limited to the circumstances of Art. To live generally more modest and
contented lives; to win the greatest possible pleasure from the smallest
things; to do what is likely to be serviceable to our immediate
neighbours, whether it seem to them admirable or not; to make no
pretence of admiring what has really no hold upon our hearts; and to be
resolute in refusing all additions to our learning, until we have
perfectly arranged and secured what learning we have got;--these are
conditions, and laws, of unquestionable σοφίa and σωφροσύνη, which will
indeed lead us up to fine art if we are resolved to have it fine; but
will also do what is much better, make rude art precious.
91. It is not, however, by any means necessary that provincial art
_should_ be rude, though it may be singular. Often it is no less
delicate than quaint, and no less refined in grace than original in
character. This is likely always to take place when a people of
naturally fine artistic temper work with the respect which, as I
endeavoured to show you in a former lecture, ought always to be paid to
local material and circumstance.
I have placed in your educational series the photograph of the door of a
wooden house in Abbeville, and of the winding stair above; both so
exquisitely sculptured that the real vine-leaves which had wreathed
themselves about their pillars, cannot, in the photograph, be at once
discerned from the carved foliage. The latter, quite as graceful, can
only be known for art by its quaint setting.
Yet this school of sculpture is altogether provincial. It could only
have risen in a richly-wooded chalk country, where the sapling trees
beside the brooks gave example to the workman of the most intricate
tracery, and the white cliffs above the meadows furnished docile
material to his hand.
92. I have now, to my sorrow, learned to despise the elaborate
intricacy, and the playful realizations, of the Norman designers; and
can only be satisfied by the reserved and proud imagination of the
master schools. But the utmost pleasure I now take in these is almost as
nothing, compared to the joy I used to have, when I knew no better, in
the fretted pinnacles of Rouen, and white lace, rather than stonework,
of the chapels of Reu and Amboise.
Yet observe that the first condition of this really precious provincial
work is its being the best that can be done under the given
circumstances; and the second is, that though provincial, it is not in
the least frivolous or ephemeral, but as definitely civic, or public, in
design, and as permanent in the manner of it, as the work of the most
learned academies: while its execution brought out the energies of each
little state, not necessarily in rivalship, but severally in the
perfecting of styles which Nature had rendered it impossible for their
neighbours to imitate.
93. This civic unity, and the feeling of the workman that he is
performing his part in a great scene which is to endure for centuries,
while yet, within the walls of his city, it is to be a part of his own
peculiar life, and to be separate from all the world besides, developes,
together, whatever duty he acknowledges as a patriot, and whatever
complacency he feels as an artist.
We now build, in our villages, by the rules of the Academy of London;
and if there be a little original vivacity or genius in any provincial
workman, he is almost sure to spend it in making a ridiculous toy.
Nothing is to me much more pathetic than the way that our neglected
workmen thus throw their lives away. As I was walking the other day
through the Crystal Palace, I came upon a toy which had taken the
leisure of five years to make; you dropped a penny into the chink of it,
and immediately a little brass steam-engine in the middle started into
nervously hurried action; some bell-ringers pulled strings at the bottom
of a church steeple which had no top; two regiments of cavalry marched
out from the sides, and manœuvred in the middle; and two well-dressed
persons in a kind of opera-box expressed their satisfaction by approving
gestures.
In old Ghent, or Bruges, or York, such a man as the one who made this
toy, with companions similarly minded, would have been taught how to
employ himself, not to their less amusement, but to better purpose; and
in their five years of leisure hours they would have carved a flamboyant
crown for the belfry-tower, and would have put chimes into it that would
have told the time miles away, with a pleasant tune for the hour, and a
variation for the quarters, and cost the passers-by in all the city and
plain not so much as the dropping of a penny into a chink.
94. Do not doubt that I feel, as strongly as any of you can feel, the
utter impossibility at present of restoring provincial simplicity to our
country towns.
My despondency respecting this, and nearly all other matters which I
know to be necessary, is at least as great,--it is certainly more
painful to me,--in the decline of life,--than that which any of my
younger hearers can feel. But what I have to tell you of the unchanging
principles of nature, and of art, must not be affected by either hope or
fear. And if I succeed in convincing you what these principles are,
there are many practical consequences which you may deduce from them, if
ever you find yourselves, as young Englishmen are often likely to find
themselves, in authority over foreign tribes of peculiar or limited
capacities.
Be assured that you can no more drag or compress men into perfection
than you can drag or compress plants. If ever you find yourselves set in
a position of authority, and are entrusted to determine modes of
education, ascertain first what the people you would teach have been in
the habit of doing, and encourage them to do _that_ better. Set no other
excellence before their eyes; disturb none of their reverence for the
past; do not think yourselves bound to dispel their ignorance, or to
contradict their superstitions; teach them only gentleness and truth;
redeem them by example from habits which you know to be unhealthy or
degrading; but cherish, above all things, _local associations_, and
_hereditary skill_.
It is the curse of so-called civilization to pretend to originality by
the wilful invention of new methods of error, while it quenches wherever
it has power, the noble originality of nations, rising out of the purity
of their race, and the love of their native land.
95. I could say much more, but I think I have said enough to justify for
the present what you might otherwise have thought singular in the
methods I shall adopt for your exercise in the drawing schools. I shall
indeed endeavour to write down for you the laws of the art which is
centrally best; and to exhibit to you a certain number of its
unquestionable standards: but your own actual practice shall be limited
to objects which will explain to you the meaning, and awaken you to the
beauty, of the art of your own country.
The first series of my lectures on sculpture must have proved to you
that I do not despise either the workmanship or the mythology of Greece;
but I must assert with more distinctness than even in my earliest works,
the absolute unfitness of all its results to be made the guides of
English students or artists.
Every nation can represent, with prudence, or success, only the
realities in which it delights. What you have with you, and before you,
daily, dearest to your sight and heart, _that_, by the magic of your
hand, or of your lips, you can gloriously express to others; and what
you ought to have in your sight and heart,--what, if you have not,
nothing else can be truly seen or loved,--is the human life of your own
people, understood in its history, and admired in its presence.
And unless that be first made beautiful, idealism must be false and
imagination monstrous.
It is your influence on the existing world which, in your studies here,
you ought finally to consider; and although it is not, in that
influence, my function to direct you, I hope you will not be
discontented to know that I shall ask no effort from your art-genius,
beyond the rational suggestion of what we may one day hope to see
actually realized in England, in the sweetness of her landscape, and the
dignity of her people.
* * * * *
In connection with the subject of this lecture, I may mention to you
that I have received an interesting letter, requesting me to assist in
promoting some improvements designed in the city of Oxford.
But as the entire charm and educational power of the city of Oxford, so
far as that educational power depended on reverent associations, or on
visible solemnities and serenities of architecture, have been already
destroyed; and, as far as our own lives extend, destroyed, I may say,
for ever, by the manufacturing suburb which heaps its ashes on one side,
and the cheap-lodging suburb which heaps its brickbats on the other; I
am myself, either as antiquary or artist, absolutely indifferent to what
happens next; except on grounds respecting the possible health,
cleanliness, and decency which may yet be obtained for the increasing
population.
How far cleanliness and decency bear on art and science, or on the
changed functions of the university to its crowd of modern students, I
have partly to consider in connection with the subject of my next
lecture, and I will reserve therefore any definite notice of these
proposed improvements in the city, until the next occasion of meeting
you.
LECTURE VI.
THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT.
_24th February, 1872._
96. I have now, perhaps to the exhaustion of your patience, but you will
find, not without real necessity, defined the manner in which the mental
tempers, ascertained by philosophy to be evil or good, retard and
advance the parallel studies of science and art.
In this and the two next following lectures I shall endeavour to state
to you the literal modes in which the virtues of art are connected with
the principles of exact science; but now, remember, I am speaking, not
of the consummate science of which art is the image; but only of what
science we have actually attained, which is often little more than
terminology (and even that uncertain), with only a gleam of true science
here and there.
I will not delay you by any defence of the arrangement of sciences I
have chosen. Of course we may at once dismiss chemistry and pure
mathematics from our consideration. Chemistry can do nothing for art but
mix her colours, and tell her what stones will stand weather; (I wish,
at this day, she did as much;) and with pure mathematics we have nothing
whatever to do; nor can that abstract form of high mathesis stoop to
comprehend the simplicity of art. To a first wrangler at Cambridge,
under the present conditions of his trial, statues will necessarily be
stone dolls, and imaginative work unintelligible. We have, then, in true
fellowship with art, only the sciences of light and form, (optics and
geometry). If you will take the first syllable of the word 'geometry' to
mean earth in the form of flesh, as well as of clay, the two words sum
every science that regards graphic art, or of which graphic art can
represent the conclusions.
97. To-day we are to speak of optics, the science of seeing;--of that
power, whatever it may be, which (by Plato's definition), "through the
eyes, manifests colour to us."
Hold that definition always, and remember that 'light' means accurately
the power that affects the eyes of animals with the sensation proper to
them. The study of the effect of light on nitrate of silver is
chemistry, not optics; and what is light to _us_ may indeed shine on a
stone; but is not light to the stone. The "fiat lux" of creation is,
therefore, in the deep sense of it, "fiat anima."
We cannot say that it is merely "fiat oculus," for the effect of light
on living organism, even when sightless, cannot be separated from its
influence on sight. A plant consists essentially of two parts, root and
leaf: the leaf by nature seeks light, the root by nature seeks darkness:
it is not warmth or cold, but essentially light and shade, which are to
them, as to us, the appointed conditions of existence.
98. And you are to remember still more distinctly that the words "fiat
lux" mean indeed "fiat anima," because even the power of the eye itself,
as such, is _in_ its animation. You do not see _with_ the lens of the
eye. You see _through_ that, and by means of that, but you see with the
soul of the eye.
99. A great physiologist said to me the other day--it was in the
rashness of controversy, and ought not to be remembered, as a deliberate
assertion, therefore I do not give his name, still he did say--that
sight was "altogether mechanical." The words simply meant, if they meant
anything, that all his physiology had never taught him the difference
between eyes and telescopes. Sight is an absolutely spiritual
phenomenon; accurately, and only, to be so defined; and the "Let there
be light," is as much, when you understand it, the ordering of
intelligence, as the ordering of vision. It is the appointment of change
of what had been else only a mechanical effluence from things unseen to
things unseeing,--from stars that did not shine to earth that could not
perceive;--the change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of
the sun and moon for human eyes; so rendering possible also the
communication out of the unfathomable truth, of that portion of truth
which is good for us, and animating to us, and is set to rule over the
day and night of our joy and sorrow.
100. The sun was set thus 'to rule the day.' And of late you have
learned that he was set to rule everything that we know of. You have
been taught that, by the Sirens, as a piece of entirely new knowledge,
much to be exulted over. We painters, indeed, have been for some time
acquainted with the general look of the sun, and long before there were
painters there were wise men,--Zoroastrian and other,--who had suspected
that there was power in the sun; but the Sirens of yesterday have
somewhat new, it seems, to tell you of his authority, ἐπὶ χθονὶ
πουλυβοτείρῃ. I take a passage, almost at random, from a recent
scientific work.
"Just as the phenomena of water-formed rocks all owe their existence
directly or indirectly chiefly to the sun's energy, so also do the
phenomena interwoven with life. This has long been recognised by various
eminent British and foreign physicists; and in 1854 Professor ----, in
his memoir on the method of palæontology, asserted that organisms were
but _manifestations of applied physics and applied chemistry_. Professor
---- puts the generalisations of physicists in a few words: When
speaking of the sun, it is remarked--'He rears the whole vegetable
world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his
workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand
hills. He forms the muscle, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His
fleetness is in the lion's foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in
the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest and hews it
down, the power which raised the tree and that which wields the axe
being one and the same.'"
All this is exceedingly true; and it is new in _one_ respect, namely, in
the ascertainment that the quantity of solar force necessary to produce
motive power is measurable, and, in its sum, unalterable. For the rest,
it was perfectly well known in Homer's time, as now, that animals could
not move till they were warm; and the fact that the warmth which enables
them to do so is finally traceable to the sun, would have appeared to a
Greek physiologist, no more interesting than, to a Greek poet, would
have been the no less certain fact, that "Tout ce qui se peut dire de
beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y a que les mots qui sont
transposés"--Everything fine, that can be said, is in the dictionaries;
it is only that the words are transposed.
Yes, indeed; but to the ποιητής the gist of the matter is _in_ the
transposition. The sun does, as the delighted physicist tells you,
unquestionably "slide in the snake;" but how comes he to adopt that
manner, we artists ask, of (literally) transposition?
101. The summer before last, as I was walking in the woods near the
Giesbach, on the Lake of Brientz, and moving very quietly, I came
suddenly on a small steel-gray serpent, lying in the middle of the path;
and it was greatly surprised to see me. Serpents, however, always have
complete command of their feelings, and it looked at me for a quarter of
a minute without the slightest change of posture: then, with an almost
imperceptible motion, it began to withdraw itself beneath a cluster of
leaves. Without in the least hastening its action, it gradually
concealed the whole of its body. I was about to raise one of the leaves,
when I saw what I thought was the glance of another serpent, in the
thicket at the path side; but it was the same one, which having once
withdrawn itself from observation beneath the leaves, used its utmost
agility to spring into the wood; and with so instantaneous a flash of
motion, that I never saw it leave the covert, and only caught the gleam
of light as it glided away into the copse.
102. Now, it was to me a matter of supreme indifference whether the
force which the creature used in this action was derived from the sun,
the moon, or the gas-works at Berne. What was, indeed, a matter of
interest to me, was just that which would have struck a peasant, or a
child;--namely, the calculating wisdom of the creature's device; and the
exquisite grace, strength, and precision of the action by which it was
accomplished.
103. I was interested then, I say, more in the device of the creature,
than in its source of motion. Nevertheless, I am pleased to hear, from
men of science, how necessarily that motion proceeds from the sun. But
where did its _device_ come from? There is no wisdom, no device in the
dust, any more than there is warmth in the dust. The springing of the
serpent is from the sun:--the wisdom of the serpent,--whence that?
104. From the sun also, is the only answer, I suppose, possible to
physical science. It is not a false answer: quite true, like the other,
up to a certain point. To-day, in the strength of your youth, you may
know what it is to have the power of the sun taken out of your arms and
legs. But when you are old, you will know what it is to have the power
of the sun taken out of your minds also. Such a thing may happen to you,
sometimes, even now; but it will continually happen to you when you are
my age. You will no more, then, think over a matter to any good purpose
after twelve o'clock in the day. It may be possible to think over, and,
much more, to talk over, matters, to little, or to bad, purpose after
twelve o'clock in the day. The members of your national legislature do
their work, we know, by gaslight; but you don't suppose the power of the
sun is in any of _their_ devices? Quite seriously, all the vital
functions,--and, like the rest and with the rest, the pure and wholesome
faculties of the brain,--rise and set with the sun: your digestion and
intellect are alike dependent on its beams; your thoughts, like your
blood, flow from the force of it, in all scientific accuracy and
necessity. Sol illuminatio nostra est; Sol salus nostra; Sol sapientia
nostra.
And it is the final act and outcome of lowest national atheism, since it
cannot deny the sun, at least to strive to do without it; to blast the
day in heaven with smoke, and prolong the dance, and the council, by
night, with tapers, until at last, rejoicing--Dixit insipiens in corde
suo, non est Sol.
105. Well, the sliding of the serpent, and the device of the serpent, we
admit, come from the sun. The flight of the dove, and its
harmlessness,--do they also?
The flight,--yes, assuredly. The Innocence?--It is a new question. How
of that? Between movement and non-movement--nay, between sense and
non-sense--the difference rests, we say, in the power of Apollo; but
between malice and innocence, where shall we find the root of _that_
distinction?
106. Have you ever considered how much literal truth there is in the
words--"The light of the body is the eye. If, therefore, thine eye be
evil"--and the rest? How _can_ the eye be evil? How, if evil, can it
fill the whole body with darkness?
What is the meaning of having one's body _full_ of darkness? It cannot
mean merely being blind. Blind, you may fall in a ditch if you move; but
you may be well, if at rest. But to be evil-eyed, is not that worse than
to have no eyes? and instead of being only in darkness, to have darkness
in _us_, portable, perfect, and eternal?
107. Well, in order to get at the meaning we may, indeed, now appeal to
physical science, and ask her to help us. How many manner of eyes are
there? You physical-science students should be able to tell us painters
that. We only know, in a vague way, the external aspect and expression
of eyes. We see, as we try to draw the endlessly-grotesque creatures
about us, what infinite variety of instruments they have; but you know,
far better than we do, how those instruments are constructed and
directed. You know how some play in their sockets with independent
revolution,--project into near-sightedness on pyramids of bone,--are
brandished at the points of horns,--studded over backs and
shoulders,--thrust at the ends of antennæ to pioneer for the head, or
pinched up into tubercles at the corners of the lips. But how do the
creatures see out of all these eyes?
108. No business of ours, you may think? Pardon me. This is no Siren's
question--this is altogether business of ours, lest, perchance, any of
us should see partly in the same manner. Comparative sight is a far more
important question than comparative anatomy. It is no matter, though we
sometimes walk--and it may often be desirable to climb--like apes; but
suppose we only _see_ like apes, or like lower creatures? I can tell
you, the science of optics is an essential one to us; for exactly
according to these infinitely grotesque directions and multiplications
of instrument you have correspondent, not only intellectual but moral,
faculty in the soul of the creatures. Literally, if the eye be pure, the
body is pure; but, if the light of the body be but darkness, how great
is that darkness!
109. Have you ever looked attentively at the study I gave you of the
head of the rattle-snake? The serpent will keep its eyes fixed on you
for an hour together, a vertical slit in each admitting such image of
you as is possible to the rattlesnake retina, and to the rattlesnake
mind. How much of you do you think it sees? I ask that, first, as a pure
physical question. I do not know; it is not my business to know. You,
from your schools of physical science, should bring me answer. How much
of a man can a snake see? What sort of image of him is received through
that deadly vertical cleft in the iris;--through the glazed blue of the
ghastly lens? Make me a picture of the appearance of a man, as far as
you can judge it can take place on the snake's retina. Then ask
yourselves, farther, how much of speculation is possible to the snake,
touching this human aspect?
110. Or, if that seem too far beneath possible inquiry, how say you of
a tiger's eye, or a cat's? A cat may look at a king;--yes; but can it
_see_ a king when it looks at him? The beasts of prey never seem to me
to _look_, in our sense, at all. Their eyes are fascinated by the motion
of anything, as a kitten's by a ball;--they fasten, as if drawn by an
inevitable attraction, on their food. But when a cat caresses you, it
never looks at you. Its heart seems to be in its back and paws, not its
eyes. It will rub itself against you, or pat you with velvet tufts,
instead of talons; but you may talk to it an hour together, yet not
rightly catch its eye. Ascend higher in the races of being--to the fawn,
the dog, the horse; you will find that, according to the clearness of
sight, is indeed the kindness of sight, and that at last the noble eyes
of humanity look through humanity, from heart into heart, and with no
mechanical vision. And the Light of the body is the eye--yes, and in
happy life, the light of the heart also.