The Logic of Free Life.
The ideas which form the substance or substratum of the greatest books
are not primarily the products of pure thought; they have a far deeper
origin, and their immense power of enlightenment and enrichment lies
in the depth of their rootage in the unconscious life of the race. If
it be true that the fundamental process of the physical universe and
of the life of man, so far as we can understand them, is not
intellectual, but vital, then it is also true that the formative ideas
by which we live, and in the clear comprehension of which the
greatness of intellectual and spiritual life for us lies, have been
borne in upon the race by living rather than by thinking. They are
felt and experienced first, and formulated later. It is clear that a
definite purpose is being wrought out through physical processes in
the world of matter; it is equally clear to most men that moral and
spiritual purposes are being worked out through the processes which
constitute the conditions of our being and acting in this world. It
has been the engrossing and fruitful study of science to discover the
processes and comprehend the ends of the physical order; it is the
highest office of art to discover and illustrate, for the most part
unconsciously, the processes and results of the spiritual order by
setting forth in concrete form the underlying and formative ideas of
races and periods.
"The thought that makes the work of art," says Mr. John La Farge in a
discussion of the art of painting of singular insight and
intelligence, "the thought which in its highest expression we call
genius, is not reflection or reflective thought. The thought which
analyses has the same deficiencies as our eyes. It can fix only one
point at a time. It is necessary for it to examine each element of
consideration, and unite it to others, to make a whole. But the
_logic of free life, which is the logic of art_, is like that
logic of one using the eye, in which we make most wonderful
combinations of momentary adaptation, by co-ordinating innumerable
memories, by rejecting those that are useless or antagonistic; and all
without being aware of it, so that those especially who most use the
eye, as, for instance, the painter or the hunter, are unaware of more
than one single, instantaneous action." This is a very happy
formulation of a fundamental principle in art; indeed, it brings
before us the essential quality of art, its illustration of thought in
the order not of a formal logic, but of the logic of free life. It is
at this point that it is differentiated from philosophy; it is from
this point that its immense spiritual significance becomes clear. In
the great books fundamental ideas are set forth not in a systematic
way, nor as the results of methodical teaching, but as they rise over
the vast territory of actual living, and are clarified by the
long-continued and many-sided experience of the race. Every book of
the first order in literature of the creative kind is a final
generalisation from a vast experience. It is, to use Mr. La Farge's
phrase, the co-ordination of innumerable memories,--memories shared by
an innumerable company of persons, and becoming, at length and after
long clarification, a kind of race memory; and this memory is so
inclusive and tenacious that it holds intact the long and varied play
of soil, sky, scenery, climate, faith, myth, suffering, action,
historic process, through which the race has passed and by which it
has been largely formed.
The ideas which underlie the great books bring with them, therefore,
when we really receive them into our minds, the entire background of
the life out of which they took their rise. We are not only permitted
to refresh ourselves at the inexhaustible spring, but, as we drink,
the entire sweep of landscape, to the remotest mountains in whose
heart its sources are hidden, encompasses us like a vast living world.
It is, in other words, the totality of things which great art gives
us,--not things in isolation and detachment. Mr. La Farge will pardon
further quotation; he admirably states this great truth when he says
that "in a work of art, executed through the body, and appealing to
the mind through the senses, the entire make-up of its creator
addresses the entire constitution of the man for whom it is meant."
One may go further, and say of the greatest books that the whole race
speaks through them to the whole man who puts himself in a receptive
mood towards them. This totality of influences, conditions, and
history which goes to the making of books of this order receives
dramatic unity, artistic sequence, and integral order and coherence
from the personality of the writer. He gathers into himself the
spiritual results of the experience of his people or his age, and
through his genius for expression the vast general background of his
personal life, which, as in the case of Homer, for instance, has
entirely faded from view, rises once more in clear vision before us.
"In any museum," says Mr. La Farge, "we can see certain great
differences in things; which are so evident, so much on the surface,
as almost to be our first impressions. They are the marks of the
places where the works of art were born. Climate; intensity of heat
and light; the nature of the earth; whether there was much or little
water in proportion to land; plants, animals, surrounding beings, have
helped to make these differences, as well as manners, laws, religions,
and national ideals. If you recall the more general physical
impression of a gallery of Flemish paintings and of a gallery of
Italian masters, you will have carried off in yourself two distinct
impressions received during their lives by the men of these two races.
The fact that they used their eyes more or less is only a small factor
in this enormous aggregation of influences received by them and
transmitted to us."
From this point of view the inexhaustible significance of a great work
of art becomes clear, both as regards its definite revelation of
racial and individual truth, and as regards its educational or culture
quality and value. Ideas are presented not in isolation and
detachment, but in their totality of origin and relationship; they are
not abstractions, general propositions, philosophical generalisations;
they are living truths--truths, that is, which have become clear by
long experience, and to which men stand, or have stood, in personal
relations. They are ideas, in other words, which stand together, not
in the order of formal logic, but of the "logic of free life." They
are not torn out of their normal relations; they bring all their
relationships with them. We are offered a plant in the soil, not a
flower cut from its stem. Every man is rooted to the soil, touches
through his senses the physical, and through his mind and heart the
spiritual, order of his time; all these influences are focussed in
him, and according to his capacity he gathers them into his
experience, formulates and expresses them. The greater and more
productive the man, the wider his contact with and absorption of the
life of his time. For the artist stands nearest, not farthest from his
contemporaries. He is not, however, a mere medium in their hands, not
a mere secretary or recorder of their ideas and feelings. He is
separated from them in the clearness of his vision of the significance
of their activities, the ends towards which they are moving, the ideas
which they are working out; but, in the exact degree of his greatness,
he is one with them in sympathy, experience, and comprehension. They
live for him, and he lives with them; they work out ideas in the logic
of free life, and he clarifies, interprets, and illustrates those
ideas. The world is not saved _by_ the remnant, as Matthew Arnold
held; it is saved _through_ the remnant. The elect of the race,
its prophets, teachers, artists,--and every great artist is also a
prophet and teacher,--are its leaders, not its masters; its
interpreters, not its creators. The race is dumb without its artists;
but the artists would be impossible without the sustaining fellowship
of the race. In the making of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" the Greek
race was in full partnership with Homer. The ideas which form the
summits of human achievement are sustained by immense masses of earth;
the higher they rise the vaster their bases. The richer and wider the
race life, the freer and deeper the play of that vital logic which
produces the formative ideas.