THE PROVISION FOR THE ÆSTHETIC NATURE OF MAN.
The glory of the mind is the possession of two eyes, the eye of sense
and the eye of reason. Through the one, it looks out upon the world of
matter and fact. Through the other, it beholds the world of idea and
relation. The world of matter and fact, seen through the eye of sense, is
lifted and transfigured and multiplied a thousandfold when contemplated
through the eye of reason. When the literal world is transferred to the
ideal world, it takes on hues and dimensions in accordance with the
universal and illimitable nature of man. The world which the sense sees,
and the world which the reason sees, are both real, and through the mind
commerce is kept up between them. Along this mental highway facts make
a pilgrimage to the holy land of reason; there they are changed into
ideas. Stars are turned into astronomy, atoms into chemistry, rocks into
geology, plants into botany, colors into beauty and sounds into harmony.
Over the same royal road, ideas pass to the world of sense. There they
are changed again into facts. Ideas of beauty, distilled in the alembic
of the imagination from the seven prismatic colors, are turned into
painting, and Raphael’s “Transfiguration” blesses the world. Ideas of
harmony, formed by the power of the imagination from the notes of the
musical scale, are turned into song, and Handel’s “Messiah” agitates
the thoughts and feelings of men with the melody of the skies. Ideas of
form, deduced from the contemplation of the shapes of things, are turned
into sculpture, and Michael Angelo’s “Moses” augments the world’s fund
of conviction and courage. By changing facts into ideas, the mind gives
us science. By changing ideas back to facts, it gives us art. Without
science, life would be without bread; without art, it would be without
ideals.
Science ministers to the body, art to the spirit. Men who go from things
to ideas are practical; those who go from ideas back to things are the
seers. Practical men conserve, but never venture. Seers throw the light
of their genius into the dark beyond, disclosing new worlds for men. They
are the leaders, they are in the vanguard of human progress.
By the possession of two eyes, the eye of sense and the eye of reason,
man is placed into relation with two worlds.
The world he sees by the eye of sense is meager, limited,
poverty-stricken. There are only a few houses in it, a little clump
of trees, a little patch of meadow, a horizon hounded by the curl of
his cabin smoke. The world he sees by the eye of reason stretches far
down into the twilight of the past, embracing all ages, all stages of
progress, all empires and republics, all literature and peoples.
Through the eye of sense, he sees a world of hard limitation and fact.
Through the eye of reason, a universe of ideas, visions, relations.
Through the eye of sense, he sees a candle, with its flickering and
passing flame. Through the eye of reason, he sees a kingdom of light,
with truth and beauty, and love billowing away to infinity.
Through the eye of sense he sees a little mountain spring rise from the
ground, to lose itself in the deepening shadows of the trees. Through the
eye of reason he sees a river, clear as crystal, flowing forever from
under the throne of God. A few violets and buttercups, covering with
their blue and their beauty a little strip of meadow, he sees through
the eye of sense. The hills of day, numberless and immeasurable, covered
with flowers, whose leaves never wither and whose beauty never fades, he
sees through the eye of reason.
It is the conceit of those whose habit of mind is to look through the
eye of sense alone, that they see more in the actual tangible world than
those who are accustomed to look through the eye of reason as well as
through the eye of sense. There never was a greater mistake. Those who
see most in the world of mountain and sea and sky, are those who look
most through the eye of reason into the world of idea, principle, and
relation. Adams in England, and Leverrier in France, discovered Neptune,
not by sweeping the heavens with their telescopes, but by careful
ciphering in their studies. “Mr. Turner,” said a friend to him one day,
“I never see in nature the glows and colors you put into your pictures.”
“Ah! don’t you wish you could, though,” was the painter’s reply. In an
apple’s fall Newton sees the law of gravitation. Goethe sees in the
sections of a deer’s skull the spinal column modified. Emerson sings:
“Let me go where’er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still.
’Tis not in the stars alone,
Nor in the cups of budding flowers,
Nor in the red-breast’s yellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers;
But in the mud and scum of things,
There always, always something sings.”
Humboldt habitually dwelt in the realm of principles and ideas. He spent
only five years in America, and it took twelve quartos, and sixteen
folios, and half a dozen helpers, and many years to put on record what he
saw.
“The poem hangs on the berry bush,
When comes the poet’s eye,
And the street is one long masquerade
When Shakspere passes by.”
I.
Yet the mind must first see through the eye of sense, before it is
capable of seeing through the eye of reason. The universe, that really
belongs to the mind, the eye of sense never sees, but it sees something
that suggests it. Through the eye of sense man takes in a few colors, but
these suggest to Rubens the magnificent visions which illuminate the art
galleries of Europe. Through the sense man hears a few notes, but these
are taken and multiplied into the symphonies of Beethoven.
Through the eye of sense, Columbus sees a few pieces of driftwood brought
to the shore by the waves of the ever-restless sea; but these help him,
through the eye of reason, to see a new world with its virgin forests,
its wide-reaching plains and its majestic mountain ranges. Agassiz sees
through the eye of sense an indentation on a rock in the State of Maine.
This gives him a suggestion which helps him to see, through the eye of
reason, the icebergs and the glaciers, which, in the early ages, ground
their way to the south. The man of science sees through the eye of sense,
only a bit of chalk; but from this a suggestion comes to him, which
enables him to see through the eye of reason the oozy bed upon which
the submarine cable rests; and the life that sported in the vast oceans
when the Dover Cliffs were being formed. Through the eye of sense Cuvier
sees an immense tooth, larger than any known at the present. Through the
eye of reason he sees the huge animal in whose jaw it was set. Upon the
comprehensive, active power of reason, man relies to determine for him
the elements good for food, the power which serves his social nature, the
truth which furnishes his intellect, the right which matches his will,
and the beauty which corresponds with his æsthetic nature.
The universe lends itself in its totality to the scale and the dip of
the particular capacity or power through which man, for the time being,
seeks to appropriate it. It stands before the sense of hunger in terms
of bread. It stands before the social nature in terms of power. It
stands before the intellect in terms of truth. It stands before the
will in terms of law. It stands before the æsthetic nature in terms of
beauty. The person who has related himself to the world through all
the powers of his nature, finds it capable, by turns, of feeding every
faculty with which he is endowed. The universe is now all bread, now all
power, now all truth, now all law, and now all beauty. It will be any
or all of these, according to the side, or sides, of himself through
which he addresses it. One of the great discoveries of modern times is
the correlation of forces. The persistent force may express itself in
heat, or light, or electricity, or magnetism. These are only different
forms of the same thing, and any one may pass to any of the others. In
the world, as a whole, we find the sense of correlation inheres, as it
relates itself to the different faculties man has for taking hold of it.
As the correlate of hunger, it is all bread; as the correlate of the
social nature, it is all power; as the correlate of the intellect, it
is all truth; as the correlate of the will, it is all law, and as the
correlate of the æsthetic sense, it is all beauty. Objective reality is
addressed to the many sides of human life, in order that the whole of it
may be used up for the purpose of making a man. It is all to be drawn
into manhood. As all rivers meet in the ocean, and all colors meet in the
white ray of light; so objective reality, in all that it is for food, for
power, for truth, for right, for beauty; is to meet in human life, for
nutriment, for furnishment, and for the completion of manhood. If you
want to know what the objective self of the fish is, look at the ocean.
If you want to know what the objective self of the eagle is, look at the
sky. If you want to know what the objective self of the elephant is,
look at the Asiatic jungle. If you want to know what the objective self
of man is, look at the conditions of food, power, truth, law, and beauty
which environ him. The fish gets the water, the bird gets the air, and
the elephant gets the jungle; but man, with a nature illimitable, with
capacities inexhaustible, with hunger deep as truth, with aspirations
as wide as right, and with an ideal as unfathomable as beauty, is the
child of the eternal God, and is to get the fullness of his nature in
nothing less than the entire expression which God has made of himself in
objective reality.
II.
All truth, as we have before stated, which man has tried to express, is
but a transcript of divine truth. The truth of astronomy is a transcript
from the reality of the stars. The truth of botany is a transcript
from the reality of plants. The truth of geology is a transcript from
the reality of the earth’s structure. All right, which man has sought
to embody in statutes, in constitutions, in enactments, is but a
transcript from the will of God. So all beauty, which man has attempted
to symbolize, is contained in the nature of things, and has its source
in God. The beauty man has seen has taken in the process of history many
forms. It is seen in architecture, sculpture, poetry, painting, and
music. These are different forms of the same thing. As the persistent
physical force expresses itself in heat, light, electricity, and
magnetism, so genius is the persistent mental force which expresses
itself in art. Sometimes the persistent mental force comes to such unity
and fullness in some massive soul that from him it goes out into all
the fine arts. Michael Angelo was by turns poet, painter, sculptor, and
architect. Had he lived in Germany in the time of Beethoven he would have
added to his other accomplishments that of music. The noblest specimens
of music are only great cathedrals constructed out of sound, as Michael
Angelo’s “Moses” was a great epic poem wrought in stone.
We wish to consider beauty in its relation to the æsthetic sense, in two
aspects of itself.
The most important forms of beauty have as the physical conditions of
their existence light and sound, and as the ideal conditions of their
existence space and time. The names man gives to these forms of beauty,
when he expresses them, or re-expresses them, are painting and music. For
no element of man’s nature has more marvelous provision been made than
for the æsthetic element. The objective conditions of the beauty, which
correspond to the subjective æsthetic sense, are contained in sound and
light. Sound and light are the invisible physical forces which play upon
the objects of nature, and call from them the responses of melody and
vision which the æsthetic nature appropriates for ecstasy and delight.
Capacity for sound is lodged in well-nigh all created objects. Minerals,
woods, gases, and liquids even, contain the notes of the musical scale.
Builders of pianos, harps, put no notes in the elements they use in the
construction of these instruments. They simply comply with conditions
necessary to bring them out. The music we get out of wood and steel and
brass, as we find them arranged in the piano, the organ, the harp, by
striking them at regular intervals, is the melody breathed into them when
they were created. Beethoven, Handel, and Mozart created no music. Their
genius was manifested simply in the power to bring out of forest and mine
and cane-brake what God put into them.
As to what note a body shall give up under tension and pressure, is owing
to its ultimate structure, and the elements which compose it; and also
the note latent in the object by which it is struck, or pressed. Sing
into a piano and the same notes respond which are used in the execution
of the song. A storm, howling through a forest, makes a loud noise, but
no music. Its notes do not synchronize with those contained in the limbs
and leaves of the trees. But when the low, sad murmur of the evening
winds gently strike the needles of the long-leaf pine there is music. The
notes of the one are related to the notes of the other.
As all things have capacity for sound, so well-nigh all created things
have capacity for color. The color which an object takes on in the
presence of light is determined also by its ultimate structure and the
elements which constitute it. Nearly every object absorbs a portion of
the light and throws back to the eye of the beholder a portion. Bodies
absorb those rays which are synchronous with their constituent elements.
When the particles which compose a body are not capable of vibrating at
the rate of any portion of the light particles, then they are all thrown
back, and the body is pronounced white. It is to be observed that no body
has color or sound of its own, but only the capacity for these. The note
of a body is discovered by striking it, and its color by stimulating it
with a light ray.
Another interesting fact is to be noted here—that is the analogy
between sound and light, or music and painting. The difference between
a sound wave and a light wave is only a difference of length. The
principles underlying them are the same, and the methods by which they
are produced are the same. Sound waves, to be heard, must vibrate at
least as often as sixteen beats to the second. Light waves, in order
to pass through the organ of vision, and reach the retina of the eye,
must not vibrate at a less rate than four hundred trillions of times to
the second. The difference between the eye and the ear is, one is more
refined than the other. A painting is a silent piece of music, and a
piece of music is an audible picture. The notes of the musical scale and
the colors of the prismatic scale are analogous. The distance between
C and A of the musical scale is the same as the distance between red
and orange of the prismatic scale. The notes of the one scale may be
translated into the colors of the other. Harmony of colors in a silk
dress, would, if translated into their analogous notes, produce a piece
of music that would be equally as pleasing to the ear as the colors are
to the eye. Painting is only a more refined form of music. This is not
fancy; it is mathematics and science. All things about us are capable
of music, silent or audible. Notes belonging to some part of a great
song are lodged in all created objects. Things are not measured off in
continents, oceans, islands, mountains, forests, and mines only, but also
in octaves. The music of the spheres is no longer a dream of the poets,
but in accordance with exact science. The material system into which we
are born is capable, then, not only of furnishing us food to eat and
clothes to wear, but music and painting for the sense of the beautiful.
A mere utilitarian, bread-and-butter philosophy does not exhaust the
possibilities of even the material world. In its very construction
respect to man’s higher nature was had, as well as to his lower. By
so much as music and harmony of color surpass in their subtlety and
refinement the coarser elements necessary to sustain the lower nature;
by so much has God emphasized the value of the higher nature. Had God
intended his children for no higher plane than that upon which the
animals live, and no greater future for them than that which belongs to
“the beasts that perish,” doubtless the beauty would have been left out.
Men have been told, by one having authority, not to cast their pearls
before swine. The beauty that was flung at the feet of man contained a
message to a side of himself keyed to a radiant and imperishable realm.
Who does not feel, under the charm of music, or the influence of a great
painting, reasons for high living which no words can express? The tear
which often gathers in the eye of the most abandoned, hardened man, under
the power of song, bespeaks the fact that chords have been touched which
vibrate responsive to no earthly interest or relation.
III.
The melody in sound and the harmony in color are correlated to the
æsthetic nature of man through the ear and the eye. In the ear is found
the musical scale, and in the eye the prismatic scale.
Notes are in the ear which correspond with the C D E F G A B of the
musical scale, and parts are in the eye which correspond to the red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet of the prismatic scale.
It is only through D in the ear that D out of the ear can be heard, and
it is with C in the ear that C out of the ear is heard.
If there were no notes in the ear except D, and all other notes in
nature were destroyed, the ear could hear no notes at all. A hears A,
and B hears B, and C hears C. What A hears, B does not hear, and what C
hears, A does not hear. What is true of the ear is true of the eye. The
parts of the eye with which red is seen are not the parts with which
green is seen. Red in the eye sees red out of the eye. Blue in the eye
sees blue out of the eye, and green in the eye sees green out of the eye.
If there was in the prismatic scale located in the eye only the part
with which blue is seen, no color in the world would be visible except
the blue. The notes latent in all natural objects are addressed to the
æsthetic sense, through the corresponding notes latent in the ear; and
the seven colors, capacity for which is latent in all earthly objects,
address themselves to the æsthetic nature through the corresponding
capacities for color contained in the eye. That man is related to
the kingdom of beauty in a sense which marks him off from the animals
below him, is proven by the fact that he can take the elements of this
kingdom into his imagination and send them back to the realms of sense,
in oratorios and paintings. The masters have given all history ideal
and permanent setting by means of sound and light. Man cannot only see
the truth, but repeat it; not only recognize the right, but conform to
it, and not only appreciate beauty, but express it. In this he has the
evidence of his kinship with the author of the true, the good, and the
beautiful. The lower animals, as far as we know, may be thrilled with
that which is beautiful; we do know they never repeat the beautiful. In
the art galleries and conservatories of the world all the past is brought
to life again and stands before the eye and the ear, under the ideal
forms of time and space. Moses is not only immortal in the laws which he
wrote, and in the race which he civilized, but, through Michael Angelo’s
genius, he has been made eternal in the kingdom of beauty.
Thus, through his æsthetic side, man not only receives, but he gives.
The melody of sound and the harmony of color not only come to him, but
go from him; and from him, too, charged and shot through with all the
suffering, temptation, sin, and sacrifice he has known.
IV.
The empirical philosophy, which reduces knowledge to sensations and
morality to laws imposed by prudence, and man himself to the same
plane of life occupied by the lower animals, invades the domain of
æsthetics, and makes of beauty a mere matter of individual feeling, local
convention, and arbitrary fashion. This philosophy of the dirt denies
to mind any inherent, creative activity, in the region of knowledge,
morals, or art. Now, it is doubtless true, that food and power and beauty
of color and tone are addressed to the lower animals; sufficiently,
at least, for them to get the means of subsistence, and some low sort
of pleasure from them. They do this, however, not by reason, but by
instinct. The bee is determined by its nature to build his cell in
accordance with mathematical principles, and to store it with honey from
the leaves and the flowers. The bee does this as naturally as water runs
down-hill. There is no calculation in it, and the bee does not recognize
itself in the process of this work.
The bird may be determined in the selection of its mate by brilliant
plumage, or joyous song, but this it does just as a rock turned loose
from the top of a house falls to the ground. The evidence of a combining,
mental activity in man, to which things in the outside world are
addressed, in a peculiar and distinct sense, is found in the fact that
man not only receives the things that come to him, but sends them from
him in the forms of his own thought.
The bee appropriates the honeydew that covers the surface of the leaves,
stores it in his cell, and eats it in the winter; but who ever knew bees
to plant out trees in order that there might be leaves from which to
secure honeydew? Man finds the bananas that grow in the tropics, and the
berries that grow in the temperate zones, and eats them; but he sees how
bananas and berries grow, and so clears fields and hedges, to insure a
more abundant crop.
The monkey hears the thunder and sees the lightning as well as the man,
but man investigates the nature of lightning; he sees the principle
underlying its weird movements, the things for which it has affinity.
So he contrives various methods for utilizing it. The mind within him
being the same in kind as the mind which sends the lightning, he sees how
lightning is sent, and sends it. He not only sees thunder-storms, but
how they are made. So the professor creates them in glass jars for the
benefit of his class.
Nature presents herself to man under uniform methods of action.
Everywhere is regularity and orderliness. He reproduces this order in
political and social life. The laws without him kindle into expression
the moral magazine of volition within him.
Nature presents herself to man as unity. This implies mind. Unity is
impossible without mind. The mind underneath the unity, without him,
speaks to the mind within him. Then by his own mind he recreates the
universe in literature.
He hears the cawing of rooks, the cooing of doves, the purling of brooks,
and the roar of tempests. These, with all other sounds in nature, are
caught and combined in the marvelous creation of Mozart and Beethoven.
Much is said by the learned men who are ever seeking to minify man’s
place in nature, about the reason and memory, and intelligence, and
even conscience of the lower animals. It is almost enough to make one
wish he were a dog or a horse when he reads how much sense and how much
conscience dogs and horses have. Not much weight, however, will ever be
given to these long treatises on the intelligence of the lower animals,
until some bee shall give us a book on mathematics, or until some horse
shall tell through one of our agricultural journals the best time to sow
clover; or some dog shall give us the philosophy of the chase. We see the
capacity of the human mind in Shakspere’s plays. So one picture painted
by a cat, one poem written by a mule, one philosophical dissertation
composed by an owl, or one cocoanut plantation planted by the monkeys,
would establish beyond question that the high claims made for the mental
capabilities of these humble members of the animal creation are justified.
Man grows wheat by the use of the mind within him, which sees how the
mind without him has made the growth of wheat possible. Man utilizes
power, by the use of the mind within him, which recognizes how power
is produced and controlled by the mind without him. Man sees truth,
because the mind within him is like the mind without him, which expresses
itself in truth. Man sees law, because the mind within him is like the
mind without him which ordained law. So man sees beauty, because the
mind within him is like the mind without him, which expresses itself in
beauty. Food, and truth, and law, and beauty, cannot be reproduced by
man, except by the laws of mind acting in him as the laws of mind do
without him.
V.
What is the use of beauty? Like truth and law, it looks beyond itself.
It is to help realize the purpose for which the earth was created, the
purpose which finds its consummation in a perfect man.
Beauty comes to man, bearing intimations of his high origin and also
of his glorious destiny. Under the magic spell which beauty throws
around him, he forgets for the time being his limitations, his fears,
his doubts. He is lifted into a realm of universal freedom, where all
difficulties disappear, where all conflicts are eliminated. The æsthetic
nature is not at all seclusive and aristocratic. It receives the melody,
and symmetry, and harmony which reason finds in the tones, and forms, and
colors of the outside world, and turns over to it. These rich gifts are
then shared with all other human powers and faculties. Hunger is served
with food set in painted china. Around the table, where man satisfies
his appetite, pictures are hung, and the beef market and the mill are
built and arranged in accordance with the dictates of symmetry and taste.
The college, where truth is taught, and the courthouse, where law is
administered, are invested with all the beauty of the architect’s genius.
Thus beauty, high, heaven-born, and refreshing, is drawn into all the
relations, and thrown around all the institutions of life. It reduces
friction, redresses littleness, and adds to life good cheer and depth.
It smoothes the rough places, rounds the sharp corners, and hangs the bow
of hope on the dark cloud of coming trial.
The æsthetic sense, nurtured on beauty, keeps before the minds of men
and nations a proper ideal of life. When the ideal held before the mind
at one period of advancement is reached, the æsthetic sense has already
lifted another and a nobler, as far ahead of the actual as the first.
In presenting to the living spirit ideals always in advance of actual
attainment, the æsthetic nature opens the unending path of progress. It
is incorrect to suppose that the ideal is worked out only in painting,
symphony, or cathedral. Its presence is manifest in the useful, as well
as the fine arts. The ideal often gets itself translated into the heel
of a shoe, into the crown of a hat, into the wheel of a wagon, into the
fence around the field, and into the structure of the mower and the
reaper. It curves in the arches of bridges, echoes in the sound of the
hammer, and breaks over the hills in the whistle of the engine.
The progress of beauty in modern times has not been in the direction of
form or coloring or symmetry, simply, but toward wider distribution. In
early times, its ministry was to kings and scholars; it has advanced by
expanding. The pyramid of Gizeh, the most expensive monument ever seen,
was reared to perpetuate the memory of a great Egyptian king. A country
was drained of revenue and of life to regale the pride of one man. The
Parthenon ministered to a few great men in Greece. The cathedrals of the
middle ages blest and helped a wider circle. But it was left to the time
which is ours to build churches and chapels, as broad in their aims and
ministry as the life of humanity. The early poetry concerned itself about
the wars of gods and the contentions of kings. But as the sacredness of
human life came to be seen more and more, did it tend to catch within the
sweep of its rhythm the incidents and traditions and loves of the common
people. The ideal in our day is being worked out in fields of waving
grain, into the cattle upon the hills, into the homes of the people. It
is being turned into orchards and vineyards. It is being traced in vines
and flowers over the poor man’s cottage. The ideals were once housed
and confined in the museums; now they are being turned out into the
street. It was once the custom to bring Venus and Diana, by the aid of
the chisel, from rough marble. The tendency now is to put the beauty of
Venus and the enterprise of Diana into the spirits of our women. Sublime
conceptions were once mainly realized in temples and cathedrals, but now
we would see them distributed into dwellings for families, into schools
for children, and into churches for the true worship of God. We would see
them in bridges spanning all the rivers, in mills grinding the people’s
bread, in factories spinning their clothes, and in railroads transporting
their products. We would see them lifted into an asylum for the blind,
a shelter for the orphan, and a home for the aged and infirm. We would
hear them in the whirl of the spindle, in the ring of the hammer, in the
splash of the paddle, and in the sound of the flying train. We would
hear them in the steady march of progress, and in the pulse-beats of
the happy plowman. Beauty is to be used to stimulate human courage, to
embellish human spirit, and to enlarge human thought. Life’s shadows are
to be chased by the light of eternity’s day, and its tumult hushed by
the repose of eternity’s harmony. The æsthetic element in man’s nature
was appointed to receive the beauty provided for it. But it was to be
God’s almoner; having received it, also freely to give it. Thus it was
to be the power whose function should be to put the whole of life into
terms of harmony. Bernard Palissy put his ideal into a white enamel for
his pottery; Columbus worked his ideal into a new world; Morse left his
in the electric telegraph; Cyrus W. Field turned his into the submarine
cable; and Thomas A. Edison has given his to the world in the telephone.
It is not to be inferred, however, that those who work their ideals
out in the useful arts contribute more to the making of men than those
who express their ideals in poetry, painting, sculpture, or music. The
tendency of beauty to get down into the ordinary work and relations of
life is an intimation that all life should be beautiful in itself, and
in all expressions which it makes of itself. The æsthetic sense is the
badge of man’s royalty. A tutor was once employed to teach the son of
a king. The young prince was sometimes disobedient. But in the esteem
of the tutor, it was not quite proper to whip the son of a king with a
common switch. So to the lapel of the boy’s coat the teacher pinned a
piece of purple ribbon. When the young prince manifested a disposition
to defy authority, the instructor pointed with the end of the rod to the
purple ribbon on his coat. This was an appeal to his royal blood.
Not a flower gathers on the limbs of a rose bush but addresses the high
and purple nature of everyone who beholds it. In Mexico, where the
average of life is so low, the flowers which grow in such profusion are
about all that is left to keep the people reminded that they are the
children of God, the author of all beauty. The highest evidence of the
remaining worth of the Mexican people is found in the fact that they
love flowers with a deep and unfailing passion.
VI.
Beauty is to feed enthusiasm. Tones and colors are to be used to jostle
the elements of mind, and will, and emotion into harmony with the high
and holy life of our Father who art in Heaven. Beauty is to nerve the
soldier for the battle, the martyr for the stake, and the hero for his
work. There is a height of development to which the human spirit aspires,
that the logical understanding is unable to reach. Here, then, where
truth in logical form fails, beauty comes, and helps the human spirit to
disentangle itself from the sphere of contradictions and antagonisms.
Truth and right command the spirit by an external necessity; beauty
moves it by an internal necessity and starts it to vibrating in the very
centers of its being, in consonance with itself. Beauty lifts it to a
pinnacle where the horizon quadrates with its irrepressible longings; and
where the whole of life is rounded into an orb from which all strife is
eliminated, and all discord extracted. Men seek artificial stimulants and
narcotics, because of the abiding conviction they have, that their lives
were keyed to some ideal realm of unity and freedom.
What intoxicants do to the detriment of the spirit, beauty accomplishes
to its health and vigor. It is carried by beauty into no land of
vague dream, and unreal delirium, but into a radiant region where the
environing conditions exactly match its undying hopes.
_LOVE._
“There are indeed men whose souls are like the sea. Those
billows that ebb and flood, that inexorable going and
coming, that noise of all the winds, that blackness and
that translucency, that vegetation peculiar to the deep,
that democracy of clouds in full hurricane, those eagles
flecked with foam, those wonderful star-risings reflected in
mysterious agitation by millions of luminous wavetops, confused
heads of the multitudinous sea—the errant lightnings, which
seem to watch; those prodigious sobbings, those half-seen
monsters, those nights of darkness broken by howlings, those
furies, those frenzies, those torments, those rocks, those
shipwrecks, those fleets crushing each other; then that charm,
that mildness, those festivals, those gay white sails, those
fishing boats, those songs amid the uproar, those shining
ports, those mists rising from the shore; those wraths and
those appeasements, that all in one, the unforeseen amid
the changeless, the vast marvel of inexhaustibly varied
monotony—all this may exist in a mind, and that mind is called
genius, and you have Æschylus, you have Isaiah, you have Dante,
you have Michael Angelo, you have Shakspere.”