can be so made--to awaken and enlarge the spirit--without
some apparent wastefulness of material or of energy. A cathedral will
absorb more stone, and the labour of more men’s lives, before it is
finished, than a tenement of equal housing capacity which aims only at
providing warmth and a cover from the elements. To provide so much joy
and enlargement to the human spirit, a kind of waste, upon the material
plane, is necessary; and the man without joy or imagination in his
composition is likely to say on beholding it: “Why was all this waste
made?”
Bear in mind this accusation of waste which can constantly be made,
from a certain standpoint against all forms of joy evolved by the art
of living--possibly against all forms of joy that you can name; for all
joy entails an expenditure of energy, and for those who do not realise
the value of joy such expenditure must necessarily seem wasteful.
But when a man employs hand or brain worthily, straightway he discovers
(latent within that connection) the instinct of delight, of ornament.
He cannot rejoice in his craftsmanship without wishing to embellish
it--to place upon it the expression of the joy which went with the
making. All that he does to this end is apparently (from the material
point of view) useless; but from the spiritual it is profoundly useful;
and from the spirit (and this I think is important) it tends to re-act
and kindle the craftsman to finer craftsmanship than if he had worked
for utility alone.
Now if spirit thus acts on matter--achieving its own well-being only
through a certain waste of material, or expenditure of labour upon the
lower plane, yet communicating back to matter influences from that
state of well-being to which it has thus attained--may it not be that
waste of a certain kind (what I would call “selective waste” _versus_
“haphazard waste”) is the concomitant not only of spiritual but of
material growth also? May it not be that evolution has followed upon a
course of waste deliberately willed and insisted on--and that without
such waste, life--even material life--had not evolved to its present
stage?
We see a certain wastefulness attaching to many of the most beautiful
biological manifestations in the world. Up to a certain point, the
construction of flower, bird, beast, fish, shows a wonderful economy of
structure, of means to end (it is the same also in the arts). But there
comes a point at which Nature, “letting herself go,” becomes fantastic,
extravagant--may one not say “wilful”?--in the forms she selects for
her final touches of adornment. And is it not nearly always when the
matter in hand is most closely related to the “will to live”--or, in
other words, in relation to the amative instincts--that the “art of
living” breaks out, and that Nature quits all moderation of design and
becomes frankly ornamental and extravagant? Just at the point where to
be creative is the immediate motive, where, in the fulfilment of that
motive, life is found to be a thing of delight, just there, Nature,
being amative, becomes playful, exuberant and ornamental.
There are some birds which, in this connection, carry upon their
persons adornments so extravagant that one wonders how for so many
generations they have been able to live and move and multiply, bearing
such edifices upon their backs, their heads, their tails--that they
were not a crushing hindrance to the necessary affairs of life. They
certainly cannot have been a help; and yet--they still persist in them!
Taking, then, these natural embryonic beginnings as our starting point,
I would be inclined to trace out the living value of art and ornament
somewhat upon these lines: Exuberance--the emergence of beauty and
adornment, in addition to the mere functional grace arising out of
fitness for use--has always been going on through the whole process
of creation among animate nature. We see it established in a thousand
forms, not only in bird, beast and reptile, but in the vegetable
world as well. The tendency of all life that has found a fair field
for its development, is to play with its material--to show that it
has something over and above the straight needs imposed on it by the
struggle for existence, which it can spare for self-expression.
It has been lured on to these manifestations mainly by that “will
to live” which underlies the attractions of sex. That exuberance
is an essential feature of the evolutionary process at the point
where self-realisation by self-reproduction is the game to play.
Under that impulse the selective principle begins to assert itself,
and straightway the outcome is ornament. Self-realisation (by
self-reproduction under all sorts of images and symbols) is the true
basis of ornament and of art: self-realisation!
The spirit of man, moving through these means, impresses itself
reproductively on the spirits of others with a far better calculation
of effect than can be secured through bodily inheritance. For in
physical parentage there is always the chance of a throw-back to
tainted origins; the sober and moral citizen cannot be sure of sober
and moral children in whom the desire of his soul shall be satisfied.
They may be drawn, by irresistible forces, to take after some giddy and
disreputable old grandfather or grandmother instead of after him; for
in his veins run the parental weaknesses of thousands of generations;
and over the racial strain that passes through him to others he
possesses no control whatever. But the man who has given ornament to
life in any form of art--though he commits it to the risks and chances
of life, the destructive accidents of peace and war--is in danger
of no atavistic trick being played upon the product of his soul; he
is assured of his effect, and so long as it endures it reflects and
represents his personality more faithfully than the descendants of his
blood.
Now for the satisfaction of that instinct, the perpetuation of name
and identity is not necessary. The artist would not (if told that his
self-realisation was destined to become merged anonymously in the
existence of fresco, or canvas, or mosaic)--he would not therefore lay
down his mallet or his brush, and say that in that case the survival
of these things to a future age was no survival for him. The maker of
beautiful inlay would not lose all wish to do inlay if the knowledge
that he, individually, as the craftsman were destined to oblivion.
Let the future involve him in anonymity as impenetrable as it liked,
he would still go on expressing himself in ornament; self-realisation
would still be the law of his being.
That is the psychology of the artist mind--of that part of humanity
which produces things that come nearest, of all which earth has to
show, to conditions of immortality, and so presumably are the most
satisfying to man’s wish for continued individual existence. The makers
of beauty do not set any great store on the continuance of their
names--the continuance of their self-realisation is what they care
about.
But the possessors of these works of beauty do very often make a great
point of having their own names perpetuated, even though the vehicle is
another personality than their own. And so very frequently we have the
names passed down to us of these parasites of immortality--the tyrants
for whom palaces, or arches, or temples were built--but not the names
of the artists who designed them, whose immortality they really are.
And though the official guide may refresh our memory with snippets
of history, and say this, that, or the other about the name to which
the temple remains attached--the really important thing that lives,
survives, and influences us is not the externally applied name, but the
invested beauty which has no name, but is soul incarnate in stone to
the glory of God--the self-realisation of a being who (but for that)
has passed utterly from remembrance.
That, as I have said before, is the nearest thing to immortality that
we know. And it comes to us, in a shape which, (so to be informed with
immortality) cannot limit itself to the demands of use. When all the
claims of use are satisfied, then the life of personality begins to
show--the fullest and the most permanent form of self-realisation known
to man on earth lies in ornament.
Of course, when I say “ornament,” I use the word in a very wide sense.
What I have said of sculpture, painting or architecture, applies
equally to poetry, music or philosophy. I would even go further, and
apply it in other directions where no material matrix for it exists.
Every department of mental activity has its ornament--the culminating
expression of that particular direction of the human will. Faith is
the ornament of destiny, Hope the ornament of knowledge, Love the
ornament of sex. Without these ornaments destiny and knowledge and sex
would have no beauty that the soul of man should desire them. Those
additions or glosses were quite unnecessary to existence--up to a
point; for millions of years the world did without them, and Evolution
managed to scramble along without faith, without hope, without love.
But Evolution itself brought them into being; and then for millions of
years they existed in germ, without self-consciousness; but steadily,
as they germinated, they produced beauty and a sense of design in
their environment. Co-ordination, dovetailing (peaceful word!), the
harmonising and gentle effect of one life upon another, as opposed to
the savage and predatory, began to have effect. And in response came
ornament; faith, hope and love showed their rudimentary beginnings even
in the lower animals.
One of the most perfectly decorative objects that I have ever seen in
the animal world (you will find it in still-life form in our Natural
History Museum) is the device by which a certain small possum has
taught her young to accompany her from branch to branch. Along her back
she seats her litter, then over their heads like the conducting-wire
of a tram-line she extends her tail--and then (each like an electric
connecting rod) up go the little tails, make a loop, adjust themselves
to the maternal guide-rope, and hang on. And there, safe from upset, is
the family-omnibus ready to start!
Of course, you may say that is use; but it is use in which the
spiritualities, faith, hope and love, begin to appear; and in the
gentleness of its intention it forms a basis for the up-growth
of beauty. Now all the arts are, in the same way, first of all
structural--having for their starting-point a sound and economic use of
the material on which they are based. Music, architecture, poetry, and
the rest were all, to begin with, the result of an instinctive choice
or selection, directed to the elimination of superfluities, accidents,
excrescences--which to the craftsman’s purpose are nothing.
Nature, in her seed-sowing, has gone to work to propagate by profusion;
her method is to sow a million seeds so as to make sure that some may
live; thus she meets and out-matches the chances that are against her.
The seed of Art sprang up differently; maker-man took hold of the one
selected seed, not of a dozen, or of a thousand dozen promiscuously,
and bent his faculties on making that one seed (his chosen material)
fit to face life and its chances: if a house--walls and roof
calculated to keep out the rain and resist the force of storms: if a
textile--fabric of a staple sufficient to resist the wear and tear to
which it would be subjected: if a putting together of words meant to
outlast the brief occasion of their utterance--then in a form likely
to be impressive, and therefore memorable; so that in an age before
writing was known they might find a safe tabernacle, travelling from
place to place in the minds of men. And similarly with music--a system
of sounds so ruled by structural law as to be capable of transmission
either by instrument, or by voice disciplined and trained to a certain
code of limitations. And being thus made memorable and passed from
mouth to mouth, from one place to another, and from age to age, they
acquired a social significance and importance; till, seeing them thus
lifted above chance, man set himself to give them new forms of beauty
and adornment.
And the governing motive was, and always has been, first man’s wish to
leave memorable records--beyond the limits of his own generation--of
what life has meant for him; and secondly (and this is the more
intimate phase) the delight of the craftsman in his work, the
exuberance of vital energy (secure of its structural ground-work)
breaking out into play. “See,” it says, “how I dance, and gambol, and
triumph! This superfluity of strength proves me a victor in my struggle
to live.”
Nothing else does; for if (having survived the struggle) man only lives
miserably--scrapes through as it were--the question in the face of so
poverty-stricken a result, may still be--“Was the struggle worth it?”
And so by his arts and graces, by his adornment of his streets, temples
and theatres, by his huge delight in himself, so soon as the essentials
of mere material existence are secured to him, man has really shown
that life is good in itself, that he can do well enough without the
assurance of personal immortality held out to him by the theologians.
Whether that be or be not his reward hereafter, he will still strive to
express himself; but for that end mere use alone will not satisfy him.
We have seen, then, how man, in his social surroundings, begins to
secure something over and above the mere necessities of life; and so,
after providing himself with a certain competence of food, clothing
and shelter, has means and energy left for the supply of luxuries,
ornaments, delights--call them what you will. And according to
the direction in which he flings out for the acquisition of these
superfluities--so will his whole manhood develop, or his type of racial
culture be moulded.
Far back in the beginnings of civilization one of the first forms
taken by this surplus of power and energy over mere necessity was the
acquisition of slaves and wives. Civilization then began to ornament
itself with two modes of body-service--the menial attendance of the
slave upon his master, and the polygamous sexual attendance of the
woman upon her lord.
To-day we think that both those things were, from a moral point of
view, bad ornament. But you cannot look into the history of any
civilization conducted on those lines without seeing that they
decorated it--and that, out of their acceptance, came colour,
pomp, splendour, means for leisure, for enjoyment--for a very keen
self-realisation of a kind by the few at the expense of the many. And
the masterful few made that form of decorated civilization more sure
for themselves by extending a good deal of the decorative element
to the subservient lives around them. The slaves wore fine liveries
and lorded it over lower slaves, the favourite wives lived in luxury
and laziness, eating sweets and spending their days in the frivolous
mysteries of the toilet.
At a certain point in the social scale this form of ornamental
existence produced great misery, great hardships, great abasement. But
it was not instituted and maintained for that reason. Those underlying
conditions were a drawback, they were a misuse of human nature employed
as a basis for that ornamental superstructure to build on. And out of
that underlying misuse came the weakness and the eventual decay of that
once flourishing school of ornament.
But when that school of ornament was threatened by other schools, it
was ready to fight to the death for its ornamental superfluities--for
polygamy, for slavery, for power over others, which had come to mean
for it all that made life worth living! Life was quite capable of
being carried on without those things--was, and is, happily lived by
other races to the accompaniment of another set of ornaments which
those races think more enjoyable. But no race will consent to live
without some sort of ornament of its own choosing; and when its choice
of ornaments, or of social superfluities, over and above the needs
of existence, is seriously threatened from without it declares that
it is fighting not merely for liberty but for existence. Yet we know
quite well that the people of invaded and conquered States continue
in the main to exist--they continue even to wear ornaments; but these
are apt to be imposed ornaments galling to the national pride. And so
to-day, in the midst of a vast belligerency, we have committees and
consultations going on, to see to it lest, at the end of the war, under
German dominance, our women should have their future fashions imposed
on them from Berlin instead of from Paris, a fearful doom for any lady
of taste to contemplate.