touch evil and ugliness, unhappily a large part of life. Religion as
a virtue must overcome evil and not permit it to master the will. Art
depicts evil in such a way as not to offend the enlightened mind, by
approval of evil or by the artistically unjustified introduction of
evil or by actual experience of evil. In all these cases the mind would
not experience the true and lasting pleasure of art. The taste of fruit
passes; the contemplation of painted fruit is a joy forever. Art pleasure
is not the playing with toys, as Plato would seem to make it, but the
fine occupation of rational minds, which Aristotle made it, an occupation
worthy of man because art interprets nature and man to himself, because
art exercises man’s rational faculties, because art releases man’s
emotions under conditions where the evil of actual life is removed.
Macbeth and Œdipus in life were saddening spectacles; the echo of that
sadness felt through dramatic representation has high pleasure for the
mind.
The cathartic function of art brings it close to the virtuous and the
divine. What virtue does really, art does ideally, transforming evil into
good. The vicarious sacrifice of Calvary was the catharsis of mankind,
an infinite cleansing, compared with which the vicarious feeling of
dramatically enacted evil is but as a drop to the ocean. Close to the
divine, too, although at the same time infinitely remote, is the creation
of art. Wisdom and love inspired God in His creation, but so also did
the quest of beauty. Aquinas called the universe God’s sermon, and the
universe is a divine picturing and sculpturing and harmonizing. The
artist follows far after, rethinking through finite images the ideals
which filled the thoughts of the Divine Artist.
In idealizing, in creating, is art akin to the divine, and, lastly,
in its disinterestedness is art divine. All appreciation of beauty
is divine. Contemplation will be the occupation of eternity, and
contemplation is the proper and the congenial attitude of the soul
towards beauty. Good inspires love and attracts to union, but when union
has been effected in eternity, the enraptured ecstasy of the beautiful
will be the soul’s unending activity. Beauty is the supreme excellence
of truth, the polish on the granite of fact, the uncloying fascination
arrested upon perfection. In eternity infinite good and infinite truth,
obscured in time, will stream into the soul unclouded and refulgent, and
beauty will grace love and crown wisdom.
The millions of mankind who admire the red of every morning, and the
forests breaking green through the silver mists and the birds in awakened
song rising from the flowers to the brightening sky, these millions
do not begrudge one another such beautiful spectacles, nor are they
mutually jealous as they listen to beautiful sounds. That unselfish,
that unenvious contemplation of beauty marks off man from animals by an
impassable chasm and makes him an image of the self-sufficing Creator,
the source of all beauty, the exemplar of all beauty, whom the Blessed
forever contemplate and forever enjoy, unenvying and unenviously.
VIII
THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY
“What is the prime requisite of a critic?” was the question. “His
sincerity,” said one; “his sympathy,” said a second; “his philosophy,”
said a third, “because everything he says will be ruled by his
principles, even his sincerity and sympathy.” The answer of the third
speaker is pertinent to a symposium printed in the _New Republic_ on the
function of criticism.
It is the common view of the seven writers that criticism is an art and
the critics, artists, but no one, except Mr. Francis Hackett, tries to
show what the label of artist means. Mr. Dickinson Miller, a professor
in a theological seminary, very justly and quite fittingly insists on
the social responsibility of the artist, as one who deals with life.
Mr. Lovett goes to history and prepares the ground for a discussion
of principles by grouping critics in several classes. Mr. Clive takes
the humblest and most practical view of the critic, calling him an
appraiser, a function which Mr. H. L. Mencken vehemently repudiates and
places a chip on his shoulder while belligerently proclaiming himself
impressionistic. He makes one deep remark which would seem to put him in
the same school of esthetics with Mr. Hackett. Presumably with humorous
intent, or perhaps seriously, Mr. Mencken locates the artistic impulse in
“hormones and intestinal flora.” Hormones are secretions of the glands
(we just looked it up!) and “intestinal flora” may mean ferments. Mr.
Mencken is abreast of the times. Graft on a new gland and masticate
yeast, these are the new specifics for all the ills that flesh is heir to.
The other contributors to this interesting symposium, though not, with
the exception of Mr. Hackett, delving as deep as Mr. Mencken, would
appear to be in philosophy individualists and subjectivists. The former
editor of the _Athenæum_, Mr. J. Middleton Murry, accepts the dictum
of Rémy de Gourmont: “Erect personal impressions into laws,” as the
“true motto of a critic.” Mr. Murry is, however, too sensible to accord
to individual impressions undue freedom and with some violence to his
consistency asserts that personal laws stand or fall by their agreement
with common experience and with human nature.
Mr. Morris Cohen puts himself into a fallacious dilemma from which he
does not successfully extricate himself. According to Mr. Cohen, all
critics are led by personal impressions or by the authority of others. He
should know that between the blind feeling of impressionism and the blind
faith of authority there is enlightened reason. Mr. Cohen does not take
the path of reason, but endeavors to escape the horns of his own dilemma
by recourse to pragmatism. He claims, what will be news to historians of
philosophy, that Euclid was the first pragmatist, although in the next
breath Mr. Cohen states that “mathematicians of the nineteenth century
have shown that Euclid’s axioms are mere guesses to be justified by
their consequences in the factual realm.” “Factual realm” seems to mean
the indefinitely remote future of pragmatism where the gold of truth
is separated from meaner elements. Some chosen spirits of the “factual
realm” now assure us that the “self-evident principles” of Euclid are
“guesses.” Mr. Cohen is equipped to write an inside history of philosophy
with some entirely original features. The “factual realm” leads back to
skepticism, and Mr. Cohen is still impaled by his dilemma.
Mr. Francis Hackett makes the most serious attempt to get at the
philosophy of criticism and of art, and attacks at once the question
of the beautiful. It is evidence of his thoroughness that he goes
straightway to the great problem of esthetics, “Can an object be at once
beautiful and evil?” Mr. Hackett answers promptly in the negative, but
then proceeds to confuse the point by going to another and different
question, “Can evil or an ugly object be represented in art?” The answer
to this question is evident. The elopement of Helen, the patricide and
incest of Œdipus, the galleries of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, and
countless other happenings in the world of art, show that the evil
and the ugly have been and may be represented in art. “I can hardly
conceive,” says Mr. Hackett, “an artist as subduing a cancerous object
to an esthetic design.” But why not? Marriage with one’s mother is
more repugnant than a cancer, and yet it was handled successfully by
Sophocles, however repulsive some of his imitators have been in their
details.
The very transfer to the realm of art robs the ugly object of its
actuality and imminence. Surely the ugly and evil have been and may be
represented in art, but such objects may not be represented as beautiful
and good. That were as false and untrue to nature as a centipede cow in a
picture. Perhaps a cancer could not appear in a picture or poem or story
except by suggestion. A stark realism would disgust, but a true artist
might subdue a cancerous object to artistic design as effectively as
Homer subdued in his story the fleas of the dog, Argos, and the dung-heap
where he lay.
Beauty in art would lose one of its charms, the splendor of contrast, did
not admitted ugliness or evil occur in art. Bad art disgusts and so does
badness in art, when badness is approved or when it is projected into art
for purposes not artistic. Mr. Hackett’s real trouble is that he has not
properly isolated the feeling of art awakened by beauty. He thinks that
the esthetic sense is sexual and visceral. If the mouth waters at painted
fruit, would Mr. Hackett call art salival? Human beings are composites,
and external objects while producing their essential and proper effects
may have concomitant effects accidentally brought into being. To admire
the beauty of an apple is an esthetic feeling entirely distinct in cause
and faculty and in operation from the feeling of sensible satisfaction,
anticipated or actual, which comes to the taste-buds, and different again
from any visceral qualms that may arise from associated ideas of unhappy
experience with other apples.
Mr. Hackett has been led astray by not distinguishing the disinterested
emotions of beauty from the selfish emotions of appetite. He calls
beauty, “disinterested satisfaction,” and in that word “disinterested”
he has a fact about beauty, a fact solving his problems, a fact which
has been admitted by every one who has studied the subject, and a fact
which is capable of experimental demonstration at any moment. Professor
Phelps of Yale once called esthetic emotions a spinal thrill; Mr. Mencken
would call them “hormones or intestinal flora”; and Mr. Hackett declares
that “the true sources of esthetic satisfaction and dissatisfaction are
deep in our emotional and visceral life.” The one essential quality of
disinterestedness, found in esthetic satisfaction, shows the absurdity of
all such statements. Bodily emotions are all the outcome of appetites,
and appetites are never disinterested but always self-seeking by their
very nature. They are actuated by good; they tend to an end, an end which
they do not and cannot seek disinterestedly. Even the act of the highest
disinterested love may be akin to the sense of beauty, but it is not as
wholly disinterested because that unselfish love is still seeking good,
and good as such does not come within the purview of beauty at all. It is
impossible to be disinterested towards good or evil.
Mr. Hackett speaks of beauty being a “sensuous satisfaction.” Here again
there is a confusion between beauty of art and other beauty. Art appeals
to the senses because art presents its beauty in concrete embodiments. To
that extent the satisfaction of beauty arises from sensible objects, but
the feeling of beauty transcends mere sensation. “Art is long.” “A thing
of beauty is a joy forever.” The satisfaction of appetite is passing;
the satisfaction of beauty abides. Mr. Hackett does well to seek the
springs of beauty in personality. Personality is an abiding principle
of intellectual beings. The enduring joy of beauty argues to an abiding
principle which bears the dynamic charge of that joy. Beauty supposes a
soul.
“Beauty is a light that may follow any reality whatever and give us the
power to release our emotions happily in the presence of that reality.”
So states Mr. Hackett, and he is right, if he gives the correct meaning
to “emotions.” Light or luster has been recognized from all time as an
objective element of beauty, which has been defined as the light of
truth. Mr. Hackett paraphrases a definition which has been incorrectly
attributed to Plato. Kleutgen has defined beauty as the perfection of
anything resplendently manifested.
Let us hope that Mr. Hackett will remove “visceral” from among the
qualities of beauty and preclude critics from adding a fiftieth
explanation of Aristotle’s _catharsis_ to the forty-nine varieties
already set forth. Wearers of Murphy buttons or those who have lost or
may lose sections of the intestinal tract should be assured in an amended
edition of Mr. Hackett’s esthetics that their sense of beauty has not
been abbreviated or impaired. Sane philosophy is the prime requisite of
true criticism.
PART SECOND
ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE
IX
LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE
The teacher of literature today is looking backward when he should be
looking forward. Greek literature, Latin literature and, to a large
extent, English literature are not orientated; they do not face the
rising sun. It was not so in the Greek schools of Greek literature.
Gorgias and Isocrates taught literature for the morrow, and for practical
and immediately practical purposes. In the Roman schools it was so from
first to last. Recall Cicero’s studies under Greek rhetoricians and
Cicero’s own preachment in the _Archias_ speech. “Shame on those who bury
themselves so deep in literature that they harvest nothing for the good
of all and bring nothing to light for our eyes to look upon.” Recall
Quintilian’s _Institutes of Oratory_, and all the intervening schools
of Rome. Rome had no vocational schools for road-building, but Rome did
have schools of grammar, poetry, rhetoric and philosophy where it trained
leaders with vision and with the power to act. The brains of Rome trained
in literature guided barbarian hands to lay down the roads over which
Christianity traveled and civilization came down to us.
Literature looked forward in every period of the world’s schooling.
Ausonius and Isidore, Alcuin and Petrarch, Boileau and Pope, England and
France, and even Germany until about the middle of the nineteenth century
and America until a little later, kept the literatures of Greece and Rome
orientated to the future by teaching them as arts, by making composition
of literature the goal of the teaching of literature.
Science is ever growing old; history is always being rewritten;
literature is ever young. We know more about Homer’s history than
Longinus knew, but we do not taste the delight of his poetry any better
than Longinus tasted it. “Handing on the torch of learning” is a trite
phrase, but it is literally verified in the true teaching of literature.
Each age adds to the advance of science and information, but art is long.
Literature and art do not belong to the past. Literally and without
figure of speech they are the past living in the present. They are the
flaming torch, kindled in the past, never dimming and never to dim.
Write a history of artists; do not write a history of art. “A thing
of beauty is a joy forever.” The information of science changes
every moment; the appreciation of art once gained is enduring. The
_Encyclopedia Britannica_ has rewritten all its science and history; it
reprints its appreciations of Sophocles by Campbell and of Demosthenes
by Jebb and even of Johnson by Macaulay. Where the cause is the same,
the effect is the same, and so the beauty of Homer’s rosy-fingered dawn
awakens still the same appreciation.
Of literature as a subject of investigation in university or graduate
work there is here no question. The investigator studies the origin, the
development, the history of literature. He looks backward; his purpose
is to amass information and to codify a science. That is not or should
not be the purpose of the teacher in high school and college. He is
educating; he wishes to set in operation and perfect the faculties of
the class before him, to impress upon every faculty its own proper art,
that is, its habitual and excellent way of acting. The school teacher is
concerned with the education of acts; the university lecturer with the
education of facts.
Take the _Ratio Studiorum_ of the Jesuits, a system embodying the
traditions of education and not differing fundamentally from other
systems of its time. The _Ratio Studiorum_ had no history of literature
or lectures on the evolution of literature. It did not approach
literature as a science but as an art. It took the standard authors of
Latin and Greek. Cicero was the staple of every class in Latin because
for nearly every kind of Latinity, history and poetry excepted, he was
a model. Cicero was analyzed, was appreciated, was imitated, that the
student might express himself in writing and speaking as clearly, as
interestingly, as forcibly as Cicero, that the student might be master
of acts of literature, not of facts about literature. That was and is
humanism; that is, making a man a man by equipping all his faculties with
the art proper to each. The humanities were so called because they embody
man. Science is classified nature; literature is nature brought into
touch with man’s personality and transmuted into art, man’s only creation.
You cannot get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. Every other
subject in the curriculum produces its kind; so should literature.
Mathematics makes mathematicians, chemistry chemists, and physics
physicists. Art should produce artists; literature should result in
literature, in artistic expression, but it is made to produce historians,
biographers, perhaps critics. The history of literature, the evolution
of literature should be put out of high school and college and relegated
to the university or handed over to the lectures on history, leaving the
valuable time of literature for appreciation and expression.
Today we have literature in one class and composition in another
and perhaps rhetoric in another. Departments are the offspring of
universities and the instruments of science. The rational school of
literary expression correlates author, precept and exercise. Information
may be imparted piecemeal and from different sources; it is multitudinous
and capable of division. Formation is one and united; it is the faculty
or power brought to the perfection of self-expression. Art requires a
teacher and unifying of means; science may have a score of lecturers as
its truths are found in a score of books. Let the teacher of literature
therefore take standard literature, make it understood, feel its
personality that students may feel it, note and appreciate its beauty
that others may take fire or at least get heat from the enthusiasm
kindled within him, and then let the teacher see to it that his class
express their own selves as the author expressed himself. Let students
do for Lincoln what Shakespeare did for Julius Cæsar. If they cannot do
a play, perhaps they can do an act; if they cannot create a character,
perhaps they can give one characteristic action; if they cannot write a
description or tell a story, perhaps they can supply a noun for Lincoln
or visualize his deeds in a verb or paint him in an epithet or coin him
in a metaphor. And all this, not for an Elizabethan public, but for the
students’ own public here and now, looking forward, not backward.
Desperate efforts have been made to galvanize literary courses by
lectures on modern novels, current magazines and daily papers. The
lamentable fact is that most recent products are not literature; that
if there is in them art, it has not been made available for students,
as the art of literary classics has been made available by centuries
of criticism, and that, finally, the contents of contemporary writings
are so easy of access and so inviting to the reader and yet often so
ephemeral, that the artistic form is neglected. There is no contemporary
history, neither is there contemporary criticism. Literature, like all
art, must pass beyond the prejudices and passions of the day to be known
and appreciated as art at all. It is for the enlightened teacher of
literature to make the students embody their own experience in the finest
art molds of the past, not distracting them by the multiplicity of modern
literature, but holding up the ideals, like torches, to light the paths
before them and, like expert guides, to direct the trembling steps of
beginners to new goals.
Literature is not the study of words. Grammar or philology is the study
of words. Science dehumanizes everything; it eliminates the personal
equation; it is objective, unimpassioned, impersonal, subordinating
everything to laws and principles. Literature is the opposite in every
respect. It is embodied humanity. Science contains some of man’s
operations; literature enshrines all; not truth alone, but good and
beauty as well; not simply the clear idea, the accurate statement, the
correct conclusion, the consistent reasoning, but also the myriad visions
of the imagination, the subtle analogies, the suggestive creations,
haunting beauties and idealized good. So literature actuates every power
of man whether that power is a constituent part of man’s soul or is a
bodily power whose operation by reaction terminates in man’s soul.
As literature is therefore the whole man, so far as humanity can be
put in language, the understanding of literature, its appreciation and
most of all its creation will make every power of the student operate,
if literature is taught as literature. Such results will not come
automatically; they come when the teacher by true appreciation creates
again before the student the literary masterpiece and when the student
strives to rival the masterpiece in the expression of his own experience
and of his own dawning humanity. Literature is looking forward when it is
making minds think and imaginations imagine and reasons reason and tastes
taste and emotions thrill. Teach literature as an art, which it is; not
as a science, which it is not.
X
UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE
Unity is most useful, if not essential, to a satisfactory course of
studies. In the university this unity is effected by the profession which
the student has chosen. His field of concentration in art, literature,
law, medicine, science, engineering or divinity dictates to him his
subjects, and his own earnest choice, together with prescriptions and
examinations, insures unity and thoroughness in concentration courses.
Lecturing is the predominant method of the university because professors
of higher branches are few and students are comparatively numerous.
Lecturing is the weakest and most ineffective of all means of education,
and is only saved from complete failure by the serious purposes of
university students and much more by the sanction of repetitions and
examinations.
In the colleges, however, with the advent of electivism there was no
unifying bond to the studies. University methods of studies and lectures
prevailed where there were no university conditions. Thoroughgoing
electivists, like Dr. Eliot, admitted that the purpose of the college was
a general education or culture, but held that any and every study could
give such general training. President Lowell, Dr. Eliot’s successor,
began to put order into the chaos of extreme electivism. He saw his
coaches on the athletic fields build up expert athletes by a rigidly
prescribed course of training, and proclaimed the analogy between body
and mind, an analogy which would have been all the more cogent had his
philosophy been materialistic like that of Dr. Eliot. The prescribed
examination in one department at the end of four years is the latest
advance of Harvard toward definiteness and unity.