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THE

Aktist and his Mission

A STUDY IN ESTHETICS.

BY

REV. WILLIAM M. REILY, Ph.D.,
Professor of Ancient Languages, Palatinate College.

PHILADELPHIA:
JOHN E. POTTER AND COMPANY,
617 Sansom Street.

COPYRIGHT
By WILLIAM M. REILY
1881

MOTTO.

Without the spiritual, observe,
The natural's impossible ; — no form,
No motion ! Without sensuous, spiritual
Is inappreciable ; — no beauty or power :
And in this twofold sphere the twofold man
(And still the artist is intensely a man)
Holds firmly by the natural, to reach
The spiritual beyond it,— fixes still
The type with mortal vision, to pierce through
With eyes immortal, to the antetype
Some call the ideal, — better called the real,
And certain to be called so presently
When things shall have their names.
Mks. Bkowning.

(iii)

DEDICATION.

TO THE STUDENTS WHO DURING THE LAST DECADE HAVE BEEN,
AND WHO AT PRESENT ARE, CONNECTED WITH PALATINATE
COLLEGE, AND MORE ESPECIALLY TO THE MEMBERS OF HIS
FIRST CLASS IN /ESTHETICS, TO WHOM THE SUBSTANCE
OF THIS VOLUME, IN THE FORM OF LECTURES, WAS
ORIGINALLY PRESENTED, AND WHO ARE IN A
MEASURE RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS APPEARANCE
BEFORE A LESS INDULGENT PUBLIC,

©HIS G50I^,

AS A SOUVENIR OF PLEASANT LITERARY, SCIENTIFIC, AND
SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP, IS

AFFECTIONATELY INSCEIBED

THE AUTHOR.

(v)

PREFACE.

In presenting this volume to the public, the author has
a twofold acknowledgment to make. In the first place, he
has scarcely anything to set forth that is original; and in
the second, his reading has been confined to a very limited
sphere. For the former fact no apology need be offered.
When we think of the vast amount of aesthetic material
which has been unearthed since Kant by the later German
metaphysicians, the task of the present generation will seem
to be adequately performed, if the more mechanical process be
attended to of sifting, combining, and re-presenting. What
is here offered may appear of less value, inasmuch as the
most of what is said has already been given to the English
reading public by writers with whom all readers, who make
pretension to a share in modern culture, are familiar.
Carlyle, Emerson, Lowell, and others, acknowledge their
indebtedness to German thinkers, while Ruskin, who has
indirectly drawn upon them for some of his most important
and valuable principles, can scarcely find words strong
enough to express his scorn for the entire class of German
theologians, artists, and philosophers.
Should the author's want of acquaintance with many of
the authorities manifest itself, he does not offer as an excuse
the fact that most of them are difficult to read, and the
number large, but that the substance of the investigations of
all is contained in a few. It is said that Plato alone is en
titled to the compliment Omar paid the Koran : " Burn the
(vii)

viii PREFACE.
libraries, for their value is contained in this book." " Out
of him come all things that are still written and debated
among men of thought." So far at least as modern study in
the philosophy of the beautiful is concerned, it has resulted
in but little more than the confirmation and elucidation of
his principles. A few of those authors acknowledged most
successful are fully adequate to furnish the material which
the writer primarily had in view. In his introductory lecture
on the Beautiful, Cousin has the following passage :x"It was
worthy of the Scotch school and Kant to give a place to the
beautiful in their doctrine. They considered it in the soul
and in nature. But they did not even touch the difficult
question of the reproduction of the beautiful by the genius of
man. We will try to embrace this great subject in its whole
extent, and we are about to offer at least a sketch of a regular
and complete theory of beauty and art." While the present
monograph must fall far short of the aim thus proposed, the
author presents it to the public with the hope that it will
furnish some insight into the comprehensive and important
science of ^Esthetics, and that it will not prove an altogether
useless contribution to the literature of the day.
Myeestown, Pa., October, 1881.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I.
PACE
Preliminary Remarks  13

SECTION II.
The Artist's Mission  18
SECTION III.
The Artist's Method  ¦  24
SECTION IV.
The Artist's Resources  33
PART I.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY IN GENERAL.
SECTION I.
The Sense of Beauty in General  37
(ix)

x CONTENTS.

PART II.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY UNFOLDING ITSELF IN ARTISTIC
PRODUCTIVITY.

SECTION I.
PAGE
Preliminary Remarks  54

SECTION II.
I. — ^Esthetic Contemplation, ob the Regardant Faculty . 57
SECTION III.
IL— Fancy  65
A. Depositive  66
B. Expositive  71
C Compositive  77
SECTION IV.
III. — The Imagination  82
A. Identificative  84
B. Re-creative  88
C. Organically Originative  92
PART III.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY AS THE ENDOWMENT OF THE
INDIVIDUAL ARTIST.
SECTION I.
Preliminary Remarks  102
SECTION II.
1— Talent  107

CONTENTS. xi
SECTION III. PAGn
II.— Geniality  116
SECTION IV.
III. — Genius. — General. Conception  121
SECTION V.
Genius. — First Characteristic  136
SECTION VI.
Genius. — Second Characteristic  155
SECTION VII.
Genius. — Third Characteristic  161

The Artist and his Mission.

INTRODUCTION.
THE ARTIST'S MISSION, METHOD. AND RESOURCES.

SECTION I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
As the title indicates, the present work has to do
with the artist on the one hand, and witli beauty on
the other. It will be naturally expected that here, at
the threshold, the writer explain his terms.1 Those
who are best acquainted with the subject dislike to
venture upon a definition of the abstract name; while
the conception of beauty and that of the artist are so
closely related to each other, that when we obtain the
one the other must of necessity follow.
"What, then, is your conception of the artist?"
This is the question which the book is intended to
answer. An adequate reply, accordingly, is afforded
those only who see fit to peruse its pages. But before
entering into the subject which has been undertaken,
it is necessary to prepare the way by making a few
statements concerning some matters pertaining to it.
1 "A definition maybe very exact, and yet go but a very little way
toward informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue
of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to
follow than to precede our inquiry of which it ought to be considered as
the result." — Burke : Introduction to the Sublime and Beautiful.
2 (13)

14 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
In the body of the work the attempt is made to set
forth what that is in the man which makes of him an
artist. In the introduction it will be necessary to
consider the mission which devolves upon him, the
method he adopts in the execution of it, and the
material which he employs. In this preliminary sec
tion, a few words may be allowed for the negative
purpose of clearing away false apprehensions of the
subject which sometimes are found to prevail.
The artist dare not be mistaken for the artisan. The
latter has a purely material and practical end in view.
His aim is to minister to wants connected with the
ordinary, practical, and every-day life of man. How
ever admirable his skill, however attractive and
finished his workmanship, so long as his activity is
confined to the sphere of what is ordinarily termed
industrial art, he is not properly an artist. As will
hereafter be shown, the beautiful is the domain of the
one, as entirely separate and distinct from the useful,
which is that of the other.
When we step beyond the sphere of strict utility,
we find various forms of employment resembling the
artist's, and sometimes assuming the name of art, which,
however, fall beneath the rank. The photographer, for
example, although pictures of life-like expression and
beauty are the result of his handiwork, is still no more
of an artist than is the maker of your mirror, to whom
you are indebted for a perfect image of yourself every
time you make your toilet. The business of both,
being of an essentially mechanical nature, is properly
designated by the word — handicraft.
Still another class of claimants to artistic beauty
must be excluded. It consists of those who in virtue

INTRODUCTION. 15
of natural aptitude and assiduity have acquired an
extraordinary degree of skill in some physical exercise,
and whose exclusive object is the display of it with the
view of exciting surprise. The adept in tricks is not
an artist. The circus-rider, the acrobat, the pres-
tigiator, fail entirely to meet the requirements made
of those who legitimately represent the sphere of art.
While the distinction here made must be insisted
upon, no one will deny the fact that there are some
branches of mechanical employment which so closely
resemble that of the artist, as scarcely to be distin
guished from it; just as, on the other hand, much that
pretends and seems to be artistic is essentially me
chanical. But this does not do away with the differ
ence between the spheres. In the natural world the
same difficulty is experienced. There are forms of
existence, which connect the various kingdoms and
partake so equally of the characteristics of two of them,
that it is impossible to say to which one they belong.
And yet of each of these kingdoms, as separate from
the rest, we have a distinct conception.
From what will be said hereafter, it will appear that
the artist stands upon a plane elevated far above the
classes of pursuits to which reference has been made.
Still the position assigned him by the majority of men
is of no greater dignity than that properly belonging
to the lowest of his rivals. In the esteem of most
persons the artist stands high in proportion to the
degree of surprise and astonishment he awakens by
feats of skill and ingenuity. When the painter can
imitate cherries so accurately and naturally that the
birds will peck at the canvas, he is supposed to achieve
a complete artistic success. So it is with the musician

16 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
who can entice from his instrument sounds utterly
strange to its nature and which least of all it was
designed to produce. If this be all of art, how are we
to expect the artist to be properly regarded ?
There is an inborn tendency in the human heart to
do homage to the genius ; and when the artistic hero
appears, he fails not to awaken a greater or less
amount of enthusiasm. Still, in the minds of men
ordinarily, the idea prevails that the artist does not
rank very high in the scale of spiritual being. He is
not usually regarded as a man in the sense in which
other men are. The language and bearing of others
toward him is often like that which is employed in
the case of children, as though he were not deserving,
on the part of busy, bustling men, struggling with the
realities - of life, of the treatment due one another.
When he is admitted into social circles, and attention
is shown him, it is understood that this is owing to a
generous sufferance and polite consideration; but it is
never forgotten that he is only an artist.1
The true dignity of the class will appear, we trust,
from what follows. If the conclusions reached are
correct, it will be found that artists have but few com
petitors in their claims upon the gratitude, esteem,
1 The prevailing sentiment on this subject is represented in Thackeray's
" Newcomes" by Mr. Honeyman, a clergyman of the Established Church
(whose pulpit, by the way, was a source of income to stock-speculators),
who says to the hero of the tale, " My dear Clive, there are degrees in
society, which you must respect. You surely cannot think of becoming a
professional artist?" To this, good old Colonel Newcome, who, though
he was determined to make his son respectable, thinking that he could do
so by making him rich, replies, " He shall follow his own bent; as long
as his calling is honest, it becomes a gentleman; and if he were. to take
a fancy to play on the fiddle, — actually on the fiddle, — I should not
object."

INTR OD UCTION. 1 7
and homage of their fellow-men. For, while they
cannot furnish them with what may be strictly termed
useful, they bring them face to face with the beautiful,
the essence of which is identical with that of the true
and the good ; while they do not mechanically repre
sent the products of nature and of other hands, they
convey a spiritual message in that they reveal the
states, sentiments, and emotions of their own free, feel
ing, and thinking souls; and while the pleasure they
afford is not usually the startling and agitating one of
surprise, it is none the less real, true, and substantial,
inasmuch as it consists in the satisfaction of one of the
most essential, as well as the most deeply felt, wants
of the heart of man.

18 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

SECTION II.
THE ARTIST'S MISSION.
To ask in regard to the mission of any class of
producers is, in the minds of most persons, the same
as to ask, Of what use are their productions ? If the
word " use" be taken in the ordinary sense of utility,
it must be acknowledged, as has already been inti
mated, that the artist is of no use at all. He has no
practical or material end in view. He adds nothing
to our physical well-being. He brings no wares to
our markets. He furnishes us with no commodity.
Hence the conclusion is precipitately arrived at, that
he is nothing but a useless parasite, depending upon a
patient public for his subsistence without rendering
any real return.
This view, however, is felt to be untenable. Few
will deny that the artist deserves to be supported.
All will acknowledge that he should be remunerated
according to the measure of entertainment which he
affords us. What, say many of his friends, would
life be without amusement? We must have relaxa
tion from its cares. Our attention must, at intervals,
be withdrawn from the serious and wearing concerns
of our ordinary existence. Our surroundings must be
adorned and cheered. We must be encouraged and
stimulated in our sufferings and toils. Accordingly,
it is added, while he does not work properly in the
.sphere- of tho useful and practical, he renders a service
which is subservient to this. According to this view,

INTRODUCTION. 19
his services are helpful, and of course subordinate
also, to interests higher than any which he can claim
to represent. Man's physical and material welfare
is thus supposed to be of paramount importance.
Others, more thoughtful, will assert that if the
artist is to accomplish anything truly useful, he
must render a more significant service than the one
described. Man's physical nature is the less import
ant side of his constitution. " The greatest thing on
earth is man, and the greatest thing in man is mind."
Nothing is of more value in the world than the think
ing soul. Accordingly, it is maintained that the
mission of the artist, if it is to be of any real account,
is to contribute to one's advancement as a man of
science, to correct and establish moral principles, and
to stimulate reflection upon man's nature, condition,
and destiny, as also upon his relation to his Creator
and the world around him.
This position is, in a sense, correct. Demands of
this kind are not altogether unreasonably made of
the artist; and, in a measure, he is capable of meeting
them all. But as to the manner in which this is
effected, there will be found to be a difference of
opinion. Some of those belonging to this number will
remind us that the artist is helpful in the direction
referred to, when he simply places before us an imita
tion of some natural object. We spontaneously make
a comparison between the representation and the
original, and in doing so we are forced to reflect.
Here is definite, rational activity of mind. Man's
nobler nature is called into exercise and is conse
quently developed. Before a well-executed work of

20 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
art, however simple the subject, the beholder discon
tinues his empty dreaming, pointless ruminating, and
selfish scheming, and, in accordance with the preroga
tive of manhood, he gives himself over to thoughtful
contemplation. Others, again, will say: The artist informs our
minds by making us acquainted with objects and facts
otherwise unknown to us. He shows us trees, animals,
and localities, in regard to which we would have
remained ignorant, had it not been for his representa
tions of them. Most of all, he tells us about human
life and manners. By thus enlarging our store of
information, he advances us toward the perfection of
our nature.
Still another class measure the artist's merit by his
ability to awaken certain noble feelings. He can
represent heroic actions, and call up sentiments of
admiration for what is honorable, benevolent, and
self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he can bring into
exercise emotions of sympathy and compassion by
placing before the imagination scenes in which our
fellow-creatures appear suffering the multitudinous
vicissitudes of fortune. The purification of the pas
sions is certainly one of the most important effects of
artistic activity.
Lastly, it is insisted, that if the artist be true to his
mission, he will direct his labors toward the moral
improvement of those around him. By his represen
tations, he will convey lessons of ethical and religious
import. He will show us that right is to be. preferred
to wrong. He will encourage us to purity of life and
devotion to the cause of the good and the true.
As far back as we may go in history, we will find

INTRODUCTION. 21
that the artist has rendered service in all these partic
ulars. His work has ever been employed for the
illustration and inculcation of religious principles.
He has done much to encourage virtue and check
vice. He has always furnished support to the prog
ress of science. But if we were to interrogate him,
he would tell us that he did not have these ends
expressly in view in producing his works ; that, in so
far as such results have come to pass, they have pro
ceeded not directly but indirectly from his labors;
and if these were to be the essential and only legiti
mate fruits of his toil, he had better abandon his
domain ; for, in other fields, those of philosophy and
theology for example, he could render a service more
adequate to the purpose.
By making requirements of this kind of the artist,
his calling is at once raised too high and sunk too
low. It is raised too high, because, while the man of
thought withdraws as far as possible from the con
crete realities of life and of the external world, and
the man of religion resists nature in order to subdue
it, his business is to glorify nature ; for, while he enters
into its deepest life and sense, he exalts it by inter
preting it. He allows the physical and sensuous side
of objects to assert its importance ; for, as Cousin says,
" art reaches the soul of man through his body." But,
at the same time, art is unduly degraded, if it is to
be regarded merely as the handmaid of science and
religion. It recognizes only one Master, as do they ;
but, like them, it declares itself free-born. Its work is
the same as theirs, only it is performed in an humbler
and less pretentious way. The essence of the good,
the true, and the beautiful is one and the same.

22 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Through the instrumentality of scientists and theo
logians, what constitutes this essence is made known
and proclaimed ; but by the artist, also, it is brought
directly home to the hearts and consciousness of
men. The Deity discloses himself not only through
the medium of man's reasoning powers, and through
supernatural revelation, but likewise through the
world of nature and material existence. The artist
apprehends the tokens of the Divine here to be
found, he reproduces the object in which it is con
tained, and maintains that through his beautiful forms
the eternal principle of truth and goodness shines
forth and is made manifest to the spirit of man. One
of their number says, that the province of the gifted
painter is "to find, even in all that appears most
trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant
appearing of divine power for glory and for beauty,
and to teach it and proclaim it for the unthinking and
regardless." x Poets like Emerson and Mrs. Browning
claim the same prerogative. Many of the late philos
ophers vindicate their right so to do, notable among
whom is Hegel, who says : " It is only in so far as it
is thus independent and free, that beatiful art is true
art. It does not realize its highest mission until it
places itself in the sphere of fellowship with religion
and philosophy, and asserts itself as one of the ways
and means of expressing and bringing to conscious
ness the divine, at the same time the most compre
hensive, truths of the spirit, the interests which are of
the deepest moment to mankind. . . . While art
has this function in common with the other two
1 Ruskin. See preface to vol, i. of " Modern Painters," and many
similar passages in vol. ii.

INTRODUCTION. 23
provinces, it performs it in its own peculiar way ; for
it exhibits what is spiritual and eternal through finite
and sensuous forms. This brings it nearer to nature
and nature's means of communication ; that is, the
bodily senses and the sensibilities of man." 1
1 ".^Esthetics," vol. i.,. sect, i., of Introduction. "Their (the artists')
aim is to represent the invisible in the visible, the infinite in the finite,
eternal truth in its priority, by rendering it manifest in a sensible form and
shape." — Rauch: "Psychology," p. 244.

24 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

SECTION III.
THE ARTIST'S METHOD.
If the position taken in the preceding section be
correct, the calling of the artist, so far as his object is
concerned, is as exalted as any that mortal man can
adopt. No less than the preacher, he is a proclaimer
of the glory of God ; and, no less than the philosopher,
he is the expounder of the Absolute Idea. For what else
should we live but to know Him by whom we live?
And whose vocation can be higher than his who helps
us to such knowledge ?
Still, it will be acknowledged that the artist's method
of accomplishing the one high purpose which they
have in common is not as dignified and noble as those
adopted by the representatives of the other two spheres
which are associated with his own. His is not as
worthy as is theirs of the supremely exalted subject
concerning which disclosures are made, nor of the free,
intelligent, and spiritual nature of man to which they
are made. Hence it might be inferred that artistic
activity could well be dispensed with, especially if the
same amount of energy and labor thus spent could be
transferred to a higher domain. And here we are
confronted with the profound and important question,
Can necessity be predicated of art? If so, is it abso
lute, or merely relative? In other words, Is art an
essential element in the divine order of the universe,
or is it only by accident that it finds the place which
we see it assuming? The attempt to answer this

INTRODUCTION. 25
query would involve far more than the present task
imposes. All that is proposed hero is tho consideration
of some of the objections to the artist's method and
means as incommensurate with the mission assigned
him. The first is, that, instead of employing solid realities
for the accomplishment of his high purpose, he resorts
to hollow imitations of natural objects ; instead of
being in earnest, he plays; and instead of dealing with
actual facts and truths, he fabricates a world of show,
of illusion, and of falsehood.1 It is sneeringly said of
him that he sets up his block of stone and calls ita man.
He dashes some coloring-matter upon a yard or two of
linen, and asks you what you think of that sunset or
mountain or sea. He puts men on the stage talking,
and perhaps looking, like worthies long since departed,
who meet, and pretend to fight and kill each other;
and what other people would designate show-play he
denominates tragedy.
' The artist does employ imitations, shows, appear
ances; but, in doing so, he is certainly not to be con
demned, unless his object be to deceive. But he aims
at the reverse of this. So far from wanting his pro
ductions to pass for the real things, he seeks only to
bring to light the sense, meaning, or truth lying back
of these; his design is to furnish us with the arche
types of things, existing before all material realities,
of which natural objects are but the blurred copies.
Accordingly, he can claim for his forms, fictitious
though they may be called, more of fairness and
1 " No work of art can be great, but as it deceives; to be otherwise is
the prerogative of nature only." Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful,
part ii., sect. x.
3

26 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
truth than belong to these objects so real and solid.
"These latter," he may say, "claim to be true and
genuine; but all, inasmuch as they belong to the
sphere in which the arbitrary and accidental prevail,
are defective ; that is, fall short of their proper inten
tion, and hence are false; while my works .pretend
to be nothing more than they are ; viz., such images of
things as adequately reflect the truth intended to be
embodied in them." Hegel comes again to the artist's
support, and affirms that art strips away the show and
deception of this base and transitory world from the
real sense and purport of its phenomena, and gives to
these last a higher, spirit-born reality. And he adds
that, " so far from being mere appearance, to the pro
ductions of art, as over against the ordinary real, is to
be ascribed a higher actuality and a truer existence." 1
The next objection urged is, in its purport, the
direct opposite of the one just stated. The artist's
method is incommensurate with his design, because
the latter is essentially spiritual, while the agencies he
employs are sensuous2 and material. Each one of the
arts is dependent upon matter in some one or more of
its forms, and of this dependence they cannot divest
themselves. In the lowest of the spheres of art, archi
tecture, the external substance is subjected to the least
1 " /Esthetic-," sect. 1. of Introduction. Sir Philip Sydney said in his
own way what Plato had said long before in his, that the poet is least of
all men a liar. Wordsworth has the following in his preface : "Aristotle,
I have been told, hath said that poetry is the most philosophic of all
writing : it is so ; ils ohject is truth, not individual and local, but general
and operative."
"This word is used instead of sensible, the one employed by the older
writers, e. g. Reid and Burke, but now regarded as too ambiguous. It is
unnecessary to guard the reader against confounding sensuous with
sensual.

INTRODUCTION. 27
modification ; while in the highest, poetry, it may be
said to bo dematerialized. Where, however, tho con
ception of art is most adequately realized, as in sculp
ture, we find matter enjoying its full moiety of
importance, inasmuch as it constitutes one equal and
entire side of the artistic production. Wood, stone,
colors, sounds, and the like, make up the element in
which the artist works.
The artist, however, does not employ these material
substances as such. Who, then, it may be asked, does
employ them " as such," and where is the distinction ?
They are employed as such when made to serve the
ordinary purposes which they are intended to answer
in the concrete world of nature ; as, for example, that
of meeting man's bodily and temporal necessities.
Between this use of them and the artist's there is a
world-wide difference. He ignores man's physical
wants absolutely, and addresses himself exclusively to
his spirit and to its interests. He is dependent upon
these sensuous agencies simply because it is through
the organs of sense that the spiritual communication
which he has to impart is sent home to the conscious
ness and the heart. The elements of earth are what
he employs; but his province is to quicken them with
spiritual life, and thus to raise them to a scale of
being far higher than the one to which, as mere matter,
they organically belong. When, for example, tho
architect of a Gothic cathedral directs our attention to
his work, in which the material and natural are made
to serve their true but loftiest purpose, and in which
we have a proclamation ,of the divine ways and will,
he expects us, in the employment of our reason, to
apprehend the unity in the variety, the correspond-

28 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
ence of the multitudinous parts as uniting in the
formation of a complete and harmonious totality; in
other words, the realization of an idea in the true and
proper sense of the term. But if the pleasure we
derive from the contemplation of it consists in calling
to mind the comfort and convenience afforded by it in
the discharge of an unavoidable duty, he would tell
us that, so far as we are concerned, his labors as an
artist have been spent in vain. We would thus be
included in that large class, of which Schiller, in his
twenty-sixth iEsthetical Letter, says: "They indi
cate, by judgments of this kind, for matter as such, a
regard and consideration which is unworthy of us as
men, who should value the material only in so far as
it is susceptible of such shape and form as will enable
it to extend the realm of ideas."
Let us look a little more closely at the manner in
which the artist uses matter. In shaping and forming
it, he aims at expression. This object is accomplished
when, by means of the sensuous, an invisible and
immaterial import is manifested and unfolded. What
he turns to account is merely the appearing surface.
What lies back of this, call it the bulk, mass, or crude
materiality, sinks, so far as his purpose is concerned,
into entire insignificance.
When the senses, as such, are to be gratified, the
direct opposite of this holds. The question of ap
pearance is of comparatively little importance. Every
thing depends upon the inner nature of the object.
If I am attracted to it by an enticing exterior, aud
there is nothing back of it capable of satisfying an
awakened desire, the superficial fairness is for me most
unfair.

INTRODUCTION. 29
No one concerns himself about what is behind the
coloring-matter which the painter uses for his picture.
The artist, it is true, cannot get along without what he
calls his scaffolding ; but, so far as the artistic purpose
is concerned, it does not come into account. So in the
case of the drama, and in art throughout, we ask in
regard to nothing beyond what is shown. In thus em
ploying matter, the artist concentrates all his energies
upon its external side, and makes significance only of
what appears. He uses it merely in so far as it can be
so moulded as to become the transparent medium for
the reflection of spiritual contents. The forms of art
are sensuous, in so far as they belong to the world of
external existence as opposed to the internal one of
thought and mind. But they are withdrawn from the
material sphere, in so far as this is made up of what
is organically connected with nature's physical struct
ure. They may be said to be divested of their bulk,
weight, and simple materiality, and to be transformed
into shadows. At the same time, however, it is insisted
upon that in this- phantom-world of art body is spirit
ualized, and spirit finds embodiment and real presence
in the realm of matter.
From what has been said, it is apparent that the
artist addresses the senses directly, and that his success
depends upon the excitement of the sensibilities. Upon
this fact is based the third objection to his method.
His object is the highest conceivable, while the func
tions of the mind which he calls into activity are the
lowest, inasmuch as they are the ones most closely
allied to the physical frame. The force of the objection
becomes apparent by referring to a sphere of activity
closely related to his own.

30 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
The aim of the orator is either to impart instruction,
to strengthen conviction, or to influence the will. He
may employ sensuous images and arouse the feelings.
If these agencies become predominant, he is regarded
as falling below his proper dignity. His work is
supposed to be worthy of himself, his aim, and the
public whom he addresses, when appeals to the pas
sions are held in subordination to the clear statement
of facts, the elucidation of principles, and the encour
agement of reflection.
The artist will acknowledge that he has prevailingly
to do with our emotional nature. If he is excluded
from this domain, he is lost. His task is nothing more
nor less than to awaken the sense of beauty. When
his own soul has once been elevated by the contem
plation of some object of sense, he seeks by repro
ducing it to bring others into the same exalted state of
mind. His ability to do this determines the measure
of executive artistic power. When the mood into
which the beholder or hearer is thus transported is the
gentle reverie of a self-forgetting repose, or the agita
tion of enthusiasm, the triumph of the artist's skill is
signalized. It is owing to the fact just stated that the earlier
writers on the subject confined the science of aesthetics
to.a single department of psychology ; namely, the one
conversant with the nature of the emotions which
external objects are capable of producing. They
analyzed the sensations of pleasure and pain, and
discussed the qualities of things which are calculated
to produce them. Works of art came in incidentally
for a measure of attention; but the principal question
was, what feelings they arc capable of arousino- and

INTRODUCTION. 31
how they produce the effects which result from their
contemplation. With many of them the principal
significance of paintings and the like is to produce
the pleasure which consists in comparing the represen
tation with the real object. They all fall short of that
high conception of art which we have assumed to be
the correct one. Burke, whose services, by the way,
rendered to the science of aesthetics are duly recog
nized by the Germans, seems at one place to be on the
threshold of the true theory. In Section XIX. of Part
I. we find him saying : " The elevation of the mind
ought to be the principal end of all our studies, which,
if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very
little service to us." This elevation is explained in
the preceding passage : " While referring to Him (the
Creator), whatever we find of right or good or unfair
in ourselves, discovering his strength and wisdom
even in our own weakness and imperfection, honoring
them where we discover them clearly, and adoring
their profundity where we are lost in our search, we
may be inquisitive without impertinence, and elevated
without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to
say- so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a consid
eration of his works."1 "Admission into the divine
counsels" and the " elevation" seem to be identical.
It is unnecessary to say that he regards both as the
result of scientific investigation. He certainly was
aware that works of art elevate, and surely one would
think it might readily have occurred to him that they
accomplish this by affording us a more effective view
than we ordinarily possess of the will and ways of
1 This seems like the antetype, both in sense and sound, of many of
Raskin's eloquent periods.

32 -THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
infinite wisdom. He then would have reached the
conception which Cousin thus expresses : " The infinite
is the common limit after which the soul aspires upon
the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the
route of the sublime and beautiful as well as by that
of the true and the good." 1
The sensibilities may be a lower sphere of operation
than those to which other teachers of men have access;
still, they constitute an essential element of man's
spiritual being; and tiding-bearers have ever been
Found in the world who felt irresistibly constrained to
employ these avenues, and these alone, for the' convey
ance of the message committed to their hands. AVell
does the artist know where his power lies ; and whose,
we may ask, is greater, whether considered intensively
or extensively? For what more potent agency can be
employed than the emotional nature of man; and
how can the vast untutored portion of the race be
more readily reached than by the forms of beauty
which are the products of artistic skill?
1,1 The Beauliiul," sect, viii.

INTRODUCTION. 33
SECTION IV.
THE ARTIST'S RESOURCES.
The ralidity of the artist's method has been dis
cussed. Whatever deception art may invoke, it is
certain that the workman does not intend to be dis
honest. His productions are sensuous things ; but in
them matter is reduced to appearance, and becomes
the transparent medium through which, as through the
eye, the spirit manifests itself. The sensibilities are
directly addressed; but disclosures of highest moment
are presented to us in the garb of beauty, which, in
this form, exert the most effective and wide-spread
influence upon mankind.
Like the artist's method, his resources afford occasion
for animadversion. His productions are representa
tions of something different from themselves. Whence
does he obtain the originals of the images which he
sets forth ? Whether he finds these within himself or
without, the ominous word sensuous is again employed
to designate the source.
It is urged that, if his work is to be of any signifi
cance, it dare not be a mere transcript of things
foreign to himself, but must be the result of inner
creative activity. Originative activity is the all and
in all of artistic greatness. Fertility of production
depends upon a certain poetic enthusiasm, which
closely coheres with and is dependent upon the physi
cal organization, and, as a natural endowment, with the
latter is transmitted from one generation to another.

34 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Originality is one of the inner elements oi the artist's
power, and as such will claim due consideration with
the immediate and main subject of our present in
quiries. It will appear, it is true, that over against
pure thought and religious sentiment the elevation of
mind upon which the artist depends is not incorrectly
denominated sensuous ; but still, that it is a raising of
the soul above its dependence upon the body in
its strivings toward the spiritual and substantial
centre of existence.
But an objection of a tenor directly opposite to the
above here claims careful consideration. Art is the
imitation of the realities of the external world. Shak-
speare is cited as saying that it is the holding of the
mirror up to Nature. The appeal is justly taken, and
surely the authority must be regarded as paramount.
The force of the objection rests upon the two following
propositions, each of which must be weighed: First,
art draws its material from the sphere of external
phenomena. Secondly, the province of concrete ex
istence is not commensurate with the spiritual and
transcendent character of the mission assigned to the
artist. x
'Schiller says: "The understanding in its combination observes a
rigid necessity and regularity, and it is satisfied only by the constant
connectedness of the thoughts. But this is disturbed whenever the
imagination introduces into this chain of abstractions the representations
of single instances, and mixes the time connection with the strict necessity
of the matter connection. Accordingly, it is absolutely necessary, in case
of exact consequence of thought, that the imagination renounce its arbi
trary character, and that it learn to subordinate and sacrifice its tend
ency to as much sensuousness as possible in the conceptions, and lo as
much freedom as possible in the arrangement, in favor of the require
ments of the understanding. Such, then, must be the method and style
oi discourse, that this propensity of the imagination be reduced by the

INTR OD UCTION. 35
To begin with the latter. No one certainly objects
to the use which the scientist makes of material objects.
But, it will be answered, his use and the artist's use
are very different. The former analyzes and thus, in
a sense, destroys things, while the latter seeks to pre
serve and perpetuate their existence, and, by erecting
monuments to them, raise them to a dignity which
is above their real one. Further, the former makes no
account of things as he finds them, but he aims at the
principles lying back of them ; while fidelit}7 to nature
is one of the fundamental canons of art. To this
the answer is given, that just as the man of science
goes back from phenomena to principles, and from
these principles to those lying still deeper, prompted
by the desire to find the principle of principles or the
first' cause of all things, so the artist regards his object,
not as a material thing, but as the reflection of an
idea, and that this latter is of significance to him only
in so far as it brings him nearer to the idea of ideas,
which Plato designates as Eternal and Divine. And
just as the naturalist may make of any chapter of his
science a hymn of praise to the Creator, so the artist,
while he may be said to redeem and glorify nature,
still does this by so representing it that by his repre
sentation it accomplishes its true and high purpose,
that, namely, of revealing the counsels and attributes
of its Author. The artist may be devoid of the power
of abstract reflection, and he may be slow in appro
priating ethical principles ; but he has a keen percep-
exclusion of all that is individual and sensuous, and thus by definiteness
of expression bounds be placed to its restless poetic impetus, and by regu
larity of movement the arbitrariness of its combinations be circumscribed.
— Essay on the Necessary Limitations in the Use of Forms of Beauty.

36 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
tion of that trace of the Divine which is not wanting
in the most insignificant of things. Those objects
which speak with a voice adapted to the suscepti
bilities of his own inner nature and are passed by
unobserved by the multitude, he seizes, and, having
passed them through the alembic of his mind, sets
them forth purified of their dross, and freed from the
chaos and entanglement of ordinary existence, so that
now, with equal fullness, distinctness, and effectiveness,
they chant the lay which was first caught by his
attentive ear.
The former proposition will not be disputed. The
artist gets his material, in more senses than one, from
the external world. But it must not be forgotten that
when he enters this field he carries much with him.
He is in possession of a wand of such vast and dis
tinguishing potency, that no finite power is so deserv
ing of being compared to the original creative force
which called the universe into existence. Not to
fathom the mystery of his ability, but to follow, that
Ave may become acquainted with the workman, and
watch, that we may be able to put the proper estimate
upon the work, is the undertaking upon which we
now enter. We do it notwithstanding his positive
protest : " Vex not thou the poet's mind
With thy shallow wit ;
Vex not tliou the poet's mind,
For tliou ivi nst not fathom it,"1
but still we trust, with due deference and diffidence,
at all events with the hope that neither his dignity
nor amiability will sudor any from the intrusion.
1 Tennyson.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 37

PART I.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY IN GENERAL.
SECTION I.
What essentially distinguishes the artist from other
men is the fact that the sense of beauty asserts itself
to such a degree of intensity that it predominates over
all the other faculties of his mind. Accordingly, all
that need be said in answer fo the question, What is
an artist? maybe included under the conception of
the sense of beauty.
If we knew precisely what beauty is, we would at
once know what the sense of it is. Thus much, how
ever, is certain, that the latter consists in a suscepti
bility to pleasure in the presence of a certain kind of
phenomena. The explanation of this pleasure, and
the determination of the essential nature of these
phenomena, has in all ages been a leading problem of
philosophic investigation. So far from any definite
conclusion being arrived at, each new theorizer feels
called upon, if not to set forth a new solution, at least
to offer a new statement of an older one. There may
be a difference of opinion as to what has been accom
plished by the discussion; but one thing is evident;
viz., that respect for Plato and his theory increases in
proportion as the subject of the beautiful becomes
understood, and the statements of the great philoso
pher in reference to it comprehended.
4

38 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
The design of The Banquet is to show that aspiration
for the infinite is the fundamental impulse of man,
and that this is typified in and reflected by all other
yearnings whatever, whether of body or mind. It is
here further taught that the contemplation of some
objects causes pleasure by elevating us in the direction
of this aspiration. That which is to constitute man's
highest joy, namely, communion with and the knowl
edge of God, is in a measure anticipated, and hence
arises joy. Nothing can be called beautiful which is
not the manifestation, and in some sense the presence,
of Him who is the eternal and ultimate principle of
beauty ; and whatever object is capable of making
such a disclosure through the senses, must be said to
possess this quality.
Tho writers who in modern times have substantially
adopted this theory of Plato can scarcely be enumer
ated. It is sufficient to say that among the number
are to be found those who have made the most impor
tant contributions to speculative science, as well as the
most valuable investigations in regard to some of the
fundamental Questions connected with literature and
art.1 'No writer is more sanguine on the subject than Ruskin. We should
be able to find in every landscape a substitute for a discourse from the
" Book of Homilies," and every artist should be a Baxter. His enthu
siasm amounts to fanaticism; for while he is ready to assert that we
derive constant pleasure from what is a type or semblance of the Divine,
and from nothing but that which is so, he sneers at Chevalier Bunsen for
saying that in art the infinite is manifested in finite forms. See his
appendix to the third volume of the " Modern Painters," where he con
demns the Germans as a class, and reminds us of Virgil's blind Cyclops,
who, although he does not know where the companions of .Eneas are,
nor who they are, makes after them, and nours out upon them all the
force of his indignation.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 39
But most of the writers who advocate the theory
seem to throw the subject into inextricable confusion
by finding beauty in all things. Hear Ruskin : " Our
purity of taste, therefore, is best tested by its univer
sality ; for, if we can only admire this thing or that,
we may be sure that our liking is of a finite and false
nature. But, if we can perceive beauty in everything
of God's doing, we may argue that we have reached
the true perception of its universal laws." l Carlyle
expresses the same thought thus : " For even the
poorest aspect of nature, especially of living nature,
is a type and manifestation of the invisible spirit that
works in nature. There is properly no object trivial
or insignificant ; but every finite thing, could we look
well, is as a window through which solemn vistas are
opened into infinitude itself."2
Emerson says : " The difference between landscape
and landscape is small, but there is a great difference
in the beholder. There is nothing so wonderful in
any particular landscape as the necessity of being
beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature
cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in
everywhere." The following is from Coleridge :
" Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty." 3
1 " Modern Painters," vol. ii., p. 21. 2 " Essay on Schiller."
3 See poem on "The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison." Charles Lamb
and other friends of the poet were visiting him from London. They had
gone away to enjoy a walk amid some romantic scenery, while Coleridge

40 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
From the multitude of quotations which might be
made to the purpose we will add but one. It is from
Mrs. Browning • "Nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars ;
No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere ;
No chaffinch but implies the cherubim ;
And, glancing at my own thin, veined wrist,
In such a little tremor of the blood,
The whole strong clamor of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.:

i; 1

While the doctrine thus taught would seem to pre
vent all precision in the use of the term beauty, it is
in full harmony with that conception of it which has
been indicated. Traces of the divine character are
borne by every part, however minute, of created exist
ence. The laws which lie under and are revealed in
the pebble or blade of grass are the emanations of the
same mind and will which hold the universe together.
Still, it will be acknowledged that this manifestation is
more distinct and full in some portions of creation
than in others. It is further certain that some men
possess a quickness of perception and susceptibility to
the enjoyment of these tokens of a higher power and
presence, while, in the case of others, they are but
seldom observed, and the impression made is slight.
Some criterion must be sought by which to determine
the measure of the distinctness and fullness just referred
was detained at home on account of indisposition. Pie retires to his
lime-tree bower, and indulges in some reflections, of which the above
is an example.
1,1 Aurora Leigh," book vii.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 41
to; but before an attempt of this kind is made, the
following question will claim attention : Why is it that
mankind, in general, are so slow to perceive that which
is so deserving of being beheld, and which offers itself
to our notice on every hand?
In the case of most men, the demands of the physi
cal side of our being, which are the most loudly made,
are the chief object of attention. Some are prevail
ingly concerned about the immediate gratification of
the senses, while others project the same enjoyment
into the future, but in the meantime are intent upon
securing the means of obtaining it in a higher degree
or greater variety of forms. The former will be inter
ested in objects in so far as they are able to furnish in
stantaneous sensuous pleasure, while the latter will
have their thoughts directed to their adaptedness to
'promote general physical well-being. In the one case,
the beautiful will be confounded with the agreeable,
and in the other with the useful. In both cases, pleas
ure in the presence of what is beautiful is nothing
more than the anticipation of physical enjoyment. In
this way the lower principle gets the mastery over the
higher. The impetus toward the Infinite loses its
energy. God does not reveal himself to eyes to which
self appears as the chief object of concern.1 Accord
ingly, by the great mass of mankind, the objects of the
external world are not seen in their true and higher
character as evidences and symbols of spiritual forces
lying back of them ; but their lower, finite, and mate
rial side is allowed to assert itself as the only true and
important one.
1" Will not a liny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of
the world, and leave only a margin by which we see tlie blot? I know no
speck so troublesome as self."- — George Eliot in " Middlemarch."

42 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
There is another class of persons with whom the
case is the direct opposite of what has been described.
With these, the absorbing interest is either the true or
the good. Here the yearnings of the spirit have over
come the inclinations of the flesh, and the aspirations
for the Infinite have done away with the service of
self. The abstract thinker seeks to get as far beyond
the realm of matter and the senses as his intellect will
carry him, and by the power of pure thought to grasp
these first principles of truth which are most closely
identified with the mind of God. Those who are in
tent upon the good, in the spirit of faith and renunci
ation, seek to bring their will into complete subjection
to and harmony with that of tho Supreme Governor
of the world, and enter with full purpose of heart into
such arrangements as they believe to be divinely
ordered for the accomplishment of the original design
of the Creator in calling the universe, into existence.
Where tendencies of this kind predominate, the result
must follow, that the sensibilities will become less
susceptible to impressions from objects belonging to
a sphere which offers so many obstacles to the reali
zation of higher ends.
After making eliminations for the reasons just
assigned, we will find the number of those possessed
of a keen sense of beauty still further reduced by a
number of accidental circumstances ; as, for example,
the tendency of an age, the condition of a nation, the
climate of a country
The mind of the present period is characterized as
restless, critical, and introspective. It is least of all
fitted for the enjoyment of the beautiful. One of the
German writers on aesthetics makes a remark which

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY 43
amounts to about this: At tho present time reasons
can be assigned as fast as one can count his fingers,
why the beautiful must be regarded as consisting of
the shining forth of the absolute idea, and yet scarcely
any one is aware of what it is to enjoy tho beautiful.
George Eliot, in " Daniel Deronda," speaks of some one
" who knows the daisy, and can tell all about the smell
of the daisy, but does not know the smell of the daisy."
There is more time spent in reading criticisms and
analyses of Shakspeare's works than there is in perus
ing the works themselves.
That the state of affairs of a nation may prove a
hindrance to the development of the sense of beauty
is made apparent in our own case. The amount of
work to be done in the way of material improvement
is so great, and the consequent pressure in the direc
tion of the practical is so strong, that but little leisure
remains for attention to the claims of the beautiful.
Owing to their maturer development and riper civiliza
tion, the nations of the Old World exceed us, so far as
this sphere is concerned, in delicacy of perception and
enthusiasm of enjoyment.
Climate may exert a similar influence. In this
northern latitude we spend most of our time within
doors. Thus we sunder the normal relation in which
we stand to the natural world. We draw our wood
from its forests and gather in our grain from its fields,
but we have comparatively little opportunity to realize
the higher benefit which it was designed to confer.
Southern Europe is the fruitful soil of nearly all that
is glorious in art. Were it not for the fact that the in
habitants of Greece and Italy spend most of their time
in the open air, it is almost certain that the world

44 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
would never have seen that perfection of beauty which
is embodied in the Greek statue and the old Italian
paintings. How is it possible for a love of the beauti
ful to be developed among us as long as so many
young persons can be found, even in rural districts,
who cannot distinguish a half-dozen of the trees which
grow in our forests, or designate an equal number of
the birds which sing in their branches?1
When we come to consider the facts in the case of the
individual, we will find the quickness of the sense of
beauty subject to many conditions peculiar to himself.
At certain times and under certain circumstances he
cannot enter into the mood which is requisite for aes
thetic enjoyment. The instrument may be well adapted
for the reception of the harmonies, but in the large
number of instances it readily gets out of tune.
Physical health has certainly much to do with keen
ness of susceptibility for the beautiful. When the body
becomes diseased, there will naturally ensue a diminu
tion of sympathy with the external world. The mind
will be directed toward it only in so far as it can fur-
1 " These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life pos
sesses for a powerful mind over the artificial and curtailed life of cities.
We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light
flows into the mind evermore, and we forget ils presence. The poet, the
orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair
and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed,
shall not lose their lesson altogether in the roar of cities or the broil of
politics. Long hereafter, amid agitation, — m the hour of revolution, —
these solid images shall reappear in their morning justre, as fit symbols
and words of the thoughts which the passing events shall awaken. At the
call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the
river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains as he saw and
heard them in his infancy. And with these forms the spells cf persuasion,
the keys of power, are put into his hands." — Emerson on Nature, chap. iv.

THE SENSE OF BE A UTY. 45
nish supplies for material necessities. The poet Cowper
might be cited as an example to the contrary. When
suffering pain and reduced to feebleness, he could go
forth into the world of nature and find beauty where
others would never think of looking for it. But in
his case the sense of beauty was developed to such a
degree that obstacles were overcome which, in that
of most persons, would have been insuperable. Pope,
likewise, might be mentioned ; but it must not be
forgotten that he also was not an ordinary man, but
a poet. Depression of spirits arising from failure to succeed
in one's temporal pursuits, or from unpleasantness in
social relations, or from other similar causes, must have
the results indicated above.
In view of what has just been said, it is not difficult
to understand why it is that the faculty under con
sideration becomes blunted with growing years. Child
hood is the period during which we are most likely to
find it acute. Nature has an impressive tale to tell of
the workings going on in its deepest depths to the eyes
and ears of children.1 It would certainly be a great
privilege if one could distinctly recall the delight which
poured into the soul, as reason dawned, in beholding
1,1 God enters by a private door into every individual. Long prior to
the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness it
came insensibly into the marvelous light of to-day. In the period of in
fancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the surrounding
creation, after its own way." — Emerson: "Essay on Intellect."
" To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do
not see the sun — at least they have a very imperfect seeing. The sun
illuminates only the mind of the man, but shines into the heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are
still truly adjusted to each other, who has retained the spirit of infancy
even into the spirit of manhood." — Emerson : " Essay ou Nature."

40 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
the trees, the meadows, the clouds, the distant outline
of sombre mountains, with the red light beyond of the
rising or the setting sun !
The fact referred to furnishes Wordsworth the mate
rial for his celebrated poem on Immortality. The fol
lowing brief extract must suffice :
" Heaven lies about us in our infancy,
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy.
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended.
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
The susceptibility for the beautiful, characteristic of
youth, may be retained to a greater extent than at first
might be supposed. Where the obstacles above men
tioned do not unduly prevail, and opportunities for ex
ercising the faculty are frequently sought and enjoyed,
especially if this be done with the pure and unselfish
purpose which belongs to childhood, the man may be
attended by the " vision splendid" far on in the journey
of life.
But with advancing years the character of the en
joyment will undergo a change. In the case of the
child, material objects may be said to convey a direct
message from the recesses of nature, while in that of
the man beauty will ordinarily be appreciated in pro
portion as it more or less distinctly points to or typifies
tho facts and principles of the moral and intellectual
world. The power of perceiving the significance of

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. Al
natural objects will come up later for consideration.
Here, however, the following lines from Wordsworth
may be employed to throw some additional light upon
the subject : " For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unbosomed from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And in the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things."
There are certain spheres of the beautiful, however,
to which childhood cannot be said to have access. The

48 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
life of a man heroically devoted to the cause of the
good comes under the category of beauty as well as
the green fields, the setting sun, and the starry heavens.
Beautiful, certainly, is the countenance of one who has
had a large experience of life, with all that it involves
in the form of care and conflict, but in which is de
picted that serenity and resignation which indicates,
not subjection and surrendry, but the true nobility
and vigor of a mind which comes off purified and ex
alted from the struggle. It is beauty of this kind that
characterizes most of the compositions of Beethoven.
Here was a soul which had keenly realized the contra
dictions and antagonisms of mortal existence, but rose
calmly and majestically above them all into a state of
inward reconciliation. What gives value to his works
is the fact that they vividly portray the emotions, the
sentiments, the inner experiences, which go to make
up the soul-life of one most richly endowed with spirit
ual and intellectual gifts. Here is beauty only for
those who have felt the reality of the elements which
enter into it.
The way is now open for attention to the other ques
tion above propounded. Beauty should be seen every
where. But most persons find the ugly equal in quan
tity to its opposite. What is it that characterizes those
phenomena which are usually regarded as deserving
of tho predicate?1
It has hitherto been taken for granted that beauty
is to be found in all the orders of material existence.
1 It must be evident to the reader that tliere is no room here for enter
ing into the question of the difference between beauty proper and the
other forms, which are included under the general conception ; namely, the
sublime and the comic.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 49
Wo see it in tho pebble and shell, as well as in the
moral hero. Tho former is beautiful, as a material
object, in so far as it reflects those spiritual laws and
forces which are part and parcel of the divine mind.
The latter is so, because what is godlike is manifested
to us in a material form, and through the medium of
our outward senses. It is true, in the latter case, the
material or sensuous side sinks into comparative insig
nificance, while in the former it is predominant. But
it must have place where beauty really exists. It is
not strictly correct to speak of a beautiful problem in
mathematics or system of philosophy, as little as it is
to apply the term to what is merely useful or agreeable,
where the spiritual sinks into the background, and only
what is material passes as of account. Distinctions
such as these must be insisted upon if there is to be
anything like a fair solution of the problem which the
subject involves; and as these distinctions are made,
they will not be found to conflict with the common
sense of mankind as indicated in the use of terms, and
certainly not with the reasonings of some of the greatest
thinkers of ancient and modern times.1
It will be allowed that the highest form of beauty
1 The facts stated in the following passage of Burke deserve attention
in this connection : " Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that
we should be affected with anything, He did not confide the execution of
his design to the languid and precarious operations of our reason; but He
endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and
even the will, which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate
the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them or to
oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover
the adorable wisdom of God in his works; when we discover it, the effect
is very different, not only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its own
nature, from that which strikes us without any preparation from the sub
lime or the beautiful." — Sublime and Beautiful, part iii., sect. vii.
5

50 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
will be found in the moral sphere, and the lowest in
inorganic nature. As both the spiritual and the
material must enter into the beautiful, it is evident
that the domain of beauty will be most fairly repre
sented by that class of objects in which neither side
preponderates, but both are held in adequate equipose.
Accordingly, there can be no standard of beauty truer
or more legitimate than the human body. Matter and
spirit are here united in such way that the latter finds
its full presence and expression in the former, and the
former takes the latter up into itself, and at every point
reveals and actualizes it. Accordingly, those who take
the most rational and consistent view of the whole sub
ject tell us that in the sphere of art the conception of
beauty is nowhere more satisfactorily realized than in
the Grecian statue.1 When the orders of existence
below this are considered, they will be regarded as
beautiful in proportion as they point to and promise it;
while in the higher the domain of pure beauty is
abandoned in proportion as the spiritual asserts its
pre-eminence, for in this way a province is approached
which is separate and distinct from it.
But in this respect men differ much among them
selves. Some races and nations are more beautiful
than others. To the same individual the term is more
applicable at one period of his life than at another.
Goethe makes the significant remark, that beauty may
be predicated of a man only at a certain juncture of
'"He sees that it was no whim of the Greeks, but an instinct of the in
finity it typifies, that made them lake the human form as alone possessing
beauty enough lo stand by itself. . . . The complete incarnation
of spirit, v, hich is the definition of beauty, demands equally thnt there be
no point it docs ma inhabit, and none in which it abides." (See article
in Atlantic Monthly, February, 1S04, on •' The Relation of Art to Nature.")

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 51
his physical development, which, by the way, is one
of but short duration.
It will doubtless be generally admitted that a man
can be called beautiful who realizes our idea of man
hood. This is the same as to say that beauty exists
where the conception of the species comes to adequate
manifestation in the individual. This principle, sub
ject to some limitations, will be found to hold through
out. Some forms of vegetable and animal existence
seem to conflict with a regular progress onward toward
humanity. Instead of pointing to it, some seem to
point away from it. Room also must always be made
for a slight divergence from the rule of the species.
Accidentality must in some measure characterize the
individual and particular. And yet the accidental may
be taken up in an object in such way as iaof to interr
fere with the impression of beauty.
We call an object an ideal one when it corresponds
to our idea of it. Plato held that the beautiful object
must fully express the idea which underlies it. With
him, however, the idea was a real thing, of which what
we call objects are the more or less imperfect tran
scripts. According to his theory, the pleasure connected
with the perception of the beautiful is to be explained
thus : Each man, before his birth, existed in a more
exalted state than the present, which was one of closer
communion with the Deity. These ideas are immedi
ately connected with the mind of God, and, when we
perceive them, we are agitated in consequence of being
forcibly reminded of the pre-existent condition. While
this portion of Plato's theory cannot be adopted, it dare
not be discarded as utterly false. There is a multitude
of undeveloped thoughts lying in the depths of our

52 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
being in the form of obscure presentiments, which at
times are brought to the surface of consciousness on
perceiving a certain class of objects in the external
world. Thus the spirit of nature confronts our own
spirit, and the result of the recognition is an inner
complacency and repose.
In the former part of the section, the question arose,
Why is it that beauty is not beheld everywhere? Now
the answer may seem to be plain. It is but seldom
that what may be called ideal beauty can be found.
Goethe reminds us that " nature works for the life and
existence, the' preservation and propagation, of her
creatures, unconcerned whether they appear as beauti
ful or the reverse."
Then it is for the most part of brief continuance.
Says Vischer, " The lamentation of transitoriness bur
dens the beauty of all that is lovely in nature. Not
only the glory of the landscape, but the bloom of or
ganic life, is but for a moment." It must be seized in
its hour, or it is gone forever.
Further, it is relative. The standpoint of the be
holder is of vast moment. If we are so close to an
object that we see it with almost microscopic vision, its
beauty is apt to vanish. Viewed from one of its sides,
a tree may strike us as an ideal one, while from another
it may present an aspect common and unattractive. In
natural scenery the change of a few steps may reduce
to the level of the commonplace what a moment before
excited the most intense admiration.
While nature may be said in one sense to be neglect
ful of her charms, in another she exercises all needful
care. Among the sons of men she has always had
some favorite children, who, endowed with all requisite

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 53
gifts, Avith fidelity and success, indicate and proclaim
the glory and the beauty of the mother of us all.
There is a chosen class who in an eminent degree pos
sess not only the power of beholding beauty wherever
it is found, but of grasping, retainirg, and so repro
ducing it, that in its representation it realizes its de
sign in a truer and more exalted way than was possible
in its original form. We are now ready to pass over
to consider the forms Avhich the sense of beauty assumes,
when, as in the case of these gifted children of nature,
it becomes an absorbing and controlling principle of
the mind.

54 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

PART II.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY UNFOLDING ITSELF IN
ARTISTIC PRODUCTIVITY.

SECTION I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
The sense of beauty has hitherto been considered
as a common gift of mankind. As such it appears
rather as a capacity than a faculty. It is, however,
not entirely passive. The human mind is never
purely receptive. Even in the case of sensation, as
all will agree, there must be a reaction from within.
In the perception of beauty, there is far more inner
activity than at first might be supposed. Indeed,
if Ave listen to the statements of many of those Avhose
opinions on the subject are of the greatest value, we
will likely come to the conclusion that the subjective
side of beauty preponderates by far over the objective ;
nay, more, that beauty is not found in real objects, but
is an outgrowth and creature of the human mind.
Emerson calls Condillac the most logical of the
Materialists, and quotes from him as follows : " Though
Ave should soar into the heavens, though avc should
sink into the abyss, avc never go out of ourselves ; it is
always our own thought that Ave perceive." He else-
whero repeats the doctrine in his own words thus:
" Though avc travel the world over to find tho beau-

THE SENSE OF BE A UTY. 55
tiful, Ave must carry it with us or wo find it not."
" The truth was in us before it was reflected to us in
natural objects." "What Ave are, that only can we see."
Vischer uses the German word hincinschaucn in the
connection, and in his oavu idiom would say that avc
look beauty into the outward object. As this author
has, perhaps, brought more extensive learning and
philosophic acumen to bear on the subject of aesthetics
than any other, his answer to the question, What,
and under Avhat circumstances, does an object become
beautiful? will be of interest, although, perhaps, not
of much A'alue on account of its obscurity. It is as
follows : " The imagination brings to a pure and all-
permeating expression the pure contents or sense of
the object ; that is, the idea which is individualized in
it, by virtue of the purifying process to which it sub
jects the object."1 Quotations to the same purport
might be made from a number of eminent writers.
The following, from Coleridge, must suffice :
" Oh, Lady, we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live,
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud;
And would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate, cold world allowed
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd,
Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair, luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth,
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element.
0 pure of heart, thou neod'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be;

' ' ..-Esthetics," vol. i., sect. xiv.

56 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair, luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power." 1
If these statements are to be regarded as true, the
sense of beauty is not a capacity, but a faculty in the
strictest sense of the word. Comparatively little is
found without, but it is a vast work that goes on
Avithin. It is Avell understood that the great poet em
ploys all the powers of his mind in the 'production of
his poem ; but most persons are not aware of the fact,
that in the case of the ordinary beholder, when the
sense of beauty is truly aAvakened, the activity is the
same, differing only in degree. The highest creative
power is nothing more than what we have germinally
in that which we have hitherto been considering as a
simple form of mental receptivity belonging to man
kind as a gift in common to all.
None of the writers abo\'e quoted will deny that
beauty exists outside of us as well as within. They
would say that this is the case with reason also. But
what we Avish more particularly to knoAV is Iioav beauty
is found. When the sense of beauty remains in its
undeveloped form, as in the case of men generally,
the process is involved in more or less obscurity; but
it appears in relative clearness Avhen it rises to a higher
form, and tho elements Avhich enter into it assume the
character of distinct faculties of the mind. These are,
first, aesthetic contemplation, or the regardant faculty ;
secondly, fancy ; and, thirdly, imagination. We now
pass on to the consideration of the first.
1 Ode on Dejection.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 57

SECTION II.
I.  AESTHETIC CONTEMPLATION, OR THE REGARDANT
FACULTY.
The Avord perception might seem here to be ade
quate to the purpose. But there are several reasons
why it is not adopted. In the first place, the term is
not strong enough to express the mental activity, in
the presence of an object, on the part of those Avho
have a higher appreciation of it as beautiful. The
latter usually continues longer ; it has more of purpose
in it, and it is supported to a greater extent by the
reason than is the case with that act Avhich is usually
called perception. It may be called thinking by the
aid of forms present to the imagination. Further,
between ordinary sensuous perception and that which
we are now considering, there is a vast difference in
kind. In an important feature they may be said to
be the opposites of each other. In connection with
the latter, as we have seen, there is a reflection of the
infinite, and a consciousness of being eleA'ated toward
it, while by means of the former we identify ourselves
with nature, are made to feel our dependence upon
it, and hence to realize our neediness and imper
fection. "True beauty," says Rauch, "has the power to
silence all desires and to raise us above all sensual
feeling." While ordinary perception may be the
means of tightening the shackles of man's slavery to
the world of sense, the calm consideration of the

58 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
beautiful is one of the first steps toward that strte
of emancipation from the material world around hii.i,
which is the prerogative of the creature made in the
likeness of the Creator.
Those who possess a susceptibility for the beautiful,
resembling that which belongs to childhood, will of
course perceive the quality in objects; but they will
do far more. On finding those objects Avhich possess
beauty, they bestow upon them absorbing attention,
they realize with clearness of vision the higher truth
which is enshrined in them, and give themselves over
in complete self-abandonment to the exalting influ
ence which these objects exert. In the case of those
more highly favored by nature, in whom the sense
of beauty finds a fuller and richer unfolding, it will
be found that the regardant faculty is character
ized by a heightened potency in the three following
ways. A. Extensively. — When the love of beauty prevails
in the mind, it will not rest satisfied with a limited
field from which to draAv material for its gratification.
Those who are thus gifted Avill go forth in the search
of it. They will be found among the mountains, by
the sea, and in remote abodes of men. Ruskin says
that on the continent of Europe, from coast to coast,
not a significant object was to be found which escaped
the notice of Turner and failed to appear on his canvas.
Rubens is an object of wonder, not only on account
of the vast number and endless variety of his paint
ings, but on account of the universality of his obser
vation, to Avhich many a single production, taken sep
arately, bears ample testimony.
But there are artists who have accomplished as

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 59
much as either Turner or Rubens, and yet never went
far away from home. Life itself is a journey. How
much is here to be seen both of what is going on
around and within us ! It is the experience of life,
turned of course to proper account, that goes to make
the perfect poet as well as the perfect man. It is said
that we have no biography of Shakspeare, and that'
there is no man of whom a biography is less needed,
for his works are a perfect exposition of his life.
What a life must that have been of -which such works
are but the photograph !
History is, likewise, one of the fields which will be
entered. The occurrences of the past will be observed
with a keen-eyed regard. The artist's interest in his
torical events is, however, different from that taken in
them by those Avhose province is the good as distinct
from the beautiful. These identify themselves with
the process of history, and realize that on its bosom
they are borne along inevitably toward their destiny.
Every event accordingly finds the measure of its im
portance in the degree in which it contributes to the
realization of that end to which they have surrendered
themselves; namely, the fulfillment of the absolute will.
But the artist, in each important event, sees the con
summation of the whole. It is of significance to him
only in so far as it reflects the original divine purpose,
of which the universe is the actualization. None of
the great facts connected with the life of the race will
be overlooked by him ; he will observe the true sense
or purport underlying each of them, and he will see
them in their relation to the divinely-appointed order
of things, of which, as a totality, they form an essential
part.

CO THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
"He saw through life and death, through good and ill,
He saw through his own soul,
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll
Before him lay.1
B. Intensively. — Those who are especially gifted with
the endowment of beauty will see and hear much which,
as beautiful, escapes the attention of men in general.
A keen perspicacity is conditioned, of course, by the
measure of perfection in the various organs of sense.
A full sense-life. is of vast importance. Near-sighted
ness or dullness of hearing must prove a source of
much disadvantage to those occupied in the sphere of
the beautiful. Still, the misfortune of a moderate de
gree of deficiency in this respect is not so great as at
first might be supposed. What, however, is of vast
importance is a lively sensibility to outward impres
sions depending upon a normal form of inner nerve
vitality. An auditor may not catch all the notes of an
orchestral performance, but accurately apprehend the
harmony or perceive the discord of those Avhich are
distinctly heard. Another may be better able than most
persons to distinguish distant sounds, and yet be but
little impressed by the sweetest of all tones, that, namely,
of the human voice, or by the music Avhich the world
of nature is constantly furnishing those listeners avIio
" have an ear." The case is the same with the sense of
sight. The organ must be able to perform all its func
tions. But the hawk -like vision is not AAdiat is of im
portance hero. There must be a quick perception of
form and color; outlines must be readily grasped,
shades distinguished, and harmony, or the reverse,
1 Tennyson.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 61
observed in the combination of tints. The artist may
be required to wear goggles, or use an ear-trumpet, and
still become distinguished in his calling. But >voe to
the man Avho adopts art as his profession, Avho has not
been favored by nature with acuteness in those inner
senses to which the outward ones are but the thresholds.
In a word, the physical organs, on their more mechani
cal side, may be defective; but the inner sensibility
lying back of them must be quick and keen.
Hence, of all the objects which fall under his notice,
the true artist will at once recognize the one Avhich is
beautiful. It arrests his attention. He raises it, as if
by a sort of relief, from its surroundings, and holds it
before his eyes as the exclusive object of his contem
plation. The current of his being sets toward it as
toward something which is deserving of his purest and
most genuine affection. He unites himself with it in
the form of a spiritual conjunction and embrace, and
allows it to absorb all that he has of interest and re
gard. The self-surrendry and self-forgetfulness is some
times so complete, that he awakes as from a state of
ecstasy. Nor in his search for beauty will the real artist wait
long till he finds it. He will discover it in things
which other men look upon as common. " For every
object has its roots in central nature, and may, of
course, be so exhibited to us as to represent the
world.1 But beforehand it must be seen as doing so.
If the object be of a noble order of existence, but
poorly represent such order, the artist will purify it of
its defects, rectify its form, and do for it what the pho
tographer claims to do for a pock-marked face, — make
1 Emerson : " Essay on Art."

62 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
it look like itself, — and then enjoy the contemplation
of it as much as a less gifted beholder would that of a
fair representative of the same class. " There is a per
fect ideal to be wrought out of every face around us,
that has on its forehead the writing and the seal of the
angel ascending from the East (Revelation vii. 2), by
the earnest study and penetration of the written his
tory thereupon, and the banishing of the blots and
stains." 1
If the object be of an humble rank, the artist will
see it as occupying its divinely-appointed place in the
general economy. He regards it from the standpoint of
St. Paul, who saw " the more abundant comeliness" in
the uncomely parts ; and, reflecting upon it the purity
of his own good and honest heart, he makes it the pro-
claimer of the universal grace. It is said of Virgil that
when he cast dung about, it carried with it the appear
ance of dignity. For, as is the case with all who are
great in the same sphere, he possessed the faculty of
showing us " the sublime presence of the highest spirit
ual cause, lurking, as it always does lurk, in these sub
urbs and extremities of nature." 2
Ruskin: " Modern Painters," vol. ii., p. 117.
" Look long enough
On any peasant's face here coarse and lined,
You'll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,
As perfect-featured as he yearns at Rome
From marble pale with beauty ; then persist,
And, if your apprehension's competent,
You'll find some fairer angel at his back,
As much exceeding him as he the boor,
And pushing him with imperial disdain
Forever out of sight."
Mrs. Browning.
2 Emerson.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 63
C. Protcnsivcly. — Perhaps a word more frequently
employed — for example, effective — would adequately
designate the quality of aesthetic contemplation noAv
to be considered. Whatever the word may be, the fact
is that it must be far-working and continuous in its
effects. The ground for successful artistic work Avould
not be prepared if the artist beholding were character
ized merely by the compass and keenness of vision just
described. The impressions of beauty must exert an
abiding influence on the mind. The process to which
the single object is subjected in that it is treasured up
in the memory will be spoken of later. Here, what is
insisted on, is that objects must be regarded in such a
way that the mind becomes by their presence enlarged
and enriched. They may disappear from conscious
ness and sink so far down in the recesses of the soul as
to be unresponsive to the call of the Avill ; but, having
been beheld by the contemplative eye of the artist,
they contribute to the fertility of invention, and, as
images brightened and purified by contact with the
neAV element into which they are introduced, they float
readily upward on the mysterious wave of artistic en
thusiasm, and, by virtue of an elective affinity of their
own, spontaneously assume their places as living mem
bers of any genuine work of art in which their presence
is required.1
The contemplative gift, in this highly developed
1 " The artist must draw from the overfullness of life, and not from the
overfullness cf abstract generalities; for in art it is not thinking, as is the
case in philosophy, but the actual external forms and figures of things
that furniih the material for productive activity. This is the element, ac
cordingly, in which the artist must find himself and be at home; he must
have seen much, heard much, and treasured up much in his memory."
Hegel: ".Esthetics," vol. i., p. 362.

61 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
form, is the absolute prerequisite for the adequate ex
ercise of the two remaining faculties employed in artis
tic activity, to the consideration of one of which we are
about ready to pass. This, and this alone, can supply
tho material upon Avhich they build. Some artists pos
sess an intuitive power which accomplishes marvels.
They are endowed by nature Avith a faculty someAvhat
like that which Cuvier acquired by scientific industry ;
namely, of forming a conception of the animal on the
basis of a single bone. Goethe possessed this in an
eminent degree. Of Schiller it is said, that " he did
not have the breadth of experience and observation
which his writings would seem to indicate." " Tieck
says somewhere, that he who has never seen a battle
can poetically describe one better than he who has. It
may be that the confusion of the particulars, and the
.fact of being entangled in them, may interfere Avith
the freedom of contemplation ; but he Avho has not
beheld with interest Avhat pertains to engagements,
namely, martial forces, and what is essential to them,
exercise, Avounds, and death, can never successfully
introduce them into an artistic representation. The
genius accordingly must enjoy the advantage of a rich
and broad life. Should fortune restrain him, he will
resist, break away, and hasten out into the Avorld." l
Vischer: "..Esthetics," vol. ii., p. 319.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 65

SECTION III.
II. — FANCY.
In considering the fancy as an expanded form of
the sense of beauty and specific function of the artist's
mind, there are two facts Avhich must not be overlooked.
The first is that the faculty may be regarded apart from
the beautiful, and as an essential part of the mind of
man in general. It is sometimes identified with con
ception, sometimes with memory, and again with the
principle of the association of ideas. Like conception,
it has to do, to use an expression of Rauch, " with
images peeled off from the objects." And, like mem
ory, it controls a mass of these which have been gar
nered for its use. It is movement in the direction of
thought, and, accordingly, is sometimes called think
ing. Many persons will thus designate what is going
on Avithin, Avhen impressions from without are called
up and are permitted to ho\Ter and accumulate before
the mind. It is often said that those who are deserv
ing of being called men of intellect possess a li\rely
fancy. Taken in this wide sense of the word, the state
ment is correct. Scientists and historians cannot dis
pense with the gift.
Again, when it is regarded as a specifically aesthetic
faculty, it dare not be mechanically separated from the
one which we have just considered and denominated
contemplative. The fancy works on the same ground,
it is true, but extends its activity much further. The
former may be said to be more dependent on the object,

66 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
because it stands forth in its self-hood, and challenges
attention and regard. The latter cannot get along
without the object; but it needs not its actual pres
ence. The fancy seizes it, puts it far out of sight, and
then summons it to reappear, so shaped and moulded
as to answer best its own autocratic purpose. Much,
however, of the fancy's work may be said to be done
when contemplation ends ; but, at the same time, it is
its noble function to enhance our enjoyment of those
beautiful objects which fall under our notice, and like
wise, by reproducing and re-combining them, to multi
ply the occasions of sesthetic delight. In performing
its functions, there are three AArays in which it acts.
A. Depositive. — The fancy carries with it images of
the objects which are beheld, and so disposes of them
that when needed they are subject to its call. The
impressions made upon the mind, for the most part,
come from the surface of things. The essence, of
course, to a greater or less extent, is manifested in the
form ; still, it is essentially with the latter that the
faculty has to do. The statement that the images are
" subject to the call" of the fancy needs some limita
tion. It is plain that it is dependent on the law of
association of ideas, or of suggestion. Owing to the
various relations which they sustain to each other, the
presence of one before the consciousness involves that
of the other. The question arises, Does the mind con
trol the law, or the law the mind? Both may be
answered affirmatively. But certain it is that the char
acter of the clusterings "will be in a measure deter
mined by the mental bent and habits of the subject,
and that these are to a certain extent under the control
of the will. But. as has already been intimated, these

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 67
images exert their influence upon the mind. Their
presence serves as a stimulus, and their character deter
mines the direction of creative activity. The instinct
of the true artist seldom fails to guide him aright.
He will work in his element, and the material Avhich
he needs will not fail to come to hand.
The images do not reappear in the same form in
which they were received. There must be some devi
ation, naturally, OAving to what is ordinarily termed
forgetfulness. Some features are lost, others are modi
fied. The difficulty connected with painting from
memory is something of which artists are well aware.
Singular to say, the modification to which images are
subjected, after being taken up in the memory, is
in the direction of the beautiful. Vischer speaks of
their being polished and brightened by mutual con
tact. In another place he quotes Hegel, and says that
the change is ascribable to the fact that the objects
thus apprehended are made to partake of the infini
tude of the mind. Ruskin has expressed the fact thus:
"There is an unfailing charm in the memory and
anticipation of things beautiful more sunny and spirit
ual than attaches to their presence ; for with their pres
ence it is possible to be sated, but Avith the imagination
of them, never." :
The fact that the fancy thus improves and exalts its
images serves to explain much that otherwise would
fail to be understood. It is well known that with
many persons the contemplation of an unfinished
work of art affords much more pleasure than when
completed.2 All are aware of the fact that a voluptu-
1,1 Modern Painters," vol. ii., p. 188.
2 " As interesting as any of these relics was a large portfolio of old draw
ings, some of which, in the opinion of their possessor, bore evidence on

68 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
ous representation is more effective for evil when a
part of the object is concealed. A deed supposed to
be performed behind the scenes is often more impress
ive than if it were to take place before our eyes. The
fancy is permitted to make its own pictures of the
murders perpetrated in Macbeth, and thus the feeling
of the sublime, in this way aroused, is more intense.
The force of the aposiopesis, one of the most effective
figures in rhetoric, becomes evident in the light of this
mysterious qualification of the fancy.
Ruskin regards it as " one of the most glorious gifts
of the human mind, making the whole infinite future
and imperishable past a richer inheritance, if faith
fully inherited, than the changeful fleeting present."
He adds that " it is one of the manyr witnesses in us to
the truth that these present and tangible things are not
meant to satisfy us." 1
The relation sustained by this phenomenon to art
deserves a passing notice. The principle evidently re
quires what is called idealization. On the one hand,
the artist is spontaneously prompted to represent ob
jects taken up into the fancy in a fairer and more pleas
ing form than the one in which they were originally
received. But mqre than this, in virtue of the principle
their faces of the touch of master-hands. Very ragged and ill-conditioned
they mostly were, yellow with time and tattered wilh rough usage; and in
their best estate the designs had been scratched rudely with pen and ink on
coarse paper, or, if drawn with charcoal or a pencil, were now half-rubbed
out. You would not anywhere see rougher and homelierthings than these.
But this hasty rudeness made the sketches the more valuable.
The charm lay partly in their imperfection, for this is suggestive and sets
the imagination at work, while the finished picture, if a good one, leaves
the spectator nothing to do, and if bad, confuses, stupefies, disenchants,
and disheartens him." — " Marble Faun," chap. xv.
" Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 139.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 69
under consideration, the beholder demands that the
reproduction be purer and more exalted. This is illus
trated in the case of portrait-painting. At first it would
be supposed that the task of the artist is to copy exactly
and minutely all that the face of the sitter presents to
the view; and, accordingly, that the essential merit of
the work consists in the precision of the imitation. A
painter by the name of Denier, some of whose portraits
are found in the Louvre, has made himself celebrated
by the kind of elaboration and care spent upon them.
Every vein, wrinkle, and freckle is subject to the
scrutiny of the microscope. No visitor looking for the
beautiful in art stops long at these pictures. They
displease and disgust. They are regarded merely as
matters of curiosity, and, by artists particularly, as
negative illustrations of the important principle, that
art is not designed to furnish mere copies of nature.
Nor in departing from a method of this kind dare the
fancy be said to falsify. For the true character of a
man may disappear as' much under such treatment as
this as in the hands of an artist who takes indefinite
liberties with his subject.
It is evident, accordingly, why art does not and dare
not pretend to avoid flattery, for more is demanded of
it than nature immediately furnishes, and the artist
can be true to the essential nature of the object repre
sented AAdien he is true to his native impulse to set it
forth in more perfect conformity with that ideal of it
which prevails in his own mind.
Sir Joshua Reynolds expresses himself on the subject
as follows : " The true student will leave the meaner
artist servilely to suppose that those are the best pic
tures which are most likely to deceive the spectator.

70 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
He will permit the loAver, like the florist, or collector
of shells, to exhibit the minute discriminations which
distinguish one object of the same species from another;
while he, like the philosopher, will consider nature in
the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures
the character of its species."1 He assigns as a reason
for this the fact that " the fine arts, in their highest
province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to
the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity
which Ave have within, impatient of being circum
scribed and pent up by the world Avhich is around us." 2
1 Third Discourse.
2 Twelfth Discourse.
It may seem strange that Hazlitt, himself a painter and a delightful
writer on art criticism, should charge his distinguished and most estimable
countryman, Sir Joshua Reynolds, with inconsistency and folly in holding
" that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are to be found not in actual nature,
but in an idea existing in the mind," and "that there is nothing worthy
of the contemplation of a wise man but that ideal perfection which never
existed in the world nor even on canvas." He further says lhat "Sir
Joshua appears to have imbibed from others (Burke or Johnson) a spurious
metaphysical notion that art was to be preferred to nature." See his essay
on Sir Joshua's discourses. The fact is, that he misunderstands and exag
gerates Sir Joshua's statements, and that he himself is as liable to the
charge of self-contradiction. In his essay on Poussin, he writes as fol
lows : " To give us nature, such as we see it, is well, and deserving of
praise; to give us nature, such as we have never seen, but have often
wished to see it, is better, and deserving of higher praise. He who cm
show the world in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread over
it, or in its high and palmy state, with the gravity of history stamped on
ihe proud monuments of vanished empire, — who by his 'so potent art'
can recall time pait, transport us to distant places, and join the regions of
the imagination (a new conquest) to those of reality, — who teach us not
only what nature is, but what she has been and is capable of being, — he
who does this, and does it wilh simplicity, with truth and grandeur, is
loved of nature and her powers; and his mind is universal, and his art
the master-art." From what Burke or Johnson, it may be asked, did Mr.
Hazlitt " imbibe" his " metaphysical notions" ?

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 71
B. Expositive. — There are feAV subjects connected with
art Avhich are more deserving of consideration than the
activity of the fancy in seeing and unfolding the signifi
cance of external realities. The same high authority
just quoted insists upon it that the great object, and
the point to Avhich the artist's studies must be directed,
is " the art of seeing nature." None of the faculties of
the human mind has received so much attention and
been so highly extolled by the modern apostles of cul
ture as this of insight into the disclosures made by
nature to the soul of man. With Emerson, Carlyle,
and others, it would almost seem that a man is deserv
ing of the name only in so far as he keeps his eyes
open and gazes upon what is going on around him.
One would suppose that they forget the statement
made two thousand years ago by Plato (for whose
opinion, by the way, they have the highest respect), to
the effect that a man with his eyes shut is able to see
the most. Ruskin ventures the following assertion :
" Hundreds of persons can talk for one Avho can think ;
but thousands can think for one who can see. To see
clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one.
Therefore, finding the world of literature more or less
divided into thinkers and seers, I believe we shall find
also that the seers are wholly the greater race of the
two." l
This gift of beholding objects in their symbolical
import is the fountain and spring of all parables,
fables, and allegories. All the sober moralists, from
Seneca down to Poor Richard of the almanac, have
turned it to account in inculcating their principles and
pointing their precepts. It is this that furnishes the
1,1 Modern Painters," p. 208.

72 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
orator with the metaphors, the illustrations, and de
scriptive flights, which secure for him the control of
the popular mind. It charges the brain of the mystic
with what he proclaims as revelations from on high.
Finally, it is the fancy in the exercise of this prerog
ative that finds material for volumes of poetic and
romantic literature, whose number and variety are
bewildering to contemplate.
Few will deny that all external realities are declara
tive of something different from themselves and under
lying them. Far as Herbert Spencer goes in the direc
tion of materialism, he grants that there is a principle
or substance, call it what you will, of which material
existence is the manifestation. This same philosopher
refers to the etymological meaning of the word phe
nomenon, which is derived from a Greek verb signi
fying " to show." The view of Plato or Ruskin, accord
ingly, is tenable, that objects are beautiful in proportion
as they reveal the divine. It is the presence and power
of the Creator that the gift in. question enables us to
behold. This endowment is active, in its degree, in all
the stages of intellectual development. It is not want
ing at the dawn of reason, nor in the dullest mind. It
recognizes, hoAvever dimly, in every thunder-clap, the
overpowering potency of the divine will, in every
breath of balmy -breathing air the divine love, and in
the starry heavens the divine infinitude. But where
would the chapter end ?
The fact that small things as well as great serve the
same purpose is expressed in the following language
by Cousin : "If from man and the animal Ave descend
to the purely physical nature, we shall still find beauty
there as long as Ave find tliere some shade of intelli-

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 73
gence, I know not Avhat, that awakens in us some
thought, some sentiment. Do avc arrive at some piece
of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies nothing,
neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every
thing that exists is animated. Matter is shaped and
penetrated by forces that are not material, and it obeys
laAvs that attest intelligence everywhere. The most
subtle chemical analysis does not reach a dead and
inert nature, but a nature that is organized in its own
way, that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In
the depths of the earth as in the heights of the heav
ens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic mountain, an
immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings.
Let us contemplate nature with the ejTe of the soul as
well as with the eye of the body; everywhere a moral
expression will strike us, and the forms of things will
impress us as symbols of thought." 1
It is true, not only that the lowest orders of created
existence, as they must bear the stamp of the Creator's
hand, must likewise reflect his character, but that as
the world is a cosmos, and all the parts organically
related, the lower must in some sense point to and
promise the higher, and thus by suggestion to compre
hend the whole. It is this cosmical quality, accord
ing to Emerson, " a power to suggest relations to the
whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful indi
viduality, that constitutes a thing beautiful." 2 Accord
ingly one of the most legitimate and essential func
tions of the fancy is to see into the soul of nature,
of which the universe is the full expression, but which
is in some sense present and manifest in every part, that
1" True, Beautiful, and Good." Leet. vii.
2 " Essay on Beauty."

74 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
soul which must be regarded as the on-going and actu
alization of the divine creative word, and, as such, the
revelation of the divine thought and will.
This leads us to the consideration of another form or
species of idealization, which grows out of what, for the
sake of distinction, we have called the expositive activity
of the fancy. We have seen that one mode of idealiz
ing consists in so representing an object that the real
essence or truth underlying it may appear. But the
method now under consideration consists in this, that
an object is set forth in such a way that it distinctly
points to and reflects what is apart from and outside
of itself. Coleridge was one of the first writers in the
English language who brought this fact to light. He
expresses it thus : " It has been before observed that
images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied
from nature, and as accurately represented in words,
do not of themselves characterize the poet. They be
come proofs of original genius only as far as they are
modified by a predominant passion, or by associated
thoughts or images awakened by that passion, or when
they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity or
succession to an instant, or when a human and intel
lectual life is transferred to them from the poet's own
spirit, "Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air." '
Many persons will agree that it is legitimate for the
artist to modify an object so as to make it appear,
according to the maxim of Raphael, "as nature in
tended it should," that is, according to its own idea,
but will deny his right to change an object in such a
1,1 Biographic Literaria," chap xv.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 75
way as to make it the expression of his thoughts and
feelings. One step in the direction of idealization is
admissible, but the canon must be insisted upon that
art must be faithful to nature. It is agreed that all
things, however distant from each other, are still so
connected and related that they bear traces of mutual
resemblance. It is well known that ability to perceive
these is the essential element of that form of poetic
talent which is fruitful in metaphors and similes.
The star may be compared to a daisy, and the daisy to
a star. In the parable of our Saviour, the kingdom
of heaven is likened unto a grain of mustard seed,
and to the leaven Avhich is put into the meal. As a
lively fancy may be said to consist in a quick insight
into these points of similarity, the artist in possession
of it will feel at liberty to modify any object in such
a way that such resemblance may the more distinctly
appear. Strange as it may seem, Ruskin, who makes
a distinct profession of naturalism over against ideal
ism, still asserts that " great art is produced by men
who feel acutely and nobly, and is in some sort an
expression of this personal feeling."
No one will pretend to draw the line at which true
artistic realism ends and at which arbitrary idealism
begins. But it is certain that the fancy will not go
astray if it confine itself to what we have called ex
positive work; and certain also that in doing so it has
a vast field of most valuable activity.1 The artist is
1 " Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
Through the meanest object's sight;
By the murmur of a spring,

76 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
true to nature and to the particular object, so long
as he makes it the means of expressing those thoughts
and feelings which it evidently suggests and inspires.
His Avork is much like that of the mystic. The
latter, however, interprets nature in a stereotyped
way, and according to a preconceived theory. He
sees a symbol in every object; but he fastens upon
each its own meaning, immovably and inseparably.
The artist, if true to his calling, will allow nature,
in a free and unrestrained manner, to tell its own
tale, to prove its own emblematic significance of what
is highest and noblest in the spiritual world; in a
word, to be its own commentary in conveying to the
hearts of men the lessons of infinite Avisdom.
But the fancy is not that profound, serious, and
exhaustive faculty which accomplishes all that art
demands of the human mind in the treatment of the
single object. Its chief failing is undue self-reliance.
It is not so willing to be led hy Avhat it finds outside
of itself, as to make what is outside subservient to
what proceeds from Avithin. Ruskin calls it one of the
hardest-hearted of the intellectual faculties. It is osten
tatious; not so much anxious to allow the glory of
nature to be beheld as to cause its own glory to appear
behind the charms of nature. It deals, as has been
said, with the surface of things, and, failing for the
Or the least bough's rustling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree —
She could more infuse in me
Than all nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man."
G. Wither, quoted by Wordsworth.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 77
most part to reach their true meaning and life, it is
often capricious, delusive, and self-contradictory.
Hence we ascribe to this faculty, and designate as
fanciful, so many things belonging to the sphere of
mere abstractions, of Avhich, at the opening of the
" Ars Poetica," Horace gives us an example, compares
them to a sick man's visions, and adds,
"Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici ?"
G Compositive. — The fancy calls up the images which
it has received, attaches to them the meaning which
they seem to convey, or modifies them according to
the light in which it regards them, and then, by
selecting and combining them, forms of them a new
whole. Thus it elevates objects to a higher plane of
beauty, and indefinitely adds to the number. It may
be said to create for itself a new world.
In this invented world the mind may live, whatever
be the surroundings of the body. In the midst of
life we may thus live another life. With men in
general it is, however, by no means one of beauty.
It may be elevated above care and distress, and consist
of fulfilled wishes and hopes; or it may be one in
which we find ourselves in contact with the imps, like
those of Macbeth, whose name is legion, and whom
Mephistopheles calls "his own little ones."
In the case of the artist, the new-formed fleeting
world is by no means always pure and fair. As in the
exercise of the fancy every man is in a sense an artist,
so the artist's fancy comprehends in it alt that is in
volved in that of every other man. Emergencies will
arise when he must giA^e himself OA'er to concern about
his material and physical Avell-being. These will de-

78 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
tcrmine the character of his day-dream. The reality
and earnestness of life will come up in distinct pic
tures before his mind. As a man, too, he will enter
into problems of practical and scientific interest. Im
pressed with their significance, and anxious as to their
bearings, he will allow them at times to absorb and
determine the direction of his mental activity. Vischer
says: "He lives a fuller life than the masses, and his
works bear witness to a deeper sympathy with the
nerves of the universal life, with that which takes
hold of us, which agitates us, and which engages the
inner man with a thousand inquiries. He seems to
be one with the life-blood of humanity, and his heart
widens itself into the heart of the Avorld. . . . Still,
this does not constitute the poet; and though we are
acquainted with his agitated heart, we as yet knoAV
nothing of the mystery of the form into which he has
so moulded the pathologically agitating that it loses
its pathological sting." 1
1 " ./Esthetics," vol. ii., sect. 389.
" The artist must not only have looked about him to a great extent in
the world, and have acquainted himself with its external and internal
phenomena, but he must have allowed much of what is momentous to
have passed through his own breast; his heart must have been capti
vated and agitated; he must have lived through and worked through
much, before he is in a condition to unfold in concrete images that in
human life which is purest and most profound." — Hegel: " .^Esthetics,"
vol. i., p. 3C4.
" It was a time of fierce passions and sudden tragedies, of picturesque
transitions and contrasts. It found Dante, shaped him by every experi
ence that life is capable of, — rank, ease, love, study, affairs, statecraft, hope,
exile, hunger, dependence, despair, — until he became endowed with a sense
of the nothingness of this world's goods possible only to the rich, and a
knowledge of man possible only lo the poor. ... In 1274 occurred
what we may call his spiritual birth, the awakening in him of the imagi
native faculty, and of that profounder and more intense consciousness

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 79
Although these are not the forms of the fancy which
distinctly characterize the artist's mind, it is apparent
that they constitute the necessary background for ar
tistic work. As elements of real life they may be said
to disappear; but they are sublimated into a nobler
order of being, and, as such, are the tributaries to and
necessary support of all genuine creative productivity.
The bent of the artist's energies is in the direction of
the construction of new composite forms that will
meet those demands which the beautiful alone can
satisfy. In bringing together different objects of nature, it
is supposed that the figures will be more impressive
than ordinarily found, and their significance deeper.
In making its combinations, the fancy for the most part
relies upon its own strength, and, self-determined, car
ries out its own purposes. Still, conscious of its weak
ness and liability to utter failure, it is often found
experimenting and resorting to rules. It will take out
at one place and put in at another, having some princi
ple like that of sympathy, harmonj', or variety before
its eyes, and, by attending to all the minutiae, may suc
ceed in producing a work of art which will pass as
respectable, and even as meritorious.
Take the case of a musician. An original melody
occurs to him. He seats himself at his piano and tries
to reproduce the theme. The instrument does not rer
turn it by any means in the form in which at first it
presented itself to his inner ear. But he changes a note
here, and adds or omits one there, and, remembering
which springs from the recognition of beauty through the antithesis of
sex. It was in that year that he saw Beatrice Portinari." — James Russell
Lowell : " Essay on Dante."

80 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
the rules of melody, he may at last reach a result which
will satisfy his own judgment and that of others. He
will then proceed to the harmony and will work in
the same uncertain way ; but as he can find rules here
to guide him he need not be so fearful as to ultimate
success. In passing over to the development of his
theme, there is the widest room for choice. He may
give himself over to the guidance of a Avild and arbi
trary current of suggestions, such as usually character
ize the rhapsody or capricioso ; or, he may adopt some
traditional schemata and follow them out according to
such rules and method as he may have prescribed to
himself. The danger to which the fancy is exposed lies in its
fondness for self-display, and, at the same time, in a
readiness, in order to accomplish its end, to resort to
means least of all consistent with the air of self-
dependence which it assumes.1
The great mass of productions in all the spheres of
art originates in this Avay. Much that is valuable is to
be-ascribed to the labor of the fancy working in its own
sphere. Artists Avho occupy a high niche in the temple
of fame have in the employment- of it added lustre to
their reputation, and conferred lasting benefits upon
the race. But the artist who deserves to be called
really great cannot confine himself to the kind of
work Avhich has been described. He will not deceive
himself by supposing that true ideals of beauty can be
1 Some of the Germans would say that the activity of the fancy is apt to
run into a false subjectivism, because it has not sufficient regard for the
truly objective ; and, likewise, into a false objectivism, because it frequently
employs the objective in such a way as that the truly subjective is not per
mitted to appear.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 81
produced by that faculty of the mind which is likely
to Avork capriciously at one time and mechanically at
another ; but, being well aware in Avhat genuine artistic
grandeur consists, he is conscious of the fact that the
intellectual function to which, as its source, it is to be
ascribed, is one of higher dignity, vaster potency, and
more comprehensive grasp.

82 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

SECTION IV.
III. — THE IMAGINATION.
In passing over to the consideration of the subject
now before us, we must not overlook the fact that the
human mind or spirit is a unit, and that as one com
plete totality it is active in the various forms called
faculties, functions, and the like. It is this that feels,
thinks, and wills. It never performs one of these acts
absolutely alone. However absorbed it may be in one
of them, the other two, in some measure, however slight,
enter into the activity. The same must be said of the
faculties we have hitherto been considering. Here,
however, there is a greater difficulty in drawing the
line of demarcation. For they are to such an extent
involved in and interpenetrated by one another, that
much that is done by one may be ascribed to the other.
It has been observed that no Avork of art has been
brought about by the activity of the fancy which does
not bear some traces of the presence of the imagina
tion. But more than this. It is not only true that when
the artist gives himself over to aesthetic contemplation,
some activity of the fancy and imagination is included ;
but these faculties are in some degree at work when in
the case of the ordinary beholder the sense of beauty
is awakened in the presence of an object calculated to
call forth sesthetic pleasure.
Coleridge Avas the first English writer to draw atten
tion to the distinction betAveen the imagination and
the fancy. At times, however, he seems to forget the

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 83
fact above referred to, and to separate too mechani
cally. There is certainly truth in his statement that
fancy partakes of the nature of the memory, while the
imagination is a creative power. Dr. Rauch adopts
the same view and calls the fancy a reproductive
faculty, Avhile the imagination is productive, is freer,
and less dependent on the association of ideas. Words
worth recognizes the distinction, and in the preface to
his poems says that " the fancy is given to quicken and
beguile the temporal part of our nature; imagination,
to invigorate and support the eternal." In harmony
with what was said in the preceding section, he states
that "fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion
with which she scatters her thoughts and images, trust
ing that their number, and the felicity with which they
are knitted together, will make amends for their indi
vidual value." While the fancy, on the one hand, is
characterized by the freedom of lawlessness and arbi
trary individuality, the imagination is under the con
trol of a rational force seemingly identical with that
which prevails in the universe of natural realities ;
and, while on the other hand the former yields a me
chanical submission to laws and rules prescribed from
without, the latter, self-poised, and unerringly guided
from within, needs no help, and thinks of no failure.
As opposed, accordingly, to the capricious and me
chanical activity of the fancy, the imagination must
be designated as rational and vital.
In indicating the manner in which the fancy deals
with the external object, we took the liberty of employ
ing three words containing the Latin root verb pono,
for the sake of aiding the memory in retaining the
distinctions pointed out. It will now appear that the

84 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
imagination performs functions precisely analogous
to those of the fancy described. It, too, receives the
single object; it subjects it, having apprehended it,
to a process answerable to its own purpose, and ar
ranges a number of them into new forms of infinite
complexity and variety.
A. Identificative. — Coleridge coins an entirely new
word to express this function of the imagination. He
derives from two Greek words, signifying working into
one, and in imitation of the German In-eins-bildung,
the adjective esemplastic. The fact to be brought out
is that the imagination takes up its object into living
oneness with itself. The fancy retains the object and
is able to call it up, as presenting this or that aspect,
or possessing this or that quality; but the imagination
absorbingly appropriates it with all that it essentially
contains and involves. The former may be content
with beholding the face, but the latter insinuates itself
into the heart. Vischer says that it is by means of this
power that the artist " transports himself into the reali
ties of nature, and thus becomes as avcII acquainted with
their inmost life as if he lived in and through them."
The imagination, accordingly, does not deal arbitra
rily with objects. It pays but little attention, it is true,
to Avhat is accidental ; but it takes a firm hold of the
real life and substance of things. It does not disre
gard the form ; but what it is most of all concerned
about is the essence, and the relation it sustains to the
different parts. It permits each external reality to
assert its self-dependence, and to be controlled by its
own laws. There is no strangeness between the object
and the mind of the true artist. On the contrary, they
are cognate to each other. The former, taken up into

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 85
the latter, lives its own true life, and unrestrainedly
asserts itself to be what it really and truly is.1
This form of the activity of the imagination is
essential in every truly great artistic performance;
but it manifests itself Avith special emphasis in the
works of the more eminent painters of portraits. A
little additional consideration given to this branch of
art will throw further light upon the subject. At first
glance, it might be supposed that the artist has little
more to do than mechanically copy the face of the
sitter, and that his Avork is very much the same as that
of the successful photographer. But, as all are aware,
what is chiefly Avanted is the expression. But what is
that which is to be expressed ? Nothing but the true
character of the man. This, however, is not told by
his face when he sits for his picture. The painter
must gather it from other sources. He must have
become acquainted with the man. He must be capable,
by virtue of sympathy, to enter into his inmost life.
He must to some extent have the same moral and
intellectual qualities, in order to give expression to
them for the benefit of others. He will omit many
things that will be found wanting by the narrow-
minded spectator; but to him who sees aright, the
spirit of the subject Avill seem to have taken possession
of the artist, and, using him as an organ, to have
worked its own way forth upon the canvas.2
1The artist's "skill in execution is secondary and incidental. The
measure of his ability is the depth to which he has penetrated the world
of matter, not, the number or the accuracy of his facts." — Atlantic
Monthly, February, 1864, p. 184.
2 " In this state the artist enters into the object in such a way that he is
not conscious of being different from it, and, accordingly, his power seems
to be the power of the inflowing object, and thus he feels as though pos-

86 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
As portrait-painting consists in allowing that which
is painted to assert itself in its true character, inde
pendently of anything arbitrary or personal in the
artist, portraiture will be found to enter, to a great
extent, into the productions of all the great artistic
masters. Tintoret stands high among the painters
who are distinguished for original inventive power,
and yet the following is Ruskin's description of his
"Adoration of the Magi " :
" The Madonna is not an enthroned queen, but a fair
girl, full of simplicity, and almost childish sweetness.
To her are opposed (as magi) two of the noblest and
most thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme
old age, the utmost manly dignity in its decline being
set beside the utmost feminine simplicity in its dawn.
The steep forehead and refined features of the nobles
are again opposed to the head of a negro servant, and
to an Indian, both, however, noble of their kind. On
the other side of the picture the delicacy of the Madonna
is further enhanced by contrast with a largely-made
farm-servant leaning on a basket. All these figures
are in repose ; outside the troop of the attendants of
the magi is seen coming up at gallop.
" I bring fonvard this picture, observe, not as an
example of the ideal in conception of religious subject,
but of the general ideal treatment of the human form,
in which the peculiarity is, that the beauty of each
figure is displayed to the utmost; Avhile yet taken
separately, the Madonna is an unaltered portrait of
sessed, moved, and hurried along by a spirit different from his own." —
Visciier : ".KMheiics," sect. 394.
James Russell Lowell says of Dante, that, "instead of endeavoring to
manufacture a great poem out of whnt was foreign and artificial, he let
the poem make itself out of him." — " Essay on Dante."

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 87
a Venetian girl, the magi are unaltered Venetian
senators, and the figure with the basket an unaltered
market-woman of Mestre.
" And the greater the master of the ideal, the more
perfectly true in portraiture will his individual figures
be found." 1
To what extent Shakspeare introduced portraits in
his dramatic creations, no one would pretend to say.2
But certain it is that in the case of few poets does this
case of self-identification with external realities appear
to the same extent as in his. Everything that he beheld
was seized by this vital, comprehensive grasp. What
he takes hold of finds a living lodgment within him,
and seems to exist there in such a way that the object
and his own proper self cease to be two, and to have
become one. Everything that he represents is so like
itself that it seems to be an outgrowth of nature rather
than a fiction of the human brain.
This faculty of the imagination must be regarded as
of primary and fundamental importance. Other forms
of activity are dependent upon it. Fidelity to nature
always has been and always will be regarded as the
measure of artistic ability. No one will deny that the
poet and painter have a right to assert themselves ; and
all will agree with Ruskin's statement, that what is
great in art is but the expression of a God-made great
man. But all this is consistent with the fact that the
grand prerequisite of all artistic greatness is the ability
1 " Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 81.
2 "The fables of Aristophanes, and of comedy in general, are, for the
most part, not invented; but they are expositions (the German has Exposi-
tionen) of living characters, and actual occurrences, with which the poet
came in frequent personal contact, and which strongly impressed his
mind."— Vischer : " ^Esthetics," sect. 393.

£8 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
of the artist to unite himself homogeneously with the
inmost nature of those objects which enter into his
work, so that, when they are represented, the contents
of his mind at the same time are adequately and fully
unfolded, having found embodiment in the objects;
and the objects stand forth in their true and proper
self-hood, while they freely and fully realize the artist's
intention, with which they are permeated at every point.
B. Re-creative. — The character of the activity of the
imagination now claiming attention is more or less
plainly indicated in a few of the latter passages of the
paragraph just concluded. It can be said that the
object as represented by the artist is the same and yet
not the same. We saw above iu what sense it is the
same. We are now to see to what extent it is not the
same. The function already discussed is sometimes regarded
as a passive condition of the mind. So Goethe must
have vieAved it when he said that the poet must hold
himself in a state of pure receptivity to the object. It
is passive relatively to the one Avhich reproduces what
has thus been received.
The re-creative activity of the imagination corre
sponds to the expositive of the fanc)r. But in the one
case, the object is viewed from without, and this or that
meaning is drawn from it; in the other, it is seized
by the heart, taken up into a nobler soil, whence it
springs forth aneAV, assuming shape and form distinctive
and peculiar to itself, yet differing from the original,
and more exalted.
It has been said that an object is beautiful in so far
as it exhibits the " universal grace." It is the business
of the artist first to see it, and then to represent it, as

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 89
so doing. But it is plain that he can do this only
in so far as he carries the universal grace within him.
Schiller says that the imagination seeks to set forth
the general in the particular instance. In vieAV of this
fact, he reminds us that the measure of the poet's power
does not consist exclusively in his ability to transfer his
state of mind to some outward object, for many may
be able to do this and yet fail to meet the highest
demands that are made of art. As a fairer test, he
regards the wealth of spiritual material which the
poet, has to give expression to. Accordingly, he says
that he who is truly great will include in himself the
AAdiole of humanity, and the totality of the universe
will appear in his work.
That completeness of manhood which is involved in
high artistic power includes intellectual breadth and
profundity on the one hand, and on the other what
has been termed " ethical magnitude." The mind
must have comprehensively grasped the uni\Terse of
things, and the will have become harmonious Avith
that of the absolute being. Such a soul as this is to
find adequate expression in some object of nature.
Can this be done without violence to the latter ? How
is it possible for the rights of the unthinking object
to be maintained over against those of the thinking
subject? In the modification to which the great artist subjects
the object, so far from interfering Avith its freedom, it
is precisely this that he allows it to assert. True
liberty consists in a perfect harmony with the uni
versal purpose. In the world of ordinary realities
each object appears in its pure finiteness and " pitiful
individuality." The artist exhibits it in its true rela-

90 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
tion to the divine order of things, and thus at once
imparts to it of his own infinitude, and allows its real
significance and significant realness to come to view.1
Examples may be found in all the branches of art
to illustrate this form of the imagination's activity.
We will make a selection from two which are very
different from each other. The one is the poetical
treatment of historical characters, of which we have
two noteworthy instances in the " Wallenstein" of
Schiller and the " Egmont" of Goethe. These figures
are not fancy sketches, and certainly not mechanical
reproductions of the historical realities. They live in
1 " The gifted artist must be one who lovingly and distinctly grasps the
individual thing in the wealth of its manifoldness, but still carries each
single object back in the depths of his being into unity with the idea; for
into each individual the universe must be laid." — Vischer : "^Esthetics,"
sect. 392.
"The object as apprehended by him (the artist) melts within him like
ore in a furnace, while his inmost self undergoes a change, and pours
itself withall that it contains and involves into the object. This is that
obscure place, the brooding night, where the centre of the ego, formative
nature, and formative spirit are one with the pure centre of all the species
of existence. Now the imaginative artist is alone, but still in the midst of
the world, for that which he presses warmly to his bosom is a world,
and the empirical has surrendered its significance lo this microcosm." —
Vischer : "^Esthetics," sect. 394.
Coleridge had already said that the imagination dissolves, diffuses, dissi
pates, in order to re-create, and quotes the following stanzas from Sir John
Davies as applicable to its operation :
" Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the thing it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.
" From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things :
Which to her proper nature she transforms,
To bear them light on her celestial wings."

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 91
the dramas, and they live a true life there. Facts in
their history are altered, as all are aware. For exam
ple, Egmont left a Avife Avith eight or ten children, and
in the tragedy he appears as an engaged lover. But
what is merely accidental passes as of no account if
only the real historical significance of the men be
brought to light. The underlying truth and essential
meaning of the characters are adequately unfolded; but
this could not have taken place had not the poets
transferred to them, and made them the living embodi
ments of the contents of, their own great minds and
hearts. The other department of art from Avhich similar
illustrations may be drawn is that of the grotesque.
This might at first be regarded as a domain peculiar
to the fancy. But it is one in which nearly all of
the greatest imaginative geniuses have displayed their
power, and to which the great mass of the productions
of many of them belong. Salvator Rosa constantly
makes the leaves of trees remind the spectator of the
faces of animals. Turner sometimes causes his tree-
trunks to look like dragons. The mediaeval architects
and sculptors twist the animals, which they employ for
typical and symbolical purposes, into what seems to be
the strangest possible shapes and forms. The superfi
cial observer would say that all this is arbitrary, for
reason is contradicted and nature is perverted. But,
however great the transformation, that which consti
tutes the real essence of the object is never lost sight
of: it is made to conform to spiritual laws, and to
answer spiritual purposes, and thus to realize its OAvn
highest and truest destiny; but its essential nature
always asserts itself as the moulding and formative
power.

92 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
The re-creative activity of the imagination, accord
ingly, would seem to consist in this: that the object
taken up into the mind of the gifted artist, and shorn
of all characteristics which are outward and formal, is,
under the dissolving power of the new element into
which it is introduced, reduced doAvn to the vital truth
which lies at the root of its existence ; and now, in the
Avay of a sort of organic growth, by virtue of a new
plastic power which it receives from the imagination,
it springs up afresh, fashioning itself according to its
own laws, but at the same time cheerfully and submis
sively conforming to the requirements of the spiritual
sphere to which, in the highest and truest sense, it
belongs, and where it finds itself at home.
C. Organically Originative. — Just as the fancy deals,
as composite, AArith a plurality of images, and in so
doing performs its most important mission, so the
imagination achieves its highest triumph, and appears
in its most imposing light, when, -as an originative
power, it causes a variety of objects in its possession
to grow forth in such way that by their unity and
harmony they form one organic whole. This form of
activity is displayed to some extent in the re-creation
of the single object ; for, here, that flowing union of
the different parts must appear which characterizes all
the products of nature, and dare not be wanting in
any real work of art. It is plain that this living corre
spondence of the separate features must result from
the new unfolding of the vital essence of each object
subjected to the form of imaginative activity considered
above. In the drawing, for example, of a tree, the hand
of the artist gifted with this faculty seems to be con
trolled by laws similar to those which pervade the life

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 93
of the tree. While each line is perfectly natural, the
delineation is characterized by that sympathy and
balance of parts which is more perfect than is wont to
be found in the real objects, and is to be ascribed to the
purifying process to which everything is subjected that
is taken up into the artist's mind. When he gives him
self up to the control of true imagination, he never goes
astray. Single features, taken by themselves, may ap
pear defective ; but imperfections even will contribute
to the completeness of the whole; for these, found at one
place, Avill be balanced by corresponding ones elsewhere,
and this mutual dependence and support constitute one
of the chief charms of the great work of art.
This organizing power of the imagination seems
wonderful enough when exhibited in the representa
tion of single objects, as, for example, in the harmoni
ous treatment of the various parts of a plant or animal,
or in the proper management of the various elements
which enter into a poetical character. But it seems
to border close upon the supernatural when a variety
of objects, representing different ranks and species of
existence, enter into a production in such a way as
that, bjr harmonizing with and complementing each
other, they seem to be bound together by the bond of a
vital unity. In great imaginative creations, each object
seems to grow up spontaneously and to take its place as
though conscious of its relation to each one of the rest
and to the whole. The inventive activity seems to be
going forward simultaneously in the leading features;
for, while it seems to be giving absorbing attention to
one, it never loses sight of the rest and their bearings
to each other. In looking at one part of the production,
the inattentive observer is ready to ask, Why was this

94 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
defect allowed ? But the question is answered as soon
as his eye is directed to the light which by means of it
is thrown upon what, taken by itself, would be con
sidered a similar one elsewhere. The artist, without
genuine inventive power, seldom attempts this. When
he does undertake, by virtue of selecting, fitting, and
modifying, to bring about a similar result, here and
there he will be found over-doing or falling short, and
the mechanical element thus entering destroys the
vitality of the work. But the true artist, working from
within, and controlled by the laAvs of the subject Avhich
he has grasped, allows at all points that consistency and
helpfulness to appear which, inasmuch as they illustrate
the relation of authority aud freedom, reflect the infini
tude of his own free and rational soul, and at the same
time are the essential characteristics of the organisms
of the natural world.1 What is produced in this way
seems in its origination to be the result of a single
creative stroke, and, as Coleridge has intimated, to
bear closer analogy than anjr other form of human
activity to that of the Creator in calling the universe
into existence.
1 " It might be supposed that the artist here and there selects from what
is at hand the best forms, and then arranges them to suit his purpose; or
that, as sometimes is really the case, he hunts up, from collections of wood
cuts, lithographs, and other engravings, physiognomies, altitudes, etc.,
which to the best advantage may be embodied in his work. But with this
gathering and selecting the end will have been by no means attained.
The artist must put forth creative energy. In possession of an accurate
acquaintance with the corresponding forms, and in connection with a keen
perception and a profound sensibility, he must grasp by this power of his
imagination the significant truth or fact which has made an impression upon
him and demands representation, and then allow it to shape and form itself
forth as though directed by a single impetus from within."— Hegel:
"/Esthetics," vol. ii., p. 149.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 95
Dreaming throws so much light on the activity of
the artist's imagination, that the writers on aesthetics
attach more dignity and importance to the subject than
is usually done by the psychologists. From the follow
ing interesting passages of Ruskin and Emerson, one
might almost infer that a good dreamer is a better
drawer and painter of inner pictures than any artist
is likely to be.
"The choice as Avell as the vision is manifested to
Homer. The vision comes to him in its chosen order.
Chosen for him, not by him, but yet full of visible and
exquisite choice, just as a sweet and perfect dream will
come to a sweet and perfect person, so that in some
sense they may be said to have chosen or composed it;
and yet they could not help dreaming it so and no
otherwise. Thus, exactly thus, in all results of true
inventive poAver, the Avhole harmony of the thing done
seems as if it had been Avrought by the most exquisite
rules. But to him who did it, it presented itself so, and
his will and knowledge and personality for the moment
went for nothing : he became simply a scribe, and Avrote
what he heard and saw." 1
" We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain
of this skill ; for as soon as we let our will go, and let
the unconscious state ensue, see what cunning draughts
men Ave are ! We entertain ourselves Avith wonderful
forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of
words, and of monsters, and the mystic pencil where
with Ave then draw has no awkwardness or inexperi
ence, no meagerness or poverty ; it can design Avell
and group well ; its composition is full of art, its colors
are well laid on, and the Avhole canvas which it paints
1 " Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 86.

96 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
is life-like, and apt to touch us with terror, with tender
ness, with desire, and with grief."1
There are three points of resemblance between the
dream and a high order of imaginative activity which
deserve to be noticed.
1. Both are spontaneous upgrowths from the depths
of the mind. The pictures present themselves unsought
before the inner vision. The great artists were never
at a loss in this respect. What occasion, for example,
could the first four great English poets haAre had to
trouble themselves about sketches for elaboration ? In
all probability, their greatest difficulty was what the
Germans call die Qual der Wahl.2 It was only necessary
for them to withdraw their attention from other inter
ests, and give themselves over to a dream-like state,
when forms of poetic beauty would array themselves
before the mind.
2. Most of dreams are as distinct as is the vision of
real objects. They work upon us pathologically. No
dramatic effect could be more potent than theirs.
Scarcely less palpable are the poet's and painter's
forms to their inner vision before they are placed upon
paper or canvas. Vischer quotes Aristotle's ^o 6ftud™v
rWucOai, and adds that "the image must appear as
though the artist saAV it bodily Avith 'the eye of his
mind." The inferior Avorkman will grope his way in
tho dark, and by a sort of felicity ma)' reach a satisfac
tory result. But the genius, Avhcn the inventive impe
tus is fully upon him, sees the consummated Avhole at
every stroke of the pencil.
St. Peter's, at Rome, and the Cathedral of Cologne
stood as complete totalities before the minds of the
1 " Essay on Intellect." 2 Trouble of choosing.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 97
great architects ere the draughtsman's work was begun.
Each part arose and assumed its proper place and
relation with the uprising of the original conception
before the mental view. Room, afterward, of course,
there was for the exercise of judgment and choice in
the management of details. But the essential parts of
the structure were beheld as they entered into the
formation of the whole; and in the external execution
there could be no altering of nor swerving from what
was seen.
It is so with the works of the great musicians and
poets. Mozart and Beethoven, as a rule, had clearly
heard with their inner ear each sonata and symphony
before it was recorded or played. The plots of Shak-
speare's dramas must have first arisen like visions in
this same mysterious way. In the composition of
Hamlet or Lear we cannot conceive of the poet casting
about for characters, situations, and dialogues answer
able to the general design of the work ; but all that
are essential stamped themselves directly forth in the
original spectacle, which in a dream-like form had
engaged his mind.
3. When the artist is thus occupied, he is oblivious of
what is going on around him. His is no longer the con
dition of mind Avhich characterizes the ordinary waking
state. Cool reflection ceases. The word frenzy, which
writers in all ages haAre used to designate the poet's
excited condition, is not inappropriately applied. He
may be said to be unconscious under the power of an
absorbing enthusiasm, and to have lost himself in his
work. His vision has taken possession of him ; nothing
dare interfere with his distinct beholding of it. Wake
him at " the high hour . . . when thought is not,"
9

98 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
and there is danger of its escaping him, and never
returning in the same form. Jean Paul says that the
artist when creatively at work is a somnambulist in
more senses than one, " for in his clear dream he can
do more than he who is awake, and surmounts every
elevation of reality in the dark ; but rob him of his
dream-world and he tumbles headlong into the real."
While in some respects the dream stands thus higher
than the inventive activity of the artist, there are others
again in which the former falls far short of the latter.
These, likewise, deserve to be noticed, and may be
summed up as follows :
1. Tliere is no prevailing regard in the dream for the
laws which underlie the phenomena of the natural
world. The conglomeration is for the most part utterly
heterogeneous. It is something altogether unusual and
accidental that a controlling centre of unity or a rational
connection appears. Single parts may be exact repro
ductions of objects from real life, and often elevated in
the direction of the beautiful ; but, in general, contra
dictions and absurdities abound to such an extent that
the panorama of the dreamer furnishes the most strik
ing contrast to the order and harmony which prevail
in the world of nature.
In all the spheres of art there are those to be found
who indulge in productions which partake of this
fantastic character of the dream. Hegel, after com
mending Jean Paul's profound wit and keen sense of
beauty, observes that he surprises often by " quaint
combinations of objects Avhich are in no Avise connected
Avith each other, and the principle of Avhose union, even
from the point of vieAV of the humorous, can Avith diffi
culty be explained." Inasmuch as a great deal of Avhat

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 99
this author wrote did not proceed from genuine poetic
and inventive power, but was composed mechanically
and from without, Hegel further concluded that it was
necessary for him " always to be on the lookout for
neAV material, to peruse books of the most varied kinds,
such as botanies, travels, works on philosophy, law, and
the like, to note Avhat struck him as curious, to write
down Avhatever suggestions might occur in connection
with them, and then, when he was ready to invent, to
bring together in an external way what was most
heterogeneous in the way of Brazilian plants and
curiosities from the old court of the king's treasury."
Ariosto comes in the same category, Avhose " Orlando
Furioso" called forth the exclamation from Cardinal
De Este, " Master Louis, where in the world did you
get all of that confounded stuff?"
As is the case with the dreamer, it is possible for the
artist to get beyond his domain as readily by giving
too loose a rein to the flights of his fancy as by a
mechanical copying of the prosaic realities of life.
The artist under the control of true imaginative
impulse, in leaving nature, never forgets her; indeed,
as Goethe says, "he gives back to nature what he
receives, but only after it has been felt, thought, and
humanly perfected."
2. Dreams cannot be the full and complete embodi
ment of the contents of the mind of the dreamer.
They are, it is true, in a great measure determined by
his habit of thought. A pure and noble person is
likely to have pure and noble dreams. But at times,
so far from representing his true character, they turn
the brave man into a coward, the humane into a
monster, and the chaste into a brute.

100 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
The artist intelligently chooses his vision, and puts
into it the clearest, purest, and brightest contents of
his mind. He dreams and yet is wide enough awake.
When compared Avith ordinary sensuous perception,
his condition is one of the most thoughtful circum
spection ; but when compared with the thinking of
the philosopher, it may be called one of unconscious
ness. His volition, when placed beside that of the
man who is engrossed in Avorldly interests, is charac
terized by the purest freedom ; but over against that
of the man of sound moral and religious devotion his
is a state of thralldom. While he may be said to be
taken possession of, he inspires himself, and keeps all
that is going on Avithin him under the most perfect
rational control. It is true that " Avill and knowledge
and personality go for nothing," and likewise true that
all of these enter into his Avork and assert themselves
from the moment of its incipicncy until it stands forth
in the ultimate completeness of execution.
Says Miriam in the "Marble Faun," " My dear friend,
it is a great work ! How have you learned to do it?"
Kenyon replies, " It is the concretion of a good deal
of thought, emotion, and toil of brain and hand; but
I know not how it came about at last. , I kindled a
great fire within my mind, and thrcAV in the material
as Aaron threw the gold of the Israelites into the
furnace, and in the midmost heat uprose Cleopatra,
as you see her."
3. As the dream is but a shadow of reality and a
spurious outgroAvlh of the mind, it is the counterfeiting
mockery of ideal beauty ; Avhile in the product of the
artist's imagination Ave have its consummated perfec
tion. It is this kind of activity, and this alone, that

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 101
results in what, according to the strictest sense of the
word, is the ideal ; and in no other Avay but this can
the demands of the sense of beauty be adequately met.
Here is, on the one hand, form, Avhich is characterized
by the vitality of nature and by an individuality Avhich
is in perfect harmony Avith the requirements of the
species ; and on the other, idea, which is the contents
of a mind that, in looking out upon the universe, sees
in it the complete realization of the eternal purpose of
the absolute Being, and at the same time enters into
the form in sucliAvay as to find the same enshrinement
and presence in it which the soul finds in the body.1
1 " \Are human beings stand before the universe as ants before a magnifi
cent palace. As it is a stupendous structure, our insect gaze confines itself
to this wing, and finds, perhaps, here a column, there a statue, improperly
placed; the eye of a superior being grasps aLo the opposite wing, and
there perceives statues and columns which symmetrically correspond to
their fellows here. But the poet paints for the eyes of ants, and brings
the other half, but in a diminished form, within the range of our vision ;
he furnishes us a conception of the harmony of the greater by means of
the harmony of the less; of the symmetry of the whole by means of the
symmetry of the part, and causes us to admire the former in the latter.
An oversight in this particular is injustice to Ihe eternal Being, who will be
judged according to the infinite plan of the world, and not according to
selected fragments.
" In the case of the most faithful copy of nature, in so far as our eyes
follow it, there is a loss on the part of Providence, who, perhaps, does
not, until the following century, impress the seal upon work begun in the
present." — Schiller ; " Essay on the German Theatre."

102 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

PART III.
THE SENSE OF BEAUTY AS THE ENDOWMENT OF
THE INDIVIDUAL ARTIST.
SECTION I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
The object aimed at in Part Second AATas to describe
the faculties into which the sense of beauty unfolds
itself when it becomes a dominating force in the
mind ; in other words, the mental qualifications which
enter into successful artistic activity. As has been
said, they do not exclude each other, but work and
belong together. The great artist possesses them all,
and all have a part to perform in the realization of
every one of his works. They are likewise possessed
by men in general, for they are all involved in the
sense of beauty. But ordinarily they exist in a latent
form. They appear only in their true character Avhen
they attain the degree of energy and poAver which is
the distinguishing gift of the artist.
When the class as thus characterized resolves itself
into individuals, we find that the sense of beauty
realizes itself differently in each. Should Ave seek the
acquaintance of this or that one, so far as our present
purpose is concerned, it could be only Avith the view
of forming an adequate conception of the kind or
order of artists which he represents. If some method,

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 103
accordingly, can be adopted by which the individual
can be properly located and appear in his true relation
to the rest, the design of this third part of our treatise
will be accomplished.
It might occur to some that the three faculties which
have been considered could furnish the basis of an
adequate classification. Another is ready to ask, What
subdividing is needed beside that which is at hand in
the fine arts? It is unnecessary to say that even a
meagre discussion of these separately Avould carry us
far beyond the limits of the present undertaking. Some
artists display true power only in the sphere of simple
beauty, while others find themselves at home either in
that of the sublime or the comic. An important classi
fication is that which is determined by the domain of
external realities from which the artist prevailingly
draws his material. One is successful only in dealing
with landscape, another with animals, and a third Avith
human characters and events. All of these have their
subordinate divisions. They likewise combine with and
ramify each other. There is room here, accordingly, for
a vast amount of investigation which might be interest
ing and profitable.
There is one element of artistic success which
hitherto has been unnoticed, and which now claims
consideration ; namely, technical or executive ability.
When we unite this with the other qualifications
which have been discussed, we reach that mode of
classification which best meets the requirements of the
case. For the divisions mentioned, in so far as they
are legitimate, tell us of the kind of artistic activity,
without reference to the degree of merit, while the one
which now suggests itself comprehends all the various

104 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
classes embraced in the realm of art, and at the same
time determines the measure of perfection which the
individual artist has attained.
When the sense of beauty reaches that degree of
development which renders it a controlling power of
the mind, it is not likely that it will rest content until
it finds realization in the external world. The person
to whom in this form it belongs will be prompted,
according to a law universally prevailing in human
nature, to set forth for the contemplation of others
those forms of beauty which have engaged his own
mind and heart. There are those who seem to think
that the degree of skill exerted in putting into outward
shape and form the images which have inAA7ardly ap
peared before the mind is determined by the intensity
of imaginative power.1 There is, in all probability, a
more intimate relation subsisting between inventive
and executive poAver than many are Avilling to grant.
They seem to be the counterparts of a single gift of
nature. Wordsworth says :
" 0 I many are the poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse."
On these lines of his friend, Coleridge comments as
follows : " I for my part have not the fullest faith in
the observation, and should feel almost as strong an
1 " On the habit of both Tintoret and Michael Angelo to work straight
forward from the block and on the canvas, without study or model, it is
needless to insist; for though this is one of the most amazing proofs
of their imaginative power, it is a dangerous precedent." — RUSKIN:
" Modern Painters," vol. iii., Chapter on Imagination.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 105
objection to such a character in a poetic fiction as a
pair of black swans in a lake on a fancy landscape." 1
Where there is an artist's mind, there is almost
certain to be an artist's hand. Where the inner form-
building facility and impetus exist, the requirements
for the outAvard exhibition are not likely to fail. The
back is fitted to the burden, and the converse. When
the true seer has his vision, strange, indeed, if, in some
form or another, it fail to be portrayed. As Goethe
says, " The secret must come to the light, even though
stones ha\re to proclaim it."
The probability of the principle appears in as strong
a light when it is viewed from the opposite side.
The psychologists direct attention to the fact that
facility on the part of children to acquire technical
skill in any branch of art is an indication of latent
productive power. This finds illustration in abundant
measure in the biographies of artists. When the exter
nal and mechanical side is at hand, and the internal or
spiritual fails to appear, this is ascribed either to defect
ive education or some similar accidental circumstance,
or to some radical inner abnormity.2
It is taken for granted, accordingly, that where the
sense of beauty assumes a highly-developed form there
will be found, going hand in hand, a fruitfully invent
ive mind, and skill to mould matter into correspond
ingly expressive forms. But while the rule holds good
in general, no one will suppose that it is realized with
precision in the case of each individual. On the con-
1 " Biographia Literaria," chap. xxii.
2 "The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty
excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an easily imitable
mechanism, I regard as a highly favorable promise in the compositions of
a young man." — Coleridge : " Biographia Literaria," chap. xv.

106 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
trary, it will be found that there is wide room for varia
tion. It is evident that one artist may regularly display
technical excellence, while only now and then original
inventive power appears. Another may possess a wealth
of ideas, and for the most part find adequate represen
tation for them in his work, but still frequently be at a
loss for the proper means of expression, and thus much
that he produces will fall short of true artistic success.
While, lastly, in the case of the artist who is truly
great, we will find substantial and fruitful inventive
vigor and technical dexterity conjoined, as a rule, in
such entire correspondence, that distinguishing excel
lence will characterize every work of art that proceeds
from his hands. Thus artists will fall according to
their grade into the three classes described in the
following sections.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 107

SECTION II.
I.  TALENT.
When technical ability is emphasized, the other two
elements of artistic success must be kept distinctly
before the mind. It has been seen that the inner work
consists in the marriage of the contents of the soul
with images which have been gathered from the ma
terial world. The form-finding power is most closely
allied to the form-exhibiting poAver, and these two taken
together we sometimes call technique, as over against
the spiritual vigor and substantiality which through
them seeks expression.
When talent is spoken of, the latter is not entirely
left out of mind, but the former comes more promi
nently to vieAV. The Avord is commonly employed in
the case of young persons who are apt in acquiring,
the mechanical dexterity Avhich is involved in any one
of the arts. When success is displayed in copying
pictures, in rendering musical compositions, or writing
verses, a youth, at a time when true inventive effort is
scarcely thought of, is called talented. Manner, in
the minds of many persons, determines the degree of
talent while the matter, for the most part, does not
come into consideration. Hegel thus limited the
meaning of the word. He says that when the artist
possesses this power alone he does not get far beyond
mechanical skill.1 Still, he concedes that nothing of
1,1 Talent, ohne Genie, daher kommt nicht weit ueber die aeussere
Fertigkeit hinaus."— "^Esthetics," vol. i., p. 305.

108 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
artistic significance can be accomplished in this way
without some indication of inner productive energy.
Connoisseurs and critics of art use the word in a
somewhat different sense. As employed by them,
technical excellence is presupposed, but great origina-
native force of imagination is not demanded. It in
volves excellence, accordingly, in features which lie
somewhere between the two. It consists, on the one
hand, in facility in finding neAV forms for the expres
sion of commonplace conceptions, or, on the other, of
forming into new combinations the productions of
foreign creative power.
The mind may be characterized by a comparative
dearth of spiritual contents, and yet by ingenuity in
moulding the thoughts which are at hand with the
images which the natural world affords. Again, there
may be a degree of spiritual opulence like that which is
seen in the great philospher or theologian, and yet
dependence upon Avhat others have done for the means
of expression. One of these classes is exemplified by
the English poet, Thompson, and the German, Kleist.
Schiller notices their resemblance, and describes his
countryman as follows : " He falls behind in wealth
of ideas and depth of intellect,1 but still entertains
and delights us. His soul, full of sensibility, finds its
highest joy in rural scenes and habits. . . Varie
gated and full of splendor as the spring which he
pictured forth in his poetry, and lively and active his
fancj'-, still, it should be called changeful rather than
rich, playful rather than creative, restlessly progressive
rather than concentrative and formative. Rapidly and
luxuriantly appears feature upon feature, without
1 " Ideengehalt und Tiefe des Geistes."

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 109
combining themselves into an individual, without
filling themselves out into life, or rounding themselves
into form. As long as he confines himself to lyrical
and rural descriptions, the greater freedom of the
lyrical form and the arbitrary nature of the matter
alloAV us to overlook this defect, inasmuch as generally
we expect here to see the feelings of tho poet exhib
ited rather than the subject itself. But tho fault be
comes only too apparent when he undertakes . . .
to set forth men and human actions; because here tho
imagination finds itself circumscribed within fixed
and necessary limits, and the poetic effect can proceed
only from the subject-matter in hand. Here he
becomes indigent, tedious, jejune, and insipid even to
intolerability." l The other class is represented by
Young and Klopstock. Schiller likewise brings these
poets under one category, and speaks of them as
follows: "Their sphere is the realm of ideas, and
they elevate into infinitude all that they elaborate.
Hence solemnity, energy, exaltation, and profundity
characterize all that they do. ... Chaste, su-
persensuous, incorporeal, holy, as their religion, is
their poetic muse." But he adds, that, "instead
of doing as other poets do, namely, clothing the
spiritual with a body, they take away the body from
everything, in order to turn it into spirit." He de
scribes their weakness as consisting in their inability
to find the definite individual forms in which their
conceptions would find adequate representation. No
fault can be found Avith their mechanical technique.
Their language is perspicuous and appropriate. The
versification is melodious. In a word, they meet all
1 See Essay on " Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung."
10

110 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
the requirements of a high order of poetic style. But
Avhat keeps them within the border-line of talent is
the dependence which betrays itself upon the form-
interpreting and form-moulding activity of those who
are truly great in the sphere of beauty.
The question here presents itself, Can the truly beau
tiful be created by an artist not endowed with genuine
spiritual wealth, or by one Avho is forced to draw upon
foreign resources for the forms needed to exhibit Avhat
is at hand? In the presence of certain objects the
energies of a mind otherwise relatively sluggish and
mechanical may be aroused to pure and original artistic
effort. Following Lessing and Wordsworth, Professor
Lowell says of Pope, that " his more ambitious works
may be defined as careless thinking carefully versified."
He adds that "the abiding presence oi fancy in his best
work forbids his exclusion from the rank of a poet."
But, " measured by any high standard of imagination
he Avill be found Avanting." Yet, as in the " Rape of
the Lock," he found a subject exactly level with his
genius, he Avas able to make Avhat, taken for all in all,
is the most perfect poem in the language.1 So, like
wise, Avhen the possessor of great thoughts and senti
ments resorts to foreign treasure-houses in search of
forms, he is sometimes so judicious in his selection,
and so felicitous in his combinations and modifications,
that noAV they meet the requirements of beauty more
adequately than when they sprang up under the great
master's hand.2
1 " Essay ou Pope."
2 The talent of Hawthorne's Hilda, to say the least of it, is very rare.
" The copy would come from her hands with what the beholder felt must
be the light which the old master had left upon the original in bestowing
his final and most ethereal touch. In some instances, even (at least so those

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 111
Vischer takes the ground that, however great and
meritorious the results of talent may be, there is ahvays
something wanting, and Avhat it fails to achieve is,
according to Hawthorne, " that indescribable nothing,
that inestimable something, that constitutes the life
and soul through which the picture gets its immor
tality." The instances above given, as well as multi
tudes which might further be cited, go to establish the
view of Jean Paul, who says, " There is no figure, no
turn, no single thought of the genius, which talent, at
its greatest heat, has not reached, only it falls short
of the totality." It is certainly possible to refer to
instances here and there among the productions of the
lower grade of artists, in which the conception of the
beautiful is as perfectly realized as we can conceive it
to have been had they been the creations of an artistic
master. None would rank Gray Avith Chaucer and
Shakspeare. It is well known that he is indebted to
these and other poets for the contents of most of his
works. But it is generally agreed that the Elegy is as
perfect a poem of its kind as literature can furnish, and
that passages can be found in his letters which are char
acterized by all the freshness, Avarmth, and delicacy
which are looked for in the highest order of j.)oetic
beauty.1 believed who best appreciated Hilda's power and sensibility), she had been
enabled to execute what the great master had conceived in his imagination,
but had not so perfectly succeeded in putting upon canvas, a result surely
not impossible when such depth of sympathy as she possessed was assisted
by the delicate skill and accuracy of her slender hand. In such cases the
girl was but a finer instrument, a more exquisitely effective piece of mechan
ism, by the help of which the spirit of some great departed painter now
first achieved his ideal, centuries after his own earthly, that other tool, had
turned to dust." — " Marble Faun," chnp. vi.
1 Since venturing the above, we notice that Professor Lowell says of the

112 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
It would be a needless task to undertake to enumer
ate the disadvantages under which mere talent labors.
They are all included under the general term of defec
tive artistic ability. A single one deserves to be men
tioned, which, by the way, involves many. Talent is
fond of self-display. Conscious of its own weakness, it
seeks to make known whatever power it possesses. If
this lies in the direction of mechanical skill, it will
appear in brilliant technical exploits or the finished
elaborateness of minutiae and details. The sparkle of
Avine in glasses, the gloss of satin and velvet drapery,
and the general management of color, in many of the
Dutch painters, furnish illustrations of the one tend
ency ; of the other, many illustrations are to be found
among the works of these painters Avho take the time
to paint the veins on the wings of flies, and "show
some of their shells on the beach as open and others
as shut, though no greater in size than a grain of
wheat." 1 When the strength lies on the intellectual
side, external objects will be either slighted or exagger
ated, and thus nature, instead of being glorified by
"Progress of Poetry," that, "in reach, variety, and loftiness of poise, it
overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle." — " Essay on Pope."
" Gray, if we may believe the commentators, had not an idea, scarcely
an epithet that he can call his own; and yet he is in the best sense one of
the classics in English literature." — " Essay on Carlyle."
1,1 Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear magnifying
in the same way. Much of the finer work in them can hardly be traced,
except by the keenest sight, until it is magnified." — Ruskin.
Tennyson is said to have written parts of his poem entitled "Maud"
firly times, -and to have occupied three entire days on six of the lines.
This statement rests on the veracity of some anonymous foreign corre
spondent; but there can be no doubt but that his poems in general evince
a degree of elaboration which Homer or Shakspeare would have regarded
a waste of time.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 113
art, must suffer, in order that this or that individual's
superiority may appear.
But abundant compensation is rendered by talent
for all these shortcomings through the vast Avork and
important functions it performs in the service of the
beautiful. Without it the realm of art would be like
a head Avithout a body. What is done by it may be
summed up under three heads.
1. It disseminates the products of the highest artistic
poAver. In the sphere of painting, hoAV many Avould
be unacquainted Avith the Avorks of the great masters,
Avere they not multitudinously duplicated by those
endowed with the gift of reproduction. In tho sphere
of music, hoAV few would have been able to realize the
merits of a Bach or Haydn, Avere those artists not to
be found who enter into the spirit of these great
composers, and render their compositions in such
a way as to cause their significance adequately to
appear. 2. Talent prepares the masses for the appreciation
of what is highest in art. It is seldom that tho artist
of great originative poAver is at first understood.1 All
are familiar with the complaints of many of the poets
and musicians. Schiller looked at the subject in a
proper light. He thought that the artist should be
suspicious of popular applause. He goes so far as to
say that " the satisfaction of the public is stimulating
1 " None of our great poets can be called popular in any exact sense of
the word, for the highest poetry deals with thoughts and emotions which
inhabit, like rarest sea-mosses, the doubtful limits of that shore between
our abiding divine and our fluctuating human nature, rooted in the one
but living in the other, seldom laid bare, and otherwise visible only at ,
exceptional moments of entire calm and clearness." James Russell
Lowell: "Essay on Wordsworth."

114 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
only for mediocrity, but for the true genius it is
insulting and discouraging."1 Owing to the fact that
talent is apt to be literal in its fidelity to nature or to
indulge in brilliant mechanical achievements, it meets
the wants and attracts the attention of the multitude.
In its more or less independent activity, it raises the
standard of artistic culture from one degree to another
until the homage due exalted creative excellency is in
adequate measure rendered.
3. But talent performs a pedagogical service in still
another Avay. It not only raises the public up through
resources of its own, but it brings the productions of
the masters, by means of new combinations and modi
fications, down to the level of its comprehension.
Talent is aware that
''The public blames originalities
(You must not pump spring-water unawares
Upon a gracious public full of nerves)." 2
Every great master has his admiring and devoted
circle of disciples, who delight in ministering to his
usefulness and in reflecting his greatness. In eA'ery
sphere of human life those must be found avIio are
Avilling to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Without the various stages of excellency manifested in
reproductive activity, the great boon of divine provi
dence would be, to a great extent, lost upon humanity,
which consists in the gift of minds great and original
iu the domain of beauty.3
1 " Essay on Tragic Art."
2 " Aurora Leigh."
8" There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said
to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to
understand it; the second understands its age, and tells what it wishes to

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 115
The conclusion to which we arc brought by the
above consideration of the subject is that talent is a
natural endowment of the artist, by means of which
he readily acquires proficiency in the exhibition of
beauty, enabling him to employ forms which as beau
tiful are the embodiment of significant ideas, but do
not ordinarily indicate comprehensive, original, and
profound inventive power; which, however, occasion
ally reaching in certain spheres of art the acme of
artistic perfection, foT the most part accurately, ade
quately, and effectively set forth such ideas as readily
suggest themselves, or are furnished by the originative
activity of others.
be told. Let us find strength and inspiration in the one, amusement and
instruction in the other, and be honestly thankful for both." — James
Russell Lowell ; " Essay on Pope."

116 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

SECTION III.
II.  GENIALITY.
Some middle-ground must be recognized which those
artists occupy who do not stand in the front rank, and
yet whose degree of power is not adequately expressed
by the Avord talent. The word genial, which has been
employed by recent English writers in its more strictly
etymological sense, does not ascribe all of artistic great
ness to the subject, and yet indicates that he stands
on a higher plane of merit than the one just described.
This border-land between the two domains is defined
by a number of the German writers on aesthetics.
Nearly all refer to the applicability of the word
which has been chosen to designate it. In the follow
ing passage from C. Lemcke, the lines of demarcation
seem to be drawn as judiciously as they well can be.
"The word gcnialisch is used in connection Avith the
gift Avhich indicates traces of genius, strokes of light
strong enough to clear away the darkness for a mo
ment, but without duration. Here the ordinary alter
nates Avith the extraordinary. Noav a successful hit is
made, and then everything comes within the sphere of
the passable and common." :
We have found in talent for the most part technical
1 " Topulare ^Esthetik," p. 277; 3d edition.
" It is the flashing, surprising, and inharmonious form of the fragmentary
genius that in ordinary circles is called spirit-rich (geistreich) ; but in more
cultivated ones Ihe adjective genial is employed, and receives a sense which
deviates from the noiuigcuius, from which it is derived." — Vischer : ".Es
thetics," sect. -110.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 117
skill, and occasionally a high order of spiritual power.
We have seen how the former may reduce art into the
sphere of tho mechanical, and the latter may elevate
it beyond its own domain and turn it into philosophy
or ethics. But Ave have also seen that, in isolated
instances, Avhether it be by accident or tho result of
persevering effort,1 artists belonging to this class pro
duced works which, in so far as the word can be
applied to Avhat is human, must be called perfect of
their kind. But those to Avhom geniality is assigned
give evidence of their poAver not only iioav and then,
but so frequently that when instances of it'occur they
occasion no surprise. They may at times be stiff, help
less, and commonplace, but just as frequently rise to
those heights of excellence which, so far as the possi
bilities of art are concerned, leave nothing to be desired.
Vischer cites Sir Walter Scott as a representative of
this grade of artistic power. He finds in this author
"veins of gold," but at the same time much that is
" shallow, flat, and trivial." Not unfrequently Ave
have " the perfectly beautiful which consists in the
unity of full and rich intellectual possessions and
original form-creative poAver ; and soon again he ceases
to soar." Vischer may be correct in thinking that
"the faults to which this class of artists is exposed
are those which lie in the direction of the preponder
ance of spiritual contents," — faults similar to those of
Klopstock and Young, — but it is questionable whether
x" A hundred times, when roving high and low,
I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
Much pains and liitle progress, and at once
Some lovely image in the song rose up,
Full-formed, like Venus rising from the sea."
Wordsworth.

118 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Sir Walter's deficiencies are to be found on the side to
which they are assigned. His greatness does not con
sist, as Vischer seems to think, in massive, self-active,
intellectual, and moral force, but rather in the true
and genuine receptive relation in which he stood to
external beauty, which is reflected from that mind of
his, characterized by the rarest purity and brightness,
just as the landscape is reflected from a calm and
perfectly transparent lake. Whether he draws from
nature or art, his pictures owe their chief charm to the
fact that he leaves things for the most part as they
are, and adds to them nothing more than the delicacy
and lustre which they acquire in virtue of their being
brought in contact Avith one of the most beautiful of
minds. The view here taken with reference to Scott, as
opposed to that of the German metaphysician, is sup
ported by the authority of two critics, who certainly
are Avell acquainted Avith the subject, but who, strange
to say, differ in opposite Avays from the general estimate
here put upon the Wizard of the North. Carlyle
writes as follows : " One knows not Avhat idea worthy
of the name of great, what purpose, instinct, or ten
dency, that could be called great, Scott Avas ever
inspired with. His life Avas worldly, his ambitions
were worldly. There is nothing spiritual in him ; all
is economical, material, and of the earth, earthy. A
love of picturesque, graceful things; a genuine love,
yet not more genuine than has dAvelt in hundreds of
men named minor poets; this is the highest quality
to be discerned in him. His power of representing
things, too, his poetic power, Avas genius in extenso, not
in intenso. In action, in speculation, broad as he was,

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 119
he rose nowhere high ; productive without measure as
to quantity, he for the most part transcended but
little the commonplace."1 Carlyle contemplates the
poet from the standpoint of intellect and morals, and
hence puts Scott too low. Ruskin contemplates him
from that of material nature, and accordingly raises
him too high. He says, " Observe Scott's habit of
looking at nature neither as dead nor merely material,
in the way that Homer regards it, nor as altered by his
oavu feelings, in the Avny that Keats and Tennyson re
gard it, but as having an animation and pathos of its
own, wholly irrespective of human presence or pas
sion, an animation Avhich Scott loves and sympathizes
Avith, as he Avould Avith a felloAV-creature, forgetting
himself altogether, and subduing his own humanity
before what seems to him the poAver of the landscape."
Owing to the fact that Scott is the humble and passive
admirer of nature's charms, and that he is so meek
and reverential in her presence as not to trouble her
Avith his own thoughts, and depicts nature only in so
far as, and because, it is inherently lovely, he must be
regarded as "the greatest man among us, and intended
for the enduring type of us all," and to him must " be
ascribed a principality among the literary men of
Europe, in an age which has produced De Balzac and
Goethe."2 1" Essay on Scott."
2 The following passage from an essay of Hazlitt on Scott, Racine, and
Shakspeare, read since writing the above, I cannot refrain from quoting
in this connection :
"No one admires or delights in the Scotch novels more than Id);
but at the same time, when I hear it asserted that his mind is of the same
class with Shakspeare's, or that he imitates nature in the same way, I
cannot assent to it. No two things appear to me to be more different.
Sir Walter is an imitator of nature, and nothing more; but I think '.hat

120 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Another example of this grade of artistic power, but
of a kind the opposite of that of Scott, and fully con
formable to Vischer's conception of it, is Richard
Wagner, the composer. The mind of this character,
so prominent and so variously regarded in the artistic
world, is distinguished by its capacity for and inclina
tion toward philosophical inquiry, and at the same
time by an energetic and comprehensive grasp of
political and other practical problems of the day.
Music is the element which furnishes him the forms
in which ideas of vast significance and weight are to
find embodiment. He has perfect command of all the
external means furnished by his art. For example,
no one knows better hoAV to produce musical effects by
the judicious managemement of the orchestra. But
his conceptions are for the most part too rich, too pro
found, and too complicated to be expressed by music,
if it be allowed to remain true to its own principles
and laws. If this art is to be an independent one, as
each certainly has a right to be, the requirements of
melody and rhythm must be respected. This is the
case with the classical composers. But Wagner is not
able, at times, to find truly musical forms adequate to
his ideas; and, accordingly, Avhile much that he has
composed is of the highest merit, there is a great
deal to be found in his work Avhich is a cultured re
production of Beethoven, and also much that one-half
of the musical world pronounces to be no music at all.
Shakspeare is infinitely more than this. The creative principle is every
where restless and redundant in Shakspeare, both as it relates to the
invention of feeling and imagery; in the author of Waverly it lies, for
the most part, dormant, sluggish, and unused. Sir Walter's mind is full
of information, but the o'er -informing power is not there. Shakspeare's
spirit, like fire, shines through him ; Sir Waller, like a stream, reflects
surrounding objects."

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 121

SECTION IV.
III. — GENIUS. — GENERAL CONCEPTION.
After having defined the two lower orders of artistic
power, it is no difficult task to determine what the last
and highest must be. He who is endowed with genius
produces what is in all respects artistically great, not
in more or less regular alternation with what is ordi
nary, but the freest, truest, and fullest forms of beauty
spring up, as it were, Avith ease, constancy, and by a
sort of necessity, under his hands.1
Manual dexterity, or, which is the same thing, a
1 " Every true genius must be naive, or he is none. His natvetl alone
makes him a genius; and what he is in the intellectual and sesthetic will
not be denied him in the moral. Unacquainted with the rules and
crutches of weakness and the task-masters of perversity, led only by
nature or instinct, which is his guardian angel, he moves calmly and
securely through all the snares of a false taste, in which the non-genius,
if he is not shrewd enough to shun them from afar, will be constantly
captured. It is given solely to the genius to be at home outside of the
known, and to extend nature without going beyond it. The latter, it is
true, sometimes happens with the great geniuses, because these also have
their fantastic movements, when their protecting nature deserts them, inas
much as the force of example carries them away, or the corrupt taste of
their times misleads them.
" The genius must perform the most complicated tasks with the most
unpretentious simplicity and ease. Columbus's solution of the egg
problem is repeated in every truly genial decision. Hereby alone does
he legitimate himself as genius, in that he triumphs over the most com
plicated art by his simplicity. He proceeds, not according to known
principles, but according to suggestions and feelings. But his suggestions
are the inspiration of a god (all that healthy nature does is divine), his
feelings are laws for all times and for all generations of men." —
Schiller: "Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung."
11

122 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
masterly control of the external materials of expres
sion, is part and parcel of the endowment. A genius
in art, without executive power, is an abstraction.
Hegel settled the question as to the existence of such
a being, not by argument, but by a single statement.
" What is highest and most excellent is not the inex
pressible, as though the poet were within himself of
greater profundity than his work displays : but his
works are the best, and the true, of the artist; Avhat
he is, he is; but what remains within, that he is not."1
Just as what takes place in the human mind and
reveals itself in the countenance and bearing, or as
the inner life of the bird finds expression in its song,
so, naturally, does the inner creative activity of the
genius externalize itself in the work of art.
In architecture the external material stands least
closely related to the inner work, Avhile in poetry the
form seems to be the immediate birth of the thought.
The artistic builder need not touch the trowel nor the
hammer; but the day-laborer and the mechanic are
the implements which he uses, as does the sculptor or
painter the chisel or brush. But these last-named
artists, for the most part, work Avith the same direct
ness and immediateness upon their block or canvas as
does the poet at his desk or the musician at his instru
ment. Quick and few, but decisive, are the strokes of
the imaginative hand, and the inner picture stands
forth in all its essentiality before the eyes of the spec
tator. An cye-Avitness, describing Michael Angelo at
work, says, " No ono Avould believe it unless he saw
with his own eyes. With so much excitement and
fury did he apply himself to the marble, that I thought
1 ''.Esthetics," vol. i., p. 374.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 123
that all would go to pieces. At one blow he would
strike aAvay chips of throe or four inches, and yet
adhere so closely to his sketch, that if he had pene
trated the stone a little further the whole Avork would
have been destroyed."
But the great geniuses are not inclined to make
a display of their technical power. The artist just
mentioned showed his dislike to the mechanical work
of finish and detail by the large number of marble
sketches which he left behind. Nor is this to be
regretted. For if the time of the greatest of modern
plastic artists had been spent in the minute elabora
tion of his designs, posterity would have been deprived
of the large mass of those unfinished works in which,
according to the views of some connoisseurs, the native
potency of his imagination is most effectively and
vividly displayed.1 Chaucer's nonchalance is one of
the most attractive as well as interesting features of
his poetry.2 Shakspeare Avas as far removed as possible
1,1 For these tilings make the spectator more vividly sensible of a great
painter's power than the fine glow and perfected art of the most consum
mate picture that may have been elaborated from them. There is an efflu
ence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if anywhere, you find the
pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil of the artist serves to
bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but likewi-e adulterates it with what
belongs to an inferior mood. The aroma and fragrance of new thought
were perceptible in these designs after three centuries of wear and tear."
— " Marble Faun," chap. xv.
2" Chaucer never shows any sign of effort, and it is a main proof of his
excellence that he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages
— by single lines taken away from the connection in which they contribute
to the general effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly pro
longed power, and that delightful equanimity which characterize higher
orders of mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that
made the Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His
simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverly. The quiet unconcern with

124 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
from being a literary coxcomb, and yet who can detect
in his works the least indication of-slovenliness. Emer
son says of him that he finishes an eye-lash or a dimple
as firmly as he draws a mountain, and yet his minutest
details, " like nature, will bear the scrutiny of the solar
microscope." Still, " he is wise without emphasis or
assertion ; he is strong as nature is strong who lifts
the land into mountain slopes Avithout effort, and by
the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and
likes as well to do the one as the other." l
The vital connection holding between inner origi
native power and that of external realization is made
apparent by two forms of executive ability in which
the great representatives of two of the arts excel. The
first is the painter's employment of color which pro
duces what is called the bloom of the picture. Much
that the artist does, in a work of any size, if closely
inspected, will seem coarse and rough, Avhich, if viewed
from the proper distance, will be found not only to
exert an influence in the way of shadow and the like,
on all near and around, but will itself be so modified
in turn by the rest of the picture2 as now to appear
exactly as it should, and, with the most absolute precis
ion, to perform its function in producing the effect of
the whole. The hand seems to be guided not by the
which he s^ys his best things is peculiar to him among English poets,
though Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray have approached it in prose.
Pie prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the
story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of good luck
to be natural ! It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother brings to
her prime favorite in the cradli " — James Russell Lowell: "Essay on
Chaucer." 1 " Essay on Shakspeare."
a" Part answers to part in mutual interchange of light."

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 125
sight, but by a deeper sense and a truer law. Ruskin,
noticing the disproportion between the means employed
and the result accomplished by the paintings of Tinto-
ret, Turner, and Paul Veronese, says, " Common talkers
use the Avord magic of a great painter's power, Avithout
knoAving what they mean by it. They mean a great
truth. That poAver is magical, so magical, that, well
understood, no enchanter's Avork could be more mi
raculous or more appalling." Hegel says that "the
common talkers" have chosen the precise word, and
seems to think that the artist is here the true magician,
for his spirit accomplishes works, characterized by
vitality and animation, independently of the ordinary
and natural functions of the bodily poAvers.
In the art of music a similar illustration is furnished
by instrumental improvisation. Many of the great
composers seem to be fountains of melodious and
harmonious forms. They need but lay their hands
upon their instrument, and strains of the freshest,
purest, and richest musical beauty Aoav from their
fingers' ends. Their moral sentiments, their Ariews of
life, their inner experience, find embodiment in tone
creations which meet all the rigid requirements of the
theory of music. The laws of harmony cannot be said
to be followed, for they are never thought of. But they
are expressed, for they enter into the music which the
performer hears with his inner ear previously to its
execution." x What now takes place before us is marvel
ous and mysterious indeed. A machine, consisting,
1 " The vigorous in intellect and reason, endowed by a certain divine
liberty, are constrained by no customs. Nor is it wonderful, since they
are not governed by the laws, but much more govern the laws them
selves." — Dante.

12G THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
perhaps, of nothing but wood and metal, becomes the
vitalized and animated organ of tho human spirit.
With almost the rapidity of lightning the delivery
goes forward instantaneously Avith the conception. The
outward and mechanical, so far from being a hindrance
to the artist, seems to furnish support to his enthusiasm
and add impetus to the current of musical wealth which
pours itself forth from his soul. Let no one, hoAvever,
for a moment suppose that skill of this kind as exhibited
by the great artists is independent of labor previously
put forth in the form of self-discipline and culture.
This subject will come up again ; but, in passing, it
may be said that a remark of Lerackc in reference to
Shakspeare is applicable to them all ; namely, that he
who cannot see evidences of study on the part of the
poet is blind.
Nor is it by any means the case that those who
possess genius in the full sense of the word AArork at
all times with the certainty and directness which has
been described. We know that Shakspeare remodeled
some of his plays, and that Goethe, after having Avrit-
ten out his " Iphigenia" in prose, reproduced it in blank
verse. In the gallery at Berlin there is at least one
picture of Raphael in Avhich there are traces (notice
able, however, only to the keen-sighted and knowing
observer) of a large brush having been dashed over a
considerable portion of the painting, and the mass of
the coloring-matter alloAved to remain as a sort of basis
or background for a neAv attempt.1
'Instances of this kind are interesting to the connoisseurs, as they are
among the surest evidence that the work is an original one. For the older
copies were not intended to be counterfeits, and mistakes, accordingly,
would not be imitated.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 127
It is seldom that the artist goes to work without the
sketch or outline distinct^ before his mind. Often it
arises in all its fullness, with instantaneousness, before
his inner vieAV, and then again it is a process of by no
means uninterrupted growth. The germ may suggest
itself and then be forgotten. Again it may assert itself,
and owing to the Avorkman's preoccupation, or for some
other reason, it is intentionally dismissed. But again
it presents itself, and now its solicitations are heeded.
It begins to reveal itself in its true significance. Tho
inner plastic work goes forward and the formative pro
cess becomes more and more distinct. The artist may
now think that the period for execution has arrived,
and, relying upon the support which artists to so great
an extent receive from the external and mechanical
elements and principles of their art, he begins his out
ward elaboration. The work may proceed with un
broken continuity until it stands forth the perfect
realization of the more or less decisively grasped con
ception ; but it may go forward with hesitation and
uncertainty ; efforts must be put forth, struggles re
newed, mistakes corrected ; but at last it is done, and,
as is often the case, that the child of many sorrows
ranks above its brothers and sisters as an object of the
parents' special affection, so a production of the artist's,
ushered into existence in the manner described, may
be to him, and deservedly too, a source of perpetual
pride and delight.
From what has been said, we think it evident that
the technical and mechanical is not only an essential
side of the power peculiar to genius, but also (Vischer
and many other respected authorities to the contrary,
notwithstanding) that it is one of the elements accord-

128 THE ARTIST A ND HIS MISSION.
ing to which its measure is to be determined.1 Before
leaving the subject, it may be well to gather up what is
essential under a few heads.
1. The genius is endowed with full and adequate
executive power, but in employing it he keeps the
technical in the proper relation of equipoise to the
sense or contents of which it purports to be the
expression. 2. In the use of external material, he overcomes
difficulties which ordinarily would seem insurmount
able. Says Hegel, " The true genius has in all ages
readily mastered the externalities of technical execu
tion, and has subdued even the poorest and apparently
most unpliable elements to such an extent as to force
them to take up into themselves and exhibit the inner
figures and images of the imagination." 2
3. Some of the greatest revolutions which have taken
place in the technical department of the various arts
are ascribable to those Avho possessed the highest order
of imaginative power. Giotto Avent to the Avoods and
found material out of which he manufactured better
colors than had been previously employed. Leonardo
1,1 As talent and genius cannot be measured on the ground of technique,
we must resort to some other basis." And yet in the subsequent sentence
we have the following: "External technique has a teachable and a non-
teachable side; talent accomplishes something not only in the teachable,
for then it would be nothing but mechanical dexterity, but also in the non-
teachable; but what it does accomplish here is toto genere different from
the achievement of genius." — Vischer : "/Esthetics," sect. 409.
Hegel, after stating that the possibility of immediate execution must
exist in Ihe great ariist as a gift of nature, inasmuch as acquired skill
never brings about a vitalized work of art, emphatically asserts that " the
two sides, the inner production and its realization, go, according to the
concept of art, hand in hand throughout." — "./Esthetics, vol. i., p. 369.
2 "/Esthetics," vol. i., p. 369.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 129
da Vinci, by dint of marvelous perseverance, accom
plished results somewhat similar. The brothers Van
Eyck, of whose works a high authority says that " these
later centuries have nothing to point to Avhich surpasses
them in depth and truth," are the recognized inventors
of oil painting in its present status of mechanical per
fection. Mozart and Beethoven were the first to resort
to many of the important mechanical expedients which
are now generally employed in various branches of
music; and to none is the orchestra indebted as much
for the development of its capacity as to these great
composers. It is well known that the poets belonging
to the first class have done most in the way of modify
ing and enriching language. Goethe and Schiller have
made the German Avhat it is ; and all are aware how
much the English, viewed not only from the standpoint
of prosody, but from that of syntax and etymology, is
indebted to the great masters.1
In order to form an adequate conception of genius,
all that now seems necessary is, in connection with
what has just been said on the subject of executive
power, to recall the contents of the section on the
1,1 Put it is true that a language, as respects the uses of literature, is liable
to a kind of syncope. No matter how complete its vocabulary may be, how
thorough an outfit of inflections and case-endings it may have, it is a mere
dead body without a soul till some man of genius sets its arrested pulse
once more athrob, and shows what wealth of sweetness, scorn, persuasion,
and passion lay there awaiting its liberator. In this sense it is hardly too
much to say that Chaucer, like Dante, found his native tongue a dialect
and left it a language. But it was not what he did with deliberate purpose
of reform, it was his kindly and plaslic genius that wrought this magic of
renewal and inspiration. It was not the mere words he introduced, but
his way of using the old ones that surprised them into grace, ease, and
dignity in their own despite." — James Russell Lowell: "Essay on
Chaucer."

130 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Imagination. There the object aimed at was to get at
the nature of the latter as a distinct faculty of the
mind; but here we are considering the artist as an
individual, AA'ith all that is involved in his personality
calculated to make him a representative of the class
designated by the word genius. Presupposing all that
is included in technical ability, it is necessary to look
at him a little more closely under the light of the tAvo
other elements of artistic power to AA'hich reference
has again and again been made. The first is the
facility in finding and properly employing tho forms
which enter into the artist's work; the other is the
substantial spiritual vigor Avhich in such forms finds
expression. There are those who maintain that the measure of
the artist's merit is his success in transporting us into
the same mood or state of mind in which he finds him
self in the presence cf some beautiful object of nature
or fact in real life. But these moods will differ accord
ing to the character of the man, though the subject be
the same. Homer's state of mind, induced by the
contemplation of an heroic action, is different from
that of Dante. But yet they are equally successful in
conveying their feelings and thoughts. This is because
they have the poAver of so representing the fact that it
makes a similar impression upon other minds to that
made upon their oavu. This A'ivid pictorial power maj''
be said to be possessed alike by all the artists belonging
to the first class. In other words, all may be said to be
equally successful in so Avedding the contents Avith the
form as to effect a complete coalescence. Still, it is plain
that artists of the highest imaginative endoAvmcnt may
dillcr among themselves as to the degiee in which the

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY 131
one side is permitted to assert itself OA'cr against tho
other. Accordingly, Ave Avill find genius itself assuming
a three-fold type. In the first, the natural and external
is reflected in its sirnplieit}', force, and truth so that
the representation produces an effect upon a susceptible
spectator similar to that of the reality. In the second,
the mental and moral vigor seems to predominate in
such way as to absorb all external objects and to stamp
them AA'ith the artist's OAvn but still great individu
ality. In the third, avc have such a complete equipoise,
that the spiritual grandeur is fully expressed by tho
represented object, and at the same time tho object,
Avhile it appears in its true and vital reality, takes up
into itself and reveals the contents of the artist's mind
as naturally and adequately as though this were tho
purpose for which it was originally designed. It
happens that Ave have examples of these several types
in the three great poets of England. Hazlitt remotely
indicates their difference as follows : " Chaucer describes
things as they are ; Shakspeare, as they would be ; and
Milton, as they ought to be." He had previously said
that Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or real
life ; Shakspeare, as the poet of nature (in the largest
use of the term) ; and Milton, as the poet of morality.
A few quotations from some of the authorities in the
sphere of literary criticism will adequately confirm
and elucidate the position above taken.
The first is from James Russell Lowell. He says,
" Yet, if Chaucer had little of that organic force of
life which so inspires the poems of Dante, that, as he
himself says of the heavens, part answers to part with
mutual interchange of light, he had a structural fac
ulty which distinguishes him from all other English

132 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
poets, his contemporaries, and which indeed is the
primary distinction of poets properly so called." Fur
ther, " Chaucer gives only the direct impression made
on the eye or ear." Once more, " Chaucer seems to
me one of the most purely original of poets, as much
so in respect of the world that is about us, as Dante in
respect of that which is within us. There had been
nothing like him before, there has been nothing since.
He is original, not in the sense that he thinks and says
what nobody ever thought and said before, and Avhat
nobodj'- can ever think and say again, but because he
is always natural, because, if not absolutely neAA', he is
always delightfully fresh, because he sets before us the
world as it honestly appeared to Geoffrey Chaucer, and
not a world as it seemed proper to certain people that
it ought to appear." Of Milton this same author
writes as follows : " It results from the almost scornful
withdrawal of Milton into the fortress of his absolute
personality, that no great poet is so uniformly self-
conscious as he. . . . • Dante is individual rather
than self-conscious, and he, the cast-iron man, grows
pliable as a field of grain at the breath of Beatrice,
and flows aAvay in Avaves of sunshine. But Milton
never lets himself go for a moment. As other poets
are possessed by their theme, so is he sc7f-possessed, his
great theme being John Milton, and his great &\xty,
that of interpreter between him and the world."1 The
following is from Coleridge: "The last character I
shall mention, Avhich Avould prove indeed but little,
except as taken conjointly with the former, yet without
which the former could scarce exist in a high degree,
and (even if this were possible) would give promises
1 See Essays on Chaucer and Milton.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 133
only of transitory flashes and a meteoric power, is
depth and energy of thought. No man was ever yet
a great poet Avithout being at the same time a profound
philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fra
grance of all human knowledge, human thoughts,
human passions, emotions, language. In Shakspeare's
poems the creative power and the intellectual energy
wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of
strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other.
At length in the drama they Avere reconciled, and
fought each Avith its shield before the breast of the
other. Or like two rocky streams that, at their first
meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually
strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantty and
in tumult; but soon, finding a Avider channel and
more yielding shores, blend and dilate, and flow on in
one current and Avith one voice. . . . Milton was
his compeer, not rival. While the former darts him
self forth, and passes into all the forms of human
character and passions, the one Proteus of the fire and
the flood, the other attracts all forms and things to
himself into the unity of his own ideal. All things
and moods of action shape themselves aneAV in the
being of Milton ; while Shakspeare becomes all things,
yet forever remaining himself."1
^'Biographia Literaria," chap. xv.
" Shakspeare shaped his characters out of the nature within ; but we
cannot so safely say out of his own nature, as an individual person. No !
this latter is itself but a natura nakirata — an effect, a product, not a
power. It was Shakspeare's prerogative to have the universal, which is
potentially in each particular, opened out to him, the homo generalis, not
as an abstraction from observation of n variety of men, but as the sub
stance capable of endless modifications, of which his own personal
existence was but one, and to use this one as the eye that beheld the
12

131 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
This difference in the type of genius which reveals
itself when individuals are compared, is sometimes
discovered in the successive stages of the same artist's
development. In the earlier periods of creative activ
ity, we find a preponderance of one or the other of the
elements betraying itself to a far greater extent than
in maturer years. The opinion seems to prevail that
youth is the time when artistic enthusiasm accom
plishes its highest triumphs. But in the large number
of instances, AA'hen the earlier works of the great artists
are submitted to a careful scrutiny under the light of
true sesthetic principles, they will be found to be infe
rior to those of later life. In the youthful productions
of Goethe and Schiller, Hegel finds not only much
that is prosaic, but cold and flat. He says that " it Avas
not until they reached maturity of manhood, that
they gave to Germany its first genuine poetry, for it
was only then that their creative activity was charac
terized by real depth and solidity, by true poetic
enthusiasm, and the vital permeation of the forms
with the contents of their works." x
According to Mr. Whipple, " Shakspeare is relatively
more intellectual in his earlier than in his later plays,
for in his later plays his intellect is thoroughly impas
sioned, and though it has really grown in strength
other, and as the tongue that could convey the discovery." — Coleridge:
" Lectures on the Dramatists," No. vii.
The fact thus brought to the notice of the English-reading public first
by Coleridge, has been so frequently reproclaimed by writers who have
followed in his wake, such as Carlyle, Hazlitt, Emerson, Lowell, Whip
ple, et id genus oinnc, that now it should be perfectly plain to the mind
of every sophomore, how the individuality of Shakspeare's subjectivity
disappears in the universality of his objectivity!
1 "^Esthetics," vol. i., p. 38.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 135
and massiveness, it is so fused with imagination and
emotion as to be less independently prominent."
The view here taken need not conflict with Vischer's
theory of the personal development of the genius who
regards it from a different standpoint. " The genius
breaks through external life-hindrances like a swollen
stream, and his first productions are stormy, passionate,
overwhelming, often formless; still, tokens of true ar
tistic grace are not Avanting. Then follows knowledge
of self, and of the fact that it cannot thus remain. Now
there is doubt, conflict, and deeply-felt unhappiness.
But the true genius does not now succumb, as is the
case with the fragmentary genius ; his health is inde
structible, and he recovers in consequence of a fortunate
crisis. The first storm of production was involved in
a personal and pathological excitement ; but this the
genius overcomes and gathers material from it. But
now nature-poesy is at an end. Free self-limitation
and thoughtfulness, or, if you choose, culture, permeates
what formerly was obscure nature. . . . Previously,
the genius had cast all heteronomic legislation aside,
without creating a new one; now he becomes a law
unto himself, and raises himself to a pure and free
conformity to law. But this third stage is no falling
away from nature and necessity. It is nature become
translucid, wine off the lees, free necessity, unconscious
consciousness." 1
What remains to be said on the subject of genius
will fall under the three following heads :
1. Earnestness of purpose is presupposed by it.
2. Originality is essentially involved in it.
3. Epochs result from it.
1 Vischer: "^Esthetics," sect. 411.

136 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.

SECTION V.
GENIUS.  FIRST CHARACTERISTIC.
Earnestness of purpose presupposed by it. — Among the
number of those who have thoughtfully weighed the
subject, and whose opinion is deserving of considera
tion, some are to be found who think that to say
of an artist that he possesses genius is the same as to
say that he is earnestly devoted to the art which he
has selected as his vocation. Buffon has defined genius
as being aptitude au travail. According to this view,
seriousness and singleness of purpose are not the pre
requisite, but, assuming the form of force of will and
firmness of resolution, they are the sum and substance
of the artist's power.
Then, again, there'are points of view from AA'hich, if
the genius be contemplated, he will seem to be destitute
of the qualities which characterize the earnest man. As
has been intimated, the philosopher will say of him
that he deals in shadows, and does but little more than
play ; while the man of religion Avill find frivolity and
moral deficiency betrayed both in his life and in his
works. From Avhat has already been said, it must be
apparent that tho genius possesses, by natural endow
ment, (pialifications Avhich could not bo acquired,
however great the amount of persistent effort, while
the most cursory glance over the domain of art
makes it jalain that success here rests upon and is
conditioned by the purest, intenscst, and most self-

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 137
sacrificing devotion on tho part of tho workman to
his calling.
The question here presents itself, What is the pur
pose Avith which this self-consecration has to do?
Emerson says that the activity of the artistic genius
is characterized by " sweet and sad earnest, freighted
Avith the weightiest connections, and pointed with the
most determined aim Avhich any man or class knows
of in his times."1 If tho writer quoted were interro
gated in regard to the mission of art, he Avould be
found to coincide Avith the view expressed in the
earlier portion of this work ; namely, that it is to set
forth what is infinite and universal in finite and indi
vidual forms. But can it be said that this is the
" determined aim," the express purpose which the
artist has consciously before him in the conception
and execution of his productions?
A few of the most distinguished poets of modern
times have expressed themselves fully on the subject ;
yet, singular to say, a precise and definite answer is
furnished by none. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
Schiller, it must be supposed, certainly knew what
they were about ; and yet it is interesting to see how
they struggle, hesitate, and even trip themselves, in
endeavoring to designate the end which, as poets,2
1 " Lecture on Shakspeare."
2 AA'hat is true of one art in this respect, as in so many others, is true
of them all. The following passage from Coleridge, if it had been
quoted earlier, might have obviated difficulties which may have arisen in
the minds of some readers :
" If, therefore, the term ' mute' be taken as opposed not to sound but
to articulate speech, the old definition of painting will, in fact, be the true
and best definition of the Fine Arts in general; that is, muta poesis, that
is, mute poesy, and so, of course, poesy. And as all languages perfect

138 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
they had in vieAV. Tho first-mentioned author, who,
by the way, had taken a more philosophical and pro
found view of the nature and significance of art than
any of his countrymen up to his time, seems reluct
antly to have come to the conclusion that the object
of poetic composition is pleasure.1 The second, who
by many is regarded as England's fifth great poet,
likewise recognizes pleasure as an essential clement
entering into tho design of poetry,2 but connects with
it instruction and seems to emphasize the latter. From
the German's cesthetical essays a multitude of passages
could be quoted, from which it might be inferred that
he regards the one as the true object as well as tho
other ; and from others, again, that it is neither the one
nor the other.
In what sense is the word pleasure to be taken, if wo
can call it the end which these poetic masters had in
themselves by a gradual process of desynonymizing words originally
equivalent, I have cherished the wish to use the werd poesy as the
generic or common term, and to distinguish that species of poesy which
is not muta poesis, by its usual name, 'poetry;' while of all the other
species which collectively form the Fine Arts there would remain this a;
the common definition — that they all, like poetry, are to express intel
lectual purposes, thoughts, conceptions, and sentiments, which have their
origin in the human mind, not, however, as poetry does, by means of
articulate speech, but as nature, or the divine art does, by form, color,
magnitude, proportion, or by sound; that is, silently or musically." —
" Lecture on Poesy or Art."
1 " Poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition, opposed to
science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its
end by the use of language natural to us in a state of excitement," etc. —
" Lectures on Shakspeare." Introduction.
2 He addresses one of his new volumes thus :
" Go forth upon a mission best fulfilled
AVhen and wherever, in this changeful world,
Power hath been given to please forhigher ends
Than pleasure only."

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 139
view in their efforts to add to the literature of their
nations? Certainly it is not that of amusement and
entertainment; for when the general public derived
this form of gratification from them they mistrusted
the merit of their productions, and Avhat to most
persons Avould be a cause of self-complacency was to
them an offense. The word must be otherwise under
stood, if pleasure is to be regarded as the end arrived
at when they sought communion Avith the invisible
spirit of the universe through its manifestations in
nature, and gave themselAres over to the influence of
poetic inspiration. Yes ! they would say, if this is tho
object of making known the truth and doing the good,
we will acknowledge that it is also that of those reali
zations of beauty Avhich proceed from our pen.
If the genius be this earnest and sincere man, and
his " determined aim" be not pleasure in the ordinary
sense of that Avord, Ave are ready to conclude that it
must be instruction, with a view either to intellectual
information or moral improvement. But to this the
answer has already been returned : if the great artist
has lofty interests adequately at heart, why does he
seek to meet them by elaborating the delusive fabri
cations of his imagination, while, as he himself will
acknowledge, there are other means separate and dis
tinct from art, immediately and expressly designed by
Providence for the accomplishment of these ends?
There are those who think that art is adequately
vindicated, when the ground is taken that it is the
business of the artist at once to instruct and please,
thus, by pleasing, to ad\rance morally and intellectu
ally by means of the inculcation of particular ethical
principles or tho communication of scientific or histori-

140 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
cal truths. Much of what is ordinary in art is produced
for the purpose of pleasing the public, and it is an evi
dent fact that in proportion as artists are animated by
this motive their works diminish in real merit. Much,
too (and this is the case with the large portion of the
artistic activity of the present day), has a didactic or
practical tendency. When an ulterior aim of this
nature becomes manifest, the value of the artistic per
formance as such is decreased. For, instead of bringing
us into the unrest of theoretical problems and practi
cal requirements, art seeks to elevate us into a higher
sphere of harmony and repose. The true tendency of
art, and the aim with which the works of the genius
are "pointed," is to raise the beholder, hearer, or reader,
into the realm of ideas, or, which is the same thing, to
make present for them an order of things truer, nobler,
and more substantial than that to which as earth-born
creatures they belong.
Frivolity may in particular instances characterize
the ordinary intercourse of the artistic genius with
his fellow-men ; but Avhen at work in his sphere a
consciousness of the solemnity and dignity of his call
ing is sure to be manifested. " Weighty" are the " con
victions" which press upon his heart, Avhich demands
disburdenment through his hands. A message of vast
importance to mankind has been committed to him,
and this must be revealed.
He is aAvare that his method, in its rank, is as legiti
mate as that adopted by the only tAvo spheres of activity
which, from his point of view at least, can be compared
Avithhisown. The religious teacher is called the divine,
par excellence, because he brings the Absolute Being, as
the principle of the good, before the mind and to the

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 141
hearts of the masses of the people, in the form of doc
trinal statements and moral precepts. The philosopher
seeks to know and proclaim the divine Being as the
principle of the true, and to accomplish his purpose
by abstract thought.1 St. Augustine, Baxter, and Ed-
Avards had the highest and purest conception of the
mission of man, and sought to realize it in the Christian
ministry. Plato, Leibnitz, and Kant adopted the method
to which they were shut up in conveying the knowledge
of God which had been vouchsafed them. These all
severally accomplished their task by adhering to those
paths which were opened for them and pointed out to
them by providential arrangement. They wholly per
formed their work, and their success is to be attributed,
first of all, as to its original motive-power, to the deep
earnestness of their desire personally to realize the good
and know the true, and then to impart what they had
acquired in such Avay as that others could share in their
spiritual-possessions. In a sense similar to this, the
genius in art feels himself called to be a teacher; and
in all ages of the world he has been venerated as one
who ministers to the deepest and most absolute necessi
ties of the mind and heart of man.2
But just as the other classes differ in their methods
from each other, he differs from both. Specific and
1 " The problem of philosophy is, for all that exists conditionally, to
find a ground unconditioned and absolute." — Plato.
This statement is almost unanimously subscribed to by thinkers, down
to Sir William Hamilton and Emerson.
2 Coleridge says that the effect of an excellent work of art is that " of
enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing
in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and man-1-ike action."
Milton calls Spenser " our sage and serious poet, whom I dare be known
to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas."

142 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
direct religious activity is not the sphere to which he
finds himself professionally adapted and called. Nor
can he find himself at home in the domain of specula
tive inquiry. The world of nature around him, as well
as all that comes to his consciousness immediately in
the form of internal phenomena, presents itself to his
mind as a revelation of the Deity. Again and again
phases and features occur, AA'hich, with special vivid
ness and force, aAvaken within his soul conceptions of
the divine character, mind, and Avill. These phenomena
he livingly takes up into his own mind, and seeks by
reproducing them to convey to others the emotions
which in their presence agitated his oavii heart. By
means of these material forms he seeks to disclose what
he has inwardly realized of the presence of the invisi
ble spirit of the universe, which here, in revealing
itself as its absolute ground, assumes the garb of
beauty. He has a presentiment of the fact that by means of
his creations the end of beauty is more effectively and
adequately realized than in the real Avorld of nature.
Here the true is mixed with the false, and the essential
Avith the accidental. He strips these outward realities
of Avhat is mutable and crude material, and causes them
to stand forth in their abiding purity and eternal sig
nificance. As thus reproduced they are no longer the
products of the necessary and mechanical laAvs of
nature, but those of a free Avill and a rational soul,
and, as such, the breathing embodiment of the higher
spiritual human life Avith Avhich they are instinct.
Well does he knoAV that the means which he employs
are adapted to the end Avhich he has in vieAV. Owing
to tho nature of his method, the great mass of mankind

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 143
will cheerfully sit at his feet. Material to an unlimited
extent lies Avithin his reach. Dare such a field of ac
tivity as this be neglected ? Least of all, dare ho neglect
it who feels an inner impetus directing him toAvard it,
and who is conscious of the power to perform the requi
site work. The genius is aAvare that his calling is a
momentous one. Accordingly, he throws himself into
it with full purpose of heart; and if the statement of
those be correct who maintain that tho moral man is
he who devotes himself Avith fidelity to the calling to
which by personal endoAvment and external surround
ings Providence may have assigned him, certainly tho
character of morality dare not be denied the great heroes
in the sphere of art, Avho, with simplicity of heart and
self-forgetting zeal, have wrought and taught for the
benefit of mankind.1
The earnestness of the genius manifests itself in his
industry. Think of the number of Avorks Avhich some
of them produced ; of the Avritings of the early English
poets, of the varied labors of Michael Angelo, of the
paintings of Rubens, of the compositions of the later
German musicians ! The spectacle fills us with amazc-
'"We might say there is something priest-like in that life of his
(Schiller's); under quite another color and environment, yet with aims
differing in form rather than in essence, it has a priest-like stillness and a
priest-like purity; nay, if for the Catholic faith we substitute the ideal of
art, and for convent rules, moral, £e->thetic laws, it has even something of
a monastic character. By the three monastic vows he was not bound;
yet by vows of as high and difficult a kind, both to do and forbear, be had
taken on him ; and his happiness and his whole business lay in observing
them. Thus immured, not in cloisters of slone or rnortar, yet in cloisters
of the mind, which separate him as impassably from the vulgar, he works
and meditates only on what we may call divine things : his familiar talk,
his very recreations, the whole actings and fancyings of his daily existence,
tend thither." — Carlyle: " Essay on Schiller."

144 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
ment. But avc must take into consideration also what
is presupposed by work of the kind which these men
performed. They had to fit themselves for it. This
involves study and toil in manifold forms.
First, the genius labors to acquire an ample measure
of technical proficiency. The great musical composers
were not born with gifts like those of Blind Tom. If
they had been, they doubtless Avould still have felt that
it was incumbent on them to make strenuous efforts in
the direction of executive self-advancement. Most of
the great painters seem to be able to accomplish by a
single stroke what in the case of most persons would
require many. It has already been observed that it is
a characteristic of genius to perform complicated tasks
with readiness and ease. Still, Avith unlimited patience
and self-sacrifice, they will seek to possess themselves
of that degree of acquirable skill Avhich will meet all
artistic requirements, and at the same time render them
worthy representatives of their calling. While many
will say that much of what is so marvelous in the
power of some of them, as, for example, the balancing
and harmonizing of the parts of a draAving, or the
resolution of chords at the hands of a performer, is
ascribable to natural tact, it would, doubtless, be a
matter of surprise to learn Iioav much of this is labor
and practice "sublimated into genius."
The acquirement of technical skill may be regarded
a light matter compared with the study required by
the scientific principles involved in some of the arts.
Some of the painters and sculptors gave as much atten
tion to anatomy as the average phj'sician. The mag
nificent temple, which arises Avith a sort of spontaneity
before tho inner vision of the architect, presupposes an

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 145
acquaintance with the mechanical laws Avhich arc ap
plied in the construction of the flying buttress and tho
spiral tower. A task unavoidable and intensely irksome
to most musicians is a mastery of the abstruse and
complicated principles of thorough-bass and harmony.
While all the great tone-masters were surpassed in the
extent and accuracy of their theoretical attainments
by inferior artists, as, for example, Albrechtsburger,
they all eATince a sufficient acquaintance AA'ith tho
science of music as to make it plain that they labored
hard and patiently in order to acquire it.
Again, the artistic genius gives studious attention to
the works of his predecessors. He docs this not only
in consequence of the mutual attractiveness of kindred
minds; but, hoAvever confident of his strength, the
great artist is conscious of his dependence upon others,
and for the most part is not disposed to conceal his
indebtedness. It is not known to Avhom Homer was
under obligations ; but that the Greek dramatists and
all the Roman poets sat as docile pupils at his feet is
manifest on almost every page of their literature.
Shakspeare is, perhaps, the most original of writers.
A large portion of the essay devoted to him by Emer
son is taken up in proving that very little originality
was possessed by him. The remark is made that " the
greatest genius is the most indebted man." It is thus
explained. " The great poet, who appears in illiterate
times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is
anywhere radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every
flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his
people; and he comes to value his memory equally
with his invention." After telling us that Shakspeare
and all the succeeding poets of England owed a great
13

146 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
debt to Chaucer, Vhose " opulence, feeding so many
pensioners," is something " charming" to behold, he
informs us that the father of English poetry himself
was a "huge borrower." Sir Joshua Reynolds told his
students that none of them need to expect to become
a great painter without first having devoted much
time and patience to exact copying of the great
masters. We know that Raphael was a close student
of the works of Michael Angelo, and that all succeed
ing painters were dependent upon both.1
But, in order to be fully equal to the great task
which his vocation imposes upon the genius, far more
is needed than the acquirement of technical dexterity
and familiarity with the master-pieces of other minds
and hands. Unwearied, independent observation is
perhaps the highest and most essential requisite for
the achievement of what is truly great in the sphere
of art. The brilliant strokes of merely technical accom
plishment, and the colors which are but the reflections
of brighter minds, lose much of their lustre before
the eyes of the judicious and knowing. The artist's
enthusiasm may be intense, and his inner possessions
vast; but he will never rank among the protagonists
and peers of the realm, unless in the spirit of self-
1 Dryden furnishes the following translation of a passage from Du Fres-
noy, a French artist and critic : " Plis (Rubens's) studies were made princi
pally in Lomh irdy after the works of Titian, Paul \reronese, and Tintoret,
whose cream he has skimmed (if you will allow the phrase) andabstracted
from their several beauties many general maxims and infallible rules, which
he always followed, and by which he has acquired in his works a greater
facility than that of Titian; more of purity, truth, and science than that
of Paul Veronese ; and more of majesty, repose, and moderation than
Tintoret. ... In conclusion, his manner is so solid, so knowing,
and so ready, that it seems that this rare, accomplished genius was sent
front* heaven to instruct mankind in the art of painting."

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 147
dependence he goes forth and lays personal claim to a
dominion which he more than any one else has a right
to call his own.1
Under the head of fancy we saw how the ordinary
experience of life formed a necessary tributary to the
artist's productivity. We uoav regard him as purposely
preparing himself for his Avork. In order to do this
he Avill look Avithin and view the workings of his own
mind and heart. Introspective endurance Avill not be
found wanting, for he is aware that by the exercise of
it some of his most valuable material is procured. It
is a matter of common observation that the great poets
display as profound an insight into the human mind,
and as accurate an acquaintance with psychological
distinctions, as we ordinarily look for among professed
metaphysicians. But he will look far away from himself. The remote
parts and characters of history will have a share of his
interest and* attention. Superficial glances over the
field will not suffice. He will feel the need of a
comprehensive and connected view of events, and of
having distinctly marked out before his mind the
great movement of human life, upon whose bosom he
is vividly conscious of being borne.
But where his observation is prevailingly active is
the sphere of those external phenomena which directly
address themselves to his eye and ear. He observes
xLike Spenser's Clarion, the butterfly, in whom, as some think, he
symbolizes himself, " Over the fields, in his frank lustiness,
And all the champain o'er, he soared light,
And all the country wide he did possess,
Feeding upon their pleasures bounteously,
That none gainsaid and none did him envy."

148 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
men, he observes things. This may be said to be the
element in which the great artist lives. The theologian
attends to the divine Word as we have received it in
the written record of revelation ; the philosopher heeds
it as it is stamped upon the living soul of the intelli
gent creature; while the representative of art reads it
in the world of facts and realities which through the
senses make an impression upon his consciousness and
heart. This is the sphere to which he is naturally
inclined, and the province in which he finds himself
at home. Here is found stimulus to creative activity
as well as material for his work. The theologian and
philosopher may thrive in a monastery ; but not so the
great artist. There he would pine and die. For his
deepest heart-hunger can be satisfied only by allowing,
under the light of the sun, the beauty of the colors and
forms, and charm of the sounds, which prevail in the
world of nature to pour in upon his soul. His Avorks,
accordingly, are characterized by loving, patient, and
self-forgetting attention to what here presents itself
to the senses. That Schiller is correct in calling the
artist "the preserver of nature" is made perfectly
apparent by the fact that those productions of the
great genius pass current as the greatest which, in
a pre-eminent degree, are quick with the freshness,
the fragrance, and euphony Avhich proclaim the true
life and essence of the material world.
Forth into the universe of outward realities we see
him go. "Whatever may be his accidental failings, we
will noAV see him thoughtful, earnest, and vigilant. The
powers of his spirit may be said to be engrossed bjr his
calling. Otherwise restless, now he may be said to be
at ease, when most industriously engaged in gathering

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 149
and accumulating those elements of poAver by which
he is equipped for the adequate discharge of the duties
of his vocation. " Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in etorm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles, well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone,
From nodding pole and belting zone.
He heard a voice none else could hear
From centred and from errant sphere.
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.
*****
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for beauty, than live for bread." l
As fair and striking an illustration of what has been
said is furnished by the life and character of Mozart.
At times frivolity is the most prominent feature that
presents itself to- the view, and the conclusion might
not unreasonably be drawn that there could be noth
ing like moral earnestness about the man. He Avas
addicted to strong drink, gaming, and still grosser
immoralities. When seen in the park of Vienna, at
the masque balls in harlequin costume, tripping
around the brilliant table at a coffee-house, or drink
ing champagne with his boon companion Schickaneder,
he presents a picture of abject worldliness and sensu
ality. Some of the friends of the composer say in apology
1 Emerson.

150 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
for him that, as is the case with every true artist, he
was forced out into the Avorld to find material for com
position ; further, that he had to seek recreation and
relief from the extraordinary pressure of the genius
of inspiration which forced him to a degree of mental
activity almost unparalleled. Here was a weak physical
organization, and a mind almost constantly in a state
of severe tension, either in the form of elevation into
a state of artistic ecstasy, or of profound and learned
reflection having to do with the abstruse underlying
principles of his art. " Is it any wonder," say they,
" that, when reactions would occur, temptations Avould
be too strong for him, and many errors be committed?"
Others shield Mozart by ascribing his irregularities
to a peculiarly constructed physical organization, and
assert that he was a man of piety. He certainly had
a reverential regard for sacred things. The indica
tions, which we find in his letters, of Christian faith,
hope, and resignation cannot be regarded as pharisai-
cal cant. His noblest and most elaborate productions
are consecrated to religion, and breathe the spirit of
intelligent and fervid deA'otion. The " Requiem" is
regarded by competent judges as the bloom and per
fection of the art of music. Its aim is to exhibit the
state of mind which should take possession of the
Christian in view of the immediate approach of death.
All regard the success of the composer as complete.
This is not to be attributed to Mozart's ability to reflect
through his works the contents of other persons' minds.
Neither the "Requiem" nor "Don Juan," the greatest
of his operas, Avhich is characterized by conceptions
similar to those Avhich enter into the dirge, could have
been composed by any man who was not imbued with

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 151
sentiments like those contained in the folloAving pas
sage from a letter Avritten by him to his father: " How
anxiously I am looking forward to comforting intelli
gence from you, I need not tell you ; still, I am certainly
hoping for it, notwithstanding the fact that I have made
it a custom in all things to anticipate the worst. As
death, strictly taken, is the true goal of our life, I have
made myself, during these later years, so well acquainted
with this true and best friend, that his image has no
longer any terror for me, but much that is soothing
and consoling. And I thank my God that He has
shown me the favor of granting me the power of
regarding Him as the key to our true blessedness. I
never go to bed Avithout thinking that, young though
I be, I may not see another day. And still, of all my
acquaintances, there is none who will say that I am
sullen or gloomy ; and for this happiness I thank my
Creator every da}', and heartily wish it the portion of
all my felloAA'-men."
But what we wish to insist upon is Mozart's earnest
ness in and fidelity to his calling. We have referred
to three forms of the industry to which a great artist
will surrender himself. Mozart so readily acquired
technical skill that at an early age he was a virtuoso
on seA7eral instruments. But it must be remembered
that, hoAvever great the aptitude, the soft and crisp
touch, and the equable scale-running of the pianist,
and the smoothness, evenness, and breadth of the bow-
drawing on the part of the violinist, are the result of
assiduous patience, attention, and labor. Mozart aston
ished the whole European continent by his execution,
and surpassed all the performers of his day.
One of his biographers says that " his mission was

152 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
to establish firmly the future of music by uniting its
past with its present." This, of course, involves ac
quaintance with the past and present of the art. The
same writer says of him, "At tAvelve, Mozart had
mastered, and learned to a great extent by heart, Bach
and Handel, Hause and Graun, as also the earlier and
later Italian composers. 'There is no master,' says
he, 'whom I have not several times carefully studied
through.' Traveling was to complete Avhat this uni
versal education had begun. For twenty years we see
Mozart going incessantly about, and visiting countries
in which he could accumulate material for his studies.
Thus he became acquainted with the musical geniuses
of the various nations, noted the Avays in which they
differed from each other as regards musical taste and
methods, made attempts in all styles, exercised himself
in all branches, and became familiar with the different
systems." l
One of the most interesting features of Mozart's work
is the learning it displays; Avhile, so far from conceal
ing his indebtedness to others, he was in the habit cf
directing attention to the fact that his great produc
tions Avere not the improvised offspring of a facile brain-
activity, but tho fruit of attentive intercourse with other
great musical minds.
Mozart Avas intensely susceptible to the influence of
the beauty of the external Avorld. Horseback riding
was his favorite exercise. He would often start out at
an early hour in the morning after penning a few lines
of affection to his Avife, to be read by her after she
aAA'okc. When out in the open air, his senses AA'ere wide
aAvakc, and his heart readily agitated. "If he beheld
1 Ul.lMSCHEFK: " Mozart's Leben," vol. iii., p. 12.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 153
a beautiful landscape, illuminated by a mild spring
sun, at first he contemplated it with silent admiration;
then his sober and thoughtful features became brighter;
when his inner orchestra began to play, its echo was
transferred to his lips, and with beaming eyes he would
exclaim, ' Oh ! if I could only have this theme upon
paper !' Soon the external object was forgotten, but
the image Avould remain, and live, and prove itself the
germ of a noble Avork of art."
The material Avhich thus poured in upon him was
constantly before his mind. The work of composition,
accordingly, was necessarily going forward. We are
told that he allowed his AA'ork to engage his mind by
day and night, Avhile enjoying his Avalk or his ride,
while drinking his wine, or enduring the task of teach
ing the scales to a beginner in music. A number of
passages of " Don Juan" are the result of composition
going on while at a game of ten-pins.
We cannot leaA'e the subject Avithout referring to the
quantity of productive labor which Mozart performed.
Eight hundred Avorks of pre-eminent merit, and em
bracing all the departments of the art, a legacy of
unspeakable value to future generations, Avere prepared
in the short life of thirty-five years. The phenomenon
is the more astounding Avhen Ave remember that if wo
subtract the time devoted to traveling, to instruction,
and diversion, there remains only what men ordinarily
require for repose. What seems impossible becomes
credible only when we call to mind the fact that when
Mozart seated himself to write, the work of composition
was for the most part done, and that Avhile at his desk
the labor amounted to but little more than that of
mechanical transcription.

154 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
Mozart was the living embodiment of his art. He
seems to have been seized at the dawn of his existence
by the spirit of music. All his surroundings were
apparently foreordained with a view to his being ade
quately fitted for the vast work to which he Avas called.
The genius of his art asserted itself as the power which
determined his pathway, both from within and with
out. He gave himself over irresistibly to its sAvay. He
allowed even his weaknesses and misfortunes to be
subservient to its purpose. And Avhatever else may be
said of him, certain it is that serious and absorbing
devotion to his vocation was the leading feature of his
character and the controlling principle of his life.

THE SENSE OF BEA UTY. 155

SECTION VI.
GENIUS.  SECOND CHARACTERISTIC.
Originality involved in it. — While all Avill agree that
genius must prove itself such by earnestness of pur
pose, few will be prepared to say that any earnest
man, provided his earnestness be intense and favor
able opportunities for exercising it be afforded, may
establish his claim to the rank. If NeAvton be prop
erly understood, he may be regarded as correct Avhen
he said that the power to put forth patient effort
constituted the difference between himself and the
ordinary class of mankind. But in the sphere of art,
should certain inborn qualifications be wanting, no
amount of self-determined energy will accomplish the
great purpose. Technical skill may be acquired, the
great artistic performances be carefully studied, and a
familiar intimacy with the external AA'orld cultivated,
Avhile tho result may be nothing more than a con
firmation of the old non fit poeta. If the diligence of
Milton, Michael Angelo, and Mozart be appealed to,
the answer must be given that it was not their zeal
that made a genius of each, but it was their genius
that explains their zeal.
The third great poet o"f England, speaking of his
art, calls it " simple, sensuous, and passionate." On
these Avords, Coleridge, after stating that they imply
all that he "had endeavored to develop in a precise
and strictly adequate definition" of poetry, has the
following A'aluable observations: "The first condition,

156 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
simplicity, . . . precludes every affectation and
morbid peculiarity; the second condition, sensuousness,
insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness
and articulation of imagery, and that modification of
the images themselves, without which poetry becomes
flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated
into a hazy, unthoughtful day-dreaming; and the third
condition, passion, provides that neither thought nor
imagery shall be simply objective, but that the passio
vera of humanity shall AA-arm and animate both."1
With these facts before our minds Ave are prepared for
a statement like the folloAving, which is found in the
argument prefixed to the tenth eclogue of Spenser:
" Poetry is indeed so worthy and commendable an art,
or rather not an art, but a divine gift and heaveuly
instinct not to be gotten by labor and learning, but
adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a cer
tain Enthousiasmcs and celestial inspiration."
The possibility of the agitated and exalted state of
mind, Avhich condition all true artistic activity, rests
upon the sympathy or affinity of the poet's inner
nature with the universe of realities outside of him.
It consists in this, that he become interested, with a
far more than ordinary degree of intensity and liveli
ness, in some portion or part of the external Avorld in
Avhich the sense or significance of the Avhole is revealed.
In his excitement he forgets self and becomes so ab
sorbed in his theme that his imagination becomes a
medium by which the matter in hand renders the
person of the artist the seemingly passive agent
through which it works itself out into the reality of
art. He remains true to himself, and exhibits his own
1 Introductory Lecture on Shakspeare.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 157
real self-hood. And this is a self-hood peculiar in the
fullest sense of the Avord, because the like of it had
never been seen before. Homer and Shakspeare were
indeed singular men. But, animated by the true
reason and substantial underlying meaning of the
outward world, they show what they themselves really
are, in that they set forth the external reality, without
the admixture, from their own individualities, of what
is foreign to it. The same principle prevails here
which we find to be of force in the sphere of the true
and the good. For in all thought and action which
is as it should be, real freedom allows the substantial
and universal of the outward world to hold its full
and absolute sway ; but, at the same time, in the
expression of his own thought and the realization of
his OAvn Avill, the individual will find himself in the
most perfect accord with what is without and beyond
him.1 Hence, says Hegel, " Genuine originality ab
sorbs and does away with each accidental peculiarity
belonging to the artist, so that he may be entirely
controlled by the bent and exaltation of an enthusi
asm which is taken up solely by the subject-matter,
and thus exhibit, not his own individual liking and
1,1 The perfection of his nature is found ju^t in this, that as an indi
vidual, inseparably linked in this respect to the world of nature, from
whose bosom he springs, he shall yet recognize in himself the authority
of reason, in its true universal character, or yield himself to it spontane
ously as the proper form of his own being. Such clear recognition of the
universal reason in himself, accompanied with such spontaneous assent to
its authority, is that precisely, in the case of any human individual, which
makes him to be at once rational and free. The person is necessarily
individual; but, in becoming personal, the individual life is itself made
to transcend its own limits and maintain its separate reality, only by
merging itself completely in the universal life which it is called to repre
sent. — Dr. J. Williamson Nevin: "Essay on Human Freedom."
14

158 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
empty arbitrariness, but his true subjectivity in the
truth of the re-created object." 1
If all this be correct, some one may be prepared to
say that we might reasonably expect those Avho possess
the gift to be more alike. Some remarks that could
be made on this subject must be reserved for the fol
lowing section. All that can. be said here is that what
is finite is imperfect. The genius of the most univer
sal man must have its limitations. Non omnes omnia.
The absolute idea can be grasped in the totality of its
truth and comprehensiveness only by the absolute
mind. The insight which mortals obtain into the
universal order of things is secured from a single and
particular point of vieAV. We are all apt to look at it
in the same way, until the genius comes who enables
us to see it as it was never seen before. It is the func
tion of the mind gifted with true originality to raise
itself above the planes and platforms on which men
had hitherto been standing, and thence to cast the
penetrating glance into the heart of the universe.
" To what in the individuality of the genius is like
only unto itself, there corresponds in the external
reality one of its discoA^erable sides, Avhich no one
'"^Esthetics," vol. i., p. 381.
Cousin has the following: "The great man is the harmony of par
ticularity and generality; he is a great man only upon these terms, upon
this double condition of representing the general spirit of his nation,
and it is by his relation to this generality that he is great, and at the same
time of representing this generality, which confers upon him his great
ness, in his person, under the form of reality; that is, under a finite and
visible form : so that the generality may not overwhelm the particularity,
and that the particularity may not dissolve the generality, that the particu
larity and the generality, the infinite and the finite, may mingle in that
measure which is true human greatness." — " History of Philosophy."
Lecture X.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 159
besides him had ever found, and no one besides him
could ever find ; but there is in the great artist that
quality of pure and universal humanity and spirit
uality which reaches through this medium to the pure
essence of the thing, and gives in the definite idea the
absolutely universal. In the contemplation of the
objectively executed product of his imagination, Ave
are ready to exclaim, So it is and no otherwise : the
nail has been hit upon the head."1 We feel that a
new secret has been revealed to the workman. And
when AA'e ask ourselves again, is it neAV? we say at
once, it is not. We recognize it as the oldest of all
truths, truths of Avhich Ave had glimpses in our earliest
childhood, and in regard to which we are ready to
condemn ourselves for knoAving no more. This man
has proclaimed them as they long since should have
been proclaimed. The whole Avbrld-story had never
been told, because until his arrival it had never been
understood aright. " He is the living light-fountain,
which it is good and pleasant to be near. Tho light
which enlightens: which has enlightened the darkness
of the world ; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but
rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of
heaven; a flowing light fountain, as I say, of native
original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;
in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with
them."2 We have before us the production of a rich and
potent individuality. We are ready to say of him as
Dryden said of Shakspeare, " This is the man Avho
had the largest and most comprehensive soul." One
1 Vischer : " ^Esthetics," sect. 412.
2 Carlyle: "Hero-Worship," sect. 1.

1G0 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
faculty, however, asserts its predominance. It is the
sense of beauty. This is the avenue through AA'hich a
new celestial message has been conveyed to him, and
this the one through which he sends it home to the
hearts and minds of his fellow-men. In its delivery
all the forces of his speech are concentrated, and all
the faculties of his mind co-operate in harmonious
subserviency to the dominating one. Another Colum
bus has appeared — one who not only Avith simplicity
and ease solves the problem which had baffled all
others' skill, but who proves himself the discoverer of
a hemisphere of existence of which we had never
dreamed.

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 161

SECTION VII.
GENIUS. — THIRD CHARACTERISTIC.
Epochs result from it. — Perhaps all has already been
said that need be said. The object of our inquiry
has been to ascertain what the 'artist is, and in order
to accomplish this purpose it was necessary to give
much of our attention to what he does. To do full
justice to the results of his labors, in their length and
breadth, would require volumes. In this concluding
section we may be permitted to hint at what is accom
plished by those who are truly great in their sphere.
This is the more alloAvable because those who have
given most attention to the subject find the feature of
success now to be noticed one of the marks by which
that class is distinguished to the more particular con
sideration of which these later sections have been
devoted.1 That the genius should bring about revolutions in
his own particular art is not at all surprising. All
who have given any attention to the subject will
acknowledge, that just as painting underwent succes
sive renewals through the activity of Giotti, Raphael,
and Rubens, so also did music through that of Pales-
trina, Handel, and Mozart ; and the rest of the arts in
like manner. As some one has said, " The succession
1 " Of genius in the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening of
the sphere of human sensibility, for the delight, honor, and benefit of
human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element into the in
tellectual universe." — Wordsworth : " Supplementary Essay."

162 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
between old and new in science and art is not a
mechanical sequence, but a lift and a leap. The tran
sition from stage to stage is not the measured move
ment of an arithmetical series, but a mediation of
originating genius. Genius is the bridge-builder, tho
pontifcx maximus in the passage from period to period."
With the arrival of each one of the number, new pos
sibilities are revealed, new resources developed, neAv
fields of achievement rendered accessible. Each one
of the arts is the growth of ages. The movement —
one, indeed, marvelous to contemplate, when we com
pare the incipient stages with the splendor of the full
unfolding and bloom — was one of strides. The num
ber of these is far smaller than at first would be
supposed. They are made through the agency of a
feAV individuals, Avho seem to have been chosen by the
numcn jirsesens of the art, to haAre been taken possession
of by it, and rendered the pliable instruments for
making the full measure of its power felt, and secur
ing the recognition of its claims.
Again, genius attracts and controls circles of admir
ing followers. It is not only the case that schools are
formed, and that talent is guided by the artistic hero
Avith leading-strings; but portions of the general public
recognize his authority, and in consequence of it so
modify their views that with them what Avas formerly
right is wrong, and Avhat Avas wrong is right. " Every
author, so far as he is great and at the same time orig
inal, has had the task of creating the taste by which
he is to be enjoyed : so has it been, and so will it con
tinue to be. . . . The predecessors of an original
genius of a high order will have smoothed the Avay for
all that ho has in common with them; and much he

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 163
will have in common ; but for Avhat is peculiarly his
own he will bo called upon to clear and often to shape
his own road ; he will be in the condition of Hannibal
among the Alps. . . . What is all this but an ad
vance or a conquest made by the soul of the poet ?" :
Epochs are formed thus, it is true ; but some one is
ready to remind us that they go forward Avithin a
limited sphere, a sphere, too, which is of no higher
moment than that of art. Still, it will be granted that
the movement of the history of art is determined and
supported by the entrance upon the stage of action of
those great characters AA'ho are endowed Avith original
creative force. The lower parts must be performed.
The masses are introduced as the basis of the action.
The bulk of the figures, hoAvever, that appear, consti
tute but a dumb show ; while the piece may be said to
be played by those eminent individuals who give ex
pression to whatever of point or significance it may
possess. Epochs, certainly, they do form, but are they
of sufficient substantial avail to justify the name ? To
this the answer must be returned, Is culture, in the
ordinary acceptation of the Avord, to be regarded as of
avail ? When AA'e look back upon the progress of the
nations, and analyze the elements which enter into it,
does art appear to be of no essential force ? We must
include in it all, of course, Avhich hitherto we have
been considering as properly belonging to it. Blot
it out of existence, and how are we to explain the
advanced status of civilization which we of the nine
teenth century are permitted to enjoy ?
But epochs in art are most closely identified Avith
those which are regarded of vaster account. In tho
Wordsworth : "Supplementary Essay."

164 THE ARTIST AND HIS MISSION.
movement of universal history they belong together
in the formation of the perfect whole. The end is the
realization of the divine purpose, the full manifesta
tion of the divine mind and will. Toward the accom
plishment of this result, the great artist performs a no
insignificant task. Is it a mark of irreverence to call
his mission divine?1
Hoav, then, it must be asked, does it stand related to
Him whose advent constitutes the epoch of epochs?
"This was the true Light which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world." There is not one of them
of whom, when properly understood, it cannot be said
that " He came for a witness to bear witness of the
Light, that all men through Him might believe." One
of the truest words that Emerson ever uttered is the
1" it lies in the idea of humanity itself, that it should comprehend
within itself such a mode of existence, just as it necessarily includes also
the life of art or the law of social or political organization. The question,
whether philosophy is to be tolerated and approved, is precisely like the
question whether we should approve and tolerate government or art.
These are all so many several spheres only of our human existence itself,
which are necessary to make it true and complete, and which cannot be
sundered from it without overthrowing, at the same time, its essential
constitution. It is not by any arbitrary option or will of ours that they
come to have the right of being comprehended in the organic structure of
the world; their right is as old as the world itself, and must stand as long
as man and nature shall be found to endure. If any number of men, fur
instance, in vast world-convention assembled, should pretend lo sit in
judgment on the right and title of the fine arts, music, sculpture, poetry,
and the rest, to retain their place in the world, and at last proceed in form
to legislate them out of it, as useless, fantastic, and injurious to religion,
to what would such legislation amount in the end, more than to expose the
impotence and fol'y of the congress from which it might spring? The
fine arts might say to such a convention, ' What have we to do with thee,
vain, wretched apparition of an hour! Is the nature of man to be thus
made or unmade at thy puny pleasure? Our authority is broader and
deeper and far more ancient than thine.' " — Dr. J. Williamson Nevi.n ;
¦¦A Plea for Philosophy "

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 165
following : " We have never come at the true and best
benefit of any genius, so long as we believe him an
original force. In the moment when he ceases to help
us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect.
Then he appears as the exponent of a vaster mind and
will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the
light of the first cause." l Every one of the class is
proof of the possibility of that union of the human
and divine Avhich constitutes the fundamental article
of the Christian faith. The state of mind produced
by a genuine work of art is the shadow of that real
higher order of existence brought to pass by the pres
ence of God's spirit in the world. To those who are
willing to see them aright, all the great artists of the
Christian era bear most abundant testimony to its pres
ence. Their witness-bearing is only the more effective
for being undesigned. Much of it, perhaps it might
be said that nearly all that they do, is negative in its
nature. As has been said again and again in the
course of our investigations, in so far as they are
artists the natural world is their element and their
home. But they know for what that world Avas de
signed, as well as why they were made a part of it.
And there is scarcely one of them to be found who
Avould not, in giving expression to his devotion to his
calling and the deepest longing of his heart, use the
words of the old English poet, George Herbert :
'' Since, then, my God, Thou hast
So brave a palace built, O dwell in it,
That it may dwell with Thee, at last.
Till then afford us so much wit,
That, as the world serves us we may serve Thee,
And both Thy servants be."
" Representative Men." Lecture I.