Hate (College of AgncttUute 
 Kt (f ornell MntnerBttH 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 N 7425.P5 
 
 Form and colour. 
 
 3 1924 014 091 429 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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FORM AND COLOUR 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Works of Man 
 
 Studies in Race Characteristics 
 
 as revealed in the Creative Art 
 
 of the World 
 
 A new and revised Edition, with 
 
 z6 Illustrations. 
 
 •js. 6d. net (postage jd.) 
 
 DUCKWORTH & CO., PUBLISHERS. 
 
FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 BY 
 
 LISLE MARCH PHILLIPPS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE WORKS OF MAN" 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DUCKWORTH AND CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
First published 1915. 
 
Debication 
 
 I AM GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND THAT NO ONE MAY PROPERLY 
 JOIN IN THE DEDICATION OF A BOOK WHO HAS NOT ALSO 
 CONTRIBUTED TO THE WRITING OF IT. MY WIFE HAS NOT 
 HELPED TO WRITE THE PRESENT BOOK, SAVE IN SO FAR THAT 
 HER PLUCK AND PATIENCE HAVE RENDERED ITS PRODUC- 
 TION POSSIBLE, BUT NONE THE LESS DOES SHE UNITE WITH 
 ME IN DEDICATING IT GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY TO 
 
 HELEN AND LUDOVIC UNWIN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Testimony of Nature i 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Eastern Point of View 22 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Eastern and Western Architecture ... 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Byzantine Architecture 60 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Indian Thought and Indian Art .... 92 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Eastern Art and Western Critics . 112 
 
 vii 
 
viii FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 PART II 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Classic Point of View 125 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Greek Sculpture 144 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Greek Architecture 156 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 East and West 177 
 
 PART III 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Christian Point of View 188 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Stained-Glass Windows 214 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Venice and the Renaissance 230 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 Intellectual Limitations 259 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 The Present and the Future ' 269 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Knowledge comes to us in two ways : it comes to us 
 by way of an inward, immediate vision, or instinct, as we 
 call it, which perceives the end without perceiving the 
 steps by which it is attained ; or it comes by way of the 
 more matter-of-fact action of reason and of thought. In 
 all ages the difference, even the rivalry and opposition 
 between these two methods of perception, has been recog- 
 nised. Mystics and rationahsts distinguish between the 
 emotional and intellectual standpoints, between the 
 interior and the exterior vision, or, as is so often said, 
 between " the things that are without and the things 
 that are within." " Put away vain reason and the out- 
 ward shows of things," cries the mystic, " and surrender 
 yourself to the act of spiritual contemplation which has 
 for its subject-matter the truths that endure." " Brush 
 aside," cries the rationaUst, " visions and dreams of an 
 unknown state of being, and confine yourself to the 
 aspects of this material universe, which is the only one 
 of which you have, or are ever hkely to have, experience." 
 Thus the teachers of mankind, the mystic, the seer, the 
 prophet, the ascetic on the one hand, and on the other 
 the philosopher, the scholar, the man of science speak 
 to the world. They have ever been so much opposed 
 that the success of one side has been measured in the loss 
 of the other, and for mystical progress it was as essential 
 to surrender material interests and the faculties of the 
 mind which take charge of those interests, eis for pro- 
 ficiency in science and mundane knowledge it was neces- 
 sary to abjure abstract spiritual contemplation. 
 
X FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 This dualism has always, I say, existed in life, and 
 since art is an expression of Ufe, and is governed and 
 controlled by life's emotions and ideas, we can but expect 
 that so marked a distinction in life will reflect itself in 
 a corresponding distinction in art. That expectation is 
 verified. The true main elements in art are form and 
 colour. Of these form, in its essence, is a process of 
 definition which lends itself spontaneously to the opera- 
 tions of intellect, while colour, in its essence and divorced 
 from form, is the natural medium in which sensuous and 
 emotional, as distinct from rational, impulses express 
 themselves. Thus the essential division of the human 
 mind into intellectual and emotional is mirrored in art's 
 similar division into form and colour. 
 
 In this way have these two vehicles been used in the 
 past. Form has dominated art whenever and wherever 
 the intellectual faculty was dominant in Ufe ; colour has 
 dominated art whenever and wherever the emotional 
 faculty has dominated life. Thus, by the traces they have 
 left in art, the two great currents of ideas which have 
 illumined the mind and spirit of man may be traced in 
 their ebb and flow and in their interaction upon each other. 
 
 Moreover, it appears that not only is the mind of man 
 divided into intellectual and spiritual faculties, and not 
 only is art divided into the corresponding elements of 
 form and colour, but the actual imiVerse itself has come 
 to share in this arrangement and be subject to a similar 
 division. Every spiritual impulse which has quickened 
 the soul of man has come out of the East just as every 
 practical invention or intellectual conception has come 
 out of the West. Mysticism is as commonplace an affair 
 in Eastern life as science is in Western. Form, therefore, 
 is the art idiom of the West, colour the art idiom of the 
 East. 
 
 It has been attempted in the following pages, not only to 
 show how all the great colour schools, such as the Byzantine 
 style of architecture, the splendour of Gothic interiors, 
 the suffused richness of Venetian painting, have been 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 derived directly from Eastern sources of influence, and in 
 the same way how all the triumphs of form are strictly 
 of Western origin, but also that each element in art is an 
 outward manifestation of its own order of ideas, and 
 when it appears in art only does so because its own order 
 of ideas has previously appeared in life. 
 
 I would, in short, map out the pjist to the readej's 
 eye as dominated by the play of the spiritual and rational 
 faculties. I would show him the mystical faculty of 
 inward vision — impatient of outward claims, silencing 
 intellectual interference, intent and absorbed in con- 
 templation — out of its home in the East darting Westward 
 its rays of emotion and colour ; and I would show him the 
 intellectual faculty, reliant on the aspects of things and 
 devoted to material definitions, invading the East, now 
 and again, with its well-equipped forces of definite facts 
 and forms. Only I would show him these things, not as 
 philosophical vague arguments, but as made visible and 
 strikingly apparent in terms of art. As on a war map 
 red or blue flags, advancing and retreating, register the 
 conquests or defeats of their respective armies, so the 
 movements of art in the past, crystallising into form or 
 dissolving into colour, register the rise and decline of the 
 two great orders of ideas to which humanity owes its 
 enlightenment. 
 
 The value of such a testimony hes in the sense of 
 intelligibility it carries with it. The past history of man- 
 kind is vague and in some measure incomprehensible. 
 The whence and whither of the human lot is doubtful. 
 By what forces are we jnoved, and by what invisible 
 currents of racial instinct are we hurried along ? Is there 
 anywhere an order in this chaos ? 
 
 Wordsworth speaks of moments of serenity and insight 
 occurring in the midst of all this perplexity ; he speaks 
 of a " serene and blessed mood," 
 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world 
 Is lightened. 
 
xii FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Nature and the contemplation of Nature are the soiirces 
 for Wordsworth of this enhghtenment. But art is such 
 a source also. Art in its record preserves the sense of 
 proportion and significance. Whims, fantasies, the ex- 
 periments of a day leave no permanent artistic impression 
 behind them. Only the master-impulses, the thoughts 
 shared by whole races survive. These survive, stript of 
 all obscuring irrelevancies, in their naked power. So that 
 looking back, under art's guidance, we see humanity, not 
 blindly fluctuating to and fro, but moving under the 
 banners of great ideas in motions related to each other 
 and governed by a purpose. 
 
 We are all one family. We are something, not out of 
 our own thought and experience, but out of the thought 
 and experience of past generations. What, then, was 
 that thought and experience ? What did it amount 
 to ? What is the message which the past sends on to 
 the present ? It is recorded in art. The best of Greek 
 thought is recorded in the columns and architraves of a 
 Doric temple. We must find room for that. The best 
 of Hindu thought is recorded in the apses and domes of 
 a Byzantine interior. We must find room for that. 
 Matthew Arnold used to say that the great thing was 
 to possess the best ideas going ; but it is perhaps even 
 more important to possess the best ideas not going. 
 Ideas that are in the air can be trusted to take care of 
 themselves. It is the ideas we have got out of touch 
 with, the ideas we can no longer handle because of the 
 atrophy in ourselves of the faculty which deals with them 
 — it is these we need to exert ourselves to recapture. 
 
 The usual bibMcal phrase for the curing of the sick 
 is that they were " made whole." The sick man, that 
 is to say, was thought of as incomplete, as only part 
 of a man, whereas the healthy man was whole or com- 
 plete. What is true of the body is usually more or less 
 true of the mind. Mental sickness is apt to be a kind of 
 lopsidedness due to the development of certain faculties 
 at the expense of others. The sources from which joy 
 
INTRODUCTION xiu 
 
 and insight are derived by one age may be perhaps sealed 
 up entirely for another. The East, developing its spiritual 
 mysticism with concentrated fervour, ignored with equal 
 completeness the claims and gifts of the intellect. The 
 West, cultivating imder Greek auspices the fruits of 
 intellect, had scarcely a thought to spare for spiritual 
 insight. 
 
 But the main characteristic of modem hfe is the 
 world-wide scope and breadth of its knowledge, its 
 research, its appreciation. We cannot ever again con- 
 centrate exclusively on a hfe or an art entirely spiritual or 
 entirely intellectual. The necessity is forced upon us, by 
 our outlook, our point of view, our whole culture, of 
 being " whole " in a new sense, whole, that is to say, not 
 in the sense of being wholly devoted to the things of the 
 soul or of the mind, but as including both these in our 
 estimate of a whole man. 
 
 In this necessity of ours art is our best aid. Whatever 
 is dropped out of account in to-day's estimate, art survives 
 to correct our reckoning. This is the great advocate 
 which testifies to all the sources from which the mind of 
 man has derived Hght and pleads for the disinterested 
 use of all the human faculties. Weighing its testimony 
 we enter into the meaning of thoughts which have been 
 the stay of ages ; sides of our nature long disused are 
 quickened ; we shake ourselves free from the paralysing 
 conventions and Hmitations of contemporary thought, and 
 in the recognition of what is permanent we obtain release 
 from that worst of all tjnrannies, the tsnranny of the 
 ephemeral. 
 
 I have divided my subject into three parts ; the first 
 dealing with the East, the second with the classical epoch, 
 and the third with Christian Europe, these being, as it 
 seems to me, the most significant eras into which life 
 and art can be divided. In each case a preUminary 
 chapter deals with, the point of view and outlook of the 
 epoch afterwards to be described in terms of art. Thus 
 the first part (after a chapter on Nature, which may seem 
 
xiv FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 an irrelevance, but which is really not so) opens with a 
 sketch of India's spiritual philosophy, and briefly indicates 
 the extent to which that central thought has monopoUsed 
 the attention of the Indian mind, to the entire exclusion 
 of intellectual culttire. This bias of the Indian mind 
 imposes certain limitations on Indian Hfe and civilisation, 
 and indeed on the hfe and civiUsation of the East as a 
 whole, for the whole East has largely taken the ply from 
 India, and in the following chapters this effect on the Hfe 
 and civilisation of the East is examined in its consequences 
 upon art. That is to say, Eastern art is used as the 
 interpreter of Eastern hfe. 
 
 In the same way with the classic section ; the first 
 chapter describes the exclusively intellectual bias of that 
 period, the kind of hfe that was led, its successful develop- 
 ments and no less marked limitations, and the chapters 
 which follow endeavour to point out how and in what 
 manner both the noble qualities and the deficiencies of 
 the Greek temperament are visibly incarnated in the 
 characteristics of Greek art. 
 
 These two first parts, being naturally contrasted, are 
 easy to deal with. The third is more difficult. I have 
 endeavoured in the first chapter of this section to show 
 that, from the Christianised age on, the attempt of the 
 West constantly was to unite and combine the spiritual 
 and intellectual motives which had hitherto been culti- 
 vated separately, and under conditions which seemed to 
 show that they were deemed irreconcilable. It is during 
 the mediaeval period that the reconcihation and equaj 
 development of these two ideals is first apparent. 
 Mediaeval hfe is remarkable, on the one hand, for its strong, 
 practical reahsation of mundane interests and keen and 
 virile interest in mundane affairs, and, on the other hand, 
 for the speculative fervour with which it surrendered 
 itself to spiritual contemplation, and its evident sensitive- 
 ness to that kind of inward fehcity. From that date on, 
 whatever fluctuations to one side or the other may have 
 occurred, it has always been apparent that no ultimate 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 contentment was to be achieved which left out of account 
 either of the two great preceding developments of the 
 human intelligence. Christian art, during and since the 
 mediaeval epoch, has been and is, I think, chiefly signifi- 
 cant by reason of its unremitting experiments in the 
 reconciHation of these hitherto opposed ideals. 
 
 Briefly, then, the aim of what I have written is to treat 
 art as a language of which the two main dialects are 
 form and colour, and in this way, by the examination of 
 its really perfectly intelligible records, to add the testimony 
 of art to such evidences of the characters and motives 
 of man as we already possess. The reader who happens 
 to be acquainted with a former book of mine. The Works 
 of Man, may observe a resemblance between that and 
 the present one. At the time the earher book was written 
 I had not fuUy grasped the range of the ideas with which 
 I was dealing, and I was content to treat styles of art 
 as merely characteristic of their own epochs and races. 
 However, the earlier standpoint leads naturally to the 
 later, so much so that the chapters of The Works of Man 
 fall into their place, and may be read as ampUfications 
 of the present volume. 
 
 Some of the material, amounting to about four or five 
 chapters, of the following pages has appeared in the 
 Contemporary and Edinburgh Reviews. I am much 
 obliged to the editors of those periodicals for allowing 
 me to make the present use of it. 
 
 LISLE MARCH PHILLIPPS. 
 
 Satwell, Henley-on-Thames. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 
 
 Those scenes in Nature in which the quality of form most pre- 
 dominates tend to stimulate an intellectual mood ; those scenes in which 
 colour predominates stimulate an emotional mood. 
 
 My object in this chapter is a simple one. I wish to 
 point out that the arguments we shall by and by apply 
 to art apply also to Nature, and are borne out and verified, 
 so to speak, by the views and landscapes we see around 
 us. Such testimony is important, because laws which 
 are laws of art only, which have been evolved in the 
 studio or formulated by critics but have no general 
 appUcation, are of very doubtful authenticity and value 
 compared to those which can be shown to form part of 
 the universal scheme of Nature. In the present book 
 we are deaUng with form and colour, elements common 
 to Nature and to art, and we shall presently perhaps be 
 able to show that, as regards art, form is the expressive 
 vehicle for intellectual impressions and colour the expres- 
 sive vehicle for emotional impressions. But there is 
 nothing exclusively artistic or aesthetic in these proposi- 
 tions. They hold just as good of all natural sights and 
 objects as they do of pictures and sculpture, and the 
 reader can verify them as well in a country walk as in 
 visits to museums. We shall find, if we consult Nature, 
 that, in her operations, too, colour is emotional and form 
 intellectual ; and more than that we shall find that, in 
 ringing the changes on these motives. Nature rehes on 
 
2 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 just the same agencies as Art does. For instance, we 
 shall find that scenes in Nature which most deeply strike 
 the emotional chord in us are scenes in which colour is 
 controlled by chiaroscuro rather than by shape and 
 outline, whereas those scenes which are most evidently 
 intellectual are scenes in which colour is controlled by 
 shape and outline rather than by chiaroscuro. Step by 
 step, as colour passes under the dominion of light and 
 shade or under the dominion of individual objects, an 
 emotional or intellectual value will be found to attach 
 to it. That, we shall find, is the rule in Nature ; and by 
 and by, when we discover that precisely the same rule 
 holds good in art, we shall regard it with the more respect 
 for having remarked that it was a law of Nature before 
 it was a law of art. 
 
 Let us, then, with this testimony in view, essay a 
 brief analysis of One or two samples of scenery. Along 
 the south Devon coast the cliffs often descend abruptly 
 into the sea, and as we round the promontories each 
 bay reveals its cluster of cottages, its boats on the 
 shingle, and old grey quay, the whole being secluded 
 by the capes east and west which hold the hamlet 
 in their embrace, and endow it with the distinction of 
 isolation. If the reader will imagine himself to be looking 
 at such a scene he wUl perceive that the definite character 
 of its objects awaken a like mood of definite observation 
 in himself. The cottages, the grove of masts in the 
 harbour, the white gulls wheeling above them, the out- 
 spread nets on the beach, these and a hundred other items 
 are distinct features with a meaning and associations 
 belonging to them. They have much to communicate 
 with regard to the life and character of the community. 
 They are things to notice and think about, and their 
 appearance naturally tends to awaken in the nund a 
 correspondingly observant mood. In a word, the forms 
 of cottage, boat, gull, and the rest of them stimulate that 
 kind of reasoning comprehension which we call intellectual. 
 
 But if, as the boat drifts under the shadow of the 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 3 
 
 cliff, he leans over the side and gazes down into the 
 depths of water till they absorb his vision, the reader 
 will be aware immediately of a change of mind within 
 himself, a change of mind corresponding to the change 
 of view presented to his vision. The transition from 
 exterior to interior, from looking at to looking into, 
 will constitute a change not in outward point of view 
 only, but in his own mood. In the transition one set of 
 faculties, the faculties which recognise, distinguish, and 
 reason upon the doings and appearances of Nature, are 
 laid to rest, and another set of faculties, the faculties 
 which apprehend the mystery of the universe and readily 
 respond to spiritual promptings, are awakened and 
 stimulated. 
 
 Further, he will perceive that, though the mood of 
 pure feehng — of sensation as distinct from thought — ^in 
 which he is now wrapt, resents the intrusion of definite 
 forms, that is, definite ideas, yet it answers instantly 
 to suggestions of colour. If clouds pass over the sun 
 and the depths turn cold and grey, his own emotions 
 contract to the same bleakness. If the rays shine out 
 and those depths are illuminated with colour, his mood 
 dilates in proportion, and he is aware of an intensified 
 spiritual consciousness. 
 
 Here, then, are two scenes in immediate juxtaposition. 
 In the one the quaUty of form predominates. A number 
 of distinct, recognisable objects are set out in view, 
 suggesting ideas, as definite as themselves. The whole 
 scene exudes ideas, and naturally the mood of the on- 
 looker responds to the stimulus, and his intellectual 
 facidties of recognition and observation are kept active 
 and alert. In the second scene, on the contrary, forms 
 cease to exist, and with them dies mental activity. But 
 the very absence of recognisable objects opens the way 
 for a mood of enhanced spiritual sensibihty, which, too, 
 has its own machinery, and, as it passes from the in- 
 tellectual to the emotional phase, is played upon not by 
 notes of form but by notes of colour. 
 
4 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 The distinction we have noted is a universal one. 
 Form is always, in all circumstances of art or Nature, 
 intellectual in its essence. It speaks directly to the 
 understanding. Moreover, in consequence of its in- 
 tellectual nature, it appeals most strongly to intellectual 
 races and periods. It is strong whenever and wherever 
 intellect is developed, and weak whenever and wherever 
 intellect is undeveloped. If the sense for form has always 
 prevailed in the West, it is because the West has par- 
 ticularly relied upon and cultivated the intellectual 
 faculty. Further, in the West it has prevailed most 
 and achieved its finest successes when the intellectual 
 stimulus behind it was freshest and most vital, as in classic 
 Greece and Renaissance Italy. On the other hand, colour, 
 being emotional in its essence, has always appealed most 
 strongly to emotional races. Thus the colour sense is 
 indigenous to the East because the East has always 
 reUed upon the emotional faculty, the faculty of passive 
 intuition as opposed to active thought. If the reader 
 will recall the scenes just described, he will follow the 
 transition as a matter of personal experience. While 
 gazing at the boats, cottages, and trees of the coast 
 he belonged to the West. His material was the 
 material out of which Western science and creative 
 art have wrought their triumphs, and which has given 
 to our Western ideas their practical bias. But when 
 he detached himself from that view to immerse his 
 attention in the depths of ocean, he abandoned the 
 Western standpoint for the Eastern. He became a 
 seer, a fakir, a yogi. The spiritual consciousness which 
 suffused his being is the only mode of apprehension 
 which the East recognises ; and it was attained in the 
 same way, by the renunciation of the things of sense. 
 In turning his eyes from outward appearances to inward 
 depths he is obeying the Eastern counsel which hes at 
 the root of asceticism in all ages, and the enhanced 
 spiritual consciousness which he feels stealing over him 
 is a taste of the identical emotional ecstasy for the 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 5 
 
 sake of which so many austerities have been patiently 
 sustained. 
 
 Let me bring these arguments to yet one further test. 
 A beech-wood in autumn, at a time when the leaves have 
 turned yeUow but are still thick on the trees, may be 
 cited as the most profoundly emotional and sensuous 
 effect in English scenery. Near a certain house in Dorset- 
 shire such a grove exists, formed of towering trees, the 
 branches of which, meeting and mixing above, enclose 
 the interior of the wood with vaults of leaves, while the 
 space beneath is darkened and at the same time in- 
 describably enriched by the tints of the fohage through 
 which the hght filters. 
 
 Of the emotional character of such a scene there can 
 be no question, but the author was recently the witness 
 of an incident which, though trifling, may, as a proof of 
 the influence of such scenery, be worth describing. It 
 happened that a child was disporting itself on the lawn 
 adjoining the beech-grove already mentioned, plucking 
 flowers, helping the gardener, chasing butterflies, and 
 accompanying its manoeuvres with a Uvely chatter as 
 now one thing now another attracted its attention. 
 Presently it entered the grove to join the present writer, 
 but no sooner had it done so than a striking change was 
 visible in its whole manner and bearing. Advancing 
 into the interior of the wood, among the mottled shadows 
 and beams of hght, it paused and looked up and became 
 as it were absorbed in, or rather by, its surroundings. In 
 silence, with wide eyes and parted hps, it seemed to sur- 
 render itself to the current of feeUng which possessed 
 these glades, and when at last it turned to the writer it 
 was with eyes dUated and with an expression as wrapt 
 and abstracted as though it had seen a vision. Such 
 an experience to be sure is no more than common, but, 
 happening to be thinking of the nature of the feeUng 
 here present, to see its effect thus suddenly exerted on 
 the unconsciously receptive temperament of a child 
 startled the author almost as though he had for an instant 
 
6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 surprised the genius loci in visible aspect. A spirit 
 seemed to inhabit these precincts, so immanent, so almost 
 palpable to human sense, as to call to mind the famous 
 sentence of Bright, " You can almost hear the beating 
 of its wings," 
 
 In the depths of the wood as in the depths of the sea 
 the spirit of emotion may equally reside. Nay, it may 
 reside in much smaller compass. The effect of infinity 
 it conveys is independent of actual extent. An object 
 as tiny as a jewel will possess it, while a view embracing 
 an area of miles will not possess it. It may be that the 
 reason for the mystical and magical properties ascribed 
 to gems and crystals, and the part they have always played 
 in divination and the occult sciences, is due to the fact 
 that they achieve, within their tiny circuit, perfect space 
 obliteration. They possess the power of absorbing vision, 
 and the world and its claims are forgotten by whoever 
 gazes into them. In short, they are themselves facsimiles 
 and small replicas of the emotional mood which is con- 
 cerned, not with exact ideas, but with the consciousness 
 of being. Their depths are depths of the soul, and 
 whoever looks long into them feels the beginnings of 
 hypnotic suggestion stirred by the presentment of an 
 image of the infinite. Yet they may be carried in the 
 fingers. These phenomena are, however, familiar to all. 
 That the reader is aware of the mood we are concerned 
 with may be taken for granted. Let us go on, then, to 
 ask the further question — ^What is there in the disposition 
 and arrangement of our autumn mood that can account 
 for the kind of influence it exercises ? What are the 
 emotional factors that are at work in it ? 
 
 In the first place it is very noticeable that the colour 
 here present appears to be used almost independently of 
 form. Forms actually convey it, of course, but it does 
 not express their shape and dimensions. No forms are 
 visible. The leaves under foot, bronze, brown, grey, are 
 not leaves but rather the blended stitches of a carpet, 
 as soft and dim as some old Persian mosque carpet. So, 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 7 
 
 too, the multitude of leaves of the roof have no individual 
 existence, but, hke the leaves of the carpet, are inextri- 
 cably mingled together. Even in the intermediate spaces 
 betwixt roof and floor, where the great columns of trunks 
 stand by which the whole fabric is supported, no sharp 
 delineations of form occur. The trunks in the deep shade 
 suggest themselves but dimly, hke shapes seen through 
 deep water. Their colour is of the kind which melts 
 readily into the surrounding shadows, and in the obscurity 
 in which the lower depths of the wood are shrouded they 
 seem content to efface themselves. 
 
 We allow ourselves sometimes to be taken in by mere 
 statements of fact. Colour cannot exist, we say, apart 
 from substance ; it must colour something. Neither can 
 substance exist, at least visibly, apart from colour. The 
 two, therefore, are inseparable, and to talk of either exist- 
 ing without the other is fallacious. But we have to do 
 with things, not as they are, but as they appear to be, as 
 the eye sees them, for it is thus that they affect the mind. 
 And as a matter of appearance form and colour are separ- 
 able and even adverse influences. They are taking part in 
 a struggle all over the landscape, and are adversaries in 
 every view we look at. Sometimes form predominates, 
 that is to say, it gets colour into its power and forces it to 
 articulate, forces it to say tree, or gate, or cow, or what not, 
 and of course the mind of the observer is immediately im- 
 pressed by all the ideas that trees and cows and gates stand 
 for. Sometimes, on the contrary, forms are indistinctly 
 rendered, and among the blending of many objects and 
 the shuffled lights and shades the effect often produced 
 is merely of a variety of tints. One may conceive, in 
 short, of the visible universe as a film suspended before 
 the eyes, of which the colours now have a tendency to 
 adopt decisive outUnes and definite shapes, and now 
 again tend to run into each other and mingle , in rich 
 suffusions of their own. These are the two rival tend- 
 encies which stimulate inteUectual or emotional con- 
 sciousness, and it is in fact in this way that colour is 
 
8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 always used, not only in Nature but in art, the intellectual 
 school using it to define form and the emotional school 
 using it for its own sake. 
 
 If the reader would test this a little further, let him 
 walk on a few steps to the verge of the beech-grove, where, 
 through low gaps between trunks and under branches — 
 gaps which may be called the doors and windows of the 
 wood — ^he can obtain glimpses of the view without, of 
 distant hillsides with fields chequered on them, and solid 
 hedgerow elms, and the tiled roofs of a farm with cluster- 
 ing out-buildings. Here is a scene completely governed 
 by form and the ideas which forms convey. But a 
 moment ago we were steeped in an emotion voiceless but 
 absorbing. Yet while emotion was thus stirred our mind 
 was quiescent, for no clear shapes, or objects capable of 
 rousing distinct ideas, were present to excite its attention. 
 Those gorgeous yet grave tints, that coloured twihght in 
 which we were immersed, as they delineated no recog- 
 nisable forms, so they suggested no definite thoughts. 
 And our own mood, emotional yet inarticulate, was of a 
 like nature. We had no language for our feelings, for 
 language is itself a kind of form, or act of definition stimu- 
 lated by the presence of form, and here form w£is not. 
 But now that our glance finds the outlets along the margin 
 of the grove, and looks out upon the slopes of hill and 
 objects depicted upon them, how swiftly does our mood 
 change ! The colour of the scene before us is now de- 
 scriptive colour. It talks, it explains. It is the turn now 
 of definite ideas to take the place of indefinite emotions. 
 The square church tower, the just reaped stubble field 
 with the team and plough already at work furrowing its 
 gold to black, the line of new-thatched ricks along the 
 hedge, the cattle drowsing in the shade, now swinging a 
 tail, now flicking an ear, the glimpse of the manor-house 
 half hidden in trees : — these and scores of other details 
 the eye seizes with instant recognition. Each object is 
 known for what it is, and arouses the ideas and associa- 
 tions proper to it. The mind awakens, and the spectator 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 9 
 
 becomes a difEerent man. Unconscious an instant ago of 
 the very existence of material things, he is now, with the 
 recognition of those objects, church, cow, tree, and the 
 rest of them, the creature of his own time and place once 
 more. The English life, the gentle, implacable routine of 
 its ideas and habits, its rehgious teaching, its social dis- 
 tinctions, its agricultural processes, is outspread before 
 him. This it is, this hfe of practical ideas and definite 
 duties, which now absorbs the onlooker and makes him, 
 as he looks, part of itself. And this it does, not as the 
 rich hues of the wood did, by setting up an interchange 
 of emotional suggestions, but by setting up, through the 
 instrumentality of form, an interchange of intellectual 
 suggestions. 
 
 Throughout all Nature the same holds good. Every- 
 thing that is has reasons for being what it is, and when it 
 insists on what it is — ^that is, when it insists upon its 
 quality of form — ^it forces those reasons upon our notice, 
 and in so doing stimulates the intellectual mood in us. 
 Form, in short, is colour intellectualised or given intel- 
 lectual value and significance. In common speech we 
 allude to the colour of flowers, birds, or animals as belong- 
 ing to them, and as constituting, with other attributes, 
 our fixed idea of them. Colour used in this sense is an 
 adjective, and hke all good adjectives its first duty is to 
 its noun. It depicts for us all the ideas and associations 
 which its noun evokes, but its own substantive value is 
 undermined in the process of interpretation. How sub- 
 ject under such conditions colour is to form may easily 
 be realised by transferring identically the same colour 
 from a form which we like to one which we dishke. It 
 will be f otind that in the act of transfer the colour itself 
 undergoes a similar transformation, and that the very 
 same colour which pleases us in a form that was pleasing 
 offends us in a form which is repulsive to us. For the 
 same reason colour, belonging to a pleasant object, but 
 which gives an ill report of that object, always repels us. 
 The colours which signify disease, corruption, death in 
 
10 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 objects related to us are revolting. The colour of a jaun- 
 diced skin, an egg-stained tablecloth, and a daffodil may 
 be identical, but they are far from having the same value. 
 Standing one day before a butcher's shop I endeavoured 
 to reason myself into an appreciation of its colour. The 
 rich red of the flesh was close to some of the darkest of 
 the red roses, or perhaps still more exactly tallied with 
 the crimson of the common peony. The slabs of firm 
 yellow fat were of the very colour and texture which 
 Reynolds truly said that all great colourists' pictures 
 were made of. But the best of the colours was the white 
 of the lard. This, at once pure and warm, is perhaps the 
 most perfect white in Nature, not excepting the white of 
 ivory. Its beauty is due to the quality of its texture. 
 It is the ideal impasto which all great masters have aimed 
 at, smooth but not brittle, solid but not hard. 
 
 My efforts, however, were fruitless. Though I might 
 reason myself into an acknowledgment of the quality of 
 these colours, yet to feel pleasure in them was beyond me. 
 Overmastering all emotional impulses stood the hard fact 
 that these beautiful tints were defining and presenting 
 for intellectual acceptance the spectacle of a heap of 
 mangled fragments of animals' carcasses. The meaning 
 of the colour, I had to admit, counted for more than its 
 quality. It was an adjective and the property of its 
 noun. 
 
 This is the bondage from which colour has to be set 
 free before it can put forth its own emotional power ; and 
 the only means by which it can be set free is by the toning 
 down and partial obliteration of the quaUty of form. So 
 long as forms are presented to the eye in saHent relief 
 their colour is bound to remain primarily descriptive, 
 and accordingly the mitigation of that clearness of outline 
 is an indispensable prehminary to the display of sub- 
 stantive colour. The rough test is whether or not an 
 object strikes the attention by form or bjr colour. If the 
 former — ^if the first glance is a glance of recognition — 
 then the possibilities of colour are in subjection to the 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE ii 
 
 intellectual control of form. If the latter— if colour 
 asserts its influence direct on the feelings without the 
 mind having a chance of raising the question of form — 
 then colour is asserting its own inherent emotional power. 
 In order that it may be able to do this, however, it is 
 essential that the self-assertion of form and natural tend- 
 ency to thrust itself forward should be checked and 
 toned down. 
 
 Moreover, no sooner do we entertain the thought that 
 emotional effects depend upon the mitigation of form and 
 intellectual effects on its articulation than a score of 
 phenomena occur to confirm the conclusion. The land- 
 scape that spreads roimd us, prosaic and matter-of-fact 
 in the Ught of common day, becomes steeped in sentiment 
 and feehng as soon as the shades of evening, or the mist 
 rising along the valley, obscure its details. We have all, 
 looking out at a moonlit garden, been arrested by a shock 
 of surprise at the transformed scene, and felt how keenly 
 in that altered guise it appealed to the emotional sense 
 in us. These are among our common experiences, but 
 what do they metm ? Why does Arnold, when he wants 
 us to feel the sentiment and romance of Oxford, speak of 
 her as " spreading her gardens in the moonlight " ? Why 
 does Scott insist that, if we would lay ourselves open to 
 the emotional suggestions of Melrose Abbey, we must 
 " visit it by the pale moonUght " ? Why is the moon 
 so identified with sentiment and romance and with the 
 rhapsodies of poets and lovers ? Why do ghosts walk by 
 night, and witches and gobhns restrict their activity to the 
 hours of darkness ? Why is night the season of all vague 
 terrors and alarms ? In a word, why does obscurity let 
 loose our fancies and so act upon the emotional side of our 
 nature that it becomes sensible to the least suggestions ? 
 
 Not because of any positive additions which obscurity 
 introduces into the scene evidently, for it introduces none 
 such, but because it quiets and lays to rest our rational 
 and intellectual faculties and so leaves our emotional 
 nature free to act. And how does it lay to rest our rational 
 
12 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and intellectual faculties ? By blotting out or veiling 
 those definite appearances which it is the business of the 
 intellectual faculties to attend to, and the presence of 
 which keeps those faculties on the alert ; in other words, 
 by veiUng the quality of form in things. 
 
 The reader will think of many other instances of the 
 same kind. It will occur to him that a chief reason for 
 the sentimental attraction of old buildings and ruins, 
 quite apart from the time of day or night we may choose 
 to visit them, consists in the obliteration in them of dis- 
 tinctness of form, in consequence of which the ideas they 
 suggest are not of the exact and definite kind which speak 
 to the intellect, but of the vague and visionary order which 
 touch the emotions. So, too, he will feel that the senti- 
 ment which, as has often and rightly been said, belongs to 
 EngUsh landscapes in contrast to southern — ^in contrast, 
 say, to the landscapes of Greece or Eg5^t — ^is owing 
 largely to the softening and blurring influence of the 
 English climate, which effectually subdues in our scenery 
 that quality of form which in Greece and Egypt retains 
 its exactitude to the farthest limits of the horizon. There 
 are many natural conditions at work which make in this 
 way for sentiment, of which distance with all its deceptive 
 effects, mists, twiUght, shadows, etc., are among the chief. 
 Under such influence the most uncompromising forms 
 often take to themselves an emotional quality ; but these 
 agents always work on the same principle, and we find 
 invariably that the forms which under their handling 
 become susceptible of emotional suggestions have been 
 divested of their formal exactitude. There are emotional 
 suggestions in winter woods, but they are most felt in 
 the dim da37S when the structure of the trees is half hidden. 
 There are emotional suggestions in London streets, but 
 they, too, assert themselves at similar times, as on early 
 winter evenings when the feeble daylight is ds^ing out 
 and the first lamps struggle fitfully through the damp 
 vapour, half mist, half smoke, which hangs about the 
 parks and lends its aid to approaching darkness in 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 13 
 
 obscuring the clear outlines and sharp angles of the house- 
 fronts and street-comers. 
 
 From such general considerations it seems that Nature, 
 when she would open a way for the play of the emotions, 
 begins by subdtiing and suppressing the intellectual 
 appeal of form. This is the prehminary process, the 
 foundation, as it were, of emotional effects. But at the 
 same time this does not of itself guarantee depth and 
 richness to such effects. We need for this not a merely 
 negative but a positive agent. And such a one exists. 
 For now we find that the emotional mood has a tremend- 
 ous ally of its own which it can bring into action. This 
 ally is colour, which, with the veiling of form, assumes a 
 role of hitherto imimagined importance. The quality of 
 the emotional suggestions to be conveyed become now 
 its care. AH scenes are endowed with colour of a sort, 
 but since the conditions which obscure form (such as 
 darkness, distance, etc.) as a rule obscure colour too, the 
 colour effect of such scenes is usually low in tone, as on 
 damp, misty days, or almost negative as at night. The 
 emotional effect of this low-toned colour is of a Uke 
 quaUty to itself, that is to say, it reaches for the most 
 part only to a melancholy or pensive mood. Such feehngs 
 are perhaps almost too colourless to pass as emotions. 
 The word " sentiment " best describes them. The senti- 
 ment of winter woods, the sentiment of twihghtsand murky 
 London streets, such seems the proper definition of these 
 scenes. But when, on the rare occasions when this is 
 possible, to dimness of form is added richness of colour, 
 then there is produced an emotional effect of correspond- 
 ing power and intensity, an emotional effect which is 
 able to steep the whole spirit in ecstasy and hft it to the 
 highest point attainable, perhaps, by man in the sphere 
 of pure sensation. 
 
 Accordingly, how to release colour from the grasp of 
 form while preserving its full intensity becomes the 
 problem which every great emotional manifestation is 
 confronted with. Darkness and distance, mist and 
 
14 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 vapour, all have the power of obscuring form, but they 
 all in doing so obscure colour also. Is there no agent 
 that will do \^hat we wish, that will release colour for us 
 without injuring it ? 
 
 There is only one such. Chiaroscuro, as we rather 
 clumsily call the play of Ught and shade, is a more power- 
 ful agent than form. Its operations are on a larger scale 
 and overrule the personal differences by which forms are 
 divided. At the same time, so far from obscuring colour, 
 it develops all its resources by revealing all its gradations. 
 In the beech-wood scene we were just now speaking of, 
 the power of chiaroscuro is signally exhibited. The whole 
 interior of the grove is under the dominion of an extra- 
 ordinarily powerful scheme of light and shade, of which 
 a substratum of deep shadow forms the basis, while the 
 upper portion is suffused with Ught. The division, how- 
 ever, between the two is not abrupt. Each in var57ing 
 gradations invades the province of the other ; the light 
 often penetrating down into the shade, the shadows 
 often, where the foliage is thickest, ascending into the 
 regions of light. Thus intermingling and combining, the 
 two map out the whole view, which, seen through half- 
 closed eyes, has the appearance of being articulated en- 
 tirely in terms of Ught and shade. Forms appear to be 
 non-existent, and every portion of the scene and all its 
 features, the roof, the floor, trunks, branches, leaves, are 
 melted down by chiaroscuro into the elements of its own 
 huge design. 
 
 Let me take the reader one step farther. We have 
 been deaUng so far with English scenery, but it must 
 be remembered that in English scenery the emotional 
 element is, as a rule, only partly developed. Nature, as 
 we know her in Europe, the nature of a temperate or cold 
 climate, shows a constant bias towards form. The com- 
 paratively sparse and scanty vegetation, the tough, hard- 
 wooded, slow-growing trees, the faU of the leaf in winter, 
 which reveals in all its clearness the structure of trees 
 and plants for a large part of the year-^these are considera- 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 15 
 
 tions which all tend to emphasise the idea of form and 
 keep it prominent ; so that although Western scenery is 
 rich enough in that kind of mild sentiment which we 
 associate with dimness, with a thick atmosphere, with 
 winter days and long twilights, and although, now and 
 again, it breaks out into such rich effects as we find in 
 the autumnal woods, yet these last more forcible ex- 
 pressions of emotion are after all exceptional and rare 
 moods. The main factor in it is form. The quaUties 
 that seem inherent in it, virihty and precision, strength 
 and endurance, are essentially the quaUties belonging 
 to form. 
 
 We must go to the East for examples, at its greatest, 
 or at least at its most complete, of the emotional influence 
 in Nature. Every one, even those who have never visited 
 the tropics, carries in his mind an impression of the char- 
 acter of tropical scenery, and of that impression splendour 
 of colovuing constitutes the basis. The very word 
 " tropical " suggests not only colouring more gorgeous 
 but also more sensuous than anjrthing known to our 
 grey landscapes. It denotes the intensity of emotion 
 which goes with a certain kind of colouring. Tropical 
 blossoms, waxen -petalled, heavy -perfumed, have some- 
 thing of that character at once violent and languid 
 which belongs to the impulses of passion. 
 
 With these ideas of tropical scenery in his mind it 
 may surprise the reader to learn that in actual brilliance 
 and vividness of colour tropical vegetation often does not 
 surpass or even approach Enghsh vegetation. At some 
 seasons of the year Enghsh scenery is far more brilhant 
 in colouring than tropical scenery ever is. There is a 
 great deal more vividness of tint in an English spring wood 
 paved with bluebells, or in golden buttercup fields framed 
 in hawthorn hedges, or in Enghsh shrubberies with their 
 wealth of lilacs and laburnums, or in many views along, 
 for example, that Devon coast we were lately speaking of, 
 where dark red chffs meet a dark blue sea while aU the 
 slopes above are encrusted with the rich yellow of gorse in 
 
i6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 full bloom, than are ever to be met with in a tropical 
 jungle. 
 
 To what, then, is the more powerfully sensuous effect 
 of tropical colouring due ? It is due to the fact that, 
 while Western colouring is controlled and dominated 
 by form. Eastern colouring is controlled by light and 
 shade. The growth of Western woods is usually dis- 
 tinct. The trees preserve their shape and individuality ; 
 ample light is admitted between them. Even in summer 
 time there are usually sufficient indications of trunks 
 and knotty, angular branches to preserve the sense of 
 structure. But the flexible, climbing creepers and lianas 
 of a tropical forest are tangled together and involved 
 in a dense canopy in which all sense of individual form 
 is swallowed up and lost. There recur to the writer 
 memories of days passed in the jungles of the Ceylon low- 
 country, and these memories are all similar : memories 
 of mysterious twilights full of dim and sinuous Unes, 
 rising slantingly or hanging in loops, thickening the matted 
 roof among the tree-tops, but not distinct themselves and 
 fulfilling no distinct structural purpose. Nourished by 
 a rank soil and stimulated by a blazing sun, vegetation 
 in the tropics shoots up with a rapidity, a zest, almost 
 a fury, of which in colder climates it exhibits no trace. 
 From the moment of leaving the earth the struggle is 
 for the light, and plants and parasites start off upon an 
 upward race of which the goal is the roof overhead and 
 the Ught which shines upon it. It is curious to observe 
 how all plants are equipped with speed to aid them in 
 this race. Canes and bamboos, hollow-stalked and long- 
 jointed, of which the growth is almost visible to the eye, 
 abound ; but still more common are the various creepers 
 which ascend the trunks of trees with snake-like rapidity 
 until they feel the sunlight above, when they spread 
 themselves out in waves of foliage or blossom, sometimes 
 hanging down in pendulous wreaths or festoons, at others 
 enveloping and blotting out the tops of trees in their 
 close embrace ; using their long stems, let down through 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE I7 
 
 the gloom, as hoses through which to suck moisture 
 from the soil, while their real Ufe is lived in the leafy 
 roof far overhead under the constant hot beams of 
 the sun. 
 
 Inevitably the result of such a struggle as this is the 
 formation of a dense canopy spread over the jungle, 
 composed of mjrriads of twisting and twining tendrils, and 
 wrought into so thick a covert that even the rays of a 
 tropical sun can rarely penetrate it ; so that, as Hum- 
 boldt has pointed out of the Brazil forests — and the same 
 holds good of all tropical forests — " there reigns con- 
 .tinually a kind of dim dayhght, a peculiar sort of obscurity, 
 of which our forests of pines, oaks, and beech trees convey 
 no idea." This peculiar obscurity is, in fact, the chief 
 and most inahenable characteristic of tropical scenery. 
 Traversed by occasional floods of misty light, which break 
 through the chinks in the roof or the larger gaps left by 
 fallen trees, and die out by degrees in the murky deptl^ 
 of the forest, it constitutes a scheme of chiaroscuro of 
 unrivalled richness and power, embedded in which some 
 few occasional gleams of purple or red from high-hanging 
 bimches of orchids or drooping tendrils of creeper stain 
 the gloom, almost Uke the beams of coloured Ught that 
 shine through the dusky windows of Chartres. 
 
 In their own line of the purely emotional and sensuous 
 these colour-effects are the most potent probably that 
 exist in Nature. But still, when we come to look into the 
 character of the colouring, we find that its influence is 
 due, not to its amount or brilliance, but to the fact that 
 it is governed and disposed by means of chiaroscuro 
 instead of by form. We are again brought to our previous 
 conclusion when we were contrasting the various aspects 
 of English scenery. Insist upon form, develop form, 
 place form in command of the composition, arid instantly 
 coloiu: becomes a property of form, a subordinate, and its 
 depth, richness, power, its emotional value in a word, 
 die out of it. Release, with the help of chiaroscuro, 
 colour from form ; let it be uncircumscribed, let it 
 
 C 
 
i8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 smoulder and glow in the gloom and shadows, and its 
 emotional value returns to it.^ 
 
 Scenes of the true tropical character must needs be 
 almost unknown in a country Mke England, but I have 
 met with one or two, one of which I once attempted to 
 describe in an article in the Manchester Guardian, which 
 I now have before me. This was a huge, shaggy, unkempt 
 wood in Devonshire called Allen's Down, the peculiarity 
 of which among woods was that it had been left entirely 
 neglected and uncared for for many years, so that the 
 timber had sprung up and decayed and fallen as it listed 
 or best could, forming a vast jungle of trees in all stages 
 of growth, decrepitude, and decay. Fifty years ago this 
 forest was already old, and since then, down to the time 
 I wrote of it, not a tree had been touched. Thousands 
 of pounds' worth of timber had fallen, and the limbs and 
 trunks lay strewn about, until, by gradual decomposition, 
 they had mingled once more with the soft, damp soil. 
 " Growth and decay have gone hand in hand," I wrote, 
 " and through the rotting vegetable matter of old trunks 
 young saplings and brambles push up. I wandered on 
 through this strange scene of constant ruin and renewal. 
 The covert above was too dense, the air below too dim, 
 to encourage much undergrowth. . . , My feet made 
 no sound in the soft earth carpeted with pine needles. 
 Dimness, silence, and a melancholy mystery reigned, 
 except that here and there where trees had fallen and 
 
 1 Some years ago I wrote a few lines in a newspaper describing a 
 sale of orchids which had taken place in London, with the thought in 
 my mind of the difference between the orchid as seen in common London 
 daylight and in its native jungle. After pointing out the impossibility 
 of separating the flower from its surroundings without the loss to it of 
 nine-tenths of its beauty, I went on to say : " The dark shade of inter- 
 locked boughs and twisting, knotted creepers seems cast on purpose 
 to show off its rare splash of intense colour. All the sentiment, the 
 passion, contained in the word ' tropical ' is summed up in it. But 
 sever it from these surroundings, transpose it to London, and what 
 have you got ? Not the orchid, but a rarity, a curiosity, a freak. For 
 one of these freaks somebody yesterday paid £1200 at the Cheapside 
 sale-rooms. But it was an Odontoglossum crispum Pittianum he 
 bought, not an orchid " (Tribune, March 23, igo6). 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 19 
 
 left a gap, the sunlight burst in, making fiery spots 
 in the gloom, striking left and right on the gaunt 
 fir-trunks, and setting the scanty autumn foliage of the 
 beeches in a blaze. It was curious to notice how 
 promptly these fallen trees were set upon, and with 
 what a horrible avidity they were devoured by all 
 kinds of lesser vegetables — moss, ivy, honeysuckle, 
 ferns, and other weeds and creepers — ^into whose hands 
 their fall had deUvered them. . . . 
 
 " I had chmbed down through one of the many damp 
 and boggy ravines, putting up on the way a woodcock, 
 the only bird I had seen perhaps for an hour, and was 
 standing on the opposite rise looking back through the 
 timber, when I became clearly conscious of that f eeUng of 
 similarity in my surroundings which attends the rousing 
 of old associations. I stared about. The autumn tints 
 fit up the wood, and though it was November the sun's 
 heat could still be felt. Winter comes slowly up these 
 Devonshire valleys. Three huge oaks grew near, their 
 roots and trunks covered with a shaggy fleece of moss, 
 their lower branches thickly sprinkled with pol57pody 
 ferns. Beyond them the stems of tall firs thronged ; but 
 few grew straight. Many slanted to this side or that. 
 Some had fallen, and others would have fallen if they 
 could, but were caught and prevented by their comrades, 
 and so rotted half-standing, the bark dripping off and 
 white fungus starting from the spongy wood. Ivy had 
 seized many and enveloped them, and was consuming 
 them in the very arms of their fellows. Young trees in 
 their fuU vigour and prime were mixed with ancient and 
 decasring stumps. Long wreaths of honeysuckle trailed 
 from branch to branch, and, below, patches of sodden 
 bracken, brown and yellow and white, made splashes of 
 rich or hvid colour where the hght filtered through the 
 tree-tops. The very smell, a smell of rank verdure and 
 decomposing vegetable matter, struck me as famihar. I 
 felt a twenty-year-old memory stretching and turning 
 in its sleep. Then a jay in some tall beeches behind 
 
20 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 me screeched like a parrot, and I remembered — I was 
 standing in a Ceylon jungle among all the sights and 
 sentiments and feelings of tropical life and tropical 
 decay." 
 
 When I wrote this description I had certainly no 
 thoiight of any theory of colour. I was dwelling simply 
 on the features of this Devonshire wood which had roused 
 tropical associations and feehngs in my mind. But the 
 reader will notice that these features are for the most 
 part connected with the dimness of the place and the 
 blotting out of the sense of form, not with any prevailing 
 rich or gorgeous tints. Some gleams and splashes of 
 colour are mentioned, but the prevaiUng influence is 
 made to depend on the dim hght, and the mystery of 
 obscurity, in which the forms of trees, mouldering and 
 decomposing and half enveloped in ivy and honeysuckle, 
 are but faintly seen and which is only broken by shafts 
 of sunUght here and there. What was tropical here was 
 not so much the colour as the manner in which the colour 
 was presented. It was the blotting out of the intellectual 
 suggestions of exact form and the prevalence of a rich 
 scheme of chiaroscuro which gave the place its emotional 
 power and stirred the associations which a tropical jungle 
 stirs. 
 
 What we have here noticed in regard to Nature will 
 be found to apply generally to life and art. Whenever 
 colour develops its sensuous power and significance it will 
 be found that exact articulation of form has been so 
 softened and toned down that, relieved from that bondage, 
 colour melts into a scheme of its own, making up in emo- 
 tional depth for what it has lost in intellectual interest. 
 Fxurther, the instrument employed in the attainment of 
 this end will also in each case be the same, namely, chiaro- 
 scuro, or the alternation of light and shade, the only 
 means possible, I believe, of releasing colour without 
 weakening it, because the only means by which a scheme 
 of composition broader and more powerful than any at 
 the command of form can be attained. Hence it follows 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF NATURE 21 
 
 that the infalUble test of a great colourist, a colourist of 
 the emotional order, will be his masterly use of light and 
 shade, and his tendency to rely on light and shade for the 
 articulation of his design. 
 
 We shall deal more at large with examples presently ; 
 let me content myself here with asking what is the differ- 
 ence between colour as used by intellectual Florence 
 and as used by sensuous Venice ? Broadly speaking, it 
 is that Florence controls and arranges colour by means 
 of form, while Venice controls and arranges it by means 
 of chiaroscuro. The point of view of the former is that 
 which we just now adopted when we stood at the verge 
 of the wood and saw a landscape arranged in separate 
 particles, each distinct atom suggesting the ideas and 
 intellectual interest proper to its own character and use ; 
 the point of view of the latter is that to which we reverted 
 when turning back into the wood we exchanged the vision 
 of distant objects for the gorgeous yet stem tints which 
 darkened and shone in its interior spaces. 
 
PART I 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 Eastern thought is purely emotional. It denies the very existence of 
 a material universe and insists that the sole means of enlightenment 
 resides in the cultivation of spiritual consciousness. 
 
 Art being an expression of life should be approached 
 through life. Grasp the meaning of the motives which 
 govern life and you have, by the same act, obtained the 
 clue to the art which that life evolved. This is the 
 order we will follow. We will first endeavour to obtain 
 an insight into the point of view of the East, together 
 with the possibihties and Hmitations which it involves, 
 and we will then go on to consider how these characteristics 
 are embodied in Eastern art. 
 
 The source of Orientalism, of the Oriental influence, 
 is India. In the Hindu philosophy is to be found the 
 thought with which the life of the East is dyed. Further, 
 if we keep to essentials, we shall find that the general char- 
 acter of Hinduism is a perfectly easy matter to understand. 
 
 The Atman in Hindu thought is the individual soul, 
 which has, in outward appearance, become separated and 
 cut off from Brahman, the universal soul. Yet this 
 separation is, in fact, only the arch-illusion wrought by 
 matter and the visible appearances of the universe, amid 
 the unrealities of which the Atman is ensnared and 
 netted, and through the wearying vicissitudes of which it 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 23 
 
 passes in a long succession of reincarnations, tossed from 
 body to body like a shuttlecock and perpetually subject 
 to the deception of the senses, until the time comes when 
 at last the soul, looking deep into itself, realises that the 
 appearances of things are a hallucination, that spiritual 
 being is the only real being, and that it is itself a part of 
 and one with that being. The man who has reached this 
 knowledge, who can say, " I am Brahman," has attained 
 the goal. Henceforth materialism passes him by. He 
 has stepped into the fulness of spiritual consciousness. 
 Spiritual light envelops him, and in the brilliance of 
 that light aU earthly matter shrivels up and vanishes. 
 His own soul has, as it were, obliterated aU but itself. 
 
 This is the thought that is in the centre of the Hindu 
 mind. Human nature craves the help of something out- 
 side itself, the help of a being superior to the hmitations 
 of mortaUty by which we are bound, the help of a God. 
 But here Hinduism cannot help it. The notion of a God, 
 the notion of any separate influence or being, of any 
 source of hght other than the soul, is alien to Hindu 
 philosophy. To all the waihngs of i»an the Hindu has 
 the same answer : You crave light, you crave infinitude, 
 you crave deUverance from mortal darkness and decay ; 
 look within, all you crave is within yom: own soul. You 
 yourself are all that you long for. There is no light, no 
 eternity, outside, or other than, you. To what do you 
 hold out your hands and whose help do you invoke ? 
 Concentrate yourself in your soul. You are already the 
 immortal and the infinite which you seek. 
 
 It is a hard sasdng, and human nature often finds it 
 so. Human nature still craves extraneous succour and 
 support, and Hinduism, in answer to that demand, has, 
 however unwiUingly, to provide extraneous succour and 
 support of some sort ; has to provide, that is, what does 
 not really belong to it. Thus the application of the 
 Hindu system to human hfe, human life being what it 
 is, implies the falsification of it. All the imnumbered 
 thousands of Indian sects fence with the same problem — 
 
24 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 how to distil out of an abstract thought the aid which 
 will satisfy human nature. The answers to the problem 
 are many. In countless ways the ideas of a God, of 
 worship, of religious ceremonial, have been wrung out of 
 the abstract thought of Hinduism, and always the effect 
 on that thought itself has been to degrade it more and 
 more from its primary philosophical significance. Yet 
 somehow the original thought does not perish. The 
 Oriental is by nature emotional and contemplative. He 
 is incUned to look into his own soul. He knows what it is 
 to be suffused with spiritual consciousness ; and at those 
 moments he forgets the superadditions of creeds and goes 
 back to the central idea of his philosophy. Reformations 
 in Hinduism are always returns upon the old thought. 
 So that, through aU variations a kind of unity belongs 
 to Hinduism itself. Its most opposite practices, from 
 extreme asceticism to sanctified lust, are fed out of the 
 emotional idea of attainment through the absorption of self. 
 
 We misconceive Hinduism, therefore, if we think of it 
 as a religion. The highest good open to the Hindu is 
 the realisation of what is. Salvation, redemption, ever- 
 lasting bliss consist in being able to say, " I am Brah- 
 man." There is here no room for adoration or worship or 
 prayer ; for there is no God, or state of being apart from 
 the spiritual essence which is oiu-sdves. There is nothing 
 to adore, or worship, or pray to. All the energy which 
 others throw into worship and prayer the consistent 
 Hindu pours into the intense act of introspection which 
 reveals to him his own spiritual nature. This is the only 
 infinity, the only divinity. This is the seat and source of 
 all light, all truth, all wisdom, all bliss. With all the 
 fervour with which reUgious people struggle to save their 
 souls the Hindu struggles to know his soul. 
 
 All Hindu thought, I say, centres and plays around 
 this conception of the spiritual consciousness or soul of 
 man as his only guide and inspiration. The soul is the 
 faculty on which the East depends for illumination, 
 the faculty which has always stood it in place of intellect. 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 25 
 
 Of this the whole civilisation and life of the East are the 
 outcome. The whole civihsation and life of the East 
 flow from this habit the East has always had of looking 
 exclusively to the soul for guidance and not at aU to the 
 intellect. 
 
 This, then, being the East's chief thought, the thought 
 most formative of Eastern life, let us probe for a moment 
 into its history. Certain portions of the Vedas, the 
 Hindu sacred writings, go back, it is conjectured, almost 
 to the time of the original Aryan invasions. The religion 
 of the invaders seems to have been much what one wotdd 
 have expected, and bears indeed a strong family likeness 
 to the Nature-worship of the Gothic invaders of the West. 
 The forces and phenomena of Nature are turned into 
 deities, beneficent or maUgnant according to their in- 
 fluence on human affairs. The dark clouds of the 
 anxiously expected rainy season, the " cows of the sky " 
 that carry in their udders the moisture which is to revivify 
 the earth, when they fail to bestow it are said to be 
 shepherded by mahgnant demons who drive them off to 
 the caves of the mountains. Indra is the friendly deity 
 who, under these xmtoward circmnstances, comes to 
 man's assistance and pierces the vapour with his fiery 
 thunderbolt, bringing down the longed-for deluge. Indra 
 is a Norse god aU over — ^haughty and fierce, rejoicing in 
 battle ; bon camarade withal, and a great lover of the 
 intoxicating soma juice. He rushes, " impetuous as a 
 bull," to the place where it is flowing, and he quaffs it 
 "like a thirsty stag." Agni, the fire-god, is another 
 typical Norse character, the quaHties of the element he 
 personifies being turned into personal traits with all the 
 Norse humour. He is bom of two pieces of stick, and 
 incontinently devours his own parents. He condescends 
 to live in the hvunblest dweUings, he dispels darkness and 
 demons, and loves to be " fed abundantly with butter." 
 In all things he lies ambushed, and can leap out suddenly 
 from a stone when it is struck or from a black cloud. 
 The Sun, the Dawn, the Storm Winds, the Earth, the 
 
26 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Waters are in the same way deities who command love 
 and hymns of praise, or dread and acts of propitiation. 
 
 There is a quality about the robust Aryan gods all 
 the world over which draws them together, and it is with 
 feehngs of quite friendly recognition that we, of Thor- 
 and Odin-worshipping stock, survey the exploits and 
 idiosyncrasies of the early gods of India. Soon, however, 
 this sense of familiarity wanes, and a theory or idea begins 
 to be developed in the East of apprehension by pure 
 intuition, or inward instead of outward contemplation, 
 which comes more and more to engross the Eastern mind, 
 and in its development draws off the East along a path of 
 progress of its own. To the Vedas were added by degrees 
 the Upanishads. The word Upanishad is explained by 
 Indian writers as signifying " secret." They convey, 
 these books, a secret meaning inteUigible only to a few ; 
 and again and again the warning is reiterated not to speak 
 openly of this profound secret, and to impart it only to 
 such as have proved by perseverance their sincerity in 
 the quest of it. To such, the elect, who are not to be 
 turned aside from the pursuit of wisdom, and who, as it 
 is often expressed, have so overcome self as to have 
 " attained tranquillity," the secret may be whispered, 
 but to none else. 
 
 This mysterious secret was the thought of which we 
 have been already speaking, the thought destined to 
 dominate Eastern life, that the soul or spiritual conscious- 
 ness is the only source of real knowledge. Whispered 
 as it first was in a society much used to the dominion 
 of a powerful priestly caste and strictly held to the 
 observance of an elaborate and, to the vulgar, incom- 
 prehensible ritual, the doctrine that a man's soul was the 
 only teacher needed to be spoken under the breath. Pro- 
 fessor Paul Deussen in his Philosophy of the Upanishads 
 has some interesting remarks on the spread of the mystical 
 doctrine. The jungles and vast forests of Northern India 
 apparently harboured from remote ages a class of hermits 
 and recluses, seekers after truth, who in solitary con- 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 27 
 
 templation awaited the instillings of the divine wisdom. 
 Out of this hermit-hfe there originated certain writings 
 or books known as Aranyaka or " forest-books," from 
 Aranye, " in the jungle." They form. Professor Deussen 
 says, " a natural transition to the speculations of the 
 Upanishads," and accordingly we find philosophers and 
 hermits recognising a mutual bond or similar cast of mind 
 and joining forces, as a result of which the Upanishad 
 teachings were attached to or incorporated with the forest 
 books of the hermits. Such a union must appear natural, 
 for it was a imion of the contemplative philosophy with 
 the contemplative life. Ultimately the new teaching was 
 appropriated by the priestly cast and subjected to inter- 
 pretations which, while falsifs^ng it largely as an idea, 
 admitted of its incorporation into ritualistic tradition. 
 But in its rise we may think of this thought of India's 
 innermost heart as a secret whispered in the depths of 
 jungles by earnest and devoted students. The disciples 
 of the new knowledge recognised one another by simple 
 words or formulas only intelligible to the initiated, and, 
 following on such recognition, there came, as Professor 
 Deussen conjectures, secret meetings and consultations 
 out of which were developed gradually the earUest books 
 which bore the name of Upanishad. It must be under- 
 stood that these conclusions are all to a certain extent 
 conjectural ; nothing would give a falser impression of 
 the state of our knowledge of Indian philosophy than an 
 attempt to define the stages of its growth. But we know 
 enough about it to be sure, at any rate, that it was de- 
 veloped, not out of cities and crowds of men and schools 
 of thought and argument and intellectual research, but 
 that it arose in the hearts of lonely watchers and thinkers 
 who had abandoned the haunts of men to bury themselves 
 in forest sohtudes. Not pubhcity and controversy, but 
 secrecy and soUtary contemplation are the influences that 
 watch over the infancy of Indian thought. 
 
 In this way, thus secretly, was imfolded the idea 
 which was to dominate Eastern life. Of the dates of the 
 
28 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 various Upanishads, mingled and intermixed as they are, 
 it is impossible to speak with certainty, but it appears 
 to be admitted that the speeches of Y§.jnavalkhya in the 
 Brihad§.ranyaka Upanishad are among the oldest, and 
 in these the great secret is already fully enunciated. 
 Yajnavalkhya compares the Atman, the soul within the 
 in^vidual, to the ocean into which all currents are re- 
 ceived. " As breathing he (the Atman) is named health, 
 as speaking speech, as seeing eye, as hearing ear, as under- 
 standing mind ; all these are but names for his operations." 
 Elsewhere this idea of the soul as the sum of all con- 
 sciousness is expanded. " When the eye is directed on 
 space, he (the Atman) is the spirit in the eye, the eye 
 serves only for seeing ; and if a man desires to smell, 
 it is the Atman, the nose serves only for smelling ; and 
 if a man desires to speak, it is the Atman, the voice serves 
 only for speaking ; and if a man desires to hear, it is the 
 Atman, the ear serves only for hearing ; and if a man 
 desires to understand, it is the Atman, the mind is his 
 divine eye." 
 
 With awe and wonder the Eastern sages divined in 
 their own souls the source of all wisdom. The soul is 
 thought of as the " essential knowledge which shines 
 within in the heart." It cannot itself be known ; its 
 nature is not subject to any analysis that can be brought 
 to bear upon it ; for the source of perception can never 
 itself be perceived. " Thou canst not see the seer of 
 seeing, thou canst not hear the hearer of hearing, thou 
 canst not comprehend the comprehender of comprehen- 
 sion, thou canst not know the knower of knowledge." 
 But just as the eye which cannot see itself is that which 
 sees all that is seen, so the soul, itself incomprehensible, 
 is that which comprehends all that is comprehended. 
 Again and again it is reiterated by Y§,jiiavalkhya that 
 the act of introspection, the reading in the soul, is the 
 only real mode of perception. " The knower," " the 
 knowing subject " are the commonest ways of describing 
 the soul. Seeing is the strongest of our senses, and 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 29 
 
 besides its title of Knower the Atman's perception is 
 often likened to sight. It is the " seer " {viparcit), the 
 " all-beholder " (parid rashtar), the " Spectator " (Sak- 
 shin). The Hindu conceived the soul as a great eye in 
 the centre of his being, which was able, if he directed 
 towards it his consent and attention, to raise its Ud and 
 gaze out on realities and eternities. 
 
 To an emotional people spiritual consciousness is far 
 more than reason. Yajnavalkhya uttered a thought 
 which was already sleeping in the hearts of millions. 
 Once spoken it made its own way, soaking slowly through 
 the Oriental mind. None have grasped its significance 
 without feeUng its power. It is customary for religions 
 to depend more or less on externals, on historical evidence, 
 on the testimony of miracles, on the continuity of tradi- 
 tion, on a recognisable, visible authority. But the appeal 
 of Hinduism is to nothing but spiritual consciousness, 
 to the Soul or Knower. All that is offered for acceptance 
 is evolved out of the soul and is verifiable by the soul. 
 In that way only is it verifiable. Reason and argument 
 cannot handle it, for these are incapable of apprehending 
 the spiritual. Do you ask a Hindu for proof that his 
 thought is true ? " Look into your own soul," he will 
 answer, " and read the proof written there." 
 
 Thus, on the one hand, if Indian thought is perpetually 
 being drawn, in response to man's need for reUgious 
 sustenance, into definitions which its own rejection of 
 the finite condemn beforehand as irrelevant, on the other 
 it is perpetually engaged in clearing away these external 
 superadditions and reducing man to the bare spiritual 
 faculty. The latter attitude, the attitude of one spiritu- 
 ally conscious in a world of illusion, is, however, the 
 genuine and characteristic attitude of Hinduism. Matter 
 in Hindu thought has no existence. This apple is red. 
 How do you know ? Because my sight tells me so. But 
 your sight is a property of your own, not of the apple's. 
 It is sweet. How do you know ? Because my taste 
 tells me so. But your taste is a property of your own, 
 
30 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 not of the apple's. And so all along the line. The attri- 
 butes we assign to all objects, in virtue of which we assume 
 their existence, are sensations of our own, and the suppo- 
 sition that these sensations are occasioned by external 
 realities is a purely arbitrary one. For some reason or 
 other we project our own sense -impressions of sight, 
 hearing, taste, smell, touch into quaUties of things separate 
 from us. Who first conceived the ingenious idea of calling 
 his own interior sensations of sweetness, hardness, redness, 
 and the like by the name " apple " is not recorded. He 
 may be figured in any case as the Hindu Adam. For in 
 Hindu thought ignorance takes the place of sin, and man's 
 Fall consisted not in disobediently eating an apple, but 
 in foolishly imagining that there was an apple there to eat. 
 
 To this denial of the existence of matter (prakriti) the 
 East recurs again and again, but with not so much of 
 intellectual subtlety of analysis as of spiritual conscious- 
 ness. The efEect which that denial had on Indian spiritual 
 thought was a signal proof of the power of materialism. 
 It turned Hinduism into a dumb philosophy. The assur- 
 ance we have of the reahty of spiritual consciousness hes 
 in nothing we can say of it, but in the quahty of that con- 
 sciousness itself. All explanation of it must needs be 
 illusory ; for by the very word " explain " we mean 
 make clear to the mind ; but the mind being itself, in 
 Hindu thought, illusion, in so far as the mind can take 
 hold of the soul, the soul itself must be illusion. Putting 
 it another way, to the extent to which you can define 
 the infinite in terms of the finite, to that extent the in- 
 finite ceases to be the infinite and becomes the finite. 
 
 There is therefore no idea of any kind that can be 
 associated with the soul. The profoundest philosopher 
 knows and can say nothing of it. For if he could say 
 anything of it the fact of his saying it would be proof 
 of its falsehood. Ideas, words, images, all that can be 
 thought or uttered or in any way defined, are an outgrowth 
 of the human condition and commensurate with it. They 
 cannot grasp the spiritual order. Thus there is a cele- 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 31 
 
 brated formula repeatedly recurring in the Brihadaranyaka 
 Upanishad, " Neti ! neti ! It is not so, it is not so " : the 
 reply made to every attempted definition of the Atman. 
 Thus, too, Bahoa, repeatedly requested by the King 
 Vashkahn to explain the Atman, maintained a profound 
 sUence ; but on the King's again and again reiterating 
 his request, he answered : " I tell it you, but you do not 
 understand ; canto'yam Atma, the Atman is silence." 
 
 The Atman is silence. Whatever you say of it, it is 
 not so. Of the spiritual essence which alone is, which 
 we are and which is us, nothing in this world of shadows 
 can be spoken but what is false. Infinity, unity, eternity 
 are words which swallow up and efface all human ideas. 
 We cannot conceive a pure state of being. Our spiritual 
 ideas are but the pale images of our mortal ones. We 
 think we have a notion of the meaning of such words as 
 infinite or eternal, but we are mistaken. Such words in 
 our mouths not only have no meaning of their own at all, 
 but the meaning we put into them is, in fact, the very 
 reverse of that which we wish them to imply. For what 
 we want to imply by eternal is the opposite of temporal, 
 and what we want to imply by infinite is the reverse of 
 finite. Yet so unsuccessful are we that we cannot get 
 eternal to mean more than a prolongation of the temporal, 
 or infinite more than a continuation of the finite. So 
 true is it that whatever we would say of spiritual ideas, 
 Neti, it is not so ; the Atman is silence.^ 
 
 At the same time such a philosophy as this has no 
 relation to life as we know it, and cannot be forced into 
 any such relation. Every step Hinduism has taken to 
 meet Hfe has been a stultification of itself as an idea. 
 Hence the more reUgion in India is turned to account the 
 
 * Thus, in most people's estimation, eternity is expressed by a great 
 deal of time, and a miUion years are nearer to it than a second. But 
 in reality, since eternity impUes the total obUteratiou of time, a second 
 is much nearer to it than a million years. Could you in fact snufi out 
 that second as it passes, you would have destroyed time and entered 
 upon eternity. Yet so wedded are we to our temporal standards that 
 we go on in the old way, making immense accumulations of time convey 
 our conception of no time at all. 
 
32 , FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 more degrading an influence it becomes. India is the 
 land of spiritual prostitution because she is the home of 
 an entirely abstract order of spiritual conceptions. 
 
 Only this we may say, that however ineffective it may 
 seem in practical ways, or to whatever base uses it may have 
 been put, the thought of the existence of a spiritual faculty 
 — ^that secret breathed through India's forests so many ages 
 ago — ^has ever since been the essence of the spiritual faith 
 of the world. It seems fated never to die, this thought, 
 and we ourselves shall meet with it by and by mingUng 
 with and changing the purposes and ideals of Western 
 life. But in the West its action is intermittent. There 
 are many, perhaps a vast majority of Western folk, who 
 are quite incapable of conceiving what is meant by the 
 soul as an actively knowing agent, for their own souls do 
 not act in this way. Yet on this thought the East lives. 
 Just as a pool of water, when all impurities and distur- 
 bances have settled and ceased and its surface has become 
 calm and still, reflects with the utmost perfection the 
 surrounding hills and the clouds that float over it, so the 
 soul of man, when all obscuring influences are removed, 
 when the world is shut off and intellect is hushed, serene, 
 and untroubled, can receive into itself without conscious 
 effort those suggestions of spiritual truth which are in 
 conformity with its own nature. This is the Hindu theory, 
 but necessarily it is meaningless to those who do not 
 recognise in their own minds any process corresponding 
 to that which it describes. From the same cause arises 
 the Western total misappirehension of the significance of 
 all Indian religious usages. There is in our whole litera- 
 ture, I beUeve, no page more entirely pitiful than that 
 which contains the criticisms of English missionaries and 
 of the average Enghsh traveller on Hindu faith and dis- 
 cipline. It is not that Hinduism has not much that is 
 vile in it when it becomes a question of its application to 
 hfe ; it is that these critics are, as a rule, utterly callous 
 and cold to the original thought which inspired and still 
 inspires it. They do not see what the Hindu is after, or 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 33 
 
 in the least comprehend the state of mind he is bent on 
 attaining ; how, then, should they comprehend the means 
 by which he seeks to attain it ? 
 
 For the two are indissolubly connected. From its 
 conception of the soul as the knowing agent has followed, 
 to take that side of the question which most ofiends 
 people of our own race, the whole Hindu disciphnary 
 system. The more intimately the soul, the Atman, is 
 reahsed as the source of knowledge, the more stringent 
 becomes the need of asceticism to silence the claims of 
 the world, since the intentness of the gaze which a man 
 directs into his own soul is measured by the obUteration 
 of aU outward claims upon his attention. Hence it is 
 that Hinduism, of which the one vital tenet is the soul's 
 all-seeing power, is that form of behef which has reduced 
 asceticism to a fine art. The reader must endeavour to 
 grasp, if he would appreciate what is fundamental in 
 Eastern hfe, the absolute all-importance in Eastern eyes 
 of spiritual vision. The whole destiny of man, as the East 
 understands the question, depends upon the attaiimient 
 of that vision. It is not death, in the Hindu behef, which 
 sets the spirit free, or ends the struggle in which it is en- 
 gaged, but the spirit's own efEorts, renewed again and 
 again through the necessary number of incarnations. 
 The struggle has to be faced, the final knowledge has to 
 be attained. Thus while the Christian is hke one who 
 laboiurs in a field and does a certain amount of work 
 and in the evening expects pay according to what he has 
 done, the Hindu is hke one set to reap a field who, before 
 he receives his wages, must reap it, be the time long or 
 short. He himself, that is to say, in this or future incarna- 
 tions, must surmount the illusions of temporal existence 
 and emerge into the condition of pure spiritual conscious- 
 ness. It is as the result of that thought that we have 
 those terrible austerities which are so often held up by 
 travellers and naissionaries to the contempt of Western 
 criticism. Before we condemn let us remember that the 
 feeUngs with which we regard these practices will measure 
 
 D 
 
34 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 the extent to which we ourselves possess the faculty they 
 were intended to cultivate. To a generation barren of 
 spiritual insight, to which the soul has ceased to be the 
 Knower or source of Ught, asceticism must appear revolt- 
 ing because purposeless. None will readily give up what 
 they have until they see clearly what is offered them in 
 exchange. In short, the two ideals of spiritual vision 
 and asceticism, so closely united in Hinduism, are natural 
 associates. Whenever the soul has been conceived of as 
 the knowing subject, then and there the desire to enhance 
 its capacity by shutting off external and distracting in- 
 fluences has always existed. It matters not whether the 
 spiritual idea be identified with a state of being or a 
 personal God, if ever the soul of man becomes absorbed 
 in the contemplation of that state or that God the incUna- 
 tion towards asceticism follows. Pagan philosophy, as it 
 pressed its researches to the edge of matter and groped 
 after spiritual perception, came in touch with the idea, 
 in which Plato perceived an assurance of the attainment 
 of absolute wisdom. The Hebrew seers and prophets, who 
 heard God speak and were the channels of His revelations 
 to His people on earth, abjured and cast off all earthly ties 
 and interests that they might the better fulfil their spiritual 
 mission. Clothed in sheepskins and goatskins, " they 
 wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and 
 caves of the earth." So, too, those communities of 
 Judsean monks, the Essenes and later the Therapeutists, 
 cultivated in the same way the piety and knowledge of 
 heavenly things for which they were so venerated by 
 systematic austerities, dwelling apart from man in the 
 deserts of Egypt or on the desolate shores of the Dead 
 Sea, and renouncing all that makes Ufe tolerable to ordin- 
 ary people. SinMlarly again in Europe, through the mon- 
 astic ages, or ages of faith as they are sometimes called, 
 the idea of the soul as the " Knower," as a faculty that 
 instructs rather than as a trophy to be saved, brought 
 asceticism in its train. He who would listen to the voice 
 of God, whether he be a Hindu Yogi, a Hebrew prophet. 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 35 
 
 or a Christian monk, must rid himself of all hindrances 
 from the worid. The reasonableness of such a view has 
 been appreciated in all periods of spiritual insight. At 
 such times the contemplative hfe has been looked upon 
 almost as one of the regular professions, and those engaged 
 upon it as professors of the heavenly science. They 
 received the honours paid to those who excel in a branch 
 of learning of which all appreciate the rudiments. 
 
 Before leaving this Eastern thought let us cast a glance 
 at the hfe which has grown out of it. Passive and 
 dreamily quiescent, ineffective in all the practical affairs 
 of hfe, childishly and pathetically helpless, yet haunted 
 by mystical visions of truths too deep for words, the hfe 
 of India seems made out of the thought it has dwelt on 
 so long, the thought that the spiritual only exists and 
 that materialism is a delusion and exists not at aU. It is 
 strange to see how, just as the choking of a spring wiU 
 parch a whole oasis, the denial of materialism at the 
 fountain-head of Indian thought has cast its shadow 
 over the whole of Indian life, charming it and laying 
 a spell upon it so that it can touch nothing material 
 to any purpose. What would a potter achieve who, 
 while his fingers pressed the clay, was persuaded in his 
 mind that there was no clay there for him to press ? 
 How feeble and wandering, how pathetically uncertain 
 would the touch of his fingers become ! It is so India 
 deals with hfe. Intellect is that faculty which concerns 
 itself with the universe and with hfe under its present, 
 human conditions. It may rise to a dim perception of 
 something beyond ; but, if it does, that is its final effort, 
 a half-despairing grasp after a long, chmb at a prize too 
 high for it to reach. Its real hfe is the Ufe of this world. 
 Its activity and efficiency here have full scope. It 
 appears to be an outgrowth of the observation of natural 
 phenomena and the operations of cause and effect ; and, 
 in short, in making himself comfortable in this material 
 universe, in analysing and exposing its processes and 
 secrets and turning them to his own account, inteUect is 
 
36 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 man's chief ally and guide and instrument ; and so much 
 does it grow itself by means of this kind of activity that 
 it may be said that all the circumstances of this human 
 life and the facts of the visible universe are the natural 
 food of the intellectual and reasoning powers and the 
 source from which they derive sustenance and nourish- 
 ment. 
 
 No wonder, then, that Eastern philosophy should have 
 acted on intellect as it has done. The denial of human 
 existence and the visible universe meant the entire cutting 
 off of intellect's food supplies. In the scheme of things 
 divined by Hindu intuition intellect had no part to play 
 or function to perform whatever. The pastures destined 
 for it to graze on have been laid waste. Let the reader 
 consider the consequences. One half of character in the 
 East is blighted. All the results which belong to intel- 
 lectual activity we look for there in vain. Indian litera- 
 ture has but one note. Its sole endeavour is to express 
 the inexpressible, to define the indefinable. It follows the 
 lead of India's one thought, and pores and dwells on that 
 to the exclusion of all other matters. Again, all the know- 
 ledge which in the West has flowed from the consideration 
 of natural phenomena is lacking to the East. The East 
 can treat nothing intellectually and with a sense of its 
 reaUty. Not only cannot it treat Nature and the laws and 
 forces of Nature in this way, but it cannot treat man and 
 man's history in this way either. It has no sense of 
 actuality, no wish to discern how things happened or why 
 or in what order they happened. Oriental history is half 
 guesswork and half rajrth. None of it conveys the least 
 feeling for reality. The truth is that the East has not de- 
 veloped the faculty whose function it is to deal with reaUty. 
 The intellectual faculty in the Eagt has become atrophied 
 owing to an exclusive cultivation of the emotional faculty. 
 
 But still, when we have said ever3H:hing there is to 
 say against the Hindu idea, when we have shown that it 
 is voiceless and dumb, that it cannot sympathise with 
 human nature and human life, that its influence has been 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 37 
 
 to cripple intellect and deter the race under its sway from 
 any participation in the opportunities of this earthly state, 
 or realisation even of the beauty and significance of the 
 universe — ^when we have said all this, the idea still remains 
 the highest ever evolved by man. It is an express re- 
 cognition of man's spiritual nature as a source of know- 
 ledge and Ught. It asserts the acquisition of wisdom not 
 through the mind but through the soul. This is what is 
 of such inestimable value, for this is what places the 
 spiritual cause on the only possible safe foundation. 
 
 All the great emotional conceptions which have in- 
 fluenced the West — asceticism, monasticism, mysticism, 
 the contemplative philosophy, and I know not how many 
 other things of the same kind — ^have come out of the East ; 
 just as all the intellectual and scientific ideas which have 
 reached or are reaching the East have come out of the 
 West. 
 
 So it always has been and so it still is. The East 
 is permanently and at heart emotional, the West per- 
 manently and at heart intellectual. And so much is 
 this the case that these opposite faculties have gradually 
 worked themselves out into all the circumstances of the 
 life of East and West. They have suppHed their own 
 standards of success and failure, their own solution of all 
 social and political problems, their own ideals and tradi- 
 tions in rehgion, morals, and conduct, Intellectuahsm in 
 the West has built up one kind of solution of hfe's problem; 
 emotionahsm in the East has built up another and quite 
 different solution. No two systems could be more at 
 variance than the whole mass of beUefs, observances, 
 habits, and customs which Eastern and Western life 
 have respectively accumtdated, yet each in all its parts is 
 consistent. Both systems possess a certain unity ; the 
 Eastern because it is all an outgrowth of the emotional 
 root, the Western because it is all an outgrowth of the 
 intellectual root. 
 
 It is as these things affect the lives of the people that 
 they seem to me most significant. Their influence is to 
 
38 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 be traced through the tiniest channels and verified in the 
 most trivial circumstances. Well do I remember, many 
 years ago though it was, the arrival in our remote village 
 of the first reaping machine. It was painted blue and red, 
 and the farm-hands and neighbours came and hung about 
 it, admiring and wondering, while the farmer, intoxicated 
 with a sudden sense of greatness and the stirrings of a 
 vague ambition, called to the girls to bring cider, and 
 while he handed round the jug, explained to us how in 
 these days a man must keep abreast of the times ; how it 
 was not enough to do as our fathers and grandfathers had 
 done, but that it behoved us to be on the look-out for ideas 
 and catch on to these new inventions and things we heard 
 so much of ; and how he was one of that sort and had 
 always had these thoughts and would probably be found 
 more forward in the race than some people expected yet, 
 though he was not one to talk much. And then the 
 rest applauded and admired him, and to all the thought 
 came how splendid a thing progress was and how fine it 
 was to be one with the purpose of the age. 
 
 I read in a story once an account of the smash-up of 
 the ice-floe in the Northern seas by the incoming tide ; 
 of the pounding and ripping of the huge masses detached 
 and broken up and grinding against each other ; and 
 how, to two watchers far off, the sound came as a faint 
 murmur ; and how a shaving of whalebonC) which one 
 of them had set up in the ice, barely quivered, yet 
 quivered, to the distant shock. Even so the great days 
 of science were heard of faintly in that distant and sleepy 
 village of mine. Yet were they heard of. Men and lads 
 now and again stopped and bent their heads to Usten to 
 the far-off sounds, and every httle household quivered an 
 imperceptible response to them. We never guessed at 
 the restlessness they were instilling ; but by and by one 
 lad left, and then another, drawn by that distant lure. 
 The places that fell vacant in farm and field were filled 
 less often by the young, upspringing generation than by 
 a sort of feckless and spiritless residuum of the rural 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 39 
 
 population which sluggishly circulated about the country- 
 side, deteriorating in quality and quantity as years went 
 by. Everything that had any ambition, any ear for the 
 drum and quickstep of the race, had gone off long ago 
 to join the forward and progressive march of Western 
 intellectual civilisation. 
 
 And then, from these memories, my thoughts drift to 
 the low country of Ceylon, and I see in mid-jungle the 
 Cingalese huts clustered under groves of palms, secluded 
 and shut off from the world. I see a Ufe which from day 
 to day and year to year aspires but to repeat itself ; which 
 relinquishes itself to the care of circumstances and lets 
 time, flowing by, carry it like a fly upon its current. All 
 details of those scenes, as they gUde before me, bear out 
 this sense of a passive acceptance of Ufe. The great fawn- 
 coloured gentle oxen with their slow motion and languid 
 ways, the monotonous, tuneless chant from some figure 
 lolling in the shade of slanting palms, the heavy scented 
 air, the tom-tom's droning throb, the slow-moving glossy 
 river, and, when evening falls, the velvet shadows weaving 
 their spells around, sprinkled with the living gold-dust of 
 fire-flies ; — so, in brief, all the sights and soimds and scents 
 of those scenes combine to utter that deep but still emotion, 
 
 Felt in the blood and felt along the heart, 
 
 which has penetrated with its influence the Eastern tem- 
 perament. 
 
 For passive as this simple village Ufe is, there exists 
 among these people a spirit of dignity and gentleness 
 which suggests that some influence works for good in them, 
 though it is not the influence that acts on Western Ufe. 
 I have often thought that, between these dreamy Indian 
 villagers and the Indian seers and mystics, there exists 
 the same sympathy as exists between our own peasants 
 and the leaders of Western thought. The huts on the 
 Kaluganga, Uke the cottages on the Exe, were stirred by 
 thoughts that came from afar. The wisdom of the Hindu 
 sage, which consists in nothing but pure and perfect 
 
40 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 receptivity, is popiolar in the East in the same sense in 
 which the practical knowledge of the scientist or the 
 expert is popular in the West. The race, that is to say, 
 recognises in that direction its own natural bias and 
 outlet. Eastern life is saturated with mysticism. The 
 anchorites and ascetics, so honoured and revered, who 
 make their lonely lairs in Indian jungles, and the wander- 
 ing mendicant fakirs who prowl along the highways, deal 
 but in degrees of the same gift. Knowledge in their idea 
 is revelation. It comes not of thought or conscious study, 
 but is freely given to the contemplative soul which in 
 stillness receives and in stillness enjoys the divine inspira- 
 tion. This in India is a common thought ; indeed it has 
 been laid down as a rule of life there that all men at a 
 certain age, having fulfilled their duties as citizens and 
 to their famihes, should sever all earthly ties and adopt 
 the vocation of avowed visionaries. 
 
 Such people, I say, are understood in India because 
 their view of life is, after aU, the people's view. That 
 attitude, emotionally sensitive yet too passive almost 
 to be called content, in which the Indian peasant accepts 
 what the days bring, is the raw material, and contains the 
 germ of the whole Upanishad philosophy. It is natural 
 that such a one should feel himself sustained by the 
 presence of these holy hermits, for it is in their wrapt 
 contemplation of spiritual things that his own gentle 
 acceptance of earthly things is countenanced and justified. 
 The one is the complement of the other, and together 
 they pervade the East. Hence the unity of Eastern life. 
 No eager pioneers beckon those docile natives along the 
 path of progress — or if such there be they excite little 
 attention, httle enthusiasm — yet are they conscious of 
 dim possibiUties of development and growth. They are 
 one with the spiritual instinct which is indigenous in 
 India, and the childlike simphcity with which they con- 
 template their rice fields and banana trees is the beginning 
 of that sterner serenity with which their high priests 
 contemplate the infinite. 
 
THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW 41 
 
 These two tendencies then, as I take it, founded on 
 opposing faculties and pulling opposite ways, are what 
 make the difference between Eastern and Western life 
 and temperament. When we speak of the " wisdom of 
 the East " we have in mind the exercise and effects of the 
 emotional faculty ; and when we speak of Western civilisa- 
 tion and progress we have in view the exercise and effects 
 of the intellectual faculty. At the head of Western know- 
 ledge stand our professors and scientists and scholars and 
 experts of one sort and another, devoted to practical 
 experiment and exact definitions. At the head of Eastern 
 knowledge stand sages and prophets and seers absorbed 
 in abstract contemplation. Down from these, in long 
 array, stretches on the one hand a society, orderly, alert, 
 powerful, progressive, unrivalled in managing, super- 
 intending and organising, yet with a bias in its aims and 
 ideals towards the mundane, the finite, the material ; 
 and, on the other, a society gentle, docile, sensitive to 
 spiritual suggestions, but immobile, quiescent, ignorant, 
 and ineffective. Both, however, are consistent and of 
 a piece. Western life is of a piece because, broadly 
 speaking, intellectuahsm is the root of it ; and Eastern 
 life is of a piece because, broadly speaking, emotionaUsm 
 is the root of it. So deep into the tissue of thought and 
 character goes the abyss which separates Esist and West. 
 
 The bearing of this upon art will, I hope, in the following 
 chapters be made plain. The idea which has by degrees 
 saturated the Eastern mind and character is, as we have 
 seen, a purely spiritual one, and, being purely spiritual, is 
 formless and inexpressible. The Atman is silence in the 
 language of art as in the language of the tongue. The 
 intellectual side of man's nature, which deals with the 
 visible and concrete, is powerless to touch or handle this 
 Eastern idea in any way. And the more the idea is 
 cherished, the more exclusively it is looked to for guidance 
 and light, the more intellect and the intellectual way of 
 looking at things passes out of use. We have seen that 
 this is so in life. We have seen that Eastern civilisation 
 
42 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 has quite failed to grasp the intellectual significance of 
 the material universe. So also it must be and is in art. 
 Form is that element in art which responds to intellectual 
 definition, and wherever the capacity for intellectual 
 definition is lacking the development in art of the sense 
 for form will be correspondingly feeble or altogether 
 absent. 
 
 But there is another side to the matter. If the Oriental 
 mood is closed to intellectual, it is accessible to emotional 
 suggestions. It lays itself open to feeling. To that 
 source the East looks for instruction and guidance and 
 light, and deliberately it sets itself to cultivate its capacity 
 for emotional receptivity. This too is a part of Hfe, and 
 this part of Ufe naturally expresses itself in terms of 
 colour. We may expect, then, that Eastern life will be as 
 rich in colour as it is poor in form. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The effect which Eastern thought has had upon Eastern Ufe and 
 art. The intellectual laws which govern the life and art of the West 
 have never applied to the life and art of the East. 
 
 The most profound distinction which exists in the whole 
 sphere of art is the distinction between Eastern and 
 Western art. Whoever compares a number of Eastern 
 with a number of Western buildings will have no difficulty 
 in distinguishing at a glance between the two. Without 
 reasoning about the matter he will be conscious that 
 Oriental constructions wear a strange and entirely 
 eccentric aspect which assures him that they never could 
 have resulted from Western modes of thought. Moreover, 
 the strangeness does not consist merely in unfamiliarity 
 and is not to be explained by reference to the hmits of 
 personal experience. There are plenty of English people 
 to whom a Greek temple, with its peristyle, or surroimding 
 coloimade of shafts, standing clear from the walls of the 
 cella within, is a totally unfamiliar mode of construction. 
 Nothing indeed resembles it in modem architecture, and 
 unless he had visited some of the remains of such buildings 
 or studied the descriptions and illustrations in books 
 devoted to the subject — ^which he would be the less likely 
 to do since these books are among the dullest in existence — 
 the average Enghshman would probably find the plan of 
 a Doric temple quite unknown to him. 
 
 Yet none the less on that accoxmt would he easily 
 
 43 
 
44 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 pick it out from any number of representations of Hindu, 
 Burmese, Chinese, or Saracenic temples, mosques, topes, 
 or pagodas, as a style of building which, though unfamiliar 
 to his experience, was not unfamiliar to his intelligence. 
 The actual plan and arrangement might be new, but the 
 constructive methods would nevertheless seem natural and 
 reasonable. His mind would be at home with it. He 
 would never think of exclaiming at the sight of it, as he 
 would at sight of a Buddhist tope or Burmese pagoda, 
 " That is ahen to me ; that conflicts with all my ways of 
 thinking and seems to me for some reason irrational 
 and grotesque." 
 
 Let him enlarge the field of comparison ; let him take 
 down the volumes of Fergusson's History of Architecture 
 which deal respectively with the styles of the East and 
 the West, and look through the illustrations, and, broadly 
 speaking, he will find the distinction we have drawn 
 persistent. He will find that, whether or not he happens to 
 be familiar with particular specimens, all the architecture 
 of the West strikes him as comprehensible and appropriate 
 and more or less in conformity with his ideas of what is 
 right and reasonable ; whereas directly he gets among 
 Oriental structures he is like one moving among strange 
 seas without chart or compass to direct his course. These 
 forms, these constructive methods, have something in 
 their very nature incongruous and foreign to his tempera- 
 ment. They are not so much ugly, or in any way repellent, 
 as unintelligible. He stares at the unmeaning roofs of a 
 pagoda, raised one upon another Mke a pyramid of parasols, 
 or at some tope or temple so loaded with odd indecipher- 
 able sculpture that the stone appears to be crumbUng 
 away under the chisel, and staring is conscious of nothing 
 but the gap which separates him from these things. 
 What their aesthetic merits or demerits may be he would 
 not undertake to say, for he does not possess any standard 
 of criticism which can be applied to them. They are out- 
 side the domain of art of which he knows the laws and 
 principles. The language they speak is gibberish to him. 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 45 
 
 It is this sense of estrangement, so universal, so un- 
 mistakable, so common an experience to all who look 
 upon Eastern architecture or sculpture, that I would 
 analyse. In what does it consist ? It has nothing to 
 do, as I have pointed out, with novelty, for a style of art 
 may be new to us yet not give rise to any sense of estrange- 
 ment at all. It must consist then in method, in the 
 method, that is to say, or manner, in which structural 
 laws are apprehended and carried out. The difference 
 in character between Eastern and Western structural 
 forms seems to show that the laws which underhe those 
 forms are differently apprehended by East and West. 
 
 The law which governs Western architecture is not 
 difficult to discover, for it is testified to not only by all 
 Western successes but also by all Western failures. This 
 Western architectonic law asserts that use shall govern 
 form, or that form and function are one and the same 
 thing. All the forces, pressures, and modes of resistance 
 and support exercised throughout a bmlding, in them- 
 selves invisible, are forces latent in the architecture, and 
 it is the clothing of them in their appropriate garb of 
 form which gives to the architecture its visible substance. 
 Hence the more exactly the visible form assimilates to the 
 invisible force the more perfect and truly architectonic a 
 feature will it be. 
 
 This rule, authoritative throughout the West, is what 
 raises architecture to the level of an intellectual art. It 
 affords a basis for criticism which is absolute and irre- 
 futable and cannot be explained away by any reference 
 to personal or national tradition or usage. Probably 
 of all styles of Western architecture that which is gener- 
 ally considered by competent critics to be the most 
 typical and perfect so far achieved is the favourite style 
 of the Greeks, the Doric style ; and the Doric style 
 occupies this exalted position because it is the style in 
 which the rule we have been speaking of, the rule that 
 form shall be dictated by function, is most scrupulously 
 observed. So exactly are weight, support, and every 
 
46 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 invisible pressure and resistance present in the structure, 
 embodied in its several parts that, if the reader will 
 conceive of this architecture, first as an array of invisible 
 forces, the manifestation of which in concrete shape is 
 to form the structure itself, and then if he will imagine 
 the process of incarnation actually taking place, and 
 weight, support, and every active and passive motive 
 in the building each in turn putting on its flesh of stone 
 — ^if he will imagine this happening and then turn his 
 gaze upon a Doric temple, he will perceive that here is 
 the reality of that imaginary transformation. Here, 
 in column, capital, abacus, and the various members of 
 the entablature, are structural features which are so 
 much the image of the forces exerted that these forces 
 may be said to have engendered them and visibly 
 embodied themselves in their dimensions. 
 
 This is the reason why Greek architecture is usually 
 referred to as pre-eminently intellectual. It is so because 
 the principle it is guided by is intellectual in its own 
 nature. The whole process of calculating the extent and 
 direction of the forces at work and embodying them in 
 concrete form is an intellectual process. Such forces 
 being, as has been said, invisible must be apprehended 
 by reason, and in the same way the form of the structural 
 features answering to them must also be apprehended 
 in the abstract, that is by reason, before they can take 
 visible shape. How strictly this is so we shall easily 
 perceive if we follow in thought the development of art 
 in the West from its primitive to its developed stage. 
 For what after all do we mean by the word primitive as 
 applied to building ? What is that rudeness which is 
 apparent in the uncouth monoliths of Stonehenge ? 
 It is a mental rudeness, an absence of reasoning power. 
 When we say that the rough moorland stones, stuck 
 upright in the earth and supporting others as rough 
 as themselves, are shapeless and without form, we mean 
 that they are not adapted to the part they play ; that 
 is to say, that the nature and amount of the forces here 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 47 
 
 present have not been reasoned and thought out and 
 embodied in these structural features. By and by when 
 thought and experiment have done their work these 
 features will approximate to their function. The process 
 will be slow and tentative. In many a Saxon and early 
 Norman cr3^t and chapel in England its progress may 
 be traced. The ponderous arches and massive columns 
 are as a rule greatly in excess of the demand made upon 
 them. No sense of proportion between burden and sup- 
 port is apparent, for neither the amount of the burden 
 nor the strength of the support is appreciated. The 
 invisible forces engaged are miscalculated. Where they 
 are obvious they are represented by huge features of 
 quite unnecessary dimensions. Where they are not 
 obvious they are perhaps not provided for at all. The 
 consequence is that these structures are usually much 
 too strong in some places and not nearly strong enough 
 in others, and for aU their bulkiness are liable to dis- 
 integration. They are concrete illustrations of a kind 
 of puzzle-headedness. Their expedients are the opera- 
 tions of slow, not intellectually developed minds, groping, 
 not quite successfully, after the nature and extent of the 
 mysterious pressures and resistances which they are 
 called upon to manipulate. 
 
 Admit, then, the Western theory that form and func- 
 tion are one, that form is merely the image of function, 
 and you have a coherent critical standard applicable to 
 Western art in its entirety. It would indeed be overstating 
 the case to maintain that, even in Western architecture, 
 this theory has been equally in all ages the ruhng motive. 
 It has sometimes been departed from, but under what 
 conditions and with what results ? Sometimes it has 
 been departed from in a spirit of imaginative exuberance, 
 or playfulness, as in some of the decorative detail of 
 Gothic ornamental sculptiire. These are liberties which 
 a creative age permits itself. The main lines and frame- 
 work of the structure remain rational and perfectly 
 expressive of the part they are playing, while the non- 
 
48 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 structural detail is allowed a measure of licence and by- 
 play in the pursuance of its fancies. A more serious 
 divergence from the rule, and one which is an infallible 
 mark of corruption and decadence, consists in the misuse, 
 or misshaping, of structural features in their structural 
 capacity, as when Roman architecture exhibits, as it 
 frequently does, the contrary and irreconcilable principles 
 of the arch and the lintel so intermingled as to render 
 the method and means of construction incomprehensible. 
 Such a style is essentially corrupt because it is in- 
 tellectually defective, and in the same way much of late 
 Renaissance architecture, in which structural features 
 are broken or distorted, and fragments of pediments and 
 of classic entablatures are introduced arbitrarily and 
 where they have no business, is also for the same reason 
 corrupt, since the forms employed give the lie to their 
 uses. But still these exceptions do but prove the rule, 
 for it may be said that wherever they occur on a large 
 scale, wherever, that is to say, the constructive features 
 of Western architecture fail to adapt their forms to the 
 purposes they fulfil, the vicious and corrupt character 
 of the style is always recognised. This is in fact our 
 test. Right through the history of our architecture it 
 operates. Architecture which, in the main, in all its 
 fundamental and evidently structural features — those 
 features which uphold the edifice, on which its security 
 depends, columns and arch and buttress and fljdng 
 buttress — recognises the law that form is function, is 
 architecture which has an affinity with our own tempera- 
 ment and which we feel to be akin to ourselves. This 
 is the common and unifsdng attribute which, in some 
 cases more, in others less, permeates all Western styles. 
 In short, it may be said that the architectonic instinct 
 of the West is intellectual in its essence, for it is based 
 and founded on the idea that an intellectual conception 
 of the various activities which make up a building is 
 the means by which the appropriate formation of its 
 structural features is attained. 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 49 
 
 If with tMs thought in his mind the reader will turn 
 again to a collection of Eastern designs he will at once 
 distinguish in what the sense of estrangement with which 
 they inspire him consists. Oriental designs. Oriental 
 buildings. Oriental structural forms do not acknowledge 
 the intellectual law of the West. To the Eastern tempera- 
 ment it does not seem, and never has seemed, at all 
 particularly desirable, let alone necessary, that the feature 
 which does this or does that should take to itself the out- 
 ward form and dimension of the act which it is perform- 
 ing. The Egyptian knew of no reason why he should 
 not fashion his columns in the Ukeness of a lotus, or bulb, 
 with narrow base and distended bulk ; or, if he was a 
 native of that other river valley, the twin cradle in which 
 man's earhest civihsation was rocked, he would readily 
 surmount his shafts with attenuated and lofty capitals, 
 half as high as the shafts themselves and of a compUcated 
 inexphcable design which bore to their structural use no 
 relation of any sort or kind. But it is amid the teeming 
 jungles of India that the mere multipUcation of super- 
 abundant forms apart from purpose or function has been 
 carried to its greatest lengths. The pedestals of the 
 famous tope at Sanchi are not only mangled with scidpture 
 out of all semblance of strength, but are surmounted, 
 by way of capitals, by uncouth groups of elephants so 
 fashioned that the precarious support of the super- 
 structure upon their jewelled howdahs remains an absolute 
 mystery. The columns at Nahapana rest their short 
 octagonal bulk upon big globes, and rejoice in capitals 
 which seem to be composed in the first place of huge 
 upturned basins, on the diminished end of which is built 
 up by degrees a kind of platform, with oxen and other 
 beasts crouched upon it, and the Untel of the entablature 
 somehow reposing in their midst. " What a chaos ! " 
 a Western critic cannot help exclaiming ; " what a 
 mere mess and jumble of matter undisciplined and un- 
 controlled by any rational purpose ! " Indeed these so- 
 called columns do not to Western eyes wear the form of 
 
 E 
 
50 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 columns at all. We give them that name, for if they 
 were anj^thing nameable they would be columns, but 
 they are not what the word suggests, for what the word 
 suggests to us is a feature made in the likeness of the 
 function which it is fulfiUing, and these are not so made. 
 I do not think it necessary to refer, save in passing, 
 to the buildings of Java, Burmah, Siam, China, or Japan. 
 They are all, as regards the point we are emphasising, 
 of the same character ; that is to say, they one and all 
 have the habit of evolving structural features the forms 
 of which bear no relation to their structural use. This 
 is the note of Orientahsm. Just as we said of Western 
 architecture that the bond of union between it all is the 
 recognition of the principle that form is dictated by 
 function, so we may say of Eastern architecture that its 
 bond of union consists in the negation of that principle. 
 It may indeed be afi&rmed that the Oriental builder 
 frequently seems to take a pleasure in purposely outraging 
 this principle. He appears to delight in twisting and 
 distorting his arches and columns and capitals until their 
 real use and real form are disguised beyond recognition. 
 Moreover, to this abuse of the sense of form must be 
 added, what is its inevitable effect, a tendency on all 
 occasions to indulge in exuberance and superfluity of 
 adornment. The desire, where it exists, to articulate 
 structural forms with the utmost precision and clearness 
 must naturally tend to preserve a certain smoothness of 
 surface and purity of outline ; but once that desire is 
 removed there is no safeguard against the invasion of a 
 whole wilderness of decorative accessories. This tendency 
 to a loaded and lavish style of decoration will seem to 
 many the most characteristic of Eastern traits. In a 
 sense it is so. The Temple of Nakhon Wat, for example, 
 is, I suppose, the most magnificent building on a huge 
 scale which exists in Siam. In some respects it is not 
 Eastern at all, for in many of its details it exhibits 
 the influences of the classic style. But this has no 
 effect whatever on its general appearance, which is so 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 51 
 
 smothered in the rankest decorative vegetation that the 
 classic motives and suggestions of form pass unheeded. 
 This tendency to over-enrichment is, as I say, prevalent 
 in the East, but it is important to notice that it is only 
 prevalent because the intellectual appreciation of the 
 quality of form is absent, or at least is weak. The more 
 form is honoured, the more it is felt to be a sufficing and 
 paramount merit that a structure should exhibit the 
 forces which are inherent in it, the more care will be 
 taken not to obscure and encumber that expression by 
 superfluous additions. There is no surer sign of the 
 architectonic gift than an instinctive inclination to rely, 
 for main influence and effect, on the essential structural 
 purposes of the fabric. Nothing, in Western eyes at 
 least, can ever stand instead of this, or be a recompense 
 for its loss. No eccentricities or ingenuities, no prodigal, 
 heaped-up enrichments can offer to the mind of man 
 the satisfaction which the curt, stem outUne of those 
 features offers whose crowning merit is the duty they 
 perform. 
 
 My object is to indicate a prevaiUng bias, rather than 
 to lay down a hard and fast rule. In reviewing the whole 
 extent of so vast a subject it would obviously be mis- 
 leading to be too dogmatic. It would be misleading to 
 affirm that Eastern architecture is never under any 
 circumstances structural in form and distinct in articula- 
 tion. The very art of architecture itself so depends for 
 its existence on the forces which govern it that it only 
 needs to be let alone, so to speak, in order to give expres- 
 sion to those forces. Violence must be used to hinder 
 it from giving such expression. Naturally, therefore, it 
 cannot always be hindered. Naturally, even in the Eeist, 
 it is sometimes left free, or half free, to express its own laws 
 and principles ; so that, if the reader set himself the task, 
 he may be able to cull from Eastern styles instances 
 which may seem to conflict with what has been said. 
 Yet if he takes a more general survey of the Eastern and 
 Western styles of building in two vast groups, he will 
 
52 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 see that they are none the less opposed by the very 
 different estimation in which they hold the intellectual 
 law of which we have spoken. That form and fmiction 
 ought to be one and were intended to be one is an idea 
 which perpetually haunts the Western intelligence. It 
 may now and again be obscured or betrayed, but it in- 
 evitably recurs. It lights the art upon its way from its 
 first primitive experiments to its loftiest triumphs, and 
 the art itself may be said to be vicious or vital in the 
 degree in which it acknowledges this law of its being. 
 Nothing of the sort applies to the East. The law of the 
 West is there no law at all. It may now and again assert 
 itself, but it leads a surreptitious and furtive existence, 
 receiving no honours and no open acknowledgment, but 
 subject on the contrary to a constant series of more or 
 less flagrant snubs and outrages. I say it is this very 
 remarkable difference in estimation in which the law of 
 form is held which constitutes the difference between 
 Eastern and Western architecture. 
 
 But if this is so it stands to reason that the same 
 difference will manifest its effects in many directions 
 besides art. Art is an expression of Ufa. It exhibits 
 the quaUties which life itself contains. If Western art, 
 broadly speaking, is intellectual and Eastern art non- 
 intellectual, it is bound to follow that Western Hfe, in all 
 its activities and enterprises, must be intellectual, and 
 Eastern life non-intellectual. 
 
 This is a test to which our estimate can be easily and 
 immediately submitted. Whoever is in doubt as to its 
 validity can call in the evidence of Eastern Ufa and 
 Eastern civilisation. The point has been touched upon 
 in the preceding chapter, but let me briefly return to 
 it again. To what subject shall we first turn as being 
 typical of intellectual initiative ? I have said that 
 science is absent from Indian civilisation, and there 
 is no doubt that the kind of knowledge we think of as 
 scientific is essentially an intellectual knowledge. It has 
 nothing in common with that other kind of knowledge 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 53 
 
 which is the fruit q;£ passive contemplation and which 
 may be defined as a pm-ely spiritual gift or faculty. 
 Intellectual activity proceeds by the reverse method. 
 It analyses material substances ; it reasons and reflects 
 on Nature's laws ; it puts its faith in much study and 
 research, and in the accumulation of facts. The results 
 of its labours can be defined and verified. Science is 
 more especially its own peculiar product. If we conceive 
 of aU knowledge as the offspring of the intellectual and 
 spiritual faculties, then it may be said that science is the 
 child which most favours its male parent, intellect. It 
 has Uttle or no feeling in its composition. It dislikes and 
 distrusts .the fleeting glimpses and visionary intuitions 
 vouchsafed to the spiritual faculty of things beyond our 
 daily fife. It is a firm believer in the here, the now, the 
 visible, the concrete, in all facts that can be proved, all 
 theories that can be verified, and, generally speaking, in 
 all those ideas which are controlled by the operation of 
 the human reason. 
 
 Such as it is — ^with limitations no doubt, yet immensely 
 efficient in its own sphere — this is the faculty which has 
 had most perhaps to do in building up the imposing 
 edifice of Western science. Where, let us now ask, is 
 the corresponding Eastern edifice ? The East, Uke the 
 West, possesses an ancient and venerable civilisation ; a 
 civilisation in some respects more profound and subtle 
 in thought than that of the West. No human words 
 have probed to the qtiick of spiritual consciousness so 
 surely as the words of the Indian mystics. But, with 
 this depth of spiritual thought which belongs to it, where 
 is that wing of the structure of civilisation which belongs 
 to intellect and which it is the especial province of intellect 
 to create ? Where is Eastern science ? We ask the 
 question in vain, and the more we ask and the more we 
 seek, the more huge and yawning becomes the gap in 
 Eastern civilisation which that which we are seeking for 
 should have filled. Certain rudiments are discernible. 
 We may say of science, as we said of architecture, that, 
 
54 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 its own laws being inherent in the nature of things, the 
 mere use of natural substances tends to illustrate those 
 laws. The ABC of science, which consists in the 
 turning to human account of the animal, vegetable, and 
 mineral material which Nature has provided, may be 
 said to be a common human heritage, so implicit indeed 
 in the properties of matter as to be shared in by animals. 
 It is on this as a basis that the reasoning faculty proceeds 
 to build up, stone by stone and story by story, the stately 
 erection we call science, and it is when we look in Eastern 
 life for this characteristic building-up process carried 
 out by the reasoning faculty that we are struck by the 
 absence of any such phenomenon. There is no Eastern 
 science, and, what amounts to the same thing, for the 
 work of the reasoning faculty is essentially continuous 
 and accumulative, there is no Eastern progress. Where 
 the East is to-day, save in certain particulars which it 
 has adopted from the West, it was, to all outward seem- 
 ing, a thousand years ago, or two thousand years ago, 
 or three thousand years ago. 
 
 And besides science there are other important and 
 donainating departments in which intellect and reason 
 play a leading part. One of these is hterature. What is 
 the general trend and character of the hterature of the 
 East ? It is easily seized. Eastern literature is extra- 
 ordinarily diffuse and subtle in its deahngs with the ab- 
 stract and metaphysical aspects of spiritual consciousness, 
 but is almost totally barren in those spheres of mundane 
 interest presided over by intellect. The speculations 
 of Indian mystics and seers on the nature of the soul and 
 the insight which belongs to the soul are without end ; 
 but turn to those branches of literature which deal with 
 the affairs of earth, with the history of the Indian people, 
 and which glean for present use the experience of the 
 past, and you will be confronted immediately with that 
 void which always rewards a search for intellectual activity 
 in Indian affairs. History and historical and biographical 
 studies and essays of all kinds are, it need scarcely be 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 55 
 
 pointed out, the especial care of intellect in the domain 
 of literature, for all such works are based on the en- 
 deavour to see and understand past events as they actually 
 happened and to extract their human significance. This 
 is an act of reason and of thought. The wild fables of 
 barbaric ages, in which human and superhuman are in- 
 extricably blended, the ballad narratives in which the 
 doubtful exploits of chiefs or clans are eloquently but 
 inaccurately celebrated, give place, with the growth 
 of the reasoning faculty, to the desire to observe and 
 narrate truly and to think dispassionately over past 
 events. The appearance of this desire marks the birth of 
 history as we know it, and among Western nations it 
 has always shown itself quite early, the wish to record, 
 however rudely, a narrative of things as they happened 
 being evidently in the West a primitive instinct. 
 
 But in the East it has never shown itself at all. That 
 purely reasoning and thinking intelligence which deUghts 
 to ponder on the actions of man, which weighs and sifts 
 evidence, and excavates buried sites, and pores over ancient 
 documents, and interprets strange cuneiform or hiero- 
 glyphic inscriptions in the longing to arrive at a rational 
 and true estimate — ^that purely intellectual intelligence 
 never has, so far as the testimony of Eastern Uterature is 
 concerned, animated the Eastern mind. 
 
 And apart from Uterature and science there is one other 
 more general concern of life in the conduct of which 
 reason and intellect are the obviously acknowledged 
 guides. I am thinking of the general tenor of our laws 
 and the system on which, whether by Parliamentary or 
 local government, we manage our affairs. I am thinking 
 of our Public Offices and Government Departments, of 
 the business-like capacity and method by which vast 
 revenues are collected and such immense organisations 
 as the Army and the Navy and the civil service are main- 
 tained and administered. And in the same way I am 
 thinking of the way in which this reasoned-out system is 
 applied to cities and country towns and districts, of the 
 
56 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 work of local government, the maintenance of roads, the 
 supply of water and of Ught, sanitation, the administra- 
 tion of justice, the educational sjrstem, and a score of other 
 moulding influences which bear upon the Uves of all of us 
 and which in their entirety constitute a standard and 
 scheme of life which all the Western nations have adopted 
 and to which they have all more or less equally contri- 
 buted. It is needless to insist on the fact that this is a 
 reasoning and reasoned system, for that it is so is palpable. 
 Like all other intellectual phenomena, its growth has 
 kept pace with the growth of the intellectual faculty. 
 Turn back to barbaric ages and the scheme is lacking. 
 Follow the course of the centuries, and as the savage 
 age recedes and the reasoning capacity, which governs 
 progress, dawns and brightens, so this scheme of rational 
 management confirms its hold on the life of the com- 
 munity. It is necessary perhaps for the reader to have 
 spent some years in the East for him to realise how 
 totally any such intellectual scheme or framework is 
 lacking to Eastern life. 
 
 In whatever direction we look, then, whether to litera- 
 ture, to science, to the arrangement and control of human 
 life in town and country, we shall be struck by the absence 
 in Eastern life of that law of reason which prevails in the 
 West. More even than that, the visitor to the East will 
 be conscious, in the very air he breathes, in the influence 
 given off by society, and, generally speaking, in the tone 
 and bias of thought in which the East is steeped, of an 
 exactly similar deficiency. When Mr. Kiphng's soldier 
 soUcits the War Office to ship him " somewhere east of 
 Suez where the best is Hke the worst," and where, as he 
 proceeds to point out, there " ain't no ten commandments" 
 to impede individual initiative, he is but expressing the 
 longing which impulsive natures are apt to feel to win free 
 from the whole system of rational routine by which 
 Western Hfe is controlled. It is not in reality the ten 
 commandments that he desires to escape from so much 
 as that constant supervision of the rational sense demon- 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 57 
 
 strated through the action of laws and customs, town 
 councils and boards of guardians, petty sessions, news- 
 papers, and public opinion, which penetrates and enfolds 
 the whole of Western life. That other life, the Hfe of 
 the East, appeals to him as an enfranchisement from 
 this too strict control. Yonder, at last, those elements 
 in his nature which are irrational and purely emotional 
 can be given the free play which the rigorously intellectual 
 West refuses them. 
 
 None of the rules of life of the West apply to the East, 
 and pressed through all modes of outward expression 
 to the common source of human nature, the explanation 
 of all such differences is fovmd to consist in the fact that 
 the Western world has accepted the intellectual law of 
 reason, and has gradually arranged and bmlt up a scheme 
 of life in obedience to that law, whereas the East has 
 not done this but has accepted a scheme dictated by 
 emotional impulses. The cabals, treacheries, massacres, 
 revolts, palace - plots, and unceasing web of intrigue 
 which make up so large a share of Eastern politics, what 
 are they but the wild overgrowth of caprices which, in 
 the Uves and daily habits of men, assert themselves when 
 rational control is withdrawn ? 
 
 Once more before reverting to architecture as an epi- 
 tome of all this, let me guard myself against the charge 
 of arbitrary and sweeping generalisation. There is an 
 order of critics, with whom I have had many dealings, who 
 are hindered by the least exception or qualification from 
 accepting any broadly self-evident truth. Not every 
 " ancient civilisation " of Egypt, Assyria, India, or the 
 Far East which makes a fine show is necessarily to be 
 regarded as in any sense an intellectual achievement. 
 Time, servile labovu, a merely manual dexterity, an 
 unreasoning tradition operating on successive generations, 
 the custom of ages, and the tsnranny of kings — ^these are 
 agents which, apart from the free use of intellect, can 
 produce not inconsiderable results. Many of these 
 Eastern civilisations have been to a very large extent ant 
 
58 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and bee civilisations, civilisations of routine. But still, 
 admitting all such possible qualifications as the reader 
 may be able to discover, I am well assured that a broad 
 and general comparison of the histories of East and West, 
 from the time, six or seven centuries before Christ, when 
 the Hindu seers revealed their mystical spiritual doctrines 
 and the Greek thinkers laid the foundations of physical 
 science, will abundantly confirm the statement that intel- 
 lectuaUsm, which has been accepted as the law of life in 
 the West, never has been accepted as the law of life 
 in the East. 
 
 This is the state of things to which Eastern architecture 
 bears witness. The traveller who, turning the page of his 
 memory, compares all that he has seen of European with 
 Oriental buildings, and the reader who turns the pages 
 of Fergusson's History and carries out in a series of illus- 
 trations a similar comparison, will find themselves dealing 
 with the outward and visible signs of an inward mental 
 difference which always has divided East from West. 
 The law of the West, let me repeat it, which afiirms that 
 form is function is in its essence an intellectual or reason- 
 ing law. It is so because it deals with an idea which has 
 to be intellectually conceived before it can be turned to 
 practical account. The reader will observe that in the 
 West this intellectual law of form operates in architecture 
 by the same degrees as in other fields. I pointed out just 
 now that in matters of science, of literature, and in the 
 general government and control of urban and country 
 life, growth and development have gone hand in hand 
 with the growth and development of intellect. Our test 
 of civilisation generally is intellectual maturity. What 
 we call the Dark Ages were the ages which preceded the 
 first signs of the intellectual awakening. So, too, the 
 degrees of progress from barbarism to enlightenment are 
 registered in architecture by the development of in- 
 tellectually conceived forms. Tamperings with the law 
 there have been ; vicious practices and corrupt fashions 
 have often veiled or vulgarised the ideal at which we were 
 
EASTERN AND WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 59 
 
 aiming ; yet whoever traces from its rude beginnings the 
 art of construction in the West, and meditates on the 
 conformation of the structural features which it has 
 evolved, will acknowledge, not only that the functional 
 law has constantly operated, but that it holds in Western 
 architectixre just the same position of supremacy and 
 command which intellect in other spheres of activity 
 maintains over Western life. It is the great architectonic 
 law of the West. It images and embodies in art the pre- 
 eminent influence which intellect has achieved in Western 
 Hfe. 
 
 This he will acknowledge ; and turning then to the 
 East he will find the law break down and collapse, and his 
 very standard of right and wrong fail him in consequence. 
 What are these extraordinary shapes, these complex 
 indeterminate arches, these weird bulbous columns of 
 no fixed shape or outline, these hobgoblin roofs and 
 monstrous protuberances and excrescences, these surfaces 
 that rot with ornament, this indeterminate sculpture that 
 ramifies and spawns in every comer, eating the stone, 
 moth-like, to rags and tatters — ^what is the explanation 
 of it all, or why do such words as fantastic, eccentric, 
 whimsical, capricious, and the like spring to our lips to 
 describe it ? The answer is simple. All these portents 
 are rendered possible by the abohtion of the law of 
 function. They represent the invading jimgle of whims 
 and impulses which always spring up when the control- 
 ling hand of reason is withdrawn. Thus both in East 
 and West art and hfe go hand in hand. Placed side by 
 side, the two world-styles of architecture illustrate and 
 drive home two facts of commanding significance. The 
 first is that the tendency of the West is to rely in the 
 main on the reasoning faculty ; the second is that, what- 
 ever means of enlightenment the E^st possesses — and it 
 may be she possesses means as important as ours — ^it is 
 certainly not to the reasoning faculty that she looks for 
 guidance. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 
 
 In what respects the Byzantine style of architecture, which is an 
 adaptation by the Greeks of Oriental ideas of colour, is found to be 
 a perfect embodiment of Eastern thought. 
 
 It will very likely seem to the reader a somewhat un- 
 warranted proceeding to use a style of Christian date and 
 origin, such as the Byzantine style of architecture, as an 
 expression of something so seemingly ahen to it as Extern 
 philosophic thought. But the connection between the 
 two is really a very intimate one. I have said, and I shall 
 perhaps often have to repeat, that the two main ideas with 
 which all art is concerned have been separately contributed, 
 one by the West, the other by the East. Form, as we were 
 saying, is chiefly a matter of the intellect. The arts 
 which deal with form convey ideas. Their appeal is to 
 the mind. Colour, on the other hand, conveys no ideas. 
 It is emotional and appeals to the senses rather than 
 to the intellect. And this being so, it seems natural 
 that the Western temperament, intellectual rather than 
 sensuous, should excel in form rather than in colour ; 
 while the Eastern, sensuous rather than intellectual, 
 should excel in colour rather than form. 
 
 Certainly what the East and West mean by colour are 
 two very different things. That swarthy and deep, half- 
 melancholy richness which is the note of Eastern colour 
 does not belong to the West. At least it is not indigenous 
 to Western life, and when found in the West its presence 
 
 60 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 6i 
 
 may probably be traced to Eastern origin or influence. 
 The characteristic of Eastern colouring is a strength of 
 tone so full and rich that it conveys a sense of sober gravity, 
 even of a certain severity, which has nothing in common 
 with the feeble temerities of our " neutral tints " and 
 " half tones." The eye rests upon it undistracted and 
 feeds in contentment, secure in the consciousness of the 
 ample store at its disposal. 
 
 There is in such a conception of colour that union of 
 strength and simpHcity which reveals itself only when a 
 nation is deahng with the things which it understands 
 and which correspond to its own genius. To match the 
 Eastern sense for colour we must have recourse to the 
 Western sense for form. In the Norman arch and the 
 Doric shaft we shall find that strength and simpHcity 
 which belong to colour in the East. On the other hand, 
 Eastern form is entirely wanting in those very character- 
 istics which distinguish Eastern colour. Its constant 
 aspiration is to be fantastical and ingenious. To revert 
 in thought to Chinese, Indian, or Arab architecture is to 
 conjure up the idea of a medley of involved and eccentric 
 shapes which seem to express every kind of whim of the 
 imagination, but which never by any chance express the 
 quahties of simplicity and strength. The resemblance 
 between form used in this way and om: Western use of 
 colour is a profoimd one. Both are equally marked by 
 weakness and indecision. Both are capricious, unstable, 
 constantly involved in experiments at once ingenious 
 and trivial. The half tones and shades into which the 
 strength of colour dissolves in Western hands are the 
 counterpart of those weakly compUcated features into 
 which the strength of form dissolves in Eastern ones. 
 In short, it seems, as if Western form and Eastern colour 
 are ahke in character, and are remarkable for the same 
 great qualities of simphcity and strength ; and Eastern 
 form and Western colour are also ahke, and are remarkable 
 for the opposite quahties of weakness and triviahty. Of 
 these it is the former pair that represent the positive 
 
62 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 achievement and definite contribution of the two halves 
 of the world to the sum total of art. The masculine, 
 intellectual West has contributed the idea of form ; the 
 feminine, emotional East has contributed the idea of 
 colour. 
 
 But though the sense for colour is indigenous to the 
 East, yet of an adequate expression of that idea, of 
 its embodiment in any great work or school of art, the 
 East never has been capable. Matthew Arnold, in his 
 criticism of the Celtic spirit in literature, has some pene- 
 trating remarks on the character and capacity of the 
 emotional faculty. The essence of his argument is that 
 emotionalism, or feeling, though a most essential element in 
 creative work, is insufficient of itself to create. Feeling 
 and emotion, though they supply the inspiration, do not 
 supply the form. For this is always needed the co-opera- 
 tion of the sterner, more matter-of-fact intellectual faculty. 
 The Celtic race is full of poetry, is soaked and brimming 
 over with the poetic sentiment, but it has always been 
 unequal to the creation of important and monumental 
 works of poetry because it has not been reinforced by an 
 intellectual capacity capable of supplying the form, the 
 argument, the architectonic or structural quahty which 
 is essential to poetry of first-rate importance. Short 
 poems, poems as poignant and as brief as the spasms of 
 emotion, tender or melancholy, which call them forth, the 
 Celtic genius can produce. But when we seek to go 
 beyond such a motive, when we ask for the large and 
 ordered development which is based upon reason and 
 thought, we are at a loss. Small, pure jets of feeling 
 that genius will give us ; but such works as the essen- 
 tially intellectual classic genius achieved, and as Europe 
 after the intellectual rebirth of the Renaissance likewise 
 developed, are beyond its compass. 
 
 The Oriental genius, with its essentially emotional and 
 intuitive impulses, is similar to the Celtic, and therefore 
 in the domain of art, though we may expect to find a 
 host of minor sporadic evidences of the influence of its 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 63 
 
 spiritual thought, yet we must not expect to find that 
 thought built up into a coherent and organic style. 
 The Oriental character does not possess the intellectual 
 capacity necessary for such a task. Eastern Ufe and 
 Eastern art do, in fact, teem with just the kind of evid- 
 ences we should expect. Eastern silks and embroideries. 
 Eastern gems and jewelry. Eastern decoration in wood 
 or stone. Eastern rugs and carpets. Eastern tiles and 
 pottery and glass, all these and many more such things 
 gMtter and glow with colour of the pecuhar Oriental 
 depth and lustre. But these are no more than equal to 
 those " small, pure jets of feehng " and emotion which, as 
 I have said, inform Celtic poetry. They testify to the 
 profound emotionalism in which Oriental Ufe is soaked, 
 but they do not afEord to that emotionahsm an adequate 
 and monumental expression. 
 
 The reader who knows the East wiU be aware of this 
 inadequacy in its art. The idea of colour is indigenous to 
 the East. Every one must feel that. Every one must 
 recognise how interwoven the colour-sense is with the Ufe 
 and character of an Oriental people, so that it has become 
 the ineradicable trait by which the Oriental is invariably 
 distinguished. The gypsies who bivouac on EngHsh 
 commons impart a whiff of their Uving sense for colour 
 among us, and emphasise thereby our consciousness of 
 their own foreign origin. Colour as they use it is a 
 matter of hfe, and it assumes accordingly that note of 
 depth and richness which no amount of studio-culture 
 seems able to bestow on it. And yet, diffused throughout 
 the life of the East as this colour-sense is, we look in vain 
 for any great artistic manifestation, any school of painting 
 or architectmral style of Eastern origin and growth, 
 which shall centralise and collect that colour-sense for us. 
 The impotence which saps the emotional temperament 
 has waited on the East. The qualities which make great 
 achievements possible — disciphne, patience, self-control, 
 a strong will and a sober judgment — are wanting to it ; 
 and the consequence is, that though in Eastern countries 
 
64 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 the appreciation of colour is universally diffused, yet the 
 expression of it is restricted to such trivial illustrations 
 as carpets and embroideries, tiles and pottery, or the 
 dresses and ornaments of the people. 
 
 To realise the impotence of the East in the expression 
 of its own ideal is to realise the significance of the part 
 which the Byzantine Greeks were called upon to play. 
 The reader will remember that Constantinople, founded in 
 the fourth century, was built upon the site of an earlier 
 Greek colony, the colony of Byzantium. The trans- 
 formation of a remote provincial town into the capital 
 of a great empire produced its inevitable effect in an out- 
 burst of artistic activity to meet the demands of a wealthy 
 and luxurious society. As was natural in an Eastern 
 capital, the resulting art concerned itself with the ideas 
 proper to the East ; that is to say, it concerned itself, 
 mainly and fundamentally, with colour. So much was 
 inevitable. What was not inevitable was the existence, 
 on the spot selected for the Eastern capital, of a Greek 
 colony; placed there, as might seem, with the express 
 object of undertaking the control and management of the 
 new art. Hitherto every attempt at a manifestation of 
 the Eastern ideal had been baulked by the lack in the 
 Oriental character of the qualities necessary for the carry- 
 ing out of a great work. In this crisis, then, of the world's 
 history, when the establishment of an imperial city offered 
 so grand a field for the display of Oriental art, the unique 
 opportunity was taken out of the hands of Oriental races 
 altogether. What the Greeks had already done for the 
 Western ideal of form they were now called on to do for 
 the Eastern ideal of colour. Their colonies in the East 
 had imbibed and assimilated the conception of colour 
 common to the East, and the opportunity found them 
 prepared to give a genuine artistic interpretation of it. 
 As, in the temples and palaces of Eg3^t and Asss^ia, the 
 fragments of rough form-delineation lay to hand wluch 
 the Greek genius of an earher age combined and har- 
 monised into the perfect structure of the Doric temple, so 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 65 
 
 throughout the cities of Persia, Asia Minor, and the East 
 the equally inarticulate attempts at colour-delineation 
 were scattered which that genius was to shepherd and 
 collect into the perfect representation of the Byzantine 
 interior. The success of the Greeks in this latter task has 
 resulted in the Byzantine style being the only really 
 adequate expression of an ideal which forms one-half of 
 the inspiration of art. 
 
 In the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster 
 two of the chapels, one on the right and one on the left, 
 have already received their mosaics. They form complete 
 Uttle specimens of the art in which they deal, but it so 
 happens that several of the architectural features in 
 either chapel are treated in different was^, and these 
 different ways illustrate, as I hope to be able to show, 
 very conveniently the principle on which Byzantine as 
 a distinct architectural style is founded. That principle, 
 which may be briefly stated at once, is that mosaic is to 
 be used as the actual architectural material ; that the 
 nature of this material, soft, plastic, and flexible, is to 
 dictate the entire arrangement and composition of the 
 structure. It is never to be used superficially, as a mere 
 surface adornment, but always as the architectural motive 
 in obedience to which the main forms and proportions of 
 the building are designed. Further, as the existence in 
 a building of the usual sharply defined architectural 
 features belonging to stone construction must always, 
 when used in conjunction with mosaic, reduce the latter 
 to a mere skin-deep covering (since these features at once 
 declare the composition of the building to be not of 
 mosaic, but of stone), it will follow that a second indication 
 of the true Byzantine style, over and above the adoption 
 of all forms suited to the softness of mosaic, will be the 
 obhteration of the whole structural system belonging to 
 stone architecture. 
 
 The two large window recesses, holding double-light 
 windows, are common features of both the Westminster 
 Cathedral chapels. The recesses of the right-hand chapel, 
 
 F 
 
66 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 however, are rounded in the mosaic itself, and completely 
 carried out in that material, whereas those of the left are 
 formed of stone arches, the mosaic only beginning above 
 the archivolt. This latter arrangement, and the appear- 
 ance of the powerful stone arches as the supporting 
 members, immediately proclaim the stone construction 
 of the chapel, and reduce the mosaic to a quite superficial 
 appearance in consequence ; while in the former case the 
 rounding of the blunt angles in the gold produces on the 
 spectator the impression that the whole wall is formed 
 entirely of this substance. The difference between the 
 two in effect and feeUng is of a fundamental kind. In the 
 right chapel the mosaic is used as the architectural 
 material, and becomes naturally the motive of an archi- 
 tectural style. In the left chapel it is confessedly mere 
 ornament — of a certain effect from that point of view, 
 but entirely without architectural significance. 
 
 We need not, however, leave the right-hand chapel 
 itself to have this contrast brought home to us. As 
 though to illustrate at a glance the difference between 
 what we may call the real mosaic style and the sham one, 
 the architect has confronted his solid mosaic window 
 arches with a pair, leading from the chapel into the aisle, 
 treated, as the rival ones in the other chapel were treated, 
 with sharply moulded and projecting stone archivolts. 
 If the reader will glance from the flat gold surface framed 
 in the stone construction on one side to the solidly turned 
 arch wrought in the gold itself on the other, or if he will 
 compare the stone arches with the recessed arch above 
 the altar, which is another specimen of structural mosaic, 
 he will be made instantly conscious of the enormous 
 difference between the two ways of using the material. 
 
 And let us emphasise the point here, for it is a crucial 
 one, that it is not a question only of degree of effectiveness 
 between the two treatments. Probably most people 
 will agree that the mosaic is more effective when carried 
 right through the structure than when supported in a 
 stone framework. But it is insufficient to put it in this 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 67 
 
 way. " More effective " conveys the idea of differing 
 degrees of the same effect. This is a quite inadequate 
 distinction. The two arrangements we are considering 
 represent two totally different and opposed principles. 
 One represents mosaic used constructively ; the other 
 represents it used decoratively. It will easily be per- 
 ceived that the latter way of using it never could have 
 originated a separate style. Architecture is construction, 
 and therefore every differentiation of style is bound to be 
 based on a differentiation of construction. This is what 
 mosaic used in subordination to stone forms never could 
 imply, for under these circumstances it is used merely 
 as a superficial accessory in a structural arrangement 
 with which it has no real concern. Once, however, it is 
 allowed to form the substance of the structure, this idea 
 of a differentiation of construction is Just what it does 
 introduce. It introduces the idea of a construction suited 
 to a new material, soft and plastic, between which and 
 stone or marble there is nothing at all in common. It is 
 this assertion of the right of the material to institute laws 
 in confomdty with its own nature which marks the solid 
 treatment of mosaic as the true index of the style. ■ 
 
 We have, then, in the details of these Westminster 
 chapels a clue to Byzantine art. There, in the couple 
 of arches where the mosaic is used structurally, we have 
 a specimen of the Byzantine style itself. Here, where 
 it is subordinated to stone construction, we have a 
 treatment which is not Byzantine at all ; a decorative 
 treatment of mosaic, only interesting as exhibiting the 
 misconception under which the West, by reason of its 
 allegiance to form, has always laboured in its deaUngs 
 with the Eastern ideal of colour. 
 
 Having provided omrselves with the theory that the 
 structural use of mosaic is the test of the Byzantine style, 
 we may have recourse to a few of the chief examples of 
 that style to see how such a theory applies. Probably 
 Santa Sophia owes its generally conceded position as the 
 central t57pe of the style largely to its mere magnitude 
 
68 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and splendour, qualities which, though not unimportant, 
 should not be allowed to outweigh- principles of con- 
 struction. The building is composed of a cluster of domes, 
 rising one above the other, until they culminate in the 
 wide, light central dome, which, perforated by a circle 
 of tiny windows round its base, and almost detached 
 from the main structure, seems, as Procopius long ago 
 noticed, rather to float above the space beneath than 
 to be built over it. This architectural arrangement has 
 been much admired, and it is indeed expressive in a 
 wonderful degree of a certain airy lightness and grace. 
 The dome is the structural principle. The great central 
 arc is upheld by two half -domes, which abut against and 
 support its lower rim ; while the transfer from the 
 circular dome-bases to the square supports is effected 
 by " pendentives," or dome-segments. Thus the whole 
 system is raised on a succession of concave surfaces 
 mutually self-supporting, and lesser domes, half-domes 
 and segments of domes, holding together and rising hke 
 a pile of bubbles, realise their appropriate issue at last 
 in the central, perfect specimen in which they all culminate, 
 and towards which they all converge. " All these parts," 
 says Procopius — and his remarks have been echoed since 
 by almost every critic who has written on the chmrch — 
 " surprisingly Joined to one another in the air, suspended 
 one from another, and resting only on that which is next 
 to them, form the work into one admirably harmonious 
 whole." 
 
 And yet if we look for the motive of this harmonious 
 whole we shall find that it lies rather in the endeavour 
 to harmonise and simplify the composition of an earlier 
 style than to formulate the laws of a new one. In 
 general character, as well as in detail and ornament, 
 Santa Sophia bears, as has often been pointed out, a 
 strong resemblance to the stately palaces and thermae 
 of the Roman Empire. Those eariier buildings, however, 
 represent a confusion of the irreconcilable principles of 
 horizontal and arched construction. In Roman archi- 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 69 
 
 tecture these two principles are almost always combined, 
 and the spaces within the architrave and columns belong- 
 ing to the former principle are bunged up with the arches 
 and walls belonging to the latter. Now the Greeks had 
 already in their temples carried the horizontal principle 
 to its full and perfect expression, but they had never 
 applied themselves seriously to the possibiUties of the 
 arch. This had hitherto been left to Roman develop- 
 ment. Santa Sophia makes good the deficiency. Out 
 of the unintelligible jumble of Roman construction the 
 Greeks extricated the arch principle and proceeded to 
 enforce it with their usual thoroughness. The dome is 
 the arch form carried to completion. A structure 
 arranged as a system of domes is, therefore, that in which 
 the arch principle as a structural motive can be most 
 consistently carried out. Santa Sophia is a composition 
 arranged on such a basis. Those lofty curves, supported 
 by and emerging from each other, and soaring upward 
 until they sweep victoriously in a culminating effort 
 across the vast central gap, are the most perfect representa- 
 tion that exists in the world of the resources and possi- 
 biUties that are latent in the arch principle. The result 
 they achieve, in its purity and consistency, is far beyond 
 anything the Romans had any conception of. 
 
 Nevertheless, successful as the great experiment was, 
 it was never repeated. That wonderful and almost fairy- 
 Hke construction, which has excited the astonishment and 
 admiration of so many critics, sxirvives, in its kind, a 
 sohtary example of the Greek genius. It is true that 
 the domical system has remained characteristic of the 
 Byzantine style. It is also true that the arrangement 
 by which the thrust of the dome was received by the 
 pendentives and transmitted by them to the supports 
 constituted a structural principle which was a distinct 
 addition to the science of architecture. Nevertheless, 
 this newly invented domical system was never again used 
 as it had been in Santa Sophia. It was never again used 
 to demonstrate the beauties and resources of the arch 
 
70 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 principle. What it was used for was to demonstrate the 
 beauties and resources of mosaic as a building material 
 — a quite different object, as we shall presently see. 
 
 On the completion of Santa Sophia an alternate con- 
 fronted the Byzantine architects. Santa Sophia, as it 
 stands, is a study of form. The mosaics with which it 
 is lined are of no real significance. As we saw in the 
 Westminster chapels, mosaic does not become an archi- 
 tectural motive and determine an architectural style 
 until it changes, in accordance with its own nature, the 
 whole architectural composition. But the architectural 
 composition of Santa Sophia is not in the least affected 
 by its mosaics. Those light and lofty curves, so crisply 
 defined, so clearly constructive, were not designed to 
 show off the richness and substance of a flexible material. 
 They were designed as studies of form, and they compose 
 a clearly articulated structural arrangement. As for the 
 effect of such an articulation on the mosaics themselves, 
 it is, as usual, to reduce them to a mere surface covering. 
 It is obvious at a glance that with the composition of 
 the architecture they have nothing to do whatever. 
 They are, therefore, as here used, a decorative, not 
 an architectural, motive. 
 
 And this is generally admitted, even by those who 
 accept the building as the type of the Byzantine style. 
 Fergusson, a critic for whom all lovers of architecture 
 must feel a great respect, has dwelt with emphasis on the 
 structural beauty of this interior, which he declares to 
 be unequalled by the great mediaeval cathedrals of Europe, 
 and he then goes on to deal with the decoration — ^that is, 
 with the mosaic. His judgment on this is, that, as 
 decoration, it is carried too far. It detracts, he finds, 
 from the severity which is essential to structural effect. 
 
 This criticism seems to me sound. I have pointed 
 out that structural form kills mosaic by making it appear 
 thin and superficial. But it is also true that mosaic has 
 a tendency to vitiate structural forms by making them 
 appear indecisive. A substance composed of tiny glass 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 71 
 
 particles embedded in a cement groundwork does not 
 lend itself to perfect smoothness of surface or perfect 
 sharpness and regularity of edge. The consequence is 
 that, where mosaic is employed in conjunction with 
 structural forms, the sense of decision and exactitude, 
 which is the foundation of the whole effect of structural 
 architecture, is weakened. This to some extent is the 
 case in Santa Sophia. Wonderfully telling as those 
 gradations of curves are, they would probably tell 
 with even more decisive effect if the internal decoration 
 were fresco instead of mosaic. Fergusson on this 
 point is probably right. The structure here suffers from 
 the presence of a decoration which is something more 
 than mere decoration : which is in its own nature 
 structural. 
 
 A choice, then, is here offered to the Greek architects. 
 They may go on developing the arch principle, using 
 that principle as the motive of a new architecture of 
 form, in which case the mosaic idea must remain not 
 only undeveloped, but had better perhaps be discarded 
 altogether. Or they may, if they choose, make an 
 entirely new departure by concentrating attention on 
 the possibihties of mosaic and recognising in it the 
 governing architectural motive. In this case it would 
 be the structural forms that would have to be sacrificed, 
 and, form sacrificed, it would be to the other great 
 aesthetic motive that the new style would have to look 
 for its effect — ^namely, to colour. 
 
 Fergusson's advice, as we have seen, under these 
 circumstances is to sacrifice colour to form. From a 
 Western critic such counsel was to be looked for. The 
 Greeks, however, decided differently. For one thing, it 
 is probable that they saw in the arch principle itself 
 not a first-class vehicle for an interpretation of the idea 
 of form — an idea which can only be rightly expressed 
 when the whole structural arrangement is clearly defined, 
 which again it can only be when the members that carry 
 and those that are carried are instantly distinguishable. 
 
72 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 In lintel architecture, where horizontal weight rests on 
 vertical supports, the distinction is plain, and the con- 
 sequence is that extraordinary significance is thrown 
 into every feature. We may conjecture therefore that 
 a race which had developed the idea of form on the 
 principle of the lintel was not likely to be very deeply 
 impressed by the possibiUties of the arch. The Byzan- 
 tine architects gave the principle a trial. They rescued 
 it from the muddle-headed treatment of the Romans ; 
 they divined its character and capabilities ; they wove 
 it into a structure the most perfect of its kind that the 
 world has seen, and then they turned their backs upon 
 it for ever. Of all aesthetic criticisms the most scathing, 
 to my mind, ever uttered, is that disdainful turning 
 away of the Greek architects from a principle out of 
 which they had wrought what, to most races, would 
 have seemed an unqualified success. 
 
 They found compensation in that great Oriental idea 
 which had never received due recognition in art. An 
 interior, darkened and solemn, built out of solid gold and 
 studded with figures and groups in swarthy crimsons 
 and blues, might form such an illustration of the idea of 
 colour as had never yet been dreamt of. On this thought 
 the Greeks acted. They discarded at once and altogether 
 those structural forms which had hitherto composed all 
 that was meant by the word architecture, but the pres- 
 ence of which was bound to be fatal to the influence of 
 the new material. Architraves and archivolts, cornices, 
 galleries, pilasters, friezes, all were swept aside. Instead 
 of these angular and exact features the forms employed 
 in the new style must, if they were to conform to the 
 nature of the new material, be as much as possible of 
 curved and rounded shape. The vault, the apse, and 
 the dome were selected, and became the characteristic 
 features of the style. These were, however, to be used 
 — and this is the distinctive mark of the style — ^not in 
 the least as an exhibition of domical or arcuated con- 
 struction, but solely as a vehicle for the display of the 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 73 
 
 new building material. The lofty array of curves which 
 made the fascination of Santa Sophia is exchanged for 
 a group of low, heavy domes, of immense depth and 
 ponderous solidity. It would, indeed, be impossible to 
 imagine any features more different in character than 
 the Santa Sophia domes and those subsequently used 
 in the style. The former, in their lightness, seem scarcely 
 to rest upon the earth at all, and in their exquisite grace 
 and variety form a singular triumph of structural art. 
 The latter, much lower, darker, and thicker, seem rather 
 like caverns delved out of the soUd earth than buildings 
 erected on its surface, and their squat proportions and 
 plain curves are totally wanting in the Santa Sophia 
 grace and variety. 
 
 A further change, in the same direction, was effected 
 by the use made of Ught and shade. Few points are of 
 more importance in Byzantine effects than this, and the 
 system of chiaroscuro, as it may rightly be called, which 
 they adopt is responsible for a great deal of the power 
 and influence of Byzantine colouring. In Santa Sophia 
 the hght is briUiant throughout the church, and the con- 
 sequence is that the mosaics pale their ineffectual fire 
 and fade away into a feeble, ashen grey. It is only in 
 the deep twilight of the later and more tj^pical examples 
 that that deep glow wakes which is the note of the 
 style. 
 
 The modifications then made, after Santa Sophia, in 
 the development of the new style seem to have been as 
 follows : (i) All those features which conveyed the idea 
 of a hard and exact structural material were discarded. 
 
 (2) The lofty and varied dome system was exchanged 
 for a few plain concaves of massive depth and substance. 
 
 (3) The bright Ught, suitable enough for the display of 
 form, was toned down to a solemn twilight in keeping 
 with the effects of rich colour. These alterations are of 
 so radical a kind that, if they are admitted as principles, 
 they dispose at once of all pretensions of Santa Sophia 
 to rank as the type of this style. At the same time the 
 
74 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 reader will see that all these alterations were such as 
 would arise naturally from a resolve to use mosaic not 
 decoratively but structurally. If he were offered, him- 
 self, a supply of rich plastic material out of which to 
 fashion an interior, he would find himself making the 
 same alterations. He would find himself discarding 
 intrusive suggestions of form, lowering and simplify- 
 ing his vaults and domes and softening and toning 
 down the light. The exigencies of the material would 
 impose these measures upon him as the principles of 
 the new art. 
 
 In tracing the Byzantine adoption of these principles 
 we have to deal with a difficulty peculiar to the style. 
 With most styles of architecture development is uniform 
 and regular ; the periods of the rise, the prime, and the 
 decay are clearly traceable, and sufficient examples 
 generally exist to place its characteristics beyond doubt. 
 This is not the case in regard to Byzantine. That style 
 is the sole instance known to us of a creative artistic 
 impulse taking place in an Empire's decline. It owed 
 its birth to the genius of a race which, alone among races, 
 has pursued fitness in art disinterestedly and for its own 
 sake. But other things beside genius are necessary to 
 the triumph of art on a grand scale. A really great 
 architecture especially demands much that decadent 
 races find it hard to give. It demands a heavy outlay 
 in time and work and money. Self-sacrifice is necessary 
 to it and the power of combination and dogged per- 
 severance. When we consider how poorly provided the 
 Eastern Empire was in these virile qualities, how weaMy 
 self-indulgent, capricious, and unstable, it will not seem 
 strange that its architectural accomplishment should be 
 but trifling. Moreover, the Greeks themselves con- 
 stituted but a fraction of the surrounding population. 
 Deteriorated in its own character and swamped in a 
 great empire that was passing into the apathy of its 
 decline and fall, it is no wonder that the Greek race should 
 have been unable to do for the new architecture of colour 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 75 
 
 all that its vigorous primitive sons had been able to do 
 for the old architecture of form. 
 
 The result is that the Byzantine style, instead of being 
 embodied in a great array of splendid and complete 
 specimens, is rather discernible as an influence, often 
 vague and impalpable, struggUng to assert itself, now 
 against languor and indifference, now against the opposi- 
 tion of other fashions and the prejudice of other races. 
 There is no continuity about it ; scarcely an acknowledged 
 definition can be attached to it. It is to be recognised 
 as an introduction, among contradictory and conflicting 
 aims, of a logical theory with an artistic effect of its own. 
 There can be no better illustration, both of Byzantine 
 art itself and of the obstacles with which it had to con- 
 tend, than is afforded by the little group of Sicilian 
 mosaic churches of the twelfth century, in which, amid 
 the counter-influences of other races, the principles which 
 the Byzantine artists were striving to enforce stand out 
 with great distinctness. We will therefore turn for a 
 moment to these for some further elucidation of the subject 
 before coming' to what I take to be the central specimen 
 of the style. 
 
 In their combination of conflicting elements these 
 Sicihan churches form a most striking character-study 
 of the medley of races which some spirit of romance seems 
 to have wafted here from the ends of the earth. The 
 meeting of Norman and Arab, of the chivalry of the 
 North and the South, is one of the dramatic moments 
 of history. Translated into stone it is one of the dramatic 
 episodes of architecture. The Norman strength, which 
 had identified itself with the more massive and vigorous 
 features of Romanesque and had already evolved the 
 most impressive expression of that style existing in the 
 North, is responsible for the plan and main features of 
 much of the Sicilian architecture of that time. In 
 curious contrast with that strength and solidity appears 
 the fretful and involved Arabic detail. The Arab is 
 the enfant terrible of Southern art. He interferes 
 
76 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 with everything, and he interferes invariably to confuse, 
 distort, and entangle. Whatever influence he exerts in 
 these Palermo churches is invariably and entirely per- 
 nicious. To neither, however, of these curiously mingled 
 and combined elements does SiciHan architecture owe 
 its chief fascination. The traveller who looks at the 
 massive Norman pillars or complicated Arab incrustations 
 will feel that both of these races followed, in building, an 
 instinct which neither paused to analyse and appreciate. 
 Their architecture is an unreasoned expression of racial 
 character. The element, lacking in them, of a dis- 
 interested pursuit of artistic effect is the contribution 
 of the Greeks. Theirs was an influence exerted in favour 
 of no personal prejudices, but constantly directed to the 
 development of a uniform effect ; constantly employed 
 in the effort to reject all that would clash with that effect 
 and to single out and adopt all that would assimilate 
 with it. 
 
 The Monreale Cathedral was begun in 1174. It is of 
 considerable size, measuring 315 feet in length, and its 
 imposing proportions and the splendour of its mosaic 
 walls and marble wainscoting have secured it a high 
 position among examples of the mosaic style. It has, 
 however, several fatal defects. The roof of the nave is 
 of horizontal wooden beams, much gilt and decorated 
 in the Saracenic manner, and the place of the dome is 
 taken by a construction of woodwork, painted and carved. 
 It has been pointed out that, to convey the idea of mosaic 
 used as structural material, the use of mosaic domes, 
 vaults, and apses, the curved surfaces of which afford 
 special opportunities for displaying the plastic beauty of 
 the material, is essential. These features are in fact the 
 strongholds of the style, and in proportion as it is weak 
 or strong the carrying out of these positions in complete 
 mosaic will be insisted on or failed in. On the other 
 hand it is evident that features of such magnitude as 
 domes and nave vaults are difficult and laborious works 
 to complete in mosaic ; so that, by all who were inchned 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 77 
 
 to take the Western or decorative view of the material, 
 it was just these positions that were most Hkely to be 
 abandoned. The Greeks knew well what was at stake. 
 So long as these deep, rich folds of gold dominate the 
 interior, the substantiahty of the walls and every part 
 of the mosaic elsewhere is placed beyond a doubt. But 
 let them go, and their place be taken by definite structural 
 forms, and the credit of every atom of mosaic in the 
 building is shaken. Here then, among these curves and 
 hollows, is where the fight between Greek and Barbarian, 
 the fight which has for its issue whether the whole theory 
 of mosaic is to dwindle to a decorative design or remain 
 a great architectural inspiration, rages. 
 
 The effect of the roof of the Monreale Cathedral being 
 of wood, including the central portion where the dome 
 should be, is to reduce the mosaics on the wall to the 
 superficiaUty of a wall-paper. That effect is increased 
 no doubt by the blaze of daylight which fills every part 
 of the building, but it is the wooden roof which is decisive. 
 The interior conveys the impression of a basilica. One 
 place there is, and one alone, where the Byzantine theory 
 is touched on, and that is in the eastern apse. The 
 splendid curve of this great recess, with its blunt angles 
 and the light changing to a rich mellow glow in its depths, 
 gives a fine idea of the structural value of the material. 
 It is the sohtary Greek victory here. Everywhere else 
 the word decorative is applicable. The veneer of gold 
 on the flat wall-faces has evidently nothing to do with 
 the structure which, by the pointed arcade below and the 
 great beams above, is proclaimed to be of stone and wood. 
 One glance from these to the apse reveals the whole 
 difference, a difference, as was said of the Westminster 
 chapels, not of degree but of principle. We should not 
 think of applying the word decoration to the mosaic 
 of the apse. There it is structural. It is employed 
 architecturally. 
 
 The date of the Capella Palatina, the royal chapel 
 forming part of the pedace, is 1142. Here the Greeks 
 
78 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 were rather more successful than at Monreale. That they 
 should hold the apse is only what we should expect, 
 because the apse, being a feature of far easier construction 
 than domes and vaults, is naturally less contested ; but 
 they have here also succeeded in annexing the dome, 
 which they have turned into a finfe specimen of their art. 
 using with special effect those opportunities which the 
 adjustment of the dome itself to its octagonal base, and 
 of the octagon to the square of the choir arches gave them 
 of exhibiting the pliability of their material. It is possible 
 that a line or two quoted from a diary written on the spot 
 will give the reader an impression of this effect : 
 
 " It is worth noting," I have jotted down, " how well the 
 arranging of these different shaped stories upon each other 
 shows oS their mosaic formation. First, on two sides, the 
 octagon is made to overhang the square below ; its wall not 
 projecting sharply but bulging outwards near two feet. The 
 angles are spanned with deep, triple-arched recesses, hollowed 
 inwards, rounded like caves, while at the top the octagon is 
 bent and moulded to a round shape to receive the dome. 
 These walls, with their sinuous curves and folds and wrinkles, 
 that appear and fade away, and their rounded lumps and 
 irregularities which seem to show, like clay, where the hands 
 of the artist have pressed, give one the idea of having been 
 kneaded bodily out of the rich substantial gold." 
 
 All the east end of this church, then, is practically 
 in Greek hands. Elsewhere they have not been so lucky. 
 The vaulting of the nave and aisles is carried out in tedious 
 repetitions of Arabic designs, in stonework for the nave 
 and wood for the aisles. The results of this construction 
 to the western portion of the church are fatal. The 
 mosaics are here reduced to that merely decorative 
 capacity which seems their inevitable fate in any but 
 Greek hands. At the same time, as the result of the 
 Byzantine architects having secured two out of the three 
 disputed positions, this church has acquired a quite differ- 
 ent character from the Monreale Cathedral. At Monreale 
 the apse gave us a hint of the Byzantine meaning, but the 
 influence was a purely local one. It did not extend to 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 79 
 
 the general architecture of the church. The acquisition 
 of the dome has made all the difference in this respect. 
 The effectiveness of this central feature, combined with 
 the support of the eastern apse, has estabhshed the 
 structural idea of mosaic. That idea, indeed, is not quite 
 unchallenged. It is not quite universal. Nevertheless 
 it is present as an architectural motive ; and it is, by two 
 to one, the strongest architectural motive in the building. 
 We now come to the third and last of the Palermo 
 churches still retaining their mosaics, the Uttle Martorana 
 Chapel, finished in 1143, the tiniest and yet, in character, 
 the most interesting and the completest of all. It is no 
 bigger than a large room, and its effect is much interfered 
 with by later additions and enlargements. Nevertheless, 
 the original interior, though now forming part of a larger 
 building, remains much as it was, and affords a fair idea 
 of that effect which the Greeks so steadily aimed at yet 
 were so seldom permitted to achieve. Apses, dome, and 
 vaults are wrought throughout in complete mosaic. No 
 impeding structural element is permitted anywhere to 
 appear, but the whole building down to the marble wains- 
 coting is sohdly wrought in unbroken gold. The addition 
 in effect is decisive. What was a mere hint in the cathe- 
 dral and a contested principle in the Palatina is admitted 
 in the Martorana as the one authoritative law. The 
 mosaic here is not used decoratively at all. It is used 
 in the Greek sense, structurally. A critic who had noted 
 the constant outside interference in the larger churches 
 might very hkely be incUned to attribute the tiny perfec- 
 tion of the Martorana to an individual Greek effort. 
 And he would be right. The church was built at the 
 expense of one George of Antioch, a wealthy and influential 
 Greek, who was admiral of the Norman fleet. Its tiny 
 proportions indicate the Umits of a purely personal en- 
 deavour. Nevertheless the truth it was necessary to 
 express has been expressed. The architectiual motive, 
 which has suffered so much from Norman indifference 
 and the Puck-Uke interference of the Arab, was vindicated 
 
8o FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 at last ; and if the value of architecture is to be tested 
 by the idea it embodies rather than the money and labour 
 lavished on it, then the admiral's chapel may take its 
 place among the significant buildings of the world. 
 
 Such is the testimony of these Sicilian churches. They 
 bear witness to the fact that what the Greek theory aimed 
 at was the structural use of mosaic. Wherever, in the 
 churches we have named, that theory is departed from, 
 in that place the work bears the impress of Norman or 
 Arab influence. Wherever it is most perfectly carried 
 out, there we find the Greeks exclusively in charge of the 
 building. The struggle of this theory to assert itself 
 appears like the struggle of order to emerge out of chaos. 
 But at the same time, though the Sicihan churches have 
 this interest, the interest that belongs to the vindication 
 of a principle, they make no pretence at embodying the 
 full power and effect of the Byzantine style. The Marto- 
 rana, which, as we have seen, is the most complete speci- 
 men of the group, is on quite a tiny scale, and is, moreover, 
 so altered by the enlargements that have been added to 
 it that it has lost much of its own character and signifi- 
 cance. We want something on a different scale from this 
 effort of an individual to give us an adequate conception 
 of Byzantine art. 
 
 Fortunately that something more exists. If through- 
 out the West generally Byzantine art was mistmderstood 
 and thwarted, there was one spot at least where it was 
 received with devoted submission. Venice was nurtured 
 from her birth in a detestation of the West. This detesta- 
 tion, which the Ught of their own blazing homes had 
 kindled in the breasts of the first settlers, which was 
 intensified by subsequent relays of immigrants fleeing 
 before the ravages of the Barbarians and was fostered by 
 later events and acts of hostiUty with the mainland, may 
 be faintly traced as a trait of the Venetian character 
 down to the very fall of the Republic. But its effects 
 were most apparent during the centuries when Europe 
 was enveloped in semi-barbarism. Severed from Western 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 8i 
 
 life, Venice turned her gaze eastward. Slowly, as her 
 Eastern commerce grew, arose the thought of a civilisa- 
 tion, a wealth, a culture derived from that distant source. 
 This Eastern trade was the " Enchanter's wand " which 
 drew her many - coloured palace walls from the deep. 
 Before the end of the eighth century the island city had 
 become orientaUsed. The magnificence of Venetian life, 
 the rich colours and textures of the dresses of her mer- 
 chants, as well as the dignified composure and courtesy of 
 their manners, are contrasted by contemporary historians 
 with the coarse garments and uncouth manners of the 
 Court of Charlemagne. There is something peculiarly 
 striking in the dazzUng apparition of a city so splendid 
 and cultured in an age and among nations so rude and 
 barbarous. Venice, in the Europe of the Middle Ages, has 
 that appearance, familiar to us on certain dark and cloudy 
 days, of some soUtary feature in the landscape lit by the 
 sun while the rest of the view is sunk in gloom. 
 
 Early in the ninth century Venice's attachment to 
 Constantinople was signaUsed in the treaty which incorpor- 
 ated her in the Eastern Empire. During this and the 
 following centuries the proofs of what Gibbon calls the 
 " subjection " of the Venetians are, he says, " numerous 
 and unquestionable, and the vain titles, the servile honours 
 of the Byzantine Court, so ambitiously soUcited by their 
 dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free 
 people." It is scarcely necessary to point out that a 
 subjection which was purely nominal and entirely volun- 
 tary could carry with it no particular degradation. The 
 action of Venice is interesting, not pohtically but merely 
 as showing her own consciousness that she is herself a 
 bit of the East rather than of the West, and as illustrat- 
 ing those feehngs of reverential attachment which she 
 cherished for the city which had been her foster-mother. 
 
 For this attachment, as it turned out, was to play a 
 great part in the history of art. It was this wMch 
 enabled Venice to supply the gifts that were wanting to 
 an adequate expression of Eastern art, without impeding 
 
 G 
 
82 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 or thwarting the East in its rendering of it. The collective 
 national effort that goes to the creation of a great archi- 
 tecture did not, as I have said, exist in the Byzantine 
 Empire. Where this quality did exist was among the 
 younger nations and free communities of the West. Un- 
 fortunately for the Greeks these young nations were not 
 inchned to shield themselves wholly to others' guidance. 
 They had ideas of their own to express, in the value of 
 which they were profound beUevers. A certain skill, 
 scraps of a queer knowledge, they recognised in the Greek 
 race, but they proposed to use that skill and knowledge 
 in furtherance of their own ends. Hence arose that 
 perpetual interference in Greek designs which we have 
 caught a glimpse of among the churches of Sicily, and 
 which was the rule throughout South Europe wherever 
 the Byzantine style was introduced. The difficulty of 
 getting those who had the practical power to carry out a 
 big work to submit themselves to those who possessed 
 the knowledge of how such a work should be carried out 
 was apparently insuperable. The creation of Venice, 
 however, solved the problem. A fragment of the West, 
 rich in those virile quahfications which the East was 
 deficient in, was detached, was forced into close connec- 
 tion with the Eastern Empire, adapted itself to Eastern 
 civilisation, submitted to the teaching of Eastern art, 
 and having, under these conditions, fulfilled its mission 
 and laid its egg, was gradually reabsorbed into Western 
 life again. The sole fruit of Venice's orientation surviving 
 for us to-day is her unique achievement in Eastern art. 
 And this achievement was made possible, not by any 
 artistic genius of her own, but simply by the immense 
 love and regard she had for the East which induced her 
 to place all her resources of wealth, strength, and con- 
 centrated purpose quite humbly and unreservedly at the 
 disposal of Byzantine artists. 
 
 The general aspect of St. Mark's is too familiar to most 
 readers to need detailed description, nor could such 
 description be attempted here. It will be enough to 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 83 
 
 draw attention to the vindication of that principle which, 
 as I have endeavoured to show, is the clue to Byzantine 
 art. The mosaics of St. Mark's do not, as is often said by 
 Western critics, " adorn " the church : they compose it. 
 They are used never decoratively but structurally through- 
 out. The three characteristic Byzantine features are 
 here made use of with great completeness and effect, and 
 domes, vaults, and apses combine to display the richness 
 and softness of the material. The whole of the upper 
 portion of the building is composed of curves. There is 
 not a flat expanse, nor a sharp edge, nor a correct right 
 angle in the whole of it. The edges are blunt and heavily 
 turned, the angles filled in and rounded, the surfaces 
 uneven and slightly undulating. Vaults and cavernous 
 recesses melt into each other. Nowhere is the material 
 broken. Whether it protrudes in prominent folds or opens 
 upward into the great concaves of the domes, full of soft, 
 yellow light, or sinks into darkness in shadowy tunnels, 
 or burns a steady flame, in the final curve of the broad 
 eastern apse, it forms but one mass of rich auriferous paste 
 throughout. That appearance we noted in the Palatina, 
 of curves and folds conveying the idea of the manipulation 
 of a soft material, is here carried out with far greater 
 completeness and on an immense scale, and greatly 
 heightens the impression we receive of an interior sub- 
 stantially composed of gold. 
 
 Once we fully receive that impression we hold the clue 
 to the architectxire. If we compare these domes, as a 
 domical system, with the domes of Santa Sophia, we confess 
 their inferiority. But if we consider them as a mani- 
 festation of mosaic, how immeasurably superior are they 
 in their lowness, depth, and volume to the airy structure 
 of the Constantinople church. Santa Sophia is an elab- 
 oration of the dome theory as an architectural motive. 
 St. Mark's is something quite different. It is the 
 elaboration of the mosaic theory as an architectural 
 motive. In the former case the domed arrangement 
 owes none of its real power to the mosaics, which are of a 
 
84 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 purely decorative character, and might give place, without 
 much harm done, to some other form of decorative treat- 
 ment. It owes its power entirely to its structural merits. 
 But strip St. Mark's of its mosaics, and its very architec- 
 tural existence is at an end. Those squat domes and 
 gloomy vaults make no sort of claim to structural beauty. 
 Indeed, they scarcely strike one as structural at all. So 
 ponderous, dim, and ill - fashioned are they that they 
 appear to be a work of excavation rather than of archi- 
 tecture. They might have been dug out with a spade. 
 
 No ! the sole beauty that pertains to the domes and 
 vaults of St. Mark's is derived from the substance in which 
 they are wrought. They are not beautiful in themselves. 
 They are not there for any merits of their own. They are 
 beautiful because they smt the mosaic. They are there 
 because they have been chosen by the mosaic as its own 
 fitting vehicle. It is not they that make use of the mosaic ; 
 it is the mosaic that makes use of them. I harp on this 
 point and I hope the reader will forgive me, but the fact 
 is, it is the crux of the whole matter. In the West, 
 where architecture is entirely a matter of form, vaults 
 are vaults and domes are domes. They have their own 
 structural value and no other. We shall never under- 
 stand Byzantine art as long as we stick to that point of 
 view, for it is of the essence of the Byzantine style that 
 these forms are entirely to give up this structural value of 
 theirs in order to serve the purposes of the new building 
 material. And it is this assumption by the new material 
 of absolute control over the architectural features of the 
 building which marks it as the inspiration of a distinct 
 architectural style. 
 
 Throughout St. Mark's, then, we have mosaic used as 
 an architectural motive, and we find it eversrwhere dictat- 
 ing and insisting on those kinds of forms and surfaces 
 which best display its own plastic and soft nature. This 
 idea is carried out with wonderful consistency and courage, 
 but this alone would not of course explain the attraction 
 of the style. Putty is a plastic material, and probably 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 85 
 
 an architecture of putty would in its main forms very 
 much resemble an architecture of mosaic. Yet it might 
 not be beautiful. Mosaic, however, is something more 
 than a plastic material. It is also a colour material. If 
 we would realise with what purpose in view the Greeks 
 abandoned the fascinating idea of domed construction, 
 and what thought the Sicilian architects strove so per- 
 tinaciously to realise in the Palermo churches, we must 
 unite these ideas of softness and colour, and say that in 
 making a soft substance like mosaic the architectural 
 motive of the new style, and giving it control over every 
 part of the structure, the Greeks were really making 
 colour the architectural motive and giving colour control 
 over all the structure. 
 
 Further, to appreciate the opportunities that were 
 opened to the Byzantine architects, we must recognise 
 that between these ideas of colour and softness there is 
 something more than an accidental connection. There 
 is a natural connection, in the sense that though a sub- 
 stance may be soft without being a beautiful colour it 
 cannot be fitted for the perfect display of colour unless 
 it is soft. Softness and colour go together as naturally 
 as hardness and form. Between colour and form there 
 is, as I began by pointing out, a certain incompatibility. 
 Colour is sensuous and indefinable. Form is intellectual 
 and essentially definable. Any object as it approaches 
 exact definition confirms its hold upon our intellectual 
 feeling for form, but loses some of its hold upon our 
 sensuous feeling for colour. The reader will know that, 
 among painters, the few great colourists we have had 
 always act on this knowledge. Colour, with them, assumes 
 a certain dominion over form, and, in the spread of its 
 own suffusing glow and richness, melts down and to some 
 extent obliterates form, just as the great undulations 
 of mosaic in St. Mark's melt down and obUterate the 
 structural features of the old formal styles. Wherever 
 colour is applied to exact forms it is necessarily hmited 
 and governed by such forms, and is used, in fact, as an 
 
86 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 accessory of form. This is that " decorative " use of it on 
 which critics blandly insist in regard to mosaic, and which 
 is, indeed, the only use of it which the West commonly 
 apprehends. But no matter how rich in colour it may 
 be, a defined form, so long as it retains the severity of its 
 definition — so long, that is, as it appeals directly to our 
 intellectual appreciation — never can give more than the 
 decorative interpretation of colour. It cannot give its 
 sensuous interpretation. To its sensuous interpretation 
 there must of necessity belong that indefiniteness which 
 is an emotional condition in harmony with the sensuous 
 influence of colour. Those who have felt the power of 
 St. Mark's will probably agree in this. They will feel that 
 it would be impossible to conceive an exact and sharply 
 defined scheme of colour which should produce upon 
 the senses the effect of the gorgeous twilight and misty 
 crimsons and azures of this interior. 
 
 The advantages, then, of the softness of mosaic as a 
 colour material are evident. Hiiheato Mid building 
 material, such as marble or stone, had dictated archi- 
 tectures of form, which, in thdr torn, had involved a 
 purely decorative use of colour. The intaoduction of a 
 soft substance as at once a building matacial and a colour 
 material placed colour on a new footing. It enabled it to 
 escape from the thraldom of form and to develop its 
 own sensuous rather than decorative character. And, in 
 effect, if we glance back at the Palermo examples we shall 
 find that only where the mosaic is used structurally is the 
 sensuous effect of colour felt. It is felt in the fold of the 
 Monreale apse, in the glowing recesses of the eastern part 
 of the Palatina, and more completely in the drooping 
 vaults of the little Martorana chapel. On the other hand, 
 wherever the mosaic is used superficially and in conjunc- 
 tion with structural forms, there colour is limited to its 
 purely decorative function. In short, the deepening hold 
 and power which the colour of these interiors gains over 
 the mind and consciousness of the spectator is but the 
 exact measure and reflection which the mosaic obtains 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 87 
 
 over the structural composition of the building. These 
 examples might be added to by scores. At Rome, at 
 Ravenna, at Athens, at Constantinople, and throughout 
 the Near East there are scattered buildings in which the 
 struggle of colour to free itself from the control of form 
 and the efforts of form to maintain its hold upon colour 
 are illustrated. The result of these contests is always 
 the same. Wherever form is introduced structurally it 
 kills the sensuous appeal of colour, and wherever colour 
 is introduced structurally it kills the intellectual appeal 
 of form. 
 
 At the same time these conditions certainly do not 
 preclude the use of form where colour is the main object. 
 They only limit and define that use. The Umitation, of 
 course, turns on the word structtural. Just as colour 
 does not make its sensuous appeal until it becomes struc- 
 tural, so neither does form make its intellectual appeal 
 until it, too, becomes structural. Short of that, both 
 are decorative and may be so used. There could be no 
 better example of the right use of these effects than the 
 Greeks have left us in their Doric and Byzantine styles — 
 the one a perfect manifestation of the idea of form, em- 
 ploying colour decoratively (that is to say, to individuaUse 
 and define the shape of mouldings and other features) 
 and shorn of its sensuous effect ; the other a perfect 
 manifestation of colour emplojdng form decoratively 
 (that is, in very shght string-courses or inlaid strips of 
 carving of no structural value) and shorn of its intellectual 
 appeal. ^ 
 
 As the reader wiU by this time perceive, I base my 
 interpretation of the Byzantine style of architecture on 
 the fact of the existence in the world of two entirely 
 different conceptions of the use of colour. I said just now 
 that it was in proportion as the mosaic assumed control 
 of the building, and began to mould and fashion the 
 features and proportions of it, that its colour influence 
 began to assume the same sort of control over the on- 
 looker's mind. It was then this influence of colour 
 
88 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 began to change its nature from something superficial, 
 decorative, and belonging to the eye to something profound 
 and interior and belonging to the mind. In a word, in- 
 stead of lying upon the surface of life it began to sink into 
 the texture of life. That is a difference which any acute 
 observer will notice in the efEect of flat superficial mosaic 
 and mosaic used in the formation of apses and domes. 
 But this is exactly the difference between the Eastern and 
 Western use of colour. Colour in the West does not enter 
 into life. No word, we know, is oftener used to describe 
 the lives of English peasants and artisans than the word 
 colourless. Here, among our foundations and in the raw 
 material, so to speak, of our national life, colour has no 
 existence. Among those, perhaps, who have something to 
 spend on adornments it makes a feeble appearance ; 
 but in that case it comes, not as a part of life, but as a 
 decoration of life, a something added. All the defects of 
 Western colouring, its timidity and weakness, its violence 
 and vulgarity, arise from the faot that colour does not 
 really form a part of Western life ; that it is not with us 
 a natural element but a thing acquired, put on, experi- 
 mentalised in ; a taste, perhaps, but not a sense. 
 
 On the other hand, with Orientals the exact reverse is 
 the case. Colour is of the essence of their lives. Instead 
 of being weakest where Ufe is at its simplest and most 
 primitive, it is just there that it is richest and strongest. 
 The gypsy I spoke of, dark-eyed and swarthy-skinned, 
 camping on the common edge, is himself a bit of colour, 
 and the scarlet or yellow handkerchief knotted about his 
 throat is the mere unconscious selection of like by like. 
 The reader who dwells on this distinction, who contrasts 
 the living, breathing colour suggestion of the gypsy 
 with the utter colourlessness of English peasant life, will 
 be the better able to form a conception of the depth and 
 genuineness of the inspiration that underlay Byzantine 
 art. A use of colour, superficial and acquired, will fall 
 naturally under the dominion of more powerful interests, 
 and it was inevitable that colour, as employed in the West, 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 89 
 
 should become the mere accessory and helpless parasite 
 of form. But as understood by the East, it had an 
 independent existence and was susceptible, therefore, of 
 independent development. This was the task which the 
 Byzantine architects undertook, and which, by the help 
 of a material which could render colour without form, they 
 finally accomphshed. 
 
 And in accomplishing this task they set upon their 
 work the unmistakable seal of Greek genius. It is not 
 too much to say that the inward resemblance between 
 St. Mark's and a Doric temple is as strong as their outward 
 differences are salient. Both display the same singleness 
 of purpose in making use of every means to develop and 
 heighten the artistic effect they have in view. Both 
 reject with the same confidence every means, however 
 tempting, however popular, however prescribed by 
 custom, which does not harmonise with that main artistic 
 effect and help to develop it. Both march with the same 
 splendid composure through all the allurements of detail 
 to the final judgment of the whole. If simplicity consists, 
 as I am very sure it does, not so much in plainness of result 
 as in singleness of purpose, then St. Mark's may share with 
 the temple its claim to supreme simplicity. The cathedral 
 is a single, unalloyed sensation, as truly as the temple is a 
 single, imalloyed intellectual conception. True, instead 
 of clean-cut proportions, exquisitely shaped and finished, 
 here are soft, melting forms almost indeterminable. Yet 
 the breadth of touch here is equal to the boldness of line 
 there. These great shadows that gather, darkening or 
 smouldering, and spread in dim yet rich obscurity through 
 the building, these huge curves and hollows of ruddy or 
 gleaming gold, these massive piers encased in their dusky 
 marble slabs, are the means, just as carefully thought out 
 and just as carefully adjusted to the impression they are 
 designed to conve> as the sharp - cut architraves and 
 columns are adjusted to the design of the temple. 
 
 Nothing in the history of art is more extraordinary 
 than the influence of this single structure, an influence, 
 
90 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 too, wielded largely in despite of the will even of those 
 who underwent it. No building we know of has been so 
 much misunderstood and so often reviled as St. Mark's. 
 Yet men have felt truer than they have reasoned. Her 
 power has asserted itself, and to-day the results of her 
 influence among us, veiled though they may be, are 
 immense, are incalculable. A very large share of all that 
 Europe knows of colour Venice has taught her, and St. 
 Mark's is the centre and heart of Venice's colour inspira- 
 tion. No one who turns from the glow within the basilica 
 to the glow on the canvases of the great Venetian painters 
 can fail to perceive whence that rich suffusion of colour, 
 with its power, unique among the Italian schools, for 
 melting down the obstructions of form, was derived. 
 Others have drunk at the same spring. One master pre- 
 eminently among the Netherlanders has that glow — 
 Rubens, and he learnt it in Venice. One pre-eminently 
 among English painters has it — Reynolds, and he learnt 
 it in Venice. 
 
 Thus, by channels too numerous to trace, acting 
 primarily on the art that grew up under its immediate 
 sway, and secondarily, through that, on the art and 
 artists of other nations, the influence of the great Greek 
 embodiment of the Eastern ideal has filtered and pene- 
 trated through Europe, until now, perhaps, if we stood in 
 any of our galleries and were able to obliterate at a stroke 
 all that St. Mark's had contributed, it would be as if a 
 cloud had passed over the sun. Between East and West 
 Venice has been the chief interpreter, and St. Mark's 
 has prompted Venice. 
 
 Finally, let me remind the reader that the creative 
 effort in art which we call the Byzantine style must be 
 joined in our imagination to its predisposing cause : that 
 is to say, it must be joined to that great movement of 
 mind which brought Eastern thought Westward and intro- 
 duced a spirit of emotional mysticism into regions hitherto 
 guided by purely intellectual conceptions. It was the 
 Greeks who, when their own intellectual solution of life 
 
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 91 
 
 failed, were drawn into communion with the East, and 
 were the means and channels whereby the ideas of the 
 East were received into Europe. It was they who 
 grouped these ideas into a pMlosophical system and 
 gave them for the first time something approaching a 
 coherent utterance. And what they did for Eastern 
 ideas in the realm of thought they did also in the realm 
 of art. They gave them coherent expression. Byzantine 
 art is merely Eastern thought or Eastern spiritual emotion, 
 expressing itself through and by means of the Greek 
 genius. All the characteristics of the architecture we 
 have been discussing, its stem rejection of the exactitude 
 of structural forms, its instinctive aversion to the intel- 
 lectual point of view, its reliance for effect on the aid of 
 colour working under the control of chiaroscuro, which 
 we have noted as of the emotional order — all these 
 characteristics are characteristtes of the Eastern tem- 
 perament and the Eastern soul. They are character- 
 istics which belong to all that is deepest in the history 
 of the East. Whoever would imbibe Eastern thought, 
 whoever would share the speculations and the emotions 
 of Eastern mystics will feel that all he is in search of 
 inhabits the interior of St. Mark's. The very sense of 
 an enhanced spiritual consciousness which is the aim 
 of the whole Eastern philosophy seems to pervade that 
 interior. The architecture is a mood of the mind made 
 visible. Two eminent French critics, in their work on 
 L'Art byzantine, have defined that mood, and have 
 expressed in a sentence the emotion which the soiil 
 of the onlooker feels beneath these domes : " Un calme 
 contemplatif en descend vers elle, une serenite douce, 
 mystique, familidre a I'Orient." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 
 
 The fate of sculpture In Indian hands, and the tricks which mysti- 
 cism plays with the quality of form. 
 
 "Undoubtedly," Mr. Havell begins his book upon 
 Indian Ideals, " the most significant fact in modern 
 Western art is that artists, dimly conscious of the limita- 
 tions which the narrow conventions of the Itahan Renais- 
 sance have so long imposed upon them, have been looking 
 for many years once more to the East for new ideas and 
 new sources of inspiration." This looking to the East 
 may be a significant fact as regards Western artists, but 
 its significance does not stop there. If we are drawing 
 near the East in art it is because we are drawing near 
 to her in thought and feeling. We are, in fact, living 
 in one of those most interesting yet always mysterious 
 epochs, full of mental and spiritual change and growth, 
 when the minds of East and West are acting upon each 
 other. Such epochs may well be called mysterious, for 
 though our own contribution to the exchange is for the 
 most part communicated in very inteUigible terms — ^rail- 
 ways and battleships and bridges and dams and all the 
 paraphemaUa of Western progress being factors which 
 readily submit themselves to analysis — ^yet with the more 
 spiritual East it is different. It is harder to trace the 
 routes by which that influence travels and the lines of 
 communication it has established. Its motion is Uquid, 
 and while Western ideas, borne by conquering armies 
 
 92 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 93 
 
 and dominant races, burst themselves a palpable breach 
 in Oriental philosophy, the ideas of the East soak so 
 quietly Westward that we find ourselves accepting and 
 assimilating them without knowing what we are doing or 
 observing the origin of thoughts which seem already 
 familiar. 
 
 It always has been so. What revolution of the human 
 mind has been more important or involved larger con- 
 sequences than the breakdown of classicalism following 
 on the contact established with the East during the last 
 three centuries of the pagan era ? The resemblance 
 between that era and the present is in many ways 
 striking. During those centuries the classic intellect was 
 transformed. Its serene self-confidence and self-sufficiency 
 were drained out of it. Its pretensions to explain the 
 universe, or to confine men's attention to as much of it 
 as it could explain, were exploded. Another human 
 sense seems in the interval to have developed, and in all 
 kinds of mental activity we distinguish the operations of 
 that inward, contemplative, and spiritual faculty, the 
 cultivation of which has ever been the one preoccupation 
 of the East, and the assaults of which the classic mind 
 seemed trained and organised to withstand. The classic 
 mind in this interval i§^rangely metamorphosed, but 
 how and by what means ? The walls crumble, but who 
 deals the blows ? The machinery of commimication, the 
 Alexandrine conquests, and Greek settlements in the Near 
 East exist, but they have the air of a wireless telegraphy 
 installation trafficking in the invisible. Who are the 
 missionaries and heralds of the new philosophy ? What 
 are its doctrines ? Where is its literature ? 
 
 There is little to be said in answer. It makes its way 
 imperceptibly, and, hke a thaw in the night, is more 
 visible in its effects than in itself. That men's minds were 
 changed to the point of accepting a spiritual creed which 
 to the classic intelligence would have seemed lunacy is 
 obvious enough, but the means by which the change was 
 wrought remain obscure. 
 
94 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 So now ; the transformation that has come over the 
 Western mind in the last quarter of a century is palpable 
 even to the unobservant ; not only are our mediums and 
 mystics and spiritualists of one sort and another, the 
 experts of the new learning, more confident in their claims 
 and vigorous in their researches than ever before, but our 
 very professors and men of science dabble in transcen- 
 dentalism and suspect the interference of spirit in the 
 strongholds of materialism. For each one of us the parti- 
 tions which separate the seen from the unseen, the natural 
 from the supernatural have crumbled and given way. 
 There has come upon us an access of spiritual consciousness, 
 and the universe is suffused with corresponding sugges- 
 tions and possibiUties. The old invisible traffic has set in. 
 The flowing from West to East of material conceptions is 
 balanced by a flowing from East to West of spiritual 
 conceptions. We are learning to be mystical as fast as 
 the East is learning to be practical, though how we are 
 learning we could none of us, perhaps, say. That the soul 
 is the divining or seeing faculty, that truth is attained not 
 through the operations of the intellect but by the soul's 
 inward act of passive contemplation, that matter and 
 mind are twin illusions and spiritual consciousness the 
 only real consciousness— ^these and the like thoughts 
 native to the East are receiving to-day the same kind of 
 popular attention which thirty years ago was accorded -to 
 the certitudes of science. 
 
 This is that sympathy in thought which underhes and 
 has prompted the Sympathy in art which Mr. Havell 
 refers to. All our chief art critics, Mr. Berenson, Mr. 
 Binyon, Mr. Fry, and others, have of late been insisting 
 that European art is suffering from a too exclusive develop- 
 ment of its scientific capacity. The Renaissance itself, 
 so exclusively, so one-sidedly intellectual, was from the 
 first primarily concerned with the problems of correct 
 representation ; and modelling, anatomy, foreshortening, 
 and the laws of perspective were the subjects which 
 engaged the attention of each generation of artists. So 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 95 
 
 much is this the case that a sustained progressive move- 
 ment in this department from Giotto to Raphael indicates 
 quite unmistakably the nature of the ideal at which 
 Renaissance art was aiming. Scientific excellence was 
 its object, and it achieved it. But in achieving it, it ex- 
 hausted it, and we ourselves are reaping the consequences 
 of that exhaustion. We are discovering that scientific 
 knowledge and executive skiU, pursued as an end in them- 
 selves, reveal in the long run only their own nothingness. 
 What our art lacks, it seems, is depth of thought and 
 emotion, an inspiration of the spirit. That there is some 
 truth in this line of criticism many who are not art critics 
 would agree. They know it from their experience of life 
 if not from their experience of art. Life, they find, has 
 been falling into precisely the same error that art has been 
 f alhng into, the error of proposing intellectual efficiency as 
 a final solution, and it needs to cure it the same remedy, 
 an infusion of spiritual ideas. Mr. Berenson finds the 
 inspiration in Chinese art, Mr. Binyon in Japanese art, and 
 both may be right, for, as Mr. Okakura insists, the art 
 philosophy of all the East is of the same complexion. 
 
 But if Mr. Berenson and Mr. Binyon are right, how much 
 more right must Mr. Havell be ! What holds good of 
 Chinese and Japanese art holds still more good of Indian 
 art. China and Japan do but dally with India's great 
 spiritual idea, which is diluted and weakened in its transfer 
 to those remote regions until it affords but a doubtful 
 and uncertain inspiration. If we would discover the 
 spiritual motive in its freshness and power as a life force 
 we must go to India ; and consequently, if we would 
 discover the same motive in full vigour as an artistic 
 force we must have recourse to Indian art. A resident 
 for many years in India, Principal of the Government 
 School of Art and Keeper of the Calcutta Art Gallery, Mr. 
 HaveU approaches his subject with a complete experience 
 of all its aspects. With a contemptuous gesture he seems 
 to brush aside as amateurish irrelevancies the arguments 
 in favour of Chinese or Japanese spiritual art, and in 
 
96 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 authoritative accents bids us prostrate ourselves before 
 the creations of the Hindu genius. 
 
 That we experience a shock on first seeing them is 
 undeniable ; that the dozen arms or legs which signify 
 divine naight, and the extra eye which denotes omniscience 
 are apt to puzzle and confound a Western observer is 
 only to be expected. But for this instinctive repugnance 
 -^r. Havell is prepared. Indian art being purely spiritual 
 caiiiipt, he points out, be judged by Western standards, 
 whiclt^e based on merely material considerations. There 
 is but mJsS^y *° ^*' ^* must be approached in the 
 order of itsc^SSSJ^'^" ^^^^' *^^* ^^ *° ^^y' ^^ T^^ist 
 immerse ourselwsiihJp^iia" thought, and then we shall 
 be able to accept IndiaS*^'^* ^^ the proper and perfect 
 embodiment of that thou^*- ^^ t^^* ^^^^^ i° °^ 
 way is our ingrained matenalis"^- '^^ spiritual having 
 dried up in Western life hasV"^*^ "^ ^^ Western art. 
 But Indian Hfe reeks of the spiilf*"**' ^^ saturated with it. 
 What should its art be but be satu^"^*^*^ ^*^ ^^ ^'^° ■ '^^^^ 
 it seems otherwise to us is, as M'^- havell tnumphantly 
 points out, but a proof of our di^^^^^ subjection to our 
 scientific poflp 
 
 I will endeavour in a minute tokv^oUow Mr. Havell's 
 advice and approach Indian art throu|^ ^^^^^^ thought 
 but before doing so it is worth pointii^^C^* *^^*' ^^^^ " 
 we acknowledge the insufficiency of the scS!^*^^'^ .^ ^^ 
 an end, there is something to be said for it as^^^f ^mning. 
 The scientific code is concerned with the laws of Tj^°""' ^ 
 the question to be asked is whether the artist w|^^°^^ ' 
 takes to convey any kind of ideas whatsoever^ +^1 
 the medium of form is not thereby bound to res^^'P „ .* . 
 laws of form ? Mr. Havell asserts the negative.^ ■ ^^ 
 
 difficult," he exclaims, " to argue with those wh^-^^^J^ ^° 
 steeped in Western academic prejudices " as to fc^^ .^ 
 to the use of " a third eye to denote spiritual consci. ^°^K 
 ness," or " a multiphcity of arms to denote the unif ^'=^°'" 
 attributes of divinity." His own contention is th^^*. ^"^ 
 vagaries are not only pardonable but laudable,, ^ ^^ 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 97 
 
 triumph of Indian art that it rises superior to natural law, 
 and that its multi-limbed figures do indeed express and 
 embody the more than human energy and might which 
 they were designed to embody. 
 
 It is here, it seems, that the scientific code has a word 
 to say. It is a law derived from universal experience that 
 every medium, whatever effects it may be used to produce^ 
 must, in order to produce those effects, be used in accord- 
 ance with its own nature. The musician must us^ his 
 vioUn in accordance with the nature of ^'isj^f ^^^ 
 gardener must use his spade in accoj^ygewith the 
 nature of spades. In such a way, ta(^n"ist the mason 
 use his stone, the carpenter his wjjIF^lie potter his clay. 
 The thing used, indeed, can onl/6e used after this manner. 
 Thus, too, the sculptor wh^ uses form to convey his 
 meaning is, in the interests of that meaning itself, bound 
 to observe the laws of foi^- What happens if he does 
 not ' Dissatisfied with the expressive capacity of the 
 body as it exists, it occurs to him to increase that capacity 
 by the addition of extr? arms and legs. But that human 
 form expresses most er-^gy which calls into most vigorous 
 play the whole organ''^ system of the body. It is not a 
 question of one hir^ o^ another but of the agreement 
 of the entire orga/^ni in a single act, an act which ex- 
 presses itself w^y because it unites body, limbs, hands, 
 feet pose a**^ gestures, all working together through 
 the bodv'f physical anatomy, in the bond of a common 
 Duroose ^^* ^'^^^ ^^ l™t)s are multiplied, that is, if 
 j^g^]' anatomy is outraged, can this agreement con- 
 tinue a ^^^^* ' ^^® pages of Mr. Havell's book 
 abound ^ ^g^^es with six or eight arms and as many 
 lees stu^ °^ a* random in all sorts of positions. No 
 muscul-' system supports and confirms their random 
 „ xyjs. The physical machinery which can put them in 
 ^^jn is not there. How can they be expressive as forms 
 when'^^y do not utilise the means by which forms achieve 
 g gg^n ? It is all very well to be told that to stipulate 
 for the u"'''^ number of arms and legs is to be sunk in 
 
 H 
 
98 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Western prejudice, but from the point of view, not of the 
 users of forms, Western or Eastern at all, but of the forms 
 themselves, there seems something to be said for the 
 practice. 
 
 It is possible that to many readers this will seem 
 ^•s^bvious, but I am anxious to dwell for a moment on the 
 issue in order to accentuate the difference it discloses 
 beti»(^n the Eastern and Western points of view. The 
 humalBody, as Mr. Havell points out, has always been 
 accepte(ri%Western art as the highest medium of ex- 
 pression, Wiiji<^|^^'s body being a material com- 
 position of flesh a^^iopd, controlled by a nervous and 
 muscular mechanism, elMiv as the bodies of other animals 
 are, in what does its supJipr significance consist ? It 
 consists in the quality of th^eas and emotions of which 
 it is the conductor. Living Wdies are put in motion by 
 Uving impulses of mind and cHlfecter, and express those 
 impulses in their own gestures afc attitudes. Hence the 
 value of a body as an artistic ^tucle depends in great 
 measure on the order of impulses v^ch move it and which 
 it can interpret. The impulses^hich move animal 
 bodies are of a comparatively lo\ order. Swiftness, 
 strength, activity, ferocity are the lAtely physical ideas 
 best represented by the forms of 5fcials ; whereas 
 fortitude, sobriety, nobiUty of soul, anS^gyen spiritual 
 sweetness -and lucidity, since they all tendl|^ould the 
 motions of the form and the expression of thelfece, may 
 find expression in terms of the human body, ^ice, as 
 I say, the immense superiority of the latter as an jirtistic 
 vehicle. 
 
 But while noticing the difference between the Wo, let 
 the similarity between them also be kept in view.^ While 
 the difference between animal and human forms assists 
 in the differing value of the ideas and emotions th^in- 
 carnate, the similarity between them consists injthe 
 methods and processes by which such ideas are cony^ed. 
 The ferocity which prompts the wild boar to huij itself 
 on its enemy is expressed through the nerves aniji^uscles 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 99 
 
 of the body. But so, too, the spiritual fervour which Ufts 
 the eyes and hands of a saint to heaven is also expressed 
 through the nerves and muscles of the body. The fact 
 that a transition has been made from a comparatively 
 degraded physical impulse to an exalted spiritual impulse 
 in no way emancipates the sculptor from obedience to 
 natural law. Why should it ? Precisely the same physi- 
 cal machinery which translates animal impulses translates 
 human ones, nor has the body any other way of trans- 
 lating. It can speak thus and thus only. So that what- 
 ever be the meaning the sculptor has to convey, it must 
 still be by aid and right use of the physical machinery 
 that he must convey it. His ideas may be what they will, 
 but the fact that he has undertaken to express them in 
 terms of the human body obliges him to respect the laws 
 of the human body, and f aiUng to do this he tuyns his own 
 chosen vehicle of expression into gibberish. / 
 
 In the attempt to show that spiritual conceptions are 
 entitled to ignore material laws Mr. Havell draws a parallel 
 between Indian and mediaeval art, but it is just this com- 
 parison, as it seems to me, which best illustrates the 
 difference between the Eastern and Western standpoints. 
 We may say what we like about the sculpture of Amiens or 
 Bourges, but we shall never alter the fact about it that 
 it is primitive or incomplete, and incomplete because of 
 the insufficiency of its knowledge of expression ; because, 
 that is to say, it has not achieved such a mastery of the 
 science of art as will admit of its conveying its spiritual 
 meaning with the power that meaning justifies. 
 
 But even as it is the fascination of mediaeval sculpture 
 consists largely in the reverence with which it manipulates 
 its velucle. Mediaeval sculptors may not know much 
 about anatomy and proportion, but they are perfectly 
 humble in their ignorance. They articulate with a naive 
 and wistful carefulness. They are sorry they know so 
 little of the language, for if they knew it better they 
 could utter their meaning more fully, but at any rate 
 nothing that patience and study and devout pains can 
 
100 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 achieve shall be lacking. It is impossible to conceive 
 artists more filled with respect for^ nature and natural 
 law than they are, and it is in this that the fundamental 
 difference which separates them from the Orientalists 
 consists. The opposition in point of view is complete. 
 The Western instinct of reverence for the artist's medium, 
 for the material that is, is not of scientific origin. The 
 scientific centuries developed this instinct, and perhaps in 
 doing so have tended to restrict attention to its exercise, 
 but it has always been inherent in Western art. Not 
 until we turn to the East are we confronted by the opposite, 
 and to us astonishing theory, that natural laws may be 
 violated at will, and that, having accepted a given vehicle, 
 the artist, under pretence of making it express his own 
 thought more completely, is entitled to outrage the very 
 principles which enable it to express an3^hing at all. 
 
 But if we hesitate to accept Mr. Havell's estimate of 
 Indian art, what explanation have we on our side to offer 
 of its singularities ? Indian art exhibits an indifference 
 amounting to absolute contempt for Nature and her laws. 
 Any one in India can ride roughshod over Nature and 
 break her ordinances at his pleasure. How is this to be 
 explained ? How is it that a race, in many respects sensi- 
 tively and profoundly intelligent, should have contrived 
 to miss altogether the significance of natural law and 
 design ? The idea we have been discussing, the idea that 
 power is increased by a multiplicity of limbs, strikes one 
 at first glance as so essentially stupid that it seems 
 incompatible with any kind of mental development. One 
 can understand savages arguing that eight arms are more 
 expressive than two, but for people to reason thus who had 
 learnt to observe and reflect would seem to be out of the 
 question. In this perplexity let us remember Mr. Havell's 
 hint that Indian art is the expression of Indian thought, 
 and that we must, if we would appreciate the art, ap- 
 proach it through the thought. Mr. Havell takes it for 
 granted that, if once he can get us to do this, we shall be 
 so struck by the pure and abstract quahty of Indian 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART loi 
 
 spiritual ideas that we shall be as ready as he is to accept 
 their guarantee for the art. One may, however, be quite 
 prepared to acknowledge the beauty of Hindu philosophy, 
 yet not be able to help noticing in that philosophy a 
 doctrine which, though ignored by Mr. Havell, seems to 
 have influenced Indian art not inconsiderably. 
 
 I have already drawn attention to the character of 
 Eastern thought, but I would emphasise one of its aspects 
 over again. Hindu ideas gather round two main tenets. 
 The first is the great positive doctrine of the school, 
 that spiritual existence, the existence of the soul or atman, 
 is the only real existence, and the soul itself the only exist- 
 ing medium of enlightenment. The second, which is the 
 natural coroUary to the first, is that the material universe 
 is an illusion of the senses, having no existence outside 
 the senses. The recognition of the latter truth is, as 
 the reader will see, essential to the realisation of the 
 former. Enlightenment, according to the Hindu theory, 
 is achieved when the soul, recognising the non-existence 
 of the earthly sphere, steps through the limit of time and 
 space into the presence of the infinite. That is to say, 
 salvation depends on the completeness with which the 
 pilgrim of the mystic way is able to realise the unreality 
 of matter. The value to the world of Hindtiism's first 
 tenet is, I suppose, beyond computation. It is perhaps 
 not too much to say that its ideal of spiritual consciousness 
 and direct spiritual vision has been the motive power of 
 all the great waves of faith which have overspread the 
 world. It has not supplied the thing to be believed, but 
 it has supplied the power of believing it. Its influence is 
 explained by its vindication of the spiritual faculty in 
 man. The soul, so it teaches, is that which knows, that 
 which sees. It is the organ through which knowledge 
 flows in upon a man. Here is a sure basis provided for the 
 spiritual Ufe. As all thinkers have divined, the character 
 of the knowledge we are able to assimilate must depend on 
 the character of our own assimilative faculties. Western 
 progress has proceeded on intellectual lines, and has 
 
102 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 developed the intellectual faculty in man. It has indeed 
 done so to such an extent and has taught us to seek 
 enlightenment so exclusively from intellectual sources that, 
 even when the matter in hand does not come under 
 intellect's survey at all, we have recourse to that faculty, 
 and, groping in spiritual darkness, appeal to intellect to 
 deliver us from the doubt into which it has itself cast us. 
 More logically Indian philosophy turns to another faculty, 
 another source of knowledge. Intellect can never help us 
 on the spiritual plane, for it is pledged to those finite and 
 temporal conditions amongst which it has its being. But 
 the soul, the spiritual eye in us, being itself of spiritual 
 essence can really apprehend spiritual ideas. To that 
 faculty the Indian appeals. Our arguments and reason- 
 ings and disputes on faith, on the miraculous, on the 
 absolute — ^the writhings and twistings of the mind that 
 would fain wring out of the finite an estimate of the 
 infinite — possess for him the same degree of significance 
 as the chattering of monkeys in trees. With a smile of 
 unparalleled scorn, he sweeps into oblivion and nonentity 
 both the visible universe and the powers of the mind 
 which subsist upon it, and in the silence and the void he 
 has created he waits for the soul within him to open its 
 eye and see. 
 
 In what are called the ages of faith, ages when fdth 
 attains the certainty of direct vision and the act of con- 
 templation is in itself a sufficient source of beatitude, the 
 influence of Eastern thought is always apparent. It is 
 more difficult to- grasp the conception pf matter which 
 a relentless concentration on spiritual insight involved. 
 There are illusions which are harmless and illusions which 
 are deadly. The illusion of material reality is, in Hindu 
 thought, deadly, for it cuts the soul off from the recogni- 
 tion of its spiritual identity. Not death itself can set it 
 free. So long as matter has dominion over it it must go 
 on in a perpetual cycle of reincarnations, the dupe of the 
 senses and entangled in the meshes of outward appearance, 
 until by an act of insight of its own it detects the imposture 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 103 
 
 to which it is subject. A belief therefore in material 
 reahty is in Hindu thought the main obstacle to enlighten- 
 ment. Do not let the reader imagine that there is any 
 similarity between the mysticism which accepts the 
 material universe as an interpretation, or incarnation, of 
 spiritual being, and the mysticism which conceives of 
 matter as a barrier between man and spiritual being. 
 The first view ennobles Nature, the latter degrades her. 
 The first is Western mysticism, the latter Eastern. 
 
 It is here we have our hands on a clue calculated to 
 arrest the attention of any one interested in Indian art. 
 Indian art, we said, exhibits an entire contempt of matter. 
 Indian thought, we now find, inculcates contempt of matter 
 as a condition of salvation. Indian art treats Nature's 
 laws as non-existent. Indian thought treats Nature her- 
 self as non-existent. If we desired effectually to sterilise 
 art what more infalHble means could we adopt than to 
 propagate the theory of the non-existence of matter ? 
 Such a theory, in so far as it was accepted, must tend to 
 dry up the stream of art at its very source. It is a far more 
 fatal attack than any attack on art itself could possibly be, 
 for it is an attack on the very substance in which art works. 
 It is as though a sculptor should find his marble turning 
 to mist and vapour under the strokes of his chisel. It 
 may be objected that, after all, a theory is only a theory, 
 and that it is scarcely to be expected that an abstract 
 philosophy should dictate the attitude of a whole race 
 of people towards a subject so humanly natural as art. 
 The objection wiU be disposed of if we realise the hold 
 which this doctrine had obtained over the Indian mind. 
 " Nothing really exists " — so Sir Monier WiUiams in his 
 well-known work on Hinduism describes what he calls 
 its root-dogma — " but the one Universal Spirit called 
 Brahman, and whatever appears to exist separately from 
 that spirit is mere illusion." And he adds, " This is the 
 uncompromising creed of true Brahmanism. This, ac- 
 cording to the orthodox Hindu philosophy, is the only 
 true Veda. This, at least according to the belief of the 
 
104 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 generality of educated Hindus, is the only true knowledge 
 to which the Veda leads." We often speak of the giif 
 which separates East from West, but in what does it 
 consist ? The West has assiduously fostered the cult of 
 appearances, the knowledge and investigation of Nature. 
 It has come to rely, perhaps overmuch, on science and 
 material phenomena, and to employ, almost too con- 
 fidently and too exclusively, the intellectual and rational 
 faculties which feed upon such subject-matter. It may 
 be, as our art critics tell us, that we have, in consequence 
 of this material bias of ours, lost the capacity for dealing 
 with spiritual ideas. But if this is true of us still more 
 certain is it that the East, in its concentration on spiritual 
 thought, has lost all capacity for dealing effectively with 
 material facts. The East has long preached that the only 
 means of divining the truth is by an act of purely spiritual 
 vision, and it is the case that the only truths which India 
 has ever made progress in have been truths of this order — 
 truths, that is to say, spiritual in their own essence and 
 handled by the soul, not truths of the material order 
 handled by the intellect. The search for truth which 
 carries Englishmen into libraries or laboratories or the 
 lecture-rooms of professors carries the Indian into the 
 shades of forests, where, without let or hindrance, he may 
 37ield his whole consciousness to the act of spiritual con- 
 templation. Here lies the gap that separates East from 
 West. It is a difference, not so much in opinion or point 
 of view, as in the faculties employed to acquire knowledge. 
 If, of two races, one had to rely for information on the sense 
 of sight and the other on the sense of touch they might 
 vary in their ideas in the same fundamental way that 
 East and West vary. 
 
 Indeed, what we have called the Hindu philosophy is 
 more than a philosophy; it is a racial tendency and 
 profoimd mental bias, and its dominating influence is, as 
 has been already pointed out, written across the whole 
 page of Indian history. For there is this that is sinister 
 about the Eastern contemplative philosophy, that it cuts 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 105 
 
 away the ground from under the feet of all natural 
 knowledge of whatever kind. India's only teachers, 
 her only professors are those solitary dreamers who, 
 remote from books and all the paraphemaHa of research, 
 commune with the infinite in their own souls. India has 
 built up no edifice of mundane knowledge and appears in 
 all ages to have been totally regardless of all merely 
 intellectual achievement. She is not interested in the 
 world we live in, and knows little or nothing about its 
 anatomy and its laws. She is not interested in man, and 
 knows little or nothing about his history and exploits. 
 How is so strange an indifference to be explained, and why 
 is it that a race of people of keen and subtle intelligence 
 should have remained inaccessible to all the appeals which 
 nature makes to reason ? 
 
 We have already answered the question. All forms of 
 mundane knowledge are identical with art in this respect, 
 that they deal with the visible universe as their material. 
 Hence any accepted doctrine of faith which degraded or 
 invalidated that material would deal the same deadly 
 blow at all forms of mundane knowledge as it deals at 
 art. India, in short, has never made anything of either 
 art or mundane knowledge because Indian philosophy 
 from the first has met the claims of Nature with a flat 
 negative. The first Indian seers who started the race 
 on a spiritual career, of which the denial of material 
 existence was an essential condition, laid the axe to the 
 root of all art as well as all secular science of whatsoever 
 kind. 
 
 If now we go on to examine a little more closely into 
 certain changes in Indian life and thought which have 
 attended similar changes in art, we shall discover added 
 proof of the connection indicated. The only Indian art 
 which displays the slightest respect for the forms it uses 
 is the art of the Buddhist period. This art is called 
 natxirahstic, and it was so, no doubt, at least to the extent 
 that it observes Nature, if not with knowledge, at any rate 
 with curiosity and affection. But the India which thus 
 
io6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 regarded Nature was far from being the India which had 
 originated and maintained the Hindu tenet of the non- 
 existence of matter. Sternly consistent, Hinduism had 
 combated from the first art's dangerous tendency to 
 glorify the material sphere. Mr. Havell thinks it wonder- 
 ful that there should exist scarcely a trace of art of the 
 early Hindu centuries. The spiritual idea was then at 
 its purest, why was there no art to correspond ? Pre- 
 cisely, we answer, because the idea was at its purest, and 
 being so was able to include the sacrifice of art in its scheme 
 of asceticism. Was the materialism which thought had 
 banned to be beautified and given fresh hold over men's 
 affections through the machinations of art ? It was not 
 Hindu India that wavered on such an issue, but an India 
 penetrated and suffused by the cult of Buddhism, and 
 Buddhism, as the reader knows, differs from Hinduism in 
 the more mundane and human sentiment with which it 
 is charged ; in its assiduous preaching of the more humane 
 virtues — pity, mercy, charity, sympathy — extended even 
 to the animal kingdom ; in its recognition, in short, of 
 the existence and the manifold claims of this temporal 
 earthly sphere. The pity that inflamed the heart of the 
 Buddha was a pity for the hapless multitude whom the 
 abstract contemplative doctrines of Hinduism could not 
 adequately comfort or enlighten. His gospel was a gospel 
 of earthly duties, of neighbourly and brotherly love, the 
 immediate and inevitable tendency of which was to 
 transform the universe from illusion into reality. The 
 change, from the point of view of art, was vital. It gave 
 art a footing in the natural and the visible. It legiti- 
 matised her material and removed the veto under which 
 she had hitherto lain. The period during which this 
 emancipation lasted is India's artistic period. It is the 
 only period in the country's history in which matter, art's 
 material, is treated with the least knowledge of its nature, 
 of the laws which govern it, and of the possibihties of 
 expression latent in it. 
 
 How deep did the change go ? As deep as Buddhism 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 107 
 
 itself went into Indian life. To say that Buddhism at 
 any time supplanted or even transformed Hinduism 
 would be misleading. It was partial in its influence and 
 it was limited in its duration. Without breaking with 
 the older faith it aspired to correct its abstract character 
 by infusions of earthly and human sentiment. It was, 
 in strong contrast to Hindu philosophy," a religion of 
 humanity. Now, if we were to take the period during 
 which this religion of humanity was in the ascendant, we 
 should find that, as nearly as such events can be dated, it 
 tallies with the great naturalistic* epoch in Indian art. 
 Buddhism, after a period of probation and struggle, was 
 adopted as the state religion in the reign of Asoka the 
 Great in the third century B.C. It is from the same 
 reign that Indian art dates its first decisive creative 
 epoch. Buddhism again underwent a long period of 
 decline, from, perhaps, the fifth century a.d. till its final 
 extinction in the eighth century. Indian art shows 
 during those centuries an increasing tendency to abandon 
 the naturalistic standpoint, until, with the re-establish- 
 ment of the older faith, it relinquishes it altogether in 
 favour of a frankly anti-natural treatment. As regards 
 the character of Buddhist art, Mr. Vincent Smith observes 
 that " from the seventh century," that is, after the definite 
 decline of Buddhism, " we find in sculpture few traces of 
 the kindly, human spirit and naturalistic treatment which 
 distinguished the ancient schools, mainly devoted to the 
 service of Buddhism." Buddhist art is, in short, the 
 Renaissance or Humanist period of Indian art, and the 
 Greek influence, represented by the Gandharan school, 
 played much the same part in it which it afterwards 
 played in Europe. If, however, Buddhist art is the 
 outcome of a new spirit of humanism in Indian ideas and 
 a new sympathy with man and Nature, it always quite 
 distinctly indicates the limitations of that spirit. Its 
 knowledge is imperfect and its sjmipathy incomplete, for 
 neither was Buddhism itself a complete justification of 
 the temporal. The art was the measure of an idea which 
 
io8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 had indeed penetrated society and touched all hearts, yet 
 which was a revolt, none the less, against something more 
 fundamental than itself, and which always felt behind it 
 the presence of the deeper thought. Buddhist art is 
 precisely of a similar quality, and its symptoms of feeble 
 vitality and insufficient knowledge, combined with its 
 lack of the genuine plastic instinct, reveal how incomplete 
 was the hold of the humanist movement on the mind of 
 the race. 
 
 Let me beg the reader, while the contrast is still before 
 us, to take his stand' at that point where Buddhist art 
 gives way to Hindu and look before and after. What 
 does he see ? Looking backward he sees a humanist 
 religion and a humanist art arising together and advancing 
 hand in hand through the centuries ; thought sympathis- 
 ing with life and art reflecting that sympathy. Then he 
 sees, as the shape of a monster looms up through deep 
 water, an older philosophy re-emerging out of the depths 
 of time, and, with its ancient doctrine of the unreality 
 of matter, undermining the genial humanism of its rival. 
 And then, knowing what to expect, he turns to art and 
 watches her attempts at naturalistic treatment and vague 
 gropings after a right representation of things falter and 
 fade, and in their place those forms arise which are them- 
 selves a repudiation of all natural laws. 
 
 At every stage art answers to life. We set out to 
 answer the question why Indian art is dogged by a 
 chronic incapacity to deal with nature as if she were real ; 
 and the answer we arrive at is, because Indian thought 
 has assiduously inculcated Nature's unreality. Let the 
 thought be relaxed and a breath of nature steals into art. 
 Let it be reaffirmed and natuxahsm makes way for every 
 kind of anatomical outrage. And art in this but samples 
 all life, for turning to life do we not perceive the same 
 force everywhere in action ? Are not all kinds of mundane 
 knowledge, all literature, all science, all ideas of practical 
 government side-tracked by the same fatal doubt. 
 Watch that doubt at its work, dissolving the very material 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART 109 
 
 of thought and turning the promise of a great civlhsation 
 into a shadow and a dream. Is not Mr. Havell right ; 
 does not the close connection between Indian thought 
 and art exist ? Yes, only, as it seems to me, not just as 
 he sees it. It is not the spiritual quality of the thought 
 which the art expresses ; it has not reverence enough for 
 its medium to be able to do that. What it does express 
 clearly enough is the power of that awful doctrine, which, 
 by declaring the imreality of matter, has permanently 
 degraded the very substance in which art and life alike 
 must operate. 
 
 Let us, I would say, finally, in these days of give and 
 take between East and West, keep in view, if we can, the 
 essentials of the situation. So much is being written of the 
 Eastern spiritual influence, and ideas favourable to that 
 influence are so much in the air, that it may well seem to 
 argue a certain dulness of understanding not to enlist 
 in that cause. No doubt those who are able to go along 
 with Mr. Havell and distil a spiritual meaning from the 
 specimens of art which adorn his pages must feel that they 
 are susceptible to more delicate currents of emotion than 
 those who persist in the old scientific art of the Renais- 
 sance. Yet I would urge that a due regard for the scien- 
 tific achievements of Western art need not argue a lack 
 of apprehension of spiritual motives. On the contrary, it 
 is maintainable that it is in the interest of the spiritual 
 motive that the material means of expression have to be 
 defended, for it may be only through the material medium 
 that the spiritual ever can utter itself at all. The differ- 
 ence between Eastern and Western thought is, as we said, 
 that the former rejects Nature, holding it a barrier between 
 the soul and true perception, whereas the latter accepts 
 Nature as the interpreter of the spiritual ideas which he 
 behind it. In this conflict of opinion, which always has 
 separated East from West and which is at the root of all 
 those early heresies which rent Christendom in two, it is 
 the primary assumption of the West of the dignity and 
 worth of Nature, which places art on a secure footing. 
 
no FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 And not art alone, for just as we saw that, under the 
 Eastern denial of Nature, all natural sciences withered 
 and died, so do we see that, under the Western recognition 
 of Nature, all natural science has flourished and developed. 
 Art in both cases is of a piece with the rest of life and 
 equally inculcates the same truth, that it is through the 
 natural the supernatural must speak if it is to speak at all. 
 Therefore, we say, reverence the natural, study its laws 
 and reflect upon all its processes of construction and 
 development. It is in this that art is rooted. Like that 
 ladder, fixed on earth but reaching to heaven, on which 
 angels ascended and descended, art is the chief reconciler 
 of finite and infinite. It is part of the Western endeavour, 
 acting through science, philosophy, poetry and all re- 
 search, and whether they know it or not egging them 
 forward on their course, to realise the spiritual through 
 the material. We have need for this end of all the 
 artistic science that came out of Athens and Florence, 
 just as we have need of all the natural science that 
 forms the staple of European education. Both, with- 
 out doubt, are fated to find their destination in a 
 spiritualism which but for them would have remained 
 for ever unattainable. 
 
 Therefore it seems that to rail at the natural is to 
 undermine the spiritual itself. Those critics, in truth, 
 who make so light of natural law are not only degrading 
 both Nature and art but are destroying our only hope of 
 ever attaining the very end which they themselves profess 
 to have in view, namely, the expression of the spiritual. 
 Let us have a little patience. Life has felt an impulse 
 which art is yet cold to. It needs must be so since hfe 
 must first experience the emotions which subsequently 
 inspire art. But because we feel more than we can 
 express, is that a reason that we should repudiate our 
 sole means of expression altogether ? We shall reach to 
 something more in the way of spiritual articulation by 
 and by, no doubt, but it will only be with the help of 
 our mundane knowledge that we shall do it. Mr. Havell 
 
INDIAN THOUGHT AND INDIAN ART iii 
 
 despises the great Greeks and Florentines for their earthly 
 science, but let us rather honour the great Greeks and 
 Florentines since it is through that earthly science of 
 theirs that art will one day attain to the utterance of 
 spiritual ideas. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 
 
 The art of Japan considered in relation to the spiritual and intel- 
 lectual qualities of the race. 
 
 All great art is great in one of two ways, either by 
 depth of feeling or depth of thought. What, leaving 
 Indian art, has the art of the Far East, the art of 
 China and Japan to offer us in those respects ? My own 
 feeling about Japanese painting is that, with a good deal 
 of decorative value, it has little of emotional depth and 
 less of intellectual interest, and up to a certain point 
 so distinguished a critic as Mr. Binyon seems to go 
 with me. " The painting of Asia," he observes, " is 
 throughout its main tradition an art of line." And a 
 page or two farther on, having repeated that, " This 
 painting is an art of line rather than an art of colour," 
 he goes on to qualify his statement thus : " Yet it is 
 not difficult to see how an art of line can come to have 
 for one of its chief characteristics, and for its most 
 obvious attraction, the charm of colour. The Japanese 
 prints of the eighteenth century, for instance, proved 
 a revelation of exquisite colour to Europeans, and yet 
 they too are in their essence Hnear designs. The reason 
 is that these linear designs aim at no illusion of rehef and 
 ignore cast Shadows. The spaces to be coloured are flat 
 spaces, and the instinct of the artist is to invent a harmony 
 of colour which intensifies and gives added charm to the 
 harmony of Une. Such an art never loses sight of the 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 113 
 
 primary condition of a picture as a decoration on a flat 
 wall ; and with this decorative aim the free and undis- 
 tracted development of colour-harmonies is naturally 
 associated." Here we have, as the reader will see, a 
 description of a purely decorative school of painting. 
 The colour indicated, flat and on the surface, is decorative 
 colour ; the linear designs, which " aim at no illusion of 
 rehef and ignore cast shadows," are decorative designs. 
 The " decorative aim," in short, of the entire treatment is, 
 as Mr. Binyon confesses, never lost sight of. 
 
 I agree, but what is imphed in this ? Mr. Binyon does 
 not set about defining decorative painting, but he gives us 
 some pretty exact notions of its quahty nevertheless. It 
 is flat, ignores cast shadows, and depends chiefly upon Une. 
 Well, then, whereabouts in the history of art does that 
 kind of painting come, and at what point does it stop, of 
 which flatness, repudiation of cast shadows, and depend- 
 ence on Une are the principal attributes ? 
 
 If the reader can, as the Germans say, " think himself 
 into the skin " of the palaeoUthic cave-man who first 
 smeared the waUs of his cave with yellow ochre or red clay, 
 and then into that of his neighbour and rival artist who 
 essayed to scratch the Ukeness of a running elk or antelope 
 on a piece of ivory, he will be aware that the two processes 
 proceed from different impulses or desires of the mind. 
 His wish, as the first cave-man, is simply to enjoy a gay 
 appearance which has in it no mental or intellectual 
 significance whatever, and his pleasure, so far as it goes, 
 is entirely a pleasure of the feelings. On the other hand, 
 his wish, as the second cave-man, is to express a meaning 
 and communicate an idea, and his art is so inspired by 
 that aim as, in the stage of hieroglyphics and ideagraphs, 
 to be inseparably bound up with the history of writing 
 itself. In neither case probably is the emotion or the 
 thought felt and communicated by the artist of any great 
 depth or intellectual significance, but already the difference 
 of root and character between emotional art and repre- 
 sentative or imitative art is marked and distinguished. 
 
 I 
 
114 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Nor, though mingUng, are they ever afterwards wholly 
 fused. That branch of art which ministers to contempla- 
 tion comes by degrees to feed upon the Ufe of the con- 
 templative East. Developing in method and process to 
 answer to man's deepening emotional consciousness, it 
 remains essentially the same in character. The mosaics 
 of a Byzantine, the stained glass of an early Gothic 
 interior, both derived immediately from Eastern sources 
 and steeped in the mysticism of the Indian and Persian 
 temperament, are examples of the power it can attain to. 
 Yet these mighty manifestations of the influence of art, 
 though greatly intensified and developed, are still similar 
 in kind to the efforts of the primitive cave-dauber, and 
 the pleasure they afford is but a deepening and enriching 
 of that which he sought to communicate. The branch of 
 art, on the contrary, which aspires to transmit ideas 
 passes into the charge of the intellectual West, and the 
 solution of the many difficulties which beset it become 
 the care of Western study and thought. And, as with 
 emotional so now with intellectual art, as thought deepens, 
 the power of expression of the art deepens with it, yet 
 retains its original character. The sculptures of a Phidias 
 or a Michelangelo, however far ahead in depth and power 
 of thought, are still similar in kind to the first attempts 
 at form-delineation of the palaeolithic age. Perhaps the 
 most graphic illustration of the contrast between the two 
 styles we have been discussing is offered by the great rival 
 schools of Venetian and Florentine art, the former of 
 which, primarily sensuous and emotional in its appeal, 
 is inspired by the intense OrientaHsm of Venetian life ; 
 while the latter, with less of feehng in it, but far more of 
 thought, draws for its main incentive upon the strain of 
 classic intellectualism. 
 
 But now will the reader consider this further point ? 
 I have said that, as emotion gained in depth and intellect 
 in power, so did emotional art and intellectual art gain 
 in depth and power also. Is this change, let us now go on 
 to ask, in the sphere of art gradual and insensible, or is it 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 115 
 
 marked by notable transitions in method and process ? 
 If we compare the primitive attempts in either style with 
 their later developments, we shall find that each passes 
 through a very clearly marked transition. The early 
 attempts of our cave-men at colour decoration are confined 
 to the use of flat colour or colour on the surface. That is 
 a use of colour which undoubtedly has its merits and is 
 capable of affording distinct pleasure. But it is not the 
 use of colour which most affects us, and the pleasure it 
 gives tends, hke the colour itself, to superficiality. The 
 great effects of colour, those which we think of not as 
 instances of decorative colour but of emotional or sensuous 
 colour, have an inward depth and volume added to them ; 
 and in every case where this depth and volume are added 
 we shall find that the agent employed to effect the change 
 is chiaroscuro. We deal in these pages with three 
 such cases in Gothic and Byzantine architecture and 
 Venetian painting. Take any French cathedral which 
 has retained, as most of them have, their early stained 
 glass, and what is the character of the colouring of the 
 interior ? It certainly is not " flat and on the surface," 
 but in richest tones and blending notes pervades and holds 
 possession of the whole interior space of the building. At 
 the same time the colour-scheme could not act upon this 
 space at all save through the agency of chiaroscuro. It 
 is the prevailing system of light and shade, the depths of 
 obscurity and the glowing beams which penetrate and 
 take hold of it, which enables the colour to act. So, too, 
 it is with Byzantine colour. This, like Gothic, is of great 
 sensuous power, and this sensuous power it owes to the 
 fact that it is not flat and not on the surface. But how 
 does it escape superficiality ? Structurally and funda- 
 mentally — ^for the Greeks worked out the thought with a 
 thoroughness beyond the Gothic range — ^it owes its escape 
 to its use of nothing but rounded and softly outlined 
 forms, such as vaults, domes, and apses, which give the 
 impression that the gold of the mosaic, far from being of 
 superficial extent only, is the actual materisLl out of which 
 
ii6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 the whole structure has been, as it were, kneaded ; but 
 in part also, and that an essential one, it owes it to the 
 presence of a powerful scheme of chiaroscuro which gives 
 depth and richness and lustre to the colour itself. Admit 
 the full light of day to either interior — destroy, that is to 
 say, its scheme of chiaroscuro — and the colour is struck 
 dead. Again, in the case of Venetian painting there is 
 the same depth, the same melting suffusion and glow, 
 substituted for the old decorative superficiality, and here 
 too the cause of the transition is the tremendous scheme 
 of chiaroscuro in which and through which the colour acts. 
 If the reader will take the trouble to compare a few 
 photographs of each of these subjects he will be struck 
 by a remarkable similarity between them, even as com- 
 municated by the camera. The fact is, the camera, 
 though it cannot give the colour, yet gives in each case the 
 scheme of chiaroscuro, the graduated masses of light and 
 shade which control the colour, and this vehicle, used with 
 the same effect in each of the great colour styles I have 
 been noticing, produces that sense of similarity in appear- 
 ance which the photographs reveal. 
 
 What, then, we find in regard to colour is this, that, 
 in passing firom the superficial, decorative stage to the 
 profoundly emotional stage, colour itself assumes a depth 
 and volume which did not belong to it as a surface decora- 
 tion, and that the recognisable mark of the transition is 
 the prominent role assigned to the influence of chiaroscuro. 
 We can appeal to all the great colour-schools in art to bear 
 us out in this conclusion, and we can verify it further by 
 reflecting that Nature and art are in this agreed and that 
 all the great sensuous colour-effects of Nature, as in autumn 
 woods and tropical jungles, are produced by the very 
 means we have been discussing. To turn now to Japanese 
 art, what is Mr. Binyon's view of the matter ? He admits 
 that Japanese colour is flat and on the surface, and he 
 proceeds to make, of these traits its chief merit. It is in 
 proportion as the artist becomes discontented with flat 
 colour, he tells us, and develops the use of chiaroscuro that 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 117 
 
 his " sense for colour becomes weak and uncertain." In 
 short, it is Mr. Binyon's contention that superficial and 
 merely decorative colour is the finest of all, and that it 
 is when colour, passing under the control of chiaroscuro, 
 ceases to be merely superficial that it " becomes weak 
 and uncertain." On this view he deliberately insists. 
 " Why is it," he goes on to ask, " that in Italian painting 
 before the Renaissance, even when no decided genius for 
 colour is shown, the colour of quite minor, insignificant, 
 and provincial masters pleases us ? It is because," he 
 answers his question, " the painting of those early periods 
 was as yet unconfused and undistracted by the problems 
 of chiaroscuro." So, because flat decorative colour is 
 pleasant and agreeable enough in its way, and is perhaps 
 the easiest to manage and handle, we are to admit that it 
 constitutes the noblest colour-treatment possible, and 
 that any departure from it must be a faUing-ofE. The 
 assumption is in contradiction to the whole evidence of 
 art. Grant it and you must grant immediately that the 
 most " weak," the most " uncertain " of aU colour-schemes 
 are those comprised in the golden-brown twilight of 
 Chartres, or the mellow interior of St. Mark's, or in the 
 glowing canvases of those whom, by a kind of mockery, as 
 it would seem, we have got into the habit of referring to 
 as the great Venetian " colourists." Why, Mr. Binyori 
 has but to look round him at the common aspects of 
 Nature to detect the fallacy he has taken up with. He has 
 but to pass from the outer landscape into the depths of 
 an October wood, where the rich tones of yellow blend 
 and melt in the darkness of the shadows roimd him, to 
 feel how magical is the sense of emotional depth added to 
 colour by chiaroscuro. He has but to compare a bit of 
 blue chalk with a sapphire to perceive that superficial 
 colour appeals to superficial feehng, and that depth added 
 to such colour speaks to answering depths in our own 
 souls. 
 
 So far I have attempted to give some reason for my 
 beUef that Japanese painting, with all its decorative value. 
 
ii8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 has little emotional depth. Passing now from colour to 
 form, let us take the other side of art and endeavour to 
 show why perhaps it is deficient in intellectual interest. 
 Mr. Binyon again and again assures us that Japanese art 
 is essentially an art of line, and I agree with him just as 
 I agreed with him when he said that Japanese colour 
 was flat and on the surface. I agree, and I go on to remark 
 that of all the indictments it is possible to bring against 
 the art of any nation, the indictment that it is essentially 
 an art of line — ^in other words, that its capacity for form- 
 expression is satisfied with what line can yield — ^is the 
 most condemnatory possible. Let us refer once more to 
 our cave-man and his elk. The earliest primitive idea, 
 or realisation of form, consisting as it does in the recog- 
 nition of the limits of a particular body and its separa- 
 tion from its surroundings, has always expressed itself in 
 the drawing of an outline. As, however, knowledge and 
 comprehension of the contents of form have progressed, 
 line has been reinforced by other methods capable of 
 conveying this added fulness of knowledge, and all the 
 resources of tone and of relief obtainable by brush and 
 chisel have been employed to suggest a sense of the actual 
 substance and quality of the thing depicted. Every 
 addition in artistic knowledge of this kind has been 
 demonstrably due to an all-round increase in intellectual 
 vitality, the increase of intellectual consciousness de- 
 manding more fulness of expression than mere line can 
 afford. It was so the Greek movement acted upon art. 
 It was so the Renaissance movement acted upon art. 
 Here too, then, on this intellectual side of art the transition 
 from the primitive to the riper phase is clearly enough 
 marked. Just as we said of the old treatment of colour 
 that it took to itself a new emotional power when it ceased 
 to be flat and on the surface, so do we find that form- 
 deUneation takes to itself a new intellectual power when 
 mere outline ceases to satisfy it. But Japanese painting 
 always, as Mr. Binyon points out, remains satisfied with 
 line. Quite so, and it remains satisfied with line because 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 119 
 
 it is powerless to press either form or colour beyond the 
 decorative stage ; because, in other words, it is as lacking 
 in intellectual power as in emotional depth. 
 
 According, however, to Mr. Binyon, the quaUty of 
 Japanese line is so wonderful that it is a substitute in 
 itself for all other modes of expression. " The painting 
 of Asia," he says, " is throughout its main tradition an 
 art of hne " ; but, he adds, " limited to line, the painters 
 of Asia have concentrated centuries of thought on the 
 effort to make that line intimately expressive of form ; 
 and with mere contour they succeed in producing the 
 illusion of perfect modelling." Now this claim, the claim 
 that a race which restricts itself to line can get an unusual 
 amount of expression out of that vehicle — ^is of consider- 
 able interest and importance. Mr. Fry, in a recent article 
 in the Nation on Oriental Art, has advanced the same claim 
 in connection with Egj^tian and Assjnian art. Alluding 
 to a picture of a horse supposed to be by Han Kan, in the 
 drawing of which he says there is " a solemnity and 
 grandeur which must, one feels, derive from a remote 
 antiquity," he goes on to observe : 
 
 The form is revealed by a line of astonishing force and 
 simplicity ; it has an intensity of definition, a containing power 
 which seems to belong to another race. There is still some- 
 thing left of that primal and immediate perception of form 
 that the artists of Egypt and Assyria possessed in the youth 
 of the world, something that seems altogether to have evapor- 
 ated from art alike in East and West. 
 
 It will be seen^that this criticism agrees with Mr. 
 Binyon's estimate of Japanese line. Both critics lend 
 themselves to the doctrine that line is at its greatest and 
 most expressive when it alone is responsible for the effect 
 of form produced ; that is to say, in times when artists 
 were lacking in any consciousness of form which it was 
 beyond the power of Une to convey. 
 
 In short, both these critics propound the doctrine 
 that the sense for form was at its greatest where the 
 means for expressing form were at their narrowest. The 
 
I20 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 argument contradicts all our experience. It is our 
 capacity to appreciate and understand the nature of 
 substances — ^their qualities, the laws which made them 
 and maintain them, the hidden causes which control 
 their motions, their development and their decay — 
 wfiich interpret to us the significance of form. It seems 
 impossible to dispute this. The most obvious fact about 
 the art of the Greeks is its love and appreciation of the 
 quahty of form. The most obvious fact about the Greek 
 mind is its equal love of investigation and intellectual 
 activity generally. Similarly with Florentine art. Floren- 
 tine art, as Mr. Berenson and Professor Bode and others 
 have pointed out, is " essentially an art of form," and 
 Florence itself was the headquarters of the intellectual 
 revival. Intellectual activity in the history of art is the 
 influence which has generated susceptibility to form. 
 It is natural that this should be so, for it is the play of 
 reason upon things which reveals their nature and con- 
 tents and the significance of their substance, and the 
 appreciation of this quality of form is merely the artistic 
 utterance of this play of the mind. Moreover, the conclu- 
 sion holds good, not as a matter of theory, but as a matter 
 of fact, for those periods in the history of men most re- 
 markable for intellectual initiative and the love of thinking 
 have been precisely the periods in the history of art which 
 have exploited and developed the quahty of form. 
 
 Indeed we would think it ought to be evident that 
 automatic repetition itself was sufficient to prove the 
 absence of any vital sense for form. It is impossible to 
 conceive artists from generation to generation repeating 
 the same attitudes and expressions and gestures and cur- 
 taiUng their work to the same fixity of outline, yet them- 
 selves palpitating all the time with an intimate sense 
 of the significance of form. Such a sense would be 
 bound to modify and vary the existing tradition by 
 its own fresh perceptions, however strong the tradition 
 might be. 
 
 So that for two reasons it seems impossible to sustain 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 121 
 
 Mr. Fry's position. In the first place, to stick at mere 
 outline argues in itself, an insensibility to the claims of 
 form, for it is precisely a susceptibiUty to those claims 
 which has led man to be discontented with the capacity 
 of line and to supplement it with other expedients. In 
 the second place, such a constant and continual iteration 
 of the same automatic figures as are usual in Eg3^tian 
 art is in itself proof positive of a decadence of intelligence ; 
 that is to say, it is proof that no immediate and vital 
 perception of any kind was animating the artists who 
 thus carved and painted. 
 
 If it be asked why so many critics disagree with con- 
 clusions which seem fairly obvious, I can only say that 
 the production of unvarying types in art, even though 
 utterly meaningless and always the same, is the surest of 
 all ways to impose on the imagination of a curious and 
 impressionable generation. Such a generation will easily 
 pour ideas and meanings of its own into the empty vessels 
 which an unthinking age has prepared. The features of 
 an Egyptian sphinx will to the modern critic appear 
 charged with recondite and mystical meanings, and he 
 will read into them all kinds of occult secrets and traces 
 of an ancient knowledge long extinct. Really they mean 
 nothing at all, nor were they meant to mean anything, 
 nor did the idea that they ever could or should express 
 anything ever occur to the man who carved them. Those 
 hneaments are in all respects identical with those of scores 
 and hundreds of other figures which occur in Egs^ptian 
 art and on Egj^tian sarcophagi and mummy-cases. The 
 face had become a formula out of which all meaning 
 had long perished. It was turned out in dozens of work- 
 shops up and down the Nile by sculptors who were careful 
 to get their measurements right and gave no other thought 
 to the matter. And it is precisely because it means so 
 absolutely nothing that we can make it mean such a lot, 
 just as it is only the vessel which is entirely empty that 
 we can fill according to our fancy. It is the same with 
 Egyptian line-work. The very fact that it is a conven- 
 
122 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 tional pattern encourages us to quicken and sensitise it 
 with the most wonderful expressiveness. 
 
 We ought not to be misled by the mere automatic 
 regularity and the hard mechanical reiteration of certain 
 formal outlines such as we see in Egyptian and Assyrian 
 art. After all it is a poor criticism which cannot dis- 
 tinguish between the strength of routine find the strength 
 of living thought and observation. Eastern hne is the 
 repetition of a formula, Western line is a report of reaUty. 
 The latter, it is true, can never possess the cast-iron 
 rigidity of the former, but what it does possess and what 
 is much better, is a living and flexible adaptability to the 
 vision from which it derives its significance. The West, 
 though it may not so strictly confine itself to line, for 
 it has more to say than line can communicate, nevertheless 
 has got out of line alone far more than the East has ever 
 got out of it. It has done so because, its mind being 
 soaked in the consciousness of the substance, formation 
 and character of what it is depicting, its line adapts itself, 
 so far as Une may, to the suggestion of these essential 
 quahties. It expresses more, in short, because it has 
 more to express. If, when we are turning over drawings 
 and studies — ^brief jottings, perhaps, of gesture and 
 movement by Renaissance artists, in which the pencil 
 seems endowed with the significance of life itself, so magic- 
 ally is each stroke related to the muscle and substance of 
 limb or body — if at such a moment we allow our mind to 
 revert to the methods of Egyptian and Assyrian hne- 
 work, how destitute of living interest do they not seem, 
 and how idle and unmeaning appears the applause with 
 which it has become a kind of fashion to greet them. In 
 the development of form-delineation from eariiest primi- 
 tive outline one of two things always happens : either 
 the sense for form, keeping pace with a general intellectual 
 advance, grows and increases, until Une alone, though 
 becoming ever more flexible and expressive, cannot satisfy 
 it, and the co-operation of other agents has to be called 
 in ; or there is no general intellectual advance and the 
 
EASTERN ART AND WESTERN CRITICS 123 
 
 sense for form does not grow, and line never has to be 
 reinforced and never becomes more flexible and expressive, 
 but on the contrary gives up by degrees the very thought 
 of growth, and by and by faUs helplessly back upon a 
 formula. This, not the art of the West, is the kind of art 
 from which, in Mr. Fry's phrase, all immediate perception 
 of form seems altogether to have evaporated. The con- 
 tention we are dealing with, the contention that an art 
 which remains "essentially an art of Une " can "with 
 mere contour succeed in producing the illusion of perfect 
 modelling " is paradoxical, for no art inspired by a sense 
 of the actuality and substance of form can possibly remain 
 content with mere contour. The means of expression 
 always have grown and always must grow with the need of 
 expression. This is why Mr. Binyon's true remark that 
 Asiatic art is essentially an affair of Une seems to me so 
 damnatory a one, for it afEords the strongest proof of the 
 lack, behind that art, of any vital intellectual stimulus. 
 As for the comparison with the West, if we could preserve 
 our simplicity of mind and consent to see what is under 
 our noses, we should acknowledge that the capacity of 
 Western artists, from Holbein to Phil May, to express 
 form by means of line is something Eastern art has simply 
 no conception of. 
 
 I do not see how any criticism of Japanese art, whatever 
 graces and accompHshments it may discover, can help 
 taking note of the limitations we have been discussing. 
 Such a criticism will be boimd to recognise that on the 
 decorative side Japanese art has not passed the phase when 
 superficial pleasure merges into richness and depth of 
 emotion, while on the representative or interpretative 
 side it has not attained to ans^hing of intellectual dignity 
 and excellence. It is, in fact, a stunted and prematurely 
 wizened art, destitute alike of the great quaUties of the 
 soul and the great quaUties of the mind, and no amount 
 of ecstasy and eloquence wiU prevent us eventuaUy from 
 recognising these two facts. They wiU declare themselves. 
 Even if they be not openly acknowledged their effects 
 
124 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 will be seen in the failure of Japanese art to lay a per- 
 manent hold on the imagination of the West. 
 
 It seems to me that, in proportion as the standard of 
 excellence derived from Western art is flouted or discarded 
 the duty of the critic to stand by it increases. More than 
 art is at stake. The art of the West stands for the Ufe 
 of the West, and the deeper question which underlies 
 the question of artistic merit is whether or not we shall 
 accept the life of the West as in its nature positively 
 progressive. Are we or are we not believers in the spirit 
 of intellectual enlightenment with which Western life has 
 endowed Western art ? For my part I answer in the affir- 
 mative. I do not follow Mr. Binyon when he declares 
 that all art is convention and that Japanese conventions 
 are as likely to be right as European ones. It is not so. 
 The work in this direction, begun by the Greeks and con- 
 tinued by the Eviropean nations, is secure and durable, 
 for it is built on a faithful appreciation of the laws of 
 Nature and of human sight. It is part of the central 
 Western thought that knowledge of truth proceeds through 
 the lower to the higher, and Western art and Western 
 thought stand, in this, together. If we beheve that all 
 that the Western intellect has accomplished, all its patient 
 scientific investigations which have laid broad and deep 
 the knowledge of the material significance of Nature, 
 are but the due and indispensable preparation for the 
 understanding of her spiritual significance, then we must 
 believe that the whole course of Western progress in art, 
 in the direction of scientific truth and faithful representa- 
 tion, is the necessary preliminary condition, or training, 
 through which she must pass, if she is ever adequately to 
 utter divinely significant ideas. Our art is materialistic, 
 Mr. Binyon complains. So be it ; but it is truly and 
 faithfully materiaUstic, and in proportion as it is truly and 
 faithfully materialistic to-day we may hope that it will be 
 truly and faithfully spiritual to-morrow. 
 
PART II 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 
 
 The beginning and end of all the interpretative value 
 which art, or any other of the works of man, possesses con- 
 sists in the fact that all that man creates he creates in his 
 own image. Man is perpetually reproducing himself. He 
 cannot poke the fire, or order a dinner, or make a speech, 
 or plan a garden, or arrange a room but the result will 
 be in some sort a replica of his own character. Now 
 art is simply man's most characteristic work, that into 
 which most of his character and what is most permanent 
 and profound in his character, is poured. Further it is, 
 in those creative epochs when it attains to anything of 
 importance, not an individual and sporadic, but a collec- 
 tive and universal work. It is the self-expression not of 
 a person but of an age. Only in proportion as the spirit 
 of an a^e embodies itself in the art of that period does 
 the resulting art become significant and coherent, and 
 endowed with that kind of intelligibiUty and uniformity 
 of development which made it as what we call a style. 
 
 But, if art is thus used to express the thoughts of man, 
 it, of course, follows that it must itself derive its char- 
 acter direct from the mind of the age which it interprets. 
 All the qualities we see in the art must have been living 
 
 * THs second part, dealing with classic art, covers much the same 
 ground as was covered by a former book of mine — The Works of Man — 
 to which I would beg to refer the reader. 
 
 125 
 
126 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 characteristics of that generation. They are to be 
 explained and understood by reference to life and in 
 no other way. Sometimes this reference to life is simple 
 and sometimes difficult, according as the thought and 
 mental attitude of the age was itself simple or complex. 
 What has to be observed, at the beginning- of any attempt 
 to appreciate Greek art, is that in this case the message 
 delivered is of the simplest possible kind. Greek art is 
 perfectly articulate. It is never in doubt for a moment 
 as to what it means. It never contradicts itself, or ex- 
 presses itself with the slightest vagueness or uncertainty, 
 nor is it subject to any reactions or periodic revolutions 
 such as render art, as a rule, so self-contradictory in its 
 reports ; rather it delivers a coherent and definite message 
 which it is our own fault if we misunderstand. 
 
 But if Greek art is clear it is because Greek thought 
 is clear. The articulate quality, the clear knowledge 
 of what it means to say and how it means to say it, the 
 entire absence of perplexity and confusion, the sense 
 not of shadows but of cool and clear daylight which 
 belong to Greek architecture and sculpture, belong to 
 Greek thought. They were derived by Greek architecture 
 and sculpture from the Greek mind, and it is in the Greek 
 mind that we are first to seek their presence. 
 
 The quest is a very simple one. I have pointed out 
 already that humanity is endowed with two means of 
 enlightenment. These are the soul's apprehension of 
 spiritual things, and the intellect's apprehension of 
 temporal things. The most immediate difference between 
 this two is that the first, though it consists of phases of 
 intuition of incomparable depth and certitude, yet is 
 none the less apparently vague and obscure in its reports, 
 partly because its flashes of insight are intermittent and 
 fitful, and partly because they are of such a nature as 
 not to be fully expressible in any kind of human medium. 
 They have the character therefore of hints, suggestions, 
 and tentative guesses at truths too high to grasp, rather 
 than the firmly outlined aspect of communicable facts. 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 127 
 
 Intellectual discrimination, on the other hand, has none 
 of this vagueness. On the contrary, the more intellectual 
 it is the more certain of itself and clear it is ; for intellect 
 being that faculty which deals with a man's mortal 
 surroundings, and with as much of his moral nature as 
 finds its justification in this earthly state, its subject- 
 matter, as well as its conclusions, are constantly open to 
 the test of everyday experience. 
 
 It is the concern of intellect, not only to analyse all 
 the processes of natural evolution, to trace effects to their 
 causes, and to estabUsh man, by right of this acquired 
 knowledge^ as in some sort the supreme manager and 
 director of the earthly universe, but also to go on to 
 consider the laws of conduct by which man himself should 
 be guided, and the nature of the duty he owes to himself 
 and others. Yet in their moral sphere also, as in the 
 material and scientific, the results will be valuable as 
 they are correctly reasoned and accurately defined. 
 Intellectual ethics have nothing in common with mystical 
 intuitions. They are merely efforts in correct reasoning 
 touching the conduct of a rational being in his progress 
 through the present world, and they are in all respects 
 as definite and precise as any statements in regard to 
 natural laws or events. 
 
 Intellect, then, is that faculty which deals with 
 Nature and with man, and, deahng with what is present 
 to our senses, its statements are or ought to be clearly 
 defined; whereas the spiritual faculty, dealing with things 
 not present to our senses, is constantly suggestive rather 
 than definite in exposition. Now the clearness, which 
 is so notable a characteristic of Greek art, is merely the 
 natmral consequence of the overwhelmingly intellectual 
 bias of the Greek mind. It must be remembered in 
 explaining this bias that the Greeks may almost be said 
 to be the discoverers of intellectual processes, so different 
 in character was the Greek cast of thought from any which, 
 so far as we know, had preceded it. Human progress is 
 apt to proceed by the cultivation now of one side of the 
 
128 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 mind, now of the other. The age when the spiritual 
 faculty was most developed in England, and when 
 spiritual contemplation was realised as a source of 
 felicity, was an age when the intellectual faculty was 
 very meagrely developed. Similarly, later, in the time of 
 the Renaissance, when intellect was once more assiduously 
 cultivated, the nm on the new faculty quite over- 
 shadowed the old, so that it quickly fell into contempt 
 and desuetude. If this is apt to be the case, and if these 
 effects could be pfoduced by an intellectual revival at 
 second hand, we shall not be surprised if the original 
 practice of that kind of thinking wholly engrossed the 
 minds of its discoverers. If to a Florentine of the 
 Renaissance was given the excitement of reopening 
 forgotten paths and recognising, as he advanced, the 
 footsteps of an earher generation, to the Athenian of 
 the classic age was given the more thrilling excitement 
 of the first survey of a virgin country. 
 
 The reliance on human intelligence, which is the 
 inspiration of classicalism, is the Greek gift to the world. 
 Professor Butcher is very explicit on this point. " It 
 was the privilege of the Greeks to discover the sovereign 
 efficacy of reason." He adds that " it was Ionia that 
 gave birth to an idea which was foreign to the East, but 
 has become the starting-point of modem science — ^the 
 idea that Nature works by fixed laws. A fragment of 
 Euripides speaks of him as ' happy who has learned to 
 search into causes,' who ' discovers the deathless and 
 ageless order of Nature, whence it arose, the ' how and 
 the why.' " And again he says : " The early poet- 
 philosopher of Ionia gave the impulse which has carried 
 the human intellect forward across the line which 
 separates empirical from scientific knowledge ; and the 
 Greek precocity of mind in this direction, unlike that 
 of the Orientals, had in it the promise of uninterrupted 
 advance in the future." I have in these quotations 
 underlined the words which indicate that not only were 
 the Greeks intellectual in their genius, but that they 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW lag 
 
 originated that kind of investigation, and in effect 
 started intellect on its all-conquering career. It was 
 the Greeks who discovered the efiftcacy of reason, who 
 gave birth to the appreciation of natural law, who gave 
 the impulse to which science owes its development. In 
 truth, whoever follows the course of human history 
 through the Assjman and Egyptian dynasties to the 
 dawn of the Greek civilisation, must be aware, in the 
 latter event, of a new force which is being introduced 
 into human affairs. The power which rules Egypt and 
 Assyria is the power of routine. They are remote from 
 us and unintelhgible to us because the capacity which 
 we rely on is inoperative in their Uves. In all branches 
 of knowledge, in agriculture, medicine, mathematics, 
 literature, and the sciences there exists in Egypt and 
 Assyria no trace of progress or of movement of any kind 
 from a dim antiquity to the last days of those empires. 
 All subjects of thought, all kinds of knowledge remain 
 on the banks of the Nile and of the Euphrates, stunted 
 and petrified and motionless. The total reached is never 
 more than that amount which merely manual practice 
 and a perpetual repetition can accomplish. 
 
 The infallible test of intellectual activity is the asser- 
 tion by man of his superiority to his surroundings ; his 
 assertion, that is to say, of his right to control and alter 
 and adapt to his own wishes the material circumstances 
 in which he finds himself. This must always be so ; for 
 intellect being the power which comprehends the universe 
 and its laws — ^in other words, intellect being the power 
 which gives man control of his surroundings — ^it follows 
 that the development and cultivation of intellect will 
 awaken in man the consciousness that he possesses this 
 power and the desire to use it. It is scarcely necessary 
 to point out in support of what is so obvious that every 
 intellectual age has been primarily remarkable for its 
 keen interest in all mundane forms of knowledge, and 
 is to be distinguished by its progressive action and the 
 constant changes and alterations in the environment 
 
 K 
 
130 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 of life which naturally follow from the perception that 
 man is the controller of circumstances. 
 
 There is not a trace of this thought in the earher 
 civilisations. Assyria and Egypt are images of empires 
 in which, far from man having assumed the ascendancy 
 over matter, matter has assumed a complete ascendancy 
 over man. Generation after generation, in endless 
 procession, treads in the footsteps of its predecessors; 
 worships the same gross productive powers of Nile and 
 sun, and reproduces the same rule-of-thumb knowledge 
 and narrow manual efficiency which unvarjdng repetition 
 naturally engenders. No Egyptian, no Assyrian dreams 
 for an instant of altering, inventing, experimenting, or 
 in any way interfering in the least particular with a 
 routine of hfe which bears the sanctioii of ages. 
 
 Imposing, at least in scale, as Egyptian monuments 
 may be, they are all of such a monotonous, repetitive 
 character as makes them appear rather the result of the 
 physical circumstances of Eg3T)t and the life of obedience 
 to those circumstances led there than of conscious thought. 
 They bear out the impression one receives from reading 
 Egyptian history, that the whole of Egyptian life is under 
 the sway of an iron routine. We ourselves can no more 
 claim kindred with such races than we can claim kindred 
 with beavers. Our Egyptologists have made of late 
 superhuman efforts to bridge the gulf. The dry sands 
 of Egypt have yielded up to them the sarcophagi and 
 mummied forms of many a ruler and potentate of old 
 Egypt. Sanmaout and the Princess Naffirouriya, Isis, 
 the mother of Th6utmosis, the red granite statue of 
 Toutanoukhamanou, and several others are among the 
 figures recently discovered and illustrated to the life by 
 Sir G. Maspero in his latest volume. Yet all these efEorts 
 are in vain. No one, save students and professors, will 
 ever be really interested in the Princess Naffirouriya and 
 her friends. They hved, but for us they never hved ; 
 for that', which we call hfe in human beings is the 
 hfe of intellect and thought, and those poor mummies 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 131 
 
 never lived that life, or ever aspired to anything 
 but to wear smoother the rut which former generations 
 had already worn so smooth ; or ever for one moment 
 dreamt of questioning the authority of the circum- 
 stances in which they found themselves, or asserting 
 their right to mould and control their environment in 
 the least particular. 
 
 Theirs was not this privilege of intellect. No, but 
 " among the ideas common to Thucydides and Demo- 
 sthenes this is one — ^that reason is a formative and con- 
 quering power ; that a strong and clear intelligence 
 can prevail over outward circumstances and shape 
 events." The whole difference between Egyptian and 
 Greek is explained in those words ; and our own sense 
 of the vitality in Greek Ufe and thought and art is 
 explained in them too. To pass from Egyptian or 
 Ass5nrian history into Greek is exactly Uke passing from 
 the Egyptian and Ass3nian rooms into the Greek room 
 at the British Museum. It is to exchange a dull mechani- 
 cal routine and the t5n:anny of an inflexible convention 
 for the human sympathy, the human interest, and the 
 vigour and flexibihty of life. But at the same time, 
 equally under art and rmder Ufe, hes the simple cause of 
 the revolution in the fact that the Greeks were the first 
 people to place themselves under the guidance of the 
 intellectual faculty, whose instinct it is never to acquiesce 
 in routine or accept convention, but to test the nature 
 of all things and see all things as they are. 
 
 The Greeks, then, specialised in intellectual culture. 
 While in the East the tendency was for life to feed ex- 
 clusively on the emotional faculty, the tendency in the 
 West was for it to feed exclusively on the intellectual 
 faculty. The consequence of this is that there runs 
 through all classical thought a glorification of the same 
 class or family of virtues, tending to produce an ideal 
 character, the pattern man, as it were, of the classical 
 epoch. And this pattern man, sculptured for us by* 
 classic thought, whom we see presiding over that world. 
 
132 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 is so clearly defined and uniformly the same that there 
 is no mistaking his main attribute for a moment. 
 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill, 
 
 are qualities which he possesses in perfection. All that 
 experience and thought can suggest to guide and sustain 
 him he seeks, but he seeks no more. To survey with 
 precision reason's field of operations was one-half of his 
 endeavour ; to sustain with composure all that lay out- 
 side of that field and was uncontrollable or inexplicable 
 was the other half. The ideal character of the epoch 
 is essentially self-reUant and self-sufficient, for within 
 the domain marked off by reason as his own sphere of 
 action he is supreme. His conduct, his thoughts, his 
 aims, all that lies within reach of his attainment are 
 subject to his examination and analysis ; and it is for 
 him to determine their claims and relative degrees of 
 merit. " Generally speaking," writes Mr. Osbom Taylor, 
 " excellence and right in every school of pagan ethics 
 was a matter of the rational and strenuous endeavour 
 of the enlightened man. When he acted wrongly, he 
 had his passion or ignorance to blame ; when he acted 
 aright, he might congratulate himself. A pagan is 
 neither tempted by the devil nor very definitely helped 
 by God. Right conduct, that is conduct most conducive 
 to the actor's welfare, is whatever human experience 
 and reason have approved. Approval by the best human 
 reason based on the widest human knowledge was the 
 standard." 
 
 All this is intellect's province. The representative of 
 the classic spirit is moved by no plea, is swayed by no 
 impulse, is drawn on by no object or ambition which 
 cannot explain itself clearly. His every thought, rational 
 in character, promises a definable subject-matter. 
 Marcus Aurelius's exhortation : " So order your thoughts 
 • that if any one were at any time to say. What are 
 you now thinking about ? you could without hesita- 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 133 
 
 tion, reply, Of this, or of that," is the classic rule of 
 thinking. 
 
 Any one who fixes his attention on this habit of thought 
 will have no difficulty in divining what its effect will be 
 upon krt. The pagan world built on intellectualism just 
 as exclusively as the Oriental world built on emotionalism. 
 As the Hindu turns from the finite that he maybe absorbed 
 into the infinite, so the Greek turns from the infinite that 
 he may command the finite. Clear and cool, temperate 
 and exact, the Greek mind is enamoured of the science of 
 definition. Instinctively it trusts only that which it can 
 define, regarding as most stable those very phenomena 
 which to the Oriental seemed most illusory. What is 
 the artistic vehicle or medium that will fit such a mind ? 
 Is it not evident that this stern concentration on the 
 definable, this love of firm outhnes and horror of any- 
 thing vague and elusive must instinctively find expres- 
 sion in terms of form ? All Greek thought is form already. 
 Its intellectual character maintains it in that condition. 
 All its expressions about itself, its predilection for " exact 
 thinking," for " soHd reasons," for " clear-cut logic," for 
 " precision of statement," and the like, are themselves 
 applicable to form. Unless we have fallen into the habit 
 of ignoring the most primitive of all facts about art, the 
 fact that it expresses life and reflects the hneaments of 
 life — and perhaps in days like these when life and art 
 have become, to their mutual discomfiture, so entirely 
 separated there is some excuse for our falling into that 
 mistake — we shall know already from a glance at the 
 Greek mind what we are to expect from Greek art. Here 
 are no dreams and visions, here are no inward depths 
 of spiritual vision such as must utter themselves in 
 azures and crimsons of a corresponding depth and 
 intensity. Here are forms alone. Greek art will be an 
 art of form. 
 
 Before, however, passing to a consideration of that 
 art there are two observations to be made. We have 
 spoken of the strict limitations of Greek thought. What 
 
134 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 did those limitations include ? It is not to be supposed 
 that because the Greek was an intellectuaUst he was 
 therefore a gross materialist. Matter is intellect's sub- 
 ject, but so also is man and the mind of man. Moral and 
 ethical considerations belong to man's human state and 
 relate to his conduct as a social being, and it is especially 
 on the plane of the moral and the ethical that the Greeks 
 are most themselves, most lucid in their observations, 
 most severe with themselves, and most consistent. I 
 say consistent because, though definition is here difficult 
 and subtle, and demands unusual precision of thought, 
 it is still steadily pursued and maintained. There is, as 
 I have pointed out, a profound difference between spiritual 
 and intellectual ethics. The former extend to entire 
 self-obliteration, and are able to secure a foretaste of a 
 felicity and an inspiration which seem rather to have 
 been sent down from above than to have grown up on 
 the earth. The latter, on the contrary, though they 
 represent earth's best fruits, yet still are of the earth, 
 and can be measured by an earthly standard. The Greeks 
 could define all their ideal man. There was no part of 
 him that went beyond precise articulation ; yet up to 
 the limits of articulation he went. The love of the Greek, 
 in conduct and in thought, of right proportion and a 
 perfect lucidity ; his equal shrinking from the eccentric 
 and the abnormal, from all vagueness, from short-lived, 
 spasmodic, or contradictory impulses and whims ; his 
 impatience of superfluities and irrelevancies, and his final 
 quest for that unity which is attained by the steady 
 pursuit of a foreseen end — all these and similar traits, 
 the best that intellect could divine, noble though they 
 are, yet remain strictly comprehensible and definable. 
 It is precisely these precepts of proportion, unity, the 
 elimination of the irrelevant, and so on which, taken over 
 from Ufe, become the principles of Greek art. They can 
 produce noble art because they can produce noble life, 
 yet neither in life nor in art are they permanently and 
 finally satisfying to man. 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 135 
 
 And this brings me to the second consideration I 
 spoke of, to the consideration, namely, that the perfection 
 and completeness of the classical state of being was really 
 a fugitive and necessarily passing state of being. It 
 could not be expected to endure. In excluding all that 
 belonged to spiritual perception, all that could blur and 
 mar the sculptured exactitude of his own order of ideas, 
 the Greek was excluding faculties which could not be 
 permanently silenced. It is sometimes pointed out, by 
 way of asserting their spiritual aptitude, that among the 
 Greeks there do occur from time to time individuals, such 
 as Thales, Xenophanes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, 
 who are evidently endowed with that kind of spiritual 
 susceptibility which we call mysticism. The attitude, 
 however, was not normal in the sense of being a national 
 characteristic. It is in the nature of intellect at its best, 
 to be in the long run dissatisfied with its own achievement, 
 to press analysis to the point where its own explanations 
 are inadequate, and it finds itself driven either to turn 
 back or to admit into its councils the spiritual sense 
 which it has hitherto excluded. At intervals through 
 Greek history individuals are to be met with who have 
 attained to this pitch. Profiting by the extraordinary 
 Greek disinterestedness, which would hearken to reason 
 even in condemnation of reason, they were introduced by 
 intellect itself to its own rival. But these philosophers 
 were solitary and far from being representative. How 
 little representative they were is well shown by the fate 
 of the most illustrious of their number. Has the reader 
 ever asked himself the real cause of the execution of 
 Socrates ; of a man virtuous, blameless, who had fought 
 for his country, and upheld on all occasions the rights of 
 Athenian citizens, yet who by the citizens themselves — 
 not the aristocrats who might have had some excuse for 
 the act, but the Democracy whose champion he was — 
 was done to death ? 
 
 In what was he guilty ? He was accused of denying 
 the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens, and, if the 
 
136 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 reader wonders that charges of such a kind should be alleged 
 of a man of so much inward discernment and spiritual grace, 
 let him consider the tendency of Socrates' philosophy in 
 connection with the prevaiUng Greek cast of ideas. The 
 whole drift and tendency of Socrates' arguments is to 
 question the sufficiency of merely intellectual methods. 
 Over and over again he works up to the proof that we 
 cannot know, and do not know, the very things that we 
 think ourselves most sure of knowing. The influence 
 of such a man was subversive of what we may call the 
 Greek faith, the faith in reason and reason's defining 
 power. It was for this that the most moral of men was 
 indicted as an offender against public morality. To 
 inculcate a habit of analysing and disintegrating the 
 reasoned motives of conduct on which the state rehed 
 was, in effect, to unsettle men's minds and undermine 
 the principles which made social coherence possible. 
 The thought which Socrates was dissolving was the 
 thought which had built the Parthenon, which had carved 
 the Greek gods and goddesses, and above all had evolved 
 that pattern man, as we have called him, which repre- 
 sented all that every Greek aspired to be. Intellectual 
 self-sufficiency was the inspiration of all these, and 
 intellectual self-suf&ciency was what Socrates was under- 
 mining. His fate was the fate of all who bring ideas 
 not yet understood, to take the place of the ideas on 
 which the Uf e of the present rests . They are the destroyers 
 of all that makes life intelligible and possible. They 
 are anarchists, atheists, blasphemers. So Athens felt 
 when she handed the cup to Socrates ; so Jerusalem felt 
 when she called out. Crucify Him, crucify Him. What 
 could better show the ascendancy which intellect had 
 attained to in Greek society, and the completeness 
 with which it stood in the stead of spiritual aspiration 
 and intuition, than the fate meted out by the Athenian 
 people to their profoundest spiritual teacher ? 
 
 Yet in respect of the Greek people, too, there occurred 
 a gradual wearing out of the processes of intellect, accom- 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 137 
 
 panied by an ever-growing consciousness that the mind 
 possessed other more subtle and spiritual modes of 
 divination. This change in the character of Greek 
 thought is one of the most significant events as well in 
 the history of art as in the history of ideas. It is this 
 which is responsible for the collapse of classic art and 
 for the substitution of that more emotional and spiritual 
 artistic style known as Hellenistic. Further, the move- 
 ment has this claim to our attention that it opens up a 
 connection with modem life which is still maintained. 
 
 The self-sufficiency of the classic mind was penetrated 
 both from within and without. Weakened, as it had been, 
 and shaken by its own perception of the inadequacy of 
 a purely intellectual interpretation of the universe, it 
 was of a sudden subjected to an infusion of Eastern ideas. 
 The Macedonian imperialism had for its ultimate effect 
 the bridging of the gulf between East and West. It 
 opened to the Greek a new world of thought. " As the 
 cleverest man of all the Mediterranean and Asiatic world 
 he could use whatever circumstances he found himself 
 in. And as his strenuous insistence on his own distinctive 
 quahties and loves was passing from him, there was no 
 reason Why he should not adapt himself to circumstances, 
 and also adopt whatever element or view of life seemed 
 agreeable or expedient." The view of life presented to 
 him by the East might be precisely that view which the 
 classic age had so consistently discountenanced and so 
 severely held in check ; nevertheless, disenchanted with 
 his own ideas, he proceeded to assimilate those of the 
 East, and especially he thirstily quaffed at the stream 
 of mystical thought of which the East is the perennial 
 source. 
 
 All this was to give, as Mr. Taylor expresses it, an 
 " Oriental colour " to the Greek thought of the following 
 centuries, and, in so doing, it gave, of course, an Oriental 
 bias to the Greek influence on Rome and on the West. 
 The Greek mind of necessity systematised whatever 
 thoughts it took up with, and of the systems in 
 
138 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 which the Eastern ideal came to be embodied the most 
 influential has become known as Neo-Platonism. It is 
 enough for our purpose to point out, in regard to this 
 philosophy, that its founder was a Greek of Alexandria, 
 dwelling in the midst of the busiest traffic in Eastern 
 ideas, and that it consists itself in an attempt to organise 
 and formulate the divinations of Eastern mysticism. 
 The soul's capacity of its own act to unite itself with the 
 absolute is the essence of Neo-Platonic thought, and has 
 never been more explicitly or eloquently stated than by 
 the founder of the movement. To grasp the absolute 
 there needs a faculty, according to Plotinus, not of the 
 mind but of the soul. The perception of ultimate truth 
 is not an active process of reason, but a passive con- 
 dition of spiritual being, an act of sight on the soul's 
 part, inducing a realisation of spiritual existence amount- 
 ing at last to absorption into the divine consciousness, 
 and the ecstasy of perfect union. Four times, according 
 to his pupil Porphyry, did Plotinus himself attain to the 
 mystical rapture of entire self-annihilation. 
 
 Well, here is a thought of which it is very easy to 
 recognise the origin. The thought of Plotinus is the 
 thought of the East ; its only thought, the poi"nt round 
 which its mind perpetually revolves, and the pivot of its 
 whole spiritual life. " Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, unit- 
 ing the tenets of many schools, first bringing the mysticism 
 of the East into connection with the logical philosophies 
 of Greece, had opened up a new ground of argument or 
 controversy for the minds of all the world" (Bryce, 
 Holy Roman Empire). Moreover, Neo-Platonism was 
 but one agent in an exchange which was universal. The 
 minds of all educated and thoughtful people, and especially, 
 as we know, of many of the doctors and teachers who were 
 laying the foundations of the Christian Church, were 
 soaked more or less in these ideas ; and the recognition 
 by such leaders as Clement and Origen of two kinds of 
 faith, the belief of the mind and the direct vision of the 
 soul, is in fact an express recognition of the Oriental 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 139 
 
 principle. The true knowers, yvcoa-riKoi, were those who 
 possessed this mystical gift of spiritual vision, who used 
 the soul as an apprehending medium, an eye to see 
 with. It is Yajnavalkhiya over again. It is the ancient 
 secret which was whispered in Indian forests, and which 
 struggles for utterance in the Upanishads. 
 
 The point it is ,essential to emphasise, if we would 
 understand later European developments, is that the 
 spiritualising process we are speaking of, which towards 
 the end of the pagan era was modif jang the temperament 
 of the Western world, was the consequence of the fusion 
 of Eastern with Western thought. The very common 
 assumption that it was due to the influence of Christianity 
 is evidently misleading. So far from this being the case, 
 so far from Christianity having originated the movement, 
 it is certain that, had not the movement been already 
 in full swing, Christianity itself could have made no 
 headway of its own. It is true that the two main facts 
 of the Christian religion seem to be addressed respectively 
 to East and West. In the Ascension the Eastern yearning 
 after the infinite is quite literally fulfilled. The passing 
 through, and out of physical death as a mere irrelevancy, 
 the lifting of self out of the mortal sphere into the realm 
 of spiritual reality, are in sympathy with Oriental ideas. 
 Any Oriental would at once feel that here was a doctrine 
 to which his own spiritual experience readily responded. 
 But would the Western man, so long as he remained 
 purely Western, would the classical man, have felt this ? 
 On the contrary, it is certain from his whole cast of 
 thought that such an express exaltation of the spiritual 
 at the expense of the mortal state would have been 
 entirely offensive to him. It would have broken down 
 the whole rational system of philosophy on which he 
 relied for support. His doctrine was the Incarnation. 
 His anthropomorphic instinct, his tendency to cut every 
 ideal to the human standard, would here find complete 
 expression. His own deities were all incarnations. 
 They were expressions of the divine in terms of the 
 
140 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 human, and they recognised the divine only so far as it 
 could be hunianly expressed. 
 
 Hence to a cljissic Greek the thought of God becoming 
 man presented no difficulties. In fact the thought 
 existed. His gods were men already. He had but to 
 emphasise the human side of the transaction, and all 
 that would happen would be that his Pantheon would 
 receive an Apollo the more. So far as the idea of in- 
 carnation goes, that would have been in keeping with 
 all his notions of the fitness of things and the proper 
 place of man in the universe. Widely different, however, 
 would be the reception of this doctrine in the East. To 
 an Oriental it would of course have constituted an 
 express recognition of that material state of being, the 
 very idea of which was abhorrent to him. Nature, 
 matter, the world as we see it, the reason and intellect 
 of man which deal with these phenomena, everything 
 in short which is anathema to the East, and the oblitera- 
 tion of which is to the East the first condition of salvation, 
 is by the Incarnation guaranteed and ensured for ever. 
 
 In short, though it is true that Christianity contains 
 something of the East and something of the West yet it 
 is very evident that, so long as East remained exclusively 
 East and West exclusively West, neither would have had 
 an5^hing to do with it. It was too material for the East 
 and too spiritual for the West. 
 
 For a new thought to take hold the mind of the world 
 must be prepared for it ; that is to say, there must exist 
 predisposing causes and influences leading men in the 
 direction of the new thought, and tending to develop in 
 them the faculties which shall recognise it. The mingling 
 of East and West, of which we have been speaking, was 
 in this sense apparently a necessary preparation for the 
 acceptance of Christianity. Necessarily, considering the 
 limitations of hiiman nature, it had to precede the 
 announcement of the new religion. In effect it is certain, 
 on independent evidence of which the testimony of art 
 forms part, that the decisive change had occurred, or 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 141 
 
 was in full process of occurring, long before Christianity 
 appeared upon the scene at all, and that it was continued 
 and carried on for several centuries altogether inde- 
 pendently of Christianity. If we set aside the Christian 
 religion altogether, we can still watch the mellowing of 
 pagan thought, we can still see it beating against the bars 
 of a too finite intellectualism. We can see, at this crisis 
 of its own discontent and yearning, the East brought 
 into touch and contact with it, and subsequently we can 
 trace the development of systems of philosophy arising 
 naturally out of this fusion and penetrated by that full 
 sense of the spiritual and the infinite which is what makes 
 the difference between mediaeval and classic life. 
 
 But if Christianity did not bring about the union of 
 spirit and intellect, it is in a very great degree responsible 
 for the continuance of their union. Circumstances brought 
 the two together, but Christianity has held them together. 
 It held them together owing to the fact that, as has been 
 pointed out, it contained in itself doctrines appropriate 
 to either. It contained a provision, the greatest con- 
 cession ever made to materialism, which fully justified 
 this human state of being and with it the intellectual 
 faculty in man which controls that state of being. But, 
 on the other hand, it contained another provision which 
 insisted equally inexorably on the transitory nature of 
 all earthly phenomena and on the ultimate and final 
 reality of a purely spiritual existence. So long, there- 
 fore, as these doctrines could be maintained inviolate it 
 followed that all Christians must acquiesce in that union 
 of East and West which had originally upheld the im- 
 position of the faith. In other words, they pledged 
 themselves to the equal development of the spiritual and 
 intellectual sides of man's nature which in the old world 
 had been separately cultivated. It was impossible to 
 reject either since both were imphcit in accepted religion, 
 yet the effort to reject one or other constitutes henceforth 
 the history of Christianity. 
 
 As a matter of fact the result of the opening up 
 
142 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 of communication with the East was that the tide 
 of Eastern mysticism flowed so strongly westward that 
 the difficulty was how to restrain and set bounds 
 to its operations. The most dangerous and powerful 
 of the first divisions within the Church sprang, as the 
 reader is aware, from the uncontrollable inclination 
 of the mystical emotional element to sweep away all 
 forms and definitions and resolve rehgion into abstract 
 rapture. The problem before the Church — for it was the 
 Church which the decline of the Imperial power and the 
 new vitality in spiritual ideas combined to place in a 
 position of authority — was to admit the warming, vitalis- 
 ing influence of Eastern emotionalism while checking its 
 tendency to dissolve constructive forms. Whether the 
 task was a possible one or not, it was not achieved. The 
 ultimate result of the attempts to reconcile the two was 
 to accentuate their division. The East retired upon 
 itself and the old barriers separating it from the West 
 arose once more. It would be idle to speculate on the 
 effects, both on East and West, of the estrangement that 
 followed. How much might the intellectualism of the 
 West have done for the East if the bond had held ; how 
 much might the emotionalism of the East have done 
 for the West ? Does it not seem as if the first split, 
 which threw the East back on emotion only and the 
 West back on reason only, were at the root of most of 
 what is false and ill-balanced in the subsequent life of 
 both ? The heavy weight of Western materialism, the 
 
 barrenness of Oriental speculation groping in the void 
 
 would either have attained the growth they did if the 
 union between thought and emotion had been preserved ? 
 Those terrible early heresies split more than the Church, 
 they split man's life asunder. 
 
 I hope the reader will pardon me for dealing so cursorily 
 with such large views, but it is impossible to follow 
 the changes and vagaries of art from the pagan into the 
 modern era unless we take with us a rough idea of the 
 change in mental outlook which was occurring at that 
 
THE CLASSIC POINT OF VIEW 143 
 
 time. The points I wish to emphasise are these. First, 
 that during what is known as the classic epoch, Aryan 
 thought in the West was distinctly intellectual, and that 
 all its operations and effects partook of the clearly 
 defined and firmly outlined character which distinguishes 
 intellectual processes. Second, that there came a time 
 when to this intellectual Western thought was added 
 the spiritual thought of the East, and that henceforth 
 Western thought lost its precision and clearness, and 
 became coloured and suffused with all kinds of mystical 
 divinations, which naturally also took effect in art and 
 all other modes of utterance in which life expresses itself. 
 The third point I have touched upon — that Christianity, 
 by the establishment of a Church pledged to preserve 
 its original doctrines, took it upon itself to perpetuate 
 this interfusion of ideas— is one we shall have to recur to 
 later. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 GREEK SCULPTURE 
 
 The perfection with which sculpture, the art of definition, expresses 
 Greek ideas. The obvious limitations which Greek sculpture shares 
 with Greek thought. Greek thought sapped by Eastern ideas and the 
 effect of this upon sculpture. 
 
 If, with the ideas just suggested of Greek hfe and Greek 
 thought in our minds, we turn to Greek art, we shall find 
 that the art so exactly and so evidently bears out and 
 accentuates the life and thought that a laboured com- 
 parison may well seem superfluous. Greek art is essen- 
 tially, as all have recognised, an art of form. It is true the 
 Greeks used colour and used it freely, but they invariably 
 conceived of colour as a merely descriptive agent and as 
 strictly subordinate to the requirements of form. Colour 
 used in this manner is, of course, form's most able lieu- 
 tenant. Colour one object blue and another red and the 
 eye distinguishes at a glance the limits of either ; or re- 
 lieve a blue pattern on a red background and immediately 
 it shows up with the same distinctness. All people, 
 therefore, who have a true instinct for form, and whose 
 impulse it is to articulate form vividly, will assuredly use 
 colour freely in this way, as an attribute of form and a 
 means of defining it. But they never will use it emotion- 
 ally, or permit it for a moment to pass under the control 
 of that powerful and dangerous enemy of form, chiaro- 
 scuro, in whose hands it may indeed develop a more 
 sensuous and emotionally enriched capacity of its own, 
 
 144 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 145 
 
 but at the expense of the clear thought which form is 
 able to communicate. 
 
 It was thus that the Greeks used colour. They used 
 it in their architecture to differentiate between the various 
 clear-cut members of the structure, and in this way they 
 threw up into heightened relief the delicate and pure 
 outline of every salient moulding. They used it with 
 graphic efEect on their pottery, and it is indeed remarkable 
 how, even in the rude age of the art, before form itself 
 had attained to anything like its full measure of varied 
 expressiveness, the use and value of colour as a means of 
 articulation was instinctively divined. Whether drawn 
 in white upon a dark ground, or in red or brown upon a 
 light ground, the power of a sharp contrast is equally in 
 the artist's mind. The folds of a black garment are 
 defined in threadlike Hnes of a paler tint, and each most 
 minute detail, of which there are never sufficient to im- 
 pair the legibility of the design, is shown, with an almost 
 sparkling clearness, by the firmness with which its own 
 colour is limited by its dimensions. This use of colour 
 is a Greek tradition. Precisely the same rule holds with 
 regard to the Pompeian decorations of Graeco-Roman 
 art. In these, too, the sense for form is delicate and 
 sensitive to an unusual degree, and the use of colour is 
 strictly limited to the articulation of form. 
 
 In nothing is the innate tendency and bias of the Greek 
 mind towards distinct and concrete modes of articulation 
 more apparent than in the place which sculpture occupied 
 in the public esteem. The Greek people, it may be said, 
 lisped in sculpture. It was the popular and imiversal 
 art. " The multitude of votive offerings which filled the 
 local shrines of Greece, Cj^rus, or Rhodes, and for the 
 most part took the form of statues and statuettes, in 
 which, rude as they are. Professor Gardner already 
 remarks the characteristic Greek tendency towards 
 anthropomorphism, attest by their numbers the popu- 
 larity of the art in its primitive stage of development." 
 But most clearly perhaps does the character of the Greek 
 
146 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 intelligence show itself in the treatment which Greek 
 sculpture accords to subjects which, in their own nature, 
 are more or less involved in mystery, to such subjects as 
 divinity, death, and the attributes and ideas of spiritual 
 existence. 
 
 Those who possess within themselves the faculty which, 
 after its own fashion, divines and dimly apprehends the 
 nature of the spiritual, must always distrust and always 
 be on their guard against the merely humanly intelligible 
 interpretation of those subjects which intellect affords. 
 Thus the Eastern philosophy, which in its essence is 
 purely spiritual, is, as has been pointed out, constantly 
 on the watch against any kind of definition designed to 
 adapt its idea to the human tmderstanding, and by so 
 doing to mutilate, as was very clearly seen, its own 
 spiritual nature. Nothing positive was ever permitted 
 to be spoken of spiritual being. No specification, however 
 subtle, could really grasp and enclose it. " It is not so," 
 is always the final comment. That impalpable essence 
 could be curtailed to none of the forms or formulas of 
 mortal speech or mortal art. " The itman is silence." 
 
 The same caution reveals itself wherever a spiritual 
 idea is present. The Jewish imagination, inspired by 
 its own high conception of a supreme Divinity, was in 
 perpetual alarm lest this conception should be frittered 
 away by adaptation of it to human intelligence. To 
 guard against this danger the practice of formulating or 
 defining was solemnly banned, and the prohibition " Thou 
 shalt not make to thyself any graven image " was pro- 
 mulgated as a divine ordinance. Similarly, after East 
 and West had split asunder, the determined and bitter 
 iconoclastic agitation, which raised the destruction of 
 images to a dogma of the faith, reproduced and re- 
 applied what had ever been an essential attribute of 
 the Eastern point of view. 
 
 Turning once more to Greek sculpture, it is at once 
 apparent that no misgivings of this nature affected the 
 Greek imagination. The Greeks were never troubled 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 147 
 
 by the thought that the images which the human intellect 
 could conceive and fashion of divinity were inadequate 
 or inappropriate. If we did not know already that they 
 regarded their gods and goddesses merely as glorified 
 men and women, and were perfectly satisfied with the 
 reports of them which human reason and human experi- 
 ence could suggest, we shoidd be made aware of the 
 fact by contemplating their statues. In the firm out- 
 lines and accurate proportions of these marble figures 
 is no least hint of uncertainty, or the slightest intima- 
 tion that there existed in the artist's mind the least 
 intuition of his subject which his chisel could not precisely 
 define. There is perhaps no better way, for one who 
 would really grasp the Greek point of view, to attain his 
 object, than by meditatively contemplating the sculptured 
 representations of the Greek divinities. The human, the 
 material, aspect of the imdertaking, which is bound by 
 the very nature of art to claim its share in all such enter- 
 prises, in these cases claims the absolute control and 
 direction of the work. Take away what is human and 
 material and leave only what is spiritual, and you have 
 taken away everything and left nothing. Let the reader 
 think himself into the position of men to whose spiritual 
 needs these representations respond and are sufficient. 
 What now is his state of mind ? He is one to whom 
 the idea of divinity suggests nothing more than reason 
 and the experience a man may gather in the world can 
 pronounce upon and appraise. Of that kind of spiritual 
 vision which belongs to the spiritual faculty and which, 
 blurred and uncertain as it is, possesses so strange a power 
 of transforming the value of earthly objects and earthly 
 estimates, there is here not a trace. " Speak not to me 
 comfortably of death, great Odysseus," says the shade of 
 Achilles ; " I would rather be a serf bound to the soil, 
 the hireling of a man with little land or wealth, than bear 
 sway over all the departed." Beyond this human life, 
 this life of natural law and reason, the Greek could not 
 penetrate. He had not the faculty which could give him 
 
148 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 glimpses of any other condition of being or any other 
 degree of knowledge. He had rather be a slave here, 
 here where he shone so, than reign in that other kingdom 
 which was never more to him than " the Shades." 
 
 The same limitation is apparent in another field of 
 Greek sculpture, that which commemorates the dead. 
 No one passing down the Street of Tombs at Athens, or 
 reviewing any collection of sepulchral figures, would guess, 
 were it not for the inscriptions, that the sculpture had 
 an5rthing to do with death. The action depicted is 
 usually one of a quite ordinary and everyday character. 
 There are no recumbent figures with eyes closed and 
 hands clasped. The departed one is represented as 
 engaged on some usual household occupation, or talking 
 to a friend, or ts^ing up her hair. The nearest suggestion 
 of the forbidden subject I recollect is a grave hand-clasp, 
 which seems to presage a long separation. Thus far the 
 Greek goes, but no farther. 
 
 Death is both a plain fact and a mystery. To die is 
 to go hence ; it is to say good-bye finally and once for 
 all. These are the obvious, this-side-of-the-grave facts 
 about it. But what about the other side ? What 
 awakening perhaps awaits it ? What kind of experi- 
 ences, incomprehensible to our finite senses, will it 
 encounter ? Most races have hankered after answers to 
 these questions, and in treating of Death have suggested 
 certain solutions. Some show the departed soul, en- 
 countered by the gods and goddesses of the next world, 
 being crowned with wreaths and offered refreshments, 
 as after an arduous journey, or being introduced, with 
 heavenly courtesy, to the occupants of celestial halls. 
 Sometimes the carving of skulls and cross-bones suggests 
 the contempt in which this mortal state should be held, 
 while one of the most touching and usual mediaeval 
 designs represents two angels, one at the head and one at 
 the foot of the bier, drawing back the curtain from the 
 recumbent figure, as though the moment of awakening 
 had arrived. 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 149 
 
 The Greeks knew nothing of all this. They had no 
 wish to pry into the beyond. They carved no angels. 
 The spiritual side of the mystery did not appeal to them. 
 This is their Umitation. At the end of the human tether 
 they stop dead. They walk straight and firmly up to 
 the door of the sepulchre, but they never roll away the 
 stone. Yet within their limits how perfect and complete 
 do they appear 1 Consider their dignity, their composure, 
 their serenity even in face of the awful mystery of death. 
 Here are no tears, no howls, no wringing of hands and 
 tearing of hair : 
 
 They nothing common did, nor mean. 
 Upon that memorable scene. 
 
 The power they had trusted all along upheld them 
 here. In death as in Ufe reason is their stay. To bear 
 the inevitable with fortitude and composure should be 
 the aim of a rational being. If there is nothing here 
 beyond reason, the reason is of the noblest and loftiest 
 quality. 
 
 Greek sculpture, then, does not attain to any purely 
 spiritual significance ; that has to be cancelled. But 
 it does attain to the expression of a very noble ideal 
 with marked and well-defined ethical characteristics. 
 All the figures of Greek sculpture of the prime, the 
 figures of gods and the figures of men and women, 
 testify to this ideal either by attaining or by aiming 
 at it ; and this ideal, hke all reason's products, is 
 inteUigible and consistent and can immediately be 
 recognised. It is in fact the same ideal as is indicated 
 by Greek philosophy, Greek thought, Greek poetry. 
 Harmonious proportion, perfect symmetry, and that 
 lofty unity of character which arises from the due relation 
 of the parts to the whole and is the expression of the 
 control of a central, clear-seeing intelligence — ^these are 
 the leading traits of the Greek ideal character as drawn 
 by Greek thought. Out of Greek poetry and philosophy 
 and oratory, and all such hints and sidehghts as seem to 
 
150 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 cast light on the subject, carve for yourself the figure 
 of the perfect Greek as Greek thought conceived him ; 
 and then, with that image in your mind, turn your gaze 
 upon Greek sculpture. Is not the image come to life ? 
 Is not the thought with which the poets and philosophers 
 are struggling the very thought also with which the 
 sculptors are struggling ? 
 
 Here it is we touch the secret of the profound attrac- 
 tion which the art of sculpture exercised over the Greek 
 mind. Veil the truth as we will it remains a truth, that 
 the art of man has made visible nothing save what 
 the mind of man has believed in. The Greeks were 
 enamoured of sculpture because it represented to them 
 in terms of form that which they all aspired to be. The 
 virtues which seemed to them Mghest, the temperament 
 which seemed most worthy of a man, were the virtues 
 and the temperament which their sculpture incarnated. 
 Hence the ennobling influence of the art and its essentially, 
 in Greek eyes, religious character. It was a constant in- 
 centive and exhortation to the Greeks to realise their own 
 ideal. What these things were they themselves would 
 fain be if they could. So that marble and bronze joined 
 with poetry and philosophy in leading the race on to the 
 attainment of the same goal. All were agents in the same 
 endeavour. Poetry and philosophy recommended the 
 ideal to the mind, while art recommended it to the eye. 
 
 But at the same time it is important to notice that 
 sculpture could only do this for the Greeks on the con- 
 dition that their ideas never outran its own possibilities. 
 Greek ideas, being always intellectual, are always definite, 
 always clear-cut. That is what fits them so well for 
 sculpture. They are already a sort of sculpture. As 
 ideas they have all the qualities of exact form. Even 
 the moral and ethical ideas which inspired the Greek 
 ideal were of this character. They were intellect's 
 highest, but they were purely intellectual still. No 
 tinge of mystery clung about them. They could give 
 a clear account of themselves. They could conform to 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 151 
 
 the conditions of sculpture. They could express them- 
 selves in terms of form. Hence the moment of the Greek 
 prime, when the Greek intellect, fully developed, fully in 
 command of life, was yet untried and untroubled by any 
 surmises or intuitions from another source, was the 
 moment when the art of sculpture, fully charged with 
 the meaning it could best express, seemed to reach a 
 perfection and a completeness which it has never before 
 or since attained. 
 
 This happy state of things for sculpture, however, 
 lasted only so long as Greek intellectualism remained 
 unruffled and sufficient for itself. The day came when 
 this intellectual self-sufficiency could no longer maintain 
 itself, when it was obliged to give ground to a sense of 
 spiritual unrest and anxiety not in keeping with the 
 full meaning of the word classic, and not in keeping 
 with Greek life at its most typical moment. It is in this 
 respect, some critics tell us, that Euripides, bom 480 B.C., 
 differs from Sophocles, who was fifteen years his senior ; 
 the latter being pure Greek while the former is touched 
 already with a breath of the coming change. But in 
 any case the following century saw the Hellenistic move- 
 ment in full swing, while the conquests of Alexander in 
 that century opened a breach through which the spiritual 
 ideas of the East flooded steadily Westward. The two 
 causes to be borne in mind in considering the Hellenistic 
 movement have been touched upon. They are, first, 
 the wearing out of the intellectual habit of thought 
 which had given its character to the classic epoch, and, 
 second, the opening up, by the Eastern penetration, of 
 just the order of ideas which the Greek mind was 
 beginning to feel the lack of. If we were able to trace 
 the hidden and subconscious impulses which move 
 human nature, it is probable we should find that the 
 adventure of Alexander was the outcome of some 
 inward discontent and sense of insufficiency of the 
 prevailing cast of thought of the West, and of a restless 
 hunger and craving for what only the East could supply. 
 
152 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 It is at any rate important to notice that intellectualism 
 had worked itself out in the West, and had by its own 
 efforts reached the point where the spiritual contribution 
 was necessary to its own further progress, before the 
 secrets of Oriental philosophy were divulged to it. 
 
 What now is the general character of the sculpture 
 of this later, Hellenistic, period ? It is marked by a 
 rapid relaxation of the hitherto existing rules and 
 principles of the art, and the introduction of a style more 
 emotional, romantic, and experimental in motive than 
 the pure classic epoch would have tolerated. Furtwangler 
 and Urlichs, in accounting for this change, lay stress on 
 the cosmopolitan nature of an art of which the centres 
 were the new cities and settlements of the East — Seleucia, 
 Antioch, Rhodes, Pergamos, Alexandria — rather than, 
 as heretofore, Greece itself, and particularly Athens. 
 They dwell upon " the effective realism and dramatic 
 depth " of scenes and figures which " seize and stir the 
 nerves of the spectator." Full of this spirit of emotion 
 is what they consider the most important work of the 
 period, the famous Nike of Samothrace. " On the prow 
 of a ship the tall slender goddess shares the tumult of 
 the sea-battle, and announces the victory with a blast 
 of the trumpet, which only stirs the fighters to a more 
 passionate and battle - thirsty mood." Of the same 
 emotional order of art is the head in the Brussels museum, 
 which represents a fallen barbarian who,, with a last 
 effort, still struggles to advance. " His expression is 
 full of energy, combined with the painful consciousness 
 of defeat. The expression of the eyes is wonderfully 
 telling, his wide-open mouth shows the upper teeth, his 
 forehead is contracted over the eyes." Whether or not 
 this is a correct interpretation of what the sculptor 
 meant to express, it is at least certain that what he was 
 chiefly concerned and interested in was in experimenting 
 in the capacity for emotional expression latent in the 
 human countenance. This is a marked peculiarity of 
 the Hellenistic style and the first to strike the attention 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 153 
 
 of a spectator. Every kind of expression is essayed, 
 but chiefly those which convey longing and doubt and 
 stormy trouble of soul. The passing from the sternly 
 serene figures of the classic age into this prevaiUng state 
 of mental agitation is like passing from harboured 
 waters into the broken and turbulent surf of the outer 
 sea. The reader is sure to be struck by the modern 
 appearance and character of many of these later Greek 
 sculptures, and indeed it is remarkable that all the 
 examples which, in the days before the classic ideal was 
 correctly appreciated, were instinctively seized upon by 
 northern Europe as examples of the Greek prime, such 
 as the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus de' 
 Medici, and the Dying Gaul, were of the later and more 
 consciously emotional period which so much more nearly 
 approximates to our own point of view. 
 
 But though the character of Hellenistic art and the 
 contrast between it and Hellenic art are not difficult to 
 seize, yet I cannot find among critics any satisfactory 
 account of the influences which led to the new develop- 
 ment. Stress is laid, no doubt, on the rise of the Eastern 
 cities, but there is no apparent reason on the face of 
 things why a Greek of Alexandria or Pergamos should 
 not adopt the same standpoint and the same artistic 
 ideals as a Greek of Athens. Mr. Short is satisfied with 
 arguing that " the old civic pride which had found vent 
 in the Parthenon marble was impossible in the Seleucidian 
 empire. A vigorous political hfe was out of the question 
 in the semi-oriental kingdom." But this does not quite 
 meet the difficulty. A vigorous civic pride may induce 
 to artistic activity, but as a matter of fact the Hellenistic 
 cities were as actively creative as the Hellenic. What 
 we have to explain is a change in the inward spirit and 
 character of art, and this the " civic pride " argument 
 does not elucidate. Civic pride and a vigorous political 
 life were as much and more the characteristics of mediaeval 
 French and English commimes as of classic Greek cities, 
 and they did equally result in a very marked creative 
 
154 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 activity, but so far from the medifieval style of art 
 resembling Hellenic, it much more closely resembled the 
 art of the Hellenistic age in which, as we are assured, 
 civic pride had ceased to exist. Can it really be affirmed 
 that there is anything more popular, more democratic, 
 more smacking of the ideas of citizenship in the composed 
 and almost cold figures of the great age than in such more 
 emotional and more vividly dramatic conceptions as the 
 D5dng Gaul and the Laocoon ? 
 
 The truth is that what we must look out for is an 
 inward mental change corresponding to the outward 
 visible change. It has been pointed out that the earher 
 sculpture, the purely classic sculpture, was the char- 
 acteristic expression of the one really great element in 
 classic culture, its high and serene intellectualism. Greek 
 sculpture of the prime is inspired by the same ideas and 
 principles as Greek thought of the prime. It is the 
 embodimerit of a national ideal. It cannot be too often 
 repeated or too steadily borne in mind that the very 
 principles which the Greeks aspired to hve by, and frame 
 their conduct on, are principles which can be immediately, 
 and without any change whatsoever, applied to art. The 
 watchwords which were always in the mouths of Greek 
 thinkers — ^unity, symmetry, proportion, and the like — 
 were directly relevant to the arts of form, and have been, 
 indeed, always used as a critical standard especially bear- 
 ing on Greek art. This is why Greek art bore the char- 
 acter it did, not because civic pride or poHtics were 
 particularly concerned in it, but because the intellectual 
 gospel which the Greeks intensely believed in had in- 
 carnated itself in these visible forms and proportions. 
 
 Having then realised what that particular style of 
 sculpture stood for, when the sculpture goes we shall 
 know that the predisposing cause must also have gone. 
 The predisposing cause in this case was an ethical system, 
 so purely intellectual and precisely defined that it could 
 be translated just as it was into terms of form. It was 
 the change in this ethical system which broke up classic 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 155 
 
 axt. Classic art lasted so long as the great thought which 
 classicalism had brought into the world — ^the thought of 
 intellectual self-sufficiency — blasted. It passed when the 
 thought passed. What is seen in the troubled and broken 
 experiments of the Hellenistic style is the passing of that 
 thought. That thought, of intellect's sufficiency, is break- 
 ing down, can no longer maintain itself, serves no longer 
 as an inspiration for art. It is not that men carve at 
 Antioch, or Rhodes, or elsewhere. It is not where they 
 carve that matters, but what thought they have it in 
 their minds to express. That thought is not yet clear ; 
 but this at least is clear, that they will no longer 
 proclaim the sufficiency of an intellectual code of ethics. 
 They will no longer assert that an accurately-thought-out 
 line of conduct and ideas contains the gospel of life. 
 
 So they break from the old classic tradition, signalising 
 in the act the downfall of what is stiU the most precious 
 attribute in classic culture. They went their ways, and 
 it is not in the confusion which ensues easy to distinguish 
 a positive aim. But at least something hke a common 
 tendency or bias is discernible. The most notable char- 
 acteristic of the new style is, as I have said, its pre- 
 disposition towards what is emotional and its hankering 
 after exhibitions of strong feeling, physical, mental, and 
 spiritual. This is the trait which is positive in Hellenistic 
 art, and which shows that it is not merely a revolt against 
 an order of ideas no longer beheved in, but that it is 
 inspired by an order of ideas of its own. It is seeking to 
 contribute something which the old classic style lacked. 
 The emotional and spiritual impulses which the classic 
 age so sternly disavowed, the seeking after unknown 
 things, the groping in the void, the anxiety and the 
 perturbation of soul which the classic mind above all 
 things reprehended, are now the constant subjects of 
 speculation and themes of art. It is the moment when 
 the intermingUng of Eastern and Western ideas, which 
 was permanently to change the character and thoughts 
 of humanity, is first apparent in its visible efEects. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 GREEK ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Architecture is in particular the art in which the Greeks endeavoured 
 to embody their system of thought-out and reasoned ethics. Among 
 the Greeks the ethical principles of thought and philosophy were 
 applied without change to the sphere of art. It was this which per- 
 mitted art to give a perfect rendering of the Greek ideal. 
 
 The reader will remember that in an earlier chapter 
 we pointed out the difference between the interior and 
 exterior points of view. We imagined ourselves gazing 
 into the depths of the sea or at the objects along the shore, 
 and again we imagined ourselves contemplating the 
 colours of an autumn beech-wood or looking out from 
 its edge at the individual features of the landscape. The 
 change from one point of view to the other, we said, was 
 a change of mind, a change of mood. One set of faculties, 
 the intellectual faculties, were roused to deal with the 
 objects of the exterior view, while another set of faculties, 
 the emotional faculties, were roused to deal with the 
 interior scene. 
 
 Doric and Byzantine architecture are perfectly typical 
 of this difference. In the account given of Byzantine 
 architecture nothing was said about its exterior aspect ; 
 the description was wholly of its interior effect. Such a 
 treatment was reasonable ; for there is no such thing 
 really as a Byzantine exterior ; that is to say, the style 
 has defined no specific mode of external construction. 
 Its marble panelUng and arcades and coloured disks 
 were reserved especially for the walls of palaces, but the 
 
 156 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 157 
 
 great churches of the style have Uttle that is characteristic 
 in their outward view. When the Venetians, in their 
 opulence, desired to enrich the exterior of St. Mark's 
 they were driven, so destitute was the style they were 
 dealing with of any notion of outside treatment, to Gothic 
 or even Moorish sources to help themselves out. Even 
 that most striking architectural feature, the dome, never 
 seems to have been treated by Byzantine architects with 
 the least regard to its external appearance. Taking the 
 Byzantine churches of Constantinople, Greece, Italy, and 
 Sicily which the present writer has seen, together with 
 those of Asia Minor of which he has seen illustrations, 
 he is quite imable, from the general survey, to divine from 
 their outside view any points of agreement or any commori 
 aim. Often they are mere bald, square, almost window- 
 less boxes of brick masonry, with a low irrelevant dome 
 rising timidly over the top. Almost invariably they have 
 a raw and unfinished air, as if the builders had knocked 
 off work before completing their task. St. Sophia from 
 the outside suggests a circus or a soap factory, so entirely 
 free is its jumble of brick walls from any apparent archi- 
 tectural intention. Londoners have been made to suffer 
 quite recently for this hmitation in Byzantine art. The 
 architect of Westminster Cathedral, so long as he was 
 dealing with the inside of the church, could proceed with 
 confidence, but externally he had nothing to guide him, 
 and the result has been what we see. 
 
 But if Byzantine architecture has no outside, Doric 
 architecture has no inside. It is meant simply to be 
 looked at. There was, of course, the cella, the enclosure 
 within the peristyle containing the image of the deity 
 to whom the temple w£is dedicated, but this scarcely 
 forms part of the architectural effect of the building. It 
 was of inconsiderable size, apparently ill Ut, and it seems 
 doubtful if it was ever used for purposes of pubhc worship. 
 Mr. Simpson observes that the interior of even the largest 
 Greek temple was so small (about the size of an ordinary 
 Enghsh parish church), that it could not possibly have 
 
158 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 accommodated the people who, on days of high festival, 
 came to participate in the celebrations. These took place 
 outside, round the altar in the courtyard, the entrance 
 doors of the temple being thrown open to allow as many 
 people as possible to see the shrine within. " Thus even 
 in the act of worship the crowd was excluded." 
 
 This curious lack of interior space and exclusion of 
 the people from the mysteries and emotions of worship 
 must appear to us strange and unnatural ; but we must 
 remember that it did not suit the cast of the Greek mind 
 to press enquiry beyond a certain point. The clear 
 definition of certain intelligible ideas, which the archi- 
 tecture in its form and proportions embodied, was all 
 that the Greek desired. That appeal was addressed to 
 his understanding, the only faculty which he valued in 
 himself. He had no desire to pass on, to penetrate to 
 the interior view, to drug himself (as he would have put 
 it) with spiritual aspirations or steep his soul in the syrup 
 of Eastern mysticism. The clear, distinct, essentially 
 virile, looking at point of view was an essential character- 
 istic of the Greek mind, and was indeed the basis of the 
 classic order of civilisation. 
 
 Its first effects are to be seen in the choice of the 
 temple site. We, when we use the word site, commonly 
 have in our minds a position favourable for seeing from, 
 not a position favourable for looking at. The words " a 
 beautiful site " conjure up an idea of a house well situ- 
 ated, from which we can command lovely views and 
 prospects of the surrounding scenery. To the Greeks 
 the phrase meant something quite different. It meant, 
 not a point from which the surroimding country might 
 be seen, but a point which the surrounding country could 
 see. And the use made of the phrase was in accordance 
 with this definition, for such a place, in Greek hands, 
 was appropriated, not to the private uses of magnates 
 and millionaires, but to some national shrine or temple 
 in which the whole commimity was interested. 
 
 It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance and 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 159 
 
 dignity conferred, even now in their decay, on the remnants 
 of Greek architecture by this method of placing. The 
 blurred impressions we receive from Nature are condensed 
 and accentuated by art. The ordinary landscape, with 
 distinct objects raised in relief, does indeed appeal to 
 the mind, to intellect, to thought ; yet all this is vague ; 
 these intellectual suggestions wander over the prospect, 
 but it is difficult to grasp them, difficult to bring them to 
 a head. It needs some masterpiece of art, as a temple 
 rightly placed, to focus them. It is the general character 
 of the regard which we cast upon a view, its readiness to 
 observe and report things of meaning, which makes the 
 appeal of the temple irresistible. The building sums up 
 a mood. The eye fixes on it with a delight that has 
 in it the feeling of a solution. It satisfies the mental 
 expectation which every more or less imperfectly articu- 
 lated form in the landscape has roused yet failed to 
 satisfy. 
 
 All detached pieces of architecture, isolated in the 
 general view, have this interest and power of attraction, 
 but the Greek temples possess it to a singular extent. 
 It often seems as if Nature herself had arranged her own 
 geography with a view to their convenience, and, in the 
 modelling of her hills and valleys, been guided by the 
 purpose of affording to these ideal constructions the most 
 advantageous positions possible. Standing as they do 
 they appear to preside over the scenery, the irregular 
 and wild beauty of which finds in these ordered and 
 stately structures an otherwise unuttered climax of 
 expression. The site is part of the temple's influence, 
 and the two remain inseparable in memory. Segesta 
 stands in the midst of gaunt and barren hills. A long 
 walk from the nearest railway station leads over these 
 hills, and coming round the shoulder of the last range a 
 view is disclosed of a long valley stretching in among the 
 moimtains that enclose it and tower above it on either 
 hand. From the side of one of the main ridges a short 
 spur is thrust forward into the valley, the end of which 
 
i6o FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 forms a rotinded knoll, and on this the temple is placed. 
 With the large mountains bent round it and the valley 
 leading up to it, it forms a natural cynosure and attracts 
 the eye from a great distance. No trace remains of the 
 classic city save this one building. The landscape is an 
 extraordinarily wild and lonely one, the only sign of life 
 being an occasional shepherd boy cUmbing with his goats 
 among the rocks and tufts of asphodel. Nevertheless 
 the temple, raised upon its natural pedestal, still domi- 
 nates the landscape, and claims a silent homage from the 
 surrounding scenery. 
 
 And yet more effective even than Segesta is the row 
 of temples at Girgenti, standing along the cliff over- 
 looking the sea. Inland the ground dips into a wide 
 hollow before sloping up steeply to the heights which 
 once carried the ancient city of Agrigentum, and this 
 hollow, facing south and sheltered from the north, teems 
 with a vegetation which in April and May seems to 
 combine the prodigal richness of a tropical climate with 
 the vigour and freshness of northern seasons. The 
 delicious green of the young almond trees, the almost 
 transparent leaves and tendrils of the vines, the black, 
 massive caroob trees, the gUstening foliage and glowing 
 fruit of the orange and lemon groves form a thicket of 
 the utmost luxuriance and variety, to which gigantic 
 olives, locally reputed to be survivals from the Greek age, 
 add the soft grey of their foliage and the strength of their 
 gnarled trunks. Great trailing gourds cumber the earth 
 or climb the trees, whence they hang down their flaccid 
 yellow blossoms. The air is fragrant with the scent of 
 orange blossom, and an endless variety of wild flowers 
 twinkle through the young wheat which covers the 
 ground. 
 
 This sheltered valley, nourished by its rich volcanic 
 soil and breathed on by warm sea breezes, strikes one as 
 the spoiled child and petted darling of Nature. There 
 appears, as you wander through the enchanted covert, 
 nothing lacking to complete its beauty, until through 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE i6i 
 
 gaps in the foliage, between orange groves and olives, 
 you catch a gUmpse of the long dark-brown ridge of the 
 chff, and, close in front, the easternmost of the temples, 
 Juno Lacinia, lifting its level architraves against the clear 
 blue of the sky. But no sooner do these constructions 
 appear than the scene of <fenchantment you have passed 
 through becomes, as it were, an accessory to the superior 
 significance of the objects now disclosed, its purpose 
 being merely to lead up to the stately row of buildings 
 ranged along the chfi, visible alike in salient reUef from 
 the city and from the sea. 
 
 It is imnecessary to multiply instances of this care 
 of the Greeks in the choice of sites. The most famous 
 example, as the reader knows, is the Acropohs at Athens, 
 an eminence of precisely the right height and dimensions, 
 rising sharply from the plain and commanding the atten- 
 tion not only of the town and its environs, but of the 
 encircUng mountains, of the fertile valley leading to the 
 Piraeus, and of the blue expanse of the Gulf of Aegina 
 rufiBed in old days by the Athenian fleets. So perfectly 
 adapted is this feature for the purpose for which it has 
 been used that I have sometimes wondered if the position 
 of the hill had not something to do with the choice of the 
 position for the city, which seems to have drawn hither 
 from its more natural site near the Piraeus, in order that 
 it might take advantage of such an opportunity for the 
 proper display of its precious works of art. 
 
 However that may be, it is evident that in the placing 
 of their temples the Greeks were only canying out to its 
 logical conclusion the same principles which they con- 
 stantly apphed to the detail of their architecture. They 
 were but reiterating their guiding maxim that every 
 touch must tell, that, as the disposition of every part must 
 be regulated by a strict regard for its easy and perfect 
 display, so the disposition of the whole must be guided 
 by the same consideration. What a single metope was 
 to the frieze, what the frieze was to the entire entablature, 
 what the entablature was to the whole temple, that the 
 
 M 
 
i62 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 temple itself was to the landscape. The conception was 
 altogether a Greek one. With seven hills to choose from 
 the Romans stuffed all their chief buildings into a 
 ditch. 
 
 Such was the Greek idea of a site. It is an idea of 
 course exclusively appHcable •to the external style of 
 architecture, to a style, that is, of which the whole virtue 
 consisted in its aspect. Those who asked of architecture 
 the representation of an interior mood of contemplation 
 and prayer might obtain their appropriate site in the 
 thronged streets and alleys of a city. Better for them, 
 since the building must be entered ere its best influence 
 could be felt, that it should be in the midst of dwellings 
 than set apart upon a hill. As a rule Christian churches 
 follow this impulse. To be accessible is their chief care ; 
 to mingle among the lives of the poor, just as the religion 
 they embody should mingle, is their endeavour. Were 
 you to tell a Christian builder that the chief merit and 
 capacity for good of his temple consisted in its outward 
 aspect, that far more important than its call to prayer, its 
 provision for meditation, the sacred music of its choir, 
 and the serious exhortations of its pulpit, were the visible 
 and tangible proportions and calculated symmetry of its 
 structural forms — were you to tell him this you would 
 appear to him little other than an idiot or a blasphemer. 
 He would suggest that to make such a claim was 
 in itself a proof of intellectual arrogance and pride 
 amounting to a repudiation of the whole teaching of 
 Christianity. 
 
 And, speaking from the Christian point of view, he 
 would be right, for Christianity is itself essentially 
 emotional, and therefore of the interior order. But he 
 would not be right from the pagan point of view, for 
 paganism was essentially intellectual, and therefore of 
 the exterior order. It is, I think, Ruskin who points out 
 how lovely is the spectacle of a Christian church rising 
 out of the midst of the hovels of the people, which cluster 
 round it and seem to lean against it for support. We 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 163 
 
 should like to hear a Greek's remarks on the suggestion 
 that his temple might be similarly adorned. His language, 
 we take it, would at least equal in force that of the Christian 
 builder when invited to substitute structural proportion 
 for the purposes of prayer. The truth is the two points 
 of view are separated by so profound a chasm that they 
 cannot understand each other. The Christian has come 
 to rely so much upon a spiritual source of edification that 
 he cannot understand what intellectual edification means ; 
 while the Greek relies so much upon intellectual edifica- 
 tion that he cannot understand what spiritual edification 
 means. " What," the first would ask, " are these cold 
 calculations of reason to me ? Do they speak to the soul ? 
 Do they, temporal as they are and bounded by our earthly 
 state, open up to my spiritual vision the vistas of eternity 
 and suffuse my being with a consciousness of spiritual 
 life ? " " No," the other would reply, " they undertake 
 to perform no such tricks. There is no mystery about 
 my art, and my temples shelter no god that can do for a 
 man more than a man can do for himself. But if you 
 would lead in the noblest sense a rational hfe, if in this 
 human state you would conform to the dictates of the 
 highest human faculty, then study and observe well the 
 proportions of our temples and the pose of our statues, 
 for nothing more than these will help you to reaUse the 
 beauty of the ideal which you pursue." 
 
 The best of which paganism was mentally capable — 
 its intellectual lucidity and disinterestedness, traits still 
 perpetuated in the meaning we give to the word classic 
 as appUed to literature — was perfectly embodied in Greek 
 art. It is important that we should make an effort to 
 realise — ^for we need to make the effort, the idea being 
 naturally foreign to us — that the sanctity of influence 
 which the Greeks attributed to noble architecture was 
 something totally different from the sanctity of influence 
 which we attribute to it. Could we conduct a Greek of 
 the classic meridian into the solemn interior, darkened 
 with shadow and enriched with colour, of a Byzantine 
 
i64 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 or Gothic church, it is certain that, so far from being 
 impressed, or so far from acknowledging the appeal to 
 his aesthetic sense of beauty, he would shrink with 
 aversion from so intimate and powerful an advocacy of all 
 those vague, indefinite, emotional impulses which it was 
 in part the purpose of all his philosophy to withstand. 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan," he would exclaim, conscious 
 of the intoxicating effect of their dangerous eloquence. 
 He would rush forth, as one flying from evil spirits. 
 " Give me back," he would cry, " the art that was my 
 own, the art that incarnated the thoughts I held of most 
 value, the art of pure form and perfect proportion, which 
 sustained and calmed and upheld me by presenting to 
 my eyes the very aspect and image of the intellectual 
 ideal I was striving after." ~" 
 
 Such would have been his prayer. The beauty, the 
 precious and valuable quality in his architecture, that 
 for which he laboured so patiently and so long, was simply 
 the look of it. It was the actual arrangement of the 
 marble blocks of column and entablature that took effect, 
 that preached, that edified. What was it they preached, 
 what was the message, the exhortation, they delivered, 
 and to which the Greeks were never tired of attending. 
 They preached precisely what Greek sculpture had 
 preached ; they preached the value, the beauty of those 
 ethical ideas which Greek thought had singled out as 
 guides to human conduct. That sense of proportion, of 
 symmetry, that steadfast reference of all details and every 
 day of life to the realisation of a perfect whole, the calm- 
 ness and serenity of self-knowledge, the unity which is 
 the result of the action of a central intelligence directing 
 every part to one common climax, all these traits and 
 qualities which are the guiding traits and quahties of 
 Greek philosophy, and which the whole Greek race, each 
 individual according to the measure of his intelligence, 
 may be said to have been aiming at and endeavouring to 
 realise as a matter of conduct and character, are also the 
 traits and qualities inherent in the only style of archi- 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 165 
 
 tecture which is intimately associated with the Greek 
 genius. 
 
 While we survey and ponder, therefore, the aspect of 
 a Doric temple we must all the while bear in mind this 
 essential fact in regard to it — the fact that it is an embodi- 
 ment of the Greek religion of intellectualism. This is 
 the key to its interpretation. There is nothing in the 
 temple that is not explained by reference to the idea 
 which governs it. In the very method of construction 
 it adopts, the nature of the governing idea is apparent. 
 The Greeks, we are to remember, had a definite message 
 to deliver, which imposed upon them the need of speaking 
 with the utmost possible curtness and precision. Now 
 there is only one mode of construction which -can articu- 
 late with perfect clearness, and that is the trabeated, or 
 column and lintel, mode. This is the intellectual method 
 of building par excellence, and this therefore, by reason 
 of what they had to say, the Greeks.were driven to adopt. 
 
 We will show the reader in two words in what the 
 intellectual supremacy of the trabeated principle consists. 
 The principle itself begins and ends in uprights stuck in 
 the ground and horizontals laid across them, and any 
 cattle-shed in the comer of a field is constructed on the 
 same lines. Nevertheless in this simplicity lies its 
 intellectual opportimity. It will perhaps be remembered 
 that in an earlier chapter we pointed out that the intel- 
 lectual character of Western architecture consisted in its 
 recognition of the fact that form in architecture is function, 
 that what each feature is doing, the force it is exerting, 
 the pressure it is resisting, the weight it is supporting, is 
 already its ideal form, which we, according to the measure 
 of our brains, have to turn into its real form. Form, in 
 short, is but the embodiment in visible dimensions of 
 what each structural feature does or is. It is usual to 
 call architecture a study in form and stop there. But 
 to be comprehensible it is necessary to ask the question, 
 " A study in what kind of form ? " and to give the answer, 
 " A study in the form of function." 
 
i66 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 But this being so it is evident that the constructive 
 method employed must admit of a clear definition of 
 function ; that is to say, must admit of the various stresses 
 and forces in operation being separately definable. Not 
 every constructive method possesses this qualification. 
 For instance, the arched method of construction does not 
 possess it. Arcuated constructions, at least in the West, 
 do, no doubt, aim at defining function, but they attain 
 only a moderate degree of success owing to the fact that 
 the arch principle does not distinguish clearly the limits 
 of its own -operations. It does not separate support 
 from burden. The arch itself is a mere part of the wall 
 it sustains. Moreover, the pressure exerted by the 
 superincumbent weight is not directly vertical, but is 
 flung off by the arch to right and left, much as the bows of 
 a ship fling off the resisting waves. The pressure is partly 
 downward and partly lateral, and is partly therefore 
 withstood by the columns beneath and partly by the side 
 walls and buttresses without. But how this is done, what 
 relation weights have to support, or where the line between 
 the two is to be drawn are questions which must necessarily 
 remain a mystery. The structural method employed in 
 this case does not itself clearly contrast and distinguish 
 the function of this feature and that, and the consequence 
 is that, functions being more or less indefinite, the forms 
 which embody them are also indefinite in a like degree. 
 
 This is where the advantage of such a mode of con- 
 struction as the column and lintel comes in, for in this 
 case the bearing member, or column, and the weight borne, 
 or lintel, are contrasted in the full degree of vertical and 
 horizontal, or in the full degree, if we like so to put it, 
 of active and passive, the one being an exercise of active 
 strength, the other an exercise of passive weight. Each 
 is so distinct from the other that a glance can distinguish 
 the limits of either. This is an example of clearly articu- 
 lated function, and it foUows^of course, that function being 
 perfectly definite the forms which embody it are definite 
 in a like perfection. 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 167 
 
 From this it ensues that the latter medium, the medium 
 of column and lintel, is particularly appropriate when 
 the thought which is to inspire the architecture possesses 
 intellectual clearness of articulation. This is what we 
 are always driven back upon, for it is this original thought 
 which chooses the kind of construction answering to its 
 own nature, and sharing in the extent of its own vague- 
 ness or clearness. The clear thought leads to the evolu- 
 tion or choice of a clear structural principle, and the 
 choice of a clear structural principle leads to the articu- 
 lation of exact forms. But the thought is the source. 
 No ethical principle is more often insisted upon by the 
 Greeks than the principle of just proportion. The 
 reaUsation of the beauty of proportion and the endeavour 
 to achieve it, is at the root of the Greek hatred of all that 
 is excessive or exaggerated, of all that is lopsided or 
 eccentric, of all that, whether through under- or over- 
 development, impairs sane and natural growth. None 
 knew better than they that health consists in the sense 
 of proportion which assures an harmonious culture. 
 This was a comer-stone of their ethical system, but there 
 is no spiritual vagueness about it whatever. It is an 
 intellectual truth which requires definite handhng. It 
 is, in fact, a truth which can admirably express itself by 
 means of the trabeated principle, but which cannot at 
 all adequately express itself by means of the arcuated 
 principle. 
 
 How purely intellectual the Greek aesthetic sense, 
 or feeling for beauty, was is perhaps best shown by a 
 consideration of those shght and imperceptible refime- 
 ments which constitute the mystery of Greek architecture. 
 The subject is a complicated one and demands a separate 
 volume for its adequate treatment. It will be sufiicient 
 here to indicate the general character of these refinements, 
 and for that purpose the best feature to select perhaps 
 is the shaft. The height of the Parthenon shafts is about 
 34 feet 3 inches, their diameter at the base being 6 feet 
 3 inches, and at the summit 4 feet 10 inches. These 
 
i68 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 measurements are approximate only, for they are all 
 liable to a slight variation, the columns being not all 
 exactly the same height nor exactly of the same size. 
 The first inflection I wish to call attention to is their 
 entasis or curvature. In its ascent, it will be seen, the 
 column tapers considerably, the top diameter being 
 17 inches less than the bottom. But the reduction 
 is not effected by a straight slant. The lines of the 
 sides do not lie evenly between their extreme points, 
 but are very slightly rounded or curved. In the case of 
 the Parthenon the curve at its greatest amounts to -g^ 
 of the height of the column, or approximately to three- 
 quarters of an inch. It will seem to the reader that 
 so minute an inflection applied to so large a bulk of 
 masonry, being in itself practically imperceptible, must 
 argue an extraordinary fastidiousness and deUcacy of 
 vision in the Greek race. Yet though the presence of 
 the curve is not directly noticeable its absence would 
 be felt at once. It corrects the meagre and skinny appear- 
 ance which a straight-sided column would have ; at the 
 same time it is not pronounced enough to call attention 
 to itself, and unless the column were subjected to exact 
 measurements its presence would remain unsuspected. 
 
 But as yet we are only at the beginning of this mystery. 
 This practically invisible curve is itself subject to an 
 inflection. It is not a plain curve, or segment of a very 
 large circle, but is given the outline known as a hyper- 
 bola. For some distance from the summit of the column 
 the deviation from the straight is imperceptible ; it then 
 emerges more boldly, and at a distance of one-third of 
 the column's height from the ground attains its maximum 
 deviation of three-quarters of an inch, from- which point 
 it diminishes again towards the base. 
 
 I beg the reader to pause here and consider this curious 
 feature until he has grasped its character. The column's 
 height is over 34 feet. The curvature, or bulge, to 
 be applied to it amounts only to three-quarters of an 
 inch. Yet this wonderfully delicate addition itself 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 169 
 
 receives a yet more delicate and subtle inflection, im- 
 parting finally to the colamn a pear-shaped form, the 
 upper portion shooting up out of a tMckened lower 
 portion. The entire deviation is worked out in invisible 
 dimensions. When it is further considered how great 
 must have been the labour and pains and skill involved 
 in the cutting of each marble drum to the shape required 
 by a design of such subtlety, we may form some idea of 
 the very high value which the Greeks attached to the 
 refining process. 
 
 But in what does that value consist ? The very word 
 " refine " implies, not so much an original creation as 
 an enhancement of an already existing factor. Doric 
 refinements are an enhancement of a Western law of 
 art. They do not originate any motives of their own, 
 but add a keener edge of expression to forces already in 
 operation. It will be observed that the Western law 
 as we have hitherto defined it — ^the law that form is 
 function-— is no more than an engineering or mechanical 
 proposition. It affords a standard of perfect utility and 
 honesty of construction, and it necessitates an accurate 
 knowledge of the forces at work. If these practical 
 and material considerations constitute the basis of all 
 good architecture and are a prime test of its quaUty, it 
 is because architecture itself is so very largely a practical 
 and material business. Nevertheless it is not entirely 
 practical and material. Mere mechanical excellence 
 though it is its alpha is not quite its omega. In Greek 
 work 'art takes the matter up where mechanics laid it 
 down. Mechanics superintended the construction and, 
 within narrow limits, the form of each structural feature. 
 It ensured the business-hke efficiency and simplicity of 
 the building, the clear-cut, accurate shape of its parts, 
 and its entire freedom from irrelevant additions or enrich- 
 ments. Then came the artist. But he did not go off 
 into any independent fantasticalities of his own, or 
 arrogate to himself a superior knowledge and ideas 
 different from those of ordinary people, or pretend that 
 
170 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 " art " was a highly specialised subject not responsible 
 to the ordinary laws of Hfe. He endorsed all that the 
 engineer had done ; more than that, he found his own 
 inspiration in what the engineer had done. The temple 
 itself — its structural necessities, its mechanical fitness — 
 was his law too, was indeed his law even more than the 
 engineer's. Only he would affirm, not only that each 
 feature must be mechanically efficient, but that each 
 feature should so express its efficiency and seem so 
 visibly endowed with it as to appear to take actually a 
 living and conscious part in the whole design. 
 
 Thus the trifling and minute entasis, or swelling of 
 the column, which we have been considering, adds nothing 
 to the column's mechanical efficiency, but it makes that 
 efficiency evident, it draws it out and gives it expression. 
 To this is due that aspect of vigorous and elastic strength 
 which the columns possess, and which has so often attracted 
 the admiration of critics. You would say that they put 
 forth their strength consciously. Not only does their 
 function dictate their form, but it is turned into a living 
 motive, the form of the column being actually animated 
 with the intention of fulfilling the duty allotted to it. 
 
 And so with other matters. The platform on which 
 the temple stands would serve as well if it were perfectly 
 fiat. But the artist has added, here too, a slight convex 
 curvature of, in the case of the Parthenon, about 3 inches 
 in the front in a width of loi feet, and about 4 inches 
 on the side in a length of 228 feet. Flat it would have 
 been unrelated to the temple and unaware of what it 
 was itself doing, but its slightly rounded cushion-shape 
 designs it for the burden it is to receive, and seems, as 
 in the case of the columns, to animate it with the con- 
 sciousness of the purpose for which it was created. 
 
 Or, to consider larger and combined features, take 
 the peristyle of shafts which is the main feature of this 
 kind of architecture ; obviously if the shafts stood at 
 exactly the same intervals from each other, though they 
 would carry their burden as efficiently as they do now, 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 171 
 
 yet they would not seem united in the knowledge of what 
 they were doing. The colonnade might extend indefinitely. 
 It would know nothing of its own beginning or ending. 
 As it is it begins with two short steps, the end columns 
 being nearer together than the rest, and, after marching 
 down the flank of the temple, comes to a halt with two 
 more short steps. The consequence is that the colonnade 
 appears to be no mere line of columns cut to the reqviired 
 length, but an entity, an organic feature, designed to its 
 present dimensions and actively co - operating in the 
 scheme of the composition. 
 
 This impression, again, is further developed by the slight 
 inward slant imparted to the columns of the peristyle, 
 all the columns leaning inward in such a way as to form 
 the base of an invisible pyramid, which, if the present 
 colunms were extended upward, would meet in a point 
 at an immense distance above the centre of the temple. 
 Such an inflection can add nothing to the actual utility 
 of the peristyle, but the impulse to cluster together in 
 the performance of a common task is a motive which, 
 operating upon all the colvmins, inspires them with a 
 living consciousness of the duty they are performing. 
 
 All these expedients are extremely subtle and involve 
 immense labour in their execution. They are also from 
 the practical point of view superfluous. On the other 
 hand they are aesthetically of extraordinary effect, since 
 they ensure that the whole structure, far from being a 
 mere mechanical and lifeless arrangement, shall appear 
 to be a Uving organism, life being breathed into all its 
 parts by their mutual knowledge of the task in hand. 
 This is the work of the artist, and the reader will see 
 that in each and every case it is but the carr37ing one 
 step farther of the work of the engineer, and consists but 
 in a further emphasising of the great law that form is 
 function. 
 
 I cannot but point out how closely art, in thus relying 
 for effect on the emphasising of a quite common and 
 matter-of-fact motive, resembles the highest Hterature. 
 
172 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Matthew Arnold, in one of his essays, speaks of the 
 " subtle heightening " in which the accent of great poetry 
 resides, and which is so slight an addition to common 
 speech that it is elusive and almost escapes analysis. 
 Indeed, it is just the greatest of all poetry which seems 
 to be divided from common prose by the narrowest 
 margin. How close to prose is Shakespeare. 
 
 He was a man, take him for all in all, 
 I shall not look upon his like again. 
 
 It is scarcely different from everyday speech, but it is a 
 little different from it. It is separated from everyday 
 speech by just that narrow margin, that subtle and 
 scarcely tangible heightening, in which the accent of the 
 greatest poetry consists. It is strange, but this is what 
 is inimitable. " I shall not look upon his hke again," you 
 will say, why, what is there in that ? Any one could have 
 written that. No, only, one man could have written it. 
 Poetic poetry, poetry which employs the exotic language 
 and images which the conscious cultivation of the art 
 has generated, is instable. But the poetry which is 
 content imperceptibly to heighten the simplicity and 
 directness of the speech of daily life is beyond the reach 
 of all but the immortals. 
 
 The reader will see how close is the analogy between 
 poetry of this order and the architecture we have just 
 been considering. Those elusive and almost indistinguish- 
 able curves and inflections which penetrate a Doric 
 temple, and change the most simple and direct construc- 
 tion possible — a construction of which every cattle-shed, 
 as I have said, is an illustration — ^into noble architecture 
 — what are they but an example, in a sister art, of that 
 " subtle heightening " which turns ordinary speech into 
 noble poetry ? Our first instinct in face of such archi- 
 tecture and such poetry is to take it at its face value, to 
 think that because it is simple it is easy. Not until our 
 taste is matured do we attain the knowledge that it is 
 the complicated and elaborate which are easy and the 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 173 
 
 simple which is difficult. The Greek was content witir- 
 the simplest structural proposition which exists, a pro- 
 position instinctively adopted by every child playing 
 with its wooden bricks. This he selected, and this, 
 by the means we have briefly hinted at, he subtly 
 transfigured, devoting to the process endless labour 
 and thought and generations of delicate experiment, 
 until, out of that foolishly obvious principle, he had 
 fashioned an instrument apt for his needs, an instrument 
 which could express with firm and clear decision the 
 firm and clear ideas of an intellectual philosophy. 
 
 I would beg finally the reader to place himself in the 
 position of a citizen dwelling in such a ts^pical Greek 
 town as Agrigentum, and who had, always in full view, 
 the row of temples we have spoken of raised upon their 
 rocky terrace or cUff overlooking the sea to the south. 
 Such a noble and choice position, it need scarcely be said, 
 would, in the case of a modern seaside town, be appro- 
 priated by one or two big hotels, or by the more pretentious 
 of the houses of the richest citizens. In the case of the 
 Greek town they were dedicated to the temple, which 
 no other structures were permitted to approach. The 
 evident immense age of the gnarled and hollow ohves, 
 which grow in the valley between the cliff and the city, 
 would seem to show that this intermediate space, so 
 lovely in its varied foliage to-day, was not built over in 
 the classic age, but laid out, perhaps, much as at present 
 in plantations and gardens. In any case the line of 
 temples along the sea-cliff would be the most conspicuous 
 objects visible to the inland city. They would stand 
 in a row, at a mile's distance, right across its southern 
 horizon, as though poised and stationed with the calcu- 
 lated object of attracting a constant regard. 
 
 To what end, then, was this preparation and careful 
 provision directed ? What does the reader, one of the 
 Greek citizens of twenty-five centuries ago, see as he looks 
 out southward at those raised and isolated structures ? 
 He sees buildings which fulfil a purpose no living English- 
 
174 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 man has ever associated with architecture, buildings 
 which embody in their own proportion his own highest 
 dreams and aspirations, buildings which appeal, not to 
 any superficial sentiment or mere cultivated taste, but 
 which draw him to them by the strong sympathy which 
 attracts like to like. This architecture is no less than a 
 visible manifestation, an actual embodiment in its own 
 proper shape and dimensions, of that ideal being which 
 every Greek would himself be if he could, and which, in 
 so far as he is worthy of the name of Greek, he is ever 
 tending to become. 
 
 He has been taught, you have been taught, let me 
 rather say to my Greek reader, to have distinct ideas 
 on this all-important subject. You have been taught to 
 carry with you in your mind a reasoned conception of 
 the kind of man you would wish to be. The conception 
 is an intellectual one ; that is to say, every trait or 
 attribute it possesses is to be thought and reasoned out, 
 and to be intellectually justified. But you have not been 
 left to your own devices alone to construct this character, 
 this image of what you would be. The whole of your 
 race has helped you. All the finest Greek minds, poets, 
 philosophers, historians, orators, have participated in 
 the task. There have never been any divisions of opinion, 
 or conflict, or wranghng over this business. So long as 
 Greeks have been Greeks this has been the aim of the 
 race, to formulate in ordered sequence the attributes of a 
 perfectly rational character. In truth it is this which 
 makes men Greeks. This is the distinguishing note of the 
 Greek race. You, reader, would not be the Greek you 
 feel yourself to be if you could entertain a thought which 
 was contrary to this high rational endeavour, or which 
 refused to be bounded by the limits it prescribed. 
 
 But from the list of your aiders and abettors I have 
 omitted one of the chief. Poets and philosophers, 
 historians and orators have aided and combined in the 
 task of the representation of the Greek ideal character ; 
 but more important perhaps than any of these, to a race 
 
GREEK ARCHITECTURE 175 
 
 of such keen aesthetic susceptibiHty, has been the aid 
 of the artist. He alone could give visible and tangible 
 form to the idea. He alone could represent and render 
 an abstract vision in concrete terms. He alone could 
 appeal to the sense of sight and bring the testimony of 
 sight, that this is beautiful^ to support the evidence of 
 reason, that this is true. 
 
 Thus, when you look out from Agrigentum's terraces 
 at the temples along the cliff, what you are looking 
 at is no mere experiment in the art of building. Rather 
 what you are really looking at is yourself; only not 
 yourself, as you are, weak and frail, distracted by vain 
 desires, and often false, or half false, to the knowledge 
 within you ; but yourself made perfect, the self you are 
 struggling to realise ; nay, more than that, the self that 
 your whole nation is struggling to realise. Human 
 nature yearns after the things which further its develop- 
 ment, and so do you yearn after those perfect structures 
 in which the precepts of your intellectual faith are in- 
 carnated. You have forgone much in restricting your- 
 self to these limits, but at least within these limits all 
 things work in unison. Above all, the relations betwixt 
 hfe and art are enormously simplified by the ease with 
 which you are able to employ your laws of life as laws of 
 art. Without the least change or modification all those 
 principles inculcated by your philosophers for your 
 guidance in life and conduct are apphed by your artists 
 as the guiding principles of art. That harmony and 
 symmetry which your thinkers make so much of, that 
 unity which is their final aim, that stem aversion to 
 frivolous and eccentric motives, and to every feeble or 
 random impulse that might distract attention from the 
 main design — what are all these but the principles by 
 which Doric architecture is governed, and the effects of 
 which it undertakes to render visible in terms of form ? 
 
 " Thou art the end and realisation of all my endeavours. 
 To be like thee, to attain what thou attainest, and over- 
 come what thou hast overcome has been my desire all 
 
176 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 my life long. As I gaze at thee let the beauty of thy 
 perfect shape entice and draw me, so that I too by the 
 same means may attain a similar result. Oh let the 
 craving I have after the virtues of my race be strengthened 
 and purified by thy example, and let my faltering and 
 feeble endeavours take fire from thy steadfast and un- 
 wavering pursuit of truth. In thee I see what I would 
 be ; grant me to be that which I see." Such, perhaps, 
 was the prayer, whether spoken or felt, which the Greeks 
 breathed as they contemplated the clustered columns of 
 their temples raised in view of the city and outhned 
 against the sky. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 EAST AND WEST 
 
 How the experiences of a traveller bear out the conclusions already 
 arrived at. Oriental life, in all its aspects, its crowds, towns, bazaars, 
 etc., is made up of emotion and colour, while the familiar aspects of 
 Western life are altogether composed of intellectual conceptions and 
 definite forms. 
 
 It has been attempted, in the two preceding sections, 
 to describe the essential characteristics and essential 
 differences of Eastern and Western thought as expressed 
 in terms of Eastern and Western art ; I should like, 
 however, before passing on, to render the distinction 
 clearer by describing it in terms of actual hfe. The 
 difference between East and West is not now so radical 
 as in the classic era, yet it remains to this day sufficiently 
 sahent to be readily inteUigible, and to bear out what 
 has been already written. 
 
 The European traveller, as he journeys Eastward, 
 finds himself with the first sight of an Eastern port at 
 the beginning of a totally new experience in life and 
 character. Some inkling of the nature of this experience 
 may occur to him even from the first ghmpse of the gay 
 and painted boats, with coloured sails, that dance out to 
 meet the steamer, their swarthy crews laughing, shouting, 
 singing, and quarrelling, each boat a focus of vivid colour 
 and blindly impulsive human emotion, which, discharged 
 on to the deck, becomes a rainbow-tinted, frantically 
 energetic crowd of porters and hotel messengers, who at 
 once dazzle your eyes and threaten to tear you and your 
 luggage to pieces. 
 
 177 N 
 
178 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 All this colour, all this vivacity, are new. And when 
 later you stroll through the narrow labjrrinth of native 
 streets, or wander in the covered, dimly-lit bazaars, these 
 same attributes seem to pursue you. Here, too, colour 
 and emotion pervade the scene. Every little tunnel of 
 a shop, stuffed with glowing carpets, or tissues, or gleam- 
 ing metal, or festoons of yellow and crimson slippers, and 
 disgorging some of its rich contents on to the passage, 
 is a blot of colour ; every figure carries splashes of it in 
 sash and turban ; so that the whole scene and busy crowd 
 are shot with its gleams. Equally, whether gathered into 
 patches or broken up into moving particles among hurry- 
 ing figures, colour constitutes to the eye the dominating 
 quality of the scene. 
 
 But not less present to the mental perception is the 
 human quality of an intense emotional sensibihty, an 
 emotional sensibility which manifests itself in countless 
 different, often contradictory, ways and moods and 
 actions, yet invariably, as you watch each individual 
 with intentness, declares itself as the governing impulse 
 in his character. 
 
 The Oriental rage, a rage of hissing accents and 
 blazing eyes and wildly tossing limbs and convulsed 
 features, and fangs showing through the drawn-up lips, 
 is not more entirely an affair of emotional sensibihty than 
 that passive state of contemplation which an EngHsh- 
 man might perhaps mistake for dulness or lethargy until 
 he observed the quick, stealthy passing of beads through 
 nervous fingers and noticed how clearly the light bums 
 in the dark speculative eyes. It is a state, indeed, as 
 far as possible removed from lethargy, for never is the 
 Oriental more sentient than in these hours when action 
 and thought and conversation are banished that he may 
 enjoy to the full the mere emotional sense of being. 
 Moreover, even those usual passers-by, who walk up and 
 down and exchange greetings and go about the ordinary 
 affairs of life, seem to the eye of our traveller, now grown 
 acute, to be governed by the same kind of emotional 
 
EAST AND WEST 179 
 
 instincts and motives. Their most ordinary movements 
 are strangely inconsequent, and they never seem to be 
 possessed by the same purpose for more than an instant 
 or two at a time. They drift up and down, aimlessly 
 crooning a monotonous chant, or break into sudden fits 
 of gossip and laughter, or stare fixedly at nothing, or stop 
 and sit down, or wander on, all with the impulsiveness of 
 children, and acting evidently on the mere caprice of the 
 moment. Indeed, so soaked are they in impulse and 
 feehng that it is impossible for them to help for an instant 
 giving off that quaUty, and their gait and attitudes and 
 features and voices and glances all bear witness, some- 
 times strongly and passionately, sometimes lightly and 
 fitfully, to the emotional sensibility which reigns within. 
 
 These two characteristics meet the traveller at the 
 portals of the East and abide with him so long as his stay 
 lasts. Together they make up in main outline the 
 experience to which he looks back. No matter whether 
 his intimacy with Oriental hfe be long or short, close or 
 casual, it resolves itself at last into these two ingredients. 
 All the dim bazaars he has visited, all the gorgeous 
 garments that have fluttered before his eyes, all the 
 languid, yellow twilights and jungle-tangle of blossom 
 and creeper he has encountered will be summed up 
 for him, and float back upon his memory in a blur of 
 tawny colours ; while all his dealings with men, so puzzUng 
 and baffling, all that he has gleaned in knowledge of 
 Oriental customs and manners, all that was typical in 
 their views of conduct and of hfe, will seem in the same 
 way to emerge from that profound emotional quahty 
 which is of the essence of the Oriental temperament. 
 The last impression does but confirm the first. Colour 
 and emotion, he says to himself, as the painted boats 
 and gesticulating crews recede from his departing steamer, 
 colour and emotion make up the East. 
 
 But though this may be true, and though "colour and 
 emotion do, perhaps, constitute the essentials in the 
 character of Eastern life, its possession of which makes 
 
i8o FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 that life seem strange to us, yet they do not alone com- 
 prise the whole difference between East and West. The 
 whole difference between East and West is made up, not 
 only of what the East has which the West lacks, but of 
 what the East lacks which the West possesses. It is 
 not only that our traveller finds himself- in the presence 
 of a new interpretation of life, but that he has left behind 
 the interpretation with which he was familiar. The 
 Eastern crowd is odd and strange to him partly because 
 it possesses its own peculiar character of a dreamy or 
 impulsive emotionalism, but partly also because it is 
 wanting in the quahties that make up the character of a 
 Western crowd. Instinctively he contrasts the fitful 
 motions of Orientals with the steady walk and business- 
 like manners of his own countrymen, and the very curt- 
 ness of the contrast assures him that the West, though it 
 may not have emotional sensibility, has equally definable 
 characteristics of its own. 
 
 What is the quahty he remembers that reigns in 
 London streets ? There is much bustle and movement 
 there, but there is bustle and movement in Eastern 
 streets. Yes, but the bustle and movement of the West 
 is directed to definite purposes. Its energy is subject 
 to no spasmodic impulses and no vague abstraction, but 
 is all turned strictly to account. Much is being done, 
 many things are being attended to. Every unit in the 
 crowd almost has his own business in hand and is intent 
 on it. Even pleasure - seekers go about their pleasure 
 in this business-like way, and pay visits and dine and 
 go to half a dozen balls a night with as methodical an 
 energy as if they were interviewing clients or visiting 
 patients. 
 
 This is all plain enough, but, of course, all this orderly 
 and disciplined energy in outward behaviour is but the 
 reflex of a corresponding quality in the Western mind. 
 The movements of the European are decisive and orderly 
 because he has a clear mental grasp of the things he means 
 to do. In his mind he carries a plan of action, in obedience 
 
EAST AND WEST i8i 
 
 to which he maps out his time, not for hours only, but 
 for weeks and months in advance ; a plan of action duly 
 and carefully thought out, and so not liable to capricious 
 alteration. In the same way you will find that all his 
 ideas and opinions relating to life are formed and definite, 
 and that he has convictions on all the subjects of the day 
 which he is very slow to change, because, like his plans, 
 they are supported by reasons which seem to him good. 
 
 Here we have evidently at work, as the motive power 
 of conduct, not the emotional but the intellectual faculty. 
 We can easily, by the help of such a contrast, see that 
 the whole Ufe of the average European is formed, as it 
 were, on an intellectual rather than on an emotional 
 basis. Doubtless this is more the case with some nations 
 than with others, but it is the case with all Western 
 nations as contrasted with the East. All Western nations 
 live more or less from the mind, and are perpetually busy 
 with the plans of action laid down by the mind. Reason 
 is the only guide the West acknowledges. We must " be 
 reasonable," we must " listen to reason," we must " hear 
 both sides," we must " get at the facts." The struggle 
 to obtain a distinct intellectual conception of the con- 
 ditions under which we Hve, and to modify and improve 
 those conditions according to our own better ideas, is a 
 passion with us. Any labourer or artisan will argue with 
 his fellows by the hour on Tariff Reform or the Constitu- 
 tion of the House of Lords. Limited as his views may 
 be, they are, in their nature, intellectual views. Vague 
 as his grip of facts may be, it is, as far as it goes, an 
 intellectual grip. Nay, is not all that the European 
 means by the word Hberty, so sacred a word in his eyes, 
 the right to reason and to make what he conceives to be 
 reason prevail ? Liberty as we know it in the West does 
 not flourish in the East. It involves arrangement and 
 method and co-operation and argument and compromise, 
 and these are processes of the intellect. It belongs to 
 those steady walkers who carry plans in their heads. 
 
 This tough intellectual faculty, so visible in the very 
 
i82 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 make and shape of the Western man, in the steady eye 
 and square jaw, the robust frame and firm step, which 
 seem but the outward expression of a similar toughness 
 of the mind, and which are the physical essentials for 
 -carrying into effect the decisions of the mind — this 
 faculty, I think, is that which the West possesses and 
 which the dreamy-eyed, supple-limbed East lacks. The 
 East has its seers and prophets. The West has its 
 politicians and men of science. The East feels. The 
 West thinks. This is the human difference. And then 
 what about that other difference which so much strikes 
 our Eastern traveller ? What have we in the West to 
 set against the vivid, prevalent, rich colour that gleams 
 and glows through Eastern life ? 
 
 We have form. Form is to Western life what colour 
 is to Eastern. It is the expression which Western life 
 is constantly and involuntarily seeking. We have but 
 to glance along the streets of any of our towns to see how 
 natural and inevitable this mode of expression in the West 
 is. The quaUty of Western architecture is unmistakable. 
 I do not pretend that it is always, or even that it is often, 
 beautiful, but it persistently retains the attributes which 
 mark a constructive race. There is nothing slovenly or 
 vague about it. The fafades rise exactly perpendicular, 
 each stone is shaped and fitted with mathematical pre- 
 cision, every moulding and lintel and pediment and 
 pilaster is cut and adjusted with stem accuracy. Modem 
 architecture is in many ways unsatisfactory, and to many 
 people it is disappointing to contemplate the monotonous 
 repetitions of Rome's dull and pompous ostentation, 
 which, under professional auspices, are made to fulfil 
 the functions of vital architecture. Nevertheless the 
 incongruity of these buildings, when they come to be 
 finished, will not be the most remarkable thing about 
 them. The most remarkable thing about them will 
 be the extraordinary conscientiousness and accuracy 
 of their construction. We have got so used to this 
 conscientiousness that we think nothing of it, but it 
 
EAST AND WEST 183 
 
 is nevertheless the one really interesting feature about 
 modem building. That people should take infinite care 
 in fashioning things they love and understand is not 
 strange ; but that they should take infinite care in 
 fashioning things they neither love nor understand is 
 strange indeed. Yet so it is in repeated instances. 
 Among the ugly buildings of London it is probable that 
 the new War Office will secure in the judgment of history 
 a high place. But let the reader the next time he passes 
 it force his reluctant eyes to appreciate the rigid, perfect 
 construction of every part and portion of it, and he will 
 agree that there is something here more noteworthy even 
 than ugliness. Not a throb of pleasure in the work 
 itself, in the things taking shape under their hands, not a 
 moment's pride in the thought that their fellow-citizens 
 would look with deUght at their achievement, helped on 
 these workers. It was mere dull, stupid routine from 
 beginning to end. And yet look at the awful precision 
 of it all, at the stem sense of duty which reigns in every 
 detail. Is it not evident that to these workmen the clear 
 and exact definition oifortn is something sacred, so sacred 
 that even when it is put to senseless uses, even when it is 
 wholly cut off from the life of the present and made to 
 convey only a few old classical allusions and ideas which 
 nobody imderstands or cares for, they still instinctively 
 treat form with all care and reverence ? Though there 
 may be nothing in mechanical accuracy to admire, 
 though such scrupulousness on the surface when there 
 is nothing within, no meaning or thought of any kind, 
 even aggravates ugliness, yet one may admit that this 
 kind of treatment shows where the instinctive respect 
 both of the public and of the workman lies. Indeed it 
 is the case that, so long as the Westem artisan or crafts- 
 man retains any sense of right conduct whatever, it will 
 be in his respect for form that it will show itself. In 
 these days, when all the meaning it drew from Ufe has 
 gone out of architecture, excellence of workmanship 
 tends to follow, and it needs no very vigilant eye to 
 
i84 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 distinguish in all constructive work the signs of careless- 
 ness and scamping. But yet though the wood may be 
 green and the paint reduced to a " lick," though the 
 windows may let the draught in and mud may be used 
 for mortar, still even in the most shoddily constructed 
 suburban flats and villas the articulation of form remains 
 perfect. Every wall is smartly flush, every angle sharp 
 and square to a hair's - breadth, every measurement 
 accurate, every curve true. Form is the ultimate refuge 
 of Western self-respect, and if ever the time should come 
 when Western walls and arches begin to bulge and waver, 
 we may then indeed expect the imminent collapse of the 
 whole fabric of European progress and civiUsation. 
 
 And yet all this accuracy of form, accepted by us 
 as quite a matter of course, would certainly strike an 
 observant Oriental with wonder and astonishment. The 
 like of it he has never seen. It is a new experience, con- 
 taining dim suggestions of a strength of character and 
 purpose with which he is totally imfamiliar. The rich 
 and vivid colour of an Oriental bazaar is not more absent 
 from our sombre streets than the iron clearness of Western 
 architecture is absent from the tottering, fantastic edifices, 
 pierced with distorted arches and propped by wooden 
 beams, which nod to each other across the tortuous alleys 
 of an Oriental city. 
 
 Architecture is the greatest of the works of man ; but 
 down to the least this difference holds. The contrast 
 between East and West in architecture is the contrast 
 between it in furniture-making, or jewelry, or the laying 
 out of flower gardens, or the making and finishing of 
 every kind of object or utensil for ornament or use. 
 Every one who has hved in the East knows the impossi- 
 biUty of getting the simplest bit of work done with 
 accuracy and simplicity. He will remember the car- 
 penters and masons with their childish scolding ways, 
 holding their tools as if they were afraid of them and 
 fingering their materials with the tips of their fingers, so 
 different from the easy grasp of the English artisan on 
 
EAST AND WEST 185 
 
 saw or chisel ; indeed, the mere way an EngUsh mason 
 turns a brick ere he strikes it with the trowel-edge has 
 a mastery in it which no Oriental mason ever attained to. 
 The restless, nervous, slender hands of the East are all 
 for intricacy and ingenuity. They will scratch trays and 
 pots all over with elaborate patterns and designs, but to 
 carve anything with sureness of outUne and simplicity 
 of shape is beyond them. 
 
 It is now many years ago since I was struck by and 
 attempted to describe the profound similarity which 
 exists between Arab life and history and Arab towns 
 and bazaars. It was with Algiers that I was more par- 
 ticularly dealing, and, as I said, to visit the town and 
 pass into its cnmibling mass of masonry was to pass 
 into the intricacies of Arab life. The winding, tortuous 
 alleys, zigzagging in all directions, with holes drilled 
 along their bases, out of which protrude piles of mer- 
 chandise, richly coloured, making blots of purple and 
 crimson in the shadowed way ; the irregular cliff of 
 battered walls latticed with faded shutters, which seem to 
 totter and lean towards each other for support ; the 
 ghost-like robed figures which noiselessly and mysteriously 
 appear, or vanish into their burrows — all left upon the 
 imagination of a Western observer a strange impression 
 of creatures not governed by any motives of action known 
 to him, not governed by any definite intellectual concep- 
 tion of life, but governed rather by whim and caprice and 
 fleeting emotional impulses. I had, I said, the same 
 feeUng when I stood or wandered in that picturesque 
 labyrinth as when I turned the pages of an Arab history. 
 " There are the same striking individual figures and 
 incidents, the same brilliant gUmpses and vivid little 
 scenes, and behind and around all there is the same 
 inextricable confusion, the same lack of all coherence and 
 definite plan. The details of Arab history, however full 
 of romantic and exciting adventures, are to the Western 
 mind inevitably tedious. Of what causes are these events 
 the effects ? Of what effects are they the causes ? are 
 
i86 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 questions which repeatedly recur while you study the 
 thriUing but inconsequent narrative. One receives an 
 impression as of the wrong side of a tapestry. The 
 brilliant colours are there in every stitch, but they are 
 woven into no intelHgible design." ^ 
 
 These are thoughts that come naturally to a traveller. 
 The impression he receives of the West is a rational and 
 intellectual impression, and, looking on art as an utterance 
 of life, he will expect to find that the Western rationalism, 
 with its clear-cut ideas and plans, should utter itself most 
 spontaneously in the arts of form. On the other hand, 
 the impression he receives of the East is a sensuous or 
 emotional impression, such as may indeed find artistic 
 expression in richness and intensity of colour, but which 
 neither finds nor seeks expression in the arts of form or 
 in articulate design. 
 
 Life is the secret of all. It is the fashion nowadays 
 for critics to treat art as a subject distinct in itself and 
 separable from the life which produced it. But art is 
 not self-contained. It is a mode of self-expression not 
 to be distinguished sharply from a thousand other modes 
 of self-expression. Men reveal what they are in their 
 gestures, their looks, and the tones of their voice. They 
 reveal themselves also in their smallest actions, in the 
 way they write their name, or shake hands, or take off 
 their hat or put on their boots. And in the same way 
 they reveal themselves in everything they make, of what- 
 ever kind, useful or ornamental, and especially do they 
 reveal themselves in their works of art, which are the most 
 apt conductors of human thoughts and emotions. A 
 traveller's jottings are not therefore irrelevant to art. 
 What he observes in Western cities and among Western 
 crowds, the steady unhurried step, the self-controlled, 
 almost emotionless manner, the purpose expressed in 
 look and bearing, the disciplined, clear, scientific, well- 
 organised system of life, so reasonable yet so cold — all 
 these things are so much raw material which is bound to 
 
 > In the Desert, first chapter. 
 
EAST AND WEST 187 
 
 work up into an art of a similar and corresponding kind ; 
 while, just as surely, the passion, the emotional force, 
 the speculative bias, and the weak, indefinite impulses 
 in the sphere of practical execution, which make up the 
 play of forces in Oriental Ufe, must issue in an art of the 
 same negative and positive attributes. 
 
PART III 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN POINl? OF VIEW 
 
 The mediaeval period is the first epoch in our history in which the 
 Christian point of view is formulated. Its chief characteristic consists 
 in its equally vigorous interest in mundane and spiritual ideas. The 
 gilds and the monasteries represent this dual development. The 
 balance is not maintained. With the coming of the Renaissance 
 spiritual ideas are dropped in favour of intellectual. 
 
 We have dealt with Eastern and Western thought, and 
 with their eftects upon art. Eastern thought, we said, 
 was spiritual and mystical in character ; Western 
 thought was rational and intellectual. The most 
 striking feature of the history of man during the pre- 
 Christiah era is the distinct line of cleavage between 
 the two. The opposition between them during that 
 era is absolute. Whoever compares the spirit and 
 temper of Indian and classic literature, or art, or politics, 
 or philosophy, will instantly be aware of this opposition. 
 It embraces all life. The East seems to be reserved and 
 set apart for exclusive cultivation of the emotional faculty ; 
 the West seems to be reserved and set apart for the 
 exclusive cultivation of the intellectual faculty. 
 
 But then we found, too, that, heralding the end of 
 the classic epoch, the ancient exclusiveness of the classic 
 intellectualism began to be disturbed by signs of a coming 
 invasion. Following the physical intercourse and colonial 
 penetration of East by West, Eastern ideas filtered West- 
 ward and largely transformed the character of Western 
 
 1 83 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 189 
 
 thought. The cities of Eastern Europe, which exchanged 
 Eastern and Western commerce, also exchanged Eastern 
 and Western ideas. " All over Asia Minor Hellenism 
 had to mingle with Asiatic elements, losing in the 
 contact all its fine austerity and sweet reasonableness." ^ 
 Every one of these cities was trying its hand at the task 
 to which the Greek intelligence had given itself up — ^the 
 task of formulating a philosophy of Eastern ideas. 
 
 It was at this moment, when the fusion between spirit 
 and intellect seemed complete, that a rehgious drama was 
 enacted, which, in its own main facts, or dogmas as they 
 came to be, answered to the needs of both the spiritual 
 and intellectual faculties, and by so doing secured, so 
 long as it could maintain its own dominance over life, the 
 continuous and simultaneous development and cultivation 
 of these hitherto separated sides of human nature. 
 
 Henceforth we have to deal with a Ufe and an art 
 which are conditioned by the duahsm which Chris- 
 tianity involves. Christianity, the joining of East and 
 West, undertakes the difficult task of reconciling these 
 opposites ; and it is with the recognition of this fact in our 
 minds that we should approach the study of mediaeval 
 life and art. Our reasons for choosing this epoch are of 
 course obvious. The mediaeval moment has been the 
 only moment in Christian Europe when life has been 
 sufficiently sure of its own meaning to express itself in 
 a coherent and original style of art. The earher centuries, 
 down to the mediaeval age, are encumbered with the 
 idea of the great Empire that had passed away ; they are 
 centuries that are perpetually looking back over their 
 shoulders at the departing shadow of Rome. This retro- 
 
 1 See Mr. Stobart, The Glory that was Greece, p. 251. Mr. Stobart is 
 quite aware of the connectioa between these political events and the 
 history of art. " Even the sculpture with which the wealthy Attalids 
 adorned their great altar of Zeus at Pergamum, though Greek in plot 
 and execution, is of almost Asiatic luxuriance and voluptuous beauty. 
 Passion and effort replace calm and dignity, even as they do in the new 
 Asiatic schools of oratory. Alexander's violent battering at the gates 
 which separate East from West had produced a strange hybrid in many 
 of the cities of Eastern Greece." 
 
igo FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 spective tendency shows itself equally in life and art, 
 in attempts to revive the Imperial system of government 
 and in attempts to maintain the basis of Romanesque 
 architecture. Later centuries, on the other hand, are 
 too evidently and too deeply infected with the imitative 
 bias and profound insincerity of the Renaissance to be able 
 to speak for the life of their age as a whole. Their attitude 
 towards art is vitiated by the conception they have formed 
 of it as a fruit of culture rather than a fruit of life. 
 
 To the mediaeval age, therefore, we turn. We find 
 in that age a new order of society laid down in accordance 
 with the genius of the new races. The Germanic Empires 
 on the Roman model no longer stand the chief repre- 
 sentatives of law and order. There has sprung to life 
 a new kind of social organism in the North. A new 
 national bond has been forged. The young races of Europe 
 advance with their own conception of what is to con- 
 stitute nationhood. The principle of liberty, and the 
 purpose and resolve to establish this principle as the 
 basis of a practical system of government, are to be the 
 maxims of the new progressive states. Free communes 
 and free boroughs, charters and privileges and the rights 
 of the common people are the watchwords of the new 
 citizenship. A society, rude it may be, but robust, fresh 
 formed and evidently instinct with vitaUty, dates from 
 the mediaeval epoch. This is Europe's voice, the voice 
 of the Europe that we know, by contrast with the voice 
 of the old Roman Europe that has now definitely passed. 
 And, identifying the moment, there occurs one of those 
 unmistakable creative epochs in art, a movement so 
 coherent in character and so vigorous in articulation 
 that all who but glance at it must be aware that a new 
 interpretation of life, a new conception of life's value and 
 meaning, is at the back of it. 
 
 Let us then, in regard to this age, follow our usual 
 course. Let us, before we turn to the art which it pro- 
 duced, turn to the life out of which that art grew. It 
 was not difficult to seize the ruling principle of Eastern 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 191 
 
 life, nor was it difficult to seize the ruling principle of 
 classic life, for each of these adhered closely to a single 
 idea. The mediaeval epoch does not adhere to a single 
 idea, and therefore loses something perhaps in immediate 
 intelligibiUty, yet the character of its thought is not really 
 obscure. 
 
 For whoever looks at that age frankly and freely will 
 easily distinguish the two main motives by which it is 
 inspired. He will, to begin with, at once realise that the 
 age is one of immense practical energy. The burghers 
 and citizens who, for the better defiance of feudalism, 
 banded themselves together in the earliest EngUsh 
 towns, were undoubtedly as shrewd and hard-headed a 
 generation as it would be easy to find. Their purposes 
 and intentions were of an immediately practical kind. 
 Their aim was the very intelligible one of securing their 
 own independence and right to manage their own affairs, 
 and the means they adopted went straight to the point. 
 The lack of personal authority and a personal following 
 was supphed by the excellence of their organisation. 
 To the solitary t5n:anny of the nobles they opposed the 
 collective unanimity of the commons. But that bond to 
 be effective had to be individually felt and acknowledged. 
 What made the citizens of an Enghsh town of the Middle 
 Ages so difficult a force to subdue was the unflinching 
 clearness with which each man envisaged the end in view 
 and the stubbornness of character which each brought 
 to its realisation. 
 
 If we look at mediaevalism from this standpoint we 
 can do no other than admit its materialistic efficiency. 
 Its purposes are usually of that description. The deter- 
 mination of the shop-keeper and craftsman to direct 
 the affairs of their own borough, and to supervise with 
 jealous vigilance the least concerns of their own handi- 
 crafts, seem to denote a people whose ideals lack nothing 
 in mundane tangibility. If ever there were a race of 
 doers, rather than dreamers, one would have thought 
 that the weavers, and armourers, and dyers, and bakers, 
 
192 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and masons of a mediaeval town, knit together in their 
 gilds for the maintenance of their own rights, were such 
 a race. 
 
 Yet this would have been but half the truth. The 
 curious and so far unique character of the age consists 
 in the intermingling, with the mundane temper which so 
 conspicuously belongs to it, of an equally clearly marked 
 spirit of devout contemplation and emotional ecstasy. 
 The age is not only that in which material aims are 
 pursued with the greatest vigour and the keenest realisa- 
 tion of their practical value ; it is also that in which 
 spiritual aims are pursued with an equally intense con- 
 centration. If mediaeval society derived a quite unusual 
 satisfaction from the prosecution bf all kinds of human 
 endeavour, so did it also derive more fehcity than ever 
 before or since from the inward contemplation of the 
 truths revealed by spiritual consciousness. Mediaeval 
 society appears like a cord composed of two strands, 
 one white the other red, twisted together, yet still dis- 
 tinguishable the one from the other. Thinkers at all 
 times have told us that the things of the world and the 
 things of the spirit are separate and can only be pursued 
 separately ; yet at this moment they are being pursued 
 simultaneously and that not with less but with more than 
 usual ardour and success in both quests. 
 
 So opposed in their natures do these quahties appear 
 that, when we turn back into history and fix our attention 
 on the scenes and occasions which display their rival 
 action, we seem to be dealing with the past of different 
 races and ages. The occasions which display the inffuence 
 of the virile energy of that age testify to a temperament, 
 a racial character, a point of view apparently inconsistent 
 with the ideals and aspirations of the contemplative 
 faculty. What are the motives which underlie the 
 mediaeval strenuousness ? The chief, you would say, was 
 an extraordinarily vivid consciousness of the significance 
 of man's mortal exigence. In this the Aryan race, even 
 in its youthful, primitive days, differs from other races. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 193 
 
 What lends animation and interest to Aryan barbarism is 
 the vigorous grasp it has of the concrete — a grasp which 
 seems at once to express the race's reco^ition of the 
 opportunities latent in the material universe, together 
 with its own determination to make the most of them. 
 The young of this vigorous breed set to work upon their 
 surroimdings like men who perceive in those surroundings 
 the plastic material in which aU their own purposes and 
 thoughts are to receive expression. It would almost 
 seem as if, from the very first, there had existed, among 
 the wandering tribes destined to national advancement, 
 an instinctive consciousness of what was in store for them. 
 The struggles they waged, whether against the decUning 
 Empire they invaded or amongst each other, were never 
 merely destructive. They were struggles for oppor- 
 tunities, for the right to build cities, and own land, and 
 increase, and expand, and develop. These barbarians, 
 however rude, are aware already of what the future holds 
 for them. 
 
 The contrast I have in view between the active and 
 contemplative principles which so strangely constitute 
 mediaeval life is very well exemplified in the two leading 
 institutions of that period. The EngUsh gilds are often 
 thought of as corporate trading bodies, as associations 
 founded for the purpose of protecting their trade rights 
 and maintaining among their members a certain standard 
 of craftsmanship. These, however, were not the original 
 motives of their creation. The original motive had its 
 roots in the social circumstances of Europe during the 
 Dark Ages and its purpose was the assertion and main- 
 tenance of popular hberty. The gilds are the answer to 
 the self-assertion of individual tsnranny, and it is in them 
 that we first catch sight, in its visible effects, of that 
 love of freedom which was to form the basis of European 
 civihsation. 
 
 Naturally the idea of association is as old as human 
 history, and many theories have been proposed (by 
 Harting, Wilder, and others), in which the gild system 
 
 o 
 
194 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 is derived from Greek, Roman, and other sources. What 
 we are here concerned with is the growth of the movement 
 among Northern races, and the point to be borne in mind 
 is that the gilds arose, not in the first place out of any 
 consideration of craftsmanship, but as a vehicle or instru- 
 ment through which the people could assert their claims 
 to hberty and their right to handle and manage their own 
 affairs. The collective principle they inculcated acted 
 immediately on town development. Green emphasises, 
 what is so evident a trait in mediaeval history, the fact 
 that "the rights of self-government, of free speech in 
 free meeting, of equal justice by one's equal, were brought 
 safely across the age of Norman tyranny by the traders 
 and shopkeepers of the towns." He adds that " in the 
 quiet, quaintly-named street, in town-mead and market- 
 place ... in the bell that swung out its summons to' 
 the crowded thoroughfare, in the jealousies of craftsmen 
 and guilds, lay the real life of EngUshmen, the life of 
 their home and trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle 
 with oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self- 
 government." Such was the part played by the towns ; 
 but the germs of the towns were the gilds. As early as 
 the ninth and tenth centuries the gild organisations were 
 already translating themselves into town institutions. 
 An association or collection of people is already a town 
 in all but houses, the growth of the town being but the 
 completion of the popular instinct for combination. 
 Where but two or three were gathered together there 
 existed already a consciousness of strength and security 
 which in its turn tended to attract the unattached and 
 unprotected. The instinct towards association, formu- 
 lated as a precept, or ideal, by the gilds, was in outward 
 visible fact, embodied in the towns. The town, in short, 
 was as much the refuge and fortress of the communal 
 or gild system as the castle was the fortress of the indi- 
 vidual or feudal system. 
 
 A further indication of the character of the early gilds 
 is to be found in the attitude of feudalism towards them. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 195 
 
 At the time when the English gilds were successfully 
 asserting their right to recognition, those on the Continent 
 were everywhere forbidden and persecuted by the authori- 
 ties. "A series of Capitularies of the Emperor Charle- 
 magne and his successors interfered with all kinds of 
 combinations and unions, . . . Not only those which 
 proposed directly unlawful objects were threatened with 
 scourging, nose-slitting, banishment, and such-Uke punish- 
 ments of their members, but even those whose object was 
 protection against robbery and other kinds of violence." ^ 
 Instances occur of stringent measures of repression taken 
 against the gilds, from which it is evident that every 
 tyrannic influence regarded them with an instinctive 
 and bitter hostility. " The crime of the serfs in their 
 unions," observes Brentano, "consisted in their endeavour- 
 ing to provide redress for their grievances without making 
 use of the intervention of their masters, whose powers 
 over them such intervention always increased. Even 
 when the poor people, who were without protection 
 against the inroads of the Normans, leagued themselves 
 into several brotherhoods, and in this maimer offered firm 
 resistance to the robbers, they were cut down by the 
 Prankish nobles as a reward for their bravery." 
 
 I have drawn the reader's attention to the gilds because, 
 of all the influences active throughout the mediaeval age, 
 it would seem that these are the most fundamentally 
 characteristic of Western thought and the Western point 
 of view. On the one hand they are the institutions which 
 are most powerful and which most obviously determine 
 the national development ; on the other they are in their 
 intention typical of the ruling motives of the commons. 
 What we think of as the business instinct of the 
 British people, their level-headedness and independence 
 of character, their aptitude for achieving practical 
 ends by practical means, is perfectly illustrated in the 
 formation and discipline of the gilds. The influence 
 of the gilds measures the strength of the hold which 
 * L. Brentano's History of the Gilds. 
 
196 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 mediaeval society maintained on the material interests 
 of life. 
 
 But there is another aspect of mediaeval life almost 
 as conspicuous, and this too has its associations and 
 leagued brotherhoods. Scarcely less universal and less 
 flourishing, and scarcely after their manner less influential, 
 the monasteries play almost as important a part in 
 mediaeval life as the gilds. Monasticism, it is important 
 to notice, was a spontaneous growth which sprang up 
 everywhere, in every nation, not by any act of authority 
 on the part of the church, but out of a widespread popular 
 sentiment which evers^where nourished and sustained it. 
 It is necessary, if we would do it justice, to consider the 
 movement in its vigour and its jsriasej^iiid to resist the 
 temptation to examine its decline and estimate its 
 character by the traits it then exhibited. Those defects 
 are such as appear natural and comprehensible to our 
 own critical faculty, for the fervour of monasticism died 
 away into the intellectualism of the Renais^jice, and as 
 it weakened it was preyed upon by the "Tery maladies 
 which intellect is so apt to detect in its explanations 
 of spiritual phenomena. Self-indulgence and sensuality, 
 hypocrisy and make-behef, worldly greed and luxury, 
 the natural ills which intellect attributes to devotional 
 estabUshments, came to be, as the age passed from the 
 spiritual to the intellectual standpoint, the very ills by 
 which they were assailed. We, being naturally intellect- 
 ualists, easily adopt this line of criticism, and with perfect 
 complacency persuade ourselves that we have dealt with 
 the essential qualities of the monastic movement when 
 we have signalised certain symptoms of disease which 
 attended its decline. 
 
 We shall not make much progress in that way. A 
 movement Uke monasticism, so obviously indigenous to 
 the soil which produced it, so recognised and im- 
 portant an ingredient in national history, so woven 
 into the hfe of the people, and even adopted, as we may 
 say, by the very scenery with which its buildings were 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 197 
 
 associated — such a movement is not to be estimated 
 by what is negative and defective in it, but by what is 
 positive and efEective. Causes profound and vital in 
 the hfe of that age could alone have produced effects of 
 such consequence. What drew these men forward along 
 the path they trod ? What was the feUcity they promised 
 themselves ? It was no more than every ascetic, in every 
 age and chme where asceticism has been practised, has 
 laboured to attain. Whenever and wherever seclusion 
 and asceticism have become rules of life, the same motive 
 is at work. Monastic history, the letters of monks, even 
 the relics which survive of their gardens and cloisters, 
 repeat an admonition which has never varied since the 
 world began . Not by reasoning and thinking, so all mystics 
 say, can man attain to the bhss of spiritual insight. 
 Reason dwells on earth, and its business is with the things 
 of earth. It can never yield us more than that dim and 
 faint testimony to the spiritual order which materialism 
 itseK contains. Like comprehends hke. For the com- 
 prehension of the spiritual order man needs a spiritual 
 faculty ; and such a one he possesses. The soul is to 
 man his spiritual eye by which he is instructed and 
 enhghtened ; only to use it to this end it is necessary that 
 the attention and the will be concentrated on the act of 
 spiritual attention, and that the whole order of the 
 temporal and the finite, which is reason's subject-matter, 
 should be silenced and shut out. Hence the purpose of 
 asceticism. Whenever soul rather than intellect is 
 accepted for guide, the inclination towards asceticism 
 and seclusion is invariable. Let the imiverse and all 
 objects be as though they were not ; let the breath be 
 stilled, the very heart-beats suspended, the consciousness 
 of physical existence annihilated, and by degrees spiritual 
 consciousness will take the place of physical, and, passively 
 surrendering his whole being to contemplation, the 
 visionary will be drawn into a complete participation 
 in spiritual existence. 
 
 From whence was this spirit of mysticism derived 
 
igS FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 which so strangely illumines mediaeval life ? It was not 
 indigenous to the West. It was drawn from the East. 
 We have already seen how, before and during the classic 
 age, while all the West that counts was being saturated 
 with pure intellectuaiism, the East was already brooding 
 over its one and only thought of spiritual vision ; and 
 how the Greeks themselves, when they had run their own 
 solution to a standstill, came in contact with that thought 
 and fell in love with it, and, under manifold philosophic 
 disguises, introduced it into the West. With it came its 
 inevitable attendant, the ascetic life, and together the 
 two — the idea of an inward spiritual vision and of a 
 monastic discipline for its cultivation — working constantly 
 from East to West — slowly invaded Europe. Yet there 
 remains always, even after the idea of a disciplinary 
 system had been fully accepted by the West, a difference 
 between Western and Eastern discipline which is signifi- 
 cant. The rigour of monasticism is always in proportion 
 to the intensity of the mysticism it is directed to promote. 
 In the East, where mysticism is undiluted, asceticism has 
 been carried to its most terrible extremes. In that 
 nearer East, the meeting-ground of East and West which 
 has been most largely influenced by Hellenic ideas, the 
 ascetic system was shorn of some of its terrors and in 
 part adapted to human limitations. In the more essen- 
 tially rational West, where mysticism is after all but a 
 guest, the monastic ideal has ever been comparatively 
 mundane as well as turned to more practical uses. The 
 rule of St. Benedict, which is the rule of Western monasti- 
 cism, is adapted from the Eastern rule, or rule of St. 
 Basil, yet contrives not only to mitigate the austerities 
 prescribed by the East, but also to adapt its abstract 
 and transcendental philosophy to the purposes of a 
 rational existence. It made allowance for the weak- 
 nesses of flesh and blood. More than that, it so far 
 recognised the world that it provided for the exercise 
 of other faculties than itself, a concession quite outside 
 the ken of Oriental asceticism, and even encouraged 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 199 
 
 literature and art, the recognition of the claims of 
 knowledge, and such intellectual activity as the age 
 permitted. 
 
 These modifications are perfectly typical of the Western 
 point of view, which has always declined to surrender 
 itself to a purely abstract thought, and always insisted 
 on recognising the claims of the material universe. Still 
 the point to be borne in mind is, that the inclination 
 towards seclusion and asceticism, always apparent in 
 the East in conjunction with a certain mode of appre- 
 hension, when that mode of apprehension was imported 
 into the West, travelled westward also in the wake of k. 
 It grew up first in the Eastern confines of Christendom, 
 in Egypt and Palestine and Syria, and was thence trans- 
 planted into the Western parts of Europe. It flourished 
 and spread, bearing witness in its growth to the depth 
 of the impulse it arose from, yet wearing, to some extent, 
 an alien aspect, an aspect not perfectly congenial to 
 Western hfe. The strain of deep emotional feeling, 
 passive and still in its nature, and indeed dependent on 
 clearness and calmness of soul for its very power to be 
 and act — ^this spiritual strain which penetrates mediaeval 
 life, while penetrating seems scarcely to belong to it. 
 It is often diflficult to reconcile the ideal of contemplation 
 with the strenuous habits which prevail in the society 
 of the period. No doubt every institution, or profession, 
 must draw the ideas it subsists on out of contemporary 
 life ; yet who would have guessed that the eager, energetic 
 temper which seems to animate most of the aspects of 
 mediaevaUsm would have yielded adequate sustenance 
 to such an ideal as the monastic ? Who, studjdng the 
 social, political, and communal activities of the time, 
 would have looked to find, growing freely out of their 
 rough turbulence, and mysteriously feeding upon it, 
 haunts of dreamy contemplation and meditative repose ? 
 Not less seems the contrast the writer remembers 
 between the shaggy trunks and branches of Eastern 
 jungles and the clusters of waxen orchids which, high 
 
200 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 up among the shadows, broke from the rude bark in 
 which they had so unexpectedly taken root. 
 
 Of the two motives we have just glanced at, which 
 together ruled mediaeval hfe, it was not the mystical 
 impulse which, in the following centuries, was to expand 
 and develop, but rather the practical and realistic impulse 
 of which the communes were the centre. Realism, not 
 spiritualism, was, in the immediate future, to dominate 
 Western culture. There has never been a radical change 
 in the Western standpoint. A citizen of the thirteenth 
 century, awakening in present times, would find little 
 in modem progress, with its discoveries and inventions, 
 and applications of science to life, which he would 
 not readily accept. The essentially rational bias of 
 his mind would adapt it to receive all that the 
 Renaissance had to offer. At the same time, accepting 
 modem life, he would look round for something that 
 had dropped out of it. What, among all this reason- 
 ing and analysing and investigating, had become of the 
 old thought of spiritual vision ? What indeed I It 
 would seem to have evaporated. It would seem that, 
 as in. Eastem life the cultivation of the mystical faculty 
 has led to intellectual atrophy and to the soaking of 
 Oriental hfe in the spirit of dreamy acquiescence which 
 mysticism engenders, so, in Western life, the tendency 
 to an exclusively intellectual culture has been to atrophy 
 the mystical faculty and drench life in the material 
 estimates which intellect can best handle. The growth, 
 in short, of intellect in the West is registered not more 
 in its own progress than in its rival's decline. As the 
 time drew on for the birth of the age of reason, men's 
 thoughts assumed a more definitely mundane cast. There 
 are critics who affirm that the decay of monasticism 
 was due to laxity within the religious orders. No, the 
 decay of monasticism was due to the waning of the con- 
 templative instinct throughout the West. While that 
 instinct lasted and maintained itself in Western life monas- 
 ticism kept its health, for it had that in hfe which it could 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 201 
 
 feed on. It was not until the instinct was vitiated by 
 the trend of the Western mind towards rationalism that 
 those who had hitherto looked to a spiritual source for 
 their felicity began to seek it in more mundane recreations. 
 
 One word I would add. It is not enough that we 
 should be able to discern in mediaeval Hfe certain traces 
 of practical and material energy, or certain vestiges of 
 spiritual contemplation. We might discover such in 
 almost any age, and among almost any people, for there 
 are no attributes possible to humanity of which, if we 
 looked close enough, we should not at any time detect 
 the rudiments or the relics. What we want is something 
 very different. Motives dominate art in proportion as 
 they have first dominated life. What we call style in art 
 is the assertion, over the whole area of art, of the influence 
 of certain motives which already have achieved a Uke 
 control over the hfe of the age. It is the leading and 
 governing Hfe-motives which we are after. Have we 
 correctly hit upon them ? Does the reader, when he 
 conjures up in his imagination the age of the craftsman 
 and the monk, see it under the double aspect and domi- 
 nated by the two famihes of ideas which we have spoken 
 of ? If so, then we shall find that on the art also of their 
 epoch the influence of these motives is no less clearly 
 imprinted. 
 
 Mediaeval life and art, then, are typical of what we 
 have called the Christian point of view, in that they 
 attempt a reconcihation of matter and spirit. 
 
 As regards the following period, the period known as 
 the Renaissance, which has lasted to our own day, its 
 general tendency and direction are evident. Mediaeval- 
 ism, uniting mundane and spiritual interests in a high 
 degree of vigour, utters itself, in art, in terms both of 
 form and colour. The Renaissance, remarkable above 
 all for the strongly and specifically intellectual bias 
 which it lent to the human mind, concentrates its atten- 
 tion more and more on the quality of form. The period 
 of the " awakening of the intellect," haUed as the fount 
 
202 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and origin of that strong desire to know, in the concrete 
 intellectual sense, which is the basis of modern science, and 
 indeed of modern civiHsation, is remarkable for a very 
 distinct turning away of human interest from spiritual 
 and emotional afEairs, and an equally pronounced con- 
 centration of human interest on the material and mundane 
 aspects of the universe. This strong, overmastering 
 intellectual stimulus of coiirse had the effect of vitalis- 
 ing and developing all those means of expression which 
 properly belong to intellect, at the same time that the 
 impoverishing of the spiritual faculty had the effect of 
 starving to death the means of expression which belong 
 to spiritual consciousness. These phenomena are familiar 
 to all who are interested in such subjects. It is patent 
 not only that the mind of the Renaissance epoch is con-, 
 centrated on problems of form to the practical exclusion 
 of problems of colour, but also it is clear that this move- 
 ment in favour of form was inaugurated in the very spot 
 where the intellectuEd impulse arose, and that the two, 
 the craving after the intellectual order of ideas and the 
 craving after the mastery of form-expression in which 
 those ideas best utter themselves, grew up as it were 
 hand in hand, the intellectual impulse in life constantly 
 acting upon and nourishing the development of form 
 in art. 
 
 Florence was that city " crowded with culture " in 
 which the Renaissance as an intellectual movement 
 originated. Nowhere else in Christianised Europe down 
 to the present day has intellectualism seemed so beautiful, 
 so dignified, so joyous, so altogether satisf3dng and 
 sufficient a motive in life, as in the Florence of the 
 Renaissance. To her our thoughts still turn. Modem 
 thought, modern criticism, modem science go back to 
 Florence. In the southern half of Italy the Renaissance 
 meant a revival of the pagan joy in life without the 
 revival of pagan culture and thought. In the north it 
 was the other way about, and the scholasticism and dry 
 learning of Padua and Bologna missed the warm, living. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 203 
 
 human side of paganism. Florence alone captured both, 
 and included in her culture the old studiousness while infus- 
 ing into it the old glow. Hence her perpetual inspiration. 
 We have pressed research far in many directions since 
 Pico della Mirandola, like a more romantic Bacon, set out 
 to conquer all knowledge, but we have not left, and never 
 shall leave, Florence behind. For the sake of the fervour 
 with which she testifies, not to specific results, but to the 
 happiness which springs from thinking, we shall turn back 
 to her again and again. We shall ask her to brace our 
 minds, to strengthen and animate us with her own joyful 
 confidence. Penned in and circumscribed by barriers 
 of our own erection, and specialising in narrow plots of 
 learning and research, we may yet once more achieve, as 
 we immerse ourselves in Florentine Hfe, the vision we 
 are so apt to lose sight of, of the beauty and freedom and 
 freshness of intellectual adventure. 
 
 All this is the spirit of Athens over again, and it is not 
 to be wondered at, therefore, that the art of Florence should, 
 in its main intention and direction, take after the art of 
 Athens. Like Athenian art, Florentine art is essentially 
 an art of form. The fact that it uses colour with such a 
 finely descriptive purpose, and the further fact that we 
 ourselves for the most part understand and recognise only 
 that use of it, may dispose us to somewhat over-estimate 
 the attainments of Florentine colour. The truth, how- 
 ever, is that, if we place ourselves in the position 
 of any Florentine painter or sculptor of this period, 
 we shall instantly perceive that our whole attitude 
 towards our subject is governed by intellectual con- 
 siderations, and that we are conceiving the situation, 
 personality, or scene to be depicted entirely as a 
 study and dramatic arrangement of forms. This it 
 is which lends to Renaissance art its air of scientific 
 development. Florentine art is constantly preoccupied 
 with scientific accuracy of representation. Modem art 
 criticism has very rightly specified this tendency. A 
 short time ago our art critics were all expatiating on it 
 
204 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and were all telling us what a great pity it was that a 
 movement, which at one time promised so well, should 
 have been turned into a mere matter of technical know- 
 ledge, chiefly devoting its attention to such bleak and 
 cold-blooded considerations as the laws of perspective, 
 foreshortening, and anatomy, and other details of the 
 science of correct delineation. 
 
 And not only did Florentine art catch its scientific 
 spirit from the essentially scientific disposition of the 
 Florentine mind ; Florentine intellectualism went over 
 Europe, and with it went also the Florentine scientific 
 estimate of art. All over Europe, in consequence of the 
 avidity with which this estimate was adopted, it came 
 to be believed that the chief end of art was accurate 
 representation. 
 
 What Florence did in short was to intellectualise art, 
 or in other words to make it the instrument of expression 
 of an intellectualised order of ideas. First she intel- 
 lectualised our ideas and then she intellectualised our 
 way of expressing our ideas. To any one who follows 
 Renaissance thought and art, this must, I think, be 
 evident. The danger is lest it should be too evident. 
 The danger is lest we set down the Renaissance for an 
 intellectual movement pure and simple, of a simplicity 
 and sincerity equal to the pagan. There are obvious 
 temptations on that side, yet to yield to them would be 
 fatally to misunderstand the whole era. 
 
 St. Francis may be taken as the living prototype of 
 that urgent and insistent protest against the mundane 
 inclination of the Renaissance which is to be traced all 
 through the movement, side-tracking, as it were, its keen 
 intellectualism and investing all its attempts to hve the 
 pagan life over again with that air of feverish makebelieve 
 which never fails to attend them. It is quite obvious, to 
 us who can compare the paganism of the Renaissance 
 with the paganism of Athens and Rome, to us who can 
 appreciate the difference between the over-anxious, over- 
 eager imitation and the calm and self-sufficient reality — 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 205 
 
 it is so obvious that the Florentine experiments in this 
 direction were really much more an attempt to live up 
 to an ideal which had captured the intellectual taste of 
 the day than an unconscious and spontaneous expression 
 of the national hfe. The forced note is always audible. 
 Loudly vocal though it was, the Renaissance was too 
 purely a matter of reasoning and thinking to touch very 
 deeply the lives of the people. Underneath it the spiritual 
 hfe went on. 
 
 How ineradicable that Hfe was the enthusiasms of the 
 people show. St. Francis died in 1226, thirty-nme years 
 before the birth of Dante, and seventy-eight before that 
 of Petrarch. Throughout the century which followed 
 his death the elements which were to determine the 
 character of the Renaissance were rapidly taking shape. 
 It is with Petrarch that we reach the definite point 
 of view of Renaissance culture, but in all movements 
 of this kind — ^movements of the mind — ^it is a question 
 not only of the new philosophy, but of the temperament 
 and mental bias of the period. It will not do to stop 
 at the fact that the ideas coming into vogue were in a 
 preponderating degree humanist and mundane ; it has 
 to be considered on what kind of clay they were acting. 
 This is why it is so essential, in estimating the character 
 and studying the development of the Renaissance, to 
 bear in mind the dimensions and influence of Petrarch's 
 two great predecessors, Dante and St. Francis. For the 
 emotions and impulses which these gave expression to 
 were ingredients in the Italy which the humanists set 
 about paganising. The reader cannot but have noticed 
 how usual it is for a genuinely creative epoch to be pre- 
 ceded by a period of uncertainty and stagnation. The 
 ideals that were vital hitherto seem in such crises to lose 
 their relation to life, and it is on a society which appears 
 to have exhausted its former beliefs that the dawn of the 
 new era breaks. But the beginnings of the Renaissance 
 were not of this character at all. There was nothing 
 effete or worn-out in existing conditions. Petrarch and 
 
2o6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Dante were more or less contemporaries ; that is to say, 
 Petrarch was a youth of seventeen when Dante, at the 
 age of fifty-six, died. Certainly no one will pretend that 
 of these two poets, the one standing for the culture of 
 the Renaissance and the other for the depth and earnest- 
 ness of the Middle Ages, it was the Renaissance poet who 
 represented the chief elements of strength and vitality. 
 On the contrary it was obviously the elder poet who 
 possessed most of these qualities and possessed them in 
 virtue of the fact that he had inherited the mediaeval 
 tradition. Dante's mediaevalism constituted his vitality, 
 just as the Renaissance element in Petrarch constituted 
 his artificiality. There could not be a better illustration 
 of the relative depth of the instincts to which the two 
 ages appealed, nor any better example of the comparatively 
 superficial penetration of the new teaching. 
 
 The truth is the Renaissance cut a figure somewhat out of 
 proportion to its real significance, because being essentially 
 intellectual, and therefore intensely conscious of itself 
 and its purposes, it was able to express itself in literature 
 and art with a captivating logic and fluency. To gauge 
 its limitations it is necessary to bear in mind two orders 
 of events : first, the signs of artificiaUty and affectation 
 in itself, in its art and manners, its worship of the antique 
 and aping of the cult of paganism — characteristics which 
 invest it, in spite of its splendour, with a quite unmistak- 
 able aroma of orange-peel and sawdust ; and secondly, 
 the numerous signs, which are forthcoming if one looks 
 for them, of the existence of another, contrary, more 
 profound spirit, lurking like a shadow and dimly to be 
 discerned behind the mask of intellectualism of the age. 
 The rise of the influence of Savonarola, the convulsions 
 of spiritual excitement and terror into which he could 
 fling the capital of humanism, the wistful and visionary 
 mood which so strangely and persistently blends with 
 the art of the age, from time to time the appearance of 
 directly spiritual personalities, such as we have learned 
 to distinguish as mystics — these are among the evidences 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 207 
 
 forthcoming of the survival of certain instincts, deep sunk 
 in the character and temperament of a race, which, 
 though they might be overlaid and hidden by more 
 articulate qualities for a while, yet remained in existence 
 biding their time. 
 
 Let us cite as an example of these testimonies to the 
 presence of a kind of inward leaven working amid hostile 
 surroundings the career of that devout Franciscan, St. 
 Bernardino, born in the city of Siena, a city which more 
 than any in Italy. has identified itself with the spiritual 
 idea, in the year 1380. Sixty-four years later he lay dying 
 at Aquila, in the Abruzzi, after a life of preaching and 
 exhortation, carried out under circumstances and with 
 results which mark him as among the most potent spiritual 
 influences of the age. The crowds that thronged around 
 his dead body as it lay in state, and all the passionate 
 signs of the veneration and grief of a whole populace 
 which the event called forth, enable us to estimate to 
 some extent the depth and reahty of the instincts to 
 which the saint appealed among the rank and file of the 
 people. 
 
 Over in Florence the Renaissance is in full swing. 
 It wants but five years to the birth of Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent. Donatello is at the summit of his fame. 
 The great age is about to dawn. To all who would 
 penetrate beneath outward appearances and divine the 
 nature of the deeper forces in operation I would commend 
 a moment's careful scrutiny of the events that were 
 happening at Aquila and Florence at this particular 
 moment. The difference between the two is the difference 
 between an experiment in culture carried out by clever 
 people of wealth and importance and an inarticulate con- 
 viction which lay hid in the heart of a people. It serves 
 to remind us that though the Renaissance may outwardly 
 appear purely intellectual yet it is not so inwardly. In- 
 deed, the insincerity of Renaissance art is due to this, 
 that it thinks, or pretends, that the hfe it is expressing 
 is much more purely intellectual than it really is. 
 
2o8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 I have not dealt with the artistic representation of 
 this conflict of ideas during the Renaissance in the follow- 
 ing pages ; I have not done so partly because it is im- 
 possible to deal separately with every interesting crisis 
 in the history of art, and partly because I have already 
 treated this side of the subject pretty fully in the book 
 I have referred to. The Works of Man. The chapter 
 entitled " The Gothic Contribution " in that book gives 
 an account of the constructive energy of Gothic architec- 
 ture, while under the heading " The Rise of the Renais- 
 sance " I have attempted to describe what is best in the 
 intellectual movement. The two chapters bearing most 
 immediately on the issue, however, are those which 
 describe the technical development of Renaissance 
 painting and the difference in spirit between modern 
 and ancient sculpture. In the present volume I have 
 been content to deal with the emotional side of the 
 subject, emphasising especially the significance of the 
 rich colour-schemes attained by Gothic stained glass and 
 the similar deep and glowing tints which Venice derived 
 from Eastern sources. 
 
 At the same time I would end by pointing out as 
 clearly as possible the conjunction at which we are now 
 arrived. I have called the three parts of this book " The 
 Eastern Point of View," " The Western Point of View," 
 and " The Christian Point of View." The last, as I under- 
 stand it, attempts a reconciUation or fusion of the first 
 two. In this Ues its claim to originahty, or claim to 
 constitute the inspiration of a Creative art. The purely 
 spiritual and the purely intellectual ideas had each been 
 separately and assiduously developed. Each of these 
 chief means or vehicles of human enlightenment had 
 been the subject of an exclusive culture by East and West. 
 But hitherto the opposition which seemingly divides 
 spiritual from material things had kept the two apart. 
 It was by its denial of this opposition, by its announce- 
 ment that spirit could enter into matter, and belong to 
 and form part of matter, that Christianity promulgated 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 209 
 
 a new basis of thought and of art, the full significance 
 of which has scarcely yet dawned upon the world. 
 Thence arose a conception of the universe, of Nature, 
 and of man wholly different from any which had been 
 formed before, a conception which made it its object 
 to combine the human and material value of pagan 
 thought with the spirituality of Eastern thought. The 
 new conception rested not on arguments, but on facts. 
 In the fact that the Deity had entered the human state, 
 had adopted materialism, had assumed and practised 
 the responsibilities and duties' of a human being, had 
 preached and sanctioned the ordinary virtues of kind- 
 ness and neighbourly charity, had loved others and won 
 the love of others, nay, had even loved the birds that flew 
 from tree to tree and the flowers that grew wild in the 
 fields, was contained as full and explicit a recognition 
 of the earthly state as any pagan could desire. But it 
 was a recognition not confined within pagan hmitations. 
 Having thus seized upon all that was significant in the 
 pagan outlook Christianity proceeded to annex also 
 what was valuable in Eastern thought ; it proceeded to 
 demonstrate that the human state, though significant, 
 though real, is not final, but debouches into, and fulfils 
 itself in, a spiritual state. Whoever cares to pause and 
 dwell on the facts, whether alleged or actual, of Christi- 
 anity must in fact perceive that the Incarnation and the 
 Ascension are indeed expressly designed to appeal both 
 to Western and Eastern thought — in other words, to 
 include those opposite faculties in man which deal with 
 mundane and spiritual considerations. 
 
 I say that this is what constitutes the originality of 
 Christianity. This is what gives it a position as com- 
 manding and entirely its own as that of either of the two 
 great philosophies which had preceded it. This, too, is 
 the secret of its instant and strong bearing upon art, for 
 by this means does it draw what hitherto was abstract 
 and inexpressible in spiritual thought within reach of 
 the means of expression which art possesses. 
 
 p 
 
210 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 The character of the thought always dictates the art. 
 The reader will remember that, in deahng with Eastern 
 thought, we were dealing with a thought of an entirely 
 abstract kind, which refuses to recognise even the existence 
 of Nature or of matter ; the consequence being that all 
 that Nature and matter contribute to art, — ^reasonableness, 
 the sense of form, the gift of articulation, — are absent 
 from Eastern art. But this tendency to abstraction 
 always produces the same effects, and we might equally 
 have instanced the Jewish race with its rigidly super- 
 natural outlook and curiously similar deficiency in art. 
 The Jewish idea of Deity, almost as abstract as the 
 Hindu philosophical idea, favoured the conception, a 
 vitally racial one and always present to the imagination 
 of the chosen people, of a Being which might speak to its 
 elect by signs, or in thunder and through veiling clouds, 
 but whose spiritual nature was too absolute ever to reveal 
 itself in concrete form. The idea of an invisible, almighty 
 Guardian, watching over the Jewish nation, directing its 
 destinies and confounding its enemies, might inspire a 
 lofty and solemn poetry, but could afford no opportunity 
 for art. Consequently, to the Jews a poetry of this order, 
 a poetry of more than Miltonic solemnity and grandeur, 
 seems to have been as native as sculpture to the Greeks, 
 while of the formative arts they were so essentially 
 ignorant and careless that they were obliged to borrow 
 from other races, or painfully to train for the occasion 
 artists and architects for the erection of their own 
 temples. Fiercely the Jews themselves insisted upon 
 this Umitation. Fiercely they struck at the latent 
 desire to define and render intelligible the abstract 
 thought : " Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven 
 image " ; an abstract God, " Him only shalt thou serve." 
 The command broke the back of art, for it bound the 
 national conviction to an idea which art could not partici- 
 pate in expressing. ' 
 
 Through Jewish wanderings and Jewish history what 
 is more pathetic than the sternly suppressed, but in- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 211 
 
 stinctively renewed efforts of the people to humanise 
 their austerely abstract faith ? What is this besetting 
 tendency which possesses them to run after false gods 
 and bow down to stocks and stones ? It is the craving 
 of human nature somehow to get the eternal within reach 
 of its own faculties. Thou shalt not make images ; 
 thou shalt not define, or in any way reduce to the human 
 standard and the proportions of finite thought that which 
 is abstract and divine. The Atman is silence ; the Holy 
 of Holies is empty. Between the human and the divine 
 a bottomless gulf is fixed. 
 
 It was by the bridging of this gulf that the opportunity 
 of the artistic faculty was restored to it. " The Word 
 was made flesh " is just as much the foundation of 
 Christian art as it is the foundation of Christian thought 
 It restored to art, what all art needs, a participation in 
 the governing thought of the race. The reader cannot 
 fail to have observed that throughout the whole course 
 of Christian art the distinction between the Jewish and 
 Christian elements, between that which is not expressible 
 in art and that which is expressible, is preserved. The 
 Almighty, the Jewish abstract element, forms no part of 
 Christian art. It forms no part of any art. How can 
 you represent as a person that which never had a person, 
 as a shape that which never took shape ? Numbers of 
 artists have essayed the task and not one has succeeded.^ 
 That impossible figure, of which all the attributes are 
 spiritual, has been introduced into no composition save 
 to its detriment. Christian art is the art of Christ. 
 Throughout its greatest periods the presence and person 
 of Christ, and every action of His life from His birth to 
 His death, have been the dominant inspiration. More 
 than that, the aroma, as it were, the sentiment caught 
 from His human character and teaching have pervaded 
 and exalted, as motives in art, even those scenes and 
 events in which He Himself does not appear. 
 
 To reflect upon this is to perceive that the explanation 
 ^ Blake is the sole exception. 
 
212 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 that Jewish and Christian art differ only racially will not 
 hold. The cause of the difference lies in the guiding 
 thought. The thought that was artistically barren in 
 Jewish hands remained barren in Christian hands. But 
 to this was added another thought, a thought that was 
 not purely spiritual and abstract, but hunian and concrete 
 as well. This was the basis of Christian art. Christian 
 art, as an art of definition and a mode of utterance, was 
 made possible by the Incarnation. 
 
 In reviewing the whole of the history of that art 
 this blending purpose of Christianity has to be borne in 
 mind. Mediaeval hfe and art represent the best attempt 
 so far made to realise this ideal. But the attempt is not 
 a complete success. The flaw both in mediaeval life 
 and art consists in the insufficient intellectual develop- 
 ment of the period. Mediaeval life, we must always 
 remember, precedes the Renaissance, precedes the intel- 
 lectual awakening. It is not, therefore, and cannot be 
 in the full sense, intellectual. Its reasoning tendency, 
 its strong practical inclination, its obvious sympathy with 
 mundane and material interests promise intellectual 
 development in the near future. But that stage is not 
 yet reached, and both mediaeval life and art suffer in 
 consequence. Neither think half as deeply as they feel. 
 The best in both springs from emotion. 
 
 Nevertheless the two elements are both represented. 
 The strong and vigorous mundane instinct in life dictates 
 an equally pronounced artistic energy, while the spiritual 
 depth adds the note of richness and splendour which is 
 so rare in the West. Most people for this reason regard 
 the mediaeval epoch as the moment when we attained 
 a certain completeness of life, albeit of a more or less 
 rough and rude order. 
 
 Then follows the Renaissance, and there ensues 
 immediately that lopsidedness of progress from which 
 we still suffer. The intellectual idea was vigorously 
 cultivated, the emotional dropped. The reason Renais- 
 sance culture affects only the surface of life is that, in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW 213 
 
 renouncing the spiritual element, it renounced the popular 
 element, the element which forms the connecting link 
 between art and the national life. It renounced this in 
 order to promote the idea of art as a matter of culture 
 and the perquisite of an exclusive and privileged 
 minority. Henceforth the national life lost the pleasure 
 which it can derive from art, while art lost the robust- 
 ness and sincerity which it derives from Ufe. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 
 
 The mystical or spiritual element which belongs to mediaeval life, 
 and in the sphere of life expresses itself in monasticism, expresses 
 itself in art in depth and richness of colour. While that spirit lives in 
 life it lives in art ; when it dies out of life and makes way for the reason- 
 ing Renaissance the deep colour ebbs out of art, making way for the 
 exactitude of form. 
 
 We dwelt in the last chapter on the duahsm of mediaeval 
 life — ^its vivid and virile energy on the one hand, which 
 translated all ideas into terms of action, and on the other 
 its inward spirit of mystical contemplation. There is 
 little need to enlarge on the former motive, as it has been 
 translated into terms of art, for every one who is in the 
 least conversant with Gothic architecture and sculpture 
 must be aware of just the same quality of virile energy in 
 the art of the period which life itself contains. We have 
 all followed with wonder the course of the problems in 
 construction proposed and solved by mediaeval masons. 
 We have all marvelled at the lofty vaults which do battle 
 with each other with thrust and counter-thrust, at the 
 rapidly ascending vaulting shafts which shoot upward 
 to break and diverge into the ribs of the vaults, at the 
 buttresses and flying buttresses which push against the 
 giddy height of the choir. The whole structural scheme 
 is none the less replete with energy that, owing to the 
 equilibrium of the forces engaged, it is frozen into a 
 precarious immobility. No less familiar to us are the 
 signs in detail of the same vigour, cropping out in decora- 
 
 .214 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 215 
 
 tion and sculptured features, which describe with a homely 
 emphasis and rough power the customs and habits and 
 occupations of craftsmen and ordinary working people — 
 the carpenter and mason, the husbandman and plough- 
 man, each at his toil — ^together with many a tale and 
 legend embodying the simple but fervent faiths and fears 
 of the age. 
 
 We know that side of Gothic art. But there is a side 
 to that art which we know less well, or of which at least 
 the meaning is less apparent, a side which answers to the 
 vein of mystical emotion out of which monasticism drew 
 its vitaUty; there is a note of strange, deep colour, 
 solemn and dreamy, which seems in the Gothic interior, 
 amid the strenuous active lines and battling vaults, to 
 fill much the same place as the mystical faculty filled in 
 mediaeval life, rather, that is, to bathe it with a light from 
 elsewhere than actually to belong to its own composition. 
 In England we are badly o£E for early stained glass, for 
 glass of the thirteenth century, and we are not therefore 
 generally very familiar with its character and effect. 
 We must visit the French cathedrals to appreciate its 
 full significance. The cathedrals of France — Rheims, 
 Le Mans, Bourges, above all Chartres — differ from our 
 English cathedrals, from York and Canterbury, in that 
 the quantity and completeness of their glass is sufl&cient 
 to envelop the whole interior in a single scheme of solemn 
 chiaroscuro and vivid glowing tints, whereas the English 
 examples are of so fragmentary a nature that they cannot 
 achieve anything approaching unity of effect, and a few 
 isolated and local spots or shafts of colour is all they 
 amount to. It is impossible to estimate the effect of 
 stained glass under such conditions. The difference 
 between such isolated colour-spots and a colour-scheme 
 which floods a whole church with its rich beams and dark 
 shadows is the difference between the measured approval, 
 or admiration, which we bestow on a particular object, 
 and one of those overmastering emotional moods which 
 seem imposed upon us by our whole environment and 
 
2i6 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 which we accept as unquestioningly as the air breathed 
 by us. No one can submit to the influence of one of the 
 great French interiors without perceiving that this total 
 emotional effect was the end aimed at and steadily held 
 in view. It is an effect at once so powerful and at the 
 same time so markedly peculiar in character and quality 
 that it is impossible to doubt that it expressed or em- 
 bodied a human impulse, an impulse of like quality to 
 itself, in the life of that age which craved and found this 
 outlet for itself in art. 
 
 Mr. Lewis Day, in his admirable work on stained 
 windows, speaks from time to time of the profound 
 emotional influence of the great examples of the art. 
 " To sit there," he writes of Chartres, " upon some 
 summer afternoon, when the light is softened by a gentle 
 fall of rain, is to be thrilled by the beauty of it all. It 
 is as though, in a dream, you found yourself in some huge 
 cavern, lit only by the light of jewels, myriads of them 
 gleaming darkly through the gloom. It is difficult to 
 imagine anything more mysterious, solemn or impressive." 
 He adds the tale told of a child " sitting for the first time 
 in his fife in some French church, awed by the great rose 
 window facing him, when all at once the organ burst into 
 music, and it seemed to him, he said, as ii the window 
 spoke. Words could not better express thajrthat," adds 
 Mr. Day, " the powerful impression of early mosaic glass, 
 the solemnity of its beauty, the way it belongs to the 
 grandeur of the great church, the something deep in us 
 vibrating in answer to it." 
 
 Uncertain and vague in form and outline, conveying 
 no very distinct meaning, telling no story, yet of the 
 utmost intensity and richness of colour, these early 
 windows are in their nature sensuous rather than intel- 
 lectual. They address themselves to the feelings. And 
 this they do purposely and deliberately. Many people 
 seem to imagine that the aim of the twelfth- and thirteenth- 
 century craftsman was to embody in his window the 
 meaning of a picture, to depict a scene, and that this was 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 217 
 
 done rudely and imperfectly owing to his imperfect 
 technical skill. But the purpose of the early craftsman 
 was not this at all. In the methods he adopted he was 
 not influenced by any consideration of facility of form 
 delineation, but simply by the results he was able to 
 obtain in colour. Rich, deep, and pure colour was the 
 end he sought. If the methods he employed refused to 
 adapt themselves to the representation of form, that did 
 not trouble him provided they yielded the right results 
 in colour. Colour, not form, was his object, as the means 
 he adopted as well as the effects he achieved prove. 
 Early glass, or pot metal, as it is called, was obtained by 
 fusing the molten glass in the pot with metallic oxide, 
 by which means the glass was coloured all through and 
 the depth and lustre of tint obtained which are its peculiar 
 characteristics. But such glass lent itself necessarily 
 very clumsily to the purposes of draughtsmanship. Each 
 particle of colour was represented by a separate fragment 
 of glass, and each fragment had to be separately leaded 
 into its place in the general design. It follows that the 
 subject-matter of the early windows is of the rudest 
 possible description, yet so little does this signify that, 
 as every one knows, early glass can be used to this day in 
 collected fragments and particles, without any regard to 
 the original design, to form a mere blazonry of splendid 
 colour. Beautiful effects have been obtained in this 
 way by collecting broken bits of early glass and patching 
 them together. So far as subject-matter is concerned 
 they are, of course, a mere jumble, but they attract none 
 the less powerfully by their beauty of colour, and the fact 
 that they thus attract by colour when aU significance of 
 form has departed— nay, the fact that the obliteration 
 of form has not apparently diminished in any way the 
 charm of such windows— is a remarkable testimony to 
 the truth of Mr. Day's assertion that " the beauty of 
 early glass is in its colour, not in its form." 
 
 Each age adopts or invents the artistic methods suited 
 to express its own feelings or ideas. The mediaeval age 
 
2i8 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 relied chiefly on the pot-metal system of colouring glass, 
 which was purely a colour-system. Later, as the Renais- 
 sance approached and men inchned more and more to 
 trust reason and intellect, when the tendency was for 
 ideas to grow more definite and less emotional^ processes 
 were developed in accordance with these new require- 
 ments. These processes consisted in colouring the glass 
 by painting or staining its surface by hand and then 
 burning the hand - painting into the glass. By these 
 means a faciUty and freedom in drawing figures and 
 depicting scenes was attained which had been quite 
 absent from the earlier method. It was no longer neces- 
 sary to use separate glass fragments framed in leaden 
 strips for each tint. Gradations of colour and the 
 modelUng of forms could now be freely rendered by hand. 
 The glass was no longer colour, but a surface to be 
 coloured. I do not mean to infer that the pot-metal 
 system and surface-painting system were the inventions 
 respectively of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods. 
 Surface-painting of a very simple kind was early under- 
 stood and practised. The " paint " consisted of powdered 
 flint glass and peroxides of iron and manganese ground 
 up together and laid on with a long-haired pencil or 
 " tracing-brush." The process secured dark or opaque 
 effects, and could be used to Indicate detail (hair, eyes, 
 eyebrows, etc.), in black on a paler ground. It could 
 also render small lights by blocking in the background 
 and leaving the desired portion clear. These were aids 
 to the delineation of form, but were of a very rude and 
 primitive kind. Nevertheless they represented the side 
 of the subject on which a rational and scientific tempera- 
 ment woiild naturally concentrate, for they contained 
 obvious suggestions of a capacity to draw or depict scenes 
 and objects. 
 
 Again an early expedient, not entirely unknown to the 
 mediaeval craftsman, but not used extensively until the 
 pictorial ideal was developed, was the " flashing " of 
 glass, by which a thin slab of coloured glass was fused to 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 219 
 
 a slab of white and the surface then ground through 
 where required to give brilliant light effects. Early in 
 the fourteenth century another discovery was made, the 
 discovery namely that white glass could be stained 
 yellow by the appUcation of a solution of silver. This 
 not only produced a certain variety of pale or rich yellow, 
 but was extremely ductile as a medium. It could be 
 laid on in broad washes or used to depict the most delicate 
 details, and being a surface stain was of course quite 
 independent of the restrictions of leads. Most decisive 
 of all, during the sixteenth century various metallic oxides 
 were used to produce more or less transparent colours. 
 These were known as enamel colours to distinguish them 
 from the pot-metal colours. This of course enabled the 
 artist to paint his picture on the surface of the glass with 
 hitherto undreamt-of facility. During the early period 
 the only actual colour obtainable had been the solid 
 stain. Now colours could be rendered by the brush. 
 At last the artist had got what he wanted. He could 
 depict a scene and tell a story. All these changes are in 
 the same direction. Each invention adds to the ease of 
 depicting form while it detracts from the capacity to 
 render colour. To follow the processes of the age is to 
 recognise beyond the possibility of doubt the direction 
 in which the mind of man was tending. All the curiosity 
 and alertness of intelligence that could be brought to 
 bear upon the subject were devoted to the task of turn- 
 ing it into a vehicle for form, while no one cared, or, it 
 would seem, even noticed, that by so doing they were 
 totally destrojang its efficiency as a vehicle for colour. 
 
 These changes made themselves felt in two directions. 
 Form, subject - painting, the desire to depict a scene, 
 to describe an event, became more aiid more the 
 object of window-painting. Every feature and detail 
 of dress and expression, the smile, the upturned gaze, 
 the tear in the eye, the ringlets of golden hair are 
 all microscopically delineated by the aid of the new 
 expedients. But at the same time, unnoticed, as we 
 
220 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 may suppose, and unregretted, for men's desires were 
 turned elsewhere, the glory of colour of the old win- 
 dows faded away. Surface -painting could render form 
 freely, but it could not render colour as the old style had 
 rendered it. Each age achieved that which it sought. 
 The earlier age sought and achieved incomparable rich- 
 ness of colour, but left unsolved the problem of form. 
 The later age took up that problem and solved it ; but 
 even while it was in the act of solving it, while its hand 
 grew more facile and subtle, and its rendering of its subject 
 matter more delicate, exact, and skilful, there was ebbing 
 out of it all the time, surely and steadily, that deep and 
 jewel-like glow which the earlier craftsmen had set their 
 whole hearts upon attaining. 
 
 It is upon the earlier style that I wish to concentrate 
 the reader's attention. It appears that, in the pursuit of 
 pure colour, the early craftsman kept in view, as a test 
 or standard of comparison, the colour of gems. They 
 worked, Mr. Day tells us, in deliberate imitation of 
 precious stones. The glass they turned out " actually 
 went by the name of ruby, sapphire, emerald, and so on," 
 and it was even fabled that sapphires themselves were 
 ground down and mixed with the molten glass to give 
 it its deep blue tint. Such a standard of comparison 
 indicates the preference accorded in thirteenth-century 
 work to the motive of colour. At the same time, while 
 the glazier used gems as the test of his individual tints, it 
 was not from any arrangement of gems that he had con- 
 ceived the idea of coloured-glass design. The Byzantine 
 enamellers, with the same end in view of making pure 
 and perfect colours, had already produced work like 
 enough in its methods to glazing to serve as a model. 
 We have but to think, as Mr. Day reminds us, of a plaque 
 of translucent Byzantine enamel and " imagine it magni- 
 fied manj^old to realise how likely it is that it was from 
 enamel the Gothic glaziers first took the idea of coloured 
 windows." Mr. Day supports this conclusion with 
 various arguments, into which I cannot here enter. But 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 221 
 
 indeed the derivation is, I believe, accepted. The Abbe 
 Tercier, after pointing out that the art of staining glass 
 arose in the neighbourhood of Limoges and under the 
 influence of its famous school of enamellers, goes on to 
 remark that there was a close connection of long standing 
 between Limoges itself and Venice. A Venetian colony 
 of glass-workers had established itself in Limoges as early 
 as 979, through which the influence of the East on the 
 Western school of enamellers was immediately exerted. 
 Of course, the same influence — ^what we call the Byzantine 
 influence — to a greater or less extent affected all Europe, 
 but it was for the most part a fitful and variable influence. 
 Wherever anything like direct contact with the East was 
 set up it never failed to dominate Western artistic ideals, 
 while at the same time the more untouched and remoter 
 districts were almost entirely cut off from it. Herself 
 profoundly Orientalised, Venice was as much the medium 
 between East and West in matters of art as in matters of 
 merchandise, and the close connection set up by Limoges 
 with Venice was tantamount to a close connection with 
 Constantinople. Via Venice the East darted into the 
 heart of Europe a motive which was to produce great 
 effects on European art. 
 
 What that motive was may be explained in a sentence. 
 It was the recognition of colour as, in itself, a sufficing 
 artistic ideal. What always distinguishes Oriental colour 
 is its own glow and richness, apart from definite meanings 
 or explanatory purposes attaching to it. The East feeds 
 on colour and is content. The West regards colour as a 
 property of things, and thinks of it in connection with 
 the objects to which it belongs. The difference is the 
 difference between intellectual and sensuous or emotional 
 apprehension. An intellectual people, a people whose 
 instinct it is to examine and define, to analyse the con- 
 tents, construction, uses, and significance of all it sees, 
 will utter itself in the artistic sphere in the arts of form. 
 Form is the intellectual act of definition, and whoever 
 observes any great and decisive movement of intellectual 
 
222 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 development against a background of comparative 
 barbarism — such, for example, as the Greek intellectual 
 movement or the Renaissance intellectual movement — 
 will remark that the awakened intellectual sense expresses 
 itself at once in art in a new and almost startling realisa- 
 tion of the significance of form. And yet the very' 
 strength of this perception of the value of form carries 
 with it a danger to another great artistic vehicle. A 
 people whose intelligence is always active, always scrutinis- 
 ing, separating, defining, a people in love with the quality 
 of form in things, will inevitably subordinate emotional 
 considerations to its own intellectual mode of appre- 
 hension. But what does that mean ? It means that 
 such a people, the more it exalts form, the more it will 
 tend to treat colour as a mere attribute of form and one 
 of the means of distinguishing and appraising it. Such 
 a use of colour cannot and does not disengage its full 
 power and influence, for it does not accord with the 
 nature of colour. The nature of colour, considered in 
 itself, is not intellectual, but emotional. Colour does 
 not address itself to the understanding, but directly to 
 the feelings, and only when it is subjected to form does 
 it submit to an intellectual valuation. Then, indeed, 
 the first consideration is that its meaning, or interpreta- 
 tion, should be correct, and that like a good adjective, 
 it should rightly describe the form it belongs to. Its 
 primary value under these circimistances ceases to be . 
 its own intrinsic, emotional value, and becomes the intel- 
 lectual value which it derives from form. 
 
 Let the reader look around him anywhere in the West ; 
 let him look at our clothes, our furniture, our ornaments, 
 at our churches and cathedrals, or at the orderly streets 
 of our great cities, and inevitably he will notice that the 
 quaUty of form in things is the governing quality, that 
 it is this which is brought out and articulated with care 
 and accuracy, and that, if colour is used at all, it is used 
 decoratively, or as it may be called descriptively — that 
 is, in subordination to form and as a means for its more 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 223 
 
 attractive definition. But let him look around in the East 
 and he will find the very opposite of this. It might seem 
 that forms here have all been made of wax, so melted 
 down are they as if by the hot sun's action. Not a line 
 is true, not a surface smooth, not a shape exact. And 
 as the forms have melted so have the colours run. Forms 
 which are not strong and accurate cannot retain control 
 over colour. It sHps from their grasp. It ceases to be 
 decorative and descriptive. The intellectual value it 
 drew from form it loses, but it regains in the act its own 
 intrinsic emotional value. I have spoken in an earlier 
 chapter of the bazaars of old Arab or Persian cities and 
 of the coloured twiUght which reigns there. The passages 
 are mere tunnels rudely scooped out ; through occasional 
 gratings a beam or two struggles down into the interior ; 
 the shops are holes in the wall, or smugglers' caves stuffed 
 with rich bales and cargoes. Whence does the colour 
 come ? You hardly know. Some comes from those 
 heaps of carpets and ghmmering gold embroideries which 
 are half hidden in the shop-hole and half disgorged on to 
 the ground without. Some is contributed by the turbans 
 and garments of the silent-footed figures that drift past 
 in the gloom. But, indeed, it seems to belong to nothing 
 very definitely. It bums in the shadows and dies away 
 in the darkness, pertaining apparently less to particular 
 objects than to the glow in which the whole interior is 
 wrapt. 
 
 Such is a ghmpse of Oriental life — a glimpse of the 
 surroundings which Eastern habit unconsciously fashions 
 for itself to dwell in. How is the same idea uttered in 
 art ? We have stood under the mosaic domes and vaults 
 of Byzantine churches. Here, again, is the twilight of 
 rich colour. Through the dark shadows the gold of the 
 background reddens, blurred with darker tints of inlaid 
 figures of saints or angels. But these colours define no 
 objects. There are, strangely enough, no objects to define. 
 The old exact forms, architraves, archivolts, cornices, 
 and the rest of them have disappeared. Their place is 
 
224 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 taken by deep-curved apses and softly hollowed domes 
 and simple ponderous vaults, the undulations of which 
 seem all to mingle and fuse together in a single over- 
 arching, uneven canopy, kneaded out of colour and dark 
 gold. How wonderful and deep is the effect of such tints 
 — tints which awaken no particular and discriminating 
 attention, but which blend with the darkness and the 
 shadows, which enfold us in their mystery and richness, 
 and which, insensibly to ourselves, call forth in us a mood 
 like to their own aspect ! 
 
 The influence of the East is always of the same kind. 
 What is the secret of Venetian colour ? What is the 
 difference between a Tintoretto or a Titian and any two 
 of the Florentines ? It is obvious enough. The Floren- 
 tines use colour in the Western way, to define form, while 
 the Venetians use it in the Eastern way, for its own sake 
 — that is to say, they create a powerful suffusion of colour 
 and chiaroscuro, in the mingled richness and darkness 
 of which the limitations of form are consumed and 
 obliterated. 
 
 We have taken three examples of Oriental colour — 
 an ordinary Eastern bazaar, a church of the style adapted 
 from the colour-instinct of the Persians, and the school of 
 painting of a city knit to the East by the dearest ties of 
 dependence and self-interest. All these are alike : where 
 shall we find a fourth to add to their number ? The 
 reader is standing inside the west door of Chartres. The 
 place is dark, or at least very dim, but the gloom that 
 pervades it is shot and indescribably mingled with the 
 beams of ruby and azure and golden brown cast by the 
 multitude of thirteenth-century windows by which the 
 interior is rather coloured than lit. " It is as though, 
 in a dream, you found yourself in some huge cavern, lit 
 only by the light of jewels, myriads of them gleaming 
 darkly through the gloom." The reader does not need 
 to be told that this kind of colouring is essentially Oriental 
 in character. He is quite prepared for Mr. Day's state- 
 ment that " coloured glass comes to us from the East," 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 225 
 
 and the Venetian connection with Limoges falls into place 
 as an expected Unk and opportune solution. The fact is 
 that stronger than any extrinsic evidence is the intrinsic 
 evidence of the colour itself. All that we said about 
 colour for colour's sake, as contrasted with colour used 
 to define form, applies here with signal force. I have 
 already pointed out that the methods of the early glaziers 
 were especially adapted to the attainment of the deep, 
 jewel-like tints in which they dehghted, but were very 
 ill adapted to the representation of form. The effects 
 that reign in Chartres Cathedral were latent in the first 
 processes of the art of window-staining. They guided the 
 craftsman's earliest experiments and drew him on step 
 by step along the road that ended here. Alike in the 
 original motive and in this its final achievement, the value 
 of colour, the power of colour to suffice and satisfy, is the 
 guiding thought. That is the Oriental note in art as in 
 Ufe. In the East colour is stronger than form. In the 
 West form is stronger than colour. But when we say 
 this let us not forget what we imply by it. We imply 
 that in the West the intellectual mood of defining and 
 formulating predominates, whereas in the East the 
 emotional and contemplative mood predominates. The 
 visitor to Chartres will feel this. He will feel that not 
 only have we here a very striking and wonderful exhibition 
 of colour, but that the colour is of a kind which affects 
 him in a peculiar way, which appeals with force to one 
 particular side of his nature. He will, in short, acknow- 
 ledge the emotional influence of a style of colouring which 
 seems by its own intensity to have burnt up the forms 
 and shapes of things, and therefore addresses itself wholly 
 to the feelings and not at all to the understanding. I 
 gather that Mr. Day, appreciative critic though he is, 
 rather resents, or is sometimes a little oppressed by, the 
 emotional character of early glass. " A sense of colour 
 in which there is no too definite form to break the charm " 
 has its fascination for him ; but yet " there comes a 
 point in our satisfaction in mere beauty," he thinks, " at 
 
226 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 which we feel the want of a meaning in it." The remark 
 is interesting, and worth quoting because it represents the 
 typical Western standpoint in matters of art. All the 
 same it does not convey his final judgment ; it was spoken 
 in a moment of mental restlessness. He, and we too, have 
 in us a mood which can respond to the mood depicted 
 there in the church. We feel with him that " something 
 deep in us " vibrates in answer to the mystery, the brood- 
 ing richness and the splendour of the twilight in which 
 we stand. How should we not feel it ? We, too, are of 
 the East, and, cased as we are in Western intellectuaUsm 
 and scientific tricks, there are fountains of feeling not 
 dried up in us. Something deep in us, something deeper 
 than Athens, deeper than the Renaissance, recognises the 
 inarticulate language of the soul. It is the East, the echo 
 of what we once were. We have not lost that most 
 ancient heritage. We retain it, but as a subconscious 
 instinct only. It has never in the West blossomed into 
 spontaneous expression. Whenever in art the signs of it 
 are seen, whenever the beauty of art resides " in its colour, 
 not in its form," traces of a direct inspiration from the 
 East will be discernible. 
 
 I have more than once suggested that the element of 
 emotional contemplation which nms through mediaeval- 
 ism strikes one as more or less at variance with the 
 character of the robust and strenuous mediaeval life. 
 Personally I feel the same about stained glass and Gothic 
 architecture. There is an incongruousness of idea between 
 them. It may not detract from the effect of either, but 
 it is there. The root idea of Gothic is visibly articulated 
 construction. Its whole system of lofty vaults, pre- 
 cariously balanced and pressing each against each, is an 
 active system of thrust and counter-thrust, and the 
 significance of the architecture depends largely on the 
 vividness with which it explains, by the intercommunica- 
 tion of its lines and ribs and buttresses, its structural 
 intentions to the onlooker. So vividly does the style 
 do this that the forces which animate it seem visibly to 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 227 
 
 flow off its vaults, like streams from mountain sides, till 
 they converge and run to earth in the piers and flying 
 buttresses which support the whole structure. The whole 
 efEect, indeed, of Gothic architecture is so much felt to 
 depend on this process of vivid articulation that it is the 
 boast of the style that even its ornament and slightest 
 decorative details are in their nature structural — ^that 
 is to say, that they serve but to emphasise and draw 
 attention to the main constructive design. 
 
 The elaborate system of adjustment, the equilibrium, 
 built up and calculated, of thrust and counter-thrust 
 throughout those lofty curves and vaults, the construction 
 of all the struggling and expanding forces of the edifice 
 on certain fortified points are characteristics which pro- 
 claim the building before us to be, before all things, a 
 study of structural form. It is visited by those rich 
 beams of colour, but they are not — ^it is the difference 
 between the Gothic and Byzantine styles — part of it. 
 So it is with the life of the age. Our ancestors were doers, 
 not dreamers. The future of the race lay less in the 
 cloisters than in the market-place and workshop. I 
 think, then, that if, before we had any knowledge of the 
 ultimate effects of Gothic, its structural idea had been 
 explained to us, so that we reaUsed how much the style 
 depends for its efEect on the clear articulation of its con- 
 structive purpose, we should be very far from associating 
 such an idea with the semi-darkness and dim, rich mystery 
 of such an interior as that of Chartres. Between the 
 vigorously expressed structural scheme and the twilight 
 of rich colour which veils and obscures it there is a certain 
 profound incongruity, and that incongruity is precisely 
 the same in character as that which seemed to exist in 
 mediaeval life itself between its strenuously active im- 
 pulses and the mystical, contemplative instinct which so 
 strangely haunted it. 
 
 In what I have here said I have endeavoured, neces- 
 sarily very imperfectly and briefly, and trusting much to 
 the reader's willingness to eke out my argument with his 
 
228 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 own supplementary knowledge, to indicate the common 
 origin and natural connection between something in 
 mediaeval life and something in mediaeval art. We have, 
 on the one hand, a vein of mysticism running through 
 mediaeval life, which may be traced, through many ducts 
 and channels, mainly Hellenic, and of which Neoplatinism 
 is perhaps the chief, to its home in the East. On the other 
 hand, we have a suffusion of glowing colour, an equally 
 marked and peculiar trait in mediaeval art, which may 
 also be traced back to a like source. Further, between 
 these two, between the mystical mood which deliberately 
 excludes the actual that it may indulge its inclination 
 for purely emotional contemplation, and the gorgeous yet 
 solemn colour-scheme which dissolves and veils the 
 exactitudes of form-definition that it may make its 
 sensuous influence the more felt, there exists, as it seems 
 to me, a similitude of character which all susceptible 
 minds must feel and acknowledge. When we find two 
 such phenomena as these confronting and, as it were, 
 balancing each other, living and flourishing together, and 
 together declining and dying out, is it a forced conclusion to 
 suppose that they are united as cause and effect, and that 
 the emotional scheme of colour, as I may call it, is the ex- 
 pression in terms of aft of the mysticism in mediaeval life ? 
 There remains one word to add in support of this 
 conclusion. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in 
 England were centuries of gradual preparation for the 
 Renaissance. Those centuries are marked, in life, by 
 the secularisation of the national mind and character, and 
 the development of rational habits of thought. In the 
 branch of art we are concerned with they are signalised 
 by the fading of the earlier rich and solemn colouring and 
 the substitution of a style in which the significance of 
 form and subject is the ruling motive. I have heard 
 many explanations of this artistic change. To me the 
 satisfying explanation is that colour in art died out and 
 gave place to form because in life mysticism was dying 
 out and giving place to intellectualism. 
 
STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS 229 
 
 Would the reader like to ask himself how it is with 
 us now ? We realise the beauty and feel the influence of 
 these old windows far more than we used to do. It was 
 but lately they were reckoned barbaric ; now they are 
 prized at their weight in gold. But what else ? Can 
 any one read contemporary literature without being aware 
 that the spirit of mysticism is yearly more and more 
 influencing and colouring the mind of the present age ? 
 It is natural that the awakening of the old emotion in us 
 should put us in sympathy with its own artistic influence. 
 But from whence do they come, to-day, these mystical 
 currents of- emotion ? They do not arise out of Western 
 habits of thought, they are foreign to the intellectual and 
 scientific inclination of our own mind. They come from 
 the East which is their home and dwelling-place, from the 
 East which contributes these emotions to life just as it 
 contributes its own dark and glowing colours to art. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 Not only were Venice's culture and ideas and civilisation generally 
 taken from the East, but the actual temperament of her people and all 
 the intimate habits of their daily lives have the same origin. To the 
 very core of her being she is sensuous rather than intellectual. This 
 is the view of life which her own famous colour school of art expresses. 
 
 Venice's position in regard to the Renaissance is peculiar 
 among the States of Italy. From the main current of 
 Renaissance ideas, from the intellectualism of the age, 
 she stood apart. She offered, indeed, to all men of letters, 
 to all poets, students, and scholars, a ready and hospitable 
 asylum. She welcomed them warmly and was proud of 
 their sojourn in her midst. The security, the splendour, 
 and the repose of the floating city, moored near to, yet 
 separated from, the mainland, rendered her a quite ideal 
 asylum for honoured thinkers and writers. Hither came 
 Uberti and the critical Erasmus, and Galileo and Sarpi 
 and Petrarch and Giordano Bruno and Tasso. Here was 
 established, but by foreigners, towards the end of the 
 fifteenth century, the celebrated Aldine Press, the effect 
 of which was to give solidity and consistency to the new 
 learning. Venice through these years figures as a 
 patroness of culture, but yet not one man of real intel- 
 lectual eminence issued from the richest and most magnifi- 
 cent city of Italy. She was fond of entertaining men of 
 genius, but she never bred them. She never experienced 
 that " sacred thirst " with which the rest of Italy " sucked 
 at the flagon " of the new knowledge. We have to descend 
 some way in the scale of intellectual achievement before 
 
 230 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 231 
 
 we come to Venice's contributions, nor were these the- 
 fruit of minds that convey an inspiration and an impetus, 
 minds whose fervent love of ideas and dehght in their own 
 powers of thinking infect others, and so point the way to 
 wider researches and completer enlightenment. Very 
 little, in truth, of the mental excitement, the inward 
 quickening and stirring, which led to what we call the 
 " intellectual awakening " of the Renaissance, was felt 
 in Venice. Lapped in a semi-Oriental luxury, a marvel 
 and a show, the gorgeous city seems, as our imagination 
 takes in the extent of the intellectual movement which 
 was simmering and seething among the cities of the main- 
 land, to be sunk in a dream and almost to have lost touch 
 with the thought of the age in the contemplation of her 
 own splendour and beauty. Her attitude is the attitude 
 of an indolent and gracious woman reclining in the 
 shadow of Hme trees on an August afternoon, eating 
 apricots and listening to a dispute among scholars. 
 
 Yet Venice, too, had her idea, had, so to speak, a 
 philosophy of Hfe of her own. Sensuous rather than 
 intellectual, her character in many respects strikes one as 
 more Oriental than Western. Her ties with the East 
 must never be forgotten. There exists to this day a 
 confident tradition, treated by many as an historical fact, 
 that her population is descended from a colony of emi- 
 grants from Asia Minor. Mr. Hazlitt, in his excellent 
 History of the Republic, countenances to some^xtent the 
 theory. "There seems," he says, "to be some plausi- 
 bility in the suggestion that a colony, passing in the 
 course of migration from their native soil to Asia Minor, 
 proceeded thence in process of time to Northern Italy, 
 on the shores of which they founded numerous settle- 
 ments." These colonists, Mr. Hazlitt adds, " were called 
 Tyrrhenians or Etruscans," and from their settlements 
 round the mouth of the Po the Venetian stock was 
 ultimately derived. If there is truth in the tradition the 
 Venetians were of the same blood as the merchants of 
 Tyre and Carthage, an offshoot of that wonderful trading 
 
232 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 race whose operations embraced the Mediterranean and 
 extended to our own coasts. Various scraps of evidence 
 occur in support of such a suggestion. In all her instincts 
 and phases of development Venice is true to type. She 
 has commerce in the blood. One can imagine a second 
 Tyre starting business again in the Adriatic. Again, the 
 very look of her people, their fleshy forms and faces, their 
 almond eyes, and those big noses of theirs, which Molmenti 
 insists upon as the feature which most distinguishes 
 them, all verify a Semitic origin. They had innate in 
 them, moreover, that race's instinctive passion for 
 gorgeousness, and probably the aspect of Babylon and 
 Nineveh, as of Tsnre and Sidon later, was of much the 
 same ostentatiously sumptuous character as distinguished 
 the splendour of Venice. I have always thought that 
 Venice's spontaneous reaching out to, and ready com- 
 prehension of, the East is rendered the more intelligible 
 by the supposition of racial afl&nity. We must remember 
 that not only did the greatness and very existence of the 
 city come to hang upon her Eastern trade, but that in all 
 matters of taste and art and culture her ideas were 
 prompted by Eastern example and Eastern teaching. 
 All of us must be struck by the strange spectacle of this 
 floating, Ht-up city, upon which, all through the centuries 
 called " dark," there rests so strong and mysterious a glow 
 of light and colour. Poets have insisted on what there is 
 of fairy-like and magical in this appearance, and their view 
 is natural ; for the causes which wrought her splendour 
 being unseen and remote their effects have almost an air 
 of enchantment. Venice, indeed, does not belong to the 
 West either in ideas or aspect. She still appears, even in 
 her bleached decay, almost like a bit of the East that, 
 detached, has floated hither. In her great days, to the 
 eyes of Europe bent upon her as she lay out at sea, she 
 must have seemed like some great argosy that, heaped 
 with Eastern riches. 
 
 Hangs in the air, by equinoctial gales 
 Close sailing from Bengala. 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 233 
 
 And when, from what is spectacular, we turn to what is 
 essential in her Hfe we are struck by the same deep Oriental 
 tinge. Life for Venice was no subject to be reasoned 
 over, explained, and analysed, but something to be 
 savoured and enjoyed. If she did not search out the 
 meaning of things she laid herself open to a sensuous 
 impression of them. If she did not reason acutely she 
 felt deeply. This emotional interpretation of life has 
 ever been more characteristic of East than West, and for 
 that reason, perhaps, is apt to be misunderstood by the 
 West and unduly depreciated, as if the neglect of intel- 
 lectual effort must of necessity imply a self-abandonment 
 to mere lazy voluptuousness. Thus Mr. Howells in his 
 Venetian Life teUs us how, in spite of his interest in and 
 love of Venice, the hfe there seemed to cut him off from 
 all the recognised and natural incentives of his age and 
 race. 
 
 Old habits of work, old habits of hope made my endless 
 sojourn irksome to me, and almost intolerable, when I ascer- 
 tained fairly and finally that, in my desire to fulfil long- 
 cherished, but, after all, merely general designs of literary 
 study, I had forsaken wholesome struggle in the currents 
 where I felt the motion of the age, and had drifted into a 
 lifeless eddy of the world, remote from incentive and sensation. 
 
 No doubt if we accept the Western philosophy of intel- 
 lectualism in the spirit in which Mr. Howells accepts it, 
 we shall agree that a city so out of the movement as Venice 
 is cut off from real life. But Mr. Howells wrote this little 
 book of his over fifty years ago, and many changes have 
 occurred in the interval. It is questionable if Europe is 
 quite as satisfied with her intellectualism as she was half 
 a century ago, or just as sure that it affords, or ever can 
 afford, her a solution of hfe in which she can rest and be 
 content. It is even conceivable that the contrary philo- 
 sophy, the philosophy of feeling and of a profoundly 
 emotional apprehension of the nature of things, may 
 find itself able by and by to get a word in. No one who 
 has observed — and who can fail to have observed ? — the 
 
234 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 strong interest and curiosity manifested nowadays by 
 Europe in all phases of Eastern thought, will find this an 
 extravagant conjecture, and, if this is so, Venice's point 
 of view will be sure to gain in interest and significance 
 for us. Let us endeavour, then, to discern more clearly 
 what there was peculiar in this point of view, and in what 
 mariner its characteristics have found their expression 
 in Venetian art. 
 
 As we know, the Renaissance was remarkable for two 
 things : an outburst of intellectual activity and an out- 
 burst of artistic activity. Both these movements were 
 focussed in Florence. It was in Florence that the first 
 signs of the great " intellectual awakening " occurred, 
 and as long as the movement remained in charge of Italy 
 it was Florence which presided over and controlled it. 
 Her place in the Renaissance has often been compared 
 to the place of Athens in classic thought. Take away 
 Athens and there is no such thing as the Greek intellectual 
 influence. Take away Florence and there is no such 
 thing as the intellectual influence of the Renaissance. 
 Athens and Florence are in a singular degree sources of 
 intellectual vigour and inspiration. Many cities have 
 possessed the intellectual character, and in particular, 
 of course, the great university cities, which have made 
 intellectual culture the aim of their existence, have 
 possessed it. But there is a difference between culture 
 deliberately pursued and a spontaneous impulse in the 
 direction of enlightenment and thought. Athens and 
 Florence did not merely influence the world, as Padua 
 and Bologna, or Paris and Oxford have influenced it, by 
 teaching and turning out scholars. They influenced it 
 by showing it how delightful and infinitely enjoyable a 
 thing it is for man to exercise his intellectual faculties. 
 Of the ultimate fruits of this kind of activity — of the 
 discoveries, inventions, and researches of modem times — 
 they knew nothing. Others in these things have excelled 
 them. But these others have been inspired by their 
 example, and to this day it revives within us the early 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 235 
 
 delight in intellectual activity to turn back to the mani- 
 festations of that activity in the life of Athens and 
 Florence. 
 
 And pre-eminent as sources of intellectual inspira- 
 tion, Athens and Florence are pre-eminent in the 
 arts of form. Classic art at its best and most repre- 
 sentative is Athenian, is the art of the age of Pericles, 
 and classic art is essentially an art of form. No visions 
 of rich suffusions of colour, melting down the austerity 
 of form and blending under the influence of chiaroscuro 
 into great emotional effects, cross the mind at the mention 
 of classic art. There is nothing mystical in that art. 
 Its aim is perfect definition. Those who have studied 
 the delicate, the almost imperceptible inflections which 
 pervade the form of a Doric temple will know to what 
 lengths this love of perfect definition could carry the 
 Greeks. Second only to architecture in this respect 
 stands sculpture. In the enthusiasm with which it 
 was prosecuted, no less than in the perfection which it 
 attained, sculpture declares itself as the appropriate 
 art -language of classical life. Clear-cut, exact, the 
 sworn foe of the mystical and the indefinite, it bodies 
 forth the classical ideal of thought and conduct. The 
 success it achieved is due to its finding in the life of 
 the period the exact nourishment it required. It is an 
 example of a highly intellectualised art feeding on life 
 at its most intellectualised moment. 
 
 That moment could never be quite reproduced. The 
 Italian Renaissance might awaken again the old intel- 
 lectual love of defining, analysing, comprehending, but 
 it was beyond its power to repose upon and rest satisfied 
 with its own definitions. There had been poured into 
 Hfe since the classic age ideas which intellect could not 
 handle or control, which lent themselves to no intellectual 
 definition ; and these ideas, which were indefinable and 
 yet refused to be cast out, are, in the sculpture of the 
 Renaissance, a perpetually disturbing influence. Renais- 
 sance sculpture is always more or less excited, always 
 
235 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 more or less capricious and experimental. It has lost 
 the old calmness, serenity, and certitude. Intellect has 
 no longer the same sure control of life that it had. This, in 
 Renaissance sculpture as compared with cleissic, is a source 
 of weakness. But yet, in spite of these qualifications, 
 the intellectual revival of the Renaissance was so perfectly 
 genuine an affair, intellectuahsm Wcis so truly the vital 
 force of that age, that sculpture had, for the first time 
 since the classic epoch, the power it needed behind it, 
 and its own vitality was proportionate. Florence, 
 naturedly, being the centre and source of Renaissance 
 intellectualism, became the centre and source of Renais- 
 sance sculpture. Culture and the love of ideas were 
 spread through Italy and Europe by Florentine thinkers, 
 poets, and men of letters. In the same way Professor 
 Bode explains, in his work on Florentine sculpture, how 
 that art was carried abroad by Florentine artists. After 
 pointing out that " Florence is the home of modem art," 
 and that, " in no branch of art has Florence so unqualified 
 a claim to this pre-eminence as in sculpture," he goes on 
 to show that it was the superfluity of this kind of genius 
 in Florence which nourished the rest of Europe, and that 
 Florence " could afford, out of her abundance, to supply 
 not only Italy but the rest of the continent " with in- 
 struction in this department of art. Thus in Florence as 
 in Athens, the outburst of delight in intellectual activity, 
 in the intellectual exercise of analysing, defining, and 
 identifjdng, was the impulse which inevitably took effect 
 on sculpture, and breathed life into that great art of form 
 which feeds upon and expresses those mental processes. 
 
 If space allowed we Could trace the similar develop- 
 ment of mind and art. We could follow throughout the 
 Florentine Renaissance an increase of intellectual vigour, 
 lucidity, and power moving in step with a constantly 
 increasing precision and certitude in the art of sculpture. 
 And not only could we trace this development in sculpture, 
 the art of form, but we could trace it very clearly in 
 painting, into which form enters as an ingredient only. 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 237 
 
 For the effect of the mental bias prevaihng in Florence 
 was immediately to bring this ingredient into prominence 
 in painting and give it the ascendancy. In Florentine 
 painting form is the governing factor : in other words, 
 its motives are conceived as ideas. From the first 
 definite forward movement as initiated by Giotto, the 
 instinct of Florentine painting was to define, to say 
 something definite. It is a painting backed up all along 
 by fine intellectual conceptions. And here again it would 
 be a study of no small interest to observe the stages 
 by which, as the intellectual capacity for defining and 
 reaUsing and comprehending grew and increased, so, and 
 by similar stages, the art of painting, the capacity for 
 representing things in their real forms, grew likewise, 
 until the old Byzantine helplessness was entirely cleared 
 away and man and Nature appeared in their natural 
 semblances. This was the process which gradually fitted 
 Florentine painting to become the appropriate vehicle of 
 intellectual ideas, and just as Europe put on Florentine 
 ideas so it put on in due course the Florentine ideals of 
 painting too. Mr. Berenson has drawn attention to the 
 fact that -it was Florentine painting only which was 
 destined to expand and hand down a progressive tradition, 
 and that all schools which did not draw from this source 
 had the mark of provinciality and were out of harmony 
 with the mental development of Europe and so destined 
 to be short-lived. 
 
 Nevertheless, another point of view there is. An art 
 may exist, has indeed existed, not intellectual, not tending 
 to express itself in terms of form, yet nevertheless possess- 
 ing its own powerful and permanent attraction because 
 based on something in human nature not less enduring 
 than intellect. In his Florentine Painters Mr. Berenson 
 has pointed out the broad distinction between Florentine 
 and Venetian painters. Bring the greatest names of 
 both schools together and the difference, as he says, is 
 striking. "The significance of the Venetian names is 
 exhausted with their significance as painters. Not so 
 
238 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 with the Florentines. Forget that they were painters, 
 they remain great sculptors ; forget that they were 
 sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and 
 even men of science." Intellect is naturally versatile. 
 A man of intellect brings to bear on all subjects the same 
 faculties of comprehension which he exercises on any 
 particular one. The versatihty, therefore, of the essen- 
 tially intellectual Florentine artists is not to be wondered 
 at. But what are we to say of the Venetians ? By 
 contrast with their great rivals, their non-intellectual 
 character is at once apparent. Not only are they them- 
 selves lacking in intellectual versatility, but their work 
 in their own particular line as painters is lacking in intel- 
 lectual interest and power. By contrast with the fine 
 and keen intelligence which is spread over Florentine 
 canvases, Venetian pictures are stupid. And the more 
 thoroughly Venetian they are the more stupid they 
 become. Down to about the end of the fifteenth century, 
 Venetian painting was governed entirely from the main- 
 land. It was Italian, hot Venetian, and its painters, 
 Alvise Vivarini, Carpaccio, the Bellini, are intelligent in 
 the intellectual sense. But directly we come to the great 
 colourists this intellectual interest dies out.^ It would 
 be odd, indeed, if it did not. For now painting becomes 
 for the first time Venetian. It is nourished on Venetian 
 life, and in Venetian life, by contrast with the vivid alert- 
 ness and mental sensitiveness of Florentine life, we miss 
 just the same quality which we miss in the art. We miss 
 the eager, acute conversations, the give-and-take of wit 
 and thought, the play of mind : in a word, the intel- 
 lectualism which so pervades the life of the city on the 
 Amo. 
 
 But if this goes out of Venetian art, what takes its 
 place ? If Venetian art is not intellectual, what is it, 
 and to what is its strength due ? The answer, of course, 
 
 * Titian, of course, is the great exception. In him more nearly 
 than in any other painter the emotional possibilities of colour and the 
 intellectual possibilities of form are reconciled and combined. He is 
 almost as much a Florentine as he is a Venetian. 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 239 
 
 will be that Venetian art is an art of colour ; its strength 
 lies there ; this it is that has taken the place of form. It 
 has been observed that if you call a difficulty by a name 
 it disappears, and that seems to be the case in the present 
 instance. We call the attraction of Venetian art colour, 
 and think we have explained it. But of what nature is 
 that attraction, to what faculties does it appeal and what 
 was there particular and consummate in the Venetian 
 use of it ? We know how many-sided and various are 
 the interests belonging to form ; how full of meaning 
 and subtle significance and keenly observed character- 
 istics it can be ; how infinitely suggestive in its inter- 
 pretation. In Venetian art colour is the substitute for 
 all this, and we are content to call it colour and have done 
 with it. Might it not occur to us that an attraction which 
 is capable of rivalling and, as some think, even eclipsing 
 the great intellectual attraction in art, should itself be 
 susceptible of some further explanation ; that the appeal 
 it makes to us and the effect it has upon us must be 
 more or less intelUgible ? Every one is famihar with Mr. 
 Berenson's explanation of the influence of the arts of 
 form. Mr. Beirenson's own mental bias, it may be noted 
 in passing, is essentially intellectual : he distinguishes 
 and separates with a touch as fine as that of Mino da 
 Fiesole. His theory of " tactile values," as a test of 
 excellence in painting, is expressly based on the recogni- 
 tion that it was " upon form, and form alone " that the 
 " great Florentine masters concentrated their efforts." It 
 elaborates an explanation of the stimulating and life- 
 enhancing effects of form in art, the importance of which, 
 by German critics especially, has been more fully recog- 
 nised than acknowledged. But where are we to find the 
 corresponding explanation of the effects of colour ? 
 
 I know of none, yet I believe that one is possible. I 
 beheve the Venetian use of colour stands for a criticism 
 of hfe every bit as forcible and definite as the Florentine 
 use of form, only more difficult to formulate owing to the 
 fact that the Venetian philosophy has so fallen into 
 
240 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 abeyance as to be hardly intelligible to us. We have 
 grown so accustomed to living from the intellectual side 
 of our nature that we scarcely imderstand what is meant 
 by living from its sensuous side. We do not admit that 
 sensuous impressions may be as valuable guides to truth 
 as intellectual definitions, that feeling is often as illuminat- 
 ing as thinking. Our own hold upon truth being rational 
 and intellectual, we are prone to conclude there is no 
 other. The consequence is that when we come to deal 
 with a subject of sensuous character we perpetually take 
 hold of it by that which is accidental or superficial in it, 
 and miss what is essential. Thus, in the case of Venice, 
 we find Western writers constantly dwelling on the 
 frivolous and corrupt aspects of the city's life, on her 
 carnivals and carousals, the splendour of her pageants, 
 her tmrestrained and wanton luxury, and all the marks 
 of that enervating voluptuousness which by degrees 
 drained the vigour out of her, as though the whole history 
 of the State for the last four hundred years of its existence 
 were bound up in these extravagances. It is an error. 
 Sensuality is the disease which attacks sensuousness, but 
 it is not the same thing as sensuousness. Underneath 
 Venetian sensuality, underneath all the symptoms of 
 corruption and decay, there existed that which was being 
 corrupted, that which was . gradually decajdng. This 
 was her sensuous susceptibiMty, her capacity for deep 
 feeling. Throughout Venetian history this is the factor 
 which plays the chief part. And as it plays the chief 
 part in her life, so it plays the chief part in her art. 
 
 I have called Venice Oriental. Now it is to be observed 
 that, generally speaking, the whole system of discipline 
 and control common to European States is lacking to 
 Eastern ones. Progressive governments, popular liberty, 
 representation by franchise, parliament, the direction 
 and control by the citizens of the legislative and 
 executive fimctions, all these things, clearly the out- 
 come of the practical intellectual faculty, and which have 
 come to seem to us inseparable conditions of the health 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 241 
 
 and vigour of society, are conditions which have always 
 been wanting to Oriental States. From the earliest 
 development of Western civilisation it has been dimly 
 felt that the way of citizenship was the way of life. We 
 watch our young EngUsh boroughs struggling for the free 
 exercise of their rights as we watch an infant kicking out 
 with its arms £ind legs. These are signs of vitality. Let 
 the sense of the value of their rights and privileges be lost 
 to our citizens and we can scarcely imagine but that all 
 national vigour and social health must go with it. And 
 yet Oriental States, somehow or other, with none of these 
 preservatives, have been healthy and vigorous and long- 
 lived. What gave Egypt and Assjma their national 
 cohesion and kept the life in them fresh and strong ? 
 What constituted the social bond in those societies, and 
 why did they not, lacking the ties which we rely on, 
 dissolve into anarchy ? And so, too, what was the secret 
 preservative of the strength of the old Indian principalities, 
 and how did they succeed in handing down from generation 
 to generation a social unity unwasted and unimpaired ? 
 
 Oriental communities have safeguards of their own. 
 They may be non-intellectual, but they are as a rule 
 intensely emotional. Careless of self-government, they 
 are liable, under despotic oppression, to fits of furious 
 passion which result commonly in the annihilation of the 
 despot and his instruments, and which have the effect, 
 like periodical thunderstorms, of clearing the air for the 
 time being. But chiefly the strength of such societies 
 consists in the instinctive susceptibility and responsiveness 
 of all their members to every kind of natural appeal, claim, 
 and tie. The claims of old age upon youth, the claims of 
 children upon their parents, the claims of blood relation- 
 ship, of race, the sacred claims of hospitality and of 
 religious obligations, all these and others of the kind are 
 profoundly felt and instantly admitted. They become 
 the natural bonds, therefore, of a society in character 
 sensuous and emotional, and they take the place, and 
 compensate for the absence, of those duties and civic 
 
242 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 responsibilities which intellectualised societies recognise 
 and discharge. 
 
 In all these respects the government of Venice 
 inclines more to the Oriental than the European type. 
 We call the Island State a Republic, but the name 
 expresses rather the form than the spirit of her nile. 
 There are to be found in Venetian history plenty of furious 
 popular insurrections against ts^ranny and despotism ; 
 but these outbursts are followed up by no vindication 
 of the rights of citizenship, by no provisions for the 
 constitutional expression of the national will. The 
 paroxysm of rage and resentment over, the people relapse 
 into immediate indifference. If the reader will follow 
 rapidly through the pages of Mr. Hazlitt's History the 
 changes and development of Venetian government, he 
 will be struck by the entire absence of what we may call 
 the civic instinct on the part of the people. Already 
 during the first four centuries of the life of the State, 
 while yet political organisation was loose and each island 
 practically ruled itself, we find everywhere the despotic 
 habit asserting itself. Despite the theoretical rights of 
 the public Assembly, each tribune was despot of his own 
 island. " Each aspired to absolute . and undivided 
 authority," and each made such use of his opportunities 
 that they " seldom bequeathed to those who came after 
 them anything beyond the task of perpetuating civil 
 discord and public misery." The institution of the 
 DogesMp took place at the end of the seventh century, 
 but, though the popular Assembly possessed and some- 
 times exercised the right of election, no constitutional 
 control was exerted over the Doge's authority, and he 
 was, as Mr. Hazlitt points out, " virtually and in all 
 material respects. Autocrat of Venice." 
 
 Similarly during the long period between the decline 
 of the tribunes and the rise of the aristocratic power 
 the symptoms of the decay of even the rude attempts 
 at freedom which had characterised the early stages 
 of the Republic's career are unmistakable. There is 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 243 
 
 apparent a constant tendency of the ducal office to 
 pass into the hands of a few powerful famihes. The 
 practice of associating son with father in the occupation 
 of office is the common means of evading a popular 
 election. As time elapses the guidance of the Venetian 
 State slips from the control of a people indifferent to 
 the idea of self-government and becomes the prize to 
 be plotted, intrigued, and fought for by a handful of 
 patricians and their factions. In tracing the career of 
 the ruling dynasties, as they may be called, of the Badoers, 
 the Sanudi, and others, we seem to be following the inci- 
 dents of some of the Byzantine dynasties of Constanti- 
 nople. There are the same poisonings and plottings 
 among the various pretenders to the throne, the same in- 
 difference of a people excitable indeed yet lacking the 
 political faculty. Such an episode as the massacre of 
 Sanudo IV. — ^the vicious depravity of the man himself, 
 the fickle fury of the mob, the flame-like insurrection, the 
 trapped doge peering out from behind his palace mercen- 
 aries at the scene of rage and violence, the direction by a 
 few cool heads of the aimless popular fury, the storming 
 of the palace and the casting forth of the tyrant's body 
 to the dogs — such an episode, and it is one among a 
 hundred such, is in keeping in every detail with Oriental 
 traditions. It is, of course, true that deeds of violence, 
 insurrections, massacres, and the like, are common to the 
 early history of all European States and communities. 
 But in these the violence is the outcome of the generally 
 diffused struggle between popular Uberty and feudal 
 t3nranny. It has an object, and is in a manner progressive. 
 But in Venetian Hfe the people seem to ignore altogether 
 that profound impulse so operative in other European 
 cities. As Mr. Hazlitt acutely remarks, "even their 
 occasional resistance to tyranny, marked by deeds of 
 horrid and dark cruelty, left no deep or enduriag traces 
 behind it. It established no principle. It taught no' 
 lesson." And this was in the centuries prior to the 
 revolution of 1172 which definitely constituted the 
 
244 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 aristocracy " the predominant element in the body 
 pontic." 
 
 The suppression or decline of the old ineffective public 
 assembhes, and the institution of the first council, in 
 which the chief Doge-suppljang families had pooled their 
 ambitions, and which rapidly passed under their exclusive 
 influence, mark the moment of the almost explicit abandon- 
 ment of the ideal of popular liberty as expressed in the 
 govetnment of the State. This revolution of the end of 
 the twelfth century, worked by the aristocracy in its own 
 interests, took place quietly and aroused no opposition. 
 The people watched their chance of exercising direct 
 control over their government pass from them without 
 a murmur. It was a privilege they valued lightly, for 
 they had never used it effectively. The steps and degrees 
 by which the aristocracy confirmed and concentrated 
 their power need not be followed here. They resulted, as 
 the reader knows, in the concentration of all governing 
 authority into the hands of a small and rigidly defined 
 section of society ; in the formation of secret and intricate 
 tribunals deliberating with closed doors ; in the elabora- 
 tion of a whole system of silent espionage, which watched 
 in all streets and sat at all tables, and overheard all con- 
 versations, and whispered its reports daily to its hidden 
 organisers ; which dealt its blows quietly and swiftly ; 
 which prompted the assassin's dagger and turned the key 
 of secret dungeons. Briefly, it resulted in the consolida- 
 tion of a government Oriental to the core in all its methods 
 and instincts. 
 
 Characteristics which appear but fitfully in individuals 
 frequently loom large in the life of the State. I touch on 
 these aspects of Venetian history because they teach us 
 to appreciate the meaning of that history. They help us, 
 that is to say, to realise the alienation of the city from the 
 intellectual West, and her close approximation in thought 
 and feeling to the sensuous and emotional East. For a 
 corresponding set of facts in private life we might go to 
 the pages of Molmenti's history, where we should meet 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 245 
 
 with racial characteristics which would constantly trans- 
 port us from West to East. I am not thinking only, or 
 mainly, of that passionate love of shows and pageants 
 which strikes the eye so forcibly, and on which historians 
 are so fond of enlarging. Rather I am thinking of, 
 to name an example or two, such indications of tem- 
 perament as the position of women in the State, or the 
 type of female beauty universally admired. Molmenti 
 describes the type thus : " The hair is yellow hke ripe 
 com, the eyes blue, the cheeks round and rosy, the 
 lips full and moist, the breast snow-white. We may 
 take it for certain," he adds, " that most of the models 
 who sat to Venetian artists were women of the people, 
 usually full-bodied and large - limbed ; the Venetian 
 temperament admired, as the ideal of female beauty, the 
 slow movement, the abundant flanks, the fuU breasts of 
 the noble matrons " — with much more to the same 
 effect. That obviously is a quite Oriental estimate of 
 womanhood. Quite Oriental too, or almost quite, is the 
 position filled by women and the training and education 
 of girls. There are no Catherine d' Estes and Vittoria 
 Colonnas in Venice. " The ladies of noble families, who, 
 hke Oriental women, hved much at home and appeared 
 in public only on great occasions to display their jewels 
 and brocades, had but few opportunities of meeting 
 strangers." The attachment of men to women "was 
 not disturbed by sentimentahty, but went straight to its 
 mark, the enjoyment of physical beauty." Of Venetian 
 girls, we are told, " they grow up in wearisome idleness, 
 reUeved only by needlework." They were "rarely 
 allowed to leave the house, not even to go to church, and 
 on the few occasions when they appeared in the street 
 they were attended by armed servants and wore great 
 veils of white silk which covered the head and breast" 
 
 What a difference between such a type of womanhood, 
 unintelligent, uneducated, totally uninterested in the 
 questions of the day, whether political or literary or 
 artistic, scented and painted and jewelled, with abundant 
 
246 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 flanks and all the rest of it, presiding contentedly in the 
 retirement of the harem over the emotional resources of 
 the estabhshment : what a contrast between such a one 
 and the typical Florentine woman, so alert in mind, so 
 keen yet so receptive, so sensitive to the finest shades of 
 meaning, so fond of brilliant society, and so well qualified 
 by tact and flexibiUty of intelligence to guide and control 
 its conversation. Consider the two carefully, and is it 
 not evident that they emerge but of a life different in its 
 very composition ? The Venetian woman represents a 
 national character in which what is sensuous prepon- 
 derates. The Florentine woman represents a national 
 character in which what is intellectual preponderates. 
 But the two are not Venetian and Florentine only ; they 
 are Eastern and Western. Every trait distinctive of 
 Venetian womanhood is an Oriental trait, and, like the 
 political facts already cited, illustrates her inveterate 
 leaning towards Eastern habits of thinking and feeling. 
 
 What, then, I would emphasise is that in considering 
 Venice and the Venetian character we must set aside our 
 Western ideals, and regard the Venetians as in many 
 respects more allied to the East in thought and feeling 
 than to the West ; the main feature of this difference being 
 a strong tendency to a sensuous and emotional inter- 
 pretation of life, and a strong repugnance to an intellectual 
 interpretation of life ; and I have dwelt on this distinction 
 at some length because, art being always an expression 
 of life, if the difference in life is clearly grasped, the 
 difference, and the significance of that difference, in art 
 will be readily appreciated. Explain the life, and the 
 art will explain itself. 
 
 With this thought, then, in our minds, of a race of 
 people sensuous and emotional, not intellectual, let us 
 turn back for a moment to the characteristic Venetian 
 painting. Down to the appearance of Giorgione Venetian 
 art, as we have seen, was governed from the mainland, 
 but with Giorgione there arises within Venice herself a 
 school of art different in character from any hitherto 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 247 
 
 known, a school which we all recognise as Venice's especial 
 contribution to art, and to which it is understood that 
 we refer when we use the phrase " Venetian Art." The 
 enthusiasm, amounting to a kind of creative ecstasy, 
 with which the new style was welcomed and developed, 
 sufficiently attests its genuinely national character. 
 Giorgione, Titian, Palma, Lotto, Bonifazio, Tintoretto, 
 Pordenone, Veronese, Paris Bordone, Catena, Ceriani, 
 Jacopo Bassano, the names as the fifteenth century closes 
 in come thick and fast as the big, hot drops of a thunder- 
 storm. And, separated though they may be by different 
 degrees of genius, these men are all alike. They all 
 speak the Venetian language in painting. . In their handi- 
 work, and for the first time, a people sensuous and 
 emotional, but not intellectual, utters itself in art. What 
 is there singular in its mode of expressing itself ? 
 
 All Venetian painters, big and Httle, have this char- 
 acteristic in common : they all subordinate form to colour, 
 instead of subordinating colour to form. I have already 
 pointed out, but the reader will forgive me if I point out 
 once more, that, where the characteristics of form — ^its 
 precision and clear-cut definite statements — are kept to 
 the front and vigorously insisted on, the colour of the form, 
 whatever that may happen to be, becomes merely one of its 
 several attributes. It becomes, that is to say, a property 
 of form, a means of explaining and defining it, and its 
 value as colour is subordinated to the effectiveness with 
 which it performs that office. This is the decorative 
 use of colour. But let the characteristics of form be 
 blurred and kept in abeyance, and colour at once assumes 
 a different value. It is now no longer a mere property 
 of form ; it is no longer used to express form. We think 
 of and feel only the sensuous effect of the colour itself. 
 This is the emotional use of colour. From this it follows 
 that the amount of colour-effect attained by any given 
 painting will be found to depend in the first place, not on 
 the amount of colour used, but on which of the two ways 
 just specified it is used in. The least touch of emotional 
 
248 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 colour has more power, strikes a deeper chord in us, than 
 any amount of decorative colour ; nor will the multiply- 
 ing of the most emphatic hues ever make decorative colour 
 emotional. So long as the ascendancy of form is insisted 
 upon, you may load on the scarlet and crimson without 
 ever getting beyond the same limit. Coloured objects 
 you will attain to, not colour. 
 
 In this respeqt we are constantly led into quite 
 absurd misapprehensions as to the amount of colour 
 which pictures contain, for, as a little emotional colour- 
 ing goes farther than a great deal of decorative 
 colouring, we are apt always to think of it as more in 
 itself. Really, it is the way it is used that makes it 
 seem more. It is greater in efiect but not in amount. 
 Thus most of us certainly think the Venetian school 
 of painting as singular in the amount and richness of 
 the colour it employs. By great colourists we mean, 
 or think we mean, men who use a great deal of coloTir. 
 But as a matter of fact the majority of Venetian pictures 
 are actually rather colourless. No school contains so 
 large a percentage of black and dark brown to the square 
 foot. Tintoretto — ^who may perhaps be taken as the 
 central representative of the school, for Titian, the only 
 personality at all comparable to him in scope and power, 
 is of too intellectual a cast of mind to be quite typical of 
 its spirit — ^Tintoretto, on&^of the greatest of colourists, 
 is singularly spacing of vivid tints, and the general tenour 
 of his colouring is dark almost to gloom. There is ten 
 times as much show and brilliance of tint in any average 
 half-dozen pre-Raphaelite pictures, nay, there is ten times 
 as much show and brilliance of tint in the majority of 
 pictures in any year's Royal Academy exhibition as is to 
 be found in a representative half-dozen of Tintoretto's 
 pictures. How easy it is to call to mind, in any modem 
 exhibition, landscapes of brilHant yellow foliage and blue 
 sky, azure sea with strip of golden sand, portraits of 
 soldiers or hunting men in vivid scarlet tunics and coats. 
 Tintoretto never used colour with anythitig approaching 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 249 
 
 this prodigality. No, the difference is not in amount 
 but in kind. The painters we have named, the pre- 
 Raphaelites and the Royal Academicians, use colour to 
 define form. Sea or sand, the features of the landscape, 
 the scarlet coat of the soldier tell for what they are. 
 Their colour is a mere means to help one to realise their 
 intellectual attribute of form. But Tintoretto's colouring 
 is not of this kind. His pictures are for the most part 
 dark and heavily shadowed. There are no clear-cut 
 lines. The shapes of things are suggested rather than 
 revealed. Under these conditions the colour employed 
 seems not so much to define objects as to be imparted to 
 the whole composition. Smouldering in the heart of the 
 picture it communicates a glow which is felt even in the 
 depths of the darkest shadows. 
 
 Not much colour, then, but suffused colour is the note 
 of the Venetian school. And if we ask by what technical 
 means this suffusion is obtained the answer is, by the use 
 of a powerful scheme of chiaroscuro. For as it is the 
 constant endeavour of form to restrict colour to its own 
 dimensions, so there exists but one agent, which, 
 mightier than form and able to blend, imite, or obsctire 
 all forms at its own pleasure, can set colour free of its 
 thraldom. That agent is chiaroscuro, and hence it is 
 that all really great colourists are distinguished by their 
 mastery of light and shade, and by this are most 
 unmistakably recognised. It is their business, and 
 instinctively they know it, if they would secure the 
 emotional and sensuous effects of colour, to soften down 
 and obscure by the use of chiaroscuro the intellectual 
 appeal of form. Tintqjretto, whom we have instanced 
 as the typical Venetian painter, is most typical in this. 
 All the Venetians have the gift, it is the trade-mark 
 of their guild, but Tintoretto's mastery of it has in 
 it something unique. Every subject and kind of com- 
 position is ordered and disposed by Tintoretto wholly 
 ip terms of light and shade. He has no need to use, as 
 the more intellectual Titian, and the less profoundly 
 
250 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 emotional Veronese so often have to use, the masses 
 and outUnes of architecture to map out and control the 
 composition of his larger canvases. The immensity of 
 the " Paradiso," with its monotonous array of count- 
 less figures, is handled by him with the facility of an 
 easel picture, and that solely by an arrangement of 
 chiaroscuro. 
 
 It is this mastery of chiaroscuro which constitutes 
 Tintoretto the greatest exponent of emotional painting 
 that has yet lived. His pre-eminence over his great rival 
 in this respect is indicated by the briefest comparison of 
 their two renderings of the " Presentation in the Temple." 
 Titian's picture is arranged by the help of the buildings 
 in the background and the strongly defined flight of steps 
 up which the Virgin mounts in the foreground. Tintoretto's 
 is not arranged at all, at least not structurally, for the 
 sombre figures that rudely frame the stairway tell only as 
 dark masses against the paler background. Chiaroscuro 
 only governs it, and chiaroscuro only invests it with its 
 almost awful depth of emotion. Without attempting to 
 summarise the merits of two such works it may be said 
 with confidence that, as regards the force and directness 
 of its emotional appeal, Titian's interpretation is cold 
 compared to Tintoretto's, and that the latter's superiority 
 in this respect consists in his greater mastery over chiaro- 
 scuro, his greater mastery over that tremendous agent 
 whose function it is to tone down the uncompromisingly 
 intellectual characteristics of form. There are critics, 
 we know, who find in Tintoretto something turgid and 
 melodramatic. This is partly due, perhaps, to the fact 
 that, in modem art, criticism has arrived at that stage 
 of intellectual dryness which has a natural suspicion of 
 anything like strong feeling ; but apart from that it may 
 be conceded that Tintoretto was, on some occasions, and 
 when dealing with certain subjects, liable to those kinds 
 of excesses. They are the defects of the temperament 
 he possessed. At his best, however, he paints in the 
 perfect manner of a great colourist, letting loose without 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 251 
 
 effort the utmost sensuous resources of his medium. In 
 Titian's works the chief colour notes, however effective, 
 appear almost always to be calculated and arbitrarily 
 introduced; with Tintoretto they are inevitable and 
 seefn to be there of their own accord, for they are part of 
 the emotion of the whole picture. 
 
 Tintoretto's procedure seems to have been to choose, 
 to begin with, if possible, a subject charged with emotion. 
 He then proceeded to treat it according to its nature, 
 that is to say, he toned down and obscured the outlines 
 of form, and mapped out the subject instead in pale or 
 sombre masses of hght and shade. Under the control of 
 this powerful scheme of chiaroscuro the colouring of the 
 composition was placed, but its own character, its degree 
 of richness or sobriety-, was determined by the kind of 
 emotion belonging to the subject. To use colour in this 
 way, not with emotional force only, but with emotional 
 truth, is to use it to perform one of the greatest functions 
 that art can perform. It is to use it to open up the very 
 heart of the meaning of a subject. I would instance 
 " The Crucifixion " as a case in point. In the several 
 groups of figures and faces there is nothing significant 
 whatever. The picture lends itself to no intellectual 
 . estimate ; all that may be dismissed. But yet so powerful 
 and, above all, so terribly significant in its deep mystery 
 and livid terror is the mighty scheme of chiaroscuro in 
 which the scene is muffled, and so profoundly true to 
 the emotions of the occasion are the dim and solemn hues 
 which pervade the gloom, that all other renderings of 
 this event seem, compared with this, to be beside the 
 mark. 
 
 This is what is singular in the Venetian use of colour ; 
 and this system, on which the Venetian colourists worked, 
 of creating an emotional atmosphere by the use of chiaro- 
 scuro and then charging it with colour, was precisely the 
 system, as I have already pointed out, elaborated on a still 
 grander scale by Byzantine architects. These drew their 
 inspiration from the same source as the Venetians. Their 
 
252 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 object was to express the sensuous Oriental temperament 
 in terms of its own proper medium, colour ; and forth- 
 with they dehberately and systematically set to work, 
 to mitigate and tone down all those exactitudes of form 
 which convey its intellectual appeal and stimulate the 
 intellectual mood in the observer, and then, subduing 
 the light, they admitted into the building a dark and 
 powerful chiaroscuro under the supreme control and 
 handling of which the whole tremendous colour-scheme 
 of the interior was placed. The effects attained by the 
 St. Mark's mosaics are attained by precisely the same 
 expedients as those of Venetian colourists, only the 
 architecture attains the desired end more surely and 
 completely, for it must be admitted that not even Tinto- 
 retto, in the application of the aesthetic principles common 
 to both, could match the simplicity and singleness of aim 
 of the Greeks. 
 
 But further, this mode of interpreting emotion is not 
 solely a matter of art at all. We have already seen how 
 Nature herself, when she appeals to the emotional mood 
 in us, employs a scheme of chiaroscuro, derived from 
 twilight, or mist, or the heavy shade of foliage, to soften 
 down and dim the outlines of forms ; and, indeed, the 
 interior of some dense autumnal beech-grove, which we 
 instanced as the most emotional of colour effects in 
 English scenery, exhibits just the same principles, the 
 same melting depths of shadow and suffusion of rich 
 colour, as characterise the schools of Venetian and 
 Byzantine art. This is so even in the West, and as for 
 the East, the very words " tropics " and " tropical " 
 are, as it were, heavy and loaded with sensuous sugges- 
 tion. As was the case with Venetian painting, many 
 people are under the impression that this sensuousness 
 of tropical scenery is the result of an unusual display 
 of vivid and brilliant colour, but this, as has been 
 explained, is far from being the case. There is often 
 more vividness and brilliance of tint in Western scenes 
 than in Eastern, and the superior sensuous effect of the 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 253 
 
 jungle is due to the two causes I have dealt with, to the 
 obliteration of the sense of form and the presence of an 
 extraordinarily powerful scheme of chiaroscuro. In their 
 own line of the purely emotional and sensuous the effects 
 of jungle scenery, in which perpetual and sombre shadows 
 are darkly illumined by occasional notes of rich colour, 
 are the most potent probably that exist in Nature ; yet 
 the means whereby they are produced are identical with 
 the means adopted by the Byzantine architect and the 
 Venetian painters, and we have but to think out and 
 formulate the causes of the fascination of tropical colour- 
 ing to be in possession of the principles of Byzantine and 
 Venetian art. 
 
 The truth is that these principles are permanent and 
 reliable because they are reflected processes of the mind. 
 The emotional mood, the mood of passive receptivity in 
 which insight is an integral part of feeling, is not only 
 different from the rational and intellectual mood, but is 
 itself dispelled by rational and intellectual definitions in 
 just the same way as emotional effects of colour are 
 dispelled by the intrusion of rigidly defined forms. 
 
 Insist upon form, develop form, place form in command 
 of the composition, and instantly the depth, richness, 
 power, the emotional value of colour as we call it, dies out 
 of it. But this is only a reflection, or image rendered to 
 the eye, of a corresponding change within the mind. 
 Insist upon intellectual culture, develop intellect, place 
 intellect in absolute command over the mind, and as sure 
 as fate the emotional faculty will dry up within us, the 
 capacity for feeling will diminish, the power of insight, 
 of an intuitive reaUsation of the essential nature of things 
 will leave us, and we shall be left at last in presence of a 
 collection of dry definitions from which all meaning of 
 any importance has departed. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to dis- 
 tinguish between the strongly intellectual art of Florence 
 and the strongly sensuous art of Venice. Europe, taking 
 the ply from Florence, has for the last three hundred 
 
254 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 years developed its life and thought on intellectual lines, 
 and the result has been a certain atrophy and decay of its 
 sensuous faculties. In that charming book, Hampshire 
 Days, Mr. Hudson tells the story of a young cuckoo which, 
 reared in a nest of robins, succeeded in pitching its foster- 
 brethren one by one out of the nest until it remained in 
 solitary and undisputed possession. It has been so with 
 the intellectual faculty in the European naind. This, too, 
 pampered and stimulated, has grown to such dimensions 
 that it has ousted all rivals and taken over sole charge of 
 the mind's enlightenment. But such a state of things 
 as this does not make for true happiness or true under- 
 standing. When Wordsworth addressed his studious 
 friend in the words. 
 
 Close up those barren leaves ; 
 
 Come forth and bring with you a heart 
 
 That watches and receives, 
 
 he was thinking of the illuminating effect upon the mind 
 of that passive intuition which is bom, not of any intel- 
 lectual striving, but of pure feeling, and of which, indeed, 
 all that is best in his own poetry is the direct outcome. 
 The enlightenment which feeling, which a sensuous 
 apprehension of things, brings, though not so exact and 
 definite, is more profound than that which an intellectual 
 apprehension brings. Moreover, if the mere intellectual 
 analysis be pursued indefinitely, there comes a time when 
 the mind hardens, a time when, the thing itself ceasing 
 to give pleasure, the study of the thing ceases to give 
 pleasure also. This state of weariness is apt to overtake 
 and has overtaken, as we know from their own statements, 
 mapy scientific thinkers — many men, that is to say, who, 
 cultivating their intellectual faculties to excess, aUow 
 their sensuous faculties to atrophy from disuse. But 
 it attacks not only individuals, it attacks epochs as well. 
 The mind of society as a whole is subject to these fits of 
 one-sided development, and after one of these fits it 
 feels the effects of the reaction. The intensity with which, 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 255 
 
 for a long time past, the mind of Europe has been set on 
 intellectual culture is to-day working out its inevitable 
 consequences. 
 
 Let the reader look around in any direction he Ukes, 
 and he will see those consequences plainly enough. We 
 have been talking of pictures. What are the gifts 
 manifested in modem painting ? Do we find, in modem 
 exhibitions, pictures painted out of an unquestioning 
 emotion of joy, and communicating that emotion to 
 others ; or do we find works in which the chief merits 
 are often a wonderfully skilful technique, keen faculties 
 of observation and analysis, an interesting or ingenious 
 interpretation of scenes or events, and feats of execution 
 so weirdly clever that they have almost the air of con- 
 juring tricks ? Are not both the merits and defects 
 of such works, their cleverness and coldness, intellectual 
 merits and defects ? Again, take art criticism. Is 
 the general tendency and effect of it to make us feel 
 that pictures are pre-eminently a source of joy, or to 
 make us feel that pictures are things to be understood, 
 and that the questions of most interest concerning them 
 are who painted them, what mixture of " influences " 
 is apparent in them, and whence and by what route 
 each motive found its way to the place it occupies ? In 
 fine, is not the estimate proposed by modem criticism 
 entirely an intellectual one ? Or let us for an instant 
 turn to literature. That branch of hterature which is 
 most dependent on the gift of sensuous apprehension is 
 fiction. What is the note of modem fiction ? Do we 
 find in it the spontaneous and warm vitality which arises 
 from an intuitive realisation of character, or do we find 
 characters carefully analysed, treated not as personalities, 
 but as assemblages of quahties, moving through the pre- 
 ordained maze of a plot evidently carefully thought out 
 and deliberately constmcted beforehand ? 
 
 It must, I think,strike anyone who attentively considers 
 the plight of modem art and modem literature that what 
 both are suffering from is the effect of the decay of the 
 
256 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 emotional faculties. Moreover, art and literature being ex- 
 pressions of life, we must expect to find evidence of the same 
 decay in the life around us. And everywhere such evidence 
 is to be met with. It is to be met with, for instance, 
 in the quality of the religious thought of the age ; for 
 certainly what most strongly characterises this is the 
 hankering it exhibits to deal with religion in some way 
 or other by means of the intellectual faculty, to make 
 religion intelligible, to " translate it," to use the common 
 phrase, into " terms of modem thought." We have 
 become so thoroughly intellectualised that the idea of 
 having something among us not amenable to intellectual 
 standards is intolerable.^ Is it not indeed the root of 
 our spiritual malaise that we can only bring ourselves to 
 accept a religion that intellect is able to grasp, while the 
 religion intellect is able to grasp always turns out not to 
 be a religion at all ? 
 
 But, finally, and not to dwell unduly on these hints, 
 let me ask the reader to consider at large the aspect 
 of the lives of men and women of all classes. Does 
 it not strike him that, while intellectual activity and 
 ingenuity have on all sides wonderfully improved the 
 conditions of life, yet somehow happiness and the 
 carpacity for feeling have by no means kept pace with 
 that improvement ? Consider the labourers whom one 
 meets in the country trudging from their work, or the 
 artisans that crowd the third-class compartments of 
 evening suburban trains. Are they happier than formerly ? 
 They have better wages, is the answer, and, wages being 
 causes of happiness, they must be happier. But wages 
 are not the causes of happiness ; or they can only act as 
 such, at least, through the sensibility of our powers of 
 feeling. If our powers of feeling be decayed and atrophied, 
 wages may be as high as you will, but we shall get no 
 real happiness out of them. 
 
 * I leave these final paragraphs as they were written perhaps a 
 dozen years ago, but already I think a development more emotional 
 and spiritual in modern thought is declaring itself. 
 
VENICE AND THE RENAISSANCE 257 
 
 It. is the same in all classes of life. The intense rest- 
 lessness of wealthy people, their darting and rushing 
 about, the " high pressure," as it is called, at which life 
 nowadays is hved — what is it but a hunting and seeking 
 after a happiness which somehow is not attained ? We 
 shall be happy to-morrow, or a mile farther on ; but we 
 are not happy now and here. We live in constant ex-f 
 pectation of happiness, we adopt every kind of expedient 
 for achieving it, but of how many people could we say 
 that they live in the assured and tranquil possession of 
 it ? Happiness is an emotion, and if the emotional 
 faculties, if the capacity for feeling, be dried up within 
 ourselves, reasons for being happy may be proposed with- 
 out end and yet bring us no nearer the desired result. 
 
 In art and literature, then, in criticism, in religion, in 
 all the ordinary aspects of life, both of poor and rich, 
 there may easily be traced signs of the one-sided develop- 
 ment we spoke of. Everywhere we see traces of intel- 
 lectual activity, ingenuity and vitality, but nowhere do 
 we find any corresponding traces of emotional develop- 
 ment ; on the contrary, we detect on every side evidences 
 of emotional decadence. Modern life thinks, reasons, 
 analyses with great assiduity and wonderful results, but 
 it does not feel deeply, and consequently it is unable to 
 distil from its intellectual achievements and improved 
 circumstances the stores of happiness with which they 
 seem to be laden." Fortunately, however, these lopsided 
 developments sooner or later right themselves. Mankind 
 finds out its mistake and casts back instinctively for the 
 line it has overrun. We are in such a crisis at the 
 present moment. We still have our hard-and-fast intel- 
 lectualists, but they have a much smaller body of con- 
 viction behind them than, till recently, was the case, 
 and the breed consequently has very much fallen off and 
 diminished sadly in growth and stature. On the other 
 hand, mysticism, spiritual consciousness, the philosophy 
 of feeling are subjects that draw to themselves day by 
 day an increasing share of attention. The aged East, 
 
 s 
 
258 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 the home of all such secrets, once more begins to attract 
 our regard, and all voices that can in any way interpret 
 her point of view to us are sure to be listened to. In 
 this way it is that the times we live in are favouring the 
 art of Venice. It is no doubt true that neither Venetian 
 art nor Venetian life is a very adequate witness of what 
 is most valuable in Oriental thought. Still, it is also 
 true that Venetian art and Venetian life are essentially 
 an art and a life of feeling. In this they are genuinely 
 Oriental and pass on in an intelligible medium the message 
 of the East to the West. In Venetian painting we have 
 a testimony to the supreme value of a sensuous appre- 
 hension of things. It is by the cultivation of the 
 sensuous faculties, so that painting seems to assure us, 
 that happiness and joy are realised. But, more than 
 that, it is by the cultivation of the sensuous faculties, 
 so Venetian art at its greatest declares, that true know- 
 ledge and insight are to be attained. The philosophy of 
 feeling receives at the hands of the Venetian colourists an 
 interpretation always attractive and sometimes profound ; 
 and if in the Renaissance of the intellectual faculties 
 Florence took the lead, perhaps in the Renaissance of the 
 sensuous faculties, of which we would seem to be on the 
 eve, Venice will take the lead. To Florence — Florence 
 the intellectual, Florence of the clean-cut definitions and 
 exact forms — we turned that we might learn to think. 
 To Venice — Venice the sensuous, Venice of the heavy 
 shadows and rich colours and profound emotions — we 
 must turn that we may learn to feel. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 INTELLECTUAL LIMITATIONS 
 
 The conflict of intellectual and emotional tendencies as seen in real 
 life, and in the people among whom we live, and the mental atrophy 
 which a rigorous and exclusive cultivation of the intellect tends to 
 produce. 
 
 In dealing witha subject of this kind one is often apt to 
 become abstract and dull, and therefore it is an excellent 
 thing as we go along to keep in view the human signifi- 
 cance of the ideas with which we are dealing. I endea- 
 voured in a former chapter to illustrate, by an appeal to 
 Eastern and Western life as they are stiU seen, the contrast 
 in thought between the two which had been occupying our 
 attention. In the same way I woiild show in the present 
 chapter something of the same conflict as exemplified 
 in customs and characters of our own friends and neigh- 
 bours, and in order to do this intelhgibly it will be best 
 to have recourse to the friends and neighbours we all 
 have in common in the masterpieces of fiction. We shall 
 find what we want among the great novelists of the 
 Victorian age. 
 
 The age itself is worth a moment's attention. Scientific 
 epochs are rare because they occur only at moments 
 when science can pass itself off for something more than 
 it is. As soon as the limitations inherent in the scien- 
 tific standpoint are appreciated its reign is over. But it 
 takes some finding out. Its promises are the more con- 
 vincing because they are based on definite achievements. 
 It argues from what it has done to what it may do. Its 
 
 259 
 
26o FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 material revelations are ungainsayable, and these are 
 but the beginnings, " but the earnest," as the voice of 
 the age, Tennyson, said, " of the things that it will do." 
 What will these things that it will do amount to ? Will 
 they not extend from the finite to the infinite and include 
 all spiritual as well as temporal knowledge ? Science 
 was always diffident on these points and its humiUty was 
 one of its greatest assets. It refused to make promises. 
 It could not itself estimate the probable extent of its 
 own knowledge. We must have patience. This it would 
 say — ^we were only at the beginning. 
 
 In this way people were taken captive. What they 
 wanted, poor things, was what mankind has wanted in 
 all ages, spiritual knowledge, spiritual hope, spiritual 
 assurance ; and they argued that, because science could 
 already define a star, some day she would define God ! Not 
 only did she know such a lot, but evidently it was in her 
 to know such a lot more ! These expectations science 
 herself received with no arrogance, but with her usual 
 killing meekness. Did it lie with her to demonstrate 
 their futility ? To her they were scarcely futile, " for," 
 she would have argued, "if I can never know what 
 these people want me to, yet I shall probably know all 
 there is to know." In short, it was the attraction of the 
 unexplored, the thought of possible developments, which 
 in the latter half of the nineteenth century gave science 
 its vogue and enabled it. to extend its influence over 
 spheres of thought not its own and natures which never 
 should have been subject to it. 
 
 It acted powerfully on character. Every one breathed 
 its air to some extent ; and those brought up under its 
 immediate influence felt the effects of it through life. 
 Intellectual natures became confirmed and hardened in 
 the intellectual groove, and emotional natures were often 
 swayed by its masterful influence to the neglect of the 
 best and richest side of their own character. It is to 
 one of these last that I would direct attention. 
 
 Every one remembers and has been touched by the 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIMITATIONS 261 
 
 last words of The Mill on the Floss : " Brother and 
 sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted ; 
 living over together in that supreme moment the days 
 when they had clasped their little hands in love and 
 roamed the daisied fields together." 
 
 Poor Maggie ! Few heroines have been so loved. It 
 might seem strange that one so misunderstood in her 
 lifetime should appeal so directly to the hearts of all 
 teaders of her story, did we not know that it is the func- 
 tion of art to interpret life by drawing out those essential 
 characteristics which in hfe are so often obscured by 
 what is accidental and superficial. Many of us under- 
 stand Maggie in George Eliot's pages who would never 
 have understood her in real hfe. The deep discrepancy 
 of character between brother and sister, the emotional 
 impulses of the girl dashing themselves against the curt 
 practical purposes of the man — ^these are the elements of 
 a situation we aU realise. The opposition between the 
 emotional and rational standpoints is at the root of half 
 the tragedies of life, and, in some shape or other, among 
 the commonest experiences of all of us. 
 
 But Maggie is interesting in another way. There is 
 no need to remind the reader that The Mill on the Floss 
 is largely autobiographical, and that some of the actual 
 scenes between Maggie and Tom were founded upon 
 incidents in the chUdhood of George Eliot and her brother 
 Isaac. Maggie, with her simple, rich emotionalism, is 
 George Eliot herself as a girl. This emotional self existed 
 in George Eliot, and her inward history is the history of 
 its slow destruction under the attacks of rationahsm. 
 It was philosophy and science, it was Herbert Spencer 
 and Huxley and August Comte who killed Maggie. The 
 story is a familiar one, but all the better suited to our 
 purpose on that account. Susceptible as she was to 
 current ideas, the intellectualism in the air laid hold of 
 George Eliot as soon as she began to think. The trans- 
 lation of Strauss's Life of Jesus, of Spinoza's Tmctato 
 Theologico-Politicus, of Feuerbach's Essence of Chris- 
 
262 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 tianity, and reviews of such inspiring productions as 
 Mackay's Progress of the Intellect are the studies in which 
 we find her engaged from her five-and-twentieth to her 
 five -and -thirtieth years, and the influence of which, 
 gradual but inexorable, was confirmed by her intimacy 
 with all that was most rigidly intellectual in the strenuous 
 scientific society of her day. The effect on her genius 
 was not felt at first. Down to 1861, when she was forty- 
 two years old, the emotional faculty holds its own andT 
 is the dominant faculty in her work. The Scenes of 
 Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and 
 Silas Marner belong to this period. In 1861 she began 
 the historical novel, Romola, for which she went through 
 a course of reading, LesUe Stephen tell us, " which would 
 have qualified her to write a history." This was the 
 work which, her husband says, " ploughed into her more 
 than any of her other books." But her own testimony 
 is still more significant. She felt that the book " marked 
 a transition in her history." She " began it," she says, 
 " a young woman — she finished it an old woman." 
 
 Romola signalises in George Eliot's life the moment 
 when intellectualism asserted its control over her spon- 
 taneous and emotional gifts, a control which was never 
 relaxed. She never henceforward recovered the warm, 
 natural flexibility of her first books. A spell of illness 
 and enforced rest intervenes between Romola and Felix 
 Holt, and in Felix Holt she returns to her early life and 
 provincial experiences. But Felix Holt is a failure. 
 The power to deal as she had dealt with simple situations 
 and emotions, the power which had created the Poysers 
 and Dodsons and TuUivers, had left her. Henceforth 
 her genius subserves philosophical and ethical purposes. 
 Her style, if it gains in analjrtical subtlety, loses the old 
 feeUng and charm, while the desire to express every- 
 thing in terms of the intellect gives to her language the 
 pedantic ring which henceforth is to characterise it. 
 
 Probably most readers wiU agree with Leslie Stephen 
 when he says that George Eliot's later books, " in which 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIMITATIONS 263 
 
 the didactic impulse is strongest, suffer in comparison 
 with the earlier, where it is latent " ; but setting aside 
 purely literary judgments, what we have to notice here is 
 the effect of a certain training upon a certain faculty. 
 George Eliot was endowed by nature with the faculty 
 which is in its essence emotional and creative. The natural 
 sustenance and daily food of that faculty are the sights 
 and sounds and interests and affections and troubles and 
 joys of daily life — all, in a word, which feeds feeUng. She, 
 on the contrary, proceeded to regale it on German philo- 
 sophy and metaphysics, on the Progress of the Intellect 
 and the Tractato Theologico-Politicus — on all, in a word, 
 which feeds intellect. Between a gift naturally strong, 
 but starved, and a rival faculty, also by nature strong 
 and further strengthened by years of exercise and train- 
 ing, the decisive struggle occurred, as has been pointed 
 out, half way through the author's literary career. 
 Intellectualism chose its own ground, equipped itself 
 carefully for the fight, and routed its adversary in a 
 pitched battle once for ^,11. 
 
 It was the growth of the modem habit, the habit of 
 passing all ideas through the intellect, which was drying 
 up in George Eliot the source of emotional intuition. 
 The same process and the same results are visible among 
 many of her contemporaries. It is almost horrible to 
 watch how, as the habit of reasoning absorbed him, the 
 capacity for all spontaneous feeling became atrophied 
 in Herbert Spencer. In the same way Darwin points 
 out himself by what degrees the emotional faculty 
 was done to death in him by the exclusive cultivation 
 of the intellectual faculty. His curiously impartial 
 evidence is well worth quoting. " Up to the age," he 
 says, " of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such 
 as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even 
 as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, 
 especially in the historical plays. I have also said that 
 formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very 
 
264 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure 
 to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read 
 Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably diill that it 
 nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for 
 pictures and music." Neither, he goes on to say, does 
 fine scenery yield him " the exquisite delight which it 
 formerly did " ; and in general he has to lament the 
 shipwreck of one whole side of his nature. He is con- 
 scious of his loss. " My mind," he says, " seems to have 
 become a kind of machine for grinding gerteral laws out 
 of large collections of facts " ; and the result has been 
 " the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which 
 the higher tastes depend." At the same time he feels 
 that the preservation of the lost faculty was originally 
 within his power, that its extinction is due to neglect 
 and the over-cultivation of intellect. " If I had to live 
 my life again," he concludes, " I would have made a rule 
 to read some poetry and listen to some music at least 
 once every week ; for perhaps the parts of my brain now 
 atrophied would then have been kept active through 
 use." 
 
 We have seen George Eliot, a richly emotional nature, 
 drying up her genius by exclusively intellectual culture. 
 We now see Darwin too late regretting that exclusively 
 intellectual culture should have "atrophied," to use his 
 own word, the emotional side of his nature altogether. 
 But after all there was nothing unique about George 
 Eliot and Herbert Spencer and Darwin. They were 
 specimens of their kind. The influences which affected 
 them affected their contemporaries and have affected, 
 no doubt, mankind in all ages. There never was a time 
 since man learnt to reason that there has not been this 
 play and give and take between reasoning and feeling. 
 The rational instinct or the emotional has governed 
 whole epochs, and in the present book we have attempted 
 to trace their influence as it has from time to time deter- 
 mined the character of art. These phenomena are on a 
 huge scale. We have brought together for comparison 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIMITATIONS 265 
 
 the art of Byzantium derived from Eastern sources, 
 and Doric architecture wrought in the clear morning of 
 Greek intellectualism. In. the art which incarnates the 
 mediaevp-l hfe of Europe, half mystical dream as it was 
 and half practical struggle for existence, the two com- 
 bined and mingled, the practical element embodying 
 itself in structural forms of surpassing energy, while 
 the emotional element poured itself forth in those deep 
 beams of colour which flood our Gothic interiors, the 
 character of which is unmistakable to aU who have learnt 
 to recognise what in colour is jemotional. As the Renais- 
 sance crept in, as intellect resumed its ancient sway over 
 Western life, that colour we saw die away. No skill 
 could detain it, no science restore it. As what it fed on 
 died out of life, so it, too, died out of art. Only in one 
 corner of Europe, where the Oriental influence had' taken 
 root and become indigenous, it lingered on, and Venice 
 preserves for some centuries the deep-shadowed, intense 
 hues, which, through Gothic and Byzantine interiors, we 
 trace back to their source in the East. 
 
 My object in the present chapter is but to remind the 
 reader that this mighty conflict of ideals, this •ebb and 
 flow which has governed the universe and the ages, is 
 carried on likewise and finds its little echo in our own 
 hearts and the hearts of our neighbours. It is not only 
 a question of the exact proportion of the Parthenon and 
 the golden darkness of Chartres ; our village tragedies 
 are made of the same stuff. Art, as I am so fond of 
 saying, is but the expression of life. Look around you 
 and in life you will find all the elements with which we 
 have been dealing. The Tom TuHivers of the world are 
 the champions of the practical and the mundane. They 
 contain the raw material of intellectualism, and their 
 aspirations never exceed the definitions of form. The 
 Maggies, alas ! too few among us, are the deep poetic 
 and emotional influences, which, indeterminate and often 
 ineffectual as they are, seem, as we well say, to colour 
 the lives of all who come in contact with them. 
 
266 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 And yet, at the same time this opposition, or sense of 
 antagonism, which, through all that has been written, 
 has appeared both Ijetween these faculties themselves and 
 all their outward manifestations, constitutes only a part, 
 as it were, of a familiar dualism which pervades the 
 universe. For instance, we have called this book Form 
 and Colour; well, let us take the two words and place 
 them each at the head of a column, and under them let 
 us append the family proper to either. We have spoken 
 of East and West ; will any one, not following our argu- 
 ments, but merely obe5dng their natural instinct, hesitate 
 as to which column those two words are to go in ? Of 
 course he will not ; of course he wiU write West under 
 Form and East under Colour. Take another pair of 
 opposites, solid and fluid. The reader can enter them 
 in their respective columns without help from me. Take 
 another pair, masculine and feminine ; and another pair, 
 intellectual and emotional ; and another, active and 
 passive ; and yet another, positive and negative ; and 
 another, hard and soft ; and so on through a succession 
 of pairs of words, each the antithesis of the other, and in 
 apparent antagonism to it, yet each, too, in a manner 
 drawn to its opposite because suppls^ng what it lacks 
 and what is necessary to complete it. The family like- 
 ness in the two sets of words can easily be distinguished. 
 
 Form. 
 
 Colour. 
 
 West. 
 
 East 
 
 SoUd. 
 
 Fluid. 
 
 Masculine. 
 
 Feminine. 
 
 Intellectual. 
 
 Emotional. 
 
 Active. 
 
 Passive. 
 
 Positive. 
 
 Negative. 
 
 Hard. 
 
 Soft. 
 
 Group them and the result is that all those words 
 which belong to one side of the mind's activity, the 
 intellectual side — ^all the words which signify precision, 
 definition, and effective dealings with the concrete 
 universe — orange themselves on one side, while all those 
 which belong to the other side of the mind's intelligence, 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIMITATIONS 267 
 
 and which stand for all that is profound but eternally 
 elusive in emotional intuition, draw apart and range 
 themselves on the other side. 
 
 It is out of these-two states of mind that all the works 
 of mankind which count for anything have proceeded ; 
 and this it is which makes the subject we are dealing with 
 so alive and full of human interest. This duaHsm, this 
 inveterate hostility, yet stDl profounder sympathy, in- 
 spires, yet rankles, in the life of the present as of the past. 
 It is true of East and West and all they stand for, it is 
 true of the whole dual chain of ideas we have spoken of, 
 that though opposed to each other and contrary to each 
 other, they each and all are necessary to each other ; so 
 much so that of each pair neither member could exist, 
 or receive definition, without the aid of its opposite. 
 Would East be East if there were no West, or fluid fluid 
 if there were no solid ? Does not emotion without 
 intellect dissipate its own resources and exhaust itself 
 of its own light, and intellect without emotion dry up 
 and ossify ? Is it not in other words evident that the 
 sympathy between these apparent opposites is deeper 
 than their antagonism ? 
 
 The Greeks had a pleasant fable that human beings 
 were once spherical and complete, until the jealous gods 
 divided each body vertically into two halves, male and 
 female, since when each half has wandered up and down 
 the world seeking the other and unable to be happy 
 without it. Such is the world's dualism, such the task 
 of reconciliation that is set before us. It is under these 
 circumstances that art can give us help. It is a perpetual 
 admonishment ; for, incarnating as it does the great 
 perceptive faculties of the mind, if either of them should 
 faU into abeyance in life, yet in art it stiU survives, is still 
 among us, is stiU eloquent. Scattered through Nature 
 is an unlimited wealth of emotional and intellectual 
 phenomena on which emotion and intellect equally 
 subsist. But these, as I say, are scattered, and seem 
 to demand the operation of some consciously coherent 
 
268 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 impulse ere the mind can definitely apprehend them. 
 Art is the image of Hving thought. All that intellect 
 sought for in Nature, sought for and missed, in exact 
 definition and articulate construction, is summed up in 
 the great tj^jes of intellectual art. All that the emotional 
 facility half guessed at in shadowy wood or ocean depth 
 is embodied in tixe great examples of emotional art. The 
 greatest art is that which exhibits the greatest motives 
 with the least alloy. The interior splendour of Chartres 
 and of St. Mark's, the symmetrical proportions of the 
 Parthenon are images of the mind's noblest powers, un- 
 alloyed and perfect. These it is, and such as these, 
 riding superbly through the ages, which fulfil the high 
 function of art by keeping alive in the hearts of each 
 transitory and distracted generation the ideal of man's 
 full capacity. To this present generation and to the 
 modern age the admonition comes home most keenly, for 
 universality is the note of modem criticism and modem 
 research, and to the present the art of the past is revealed 
 with more distinctness than ever before. 
 
 Therefore to us more than any the ideal of man's full 
 capacity seems to address itself. With such evidence 
 before us we cannot let either side of the mind's activity 
 fall into abeyance again. The old dualism confronts us 
 more directly, more menacingly even, than ever before. 
 Never again can we deny the intellect and wrap our- 
 selves in spirittial contemplation. Never again can we 
 exclude the inner vision and encage ourselves within the 
 capacity of the intellect. In the life and thought of the 
 future both these must be included, and their union 
 harmonised. How such a task may be fulfilled, arid 
 under what auspices of thought it will be carried out are 
 questions which, difficult as they are to handle, yet form 
 the very essence of the present and future purposes of 
 art. To one or two of their more obvious aspects I will 
 therefore devote a few final pages. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 
 
 Aa account of certain aspects of European life and thought which 
 seem to show that the idea of an equal and harmonious fusion of the 
 spiritual and intellectual faculties in man is now strongly in the air. 
 
 During the last twelve or fourteen years the author had 
 written a good number of essays and articles dealing with 
 the thought and art of East and West, and based on the 
 conception that thought in the East is emotional and 
 speaks in colour, while thought in the West is intellectual 
 and speaks in form. The difficulty was how to apply 
 this to certain phases of Christian - European art. If it 
 were true that colour belonged to the East and form to 
 the West how explain the deep and powerful colour notes 
 in Western art ? Further, how was the Renaissance itself 
 to be explained, its obvious discontent with its own 
 intellectual standard, its restless, questioning attitude 
 of mind, as testified to in Renaissance art, and chiefly in 
 that of its greatest and most ts^pical representative, 
 Michelangelo ? The habit of regarding art as an expres- 
 sion of life having become ingrained in the writer, he was 
 instinctively aware that the fusion of intellectual and 
 emotional, which exist in some phases of Western art, 
 must have existed already in the life of those periods. It 
 was evident that Eastern colour had come into Western 
 art, had from time to time deeply and richly illumined 
 it. But if it had done so, then, seeing that art only 
 speaks for existing, living ideas, it could only have come 
 
 269 
 
270 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 in company with the order of ideas to which it belonged. 
 The spiritual and emotional ideas which speak in colour 
 must at that moment have been as fuUy present in 
 Western life as colour itself was present in Western art. 
 
 But how did they get there, and how were they main- 
 tained ? For years the present work was suspended. 
 Though It was under his nose, the writer could not dis- 
 cover the human explanation of the elements present in 
 European art. He knew what he wanted, he wanted 
 some force in living ideas which embodied and justified 
 both the emotional and intellectual standpoints. He 
 wanted to find this fusion enforced with the same 
 emphasis, and as unmistakably made a doctrine of life, 
 as in the East he had found the emotional idea only 
 and in the West the intellectual idea only turned into 
 such a motive. It was plain from the testimony of 
 art that the sought -for doctrine must exist in life, 
 but under what guise ? The study of Hellenistic art, 
 curiously enough, and the circumstances under which 
 it arose helped towards a solution of the difficulty. The 
 fusion of Eastern with Western ideas, which had so 
 evidently inspired this revolution, and which had pro- 
 duced an art so curiously allied to many phases of modern 
 art, was just such a predisposing cause as we were in search 
 of. Here were the two orders of ideas, spiritual and 
 intellectual, both in charge of life, both active in life, 
 and both exhibiting their joint action in the art of the 
 period, just as later and much more forcibly they ex- 
 hibited it in European art. So far so good, but im- 
 mediately the question arose how and under what power- 
 ful auspices had this fusion of ideas been preserved and 
 handed down, as certainly it had been handed down, to 
 future generations ? With this we were knocking at the 
 door. No other agent but religion could have so guaranteed 
 this novel philosophy as that it should fully possess life. 
 The agent must have been rehgion. The fusion of ideas 
 sought for must have existed in Christianity itself. 
 
 And what more palpable than that they did so ? 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 27J 
 
 What more palpable than that they did in fact form the 
 very tissue of the faith ? Was not half of Christianity, 
 the half which emphasised man's going to God, designed 
 especially to appeal to the East ? Was not the other half, 
 the half which declared God's coming to man, designed 
 especially for the West ? The first justified the purely 
 spiritual and emotional impulse which, with the great 
 ascetics, would repudiate matter as a mere encum- 
 brance ; the second justified the keen intellectual concern 
 with mundane interests which was the hall mark of the 
 Greek intelligence. Christianity, in short, contained in 
 itself, or was in itself, that fusion of spiritual and intel- 
 lectual which we sought. The mediaeval period, the " age 
 of faith," was admittedly a period strictly under the 
 control of the ideas contained in Christianity. Certainly 
 Christianity occupied during that time as complete an 
 authority in life as intellectual philosophy had occupied 
 in classic times, or which spiritual mysticism occupied 
 in Hindu thought. Here, then, was the necessary inter- 
 action. The richly shadowed, intense tints of a Gothic in- 
 terior, so eloquent of spiritual absorption, and its energetic 
 structural features and varied and vigorous sculpture, 
 so redolent of men's human sympathies and work in the 
 world, were united in art because already the correspond- 
 ing trains of thought had been mingled and combined in 
 the rehgion of that age. 
 
 But the influence of Christianity is not specifically 
 mediaeval. It has been from the first a vital factor, 
 slowly but surely transforming the human intelligence 
 and altering the character of its thought, and although 
 its manifold effects cannot here be traced, yet their main 
 direction and tendency, in so far as they affect the subject 
 we have in hand, may perhaps be indicated. 
 
 In the year 1909 there appeared a Life of Richard 
 Jefferies, the naturalist and mystic, written with much in- 
 sight and charm by Mr. Edward Thomas, and in July of 
 that year I wrote an article on Jefferies in the Edinburgh 
 Review, in the course of which I attempted to define the 
 
272 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 difference between Western mysticism, which accepts 
 Nature and matter as aids to spiritual vision, and 
 Eastern mysticism, which rejects and sweeps aside all 
 Nature and all matter as a preliminary to the act of 
 contemplation. It was the dwelling on this note of 
 difference which seemed to reveal the character of the 
 influence of Christianity. " The basis and inspiration," 
 I point out in the above-mentioned article, " of Western 
 as of Eastern contemplation was the joy obtainable 
 through the exercise of the soul's function of seeing and 
 knowing. But in the West, far from involving the 
 obliteration of all human and material interests, con- 
 templation seemed rather, while it subdued and purified, 
 to sweeten and lend them an increased significance." 
 
 If I venture to quote a few further paragraphs it is 
 because the understanding of this dual tendency of 
 Christianity, or tendency to include both material and 
 spiritual in its survey, seems to me to be absolutely 
 essential to the due appreciation of European-Christian 
 art, not only of the past, but of the present and future. 
 I go on, then, to show that, in all its human and 
 material relations, the contemplative piety of the Middle 
 Ages is swayed by profoundly natural sympathies and 
 susceptibilities. " It is certain that there have been no 
 friendships more tender than have subsisted between 
 monks, that no charity was ever more constant and 
 reliable than monastic charity. It is certain, again, that 
 education, study, the love of thought and of letters were 
 for ten rough centuries, while Europe was given up to 
 violence and the material of future nations was shaking 
 into place, housed and domiciled in monasteries. It is 
 certain that the love and culture of art were fostered in 
 the same retreats ; and it is certain finally, from the sites 
 chosen for monasteries and the use made of those sites, 
 as well as from intimate personal records which have 
 come down to us, that a fondness and attachment for 
 Nature existed among monks which did not at that 
 time commonly exist in the world. We are not speak- 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 273 
 
 ing here," I added, " of the system of monasticism in 
 the centuries immediately preceding the rise of the intel- 
 lectualism of the Renaissance. Monasticism sickened 
 for long before it died. Its decline marks and keeps pace 
 with the decline of mysticism in Europe. The idea of the 
 soul as the ' knower,' the ' knowing agent,' was dying 
 in the West, to make room, provisionally at any rate, for 
 the intellect as the knowing agent. But prior to its decline 
 the mystical sense was a great power in Europe, and was 
 compatible and went hand in hand with the love of 
 humanity, the love of learning, the love of art, and the 
 love of Nature, therein differing entirely from mysticism 
 as apprehended by the East. 
 
 " To assign a cause for this striking difference," I 
 then go on, " we must allow weight to the changed form 
 of belief which had arisen in the West and the change it 
 wrought in the intellectual point of view. The acceptance 
 of the fact of the Incarnation was necessarily fatal to 
 one of the two main tenets of mysticism. It was fatal 
 to the idea of the nonentity of the visible universe. Not 
 that it supplied the Christian with intellectual arguments. 
 This finite existence, this life of time and space, might 
 be a dream. He could not tell. He knew of no reason 
 why we should turn our own sense-impressions into 
 qualities of things separate from us. . . . But the knot 
 he could not untie he could cut. Into his world of shadows 
 had come a sudden reality. God had visited him, had 
 broken into his little sphere of time and place, had put on 
 the attributes of mortality and clothed himself in the 
 outward semblance of the finite. To one who had humbled 
 his understanding to the reception of that gaunt fact 
 the universe necessarily appeared under a new aspect. 
 It mattered very little to him how unreal or transitory 
 appearances might be. They had for the time being 
 received the divine sanction. Materialism might be a 
 hoax, but it was a divine hoax. It belonged to a divine 
 scheme. Moreover, no sooner did the Christian accept 
 materialism in this light than it became itself transfigured. 
 
 T 
 
274 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 Natural truth and natural beauty became, in some in- 
 scrutable way, a support and an interpretation for spiritual 
 truth and spiritual beauty. The finite ceased to be 
 merely the finite, and was penetrated and suffused with 
 the infinite. AU the common affections and instincts of 
 poor human lives, all the common sights and sounds we 
 fondly think we see or hear in a Nature which has no real 
 existence, were endowed with a sudden wonderful signifi- 
 cance. These shadows, these idle hallucinations, this veil 
 of matter, which, as Hindu thought has it, is hung 
 between us and reality, and blots out the sight of it from 
 us — all this actually becomes a means of instilling into 
 the human mind a deeper idea and richer conception of 
 spiritual existence. 
 
 " This is the difference between contemplation (between 
 the use made of the mystical faculty, that is to say) in the 
 East and West. There is but the one faculty, and in both 
 East and West the act of spiritual vision was the same ; 
 but whereas the East rejected temporal existence altogether 
 the West, on the word of God, accepted it, and forthwith 
 found that in manifold ways it could be treated and 
 turned to account by the spiritual faculty itself. 
 
 " We have spoken of the love of Humanity, of Know- 
 ledge, of Art, and of Nature as being found consistent in 
 Europe with the free exercise of the spiritual faculty. Let 
 us foUow one of these emotions, the love of Nature, a little 
 farther. In the Contemporary Review for last February 
 [February 1909] there was an interesting article on the love 
 of wild Nature by Mr. Havelock Ellis, in which he traces 
 the history of the deepening and strengthening of this love. 
 There had been little like it in the classic epoch, but it 
 almost immediately foUows on the rise of Christianity. 
 He quotes St. Jerome's epistle on the beauty of the desert ; 
 Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, on the glory and harmony 
 of the universe ; and St. Augustine on the colours of the 
 sea and its majesty in storm ; and then he comes down 
 to later ages and traces through many centuries the 
 ' close connexion between the most solemn or the most 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 275 
 
 ascetic moments of Christian life, and scenery that was 
 constantly beautiful and sometimes in the highest degree 
 romantically wild.' But yet, even while insisting on all 
 this, even while pointing out that the Christian appreciation 
 of the beauty of Nature was ahead of the standard of the 
 age, Mr. Havelock Ellis does not find the cause of the 
 change in any idea contained in Christianity. He thinks 
 that a number of very emotional people were drawn to 
 Christianity in the first centuries, and, being forced to 
 take refuge in wild places, developed an appreciation of 
 that kind of scenery. This explanation, however, does 
 not appear to be adequate. 
 
 " We are not dealing with a temporary and spasmodic 
 movement! but with a change, permanent and continuous, 
 of the human mind in relation to Nature. The cause 
 alleged by Mr. Havelock Ellis, that, in the early days of 
 Christianity, some emotional individuals were driven to 
 make close acquaintance with Nature, is a transitory 
 cause. The time soon came when Christianity was 
 received as the normal religion of Europe, and when its 
 profession involved no change whatever in the ordinary 
 habits of life ; yet the new thought of something spiritual 
 and divine in Nature did not therefore die out, but on the 
 contrary steadily spread and grew. It is difficult to see 
 how two phenomena, the one so accidental and temporary 
 as the flight of certain Christians to the wild, and the other 
 so abiding as the new love of wild Nature, should be 
 related as cause and efEect.. 
 
 " It seems as if Mr. Havelock Ellis were confronted with 
 the right explanation but passes it by. The love of wild 
 Nature ' received,' he thinks, ' a powerful impetus from 
 influences associated with the development of primitive 
 Christianity.' At the same time this love of Nature was 
 a by-product of Christianity only, ' for there is nothing in 
 the doctrine of Christianity which implies approval or dis- 
 approval of any aspect of Nature.' This may be true of 
 the doctrine of Christianity : it may even be true of the 
 doctrine that it ' may be said to encourage indifference 
 
276 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 towards Nature altogether, abstracting man's attention 
 from the ejctemal world and concentrating it on the 
 problems of the soul.' But besides the doctrine there are 
 the facts of Christianity, the fact of Christ's appearance in 
 the flesh, the fact that He consented in His own person 
 to Nature, that He recognised earthly ordinances, that He 
 was touched by the beauty df wild flowers and concerned 
 with the fate of sparrows. How was this likely to tell ? 
 We must throw ourselves back," I then point out,. " into 
 the currents of thought of the early Christian contro- 
 versies. The question at issue," I meant the question which 
 was most persistently at issue, which dominates all early 
 controversies, and on the solution of which the future of 
 Christianity might be said to depend, " was the nature of 
 the Second Person of the Trinity. Oriental thought was 
 set on explaining away and dissolving Christ's dual nature ; 
 Western thought was set on establishing it. Put in 
 another way, however, the controversy amounted to this : 
 Was Christianity to be absorbed into the abstract Eastern 
 philosophy, or was it to be accepted as sanctioning and 
 recognising our human life and its surroundings ? " 
 
 Such was the issue. It is difficult to throw ourselves 
 back, as I said, into currents of thought of nineteen 
 centuries ago. We cannot realise or conceive, with the 
 Renaissance behind us and established in intellectuahsm 
 as we are, we cannot conceive what it must feel like to 
 have the whole rational foundations of life assailed and 
 threatened by the fluid, lapping motion of mystical 
 thought. That was what was going on in the early 
 Christian centuries. Moreover, that was what held out 
 a threat to the future. Everj^thing of which we have 
 been speaking, as characteristic of Western thought, 
 intellectual culture, aU the knowledge and science, the 
 progress and civilisation we are so proud of were in the 
 balance. Had the struggle gone the other way, had the 
 East prevailed, had the idea of fusion between spiritual 
 and material been lost, these things too would have been 
 lost, or rather would never have been developed. We 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 277 
 
 ^should have swung back to the Eastern standpoint. We 
 should have yielded to the invasion of those wordless 
 emotional ideas which steal upon the senses Uke sleep ; 
 we should have shared the East's dream, and all that now 
 separates us from the East and which we look upon as 
 most typically Western would never have seen its birth. 
 
 What made the struggle the harder was that the West 
 was fighting for a compromise. The last thing it desired 
 was to reject the spiritual faculty and return to Nature 
 and reason. Yet neither would it discard Nature and 
 reason. " The champions of the Western view recognised 
 to the utmost the value of the mystical gift, the inward 
 spiritual vision. They knew. Just as well as the Hindu 
 ascetics, what it was to be suffused with spiritual con- 
 sciousness. But they held out nevertheless for the hard 
 fact of the Incarnation, and by so doing, by forcing and 
 obliging the spiritual faculty to concern itself with Nature 
 and this finite existence and the visible universe, they 
 went surety, so to speak, for Nature's response to the 
 spiritual faculty. Did they know all that was involved 
 and all they hazarded ? Perhaps not, though already 
 they themselves were beginning to see Nature trans- 
 figured. In any case their trust was justified. Nature 
 made the necessary response and an alliance, hitherto 
 unthinkable, was struck up between the spiritual facility 
 in man and the universe in which he has his abode. It 
 is a manifestation of this alliance which we follow when we 
 trace, with Mr. Havelock Ellis, the deepening of man's love 
 of Nature and the increasing sense of an inward beauty 
 and harmony pervading all her aspects and operations." 
 Modem life, I go on to point out, still insists on this 
 aUiance. It wiU not give up its hold on spiritual ideas 
 in order to take up entirely with the interests and oppor- 
 tunities of the visible universe, nor will it give up the 
 visible universe in favour of purely abstract spiritual 
 ideas. " Neither the classical ideal nor the Oriental ideal 
 satisfies it. . It insists on the fusion of the two." This is 
 the characteristic, main idea which governs Western life. 
 
278 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and this idea of a fusion between spiritual and material 
 goes back to, and proceeds out of the original fusion of the 
 two in the inauguration of Western religion, that is to say, 
 it goes back to and proceeds out of the Incarnation. 
 
 The views of every race on Nature are reflected in its 
 poetry, and perhaps the difference between pagan poetry 
 and that which came after it may be defined by saying 
 that pagan poetry recognises Nature's appeal to human 
 emotions and to human feelings of tenderness and love, 
 while the later poets, who wrote since Christianity had 
 acted upon the world, went further, and treated Nature 
 as a source of inward knowledge and spiritual illumination. 
 Nature, in the great Christian poets (I am not sure that 
 this is not the test of their greatness, the test of their 
 capacity to utter the central thought of their race), is an 
 independent witness, herself spiritually inspired. " The 
 poetry more specially of Christendom is informed with a 
 feeling for Nature emotional and spiritual to a degree 
 hitherto undreamt of. Nature is no longer a mere accessory 
 of man, deriving her interest and significance chiefly from 
 him, nor a mere delusion of the senses shutting him off 
 from the truth. She is a witness and a testament. She 
 is soaked in the Divine will and the Divine intention. 
 As eyes full of spiritual question gazed at her the outer 
 husk of appearances yielded, and everywhere the inner 
 spiritual meaning peeped through, as shining chestnuts 
 show through the cracking pods." 
 
 It is unnecessary to quote examples of a tendency 
 which must be familiar to every one. It may, however, 
 be pointed out that the recognition of this divine in^ 
 tention in Nature is almost always the work of our 
 greatest poets, and of our greatest poets at their greatest. 
 Shakespeare is at his greatest in such passages as — 
 
 Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings. 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins. 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 279 
 
 Wordsworth is at his greatest in such passages as — 
 
 And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense subUme 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dweUing is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 What is peculiar in these passages is the fusion in them 
 of spiritualism and realism. They are toojspiritual to be 
 the outcome of classic thought, and too real to be the 
 outcome of Eastern thought. They combine ideas never 
 combined before Christianity ; in a word they are made 
 possible by the Incarnation. 
 
 Jefferies is most significant as one who possessed 
 in an extraordinary degree this sense of the spiritual 
 in Nature. He handles and touches the least natural 
 objects in such a way that his estimate of their spiritual 
 worth is somehow communicated to the reader. We 
 know from his own accounts how daily, as he walked 
 about, watching and taking notes, he would go apart 
 into some lonely place and yield himself to a state of 
 trance. He was in these trances "rapt" and "carried 
 away." His whole nature was given up to the act of 
 spiritual aspiration. 
 
 " I see now," he writes later. " that what I laboured 
 for was soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to be 
 full of soul-learning." It is the old thought, the mystic 
 thought, of the soul as knower. But it is not with 
 Jefferies an abstract thought ; on the contrary, the whole 
 universe and all Nature are ministers of his soul-life. 
 
 " With the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by 
 the light, with the ocean . . . with these I prayed, as if 
 they were the keys of an instrument . . . leaning against 
 the oak's massive trunk, and feeling the rough bark and 
 the Uchen at my back, looking southwards over the grassy 
 
28o FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 fields, cowslip-yellow, at the woods on the slope, I thought 
 my desire of deeper soul -life . . . under the shapely 
 rounded elms, by the hawthorn bushes and hazel, every- 
 where the same deep desire for the soul-nature. . . . But 
 to touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray 
 projecting over the path as I walked, seemed to repeat 
 the same prayer in me. The long-lived summer days 
 dried and warmed the turf in the meadows, I used to lie 
 down in soUtary corners at full length on my back, so as 
 to feel the embrace of the earth. The grass stood high 
 above me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced 
 on my face. I looked up at the sky, with half-closed eyes 
 to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over, sometimes 
 a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air, green- 
 finches sang in the hedge. . . . Dreaming in appearance I 
 was breathing full of existence ; I was aware of the grass- 
 blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawthorn and tree. I 
 seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were 
 a pore through which I drank. The grasshoppers called 
 and leaped, the greenfinches sang, the blackbirds happily 
 fluted, all the air hummed with life. I was plunged deep 
 in existence, and with all that existence I prayed. . . . 
 Through every grass-blade in the thousand, thousand 
 grasses ; through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, 
 on bush and tree ; through the song -notes and the 
 marked feathers of the birds ; through the insects' hum 
 and the colour of the butterflies ; through the soft warm 
 air, the flecks of cloud dissolving — I used them all for 
 prayer." 
 
 Can anything be conceived more opposite to Eastern 
 mysticism than this ? The reader remembers the con- 
 templative ascetics in Eastern forests, sternly excluding 
 all outer consciousness that they may advance in soul- 
 life, in soul-learning : shutting their eyes to the visible 
 world that they may see into their own souls. Here is 
 JefEeries, a Western mystic, actually utilising all such 
 outward things as a means of approach to the same 
 spiritual science. " These passages as much as the poetic 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 281 
 
 passages before quoted, reveal a view of Nature not possible 
 before the Incarnation but made possible by it. Neither 
 in the Oriental phase of pure emotionalism, nor in the 
 classical phase of pure intellectualism could they have 
 been evolved. It was the welding of these two together, 
 the forcing of mankind to look at material Nature through 
 spiritual eyes, which gave birth to them." 
 
 Thus far I had proceeded on my own account. 
 Throughout all Christian art and literature there ran 
 a feeling, a consciousness of the union and interfusion 
 of spiritual and material, which, when traced back, 
 rested ultimately on the same interfusion in the founda- 
 tions of the Christian faith. But how was such a view 
 as this likely to conform to existing criticism ? The 
 question appeared to be answered by a recently published 
 work 1 of Baron von Hiigel, which has been commended 
 by discerning critics equally for the breadth of its learning 
 and the penetration of its thought. The leading idea which 
 emerges from its analysis is precisely that dualism in the 
 Christian rehgion with which tlie history of art has brought 
 us in contact. " Thus less than ever," the author writes 
 on page 316, " is the Immanentism and the Incarnation 
 Doctrine of Christianity an empty theory ; indeed its 
 insistence that spirit shall penetrate and transform 
 matter, and shall thus awaken and develop its own self, 
 has never in the history of the world had so gigantic a 
 field, and such immense difficulties, in which to show and 
 to develop its power, as it possesses now." And on 
 page 389 : " As in all mental apprehension and conviction 
 there is always, somewhere, the element of stimulation of 
 the senses, so also does the spirit awaken to its own life 
 and powers on occasion of contact and conflict with 
 material things. Hence eternal life will (here below at 
 least) not mean for man aloofness from matter and the 
 bodily senses, nor even a restriction of their use to means 
 of spiritual self-expression ; but it will include also a rich 
 and wise contact with, and an awakening by means of, 
 
 » Eternal Life : A Study, by F. von Hiigel. T. & T. Clark. 
 
282 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 matter and things." And on page 394 the same thought 
 is even more forcibly expressed in the following words : 
 " And finally in this scheme of life [that is the Christian 
 scheme of life] the first cause, and the ultimate unity, of 
 all things is found in God, as the supremely rich, self- 
 revealing, self-giving eternal life. This ultimate Living 
 Unity is trusted, and, in the long run, is mysteriously 
 found, to permeate all, and to bring fruitfulness to any 
 one good activity, from the other levels and kinds of 
 goodness, even though apparently most distant or most 
 contrary. And it is just because of this fundamental, 
 ineradicable interconnection, and of the soul's conviction 
 of it, that man's spirit can drive home this or that research 
 or interest, and can remain sure of contributing (in pro- 
 portion to his selfless attention to the immanent neces- 
 sities and prophetic hints of its subject-matter) something 
 of abiding value to the other departments and levels of 
 man's energizings, and ultimately, to his further seeking 
 and finding of Eternal Life." 
 
 Thus, to my pleasure, I found conclusions, which had 
 been indicated to me by the history of art, independently 
 corroborated. 
 
 It seems that what we have to deal with, what is latent 
 in Christianity and coming out in the human mind in 
 gradually definable thoughts, is the idea that matter is 
 incomplete without spirit and spirit incomplete without 
 matter, that the two are mysteriously yet indescribably 
 blended. In this manner Christianity is represented as a 
 culmination of all that went before it. The two rivers of 
 thought. Eastern and Western, having flowed into each 
 other, Christianity, prepared for and made possible by 
 their union, seems to be so guaranteed by the whole 
 course and development of human thought, that there is 
 no escaping it save by renouncing or ignoring the con- 
 tinuity of experience of the human race. Viewed thus 
 the Christian religion would include, as essential to its 
 own realisation and perfect development, all the activities, 
 faculties, and functions in human nature. All art and 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 283 
 
 science, all disinterested thought would belong to it as 
 much as all spiritual exercise and inspiration. Between 
 spiritual and temporal would be no fixed line. Each, we 
 should say, has need of the other. Spirit without matter 
 is a vacant abstraction, mocking the human senses that 
 attempt to grasp it. Matter without spirit is a reiterated 
 demonstration of the perplexing fact that not only are 
 we all helpless dupes, but that we are duped by those 
 very instincts and intuitions which we feel to be most 
 pure and enlightened. 
 
 It is not, however, my purpose to raise the religious 
 point as such. I am concerned with the nature of 
 Christianity only in so far as it lights up for us the 
 meaning of art. 
 
 The language of art is one of the two main vehicles 
 in which life expresses its aspirations and ideas. Let 
 life be dominated by the thought, indicated by Baron 
 von Hiigel, of the joint co-operation of material and 
 spiritual influences, and immediately this conviction 
 becomes the inspiration of art. This, it appears to 
 me, the more complete realisation of this, is the message 
 which art awaits to-day. She has finished what she 
 had to say. She has been the instrument of purely 
 spiritual thought and the instrument of purely intellectual 
 thought. We cannot imagine her recurring to either of 
 these motives, for both have been worked out. She has 
 also vigorously expressed that further phase we spoke 
 of, the mediaeval phase, when a rough union or alliance 
 was arranged between the two mptives, and each con- 
 tributed its share to the joint style. This is nearer to 
 what we want, nearer to the requirements of modem 
 life ; yet neither does this meet those requirements. 
 Mediaeval art for modern purposes is evidently obsolete, 
 and it is obsolete because of what we called its intellectual 
 immaturity. To consider the crockets and cusps of a Gothic 
 fa9ade, and then in thought to turn to a specimen of Greek 
 work, or to the work of one of the more delicate spirits of 
 the Renaissance, such, shall we say, as Bramante, is to be 
 
z84 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 made conscious of the great deficiency which belongs to 
 mediaeval art. Never can that art, rich though it is in 
 sentiment and emotion, possess for us the interest which 
 works of intellectual maturity possess. It is an art which is 
 primitive, which has not learnt to think — ^just as the poetry 
 of that age, too, just as " Chevy Chase," for example, as 
 compared with " Paradise Lost," is a poetry which has 
 not learnt to think. Greek art and the finer Renaissance 
 art reason subtly and profoundly. Gothic art does not 
 reason at all. This at once disposes of its claim to modern 
 adaptation, but at the same time it suggests the direction 
 in which modern art may be expected to develop. 
 
 The union of intellectual and spiritual we want and must 
 have. But in the future it will be a genuine and fully 
 developed intellectualism which we shall have to offer. 
 Instead of a crude and rudimentary instinct, an intel- 
 lectualism in its embryonic stages, a mere latent capacity 
 for dealing energetically with munda;ne and material pheno- 
 mena, we shaU be able to contribute an intellectualism 
 which for centuries has been ripened and enriched by 
 culture and education. It will be the first time in history 
 that a spiritual - intellectual alliance on equal terms 
 will have been possible. When, in earlier centuries, we 
 possessed a nobly developed spiritual sense, we possessed 
 but a primitive and undeveloped intellectual sense to set 
 beside it. And when, in later centuries, we possessed a 
 fuUy matured intellectual sense, we had, in the process of 
 maturing it, so suffered our spiritual sense to atrophy 
 from disuse that this in turn was unable to play its part. 
 Now for the first time we may anticipate a more equal 
 balance. Now for the first time the "intellectual and 
 spiritual senses are both fully conscious and active. Now 
 for the first time we know and are able to say that the 
 ideal we have to realise is not of the spirit only, nor of 
 the intellect only, but of both equally interfused and 
 combined. 
 
 One word I would add. It may be suggested that such 
 a fusion of motives is inconsistent with our previous 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 285 
 
 analysis ; for it has been argued that what was perfect 
 in intellect was achieved by the elimination of all but 
 strictly intellectual considerations, and what was perfect 
 -in spiritual art by the elimination of all but spiritual 
 motives. If, then, their development and perfection 
 consist in this eliminating process must not fusion neces- 
 sarily lead to deterioration ? At the least must it not 
 mean that the factors in which we deal will be maimed 
 and crippled through being forced into unnatural asso- 
 ciation ? What we want is no compromise patched up 
 between two a<iversaries, both of which have sacriiiced 
 themselves to secure it, but an alliance that shall imply 
 fuller and more ample opportunities for both ; and how, 
 under the circumstances, is this possible ? 
 
 What we have to remember, in answer to this, is 
 that, since thought in human affairs leads the way and 
 impresses its own characteristics on its means of utter- 
 ance, our first business is with the thought, not with 
 the art. The Christian ideal, the union of intellect and 
 spirit, no doubt implies opposition. It has not the per- 
 fection of the entirely spiritual or entirely intellectual 
 view. We were speaking in the last chapter of the 
 dualism which runs through Nature and life and the 
 mind of man. The Eastern philosophy and the pa,gan 
 philosophy recognise that division, and build upon it, and 
 would perpetuate it ; while the Christian philosophy aims 
 at overcoming it and securing the united action of the 
 two sides. The question really at issue is whether or 
 not this claim constitutes what may be called a livable 
 doctrine. Does it offer an adequate foundation for 
 life ? Does the union of intellect and spirit seem to imply, 
 in actual life, the maiming or weakening of either faculty 
 or their more complete development ? I have endeavoured 
 to point out already that no such weakening is implied, 
 because the nature of the rival factors, though outwardly 
 opposed, is really so allied inwardly that each may be 
 said to be necessary to the other ; each offers to the other 
 what was indispensable to its own growth and development. 
 
286 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 But so it is with all the degrees of the dualism we were 
 speaking of. Light is not conceivable as light unless we 
 have dark to contrast it with. Hard is not conceivable 
 but by contrast with soft. Opposition runs through^ 
 the scale, but this is outward. More profoundly an 
 inward sympathy unites the opposites. And therefore it 
 is that we may believe it will ultimately be foimd that 
 the ideal of a union of spiritual and intellectual will 
 prove a livable doctrjne, that it will offer an adequate 
 foundation for life, and that it will imply, not the weaken- 
 ing of either faculty, but the completer development of 
 both. 
 
 But if this is true of the thought so it will be of the art 
 it speaks in. Thought, I said, impresses its own char- 
 acteristics on its means of utterance. Of these art is one 
 of the chief. Nothing lives in art which has not first Uved 
 in thought ; and when it appears in art it bears upon it 
 precisely the same qualities and hmitations in an aesthetic 
 sense as the original thought bore in an ethical or philo- 
 sophical sense. In proportion as the thought is true, the 
 art will be beautiful. But the greatest art only lives and 
 satisfies as long as the thought it stands for lives and 
 satisfies. Intellect is a noble thing, and the Greeks 
 expressed it nobly. But grant the time when an intel- 
 lectual estimate of life will seem inadequate, when the 
 very intellectualists themselves will feel that they have 
 bought their clear-cut philosophy at too high a price and 
 are sacrificing to maintain it too essential an ingredient 
 in life — ^grant this sense of Umitation and inadequacy in 
 the sphere of thought, and the same defects will declare 
 themselves in the sphere of art. It will still be perfect 
 in the Greek sense, perfect as far as it goes, perfect out- 
 wardly. But it will share with its parent philosophy a 
 more radical imperfection, the imperfection of including 
 but a portion of life. 
 
 We all feel this ; we all feel in the long run, however 
 deep our study and profound our appreciation of Greek 
 architecture and sculpture, that there is something in 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 287 
 
 that very exactitude, that certitude and precision of 
 articulation, which disappoints us. Beautiful, yes ; com- 
 plete, yes ; but how much is there within us, how many 
 and how profound desires and aspirations of the soul, 
 which have grown and expanded since- the Greek days, 
 which could never in that finite perfection find any utter- 
 ance at all ? 
 
 And so it is with the art in which mystical and spiritual 
 absorption has been embodied. It is true that a Byzantine 
 interior achieves its contemplative and completely 
 emotional character by the obliteration of intellectual 
 forms ; but that does not imply that the obliteration of 
 form is essential to perfection in spiritual art ; it only 
 impHes that it is essential to the Asiatic idea of perfection. 
 St. Basil, the founder of Eastern monachism, which 
 existed only for trance and contemplation, would have 
 hailed it with rapture. St. Benedict, the founder of 
 Western monachism, which included thought and study 
 and human interests and activities in the spiritual ideal, 
 would have rejected it as imperfect ; as imperfect because 
 so perfect ; as not spiritual enough because so exclusively 
 spiritual. Here lies the issue. Greek art is not really 
 perfectly intellectual, because it will not allow the intel- 
 lectual to flow on and complete itself in the spiritual. 
 And Byzantine art is not really perfectly spiritual, because 
 it will not allow the spiritual to receive the reinforcement 
 and support of the intellectual. 
 
 Art must always share the virtues and defects of the 
 thought which bred it. Should it prove true that there 
 is dawning upon the world to-day the consciousness of a 
 religion which equally includes all spiritual and intel- 
 lectual life ; and should this thought turn out to be not 
 a contradiction in terms but rather the reconciUation 
 of an ancient antagonism which has hitherto pervaded 
 Nature and man, then out of this thought there will no 
 doubt arise an art of like character, an art which shall 
 show itself able to reconcile old antagonisms in the sphere 
 of aesthetics, and in the act of reconciliation shall expand 
 
288 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 and develop rather than diminish the principles with 
 which it deals. In short, as the thought is so is the art. 
 
 If the thought I have endeavoured, with Baron von 
 Hiigel's help, to define is coherent, so also will the art 
 it will speak through be coherent. If the thought be 
 destined to unite views which have had their far- 
 separated homes in East and West, then the art it will 
 speak through wiU unite the two vehicles of form and 
 colour through which West and East have hitherto 
 separately spoken. 
 
 Nor are these necessarily remote and speculative 
 suggestions, which have more place in a student's dreams 
 than in the practical world. Indeed, the world itself at 
 this very moment is engaged in arguing the case we have 
 raised. Could we look behind the outward manifestations 
 of the war now raging, and, instead of batteries and 
 battalions, see the irreconcilable ideals which are urging 
 on the conflict, what should we discover ? What is the 
 spiritual hostility behind the physical hostility ? 
 
 Prussianism, at least, is not hard to define, for it shares 
 the firm outlines of all strictly intellectual conceptions. 
 Its diplomacy and policy, the motives on which it acts 
 itself and expects other nations to act, the aims it has in 
 view and on which it concentrates its will and purpose, 
 its rigid maital limitations, its entire inability to under- 
 stand the spiritual ideas which are moving mankind in 
 the present hour — briefly, all we see of it and all it declares 
 of itself proclaim the strict adaptation of its activity to 
 the material sphere. It believes in a subject matter 
 amenable to the laws of science and which can be mani- 
 pulated by those laws. It believes in the State, the 
 physical power of the State, and the submission of spiritual 
 claims to the purposes of the State. The State is its 
 materialistic ideal to which all else is subordinate, and the 
 rigidly intellectual and scientific character of its education 
 and training is in strict conformity with the nature of 
 such an ideal. 
 
 But why should doctrines like these excite the in- 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 289 
 
 stinctive antipathy of the greater part of the civilised 
 world ? Prussianism is not an ignoble motive. It is, 
 after all, but the motive which all States and Empires 
 have acted on in the past, only more logically expressed 
 and coherently carried out. " I have more sympathy," 
 an English politician once said a propos of the Boer War, 
 " with a strong nation struggling to be great than with 
 a weak nation struggling to be free." The whole Prussian 
 gospel is justified in those words, and they were spoken 
 but thirteen years ago. 
 
 What then, we ask again, is the reason for the strong 
 antipathy which the Prussian materialism now excites ? 
 Whence this sudden hatred of such a gospel of life ? Let 
 me remind the reader of a fact in regard to all antipathies. 
 Nothing can be hated in and for itself alone. To seem 
 hateful an idea must be viewed from the standpoint 
 of another idea opposite to it in character. To say, 
 therefore, that Prussianism is repugnant to us because 
 of its intrinsic qualities is inadequate. It would on 
 such reasoning be repugnant to the Prussians. It is 
 really repugnant to us because its intrinsic qualities are 
 directly opposed to those belonging to our own gospel of 
 life. This is what is worth emphasising. That strong 
 aversion, of which the signs are all around us, which is 
 felt to-day for Prussian materialism would not be possible 
 were it not that we ourselves had adopted, or were in 
 process of adopting, an opposite ideal. And indeed that 
 this is what is occurring should be apparent on independent 
 evidence. For it may be accepted that all people, who 
 are aware of what is going on in the region of thought, 
 are conscious of the passing of the late narrowly scientific 
 era, with its rigidly materialised standards corresponding 
 with its rigidly intellectual habit of thought. Those views 
 and standards, that narrow intellectualism with all its 
 effects, are melting and softening to-day xmder new 
 influences. The atmosphere is charged with new forces. 
 The dew of a spiritual spring is in the air which lately was 
 so hard and dry. Already the very language of scientific 
 
 u 
 
290 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 definitions and rationalist arguments appears pompous 
 and obsolete. Even in such practical matters as capital 
 and labour, and the propositions of political economy, the 
 old utilitarian, supply-and-demand theories are felt to be 
 inadequate because of their denial of all but material 
 motives. The truth is we are attentive in these days to 
 suggestions which are not of the material order at all, to 
 suggestions essentially emotional and spiritual in purport, 
 and which, as I always think, are being borne to us from 
 the East in invisible exchange for the more material 
 contributions which the East is receiving from the West. 
 Be that as it may, no sensitive temperament will question 
 the spiritual susceptibility which is so marked a char- 
 acteristic of the present generation, nor the sensation of 
 impatience and, perhaps, contempt which the newly 
 awakened sense has engendered for merely practical 
 considerations and merely material aims. 
 
 But Germany has not shared in this awakening. With 
 all her cleverness Germany's intelligence is not finely and 
 delicately strung. Thorough as she is, industrious, almost 
 dogged in her mental capacity, she lacks that pliability of 
 mind, that sensitiveness and nimbleness of apprehension 
 which recognise the advent of new modes of thought. 
 Thus the very qualities which made her effective in 
 certain fixed directions may easily in time of change 
 retard her. When intellectualism was in the ascendant 
 the assiduous tenacity of the German mind appealed 
 to all Europe as the highest proof of intellectual efficiency. 
 But directly that other kind of insight, more spiritual, 
 swifter, and more immediate in its vision, dawned upon 
 the human understanding, the limitations of Germanic 
 thought were realised. By its very tenacity and stubborn- 
 ness the German mind was undone. It was destitute 
 of elasticity. It could not let go. To this hour it is 
 still doggedly at work in its hopeless task of somehow, 
 with the aid of intellect, hammering an adequate philo- 
 sophy of life out of a material environment. Old 
 estimates and old valuations die hard, and are repeated 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 291 
 
 long after the truth has gone out of them. The opinion 
 formed long ago of the German genius has been handed 
 down, like an heirloom, even to the present generation. 
 Nevertheless, for several years now it has been apparent to 
 many people that on subjects of general interest German 
 thought in these days is consistently second-rate. 
 
 So in Germany the old material standards and purely 
 practical considerations still find a home, nay, by German 
 thoroughness and method are exalted into a regulated 
 policy and philosophy of empire. It is with this we are 
 at war. Yesterday we might have admired a materialism 
 on the imperial scale, to-day it revolts us, recognising in 
 it, as we do, a dead ideal out of which we have climbed 
 to higher conceptions. Instinctively, profoundly, and, as 
 time passes and the scorching light of war reveals the 
 purposes of nations with ever accumulating certainty of 
 knowledge, the thought of the ingrained German material- 
 ism and of the fact that that materialism is in direct 
 opposition to all that is best and freshest and fullest of 
 promise in the world's ideas, is penetrating the mind of 
 Europe. We are fighting for a spiritual hope, and we are 
 fighting Germany on that ground because Germany is the 
 chief enemy of such hope and bar to its realisation. 
 
 These are considerations which, I believe, are becoming 
 clear to us all. War is in some ways the greatest of all 
 artists, for there is none other which achieves so success- 
 fully the purpose of all great art", the purpose of blotting 
 out the superfluities and irrelevancies which entangle 
 life in their growth and obscure its issues, until at last, 
 in the glare of battle, the essential timbers which uphold 
 our existence are revealed like the beams and rafters of 
 a gutted house. Not by subtle reasoning and analysis 
 are we to attain, perhaps, the knowledge of our faith, 
 but by hammering out our intention on the anvil of war. 
 By blows not by reasons, by the shedding of blood not 
 "ink, we shall articulate and purify our ideas. Our teachers 
 and professors wiU be, not the old and learned, but youth 
 ignorant and brave ; nor will it be the first time that a 
 
292 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 nation has worked out its salvation through acts of 
 devotion and self-sacrifice, rather than through ingenious 
 argument and intellectual discrimination. Instinct is 
 more than intellect, and character itself is the highest 
 intelligence. Thus what men do sword in hand, though 
 done unthinkingly, may be the definition of a thought ; 
 and our soldiers may prove the greatest of all our 
 philosophers, since it will be they who will succeed at 
 last in awakening us to the recognition of other than 
 material standards. Indeed, there are already many, 
 who, guided by that tuition, are looking to the battle- 
 fields of the two frontiers with something of that " wild 
 surmise " which attends the discovery of new oceans and 
 continents. Many things, they feel, will be possible after 
 this, which have hitherto proved impossible. Deeds not 
 words are teaching us, and in the issue we shall perhaps 
 be able to put into actual practice ideals which as yet 
 we have only been able to talk about. 
 
 And still the reason of this confidence remains the 
 same. Fighting materialism in its most formidable and 
 imposing aspect as a rule and law of life, we are fighting 
 the arch-enemy of spiritual light and progress, and, when 
 we have done fighting, spiritual light and progress, we 
 hope, win be nearer to us and more in our lives than 
 they were. We fight not for England, France, Russia, 
 Belgium, Serbia only ; nor against Germany, Austria, 
 Turkey only ; these are but the names of inward hostile 
 forces, and it is the inward antagonism, the battle of 
 ideas, which sets the outward forces in motion. Our 
 soldiers are sacrificing themselves for something greater 
 even than a national ideal. They are sacrificing them- 
 selves for a spiritual ideal. And if we seek more closely 
 into the nature of that spiritual ideal we shall find that 
 it consists in nothing but the thought we have been 
 endeavouring to explain, the thought of the insufficiency 
 of mere materialism and mere intellectualism, and the 
 desire to embrace an ideal of life, not unintellectual 
 indeed, and not otherwise than sanely practical and 
 
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 293 
 
 material, yet with its material aspect so altered, so shot 
 and blended with spiritual significance, as to be the 
 means of feeding, sustaining, and rendering intelligible 
 to our earthly senses the spiritual order of ideas. 
 
 Such is the Western ideal, towards the realisation of 
 which we are moving to-day. This it is which our 
 armies are establishing and safeguarding to hand on to 
 future generations as an inspiration of life first, and next 
 of art. Beyond these dark days a hope extends which, 
 indefinite in extent, is definite in character. We know 
 not what spirit, disciplined and steadied by intellect, and 
 intellect, illumined and inspired by spirit, may achieve, 
 yet the general tendency and influence of such an alliance 
 may be realised. The past reveals the separate and 
 divided part which each faculty has played in human 
 affairs, together with the deficiencies and limitations 
 which have resulted from their isolation. But further, 
 the past reveals the union of the two currents, and with 
 it the inevitable development of thought which shall 
 control the life of the future. What will be the note of 
 that life ? We define it by saying that it wUl embrace 
 equally the things of the intellect and the things of the 
 spirit. Its characteristic will be its universality, its 
 acceptance, as equally indispensable to the whole, of 
 every disinterested form of human thought and human 
 knowledge. If the natural leads on into the spiritual, 
 then all who have worked within the natural sphere, 
 even though their own vision never extended beyond it, 
 will be found to have been working for a spiritual purpose. 
 Let that gulf be bridged, let the dependence each on the 
 other of natural and spiritual be established, and there 
 will at once be exorcised that spirit of dissension, at the 
 root maybe of all dissensions, which springs from the 
 pretensions of each faculty to deal with life after its 
 own fashion. Thenceforth we shall have left behind all 
 those narrower perfections, reached through the oblitera- 
 tion of a half of our means of enlightenment. Man will 
 in the old sense of the word be made whole. All that 
 
294 FORM AND COLOUR 
 
 the East has divined and dreamed, all that the West 
 has reasoned and thought out will be included in that 
 final summary. This is the conception which is entering 
 into life, and what enters into life must one day come out 
 in art. More or less fitfully and dimly, yet with growing 
 certitude, we are beginning to apprehend in Nature and 
 in thought that reconciliation of intellectual and spiritual 
 ideas out of which the reconciliation of form and colour 
 will one day inevitably proceed. 
 
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 Vicissitudes of Evangeline. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper 
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 When the Hour Came. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. 
 
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 Sahib Log: An Anglo-Indian Tale. By John Travers. Picture 
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