of research, and how the study of bacteria is opening up some of the
deepest problems of the reaction of living things to environmental
stimuli, and just as the various branches of these sciences interlace
and influence one another, so all of them, in recent years, have been
coming into contact with the inorganic sciences of chemistry and
physics. One of the noteworthy features of science in all its branches
in recent years has been the tendency of subjects which were at one time
regarded as distinct to come together again and to find that the
problems of each can only be successfully attacked by the co-operation
of the others. In their earlier days the biological sciences were in
most respects far removed from chemistry and physics; it was recognized,
of course, that organisms were in one sense at least physico-chemical
mechanisms, consisting of chemical elements and subject to the
fundamental laws of matter and energy. With the advent of the theory of
evolution this conception of the organism as a mechanism took more
definite shape, and among many biologists the belief was held that in no
very long time all the phenomena of life would be explicable by known
physico-chemical laws. Hence arose the scientific materialism which was
so widespread in the years following the general acceptance of Darwin's
theory. It was recognized, of course, that our knowledge of organic
chemistry was at the time entirely inadequate to place this belief upon
a proved scientific basis, but the expectation of proving it gave a
great impetus to the study of the physical and chemical phenomena of
life. This attempt was still further stimulated by the investigation of
the factors controlling development referred to in a preceding
paragraph, for it is evident that to a great extent at least these
factors are chemical and physical in nature. And concurrently, the great
advances in organic chemistry, resulting in the analysis and in many
cases in the artificial synthesis of substances previously regarded as
capable of production only in the tissues of living organisms, made
possible a much more thorough investigation of the chemical and physical
basis of vital phenomena. The result of this has been that to a quite
considerable extent the factors, hitherto mysterious, which control the
fertilization, division, and differentiation of the egg, the digestion
and absorption of food, the conduction of nervous impulses, and many of
the changes undergone in the normal or pathological functioning of the
organs and tissues, can be ascribed to chemical and physical causes
which are well known in the inorganic world.
As in other instances, however, some of which have been mentioned above,
the elucidation of the organism from this point of view has turned out
to be a much less simple process than the more sanguine of the early
investigators supposed. The more knowledge has progressed, the more
complex and intricate has even the simplest organism shown itself to be,
and although the mechanism of the parts is gradually becoming
understood, the fundamental mystery of life remains as elusive as ever.
The chief reason for this failure to penetrate appreciably nearer to the
central mystery of life appears to be the fact that an organism is
something more than the sum of its various parts and functions. In
tracing the behaviour of any one part or function, whether it be the
conduction of a nervous impulse, the supply of oxygen to the tissues by
the blood, or the transmission of inherited characters by the
germ-cells, we may be able to give a more or less complete
physico-chemical or mechanical account of the process. But we seem to
get little or no nearer to an explanation of the fact that although
every one of these processes may be explicable by laws familiar in the
non-living, in the living organism they are co-ordinated in such a way
that none of them is complete in itself; they are parts of a whole, but
the whole is not simply a sum of its parts, but is in itself a unity, in
which all the parts are subject to the controlling influence of the
whole. An organism, alone among the material bodies which we know, is
constantly and necessarily in a state of unstable equilibrium, and yet
has a condition of _normality_ which is maintained by the harmonious
interaction of all its parts. Every function of the body, if not thus
co-ordinated with the rest, would very quickly destroy this condition of
normality, but in consequence of the co-ordination each is subject to
the needs of the whole, and normality is maintained. When the normality
is artificially disturbed, all the functions of the body adapt
themselves to the change, and, if the disturbance be not too great,
co-operate in the restoration of the normal condition. It is in these
phenomena of adaptation and organic unity and co-ordination that up to
the present time the efforts to reduce the phenomena of living things to
the operation of physico-chemical laws have most conspicuously failed.
From what has been said it will be evident that, fundamentally, all
biological research, whether its authors are conscious of it or not, is
directed towards the solution of one central problem--the problem of the
real and ultimate nature of life. And the main outcome of the work of
sixty years has been that this problem has begun clearly to emerge as
the central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem
a reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be
insoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it
has led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living
and the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem inevitably
faces us.
Many suggestions for its solution have been made. On the one hand there
is still, as there always has been, a considerable body of opinion that
the solution will be a mechanical one--using the word mechanical in the
widest sense--and that the living differs from the non-living not in
kind, but only in degree of complexity. The upholders of the mechanistic
or materialist theory, however, are perhaps less confident than their
predecessors of the last century, for the solution in this direction
has to face not only the problem of organic co-ordination already
referred to, but also that of consciousness and mind. For although the
study of psychology on physiological lines has made similar progress to
that of other branches of physiology, it seems to approach little nearer
to a discovery of the nature of the relation between consciousness in
its various aspects and the material body with which it is associated.
So long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a
satisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.
On the other hand, there has been a revival of the ancient tendency
towards what is called a vitalistic solution. A certain number of
biologists, impressed by the apparent similarity between the control and
co-ordination exercised by the organism over its functions and the
conscious control of voluntary activity with which we are familiar in
ourselves, have supposed that these things are not merely superficially
similar but have a real and fundamental affinity. This does not mean
that organic control is always conscious, but that there is a
controlling entity, non-material in nature, which is similar in kind to
the 'ego' of a self-conscious human being. They suppose that the
organism is not simply material, but is a material mechanism controlled
by a non-material entity the nature of which is more akin to what we
mean by the word spirit than anything else of which we are accustomed to
think. They are in fact dualists, and divide reality into the material
and spatial on the one hand, and non-material principle or entity which
may fairly be called spiritual on the other.
And, in the third place, there are those who seek a solution which
denies the truth of both the preceding, and which is metaphysically
idealist or monist in character. To them, if the present writer
understands their attitude, matter and spirit are different aspects of
one reality. In the inorganic and non-living, phenomena appear which are
generalized under the laws of physics and chemistry, but the phenomena
of life fall into a different category which includes the conception of
co-ordination or individuality, while a still higher category is
required to include the phenomena of consciousness and mind.
It is evident from this brief review that Biology in the period
considered has passed through three main stages. The first of these was
the acceptance of a new illuminating and unifying idea, which led to
enthusiastic research in many directions for the purpose of proving and
amplifying it. Very rapidly new facts, or new interpretations of facts
already known, were shown to fall into line, and the evolution theory
became converted from a hypothesis into something approaching a dogma.
Not only the idea of organic evolution itself, but all the current
beliefs about the method of evolution, and the larger speculations to
which it gave rise, were widely regarded as almost indisputable, and
where difficulties and inconsistencies appeared, these were supposed to
be due solely to the insufficiency of our knowledge, which would soon be
remedied. Then, however, as detailed knowledge increased, the voice of
criticism and doubt was more frequently heard. The various branches of
Biology began once more to overlap, and to join hands with chemistry and
physics, and it became clear that the interpretation of life was very
far from being a simple problem. And so, as with the Atomic Theory in
chemistry, the present position is one of dissolution of the older ideas
and of hesitation to express a fixed belief, for while Biology has a
clearer vision of the problem before it than ever it had, its wider
knowledge reveals the fact that the problem is far from being solved.
Perhaps one of the chief results of the great increase of knowledge
during the past sixty years has been to show us the immensity of the
field still remaining to be explored.
FOR REFERENCE
Centenary volume on Darwin (Cambridge University Press).
X
ART
A. CLUTTON-BROCK
My subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so
far as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely
philosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of
the speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as
they seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject
is the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to
connect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our
beliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we
produce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to
confess it has not yet appeared.
Indeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or
other of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who
are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only
imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation
of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them
and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the
artists are often confused in their practice of it.
The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great
liveliness, by Whistler in his _Ten O'clock_, and has had great
influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and
upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no
concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There
is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental
one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.
Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.
'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.
'There never was an art-loving nation.
'In the beginning man went forth each day--some to do battle,
some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the
field--all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until
there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose
pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with
the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
gourd.
'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared
not for conquest and fretted in the field--this designer of
quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in
nature about him curious curvings--as faces are seen in the
fire--this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'
'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the
people, they took the gourd--and drank from it.'
Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had
traced on it.
'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a
consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there
was none other.'
So gradually there came the great ages of art.
'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and
drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and
drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'
And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in
the matter.
But then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class
'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of
the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the
gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and
charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham
and Manchester arose in their might--and Art was relegated to the
curiosity shop.'
I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the
people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at
all, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one
values. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and
you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.
But Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as
we can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had
seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him
starve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples,
is not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men
is modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive
societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that
reason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups
they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we
drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive
societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all
dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would
have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In
fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist
because he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read
himself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes
in a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is
wrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a
relation, and a necessary relation, between the artist and his public;
but what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to
answer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in
fact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ tried to put it
right.
_What is Art?_ is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but
I believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this
contention as shortly as I can in his own words.
'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this--that
one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on
to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people
are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'
Now this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and
just because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if
art is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the
artist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of
people who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts
these conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He
judges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be
of no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that
few can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere
fails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of
art exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the
actual words of Tolstoy:
'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and
diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few
people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it
will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of
people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious
life.'
Now this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself.
You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good,
you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it
will satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are
situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does
proceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony
and about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian
peasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked
this question about all works of art, we should none of us ever
experience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of
music, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that
is to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of
people situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to
decide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself
belongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting
of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but
for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was
blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy
of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in
the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way
of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art
would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of
Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century
in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he
condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.
We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the
tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own
experience of art. The fact that we _can_ enjoy and experience a work
of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and
experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art
is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his
own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,
in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the
primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and
always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the
public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.
According to him the proper aim of art is to do good.
'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time
unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,
and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'
The word _unjust_ implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist
sins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I
sin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people
do not enjoy.
But as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good
but good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of
art I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to
other people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that
is as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking
whether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of
it, for I have nothing else to go by.
And so it is with the artist; he cannot begin by asking himself whether
the mass of men will understand what he proposes to produce; he must
produce it, and then trust in man, and God, for its effect. Art is
produced by the individual artist and experienced by the individual man.
Tolstoy holds that it is to be experienced by mankind in the mass, not
by individuals; his audience is an abstraction. Whistler holds that it
is produced by the individual, but for himself, and not experienced by
mankind either in the mass or as individuals. Both are heretics. What is
the truth?
I will now turn for a moment to the high aesthetic doctrine of Benedetto
Croce. He in his _Aesthetic_ tells us that all art is expression. True
enough, as far as it goes; but what do we mean by expression? Croce's
doctrine of expression is incomplete, he does not explain clearly what
he means by expression, because he also avoids the question of the
necessary relation between the artist and his audience; and this is the
question which our thought about art has to deal with, just as we have
to solve it in our practice of art and in our actual relation with the
artist. Croce does not see that the question--What is expression?
depends upon the question--What is the relation between the artist and
his audience? He does see that the audience exists, which Whistler
denies; he insists that the audience have the same faculties as the
artist, though to a less degree--that the artist is not a dreamer apart.
He says indeed that to experience a work of art we also must exercise
our aesthetic faculty; our very experience of it is itself expression;
and this is a most important point. But for Croce, as for Whistler, the
artist, when he expresses himself, is concerned only with what he
expresses, not with the people to whom he expresses himself. Croce does
not see this obvious fact, that a work of art is a work of art _because
it is addressed to some one_ and is not a private activity of the
artist. That is why he fails to give a satisfying account of the nature
of expression. Croce cannot distinguish between expression, or art, and
day-dreaming; but the distinction is this, that as soon as I pass from
day-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to
others. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that
it is addressed to others. A story, for instance, is a story, it has a
plot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because
it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical
form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be
heard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be
seen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.
When a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says--This is what I
have seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art
is a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an
audience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of
address, there could be no art, no expression, at all.
In fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his
nature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man
does not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature
social always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in
isolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.
But although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a
moral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of
doing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;
if he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself
incompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does
not do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not
trying to do good.