'■ *WW"" » "*"> ° iieorv ini iii ^jiii.jj i L i ra i upn iM i ;.- ;-.ii;.m V-V-Vi: BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hettrg W. Sage 1891 Amzn- a/i/ '01 arV14115 Art in theoi Cornell University Library 3 1924 031 251 659 olin,anx Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031251659 WORKS BY PROF. GEO. L. RAYMOND. Poetry as a Representative Art. 8vo, cloth extra . $1.75 ** I have read it with pleasure and a sense of instruction on many points." — Francis Turner Palgrave* Professor of Poetry^ Oxford University. " Dieses ganz vortreffliche Werk." — Englische Studien, Universitdt Breslau. " There are absolute and attainable standards of poetic excellence. . . . Perhaps they have never been so well set forth as by Prof. Raymond.*' — Boston Traveller. u Treats a broad and fertile subject with scholarly proficiency and earnestness, and an amplitude and exactness of illustration, that make his work definitely and clearly explicit." — New Orleans Times-Democrat. The Genesis of Art-Form. An Essay in Comparative ^Esthet- ics, Fully illustrated. 8vo .... . $2.25 " A book that possesses not only singular value but singular charm.*' — New York Times. 14 It is impossible to withhold one's admiration from a treatise which exhibits in such a rare degree the qualities of philosophical criticism." — Philadelphia Press. 11 A help and a delight. Every aspirant after culture in any of the liberal arts, including music and poetry, will find something in this book to aid him." — Boston Times. Art in Theory. An Introduction to the Study of Comparative ^Esthetics. 8vo, cloth extra. A Life in Song. i6mo, cloth extra $1.00 " Marked by a fertility and strength of imagination worthy of our first poets." — Boston Literary World. "Original and noble thoughts gracefully put into verse. . . . Mr. Ray- mond thoroughly understands the true poet's science, man." — London Literary World. Ballads of the Revolution, and Other Poems. i6mo, cloth extra .......... .75 *' The work of a genuine poet." — The New York Evening Post. " A very unusual success ... to which genuine poetic power has not more contributed than wide reading." — Cincinnati Times. Sketches in Song, i6mo, cloth extra 75 "A work of true genius, brimful of imagination and sweet humanity." — London Fireside. " Fine and strong, its thought original and suggestive, while its expression is the very perfection of narrative style.' — New York Critic. " A very thoughtful study of character . . . great knowledge of . . . aims and motives. . . . Such as read this poem will derive from it a benefit more lasting than the mere pleasure of the moment." — London Spectator. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK I LONDON ! 27 West Twenty-third Street 24 Bedford St., Strand ART IN THEORY AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF COMPARATIVE ^ESTHETICS GEORGE LANSING RAYMOND, L.H.D. PROFESSOR OF ESTHETICS IN THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY AT PRINCETON ; AUTHOR OF "POETRY AS A REPRESENTATIVE ART," " THE GENESIS OF ART-FORM," ETC. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND S[)E Jinukcrboclicr .jgicss 1894 Copyright, 1894 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Entered at Stationers 1 Hall, London By G. P. Putnam's Sons Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by "Cbe Tftnfcfeerbocfter press, iRew l^orfc G. P. Putnam's Sons PREFACE. A PROMINENT Review, in noticing the first book published of this series, entitled " Poetry as a Repre- sentative Art," took the author to task, apparently, for not following exclusively that which he by no means ignored, — the prevailing and popular method of Historic Criticism. Had the critic read the book more carefully, he would have had no difficulty in detecting in the course criticized the result of a deliberate purpose. That historic criticism, in the last few decades, has been of vast benefit to truth and to thought of every kind, no one can deny. But it has its limits ; and there is no region in which, if applied exclusively, it is fitted to do more harm than in that of aesthetics. Holding that all the products of the arts and all the changes in their general conditions and effects are subject to the laws of development, two of its most promi- nent propositions are : first, that art is the expression of the spirit of the age in which it appears ; and, second, that all art, for this reason, is of interest to the artist. Neither proposition is true. If there be anything which, very often, the higher arts are distinctly not, it is the ex- pression of the spirit of their age. Greek architecture of the fourth century before Christ, and Gothic of the thir- teenth after him, may have been this ; although even they were developments of what had been originated long be- fore. But all the unmodified examples of Greek or Gothic IV PREFACE. architecture produced since then — and at certain periods they have abounded to the exclusion of almost every other style of building — have been expressions not of the age in which they were produced, but of that long past age in which their models were produced. The same in principle is true in all the arts. The forms most prevalent in poetry, painting, sculpture, even in music, are always more or less traditional, determined, that is, by the artists of the past. As, in its nature, the traditional is not essen- tially different from the historic, it is doubtful whether these conditions will not continue in the direct degree in which, in the study of art, this latter is made to dominate ; and it is not at all doubtful whether the criticism calling itself historic is not belying its title when, in a proposition such as has just been stated, it ignores the historic fact that forms, which logically ought to develop according to the spirit of an age, very often, owing to a servitude to conventionality that interferes with a free expression of originality, do not so develop. If this first proposition fall to the ground, of course the second must. But there are other reasons why this must be the case. The claim of the historian that all art is of interest and deserving of study is not true as applied to the artist as an artist. To him only such art is of in- terest as has attained a certain high level of excellence, which it is the object of criticism to discover, and which excellence, as we know, has appeared only at certain favored periods. It is worth while to notice, too, as just suggested above, that these periods are not necessarily identical with those that are under the influence of the historic spirit. The tendency of this, unless counterbal- anced, is to direct attention to forms as forms, not to these as expressions of spirit ; or, if so, only of the spirit PREFACE. V of the past. The practical results of such a tendency are, in the first place, as already intimated, imitation, and, in the second place, degeneracy. The nature of the mind is such that it must vary somewhat that which it imitates ; and if its variations be not wrought in accordance with the principles underlying the first production of the imi- tated form, the original proportions of the different parts of this as related to one another are not preserved, and the whole is distorted. For this reason, it is fully as im- portant — to say no more — for the artist to continue to work in accordance with the methods of the great masters as to continue to produce the exact kind of work that they did. And if we inquire into these methods, we shall find that, in art as in religion, philosophy, and science, the one fact which distinguishes not only such charac- ters as Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Gautama, Paul, Copernicus, and Newton, but also Raphael, Angelo, Titian, Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, and Wagner, is that they have resisted the influences of traditional- ism sufficiently, at least, to be moved as much from within as from without ; as much by their own feeling and thinking as by those of others who have preceded them, and whose works surround them ; as much, there- fore, by that which results from a psychologic method — for we must not forget that there is always a necessary connection between one's method of studying art and of practising it — as by that which follows an historic. In an age when the influence of the latter is so potent that not one in ten seems to be able to detect, even in his own con- ceptions, the essential differences that separate archeology from art, it is well to have emphasized again, as is done in every period when production is at its best, the import- ance of the former method. VI PREFACE. So much in explanation of the chief endeavor of this book, which is to get back to the first principles of our subject as revealed in the way in which they manifest themselves in the conditions of mind as related to those of matter. No comment seems to be required here with reference to the somewhat extended consideration in this volume of the different theories concerning beauty ; or with refer- ence to the way in which the conclusion derived from them has been made to meet the prominent requirements of them all ; as well as to explain certain of the character- istics of beauty, like complexity, unity, and variety, and certain also of its effects, both physiological and psychical. Everybody will recognize that the treatment of these subjects was simply essential to the completeness of the discussion in hand. A few words, however, may be in place in order to make more clear the reason for the use of the term representative to express the general effect produced by all the art-forms. This term is not a new one, though it has not previously been applied without more limitation. Nor has it been se- lected in ignorance of the distinction which certain English critics have made between what they call the representa- tive and the presentative arts ; but in the belief that this distinction springs from misapprehension, and in its results involves that tendency to error to which misapprehen- sion always leads. The way in which the term came to be chosen was as follows. In order to simplify the task of art-criticism, it seemed important to search for a single word expressive of an effect, the presence or absence of which in any work should determine the presence or absence in it of artistic excellence. This word represen- tative, without any distortion of its most ordinary mean- PREFACE. vii ings, was found to meet the requirements. It was found, moreover, that it could be applied to all the art-forms considered in either of the two relations which exhaust all their possibilities ; considered, in other words, either as expressive of thought and feeling in the mind of the artist, or as reproducing by way of imitation things heard or seen in the external world. To illustrate this — and from an art, too, which we are told is merely presentative — let one be listening to an opera of Beethoven or Wag- ner, and desirous of determining the quality of the music as conditioned by its power of expression — how can he do this ? — In no way better than by asking : first, what phase of feeling is the music intended to represent ; and, second, does it represent what is intended. With equal success, he can use the same questions with reference to the story told in a ballad, the characters delineated in a drama, the events depicted in a painting, the ideal typified in a statue, the design embodied in a building. He can apply the same questions, too, to the forms considered as imitations of things heard or seen. Handel's " Pastoral Symphony," and the music of the Forest Scene in Wagner's " Sjaigfried " express not only certain phases of feeling, but these as influenced by certain surrounding conditions of external nature ; and though, for reasons to be given hereafter, music is the least imitative of the arts, it is not, for this reason, as some have claimed, merely presentative. Such works as have been mentioned must contain at least enough of the imitative element to represent, by way of association, if no more, the surroundings suggested. The same may be affirmed of the accessories or situations in a ballad or a drama ; and of the colors, proportions, or natural methods of adapting means to ends in a painting, a statue, or a building. vili PREFA CE. The term representative, as thus applied, moreover, is appropriate not only in the sense indicated by ordinary usage, but in the specific sense indicated by its etymology. The peculiarity of art, and of all art, is that it not only presents, but literally re-presents ; that is, presents over and over again in like series of movements, metaphors, measures, lines, contours, colors, whatever they may be, both the thoughts which it expresses and the forms through which it expresses them. These facts, however, will be brought out hereafter. They have been mentioned here merely in order to suggest the general conception in which the thoughts of this essay had their origin. That purpose having been accomplished, there is no call for further comment. Princeton, N. J., October, 1893. CONTENTS. I. PAGE Nature and Art 1-6 Art a Method — Artlessness and Art Illustrated — Differing not as Originality from Imitation — Nor as the Natural from the Unnatural — But as an Immediate Expression of Nature from Mediate or Represented Expression, Art being Nature Made Human or Nature* Re-made by Man — Definitions of Nature, Human, and Re-made — This Definition of Art Applicable Universally — Art-Products, not Creations, but Reproductions of Nature — And also Results of Design which is Distinctively Human — Known to be Art in the Degree in which both Natural and Human Elements in it are Recognizable — Conclusion. II. Form and Significance in Art .... 7-16 The Fine Arts, The Arts, Les Beaux-Arts — These Manifest the Finest and most Distinctive Art-Qualities — Arts Ranked by the Degree in which they most Finely and Distinctively Reproduce Nature : Useful, Operative, Mechanical, Technic, Applied Arts in which the Appearance is Non-Essential ; Ornamental and ^Esthetic Arts of Design in which the Appearance is Essential — In these Lat- ter, Form is Essential — Forms Modelled upon those of Nature most Finely and Distinctively Reproduce it, and Belong to The Fine Arts or The Arts — Universal Recognition of the Study of Nature as Essential to the Production of these — Forms Addressing and Ex- pressing the Higher Intellectual Nature through Sound and Sight are Finely and Distinctively Human, — So are Forms Attributable to a Man as Distinguished from an Animal — These Forms are such as are Traceable to the Use of the Human Voice — And of the Human Hand— What the Higher Arts are, and their Two Main Characteristics — The Artist, the Artisan, and the Mechanic — Effec- tiveness of the Products of the Former. X CONTENTS. III. PAGE Form and Significance as Antagonistic: Classi- cism and Romanticism J 7 - 33 The Two Antagonistic Requirements of Art — Mention of the Symbolic — Of the Realistic or Naturalistic — Origin of the Terms Classic and Romantic— Classicism — Its Earlier Influence — Later Tendency toward Imitation — Toward Decline in Music and Poetry — In Painting and Sculpture — Reason of this in Architecture — Revivals in Styles — Romanticism — In it the Idea Supreme — But the Best Results are Developed from Previous Excellence in Form — Tendency of Romanticism in Music — Wagner's Dramatic Effects — Romanticism in Poetry — Whitman — In Painting and Sculpture — Early Christian Art — Beneficial Effects upon Roman- ticism of Classicism — Condition in our own Times — Architecture : Exclusive Classicism Debasing — Exclusive Romanticism Debasing — The Best Periods Manifest Both — Necessity of Considering the Double Character of Art. IV. Art-Forms as Representing rather than Imi- tating Natural Forms .... 34-46 Necessity for Making the Requirements of Form and Significance in Art Seem One — Necessity of Finding a Bond of Unity between the Arts and their Aims — Two Requirements Radically Different — The Results of this upon Theories and Methods — Can the Two Requirements be Made to Seem One ? — The Character of Artistic Reproduction of Natural Forms not merely Imitative : In Music — In Poetry — In Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Why Imitation alone is not Sufficient — Art must Reproduce the Effect of Nature upon the Mind — This Done by Representation — Con- nection between this Fact and the Appeal of Art to Imagination — To the Sympathies — In Music — Poetry — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — The Artist's Reason for Reproducing the Forms of Nature with Accuracy. V. Art-Forms as Representing rather than Com- municating Thought and Feeling . . 47-61 The Second Requirement of Art — The Materials of Artistic Ex- pression — The End of it not to Communicate Thought or Feeling vl CONTENTS. XI PAGE. — Distinct Communication Lacks the Reproduction of Effects of Nature which Art Needs — Art Emphasizes the Natural Factors Used in Expression — Elaboration of Art-Forms Necessitates Repetition — These Constructed by Repeating Like Effects in Music — Poetry — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Repe tition Involves Representation — As Does all Expression, whether Thought Comes from without the Mind — Or from within it — Representation the Aim of the Higher Arts — These Represent the Effects of Nature upon the Mind and also of the Mind upon Nature — Connection between this Latter Fact and the Expression in Art of Imagination — And of Personality — Why Art Elaborates Expressional Methods — Artistic Uses of Nature as Revealing Personality and Suggesting God — Art Creative — Possibly so in a very Deep Sense — The Divine Faculty. VI. Representation of Natural Appearances as In- volving that of the Mind . . . 62-68 Further Explanations Needed — Two Ways of Showing a Similar Method Involved in Representation of Nature and of Mind — Line of Thought to be Pursued in the Two Following Chapters — Limitations of the Natural Appearances Used in Human Art as Distinguished from Animal Possibilities — Its Development from Vocal Sounds must Call Attention to their Agency in Expressing Thought and Feeling Irrespective of Ulterior Material Ends — The Same True of its Development from Objects of Sight Constructed by the Hand — Connection between these Facts and Leaving the Materials of Art Unchanged from the Conditions in which they Appear in Nature. VII. The Art-Impulse 69-80 Art-Products not Planned to Obtain Material Ends are Due to Play rather than Work — Concurrence of Opinions of the First Authorities on this Subject — Views of Schiller and Spencer — Errors in Views of the Latter — Imitation the only Invariable Characteristic of Play — Excess of Life-Force as Indicated in the Activity behind the Play- Impulse — Life-Force behind the Art-Impulse may be Mental and Spiritual — Philosophic Warrants for Ascribing Art to Inspiration— Xll CONTENTS. PAGE It Consciously Gives Material Embodiment to that which has its Source in Subconscious Mental Action — Practical Warrant for Ascribing Art-Effects to Inspiration. VIII. Representation of the Mind as Involving that of Natural Appearances .... 81-96 Connection between the Art-Impulse and Imitation of Natural Appearances — A Utilitarian Desire to Produce Something Fitted to Attract Attention as a Mode of Expression not the Reason for Art-Imitation — But Charm or Beauty in the Object Imitated, which has had an Effect upon Desire — What Forms of Nature made Human Reproduce these Beautiful Effects? — Natural Intonations and Articulations of the Voice as Developed into Music and Poetry — Natural Marking, Shaping, and Combining by the Hands as Developed into Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Connection between an Expression and an External Product — Both Essential to Art in Music — In Poetry — In the Painting and Sculpture of Figures — Of Still Life — The only Explanation of the Existence of these Arts — Architecture Apparently both Useful and ^Esthetic — So are All Arts — Architecture as Representing Man — As Repre- senting Nature — Its Further Possibilities in the Latter Direction — Not Separated in Principle from the Other Arts. IX. The Higher as Distinguished from other Repre- sentative Arts 97-105 Other Representative Arts besides those already Considered — Elocution, Pantomime, Dancing, Costuming, Jewelry, Personal Adornment, and Dramatic Art — These do not Necessitate a Product External to the Artist — Oratory Necessitates neither this nor an End Different from One of Utility — Decorative Art, Landscape Gardening, and Artistic Phases of Civil Engineering have less Possibilities of Expression — Yet All these are Allied to the Higher Arts and Fulfil the Same Principles — What is Meant by the Humanities ? — Phonetic and Plastic Art — ^Esthetic — Vagueness of these Distinctions — Appropriateness of the Term Representative — The Terms : Arts of Form, Beaux Arts, Fine Arts, Belles Lettres ; The Higher, The Higher ^Esthetic, and The Higher Repre- sentative Arts. CONTENTS. Xlll X. PAGE Representation in Art as Determined by Nat- ural Appearances : Theories Concerning Beauty 106-122 Form as Manifested in Nature and Reproduced in Art — Charac- teristically Possesses Beauty — This should Predominate over the Ugly, but Need not Exclude it — The Distinction sometimes Drawn between Beauty and Expression — Necessity for a Definition of Beauty — The Three General Views with Reference to it — Mention of Writers Conditioning it upon Form — Of Writers Con- ditioning it upon Expression Traceable to Man — To a Source above the Man — The German Idealists — Mention of Writers Con- ditioning Beauty partly upon Form and partly upon Expression — The Term Beauty as ordinarily Used Indicates a Truth in All Three Theories, so far as they do not Exclude the Truth in the Others — Beauty may be in Form aside from that in Expression — It may be in Expression aside from that in Form — But Beauty is Complete only in the Degree in which that of Form and of Expression are Combined. XL Beauty as Absolute, Relative ; Objective, Sub- jective, etc. 123-130 The Term Beauty as Used by the Foremost Authorities Indicates the Same as its Ordinary Use Noticed in the Last Chapter — Mention of Writers who Consider Beauty Relative — Of those who Distinguish Relative, Natural, Derived, or Dependent Beauty from that which is Essential, Divine, Typical, Absolute, Intrinsic, Free, etc. — Distinction between Relative and Absolute Beauty the most Common — All these Distinctions Imply an Appeal to the Senses through Forms and to the Mind through Suggestions — Beauty as Objective and Subjective — Mention of Writers Con- sidering it Objective : these Claim it to be Recognized through its Subjective Effects — Mention of Writers Considering it Subjective : these do not Deny its Origin in Forms Considered by them Objective — They, too, Mean that Beauty must be Judged by its Effects — Mention of Other Writers Holding Unequivocably that Beauty is both Objective and Subjective. XIV CONTENTS. XII. PAGE Beauty the Result of Harmony of Effects, Physical and Mental .... 131-147 Results of our Review of Different Theories — The Term Effects and its Suggestions — Illustrations of Beauty as Attributable to Effects upon the Senses and the Mind and Both — As Incomplete because Attributable to Effects upon the Senses and not the Mind, or upon the Mind and not the Senses — Complexity of Effects thus Suggested as Essential to Beauty — Connection between this and our Present Line of Thought — Complexity of Effects Essential to the Beauty of Single Sounds, Lines, and Colors — Much more in Combinations of these in Art-Products — Besides Complexity, Va- riety, Unity, and the Phase of the Latter Termed Harmony of Effects Necessary to Beauty — Harmony of Tone Explained — Of Color — The Relations of Both to Vibratory Action upon the Acoustic or Optic Nerves — Harmony of Effects as Produced in Rhythm and Proportion — Some Sense-Effects Entering into Har- mony are Produced without Conscious Action of the Mind, but Some are not — Thought and Emotion as Determined according to Physiological Psychology, by Vibratory Action upon Nerves of Hearing, Sight, and the Whole Brain — But Thought and Emotion, Spontaneous or not Conveyed through the Senses, may also De- termine Hearing and Sight — Effects Causing Beauty in this Case are Produced in the Mind — Facts with Reference to Vibratory Action in Connection with all Conscious Sensation should not be Ignored, but Need not be Solved in an ^Esthetic System — Sufficient Data for this Obtained by Accepting Effects in their Ascertainable Conditions. XIII. Further Considerations Showing Beauty to Re- sult from Mental as well as from Physi- cal Effects 148-160- End in View in this Discussion — Complexity of Effects can be Recognized only through Mental Analysis — A Form Conjured by Imagination Coincident with Every Form Appealing to the Senses — This Fact Illustrated in the Case of Music — Of Poetry — Of the Arts of Sight — Harmony of Effects as Produced within the Mind CONTENTS. XV PAGE Means Likeness of Effects — Between Effects upon the Ear and Mind as in Music and Poetry — Between Effects upon the Eye and Mind as in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Between Effects of Different Elements of Significance as Appealing to Recollection, Association, and Suggestion in All the Arts — Ad- ditional Methods of Showing the Presence of Mental Effects — Effects Operating Harmoniously upon the Senses, not Harmo- nizing with those upon the Mind — Effects not Operating Har- moniously upon the Senses Harmonizing with those upon the Mind — These Facts Necessitate Including Mental Effects with those of Beauty — But Complete Beauty Demands Harmony of both Physical and Mental Effects — Significance as well as Form an Element of Beauty. XIV. Beauty Defined : Taste 161-171 Recapitulation — Definition of Beauty — Limitations of the Defi- nition — Relation of the Beautiful to the Sublime, the Brilliant, and the Picturesque — Applies to Appearances in both Nature and Art — In both Time and Space — What the Definition necessarily Leaves Unexplained ; and how in this System this is to ber Remedied— All Effects of Beauty Developed from the Principle of Putting Like with Like — This Principle as Applied by the Artist in Accordance with the. Action of the Mind in Other Analogous Matters — As Exemplified in Art in Accordance with Effects as Manifested in Nature — -This Conception of Beauty and its Sources Solves the Question as to whether Art can be merely Imitative or merely Expressive — Taste — Correspondence of its Action to that of Conscience and Judgment — Standards of Taste. XV. The Definition of Beauty tested by its Accord with the Conceptions of Others . . 172-184 How the Definition of Beauty in the Last Chapter Accords with the Theory Considering Beauty as an Effect, Including the Con- ceptions of Shine and Splendor — As Harmony — One in the Manifold, or Unity in Variety — Perfection — Utility — The Good, the XVI CONTENTS. PAGE True — As an Effect of Association — As Symbolic — As Identical with Life or Vital Force — With Emotive Force or Love — With an Appeal to the Sympathies, or of Personality — Truth of these Latter Views, as also of the Theory of Association — The Platonic and Aristotelian Theories again — Limitations of each — Difficulty of Finding a Basis of Agreement upon which to Reconcile them— The Method Pursued in this Discussion will do this — The Play- Impulse Tending to Imitation Indicates Effects from Within and also from Without — Natural Forms Affecting the Mind Indicate Effects both Formal and Mental — In what Regard each of the Theories is True — Each is Defective in so far as it Excludes the Truth in the Other. XVI. Representation in Art as Developed by Mental Conditions ; Considered Historically . 185-195 Introduction — Effects of Appearances upon the Mind are Inclusive both of Forms and of Principles of Formation — And are Produced both upon the Senses and upon the Thoughts and Feelings — The Three Inseparable Objects of Consideration in the Present Inquiry — Order of Development in the Modes of Expression — As Sur- mised from Prehistoric Records Rationally Interpreted — As Shown from Historic Records — In the Lives of Individuals among Animals — Among Men — Also in the Influence upon Expression of Some One Event or Series of Events in the Individual's Experience — Physical Thrill, and Vocal Expression Leading to Music — Definite Opinions, and Verbal Expression Leading to Poetry — Conflicting Opinions Leading to Oratory — Contemplation of Facts as they Appear Leading to Painting and Sculpture — Planning and Re- arranging Leading to Architecture. XVII. Representation in Art as Developed by Mental Conditions ; Considered Physiologically 196-202 Conditions of Natural Influence and States of Consciousness as Rep- resented in each Art — Ideas in the Mind and the Influence from Without Compared to Ice and to Currents Flowing into an Inlet — CONTENTS. xvii PAGtt The Condition Corresponding to Music, Poetry, Painting, Sculp- ture, and Architecture — This Comparison Corresponds to Physical Facts, Large Vibrations of the Nerves Causing Sounds, Small Vibrations Causing Colors — Largest Nerve Movement Exerted in Connection with Music, Less with Poetry, Less with the Colors of Painting, and Least with the less Brilliant Colors of Sculpture and Architecture — Our Nerves are directly Conscious of the Vibrations of Sounds, as in Thunder, but not of those of Color — This Fact as Applied Mythologically and Medicinally. XVIII. Representation in Art as Developed by Mental Conditions; Considered Psychologically 203-216 Mental Facts are in Accord with what has Preceded — Inarticulate Cries Representative of Suddenly Excited Emotions — Why these Cries are Intelligible — Association and Comparison — Emotion Co- extensive with Consciousness — Music the Language of the Emotions — The Indefiniteness of its Effect — Its Degree of Definiteness — Gives Direction to Sentiment with the Least Limitation to Freedom — Musical Ideas — Observation of Natural Forms and Experience of Human Sentiments are both Conditions Underlying Musical Composition — Influence from Without and Ideas Within in Poetry — The Function of Intelligence — Influences and Ideas Made One by an Exercise of Comparison — Association and Comparison at the Basis of Words and of the Forms of Language and Poetry. XIX. Representation in Art as Developed by Mental Conditions ; Considered Psychologically (Continued) ..... 217-228 Definite Conceptions in Opposition to the Influence from Without, Lead to the Distinguishing of the One from the Other — Persuasion and Oratory — How Differing from Poetry and Fine Art — In the latter, the Influences from Without and from the Ideas suggest Contrast — Rendering Necessary an External Medium of Represen- tation — Bearing of this subject upon Poetic Descriptions — Render- ing necessary also a Stationary Medium — Landscape Gardening — Painting — Sculpture, Representing less of Nature and more of XV111 CONTENTS. PAGE Ideas within the Mind — Therefore Offering more Resistance to the Motive from Without — Architecture Represents the Will, in that it is still less Influenced by Natural Forms — In the Latter Regard Architecture Resembles Music — For an Opposite Reason, Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture are between these Extremes — Completeness of this Analysis of the Arts in Accordance with their Development from Representative Effects. XX. Further Conditions Underlying the Representa- tion of Thought in Each of the Arts . 229-243 Further Conditions from which to Draw Inferences with Reference to the Particular Form of the Mode of Representation — Recapitu- lation — Association — Comparison and Contrast as Related to the Work of Imagination — Audible Expression as Representative of the Instinctive Tendency — Development of this in Music and Poetry — Visible Expression as Developed in Painting, Sculpture, and Archi- tecture Representative of the Reflective Tendency — Methods in Art-Composition Confirming these Statements — Instinctive and Reflective Tendencies both Present together in all Art that is Emo- tive, or Manifests Soul — Something both of the Instinctive and Reflective must be Represented in each Art — Music as Subjective, Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture as Relative, and Architecture as Subjective — All the Highest Art is both Subjective and Relative, *'. e. , Objective — Bearing of what has been Said upon Form in each Art — Sustained Sounds are Instinctively Subjective and Spontane- ous ; Unsustained Sounds are Instinctively Relative and Responsive — Both Forms of Sound as Developed respectively in Music and Poetry — No other Fundamental Difference between Sounds in these -•■Order and Relation of the Development of these Forms of Sound — Same Principles Applied to the Arts of Sight — Sustained Action is reflectively Subjective and Spontaneous ; Unsustained Action is reflectively Relative and Responsive — Each Method of Action as Developed respectively in Architecture and in Painting and Sculp- ture — Analogies between Architecture and Music — Between Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture — Recapitulation and Summary — Con- clusion. Appendix . 245 Index . . 249 ART IN THEORY. CHAPTER I. NATURE AND ART. Art a Method — Artlessness and Art Illustrated — Differing not as Originality from Imitation — Nor as the Natural from the Unnatural — But as an Immediate Expression of Nature from Mediate or Represented Ex- pression, Art being Nature Made Human or Nature Re-made by Man — Definitions of Nature, Human, and Re-made — This Definition of Art Applicable Universally — Art-Products, not Creations, but Reproduc- tions of Nature — And also Results of Design which is Distinctively Human — Known to be Art in the Degree in which both Natural and Human Elements in them are Recognizable — Conclusion. "I A J HEN we say that a man has an art or the art of producing effects of any kind, we mean that his words or deeds manifest a certain method. Works of art are products revealing this method. They may not reveal it to a first glance ; they must to careful inspection. Otherwise none could distinguish them from other works and designate them by a special term. What is this method ? A child talks to us with grace in her movements and sweetness in her voice, and we admire what we term her artlessness. A grown woman, an actress, perhaps, produces almost identical effects that seem equally pleasing, but what we admire in her we term her art. What is the difference between an absence 2 ART IN THEORY. of art and a presence of art, as indicated in these two cases? We cannot fully answer this question by saying merely that the child's actions appear to be spontaneous or origi- nal, and that the woman's appear to be imitated ; though, of course, there is often a sense in which this statement is true. But the very actions of the child which the grown person imitates, may themselves be imitative. A large part of all children's actions are so. The actress, in repeating them, does not necessarily change them from the non-imitative to the imitative. What she does that is different from the action of the child, is to produce her imitations according to a different method. Nor can we answer the question by saying that the child's actions are natural and the woman's unnatural ; though here again, inasmuch as the woman is not acting as we naturally expect a woman to act, there is a sense in which this statement is true. But if her actions be absolutely unnatural we fail to admire them. That which pleases us in them is the very fact that they are not this, but, on the contrary, are similar in form to those of nature. Yet we term the result art because we recog- nize that it is produced not according to the method of nature — in this case, of a child's nature, — but according to a different method. In what now consists this difference in method? Is it not in this? The child's words and deeds, like the bleat- ing and gambolling of the lamb, seem to be immediate expressions of nature, or of what, in this case, we may term natural instinct. But we know that a mature woman's natural instincts would never prompt her to express herself in the child's way ; and that therefore her childish words and deeds, while expressions natural NATURE AND ART. 3 enough to a very young person, are not so to one of her age. They are expressions, therefore, of something which nature has presented to her, and which she, according to a process which, as distinguished from instinctive, we may call mental, re-presents to us. As the result, which we term art, is a combination of what comes, in the first place, from nature or natural instinct, and, in the second place, from a human being exercising the distinctive traits of the human mind, we may say that, in this case at least, art is nature made human, or nature re-made by the human mind. The term nature, as used thus, may apply to every effect, aside from the supernatural, that is not produced directly by the agency of distinctively human intelligence ; human may apply to every effect that is produced by this agency, and made or re-made may in- clude all such ideas as might be expressed specifically by terms like shaped, arranged, applied, combined, or, as has been intimated, by reshaped, rearranged, reapplied, recom- bined, or, to repeat the term already used, re-presented. But is not what has just been affirmed of one illustra- tion of art true in all cases ? In the first place, are not all art-products necessarily reproductions of that which nature furnishes, though, of course, in different degrees and ways? A man can absolutely create none of the materials which he uses, nor the laws according to which they operate. He can merely put into new shapes and use with new combinations and applications that which already exists in the world about him. This is true not only in the lower arts where the fact is evident, but in the higher. "The term invention," says Henry Fuseli in the third of his " Lectures on Painting," "never ought to be so far misconstrued as to be confounded with that of creation, 4 ART IN THEORY. incompatible with our natures as limited beings . . . and admissible only when we mention Omnipotence. ... It discovers, selects, combines the possible, the probable, the known in a mode that strikes us with an air of truth and novelty at once. . . . To invent is to find ; to find something, presupposes its existence some- where, implicitly or explicitly, scattered or in a mass." " The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models," says Sir Joshua Reynolds in the twelfth of his " Discourses before the Royal Academy," " is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed." " Agassiz, who examined this drawing of ' The Nightmare,' " says S. P. Long on page 48 of his "Art; its Laws and the Reasons for Them," "and an- other of a ' Devil Tormenting St. Anthony,' by Salvator Rosa, thought he detected in the head of the former the monkey with ass's ears, and in the head of the latter the hog, in the beak some ravenous bird, in the arms the skeleton wings of the eagle, in the legs the bones of a man, and in the tail the monkey. The original of all but the head of ' The Nightmare ' he could not determine with any exactness, but he had no doubt of its being selected and combined from real existences " — an opinion with which, probably, we shall all be prepared to agree when we recall the unmistakable absence of any appearances that fail to resemble those of the earth in all attempts on the part of men to picture spiritual beings or a place of spiritual existence. A similar assertion could be made with reference to the results produced in all the other higher arts. In poems and dramas, the characters repre- sented, although Homeric gods or Miltonic angels, speak and act in ways showing that the artist's ideas concerning them have been modelled upon forms natural to men and NATURE AND ART. 5 women of the earth. Even in music and architecture, the principle holds good, though in a more subtle sense. There would be no melodies if it were not for the natural songs of men and birds or for what are called "the voices of nature " ; nor would there be buildings were there not in nature rocks and trees furnishing walls and columns and water-sheds, to say nothing of the innume- rable forms suggested by the trunks, branches, leaves, flowers and other natural figures which architectural details unmistakably imitate. In a word — to repeat what was said before, — the effects of art are not what they are because they are unnatural. On the contrary, they all do no more than remake, reproduce, reshape, rearrange, re- apply, recombine, represent appearances that nature first supplies. In the second place, is it not true that in all cases art results from influences that have been exerted upon nature by man as the possessor of a human mind, and that, in this sense, it is made human or is re-made by the human mind? To go back again to the contrast between what is done by the child and by the actress, it is impos- sible for us to believe that a woman can act the part of a child, except as a result of that mental application of means to ends which we term design. It is because we recog- nize this element in her actions that we attribute them to art. In fact, the words art and design are sometimes used as if synonymous. A cousin of mine went to a ball. He came back raving about a young miss fresh from the country who had fascinated him there. A few days later, he was told that she was an experienced coquette who had long been out of her teens. Then he began to talk of her arts, he began to recognize in her a creature of design. And we shall find that universally when we speak 6 ART IN THEOR Y. of art, whether of its lowest or highest manifestations, — all the way from sighs to symphonies or canes to cathe- drals, — we mean something which is a manifestation of design. Not, however, of design per se ; but only of human design. Men speak sometimes of the designs of the lower animals, but were they asked if what they knew to be a choice specimen of coral were a work of art, they would answer ".No," and give as their reason, the fact that it is produced by a polyp. Men speak too of the designs of the Almighty, and these they may believe to be manifested by everything produced or done in the universe. Design, as applied to the methods of art, sig- nifies that adaptation of means to ends which results from the action of the human mind only. So far as we have yet been able to define it, art is nature made human. It is important to notice now that we can recognize a product to be a work of art in the degree only in which we can recognize in it both of the elements — natural and human — which enter into its com- position. An ordinary walking-stick, for instance, shows both that it grew and that it has been shaped by a man. More than this, we recognize in it the effects of the man's work in the degree only in which we perceive the differ- ence between the condition in which natural growth left it and that into which man has shaped it, — in other words, only as it reveals the results both of nature and of human design. Nature made human, or nature re-made by the human mind, is, of course, a very broad definition of art — one that scarcely begins to suggest all that is needed for a full understanding of the subject. But it is one that all can accept, and therefore it will serve as a starting-point for what is to follow. CHAPTER II. FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART. The Fine Arts, The Arts, Les Beaux-Arts — These Manifest the Finest and most Distinctive Art-Qualities — Arts Ranked by the Degree in which they most Finely and Distinctively Reproduce Nature : Useful, Opera- tive, Mechanical, Technic, Applied Arts in which the Appearance is Non-Essential ; Ornamental and Esthetic Arts of Design in which the Appearance is Essential — In these Latter, Form is Essential — Forms Modelled upon those of Nature most Finely and Distinctively Reproduce it, and Belong to The Fine Arts or The Arts — Universal Recognition of the Study of Nature as Essential to the Production of these — Forms Addressing and Expressing the Higher Intellectual Nature through Sound and Sight are Finely and Distinctively Human, — So are Forms Attributable to a Man as Distinguished from an Animal — These Forms are such as are Traceable to the Use of the Human Voice — And of the Human Hand — What these Arts are, and their Two Main Characteris- tics — The Artist, the Artisan, and the Mechanic — Effectiveness of the Products of the Former. \\T E are to deal in this essay not with all the products of art, but with a particular class of them, to some of which, among other terms, that of the fine arts, and to all of which the term the arts is applied. It may be of interest to recall here, too, that the former term is an English substitute for the French " Les Beaux-Arts," first used in the " Reflexions Critique sur la Poesie et la Peinture," published by the Abbe Du Bos in 1719. Ac- cording to the first and historic part of Professor William Knight's " Philosophy of the Beautiful," a work which has proved of much service in the preparation of the present volume, the term afterwards came to be used as follows : 7 8 ART IN THEORY. " In the seventeenth century certain schools of Painting and Sculpture were instituted. A school of Architecture followed. In 1793 these were united in one, an ' Ecole des Beaux-Arts.' When, subsequently, an ' Academie des Beaux-Arts ' was established, Music was added. Poetry was left out, partly because it could not be taught, and partly from an idea that it belonged to a loftier sphere. In the ' Dictionnaire des Sciences, des Lettres, et des Arts,' the arts of Design only are included — Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, Architecture, Music, and Drawing." Thus far we have gone upon the supposition that men use different terms, like nature and art, in order to ex- press different conceptions. We may as well apply the same supposition here, and infer that men class among the fine arts or the arts those products which, according to their conceptions, manifest the qualities of art that are the finest and most distinctive. What products are , these ? Evidently, if art be nature made human, they are those which most finely and distinctively belong to nature, and, at the same time, are the most finely and distinctively made human. What products, then, most finely and distinctively belong to nature ? Those certainly which, other things considered, appear to be the least changed from the state in which they are found in nature. As a first step toward the discovery of these, it is important to notice that all possible art-products can be divided into two classes — those in which appearances, whether of nature or of any kind, are not essential, and those in which they are essential. In the former class we may place all those compounds and constructions, from the lightest fluids and fibres to the heaviest instruments and machines, FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART. 9 which are designed, not for the appearance that they present, but for the work that they do. They belong to what are termed, when chief reference is had to the motive, the useful arts ; when to the method, the opera- tive or mechanical arts ; when to the effect, the technic or applied arts. In the class contrasted with these we may place everything in which appearances are a chief matter of consideration, the word appearance being uni- versally used in this connection to indicate an outward effect upon either the eye or the ear. Here belong what are termed, when chief reference is had to the motive, the ornamental arts ; when to the method, the arts of design; and when to the effect, the cesthetic arts. In a general way, these arts may be said to include all prod- ucts, alike in kind, that range between a carved penholder and a palace, between a jews-harp's humming and an overture. Of course, in certain respects, these latter arts may be as useful as any that are termed useful : but the utility in them is always such as produces not a ma- terial but a mental result, and even no mental result except indirectly through an effect upon the senses. In connection with these arts we come upon the word form, attributed to them as a necessary characteristic. The word is from the Latin forma, meaning an appear- ance, and is applied especially to what presents a definitely outlined or concrete appearance. All art-products, in one sense, have form, but only in the degree in which the appearance is essential can we say that form is essential. This statement implies — what needs to be noticed next — that there are different degrees and classes among the aesthetic arts. House-painting cannot rank as high as landscape-painting nor masonry as sculpture. What are the characteristics of the products for which we are in IO ART IN THEORY. search — of products which, in the finest and most distinc- tive sense, are those of nature ? The very phraseology of the question answers it. They are the products which have forms or appearances the most like those of nature, products which we could unmistakably define as, forms of nature made human. Unfigured silk, however ornamental, is not one of these products because it is not, or has not, necessarily, an appearance in any sense attributable to nature; nor is a steam-engine, however elaborately its parts may be mounted and polished. A man accustomed to use words with discrimination, and with the idea of the fine arts or the arts in mind, might say of the latter, " It looks like a work of art," but he would not say, " It is a work of art " ; and this not only because he would feel that it should be classed with objects designed for use rather than for ornament, but also because he would feel that its forms, however ornamental in this case, were not in the finest and most distinctive sense those of nature. To be this, their outward effects upon the eye or ear should suggest, like the carving of a man's head, the picture of a tree, the dialogue of a drama, the bird- trill of a song, certain outward effects of nature upon which they have been modelled. Only to classes of products containing suggestions like these can terms like the fine arts or the arts be applied by way of distinction. That this is so seems to be universally recognized in practice, at least, if not in theory. Who does not ac- knowledge that one characteristic of all great artists, especially of those who are leaders in their arts, is the faithful study that they give to nature. We may not admire the social customs of ancient Greece that allowed its sculptors frequent opportunities to observe the un- clothed forms of both the sexes ; we may shrink from FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART. II believing the story of a Guido murdering his model in order to prepare for a picture of the crucifixion ; or of a David coolly sketching the faces of his own friends when put to death amid the horrors of the French Revolution ; yet, in all these cases, there is an artistic lesson accom- panying the moral warning. It was not in vain that Morland's easel was constantly surrounded by represen- tatives of the lower classes ; that Hogarth always had his pencil with him on the streets and in the coffee-houses ; or that, morning after morning, Corot's canvas caught its colors long before the eastern sky grew red with sunlight. Or, if we turn to literature, it is not an insignificant fact that Shakespeare and his contemporaries who gave form to the modern drama, as well as Goethe, who records in his " Wahrheit und Dichtung " the way in which he spent his youth in Frankfort and his age in Weimar, were for years the associates both of the audiences and actors in city theatres ; or that Fielding, who gave form to the modern novel, was the justice of a police court. High art is distinctively a form of nature — a form that is this in the sense of being perceptible in nature, or at least directly suggested by it. Now let us ask what arts those are, which can be said to be in the finest and most distinctive sense made human. Here, too, we can begin by accepting the ordinary judg- ments of the world. Later on, if we choose, we can go deeper into the question. There is no doubt that men associate with the production of the highest art, the highest results of human intelligence. " As it is by his mind that man is superior to animals," says F. T. Pal- grave in his essay on " Poetry and Prose in Art," " so it is ever by the quality of that mind that one man's work differs from another's." For this reason,* the class 12 ART IK' THEORY. of art for which we are in search obliges us to exclude from consideration, first of all, such phenomena, whatever of ornament, design, or aesthetics they may suggest, as appeal to attention through merely one of the lower senses of touch, taste, or smell. The poet Coleridge, in the third of his " Essays on the Fine Arts," says that this is so because the effects of these are " not divisible into parts." Notice what is said in Chapter XII of complexity as an element of beauty. At present we shall sufficiently recognize the truth of his remark upon recalling that only something radically complex in its nature naturally stimulates us to think in order to understand it. But waiving the exact explanation at present, we know at any rate that for some reason effects appealing through these senses do not address, and therefore we conclude that they do not express, the higher intellectual and spiritual nature. Accordingly, we must find the arts that in the finest and most distinctive sense are human among those only the products of which are apprehended in the realms of sound and sight. Again, the class for which we are in search obliges us to exclude from consideration even those products in sound or sight which are not clearly attributable to a human being as distinguished from an animal. In trying to determine exactly what these products, and the classes to which they belong, are, it would evidently be illogical to start by theorizing with reference to such subtle differ- ences distinguishing the two as are dependent upon merely mental states or capacities. These differences can, at best, be only indirectly inferred. Actual observa- tion never starts with them ; and we should start where it starts, namely, with something directly perceptible, which itself is the occasion of their being inferred — with FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART. 13 something belonging, therefore, not to the hidden psychi- cal but to the apparent physical nature. What then are the physical differences — not all of them, but those connected with the reproduction of effects of sound and sight — which distinguish the human from the merely animal body? The question is readily answered. They are the vocal organs and the hands. To begin with the former, a man can produce such variations of intonation and articulation as to enable him to represent wellnigh every object of thought and phase of feeling in a definite vocal form ; and with this possibility none of the lower animals are endowed. Notice now the inferences that follow. A man can select for imitation such sounds of nature, or can originate such sounds, as are appropriate for expres- sion, and he can use these as in language. The lower animals, whatever may be the character or extent of their thoughts and feelings, cannot make these selections of sounds, nor originate them ; and, therefore, they cannot construct language, nor know what it is to use it. Accord- ingly, their mental experience, however full it may be of recollections of sounds or of sights, is, at least, not an aggregate of consecutive processes resulting from the grammatical and logical arrangement of sounds used as symbols, which is the case with that accumulation of in- flections and words and of scenes suggested by them, which together constitute a man's internal world of imagi- nation. Or, even supposing it possible that they think and feel as a man does, they certainly do not express themselves as he does. The bird can sing and the beast can roar ; but neither can do both ; nor is there any proof that either has the power of making new sounds in order to indicate newly discovered distinctions between thoughts or feelings. 14 ART IN THEORY. The other physical difference between a man and the lower animals, which applies to the subject before us, is noticeable in his hand. The structure of this is such that there is hardly any limit to the variety of objects that he can produce. The animals have nothing comparable to it. Notice the inferences from this fact too. A man can select for reproduction such phases of the products of nature appealing to sight, or he can originate such of these, as are appropriate for expression : and he can so vary the objects that he makes as to cause them to be very definitely expressive. But the animals can repro- duce little that they see ; and never much more than is necessary for their physical sustenance. They cannot with their mouths, beaks, paws, or claws construct a single written character or picture of such a nature as to indicate clearly any particular thought or any particular scene suggesting it. They can scarcely construct even an implement or a machine showing unmistakably that it was designed to be a means of accomplishing an end conceivable only as a result of a consecutive and compli- cated mental process. The higher arts which are attributable to the possibilities of expressing thought and feeling through the use of the human voice and hands are usually represented as being the following : music, developed from expression through the intonations of the voice ; poetry, from expression through both its intonations and articulations; and fainting, sculpture, and architecture, from expression through the use of the hands in pictures, carvings, and constructions. But until intervening matter can make clear the explanations to be given in Chapter IX, there is nothing in what has been said so far, to lead us to ex- clude from this class either elocution, oratory, dancing, FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART. 15 pantomime, dramatics, decorating, or landscape-gardening. Without pausing to determine here the exact limitations of the arts for which we are in search, it is sufficient if we recognize, at this point, that all the 'products of them are clearly differentiated from those of any other class, in being, first of all, reproductions of the appearances of nature, and, second, in connection with this, expressions of thought and feeling. Every artist, as John Ruskin says of the painter, in his " Modern Painters," Part II, Sec. I, Chap. I, " must always have two great and distinct ends ; the first, to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful conception of any natural object whatsoever; the second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of its contemplation, and to inform him of those thoughts and feelings with which these were regarded by the artist himself," a statement which is ex- actly paralleled by one of John Opie, who declares in the first of his " Lectures on Design," that " the end of painting, in its highest style, is twofold : first, the giving effect, illusion, or the true appearance of objects to the eye ; and secondly, the combination of this with the ideal." These affirmations which might be multiplied indefi- nitely, accord with those of the majority of thinkers upon this subject. It is wellnigh universally recognized that the poet is not a reporter, nor the painter a photographer, nor any artist at all entitled to the name, a mere copyist. For this reason, it is felt that while, in the main, he is a careful observer of outward appearances, he, too, as well as the workman in so-called useful art, must have ability to penetrate in some way to something underlying these ; that pathos in ballads, passion in dramas, groupings on canvas, attitudes in marble, arches in cathedrals, cannot be produced so as to have anything approximating an 1 6 ART IN THEORY. artistic effect — be produced so as to cause forms to fulfil both physical and mental laws, — if their authors have either studied the sounds and sights of nature to the exclusion of its operations, — under which term may be included its effects upon thought and feeling as well as upon matter, — or have studied the latter to the exclusion of the former. Men name the producer of the highest aesthetic results an artist. By this term they distinguish him from one whose skill exhibits a more partial exercise of his various possi- bilities, whom they term, if his products repeat merely the appearances of nature, an artisan ; if they repeat merely its operations, a mechanic. The highest aesthetic art must do both. There is a sense, too, in which this art is often able to repeat the most effective even of nature's operations in the most effective way. What is it in nature that operates the most powerfully? Not the wind or fire or earth- quake, but rather the still small voice, sighing for us in the silence of our reveries. So in the works of man, not in the railway or the telegraph, in the rattle or the flash of material forces that deafen or dazzle us, do we apprehend the presence of the most resistless power. Just as frequently, more frequently, perhaps, we recog- nize it in connection with those products of art that, though they seemingly may influence activity as slightly as the ministering angels of a dream, yet, like them too, come often summoning souls to high companionship, and everything that this can signify, with all that is most true and good and beautiful. CHAPTER III. FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC : CLASSI- CISM AND ROMANTICISM. The Two Antagonistic Requirements of Art — Mention of the Symbolic — Of the Realistic or Naturalistic — Origin of the Terms Classic and Romantic — Classicism— Its Earlier Influence— Later Tendency toward Imitation — Toward Decline in Music and Poetry — In Painting and Sculpture — Reason of this in Architecture — Revivals in Styles — Ro- manticism — In it the Idea Supreme — But the Best Results are Developed from Previous Excellence in Form — Tendency of Romanticism in Music — Wagner's Dramatic Effects — Romanticism in Poetry — Whit- man — In Painting and Sculpture — Early Christian Art — Beneficial Effects upon Romanticism of Classicism — Condition in our own Times — Architecture : Exclusive Classicism Debasing — Exclusive Romanticism Debasing — The Best Periods Manifest Both — Necessity of Considering the Double Character of Art. TT has been shown that the kind of art, or of nature made human, which we are to consider in this book necessitates two things : first, a reproduction of the ap- pearances of nature ; and second, an expression of thought or feeling. These two requirements are apparently very- different. How can any one who has to deal with art pay due regard to each and yet do full justice to both ? This is a question which just here must evidently confront any attempts at solving the problems before us, whether theo- retical or practical ; and it must be answered. To show the difficulty of answering it, as well as the fact that the way in which the mind preserves or loses the balance between the two horns of the dilemma which the question 17 1 8 ART IN THEORY. presents, let us, in this chapter, review briefly the results of the two main tendencies which, throughout the history of art, have respectively exemplified them. They are termed, conventionally, the classic and the romantic ; and the methods for which they stand, however they may be named, have probably always existed and always will exist. It is true that the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, and later writers who have adopted his classifications, in an endeavor — always a perilous one — to harmonize the factors of historic and logical development, divide the tendencies of art into the symbolic, as in Assyria and Egypt, the classic, and the romantic. But the symbolic, in its earlier and more distinctive period, previous to the time when it becomes traditional and conventional and hence more or less classical, is really a preliminary phase of the romantic, from which in its incipiency it does not differ in the radical sense, nor according to the same principle, in which both differ from the classic. We shall find that the germ of the latter is the conception, which inevitably tends to imitation, that art should chiefly em- phasize the form ; whereas the germ of both the symbolic in its initial stages and the romantic is the conception that the ideas expressed in the form should be chiefly emphasized. We shall find also that it is in the degree in which the balance is maintained between these two conceptions, that^art-produetion of any kind is at its best. It ought to be added here, too, in order to prevent misunderstanding, that neither of these tendencies is identical with the modern one that is termed realistic or naturalistic. This occupies a middle ground between the two, but not in the sense of necessarily embodying the best features of either. Like the classic, it emphasizes FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 1 9 the importance of form, if by this be meant a form that appears in nature, which fact it frequently takes as a sufficient justification for reproducing both the ugly and the vile ; but unlike the classic, it is little guided to its results by forms that have previously appeared in art. Like the romantic again, the naturalistic emphasizes the importance of ideas, if these be such as are necessarily associated with the forms of nature ; but unlike this, it is little guided to its results by such ideas or ideals, however suggested or wherever aimed, as are plainly due, in the main, to the artist's own imagination. With the tenden- cies of the naturalistic as thus understood we have nothing to do now. It will be noticed, however, that, so far as they lead astray, they do this because of the supposition that it is all one to art whether its subjects be beautiful or deformed or its effects be inspiring or debasing. The first of these suppositions evidently differs from that of classicism, which would not emphasize form as it does, except as a result of having other conceptions with refer- ence to beauty. For a like reason, too, the second sup- position differs from that of romanticism, which would not emphasize ideas as it does, except as a result of having other conceptions with reference to effects pro- duced upon the mind. With this general indication of the relationship of the three tendencies, we drop the consideration of the naturalistic for the present, and go back to the two that suggested this paragraph, namely, the classic and romantic. What is meant by these terms as ordinarily used? Centuries ago, people who spoke one of the two lan- guages, Greek or Latin, the degrees of proficiency in which even in our own colleges indicate the class to which a student belongs, and which everywhere since the revival 20 ART IN THEORY. of learning have been termed, because the literature com- posed in them is supposed to belong to the highest class, the classic languages, — these people produced certain works of art, noticeably in poetry, sculpture, and archi- tecture, that are still considered to equal, if not to excel, anything produced in modern times. For almost a thou- sand years, during the Middle Ages, this art was scarcely known, little appreciated, and seldom imitated. In the meantime, however, an artistic development manifested itself among the different Romanesque or Romantic nations, as they are termed, i. e., nations both Latin and Gothic, formed from the fragments of the former Roman Empire. In architecture this development culminated in the style termed Gothic. In sculpture, years before the revival of learning, it produced statues and busts like those in Wells and Lincoln cathedrals, which in form are wellnigh perfect. In music and poetry it brought forth the songs of the troubadours, and the minnesingers, and also the early rhyming chronicles and ballads. It gave rise, too, to the "mystery plays" and the "moralities," and was the mainspring of the English drama. About the fifteenth century, however, owing partly to the wars in the Orient and the attendant renewal of commercial intercourse with the East, partly to the fall of Constantinople and the consequent dispersion of Greek scholars through Europe, and partly to that general revival of interest in intellectual pursuits that soon after- ward led to the Reformation, the older classic languages and art began to attract attention. The matured results, as they were, of a matured civilization, they could not but have a moulding influence upon the theory and prac- tice of western art with which they were now brought into contact. FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 21 Whatever increases intelligence tends to increase intel- lectual power, and the influence of schoolmen learned in the classics was at first only beneficial. Nearly all mod- ern literature in every country of Europe dates from the Renaissance. Painting and sculpture attained, at that time, an almost unprecedented degree of excellence ; and the style of building originated by Brunelleschi, Bramante, and Alberti in Italy was based upon principles that still underlie the most successful street architecture for large cities, and which, artistically developed, might have led then, and might still lead, to results equalling anything termed Grecian or Gothic. But increased intelligence tends to increase not only intellectual activity but also pedantry. The artistic expression of pedantry is imitation. As soon as that which was classic became fashionable, artists began to forget to embody their thoughts and feelings in what they produced. They paid attention only to forms ; even then to forms as they could be found, not in nature, but in celebrated works of art. With these for their models, and being artisans rather than artists, they at- tained the highest object of their ambition in the degree in which they attained success in copying. Their copy- ing, moreover, necessarily extended, after a little, beyond the forms to the ideas expressed in them. The subjects of art came to be not modern nor even Christian, but ancient and mythologic. For these reasons, the produc- tion of something that imitates a previously existing form or subject is now one of the recognized meanings of the term classic. When the word was used first, Greece and Rome supplied the only classic products. Now any works of any nation are so called as soon as they have become admired sufficiently to be used as models. The 22 ART IN THEORY. music of Bach and Haydn is now classic ; so, for English- speaking peoples, is the poetry of Shakespeare, though at the time when it was written it was a result of the- opposite tendency. The same term is applied to certain modern — because resembling mediaeval and ancient — styles of painting ; but never to Gothic architecture, though this might be done and not violate the meaning, which, broadly applied, the word has now come to have. It was the classic tendency that Ellis manifested when exclaiming to the rising Reynolds, " This will never answer ; why, you do not paint in the least degree in the world in the manner of Kneller ! " and then, while leaving the room and slamming the door, crying out in rage at Reynolds' expostulations, " Shakespeare in poetry and Kneller in painting for me ! " The results of this classic tendency, when manifested in excess, have been injurious to all the arts, — to music, of course, less than to the others, because all music of a high order is comparatively modern. Yet, as we know, before obtaining recognition, every successive composer with original musical methods, from Gluck to Wagner, has been obliged to fight hard and long against the classicists of his day. The works of two of our greatest English poets are not all that they might have been, merely be- cause their desire to imitate classic models overbalanced a mode of expression natural to the current of their own thought in their own age. The " Faerie Queen " of Spenser, to use the language of Ferguson in his " History of Modern Architecture," Book IV., Introd., "is a Chris- tian romance of the Middle Ages, interlarded with classical names and ill-understood allusions to heathen gods and goddesses." Whenever these latter are introduced, few fail to feel the presence of incongruity, and that this inter- FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 23 feres with artistic effects. Milton, again, might have given us a poem more unique, had he been as free as Shakespeare and Dante from the spirit of imitation which made him model his great epic upon the works of Homer and Virgil. The romantic tendency in poetry, however, that, with its modern forms giving expression to modern ideas with reference to modern subjects, rose imperceptibly in Spain, and, flowing through Provence and Normandy, broke in spray over England in the time of Chaucer, and watered it like a Nile-flood in that of Shakespeare, had but partly subsided in that of Milton. It receded entirely only in that high and dry "classic " age that immediately followed him, when nothing could have manifested less of the purely romantic than the poetry and criticism of the eighteenth century. Even then, however, the springs of the opposite tendency still lingered in humanity, and when our Revolution and the French Revolution had broken apart forms that had arbitrarily checked other sources of energy, this too burst forth with renewed vigor in the wri- tings of Goethe and Schiller and Scott and Wordsworth. The same principle is exemplified in the history of painting and sculpture. After original workers like Ra- phael, Angelo, Titian, Correggio, Claude, Rubens, Teniers, come the mere imitators, and we care scarcely to remem- ber their names. Then art goes on degenerating, till, as fortunately in some of the schools of our own day, men arise who shake off the undue influence of the classic masters and look more immediately to present conditions and, in connection with these, to nature for their models. Thus they do, not what the former artists did, but as, they did, and so pursue the only course through which it is ever possible to originate styles that, in their turn, will deserve to become classic. 24 ART IN THEORY. It is hard enough to produce a work of art which is natural, when one models directly from nature. It is wellnigh impossible to do so, when one models merely or mainly from that which another man, however accurate his eye, has seen in nature. The work of the imitator will be as much inferior to the work of art after which he models, as the latter is to nature's original. But of all the arts, architecture, perhaps mainly because of the double character of its products as both useful and aesthetic, has suffered the most from this classic tendency. In the majority of cases, what thought, what design, do we find embodied in the modern building? Of what in- ward plan are the outward forms an expression ? Through the facade that confronts us, what can we read, what can we even guess, about the shapes or sizes or uses of the rooms that are behind it ? During the most of the present century, little more has been done than to imitate what have been thought to be the best features of Grecian, Gothic, or other styles. We have had what have been termed " revivals." Several decades ago, the effects of these showed themselves in a literal reproduction of Greek temples, with their porticos and high steps, certainly not by any means quite as con- venient for a hurried merchant of the north on a sleety day, as for a lazy Oriental taking his ease where abun- dant shade could shelter him from the burning sun. In a form of imitation just as classic in its essence, this development was followed a little later by a literal repro- duction, but a diminished one, of Gothic cathedrals, used indiscriminately for either markets or jails. Even when employed as by the older architects in church edifices, their excess of pillars often made them not at all adapted to modern requirements. After this came the " Queen FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 2$ Anne" revival; and it is a sufficient commentary upon what it has done for us to notice how universally it is recognized as appropriate to term the style of some of the phases to which it has led, the " Bloody Mary " or the " Crazy Jane." The forms of these latter, however, really stand on the border line between the classic tendency of which we have been speaking and the romantic. This is so, because, although called " Queen Anne," they really manifest very little regard for the forms of this or of any classic style ; often, indeed, very little for any new forms which one has a right to dignify by placing them among the possibilities of any style whatever. The classic tendency being that which prompts the artist to imitate forms and subjects of the past, the ro- mantic has come to mean just the opposite, — namely, that which allows the form to be determined solely by the exigencies of expression and the expression solely by the exigencies of the period. In fact, it is hardly right to say that this latter tendency has come to mean this, — it has always meant this. The mediaeval pictures were poorly drawn. Their forms, as forms, were exceedingly defec- tive. Yet they were fully successful in expressing exactly the religious ideas of the time. Similar conditions under- lay also, as first developed, mediaeval music, poetry, and sculpture. This being so, it is evident that romanticism, if mani- fested to the total exclusion of classicism cannot lead to the best results. The same fact is still more evident when we consider that the forms and themes of all art of the highest character, whenever and wherever it appears, are developed upon lines of previously developed excel- lence ; and that to model after others, even in a slight degree, is to manifest something of the classic tendency. 26 ART IN THEORY. A Beethoven, for example, would have been impossible without a Haydn ; a Raphael without a Perugino ; a Tennyson without a Keats ; Corinthian architecture without Doric ; and decorated Gothic without pointed. It is a question whether the most enduring work of even the most original artist is that in which he manifests to the full his tendency to forsake the methods of his predeces- sors. Wagner, for instance, will probably be remembered chiefly not for the extended passages in his " Siegfried " or " Tristan und Isolde," in which he carried his the- ories to excess ; but for the passages mainly in the operas of his middle period, in which his themes were developed more in accordance with the requirements of form, as established by his predecessors. That he neglected these requirements is more evident, perhaps, in the works of his imitators than in his own. To say nothing of some of the songs that are now in vogue, the composers of which seem to have lost entirely the sense of form in melody, let the members of an opera troupe that has been devoted almost exclusively to the study of Wagner, attempt to render such an opera, say, as Gounod's " Faust " ; and in view of the way in which they sing passages like those of the " Soldier's Chorus," or the " Old Man's Chorus," or the " Flower Song," one will have reason to ask himself whether these performers are not in danger of losing entirely the sense of form in even such a simple matter as musical rhythm. Wagner was, possibly, the greatest of musicians, and in the orchestra- tion of some of his operas, noticeably " The Meister- singer," he introduced more melodies even, not to speak of harmonies, than alone would suffice to im- mortalize an ordinary composer ; yet there is reason to fear that his followers, if they develop some of his peculi- FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 2-7 arities a little further, may ultimately produce successors who can really be benefited in their own chosen line of development by studying the art of music where our decorators, though not without justification, are now studying that of painting, — in China or Japan. Even the dramatic effects, too, to which Wagner often sacrificed melody in song, seem to have been lessened by his insensibility to what might have been taught him by the experience of the past. There is that indisputable requirement of variety, for instance, which certainly is violated when, in an opera over four hours long, the monotony of continuous recitative is not relieved by a single duet or chorus. Again, there is that other equally indisputable requirement in dramatic representation of fidelity to the facts of nature. If it were regarded in " Tristan und Isolde," we should not have a clandestine meeting of lovers in which both often let fly explosive tones at the tops of their voices. Such are the tones neither of secrecy nor of love, which latter, in the degree in which it is deep-seated, expresses itself, not in quan- tity of tone, but in quality, and in force that is not explosive but suppressed — except, of course, in the case of the feline tribe ; but it is reasonable to suppose that Wagner imagined himself to be working up a catastrophe that was not intended to be in any sense of the term inhuman. To turn from music to poetry, almost everybody recog- nizes that Goethe and Schiller, who were, at first, exceed- ingly romantic, the one in " The Sorrows of Werther," the other in " The Robbers," would never have become the great artists that they did, had they not subsequently studied criticism and form, in which pursuits the classics of Greece and Rome, as well as those of England, aided 28 ART IN THEORY. them not a little. Of English poets, Chaucer and Shake- speare both accepted from writers whom they succeeded, not only their romantic methods and themes, but even, in some cases, their plots and characters. The same is true of Scott, whose first literary work was to study and collect the " Ballads of the Border Minstrels." Among the most exclusively original and, in this sense, romantic, of modern poets, are Wordsworth, Browning, and Hugo. All, like Wagner, are really greatest when they fail to carry out fully their own theories, and write in a manner approximating that of others before them. The last two, with all their chaotic magnificence, would have produced works still more effective artistically, if their ruling ten- dency had been balanced by a little more of what they could have learned from the classics. Like Wagner again, both are excessively dramatic ; yet both, like him, are given to almost interminable declamation, purely subjective in its nature, and therefore, in important particulars, undramatic. Our American representative of the exclusively roman- tic tendency is Whitman. Most of his productions are entirely devoid of either metre, tune, or verse, nor do they treat of subjects in themselves aesthetic, or present them in picturesque phraseology. They are written at times in rhythm, but so is most prose ; and the prose of some, both in spirit and form, is more poetic than that which his admirers call his poetry. That he has been a force in literature, no one can deny. The virility and suggestiveness both of his matter and manner cannot but affect for good, thoughtful minds able to appreciate their scope and meaning. But how many distinctive characteristics of poetic form do his works embody ? And if works like these are to become the models of poetic form, FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 29 what, in the future, will separate poetry from poetic prose ? If poetry, per se, be not destined, one of these days, to become a lost art, it is because the classic tendency, no trace of which Whitman manifests, will never be com- pletely overcome. The same lesson of the importance of holding on to the traditions and teachings of the art of preceding periods, is taught still more strikingly, perhaps, in the history of painting and sculpture. The majority of the extant Assyrian and Egyptian pictures and statues of the so- called symbolic style show that the story, the idea to be presented, was uppermost in the mind of the artist. So long as those for whom this story was depicted recog- nized that a particular figure was intended to represent a man or an animal, absolute fidelity to the appearances of the forms in nature after which it was modelled was of minor importance. There was an earlier period of very high attainment in Egypt, however, and a later one in Greece, in which form as form was an end in itself. The Greek artists and their pupils continued to regard it in this light for many centuries. But with the rise of Chris- tianity, artists, if we may call them this, sprang up, whose main object, like that of most of the Egyptians, was, through the use of symbolic illustrations, to communicate to the common people, who could not have interpreted less graphic forms, religious conceptions. The earlier of these artists had undoubtedly enjoyed the benefit of Greek culture ; and it would have been no detriment to the religious effectiveness of pictorial art, had all of them continued to remain acquainted with what this had taught them of the principles underlying correct drawing and coloring. But these principles they forgot or neglected ; and, for almost a thousand years, 30 ART IN THEORY. because wholly uninfluenced by the methods of the Greek classic artists, no sculptures or paintings such as would be thoroughly admired in our day, were produced. After a time, however, even out of this state, artists arose of such excellence that their works became standards and thus, too, the bases of imitation and further development. It was only after this at least partial revival of the classic tendency, that Romanesque art began to produce what, as art, is, in our time, worthy of attention. Finally, with the revival of classic learning, the older methods of the Greeks began to be practised again ; and in the works of men like Angelo and Raphael, we have the Christian ideas of the period embodied in forms worthy of the Greek masters. It certainly was unfortunate for the artists who lived in mediaeval times that it took a thou- sand years and more to find those who had sufficient sense to know how to strike the balance between the romantic and classic tendencies, and to give due weight to both. But that it should take this length of time should not appear strange to any who have noticed the tendencies of art in our own age. To have that breadth of view which is able to balance apparently conflicting extremes and to perceive how both can influence the same product, is apparently the least common of human traits, espe- cially in those who have dealings with art, either as pro- ducers or critics. For instance, no one will deny, probably, that most of the present French painters of the highest rank excel in imitation, i. e., in reproducing the exact appearances of nature ; or that most of the English painters excel in expression, i, e., in arranging these appearances so as to be significant of ideas. As a con- sequence, the French are accused by their dectractors of caring only for technique, and the English, especially FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 3 1 so far as their arrangements suggest a story, of being literary. But why cannot and why should not a work of art be equally successful in imitation and in expression, in exe- cution and in invention ? — there is no reason except that the most of us are narrow in our aims and sympathies, and prefer to have our art as contracted and one-sided as ourselves. But this is not the spirit that will ever lead to the development of great art. It may foster the me- chanical school, where everything runs to line, and the impressionist, where everything runs to color, but it will not always blend both lines and colors sufficiently to produce even satisfactory form, and it will never make this form an inspiring presence by infusing into it the vitality of that thought and feeling which alone can en- title it to be a work of the humanities. Reference has been made already to the way in which, in accordance with the operation of the classic tendency, the different styles of architecture are developed from one another. The Greek, for instance, passed from the Doric through the Ionic and Corinthian to the Composite; and the Gothic passed from the Romanesque, through that of the Pointed Arch to the Decorated and the Tudor. But while it is true that the very highest developments of art have usually appeared some time after the sway of what we might term the classic tendency has begun, it is also true that the continuance of this sway has ultimately debased the art. Composite Greek architecture and Tudor-Gothic are universally recognized to rank lower than the styles preceding them, though higher than the ones which followed. In this art, too, therefore, the clas- sic tendency alone cannot lead to the most satisfactory results. 32 ART IN THEORY. Again, it will be noticed that the methods manifesting the Romantic tendency, have full sway only when a new style is beginning, or — what is the same thing — when an old style is being discarded. Periods of this kind, too, are never those in which we find produced the best works ; and, accordingly, the romantic tendency alone cannot lead to the most satisfactory results. These latter ap- pear almost universally in the middle period of a style, the period in which the romantic tendency is still work- ing, and the classic is not yet predominating. When a style is just beginning to be developed, a builder, having learned nothing from his own experience or that of others, necessarily makes mistakes. His work is the expression of his thought. It is original ; but not always artistic. Much later on, in the development of the style, precisely the opposite condition is found. The highest conception of the builder seems to be that his forms should be modelled — not partly, which would be unobjectionable, but entirely, — upon those of preceding buildings, ancient or modern. These preceding buildings are either wholly copied by him, in which case the new product is a mere imitation ; or else several different buildings are copied in part, and in part combined with other forms that he originates ; in which case, because the method in accordance with which such forms as he combines were brought together by the earlier architects is not known, often not even studied, his new product is incongruous. Its effects are produced with too little regard for the considerations which must have influenced those who produced the original forms which are imitated — namely, the requirements of the design of the build- ing and of the eye and mind as affected by great natural laws like those of propriety, proportion, and symmetry. FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE AS ANTAGONISTIC. 33 In fact, in whatever way we may look at this subject, we shall find that the one thing which can enable an architect to produce that which, so long as it survives, may have a right to claim attention as, in its own style, a model, is for him to bear in mind the double character of all artistic effects. Depending partly upon outward form, which mainly requires a practice of the method pursued in classic art, and partly upon the thought or design embodied in the form, which mainly requires a practice of the method pursued in romantic art, these artistic effects appeal partly to the outward senses and partly to the inward mind ; and only when they appeal to both are the highest possibilities of any art realized. CHAPTER IV. ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING RATHER THAN IMITATING NATURAL FORMS. Necessity for Making the Requirements of Form and Sentiment in Art Seem One — Necessity of Finding a Bond of Unity between the Arts and their Aims — Two Requirements Radically Different — The Results of this upon Theories and Methods — Can the Two Requirements be Made to Seem One ? — The Character of Artistic Reproduction of Natural Forms not merely Imitative : In Music — In Poetry — In Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Why Imitation alone is not Sufficient — Art must Reproduce the Effect of Nature upon the Mind — This Done by Representation — Connection between this Fact and the Appeal of Art to Imagination — To the Sympathies — In Music — Poetry — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — The Artist's Reason for Reproducing the Forms of Nature with Accuracy. TT is natural that the practical developments of art just considered, tending to emphasize on the one hand form and on the other hand significance, should manifest themselves in the theories that, in different ages, have been propounded with reference to the subject. " What is the bond of unity," inquires Mr. E. S. Dallas, the eloquent and suggestive author of " The Gay Science," " which knits poetry and the fine arts together ? What is the common ground upon which they rest? What are we to understand by the sisterhood of the Muses ? . . . Whenever the philosopher has encountered this question, as a first step to a science of criticism, he has come forward with one of two answers. All attempts 34 ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 35 to rear such a science are based on the supposition either that poetry and the fine arts have a common method or that they have a common theme. Either with Aristotle it is supposed that they follow the one method of imita- tion ; or with men whose minds are more Platonic, though Plato is not one of them, it is supposed that they are the manifestations of one great idea." Without dwelling upon the exact connection suggested by this author between these two general conceptions of art and the theories of Aristotle and Plato, which will be considered in Chapter XV., it will be noticed that all that has been said thus far naturally leads us to accept his general conclusion that " both the suppositions upon which these two systems rest, are delusive," except that we might modify it by saying that each is delusive in the degree in which it disregards whatever of truth there may be in the other. So far as the arts reproduce natural forms they must, to some extent, follow a method of imitation. So far as they express thought and feeling they must to some extent be manifestations of ideas, even if not " of one great idea." But if we say no more than this, it is evident that we have not said enough to obtain a working theory that will effectually meet the practical difficulties suggested in the last chapter. Still less have we obtained a theory that, however it may solve the problem of conflicting aims as manifested in a single art, can be applied to these as manifested in the different arts, which latter is the chief consideration influencing Mr. Dallas when referring to " the bond of unity knitting poetry and the fine arts together," " the common ground upon which they rest." His general inference, however, is universal in its appli- cation, whether it be made to refer to the different aims 36 ART IN THEORY. of a single art or to the aim of this as related to that of other arts. If for instance we emphasize the fact that art reproduces the appearances of nature, we thrust sculp- ture and painting into prominence. We term these " the fine arts," and music or poetry on the one hand, and architecture on the other, are classed in the same company- only by a doubtful courtesy which allows them to cling to the skirts of the former. If, again, we emphasize the fact that the arts are human, in that they are means of communicating thought and feeling, then literature and poetry are unduly exalted. Nor does the emphasis of either fact do justice either to music or to architecture. Is it not surmisable, however, that there may be a source of unity deeper than either of these, the results of which are equally recognizable in the reproduction of forms in nature and in the expression of the formative thought and feeling in the artist's mind ? If so, is it not evident that we can base a classification upon the degrees of in- fluence which, in any given product, one of these factors exerts as contrasted with the other, and that, thus doing, we can find a place somewhere between the two where each art can stand without danger of having the qualities that render it artistic either exaggerated or belittled ? With this suggestion in mind, let us examine again more carefully the conflicting factors before us, as repre- sented in the two different requirements of art with which we are dealing. They are the reproduction of the appear- ances of nature and the communication of thought and feeling; or, as is usually said, imitation and expression. There is no doubt that if these, in any way, could be made to seem one and the same thing, this result would be of great advantage not only to a proper understanding and classification of the principles of art, but also to ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 37 facility in the application of them. Yet, at first thought, the two seem very different. How then can they be made to seem identical ? In order to answer this question satisfactorily, we must begin by understanding distinctly the conditions of the two factors to be considered in it ; in other words, we must determine, in a general way, at least, just what is to be done by the artist in view of each of the require- ments of art to which they refer. Take the first of them — the reproduction of the appearances of nature. What is the character of this reproduction ? Is it literally and exclusively an imitation ? Or being this at times, is it also, at times, something more ? Let others decide this. ''This principle of imitation," says Hegel, to quote from the "Critical Exposition " of his " ^Esthetics," as trans- lated by J. S. Kedney, Part I., Chap. I., " cannot even apply to all the arts. If it can seemingly justify itself in sculpture and painting, what does it mean in architecture, or in any poetry other than mere description ? This is mere suggestion, not imitation.' But to consider the question as related to each of the arts individually, how is it with music ? " What has music done," asks H. R. Haweis in his " Music and Morals," " for the musician ? She has given him sound, not music. Nowhere does there fall upon his ear, as he walks through the wide world, such an arrangement of consecutive sounds as can be called a musical subject or theme or melody. Far less does he find anything that can be described as musical harmony. The thunder is not affecting because it is melodic, but because it is loud and elemental. The much extolled note of the lark is only pleasant because associated with the little warbler, the ' sightless song ' in the depths of the blue sky ; for 3§ ART IN THEORY. when the lark's trill is so exactly imitated (as it can be with a whistle in a tumbler full of water) that it deceives the very birds themselves, it ceases to be in the least agreeable, just as the sound of the wind, which can also be well imitated by any one compressing his lips and moaning, ceases under such circumstances to be in the least romantic. The nightingale's song, when at its best, has the advantage of being a single and not unpleasantly loud whistle. That, too, can be imitated so as to defy detection. But once let the veil of night be withdrawn, and the human nightingale disclosed, and we shall proba- bly all admit that his performance is dull, monotonous, and unmeaning." How is it in the art of poetry ? " The very existence of poetry," says Sir Joshua Reynolds in his thirteenth " Dis- course on Painting," " depends on the license it assumes of departing from actual nature in order to gratify natu- ral propensities by other means which are found by experience fully as capable of affording such gratification. It sets out with a language in the highest degree artificial, a construction of measured words such as never is and never was used by man. Let this measure be what it may, . . . rhyme or blank verse ... all are equally removed from nature." In a less degree the same might be affirmed, perhaps, of the rhetoric of oratory. " Did you ever hear me preach ? " demanded Coleridge of Lamb. " I never heard you do anything else," was the reply. Turn now to painting, sculpture, and architecture. In the latter of these arts, the evidences of adaptation so overbalance those of imitation, that it is the presence of the latter rather than its predominance, that needs to be proved. With reference to painting, Henry Fuseli, in AST-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 39 the first of his " Lectures on Painting," says even of Aristotle and other ancient writers, usually quoted as advocating the view that all art is imitation : " Their imitation was essential, characteristic, and ideal. The first cleared nature of accident, defect, excrescence ; the second formed the stamen which connects character with the central form ; the third raised the whole and the parts to the highest degree of unison." And in his fourth lec- ture, when treating of the most imitative department of painting, that of portraiture, he speaks of "that characteristic portrait by which Silanion in the face of Apollodorus personified habitual indignation ; Apelles in Alexander, superhuman ambition ; Raphael in Julio II., pontifical fierceness ; Titian in Paul III., testy age with priestly subtlety, and in Machiavelli and Caesar Borgia, the wily features of conspiracy and treason . . . that por- trait by which Rubens contrasted the physiognomy of philosophic and classic acuteness with that of genius in the conversation piece of Grotius, Memmius, Lipsius, and himself." Again he says: "The landscape of Titian, of Salvator, of the Poussins, Claude, Rubens, Elzheimer, Rembrandt, and Wilson, spurn all relation with map work." " It does not look like a man which it is not," declares Ruskin, referring to statuary, " Modern Painters," Part I., Sec. I., Ch. III., " but like the form of a man which it is. Form is form, bona fide and actual, whether in marble or in flesh, not an imitation or resemblance of form." " If the producing of a deception," remarks Sir Joshua Reynolds significantly in his tenth " Discourse on Paint- ing," "is the summit of this art, let us at once give to statues the addition of color." " Art," says W. W. Story, the sculptor, in a late article in " Blackwood's Magazine " entitled " Recent Conversations in a Studio," " art is art 4° ART IN THEORY. because it is not nature ; and could we absolately produce anything by means of form, tone, color, or any other means, so as actually to deceive, it would at once fail to interest the mind and heart as art. However we might, on being undeceived, wonder at the skill with which it was imitated, we should not accept it as a true work of art. It is only so long as imitative skill is subordinated to creative energy and poetic sensibility that it occupies its proper place. . . . The most perfect imitation of nature is therefore not art. It must pass through the mind of the artist and be changed. . . . Art is nature reflected through the spiritual mirror and tinged with all the sentiment, feeling, passion of the spirit that reflects it." Evidently the general idea underlying all these quota- tions, even when it is not explicitly stated, serves to confirm what we have already found in this essay, namely, that imitation in art does not suffice because, in addition to it, there must be an expression of thought or feeling. The object in view in making these quotations, however, has not been merely to confirm what has been said hitherto, but to furnish a trustworthy beginning for that advance in thought promised at the opening of the chapter. The question before us is, whether it is possible to state in a single proposition exactly what that is, in all cases, which, according to the acknowledgment of the best authorities, is neither merely an imitation nor merely an expression. In order to attain our end, let us go back and examine once more the words of Dr. Haweis. He says that imitation is not sufficient because the reproduc- tion of sounds like those of the lark, the wind, or the nightingale is not accompanied by a blue sky, romance, or a veil of darkness. By this he means that they are ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 4 1 not accompanied by that which recalls, in connection with them, the associations of nature. But what are these associations, and how can they be recalled ? Are they other forms which, for a satisfactory effect, need to be imitated in addition to those that are imitated ? How could one imitate, in connection with a whistle, a blue sky, or romance, or night ? A blue sky might be imitated by passing from the element of sound to that of sight, and producing a picture ; but, even then, and still more in the cases of romance and night, the association could not be reproduced except indirectly through an appeal to the mind. What is needed is an association of ideas, in other words, an appeal to thought or feeling in connec- tion with the appeal (not lacking in the imitation) to the ear. How can we describe, in general terms, applicable in all special cases, this condition, in which there is needed an additional appeal to thought or feeling? How better than by saying that mere imitation is not satisfactory, because, notwithstanding it, the effects of nature upon the mind are not reproduced. Art is the work of a man possessing more than merely physical senses. The reason why he desires at all to construct an art-form, is because natural forms have produced an effect upon his mind. And it is this effect that he wishes to reproduce. If he can do it by mere imitation, well and good ; but there are many cases in which he cannot do it thus. Yet even then, even in poetry, in which, as shown in the quotation from Sir Joshua Reynolds, the imitative element is often very slight, who can fail to perceive that, as in the " Voices of the Night " of Longfellow, or the tragedies of Shakespeare, the effects of nature upon the mind may be reproduced ; that the reader or hearer feels sad or joyous, 4 2 ART IN THEORY. weeps or laughs, precisely as he would, were he, in natural life, to experience the actual moods or perceive the actual events imaginatively presented to his contemplation ? A similar principle evidently applies also to the products of painting, sculpture, and architecture. When we say that it is the work of art to reproduce the effects of nature as exerted through eye or ear upon the mind, there is no doubt that we have put into a single phrase that which, at once, renders it impossible to exclude from consideration either imitation or expression, and at the same time makes it imperative to include something of both, no matter how much literalness of meaning we apply to either. The effects of nature as exerted through eye or ear upon the mind being the material of art what is its method ? For we must not forget that to find this latter is the chief ob- ject of our present inquiry. Let us notice if there is any term in our language which, according to etymology and conventional usage, can always be employed to designate this method, even though applied with as much apparent difference as in music and in portraiture? If there be such a term, it is evident that to use it will contribute greatly to clear thinking upon this subject. There is such a term. It is the word represent, meaning in its verbal form " to present again," which is precisely what the artist does with the forms presented for his use by nature. To represent, moreover, means, according to Webster, " to present again either by image, by action, by symbol, or by substitute," and there is no possible method of reproducing natural forms in art that cannot be included under one of these heads. An orchestral passage in an opera, or a declamatory scene in a drama, does not, strictly speaking, copy or imitate, but it does represent an exchange of thought between a demi-god ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 43 and a forest bird, as in Wagner's " Siegfried," or a con- versation between historic characters as in Shakespeare's " Henry the Eighth." A painting of a man on canvas, or a statue of him in marble, does not, strictly speak- ing, copy or imitate a man, who, actually considered, could be neither flat nor white ; but it does represent him. Columns, arches, and roofs do not, by any means, copy or imitate, but they do represent the' trunks and branches and water-shedding leaves of the forest. Nothing in fact that a man can make of the materials at his disposal can, strictly speaking, copy or imitate in all its features that which is found in nature ; but he can always represent this. It is precisely for this reason, too, because art does, and can represent, and does not and need not literally imitate, that the faculty through which it exerts its chief influence upon the mind, as has been so often observed but seldom explained, is the imagination. A literal imitation, leaving nothing for the imagination to do, does not stimulate its action. Whistles or bells in music ; common-place phrases or actions in poetry ; and indis- criminate particularities of detail in the work of pencil, brush, or chisel, usually produce disenchanting effects entirely aside from those that we feel to be legitimate to- art. This is largely because the artist, in using them, has forgotten that his aim is not to imitate but to repre- sent. It is well to observe here, too, that an effect, appealing primarily to the imagination, necessarily passes through it into all the faculties of mind ; and therefore that the distinctive interest awakened in them all by works of art is really due to that which affects first the imagination. The fact that they represent explains, too, in part at 44 ART IiV THEORY. least, the sympathetic interest awakened by these works, an interest often noticed and as often deemed essential. To what can this with better reason be attributed than to a recognition of the difficulties overcome — as must always be the case where a form of presentation is changed — when producing in one medium effects that appear in nature in another, and to a consequent ap- preciation of the particular originality and skill of the individual artist who has overcome them ? To apply these statements to the different arts, it is mainly owing to a lack of all appeal to the imagination or the sympathies, that accurate imitations of the sounds that come from birds, beasts, winds, and waters fail to affect us as do those which are recognized to be produced by wind and stringed instruments in the passages descrip- tive of the influence of a forest, in Wagner's opera of " Siegfried," or in the " Pastoral Symphonies " of Handel and Beethoven. Nor do any number of tones imitating exactly the expressions of love, grief, or fright compare, in their influence upon us, with the representations of the same in the combined vocal and instrumental melodies and harmonies of love songs, dirges, and tragic operas. The truth of this may be more readily conceded in an art, like music, perhaps, than in some of the other arts ; for in it the imitative elements are acknowledged to be at a minimum. To such an extent is this the case, in fact, that some have declared it to be presentative rather than representative, not recognizing that a use of the ele- ments of duration, force, pitch, and quality, such as enables us to distinguish between a love-song, a dirge, and a tragic passage, would altogether fail to convey their meaning, unless there were something in the movement to represent ideas or emotions which we were accustomed to associate ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING NATURAL FORMS. 45 with similar movements as they are presented in nature, especially as they are presented in natural speech. But how, it may be asked, is it with poetry ? Is it true that our interest in this art is owing to the representation in it ? Why not ? Figurative language that calls up to imagination scenes that are described, is not necessarily imitative but it always is representative ; and an imitation, so exact apparently that we should think it written down within hearing, of the ravings of a mad king, or of lamentations at the loss of a friend, would not appeal to us like what we know to be merely representations of these in the blank verse of Shakespeare's " King Lear," or in the rhyming verse of Tennyson's " In Memoriam." The talk of the phonograph will never be an acceptable substitute for the soliloquy or dialogue of the artistic drama or novel. A like fact is true of the photograph. For the very reason that it is an imitation, in the sense of being a literal presentation, of every outline on which the light at the time when it was taken happened to fall, it does not awaken in us the kind or degree of imaginative in- terest or of sympathy that we feel in paintings or statues. Unlike the impressions that we receive from the photo- graph, in gazing at these latter, we feel that we are look- ing through an artist's eye, seeing only what he saw or thought fit for us to see, and that everything in them is traceable to the skill displayed by him in transferring what in nature is presented in one medium into another, as in delineating flesh and foliage through the use of color and in turning veins and lace into marble. The same principle applies in architecture. The man of the backwoods who came to an early centre of civilization, and stood before the first stone colonnade that he had 4 6 ART IN THEORY. seen, was not charmed with it because it imitated so exactly the row of poles that supported the projecting caves of the huts which for centuries had been constructed by his ancestors ; his delight was owing to the fact of his perceiving in another material, exceedingly difficult to "work, that which represented the forms presented to his view at home. In fact of whatever art we may be speaking, it will not do to say that the aim of it is to imitate nature, not even, putting it in a milder form, that it is to reproduce the appearances of nature. Few would surmise this aim in the case of either music, poetry, or architecture ; and in the quotations from artists and art-critics at the opening of the chapter, it was shown that, in their opinion, such is not the aim primarily of either painting or sculpture. The most that can be said with truth, is that the forms of nature are reproduced by the artist with the aim of having them appear to others as they have appeared to himself, as they have exerted an effect upon his mind, as they have influenced his thoughts and feelings. Of course, in order to accomplish this aim merely, he must represent the appearances so as to recall their state in nature, and, where imitation is demanded, he must imi- tate with accuracy. But he would be the last in the world to acknowledge that he has added to his work nothing originated in his own brain, and that what he has produced is a simple reproduction. He considers it a representation. CHAPTER V. ART-FORMS AS REPRESENTING RATHER THAN COMMUNI- CATING THOUGHT AND FEELING. The Second Requirement of Art — The Materials of Artistic Expression — The End of it not to Communicate Thought or Feeling — Distinct Com- munication Lacks the Reproduction of Effects of Nature which Art Needs — Art Emphasizes the Natural Factors Used in Expression — Elaboration of Art-Forms Necessitates Repetition — These Constructed by Repeating Like Effects in Music — Poetry — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Repetition Involves Representation — As Does all Expression, whether Thought Cqmes from without the Mind — Or from within it — Representation the Aim of the Higher Arts — These Represent the Effects of Nature upon the Mind and also of the Mind upon Nature — Connection between this Latter Fact and the Expression in Art of Imagination — And of Personality — Why Art Elaborates Expressional Methods — Artistic Uses of Nature as Reveal- ing Personality and Suggesting God — Art Creative — Possibly so in a very Deep Sense — The Divine Faculty. "\JOW let us examine the second requirement of art, namely, that it should be expressive, by which is meant here that it should be a means of communi- cating thought and feeling. What is the character of artistic expression ? or, to divide the question, in order to answer it satisfactorily, what are the materials used in this expression, and how are they used ? The materials need not detain us long. As shown in Chapter II., the germs of them all are furnished by cer- tain of the possibilities of voice and action, through which men naturally manifest to their fellows that with which 47 48 ART IN THEORY. their minds are occupied. These possibilities, too, before being adapted to the purposes of art, have already been developed as in intonation, language, drawing, coloring, stone-cutting, and house-building. Evidently, it is the difference in method between that which produces these latter and that which produces the higher results of art, that we are to try to discover in this chapter. Every method is a means to an end ; for which reason we can never come to a satisfactory conclusion with refer- ence to a method until we have exactly determined its end. As related to the fact that the higher arts are human we have found that they involve a communication of thought or feeling. But is it true, in any sense, that their object or chief object is to communicate this, even though it be done not in an ordinary manner, but in one so effective that it may be termed extraordinary ? Let us answer this question in a practical way, by applying it to each of the arts. If the communication of thought or feeling be their chief object, they ought to attain this object better than does any other form of expression that is not so artistic. Do they ? Do poetry, painting, and sculpture, to say nothing of music and architecture, which all men know to be very deficient in ability to convey definite information of any kind — do poetry, painting, and sculpture give a more satisfactory expression to thought or feeling, in the sense of indicating more clearly exactly what a particular thought or feeling is, than do sounds and sights as they are used in ordinary speech and writ- ing ? The moment we ask the question, we are ready to answer, No. A frequent effect of making any method of communication more artistic is to make it less intelligible; and probably no form of art is ever quite so easy to understand as the unelaborated form of natural expression ART-FORMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. 49 from which it is developed. As a rule, sighs, laughs, shrieks, wails, can communicate, and cause a listener to realize, too, the particular thought or feeling to which they give expression far more unmistakably than is possible for a musical passage, unaccompanied by words, whatever may be the amount of its hush, trill, force, or pathos. As a rule, a plain, direct utterance of sentiment, or statement of fact, is far more readily apprehended, if that be all that is desired, than the most imaginative effort of poetry. As a rule, a few objects carelessly but clearly drawn or carved, even if as rudely as in an ancient hieroglyph — a few tree trunks roughly built together for support and shelter, can convey intelligence of their purpose much more distinctly than works of painting or sculpture or architecture upon which men have expended years of labor. Were the communication of thought or feeling the object of art, it would be a very senseless undertaking to try to attain this object and expend years of labor upon it by making the forms of communication from which art is developed less communicative. Yet, evidently, these forms of natural expression — intona- tion, speech, drawing, coloring, constructing, — just at the point where most satisfactory as means of communicating thought and feeling, lack something that art needs. What is this ? It is not difficult to tell, and is clearly suggested by all that has been unfolded thus far in this essay. They lack that which can be given, in connection with expres- sion, by the reproduction of the effects of nature. Pen- manship and hieroglyphics lack the appearances of nature that are copied in painting and sculpture. Prose lacks the figures of speech and descriptions that in poetry are constantly pointing attention to the same appearances ; and, as shown in the last chapter, even the elements sub- 5° ART IN THEORY. sequently developed into music and architecture lack traces of a very keen observation and extensive use of effects in nature which would not need to be observed or used at all, were the end in view attainable by the mere communication of thought or feeling. Were communica- tion the aim of any art, the elaboration of the forms of nature would cease at the point where it became sufficient for this purpose. Indeed, as Hegel says, according to J. S. Kedney's translation in his " Critical Exposition " of that philosopher's "^Esthetics," the form of art is mere " surplusage if its mission is only to teach, and all the delight we receive from art-representations might as well be missed." These facts confirm what has been said hitherto with reference to the two requirements of art ; but, as in the last chapter so here, that which we wish to do is to find a single proposition stating exactly what, in all cases, that method is which involves neither merely the one nor the other. The last paragraph shows us that expression in art differs from ordinary forms of it in the emphasis which it gives to the effects of nature, as factors of the expressional form. All expression, in order to be what it is, in order to convey audible and visible information of inaudible and invisible thought and feeling, neces- sitates a use of the sights and sounds furnished by nature. Only art emphasizes this use of them. Notice that, in doing so, it does not emphasize the thought and feeling in themselves ; and this is the reason why it is not solely an expression of these. What art emphasizes is the use that by way of development is made of the factors of ex- pression. What music emphasizes, for instance, grows out of the possibilities of rhythm, melody, and harmony in sound ; what poetry emphasizes, grows out of the possi- ART-FORMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. 5 I bilitips of rhythm, figurative language, description, and characterization ; what painting and sculpture emphasize, grows out of the possibilities of outline, color, pose, and situation ; what architecture emphasizes, grows out of the possibilities of support, shelter, strength, and elevation. In short, what all art emphasizes in expression, is not the thought and feeling of it, but the effect which the thought and feeling have had upon the factors of it ; in other words, the effect that the mind has had upon the appear- ances of nature. Now, waiving, for a little, any questions that may be suggested inquiring into reasons, let us accept the fact merely as a fact, and notice the method necessitated on the part of the artist. This is universally and inevitably the same. Inasmuch as every form employed in art is chosen because it is a natural mode of human expression, having a recognized meaning, it is impossible for the artist to change the form essentially. Were he to do this, it would not continue to have the same significance in art that it has in the natural mode of expression which has occasioned his selection of it. And yet, to make the form artistic, he must, in some way, work over it, labor with it, elaborate it, as is said. The only way of elabo- rating it without changing its effect upon the mind, is to cause whatever is added to repeat the general effect of that to which it is added. Only in the degree in which this is done, will the elaborated form as a whole have the same significance that its germ had before it was elaborated. Bearing in mind this plain deduction from first prin- ciples, we shall not be surprised to find that the one method of composition common to all the arts is to group about the form that is first selected as a nucleus 52 ART IN THEORY. of expression, other forms that are like it, or if, in order to prevent monotony, slightly changed, are at least allied to it. In other words, the method of art-composition is, above all else, a method of repeating effects. To illus- trate this statement, look first at music ; and, to begin with, take those forms of it which seem constructed the most arbitrarily. What is rhythm or metre ? Nothing but a development of sounds based upon a repetition of similar intervals of time in notes and rests. What, wherever found, or however varied, is the musical scale that conditions all our present systems of melody and harmony ? Nothing, as might be shown, but a repetition and emphasizing of the possibilities of pitch already ex- isting in compounds of the tone that forms the keynote. But to pass to a region where the underlying facts are better understood, how is a song or a symphony that is expressive of any given feeling, composed ? Always thus : a certain duration, force, pitch, or quality, of voice, varied two or three times, is recognized to be a natural form of expression for a certain state of mind, — satis- faction, grief, ecstasy, fright, as the case may be. A musician takes this form of sound, and adds to it other forms that in rhythm or modulation or both, repeat it, or vary it in such subordinate ways as constantly to suggest it ; and thus he elaborates a song expressive of satisfac- tion, grief, ecstasy, or fright. Or if it be a symphony, the method is the same. The whole, intricate as it may appear, is developed by repetitions of the same effects, varied almost infinitely but in such ways as constantly to suggest a few notfes or chords which form the theme or themes. Look, again, at the method underlying construction in poetic form. What are rhythm, verse, metre, rhyme, A R T-FORMS REPRESEN TING THO UGHT AND FEELING. 5 3 alliteration, assonance ? Nothing but repetitions of the same effects of sound, obtained by putting like with like. What is the method underlying construction in poetic thought ? Nothing but a repetition of the same particu- lar or general idea in different phraseology or figures, e. g. : And what is music then ? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch ; such it is, As are those dulcet sounds in break of day, That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, And summon him to marriage. Merchant of Venice, iii., ii. — Shakespeare. Brutus and Caesar : what should be in that Cassar ? Why should that name be sounded more than yours ? Write them together, yours is as fair a name ; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well ; Weigh them, it is as heavy ; conjure with them, " Brutus " will start a spirit as soon as "Caesar." Julius Casar, i., ii — Idem. 'T is not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath ; No, nor the fruitful river in the eye. Nor the dejected haviour of the visage Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, That can denote me truly. Hamlet, i., ii. — Idem. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ? Macbeth, v., iii. — Idem. 44 AST IN THEORY. What, too, is poetic treatment of a subject as a whole in an epic or a drama ? Nothing but the repeated delinea- tion of the same general conception or character as mani- fested or developed amid different surroundings of time or place. How now are the forms of painting, sculpture, and architecture composed ? Every one knows that, as a rule, certain like lines, arches, or angles are repeated in the columns, cornices, doors, windows, and roofs of buildings. Few, perhaps, without instruction, recognize that the same principle is true as applied to both the outlines and colors through which art delineates the scenery of land or water or the limbs of living creatures. But one thing none fail to recognize : this is that, in the highest works of art, every special effect repeats, as a rule, the general effect. In the picture of a storm, for instance, every cloud, wave, leaf, bough, repeats, as a rule, the storm's effect ; in the statue of a sufferer, every muscle in the face or form repeats, as a rule, the suffering's effect ; in the architecture of a building — if of a single style — every window, door, and dome repeats, as a rule, the style's effect. To extend this subject here would be to anticipate what is to follow. It suffices to say again that the method in which art elaborates a natural form of expres- sion without changing its meaning is to repeat it with, of course, any amount of variety consistent with this. But now, what is a form of expressing thought and feeling, as it appears in nature, but a method of presenting these ? And what is a repetition of the form but a method of re-presenting them ? In fact, while it is not true, in all cases, that there is literal repetition, — for, as has been inti- mated all along, and will be brought out more clearly in ART-FORMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. 55 another place, effects are often greatly varied — it is true, in all cases, that the natural form of expression* is literally- represented. To represent, both according to etymology and to conventional usage, means, — to quote from Web- ster again, — " to present a second time by a transcript what was originally presented to the mind." This is ex- actly what is done when forms of expression are repeated with the effect of repeating that which is expressed through them. The possibility of this kind of representation exists, of course, in the very nature of all expression. Otherwise there could be no artistic development of it. The fact of the existence of this possibility is evident the moment that we consider the sources of the thought or feeling which a man expresses. These are either outside of his mind or inside of it. If they be outside of it, the thoughts and feelings come from what we mean in this essay by nature. But if they come from this, they are suggested to him by a form of nature, and if he wish to communicate them to others, to accomplish his object he must use this form. If he be thinking or feeling about a sound or sight, he must refer to this sound or sight ; and, in order to express his thoughts or feelings concerning it, he must do something with it in the way of reshaping, rearranging, or recombining it. In other words, in order to use nature so as to express thought and feeling, he must not present it as he finds it, but re-present it. Suppose, however, that the sources of the thought or feeling to which he wishes to give utterance lie within his mind. How must he express them then ? He cannot do it at all except by making an appeal to the eye or ear, or to some other of the outward senses of those whom he wishes to address. But there is nothing in thought and 56 ART IN THEORY. feeling as they exist in the mind capable of making such an appeal. They are beyond the apprehension of the senses. They are immaterial, and cannot be presented directly through a material medium. They must there- fore be presented indirectly. They must be re-presented. But while all expression is thus representative, only that which is elaborated, in the ways explained in this chapter, for the distinctive purpose of representation can rightly be termed representative by way of distinction. It was noticed in the last chapter that to represent, meaning to present again by image, by action, by symbol, or by substitute, indicates accurately what the artist does in all cases in which, in accordance with the first require- ment of art, he reproduces the appearances of nature. Now we find that the same word indicates accurately what he does in all cases in which, in accordance with the second requirement, he uses these forms for the purpose of ex- pressing thought and feeling. The word represent, there- fore, is a term applicable to the action of his mind when fulfilling both requirements. Moreover, when we recall that we have found, in addition to this, that what is represented in accordance with the first requirement is the effects of nature upon the mind; and, in accordance with the second requirement, is the effects of the mindupon nature, we have suggested to us by each of the terms, representation and effects, a sense in which both require- ments of art, though apparently necessitating aims and methods distinct and different, really necessitate one and the same thing. Is it not a clear deduction from what has been said up to this point that art represents the recipro- cal effects of nature and of mind? The word effects, as thus used, including, as it does, all natural influences, however utilitarian or ugly, needs to be limited in its ART-FORMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. $? application before it can be applied to the higher arts. Nevertheless, the statement, on the whole, is plainly in advance of any at which we have yet arrived. Nor is the general agreement between the thought in this chapter and in the last manifested by merely the use of the words representation and effects. The connec- tion was pointed out there between the method of repre- sentation and the appeal of art to the mind through imagination and sympathy. Notice now the connection between this same method and an exercise of such powers of mind on the part of the artist as necessitate such an appeal. Like stream like source : that which appeals to imagination is most certain to do so in the degree in which it springs from imagination. What is the faculty of mind from which springs the kind of repetition de- veloped in art when elaborated in accordance with the principle of representation. What is it but the imagina- tion, the faculty which has to do with the imaging of one thing in or by another? In an art-product, forms are grouped together because- imagination perceives that they are alike or allied, in other words that they compare, either exactly or very nearly. If, for the sake of variety, a few subordinate features are introduced of which this is not true, even then the clearest possible consciousness that comparison is the process and that these features are exceptional, is manifested by the fact that they are ac- knowledged to be introduced artistically in the degree in which they exactly contrast with the other features. But no one can originate or recognize a contrast, — which is an effect caused by agreement in many features but disagree- ment in, at least, one feature, — except as a result of com- parison, which itself is merely the mode of procedure of imagination. 58 ART IN THEORY. Once more, besides an appeal to imagination, a work of art, as shown in the last chapter, involves an appeal to sympathy. Nothing can appeal to this except as it has its source in personality. Let us observe then in what sense the fact of representation necessitates the ascribing of art to this source. It has been said that upon the artistic elaboration of the factors expressing thought and feeling men expend years of labor beyond what are need- ed in order to make them express these. Let us ask now upon what exactly do they expend this labor? Of course it must be upon that which the expression contains in addition to the thought and feeling. What does it con- tain in addition to these ? Nothing more, certainly, than the expressional factors. As it is not the thought and feeling, it must be the expressional factors that are in- tended to be emphasized ; and when we recall that it is the expressional factors that are repeated in art, and that, as a rule, repetition necessarily emphasizes, we shall rec- ognize the truth of this inference. But why should ex- pressional factors, aside from that which they express, be emphasized ? For no reason, of course, except to empha- size the fact that they are expressional, which fact, as will be noticed, is unimportant except so far as it involves the existence of something behind them, i. e., of a mind capa- ble of using them for this purpose. But what interest has the artist in manifesting, or the world in knowing, that certain forms of nature are factors used for the purpose of expression by a mind behind them ? What interest has a man in manifesting, or the world in knowing, that behind any appearances of nature there is a mind ? He who can answer this, will find a reason for the interest that men take in art, either as producers or as patrons. But are there any problems of life of interest so pro- ART-FORMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. 59 found as those which have to do with the relations of mind to matter? Is it not enough to say that mortals conscious of a spirit in them struggling for expression, feel that they are doing what becomes them when they give it vent and with earnest care for every detail elaborate the forms in which they give it this? What are they doing when thus moved but objectifying their inward processes of mind ; but organizing with something of their own intel- ligence, but animating with something of their own soul, the scattered and lifeless forms that are about them, and infusing into their product something of the same spirit that is the source of all that they most highly prize within their own material bodies. Motives like these are facts to men, not fancies ; and they appeal as such to others. It is because of them that art, aside from any particular thoughts or feelings that it may express, but in connection with them, reveals the per- sonality of the artist, and therefore is addressed to human sympathy. It is because of them, too, that the Platonist draws the inference that, if the forms of nature furnish men with the means of representing to others thoughts and feelings and themselves as well, then behind the forms of nature, too, there must be thoughts and feelings and a life which is divine, and that in the aspects and the phases of these forms the truths concerning it must be revealed. In our second chapter it was said that the arts cannot create. But it was not said that they cannot be creative. If by the creative we mean the power which seems to represent divine intelligence through the sights and sounds of nature, what can more resemble this than can the power of him who makes a further use of these same sights and sounds for the purpose, through them, of representing the processes, which otherwise could not be manifested 60 ART IN THEORY. of his own thoughts and feelings ? Is it strange that he should take delight and pride in work like this, and in connection with it feel the sources of the deepest inspira- tion stir within him ? Who is there that could not draw delight and pride and inspiration from the consciousness of being in the least degree a follower, an imitator, a child of Him who created the heavens and the earth? There may be, too, a deeper reason even than this for that which moves the artist to his task ; a deeper reason even than Hegel fathomed when in his " ./Esthetics " he declared that " in the nature of man itself Art finds its necessary origin." There are those who dream of flying; or, at least, of moving through the air in ways not possi- ble to one in waking hours ; and after much experience of this they have come to realize even in their dream-, ing that the world about them is not that -in which they really live. In circumstances such as these, the author of this book, with clearest consciousness that he was dreaming, has applied, with others who appeared to be with him, tests, scientific in their way or enough so for the purpose, to the things surrounding him. He has struck against the stones of pavements and of walls, and has found them all as solid as in actual life. Now if tests like these can be applied in a dream, which subsequently proves to be a fabric of imagination only, why may they not be applied in waking hours to things called actual, yet prove no more with reference to reality ? What though we all, when not insane, agree substantially about the character of these surroundings ? This may not prove a thing beyond the fact that the spirits of us all are under similar subjection to the same conditions, — a perfectly conceivable result of a spell that may be exercised over us by some superior intelligence, a result that is conceiva- ART-FROMS REPRESENTING THOUGHT AND FEELING. 6 1 ble, because not differing essentially from that with which the phenomena of hypnotism have or could have. made us all familiar. But if this be so, if, in the world that we call real, our spirits be in prison, then in the world ideal of art in which the spirit freely conjures forms at will, there may be an actual and not a fancied exercise of that which men in general, not knowing why, but following, as so often, an unerring instinct, have agreed to call " the faculty divine." At least, with all the possibilities suggested, if not indicated, by the facts that are beyond dispute, we certainly have no necessity for asking why the aim of art should be to represent, though only for the sake of representing, these reciprocal effects of nature upon the mind and of the • mind upon nature, with which, in the last two chapters, we have found it to be occupied. CHAPTER VI. REPRESENTATION OF NATURAL APPEARANCES AS INVOLVING THAT OF THE MIND. .Further Explanations Needed — Two Ways of Showing a Similar Method In- volved in Representation of Nature and of Mind — Line of Thought to be Pursued in the Two Following Chapters — Limitations of the Natural Appearances Used in Human Art as Distinguished from Animal Possi- bilities — Its Development from Vocal Sounds must Call Attention to their Agency in Expressing Thought and Feeling Irrespective of Ulterior Material Ends — The Same True of its Development from Objects of Sight Constructed by the Hand — Connection between these Facts and Leaving the Materials of Art Unchanged from the Conditions in which they Appear in Nature. *~rO come to the conclusion that art has to deal with the reciprocal effects of nature upon the mind and of the mind upon nature ; and therefore that it necessitates, on the part of the artist, a representation both of the appear- ances of nature and, through them, of the processes of the mind, involves an important suggestion in the direc- tion toward which our thought is tending. It is not sup- posed, however, that the end in view can be fully reached by what, at first thought, may seem to some little more than a play upon the word representation. It has to be acknowledged that the mere use of this term has not yet shown beyond dispute a common basis underlying both of the apparently conflicting requirements of art of which we have been speaking. How then can we find this common basis ? May we not, at least, be encouraged 62 REPRESENTATION OF NATURAL APPEARANCES. 63 in an endeavor to do this by recalling that it is always possible, in this world, by going deep enough below the surface, to reach a foundation-rock sufficiently broad to hold any superstructure, however complex. Simply by pursuing further the course of thought that up to this point has been gradually leading us away from the more superficial and general aspects of our subject, we may hope, at any rate, to get nearer to those that are deeper and more specific. Bearing in mind that a single method, applicable to the representation both of apparent effects of nature and of invisible effects in the mind, is that for which we are in search, it is evident that we can accomplish our object in either one of two ways. We can show either that in the art which is in the finest and most distinctive sense nature made human, the representation of the appearances of nature — in other words, to put it more narrowly, imita- tion, necessitates a representation of the thoughts and feelings of the mind ; or else we can show that the repre- sentation of the thoughts or feelings of the mind — in other words, expression, necessitates a representation of the appearances of nature. Either of these supposed ■conditions, if proved actually to exist, would certainly accomplish our object. It should make certainty doubly certain, therefore, that the course of thought upon which we are now to enter will show that both exist. In showing this, in the present chapter, with reference to the former condition, we shall incidentally yet neces- sarily reach and reveal the primal mental source of aft in what is termed the art-impulse. This will be treated by itself in Chapter VII. ; and in the chapter following, when considering the methods in which the art-impulse vents itself in expression, the existence of the latter of the two 64 ART IN THEORY. conditions will be made clear. In the remainder of the book an endeavor will be made to show how, as directed by the art-impulse, the reciprocal effects of nature and of mind are represented, first, as determined chiefly by those features of them which come from nature; and second, as determined chiefly by those features of them which . come from the mind. The former point of view will necessitate our discussing the character of form in gen- eral as reproduced in art, and therefore, as connected with this, the general character of beauty. The latter point of view will necessitate our discussing the character of forms in particular, when used as means of commu- nicating to others an intelligent apprehension of mental processes, and therefore, as connected with this, the vari- ous expressional peculiarities and possibilities of differ- ent departments of art, or of different arts, as we term them. In going on now to show the existence of the first of the conditions supposed above — the fact, namely, that an artistic representation of the appearances of nature, as in imitation, necessitates a representation of thoughts and feelings, as in expression, — it will be best for us to begin by noticing the general limitations which the requirement that the arts must be human as well as natural puts upon the use of natural material. Nature gives the artist sounds like the rushing of waters, the rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds, the growling of beasts, and the whis- tling, humming, crying, groaning, scolding, laughing, and talking of human beings. But, although these sounds furnish the elements of art, only certain phases of them can be reproduced in it, and they can be reproduced in it as a result only of a peculiar mode of observing, analyz- ing, selecting, combining, and applying them. In the REPRESENTATION OF NATURAL APPEARANCES. 65 same way, nature 'gives us things seen, like the shapes of men, animals, flowers, trees, streams, valleys, mountains, and clouds ; and while these too furnish the elements of art, only certain phases of them can be reproduced in it ; and they can be reproduced in it as a result only of a peculiar mode of observing, analyzing, selecting, combin- ing, and applying them. Now what phases of sight and of sound can the art that is the most distinctively human reproduce, and what is its peculiar mode of doing this ? To a certain extent we have already considered the answers to both these questions. In Chapter II. it was shown that the art which is most finely and distinctively human is developed from methods of expression possible to the human voice and hands. Merely to come to this conclusion, however, was not to reach the limits of the fields of inquiry thus suggested. Beyond that preliminary answer, still rises the question, " What department of the possibilities of expression derivable from the physical formation of the human vocal organs and hands, is human in the finest and most distinctive sense?" In determin- ing this, we can start, as all will recognize, with the broad statement that it must be that department in which the general characteristic distinguishing a man's work from an animal's work is the most apparent. This general characteristic is the definite representation, in utterances and constructions, of particular thoughts and feelings. The characteristic is most apparent, of course, in products, if there be any, which exist for no other reason than to represent thoughts and feelings, — in other words, that exist for expression's sake alone. Notice that this is so, not because they exist for expression's sake, but because, existing for this, they necessarily call attention, as other products do not, to the thought or feeling to which they 66 ART IN THEORY. give form ; and it is in this fact and possibility of giving form to thought or feeling that the human product differs from that of the lower animal. Having reached this con- clusion, it will be recognized that the finest and most dis- tinctively human art is not that which primarily directs attention to a material end outside of itself for which it is used. There is a sense in which every utterance of a man gives expression to thoughts or feelings ; but if he employ it only for some materially useful purpose, as in calling for assistance or even as in imparting information, what he emphasizes is his conception of assistance or information, not his mode of communicating this con- ception, which alone differentiates his action from that of the lower animal. A dog, when in trouble, can whine to call for assistance, and, when disturbed by a burglar, can bark to impart information of the fact. It is only in his mode of doing these things that his action differs from that of the man. The same, in principle, is true with reference to objects produced by the hands. There are compounds, like syrups and pastes, which can scarcely be distinguished from such things as sap and gum, needing no intervention of any animal life whatever. There is network and matting which one might easily imagine to have had their origin in thought or feeling of no higher order than that which spins the spider's web or builds the bird's nest. When, however, we come to implements even as rude as the arrow-heads found with the bones of the mound-builders, we recognize an adaptation of means to ends which we are obliged to attribute to design that is human. Still more are we forced to ascribe this to that which contrives a thrashing machine or a steam-engine. But even such products, great inventive genius as they display, are not REPRESENTATION OF NATURAL APPEARANCES. 67 those which are the most finely and distinctively human. They are all planned in order to be used as means to material ends, and for this reason necessarily direct atten- tion to these rather than to the fact that they are modes of giving form to thought or feeling. Now are there any products, whether of the voice or the hands, that necessarily direct attention to the latter fact ? Are there any products which, however materially useful they may subsequently prove to be, are, at any rate, not planned, primarily, for the purpose of being use- ful ? Of course, there is but one answer to this question. Such products are plentiful. Moreover, it is one invariable characteristic of all of them that in certain features, to a certain extent, their appearances are left in the condition in which they are found in nature. This is the case even with factors of a musical melody. The composer accepts the different elements of movement and pitch as they come to him, rendering them more useful not even by adding to them articulation. Much more is the same fact evident in poetry, the imitative, figurative, or descrip- tive language of which is recognized to be successful according to the degree of fidelity with which it recalls the sights of nature. So too with the products of paint- ing, sculpture, and of the ornamental parts, at least, of architecture. Were forms in these arts — and in principle the statement is applicable to the arts of sound also — shaped or combined, as are most implements and machines, into appearances wholly unnatural, they would necessarily suggest a material end intended to be accomplished by them. But this they do not suggest, for the very reason that their appearances are not changed from those that are presented in nature. Here then we come upon a clear point of agreement between the arts that are the most 68 ART IN THEORY. finely and distinctively forms of nature, and those that are the most finely and distinctively human. There is an in- dissoluble connection between employing in a product the appearances of nature and having it in a condition in which it will pre-eminently direct attention to the fact that it is used for the sole purpose of giving expression to thought or feeling. An artificially shaped machine or implement at once suggests the question, " What can it do?" But a drawing or carving never suggests this question, but rather, " What did the man who made this think about it, or of it, that he should have reproduced it? " This is a fact which at this place need only be sug- gested. The truth of it, and the legitimate inferences from it, will be brought out beyond the possibility of dis- pute in the chapters following. CHAPTER VII. THE ART-IMPULSE. Art-Products not Planned to Obtain Material Ends are Due to Play rather than Work — Concurrence of Opinions of the First Authorities on this Subject — Views of Schiller and Spencer — Errors in Views of the Latter — Imitation the only Invariable Characteristic of Play — Excess of Life- Force as Indicated in the Activity behind the Play-Impulse — Life-Force behind the Art-Impulse may be Mental and Spiritual — Philosophic Warrants for Ascribing Art to Inspiration— It Consciously Gives Material Embodiment to that which has its Source in Subconscious Mental Action — Practical Warrant for Ascribing Art-Effects to Inspi- ration. T T is easy to recognize that, when considered as results of mental action, the art-products mentioned at the end of the last chapter, products which, however useful in attaining material ends, are not planned primarily for this purpose, are of the nature of those owing their origin, in the sphere of thought, to dreaming rather than to plan- ning ; in that of feeling, to spontaneity rather than to responsiveness ; in that of action, to play rather than to work. In different ways and degrees, this general fact has been acknowledged by almost all the ablest writers on this sub- ject. Among these we may include, first of all, those who have emphatically denied an aim of utility to any repro- duction whatever of the beautiful, as is done in systems differing so essentially in other regards as those of the German Arthur Schopenhauer, who, in his " Die Welt als 69 7° ART IN THEORY. Wille und Vorstellung," conditions it upon effects " beyond the measure which is required for the service of the will " ; of the Swiss Adolphe Pictet, who in his " Du Beau dans la Nature, l'Art et la Poesie," conditions it upon analo- gous effects as related to the intellect ; and of the French Theodore Jouffroy, who in his " Cours d'Esthetique," as well as the Italian Vicenzo Gioberti, in his " Trattato del Bello," conditions it upon the same as related to the sym- pathies. We may include in this class also those who have attributed aesthetic results to the subconscious mind — the mind not conscious, therefore, of adapting means to ends — as suggested by G. W. Leibnitz in his " Principes de la Nature," and, again, by F. W. J. Schelling in his "^Esthetik"; and as formulated into a system by E. von Hartmann in his " Philosophic des Unbewussten," and developed, in an exceedingly suggestive and stimulating manner, especially for English readers, in "The Gay Science" of E. S. Dallas. A similar conception is clearly indicated, too, in the views of that large majority of those treating of the subject, who, in one way or another, have associated, though without always identifying, the chief feature of aesthetic effects with the production of pleasure ; whether the source of this be considered mainly psycho- logical as by such writers as Moses Mendelssohn in his " Morgenstunden"; Immanuel Kant in his " Kritik der Ur- theilskraft "; Hieronymus van Alphen in his "Theorie van Schoone Kunsten en Wetenschappen " ; Edmund Burke in his " Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful " ; Abraham Tucker in his " Light of Nature Pursued " ; Dugald Stewart in his "Philosophical Essays"; Dr. Thomas Brown in his " Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind " ; Sir William Hamilton in his " Lec- tures on Metaphysics"; and John Ruskin in his " Modern THE ART-IMPULSE. 7 1 Painters " ; or whether the source of this pleasure be considered psycho-physical ; as in the theories held by Alexander Bain in his " Mental and Moral Science " ; by James Sully in his " Sensation and Intuition : Studies in Psychology and .Esthetics " ; by Grant Allen in his " Physiological ^Esthetics " ; by Eugene Veron in his " L'Esth6tique " ; by the two Darwins, Erasmus in his " Zoonomia," and Charles in his " Descent of Man," and, in fact, by the most of our more recent authorities. Still more decided in its recognition of what has just been stated, is the attributing of aesthetic results by the poet Frederick von Schiller in his " Briefe iiber die aesthe- tische Erziehung des Menschen " to what he terms " der Spieltrieb " {play-impulse). Developing this theory so as by implication to exclude, as Schiller is very careful not to do, the spiritual sources of art, Herbert Spencer, in his " Principles of Psychology," says that " as we ascend to ■ animals of high types, having faculties more efficient and more numerous, we begin to find that time and strength are not wholly absorbed in providing for immediate needs " ; and again : " A cat with claws and appended muscles adjusted to daily action in catching prey, but now leading a life that is but in a small degree predatory, has a craving to exercise these parts ; and may be seen to satisfy the craving by stretching out her legs, protruding her claws, and pulling at some such surface as the cover- ing of a chair . . . This useless activity of unused organs, which in these cases hardly rises to what we call play, passes into play ordinarily so called, when there is a more manifest union of feeling with the action. Play is . . . an artificial exercise of powers which, in default of their natural exercise, become so ready to discharge that they relieve themselves by simulated actions in place of real 7 2 ART IN THEORY. actions. For dogs and other predatory creatures show us unmistakably that their play consists of mimic chase and mimic fighting. It is the same with human beings. The plays of children — nursing dolls, giving tea parties, and so on, are dramatizings of adult activities. The sports of boys, chasing one another, wrestling, making prisoners, obvi- ously gratify in a partial way the predatory instincts. . . . The higher but less essential powers, as well as the lower but more essential powers, thus come to have activities that are carried on for the sake of the immediate gratifications derived, without reference to ulterior benefits ; and to such higher powers, aesthetic products yield substantial activities, as games yield them to various lower powers." G. Baldwin Brown, in his recent work on " The Fine Arts," after quoting this pas- sage, adds : " In conclusion, we may sum up the matter by saying that on every grade of his being man possesses an ideal self-determined life, existing side by side with, but apart from, his life as conditioned by material needs. This life expresses itself in, and is nourished by, various forms of ' free and spontaneous expression and action,' which on the lower grades of being may be termed simply ' play,' but in the higher grades take the shape of that rational and significant play resulting in art." This last quotation suggests what seems to need more emphasis than has been given to it, namely, that the Spencerian philosophy tends, at least, to interpret wrong- ly the facts that have been mentioned by making the very common mistake of taking an effect for a cause. A grown cat, with no mice to catch, undoubtedly goes through the forms of catching them. But a kitten that has never caught a single mouse goes through the same forms a hundred times more often. In the same way a THE ART-IMPULSE. 73 veteran soldier may, now and then, play at being a sol- dier ; but, as a rule, it is the boy wholly inexperienced in battle, who amuses himself thus. The truth seems to be that every animate creature is an embodiment of vital- ity, or life-force, as we may term it ; and, as if to prevent a lack of it in him, it is usually given him in excess. For this reason, as in the case of the desires behind all the appetites, it always tends to overflow the channels of necessary activity. This excess of force, moreover, be- cause it is to some extent, as Mr. Spencer correctly holds, hereditary, tends to expend itself in the same directions as those taken by the necessary activities of his progen- erators. But does heredity account for all the facts ? Not, certainly, for all that are true of the human race. The descendants of the longest conceivable line of farmers, none of whom have ever seen a battle, a city, or a palace, will play at being soldiers, merchants, or princes with just as much zest, when shown by their comrades how to do so, as will the sons of soldiers, merchants, or princes. The only really invariable characteristic of play is the one suggested by Mr. Spencer in the third sentence of his quoted above — namely, imitation. As a rule, of course, young dogs in their play imitate old dogs ; and young monkeys old monkeys — but not always ; both sometimes imitate men. But the general fact that the play-impulse, when it assumes form, invariably tends to manifest itself in imitation, no one can deny. The same is true, too, or at least largely true of the art-impulse. Not only is all dramatizing, as Mr. Spencer intimates, imita- tion, but so, in a sense, is all poetizing, being all sup- posedly representative of what men say, or think, or do. So, too, are all reproductions of scenes in nature through drawing, coloring, or modelling ; and the same may also 74 ART IN THEORY. be affirmed, in a sense that need not be explained here, of much that is reproduced in music and architecture. Those, therefore, who identify the art-impulse with the play-impulse are justified when they apply their tests either to the results of the two, or to their sources. There are many conditions in activity and in nature behind the play-impulse and the imitation caused by it,, which now suggest themselves. Considering these in the order in which they can be best interpreted, let us begin by noticing that imitation resulting from play, imitation of manner without reference to matter — in other words, imitation without reference to that which underlies the manner, or has to do with the object which it is desired to attain — always arises from a condition in which the tendency to activity on the part of the imitator is in excess of that which needs to be expended, or which, in the circumstances, can be expended, upon gaining what is really necessary for the supply of material wants. The young neither realize the need of expending it upon these, nor do they know how and where to expend it thus. Therefore they play, and the form of their play is imitative. Their elders, on the contrary, realize that they must work ; and they have learned how and where to do it. Therefore they seldom play, having neither the time nor the inclination for it. But that which causes indul- gence in play in any case is excess of life-force which, if it cannot be expended in obtaining that which is needful for the supply of material wants, must be expended in other directions. Now, going back, let us recall that products which are human in the finest and most distinctive sense, do not result from an excess of life-force in general, but only of that particular phase of it which is expended distinctively THE ART-IMPULSE. 75 upon modes of expressing thought or feeling. But force is something which derives its importance, if not its quality, less from itself than from that in which or upon which it operates. A clear recognition of this fact would have rendered unnecessary much of the criticism to which this theory of the play-impulse has been subjected, such, for in- stance, as abounds in " Les Problemes de l'Esthetique Con- temporaine," by Jean Marie Guyau, and adds piquancy to " The Spirit of Beauty " by H. W. Parker. The truth is that we all recognize a difference in both importance and quality between what we term hand-power, horse-power, or steam- power and electric-power. According to the same analogy, a moment's consideration will enable us to recognize that the force which is expended upon the imitation of nature may be much more important and also different in quality when it is used in the expression of thought and feeling than when it is expended upon merely physical phases of activity, as by the lower animals. As distinguished from the latter force, which is rightly termed vital, physical, or animal, the former may be termed mental, psychical, or spiritual. A clear perception of a difference between these two is essential. Only when it is understood can one understand how art, while traceable to that which, in one sphere, is a play-motive, and while produced with an aim irrespective of any consideration of material utility, nevertheless often springs from mental and spiritual activity of the most distinctive kind, and results in the greatest possible benefit to the race. What if a product does exist for expression's sake alone ? A being with a mind and spirit perpetually evolving thought and feeling possesses that which, for its own sake, ought to be ex- pressed. Beyond his material surroundings and interests, there exists for him a realm in which excess of mental 7° ART IN THEORY. and spiritual force may be directed toward the production of veritable works of art ; and the effects of these upon mental and spiritual development may be infinitely more important than all possible energy that could expend itself in seeking " what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed." Just here, in fact, we come upon a philosophic, if not scientific, warrant for that common opinion, so often held without reasoning and expressed without discrimination, that the products of art are to be ascribed to what is termed inspiration. When we have traced them to this overflow at the very springs of mental vitality, no one who thinks can fail to feel that, if human life anywhere can come into contact with the divine life, it must be here. There are reservoirs behind the springs of the mountain- streams. Are there none behind those of thought ? And if there be, what are they? The answer to this question must depend, of course, upon the general char- acter of one's theologic or philosophic conceptions. He may attribute that which he calls inspiration directly and immediately to the divine source of life. Or, recognizing the erroneous nature of the forms in which truth, even when most unmistakably inspired, is often presented, he may suppose that there are gradations of intelligences beyond one's ken through which, even before undergoing subjection to human limitations, the brightness of the divine light, in order to become attempered to the re- quirements of earthly conditions, loses not only its bril- liancy but with this much of its defining power. Or he may suppose that the soul itself comes into the world stored with forces directly created for it, or else indirectly acquired in a previous existence of which not only every otherwise unaccountable intuition but every impulse is a THE ART-IMPULSE. TJ consequence, — a previous existence, which, if not human and personal, may, at least, have existed as a psychic force developing in the lower orders of life according to the laws of psychic evolution through successive physical forms, themselves developing according to the laws of physical evolution. Or, finally, he may suppose that this reservoir is in a man's own subconscious nature ; and this, again, he may suppose to be either psychical or physical. With those whose tendencies are toward idealism, he may consider it to be the accumulated result of experiences in his present state of existence, stored up in the inner mind with all their attendant associations and suggestions, and in accordance with its laws surging upward in order to control thought and expression whenever, as in dreams or reveries, or abnormal states of trance or excitation, or merely of poetic enthusiasm, the conscious will, for any reason, is subordinated to the impulse coming from within. Or, with those whose tendencies are more materialistic, he may consider this subconscious nature to be the accu- mulated result merely of that which, through physical sensation, has come to be stored up in the nerve-cells and, in circumstances similar to those just mentioned, aroused to conscious vitality as a consequence either of intense external stimulation, or of unusual activity in the nervous centres. See Chapter XII. Whether a man incline to the acceptance of one of these theories, or of a combination of them ; however he may account for what lies in the realm of mystery beyond the art-impulse, it is evident that the theory just presented of it can accord with every possible view. That, back of all conscious intelligence, there is an unconscious intelligence of some kind, in which the powers of memory and of deduction are wellnigh, if not abso- lutely, perfect, the phenomena of accident, disease, and 78 ART IN THEOR Y. hypnotism seem to have established beyond all question. How, otherwise, could men with memories naturally weak recall, as at times they do, in abnormal conditions, whole conversations in a foreign tongue with not one word of which they are consciously acquainted ? Or how could those of the very slightest powers of imagination or of Y gic, argue for hours, when in such states, with superlative brilliancy and conclusiveness? Whatever be the final ex- planation of these facts, in themselves — as will be brought out clearly in the volume of this series treating of the nature of the thought that can be represented in art — they cannot now be doubted. Behind conscious mental life, sources exist of intellectual energy. They find expression in many ways — in the words and deeds of ordinary obser- vation, as well as in extraordinary moods and methods of prophets and reformers. But there is only one department of activity which humanity appears to have developed for the special purpose of giving expression — if we may so say, of consciously giving material embodiment — to that which has its source in these subconscious regions of the mind ; and this department of activity is art. Few, indeed, derive their impressions of art-inspiration through a line of thought similar to that through which it has here been reached. They infer it as a cause from ■what they have experienced of its effects. And, surely, if anywhere there be anything that is inspired, this must be true of some of these. What else than a subtle sense that they are traceable to the deepest springs in life of -which we know, could cause us all to recognize it as a legitimate tribute to the art of a singer like Pacchierotti, when we hear of an entire orchestra so entranced by his voice as to cease playing, and, with eyes filled with tears, to break down in the midst of an accompaniment? — or of THE ART-IMPULSE. 79 a poet like Euripides, when we read of the Sicilians saving the lives of such of their Athenian captives as could re- member and repeat his verses ? — or of an actor like Cooke, when we are told of his portraying his conception of Iago so as to be hissed by his audiences with cries of : " Villain, Villain " ? — or of an orator like Whitefield, when we think of a Franklin, previously resolved not to give a penny to a cause which the preacher was to advocate, emptying the whole contents of his pockets at the end of the discourse? — or of a painter like Cimabue, when we learn that the whole city of Florence turned out to cele- brate the day on which he was to set up a new picture ? — or of a sculptor like Phidias, when we find it recorded that Paulus Emilius in the presence of his statue of Jupiter Olympus was struck with awe as if in the pres- ence of the god himself? — or of an architect like Michael Angelo, when we listen to the muffled exclamations that invariably announce that a stranger stands for the first time in the Sistine Chapel, or under the dome of St. Peter's ? Other products of men, products that are not distinctively works of arts, sometimes have marvellous effects. A machine, a galvanic battery, can electrify a body just bereft of life into movements for a moment almost deceiving the senses into surmising life's return. But what are such effects to those of art ? men ask. What else but it can put such spirit into matter which never yet had life that the vitality can remain forever ? — More than this, what else can reach outside the forms in which it is embodied, and electrify all beings that have souls ? And when one yields to arts of this kind, the highest homage that can be bestowed upon the products of intel- ligence and skill, to himself, at least, he seems to do so, recognizing not alone that the finest and most distinctive 80 ART IN THEORY. qualities of mind have been expended on them ; not alone that they have issued from an intellect exerting all its power, throned in the regal right of all its functions ; not alone that they have involved activities of mind at the sources of the useful and of the ornamental arts com- bined. But he does so, because he feels that such activities, when exercised conjointly, adjusting thought to form and form to thought, necessitate, even aside from any other consideration, a quality of action that is not the same as that manifested by either of the same activi- ties, when not combined. Gunpowder and a match give neither of the two, nor both. No wonder then that mental possibilities, united as in art, suggest a force and brilliancy different in kind from that exhibited in any other sphere. " I tell you," said King Henry VIII. to a nobleman who had brought him an accusation against the painter Holbein, " I tell you of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but of seven lords I could not make one Holbein." CHAPTER VIII. REPRESENTATION OF THE MIND AS INVOLVING THAT OF NATURAL APPEARANCES. Connection between the Art-Impulse and Imitation of Natural Appear- ances — A Utilitarian Desire to Produce Something Fitted to Attract Attention as a Mode of Expression not the Reason for Art-Imitation — But Charm or Beauty in the Object Imitated, which has had an Effect upon Desire — What Forms of Nature made Human Reproduce these Beautiful Effects ? — Natural Intonations and Articulations of the Voice as Developed into Music and Poetry- — Natural Marking, Shaping, and Combining by the Hands as Developed into Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — Connection between an Expression and an External Product — Both Essential to Art in Music — In Poetry — In the Painting and Sculpture of Figures — Of Still Life — The only Explanation of the Existence of these Arts — Architecture Apparently both Useful and Esthetic — So are All Arts — Architecture as Representing Man — As Representing Nature — Its Further Possibilities in the Latter Direction — Not Separated in Principle from the Other Arts. T N Chapter VI. it was shown that artistic representation or imitation of the appearances of nature involves a representation of the thoughts and feelings in the mind of the artist. Now that we have traced these thoughts and feelings back to their mental sources in the art- impulse, we are prepared to retrace our steps, and to show how all thoughts and feelings, to which it gives rise, in order to represent themselves in outward expres- sion, must also represent or imitate the appearances of nature. While the art-impulse is the mental cause of artistic activity, the appearances of nature, by which the 6 81 82 ART IN THEORY. one moved by this impulse is surrounded, are material causes perpetually furnishing conditions for its exercise. Were it not for these appearances, the activity could find no means of outward expression, no means of appealing to the senses. To do this, as was shown on page 3, it must make use of forms which nature has furnished. Moreover, in order that these, when thus used in art, may call attention to the fact that they are intended to be modes of expression, it is also important, as has been shown too, that they be imitative. Now let us ask, as having an evident bearing upon de- termining that for which, all through this essay, we have been in search, namely, the forms that are the most finely and distinctively those of nature made human — let us ask what it is in any case that causes a form to be imitated ? Is its cause in the artist himself ? or is it owing, partly or wholly, to something in the form ? and if to the latter, to what? To take up the first of these questions, is the form imitated solely because an artist, in accordance with the principle brought out on page 58, is intent upon pro- ducing something fitted to call attention to itself as a mode of expression ? If this were his aim, would it not be directed toward an end of utility ? and if so, how could his efforts be attributed to an absence of this aim, which has been said to be characteristic of all work traceable to the art-impulse ? Any endeavor to deal fairly with such questions must evidently force us to conclude that this aim, however certainly it may be attained, is not that which is chiefly present to his consciousness. Moreover, when we recall that the play-impulse in animals, to which the art-impulse in man has been shown to be analogous, also leads to imitation, and this in circumstances showing that it springs not from intentional adaptation of means REPRESENTATION OF THE MIND. 83 to ends, but from instinct, we must admit that the chief reason for the imitation lies deeper than any conscious intention on the part of the artist to make it useful. What is this reason ? As it cannot be attributed, as has already been shown on page 74, to any external constraint or necessity, must it not be attributed to the imitator's •own desires? It certainly seems so. And yet desires cannot be aroused in view of an external appearance and excited to action imitating it, except as something con- nected with it appears desirable. A pup or kitten not only, but a child, imitates the action of his elders only when allured to do so by some subtle charm connected with the action, which causes him — of course, because in some way it fits the requirements of his nature— to be at- tracted to it, and so to be desirous of reproducing it. To apply this to the appearances of nature, which, as we must remember, are always surrounding the man, and, there- fore, are always furnishing the conditions in connection with which his activities may vent themselves, we are forced to conclude that it is only when an effect, whether appealing to the ear or eye, exerts a subtle charm upon the mind and spirit that it influences a man sufficiently to cause him to desire to reproduce it. But what is it that exerts this subtle charm upon the mind and spirit ? It must be something, of course, connected with the appearance or form ; for it is this, presumably, which is imitated. But charm exerted by appearance or form is due, as a rule, to that which men ordinarily associate with the term beauty — a term, the full significance of which cannot be brought out here. It suffices to say that " Les Beaux Arts," as the French call them, " the beautiful arts," "the fine arts," "the arts," as we term them, are those in which a man gives expression to the excess 84 ART IN THEORY. within him of mental and spiritual, or, as we may say, in- tellectual and emotional vitality through a representation of effects exerting that subtle charm which, as a rule, is traceable only to appearances having what is called beauty. Before going on now to consider more specifically this subject of beauty which is, at once, suggested here, let us, in the rest of this chapter, notice still more in detail than has yet been done, and now for the last time, exactly what are the forms of nature made human in which effects, beautiful in themselves, are represented, and through the use of the human vocal organs or hands, as indicated on page 75, are made to give expression to an excess of mental or spiritual vitality. In using the vocal organs, two kinds of effects are pos- sible, namely, intonations, as we may term them, caused by adjustments of the vocal chords in the larynx, and articulations caused by adjustments of the lips, tongue, and palate. For ends of material utility, men command, assert, question, cry, call, and express many other wishes through intonations ; and they make their wishes more intelligible by forming them into words through articula- tions. But how and when does excess of force manifest itself in each form ? or how and when do men indulge in each form irrespective of any end of material utility? Evidently whenever, influenced by no demand of actual necessity, by no need of giving anything to others, or of getting it from them, they intone or talk to themselves, as we say. But when they are intoning to themselves without articulation, what are they doing ? Humming. And what is humming, as related to art ? Undoubtedly, the beginning of music — the beginning of the develop- ment of the beautiful in sound. So much all will recog- REPRESENTA TION OF THE MIND. 85 nize ; but probably few will recognize that unless a man could and did hum in this apparently useless way, it is not likely that any conception of musical art could ever be suggested to him. At any rate, it is true as a fact that it is never until something in connection with the form in which he hums — the movement, the tune — attracts his attention, charms him, seems beautiful to him, and he begins to experiment or play with it for its own sake, irrespective of any aim having to do with material utility, that he begins to develop the possibilities of the musician. In a precisely similar way, talking to oneself may be said to be the underlying condition of poetry. When a man, because interested in some ulterior object, is talking to others, he has neither the time nor the inclination to think of the form that he is using. It is only when some- thing in connection with the form — the metaphors, similes, sounds of the syllables, or words — attracts his attention, charms him, seems beautiful to him, and he begins to experiment or play with it for its own sake — it is only then that he begins to develop the possibilities of the poet. How now is the same motive manifested in results ne- cessitating the use of the hands ? These results we may divide into three classes, namely, those produced respec- tively by marking, as in drawing or coloring, by shaping, as in separating compounds into their elements or in modelling them ; and by combining, as in constructing and building single objects from scattered material. As actually applied to products, all, these methods are some- times used conjointly ; but they are clearly distinguishable and can sometimes be used separately. Each, too, can serve ends of material utility, and this even in the expres- sion of thought and feeling. In this way, the first method 86 ART IN THEORY. leads a man to draw outlines on his material, whether board or stone, preparatory to shaping it ; and not only so, but for the purpose of aiding his own memory or of preparing explanations by the use of which others may sketch and color plans of sites and figures that he has seen. It leads him, too, after a time, to invent, first, ideographic and hieroglyphic, and then phonetic forms of writing. The second method leads him to put the results of his drawing to further use by cutting up the material that he has marked in order to shape it for certain other ulterior ends. Moreover, the material itself, when so shaped, as in cases of clothing, knives, forks, and most implements, usually shows exactly what these ends are. The third method leads him to join together materials that have already been thus marked and shaped, and in this way to bring the whole procedure to a conclusion, the most primitive, as well as still the most necessary and impor- tant adaptation of this method being that employed in house-building. We are ready now to ask, how and when do men manifest excess of expressional force according to each of these methods ? or indulge in each irrespective of any end of material utility ? Evidently, whenever in- fluenced by no demand of actual necessity, by no need of doing anything for others, or of getting anything from them, they mark, or shape, or combine merely to gratify themselves, that is, to embody their own conceptions of what is attractive, charming, or beautiful. A rude outline can convey all that is essential to suggest to oneself or to others the idea of a horse. When a man, simply to give vent to the excess of energy in his expressional nature, delays over the outline, adding to what would be neces- sary in hieroglyphic writing, for instance, limnings and colors that make the representation more complete or REPRESENTA TION OF THE MIND. %J ornate, he is moved by the art-impulse. When again, merely to give vent to this energy, besides shaping, he shapes carefully, or ornaments clothing, knives, forks, or other implements ; and, still more, when he does all this in connection with busts and statues, which from their very nature by imaging human forms and faces, are pecul- iarly adapted for the expression of human thought and feeling, then again he is moved by this impulse. Once more, when in constructing by way of combination any object, but especially a house with which we always asso- ciate a human presence, he adds to it, above what is neces- sary, pillars, porches, window-caps, cornices, cupolas, and always in the degree in which these are distinctly expres- sive of human sentiment — as in a church, for instance, — then, too, he is influenced by the art-impulse. It is almost superfluous to point out that, in these three cases, respec- tively, we find the conditions leading to painting, sculp- ture, and architecture. Some who have read these last paragraphs will now recall, and be right in recalling, that when men speak of expression, they ordinarily associate it with the use of the human body as in intonations, words, postures, and gestures, especially as in the first two of these. But in what has been said here, it has been associated with the use of the hands in the construction of external products. At first thought, notwithstanding the fact that painting and sculpture, in some of their phases, reproduce postures and gestures, it certainly seems that expression can be at- tributed to these products in only a secondary and differ- ent sense from that in which it is attributable in the other cases. If this be so, why are not music and poetry, which are developed from the direct and primary form of expres- sion in the use of the voice, more emphatically results of 88 ART IN THEORY. the art-impulse than are painting, sculpture, and architec- ture, which are developed only from the indirect and secondary form of expression attendant upon the con- structive uses of the hands? This is a question with rea- sons behind it ; and it needs to be answered. The answer will be suggested by that other fact, pointed out on page 63, namely, that expression necessarily involves an appeal to the ear or eye through that which is an appearance or form — in other words, an external product. If this be so, that art which is in the highest and most distinctive sense an expression, must also involve in the highest and most distinctive sense an external product. It is true that the term expression is primarily associated with that which results from the use of the voice ; but it is also true that secondarily it is associated with that which is made by the hands. It is true, moreover, that an external product is primarily associated with that which is made by the hands ; but here, too, it is also true that secondarily it is associated with that which results from the use of the voice. These two facts, as will be seen, counterbalance each other, and in this way correct the apparent inequali- ties in the conditions underlying the different arts. For, if music and poetry suggest most with regard to expres- sion, painting, sculpture, and architecture suggest most with regard to an external product; and the whole truth is not taken into consideration until it is recognized that a work of the finest and most distinctive human art in necessitating expression for expression's sake necessitates also an external product of beauty embodying this. Let us observe now in what sense this statement is true as applied to each of the arts in succession. Music has been traced to humming. But only a slight development of this latter is needed in order to turn it REPRESENTATION OF THE MIND. 89 into a song; and a song is not merely the beginning of music, but music. Cannot a man sing without construct- ing a product external to himself? Certainly he can, and so can a bird ; and, if a man could do no more, he could do nothing entitling music to be placed in a class different from that to which, for example, dramatic representation belongs. A melody, in itself considered, is not necessa- rily, in the finest and most distinctive sense, a natural form made human. Yet it may be this. It is so in the degree in which it is unmistakably a product of the art of music. What is such a product ? A composition that consists not merely of unstudied subjective expressions in sounds. It is objective. It is a result of labor and practice. Even aside from its usually involving an external writing in musical notation, it is a development of a complicated system of producing notes and scales and chords, not only with the human voice, but with numerous instruments, invented, primarily, so as to imitate every possibility of the; human voice, all these working together in accordance with subtle laws of melody and harmony which, as a re- sult of years of experiment, men have discovered and learned to apply. Or, to go back again, we might infer the same thing from the origin of music. Simple hum- ming is not only a method of expression for its own sake, but it is a form of nature, of nature as manifested in a man. A symphony is a development not only of the pos- sibilities of this expression, but of its peculiar form ; and it involves, therefore, especially in connection with the necessity for a written score and for manufactured instru- ments, the existence and elaboration of form such as is possible only to an external product. Notice, too, that to the last detail of this elaboration, there is nothing whatever in the art that is not attributable to the satisfac- go ART IN THEORY. tion which the mind takes in developing the form not for the purpose of attaining an end of material utility ; but for the sake of its own intrinsic beauty. Similar facts are true of poetry. A man like an animal could express his actual wants in a few different sighs, cries, grunts, and hisses. But from these he develops, in their various forms, the innumerable words and phrases that render possible the nice distinctions of language. These words and phrases are often freshly invented by the poets, and they are almost always invented as a re- sult of what is recognized to be the poetic tendency latent in all men. As for poems considered as wholes, their metres or rhymes are never produced as immediate subjective utterances, such as we hear in ordinary speech. They are always the work of the imagination, bringing together the results of experience and experiment, ac- cording to the method termed composition. In other words, even aside from the fact that they are usually written or printed, but necessarily when considered in connection with this, they evidently involve the con- struction of an external product. Nor can we explain their existence at all, except by attributing them to the intense and unadulterated satisfaction which the poet derives from elaborating them, not for ends of material utility, but for effects of beauty that pertain only to themselves. Passing on to painting, sculpture, and architecture, let us notice in what sense the statements just made with reference to music and poetry are true of them too. As has been said, they all appeal to sight. How does a man express to sight what is passing in his mind ? Un- doubtedly by his postures and the gestures of his hands, feet, head, and countenance, and by these as we see him when standing alone not only, but when surrounded by REPRESENTATION OF THE MIND. 9 1 other persons and things. Postures and gestures, though never as definitely intelligible as the sounds of the voice, are, nevertheless, in as true a sense natural forms of com- municating thought and feeling ; and may be developed into the subordinate art of pantomime, just as natural forms of utterance in sound may be developed into the art of speech. But pantomime is no more painting or sculpture than speech is poetry. It is when a man be- comes so attracted and charmed by the methods through which he naturally expresses thought in pantomime that he begins to make an external product, embodying thought through like methods, — it is then that he begins to work in the sphere of the higher arts. Moreover, when he does this, he does not pose with his own figure, as in dramatic representation, but he makes other figures pose — that is to say, he draws, colors, shapes, and combines the different parts of the figures of other men, either alone, or in connection with their fellows or with objects of nature animate or inanimate. Besides this, too, very often without making use of any human figures, he draws, colors, shapes, or combines other animate or inanimate objects. It is for these reasons and in these circumstances that he produces a work of painting or of sculpture. In other words, instead of conveying a thought or feeling through a posture of his own body, he conveys it through representing a posture in a pictured man's body ; and if his conception have reference to surround- ing persons and objects, he represents these latter as sur- rounding the pictured man ; — clouds, rain, and a waste, for instance, if his idea be the same as that expressed in lines like these : The clouds have broken in a dreary rain And on the waste I stand alone with heaven. Lady of Lyons : Bulwer* 92 ART IK THEORY. Or if his idea involve nothing that needs to be rep- resented by human figures ; if it be something that could be conveyed by his pointing to animate or in- animate objects, were they present in a certain location, then he leaves the human figures out of his picture, and reproduces merely these objects — darkness, rain, wind, a clinging vine, and dead leaves, for instance, if his idea be like that expressed in the following : The day is darjc and cold and dreary, It rains and the wind is never weary ; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall. The Rainy Day : Longfellow. Paintings and statues are thus external products that are embodiments of distinctively human methods of ex- pression. But, besides this, notice how true it is that they are not directed primarily toward ends of material utility. The infinite pains taken with the lines, shadings, hues, and modellings, that alone make them works of art, cannot be explained on any other supposition than that they are owing to the satisfaction which a man takes in developing the forms for the sake of their own intrin sic beauty, wholly aside from any desire to make them con- vey clear intelligence of that which they express. This could usually be conveyed equally well by the rude out- lines of hieroglyphics. All that has been said may be acknowledged, so far as the statements are applied to products of painting and sculpture. But how, it may be asked, can they be ap- plied to those of architecture ? The external character of its products is, of course, evident ; but it has other characteristics, which cause many to doubt whether, in REPRESENTATION OF THE MIND. 93 important regards, it does not differ too greatly from music, poetry, painting, and sculpture, to admit of its being placed in the same class with them. " Architecture," says Fergusson in his " History of Modern Architecture," " is, in fact, nothing more than the aesthetic form of the purely technic art of building." " Architecture," says Prof. Henry N. Day in his "Science of ^Esthetics," "belongs under the denomination of dependent beauty, for it char- acteristically seeks an end of utility " ; though in another place he says : " It appears sometimes as properly a free art." "In . . . architecture," says Prof. John Bascom in his " ^Esthetics or Science of Beauty," "we come yet more immediately under the law of utility. Architecture becomes a fine art, addresses itself to the tastes and feel- ings of men, through the thoughtful and emotional manner in which the particular object of protection, transit, or motion is reached." As will be noticed, the idea in all these quotations — and they might be multiplied almost indefinitely — is the same. Architecture is sometimes technic and sometimes aesthetic, sometimes useful, some- times ornamental. But to some extent the same holds true of all the arts. They are all elaborations of modes of expression which, in their natural forms, serve ends of material utility. An ordinary wood-shed has no more to do with architecture than the cry of our nursery, the talk of our kitchen, the paint of our stable, or the rock of our curb-stone has to do with the respective art to which it seems allied, whether music, poetry, painting, or sculpture. But underlying all these latter arts, it may be said, there are subjective modes of expression, like humming, speaking, gesturing, whereas architecture is always devel- oped from an objective product — a dwelling. The answer 94 ART IN THEORY. to this is that, underlying architecture too, there are sub- jective modes of expression. There are the ideas, for instance, of support and shelter ; and these ideas it is by no means impossible or unusual to represent by gesture. Moreover, in all the other arts too there are objective products intervening between the subjective and the artistic forms. Artificial resonant sounds, spoken and written language, hieroglyphic drawings and carvings are conditions that antedate music, poetry, painting, or sculpture, no less than house building antedates architec- ture. House building, moreover, according to the princi- ples that have been unfolded, is no less truly a form of natural expression than these others are. It springs from the nature of the primitive man, precisely as nest build- ing or dam-building from the nature of the bird or the beaver. That architecture does not reproduce the forms of nature in as strict a sense as do poetry, painting, and sculpture is true ; yet, as we shall find hereafter, its products are modelled upon these forms in as strict a sense as is the case in music. This art, like it, is evolved from the unfolding of the principles underlying nature's methods of formation even more than from a reproduc- tion of its actual forms. And yet architecture does repro- duce these latter. The portico of the Greek temple is acknowledged to be nothing more than an elaboration in stone, for the sake merely of elaborating its possibilities of beauty, of the rude wooden building with a roof sup- ported by posts, which was used by the primitive man in his natural state. A Chinese or Japanese temple or palace, with its many separate small structures, each cov- ered by a roof sagging downward from the apex before moving upward again at the eaves, is nothing more than REPRESENTA TION OF THE MIND. 95 an elaboration in wood, for the sake of elaborating the possibilities of beauty in it, of the rude tent used by the nomadic ancestors of these people in their primitive natural states. That Gothic columns and arches are merely imitative elaborations, for the same reason, of the methods and manners of support suggested by arrange- ments of rows of tree-trunks and their branches, has been strenuously denied and even ridiculed. But the fact re- mains that an avenue of trees with bending branches invariably suggests the effect of a Gothic cathedral. If so, why could it not have suggested the conception of a Gothic cathedral to the architect who first planned one ? Whatever answer may be given to this question, or whatever may be thought of the previous statements, none can fail to recall that we frequently find in architec- ture actual reproductions of the figures of men, animals, leaves, and flowers, chiselled, carved, or worked in some way into the ornamentation ; and who can say that the world has seen the highest developments in these direc- tions? Why might it not be possible to carry these methods further, and to produce an interior, the columns, arches, groinings, and ceilings of which should resemble, as closely as could the forms of a landscape picture, the trunks and leaves of, say, a palm grove, while the walls and partitions should resemble natural rocks overgrown by natural vines ? Is it not conceivable too, in this age, when artificial tile and brick and stone can be produced in all possible colors, and when iron can be moulded into beams and platings of all possible shapes, that, with judi- cious selections of natural models and artistic fore-short- enings, exteriors might be produced, in the wholes or parts of which, both in walls and roofs, the resemblances to natural appearances — vine-clad or flower-covered 96 ART IN THEORY. groves, mounds, cliffs — should be almost as unmistakable as in certain works of painting and sculpture ? To answer either of these questions in the affirmative is to admit that there is nothing in the art itself neces- sarily removing it from a sphere identical with that of painting and sculpture. Its products, it is true, must fulfil the purely technical principles of mechanical contriv- ance. But so must works of music fulfil the principles of harmony, to say nothing of the technique of execution. So must works of poetry or painting or sculpture fulfil the principles of rhythm, rhyme, grammar, color, or pro- portion. But in all these arts equally the fulfilment of such laws is only a means to an end. That end is the distinctively human satisfaction derived from elaborating forms in excess of that which is demanded in order to meet the exigencies of material utility, elaborating them simply because they are felt to be attractive and beautiful in themselves. CHAPTER IX. THE HIGHER AS DISTINGUISHED FROM OTHER REPRESENTATIVE ARTS. Other Representative Arts besides those already Considered — Elocution, Pantomime, Dancing, Costuming, Jewelry, Personal Adornment, and Dramatic Art — These do not Necessitate a Product External to the' Artist — Oratory Necessitates neither this nor an End Different from One of Utility — Decorative Art, Landscape Gardening, and Artistic Phases of Civil Engineering have less Possibilities of Expression — Yet All these are Allied to the Higher Arts and Fulfil the Same Prin- ciples — What is Meant by the Humanities ? — Phonetic and Plastic Art — ^Esthetic — Vagueness of these Distinctions — Appropriateness of the Term Representative — The Terms : Arts of Form, Beaux Arts, Fine Arts, Belles Lettres ; The Higher, The Higher ^Esthetic, and The Higher Representative Arts. A N application of the principles thus far unfolded to the arts with which we are chiefly concerned, neces- sitates our making at this point certain distinctions, possi- ble only through the aid of the thought advanced in the rast chapter, between various branches of that kind of art which may properly be termed representative. The ques- tion arises whether the arts from which our illustrations have been drawn, and which all acknowledge to be the higher arts, are not representative in some peculiar sense or man- ner? If not so, how can we separate them from other arts which are at once suggested, which, indeed, have often been mentioned hitherto in this argument, but which, ac- cording to common opinion, at least, do not possess quali- 7 97 98 ART IN THEORY. ties entitling them to be included in the same class with music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture ? Let us, for a little, consider this question. It has been said, for instance, that music and poetry are forms of representation developed from the use of the voice. But is not the same fact equally true — indeed, be- cause of the more immediate connection traceable, is it not more true — of elocution ? And if painting, sculpture, and architecture are forms of representation developed from the use of the body, particularly of the hands, in ex- pression and construction, is not the same fact true, and, because of the more immediate connection traceable, more true of pantomime and dancing? And if painting, sculp- ture, and architecture again, can represent aesthetically, through the uses of colors, metals, or stones, the thoughts and feelings indicated by the positions, postures, or sur- roundings of the body, why cannot the same be done as applied to the actual body by the arts of costuming, jew- elry, and personal adornment in general, including certain phases of upholstery ? But to pass to a more dignified art — there is the dramatic. What can be more unmistakably a form of representation, or more unmistakably developed from a use of the human body? Now why is it that these arts — especially the latter — are not included in the same class as the five considered to rank highest. The only thoroughly satisfactory answer to this question seems to be the one that follows logically upon the line of thought presented in the last chapter, which answer is, that none of the arts last indicated necessitate that which was shown to be requisite in the cases of the other five — namely, an external product. Take the dramatic art — a better term, by the way, than histrionic, though perhaps, because liable to be confounded with dramatic literature, THE HIGHER AND OTHER REPRESENTA TIVE ARTS. 99 not so distinctive a term as dramatics — take this art. In important particulars, it certainly stands at the centre of the higher aesthetic system, containing in itself, as it does, the germs of all its artistic possibilities. It may use not alone the sustained intonations of the voice that are de- veloped into melody and music, but also the unsustained articulations that are developed into language and poetry ; and besides these, too, it may use the posturing in con- nection with surrounding scenes and persons and stage settings that are developed into painting, sculpture, and architecture. Why then is it not usually included in the same class with music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture ? Is not this the reason ? — Because its effects result mainly from the use of means of expression that are connected with the artist's own body, whereas the other arts necessitate the use and consequent production of a medium of expression that is external to him. There is little doubt that externality in this sense is important in order to give completeness to the conception of a product of art as a thing that is made : and there is no doubt at all that it is important in order to give a conception of a product of superlative value. While the effects of music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture are embodied in such forms that they can continue to influence the world through ages, the effects of the dramatic art, except so far as it becomes literature, die with the actor who pro- duces them. Elocution, pantomime, dancing, costuming, jewelry, methods of personal adornment, and dramatics, are all representative arts ; but none of them necessitate a product external to the man ; of none of them can it be said that they result in " art-works." The same statement applies, to some extent also, to oratory, and to certain forms of rhetoric. But with refer- IOO ART IN THEORY. ence to these, as also to decorative art, and to landscape gardening, to say nothing of the combinations of the latter with architecture which characterize some of the results of civil engineering, an additional principle often operates, which is, that they are not solely and therefore are not strictly representative. Oratory involves some of the representative character- istics not only of elocution but also — and here it is at one with rhetoric — of poetry. Like the latter, both oratory and rhetoric result in an external product. But, counteract- ing this latter fact, is another which causes both to differ not only from the dramatic art but equally from music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is the fact that, at their best, neither public address nor rhetoric is attributable, as we have found to be true of the effects of these arts, to the satisfaction derived from elaborating a form of expression as a thing of beauty aside from an end of utility. Oratory invariably springs from a desire to influence, in certain definite directions, the thoughts and feelings of those to whom it is addressed. This fact makes its rhetoric differ from poetry no less than its de- livery does from acting. Anything that attracts atten- tion merely to the manner of expression, to form as form, is injurious both to oratory and to rhetoric per se. But it is often essential to the effects of the actor and the poet. Still more closely allied to the arts considered in the last chapter, especially to architecture, are decoration and landscape gardening. Their products are external to the man, and seem to spring from the satisfaction which he takes in a form of expression aside from an end of utility. Why then are they not included among the arts of the highest character ? Perhaps they should be. At the THE HIGHER AND OTHER REPRESENTATIVE ARTS. IOI same time, there are reasons justifying the course of those who assign them to a lower rank. Their effects, especially those of landscape gardening, are produced through a use of inanimate nature not wholly out of analogy with that in which those of the dramatic are produced through a use of the human form. And besides this, although con- ventional figures and gardens and parks are certainly works of nature made human, it is a question whether an ornamentation by colors and outlines, often merely con- ventional, neither imitative of nature, nor suggestive to the mind; or whether fields or forests however transformed by the hand of man, can express or address the sympathies and intellect in the same sense, to say nothing of degree in which the works of the arts of the highest rank do this. The majority of people seem to think not ; and as common opinion has been the test which we have applied hitherto, we are justified in applying it here. All the arts, however, that have just been mentioned — especially elocution, pantomime, dancing, costuming, dramatics, oratory, decorative art and landscape garden- ing — are, either wholly or partly, representative in character, and thus necessarily have many features in •common with the arts that it is the special object of this •essay to consider. For this reason, references will often be made to them ; and in many places they will be treated as themselves belonging to the class in which the ordinary judgment of men allows us to place only music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Indeed, elocution, pantomime, dancing, dramatics, and oratory are often grouped with these latter arts ; and all together called " the humanities." A special appropriate- ness will be recognized too in applying this term to them. They are the arts through which a man can cause forms, 102 ART IN THEORY. otherwise often merely material in their influence, to thrill and glow with emotion and meaning; through which he can show himself able to breathe, as it were, something of that sympathetic and intellectual life which has already given life and humanity to his own material frame. For similar reasons we can recognize, as applied mainly to poetry, painting, and sculpture, the origin of the term phonetic, from the Greek