diff options
| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-23 14:03:33 -0800 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-23 14:03:33 -0800 |
| commit | eade7edf362af75e32b4f1b7cf1a3093134087de (patch) | |
| tree | 8988c51983ae11033a05ff59b824d93892331620 /old/64443-h | |
| parent | 5f8be9007095dab37a968af5144ab7798926e9f7 (diff) | |
Diffstat (limited to 'old/64443-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/64443-h/64443-h.htm | 5576 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/64443-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 136739 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/64443-h/images/flower.jpg | bin | 2269 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/64443-h/images/macmillan.jpg | bin | 7044 -> 0 bytes |
4 files changed, 0 insertions, 5576 deletions
diff --git a/old/64443-h/64443-h.htm b/old/64443-h/64443-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index f708cc9..0000000 --- a/old/64443-h/64443-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5576 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Art Principles in Literature, by Francis P. Donnelly. - </title> - - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - -<style type="text/css"> - -a { - text-decoration: none; -} - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - -h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -h2.nobreak, h3.nobreak { - page-break-before: avoid; -} - -hr.chap { - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - clear: both; - width: 65%; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; -} - -div.chapter { - page-break-before: always; -} - -p { - margin-top: 0.5em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; - text-indent: 1em; -} - -table { - margin: 1em auto 1em auto; - max-width: 40em; - border-collapse: collapse; -} - -td { - padding-left: 2.25em; - padding-right: 0.25em; - vertical-align: top; - text-indent: -2em; - text-align: justify; -} - -.tdc { - padding-left: 0.25em; - text-align: center; - padding-top: 0.75em; - padding-bottom: 0.25em; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.tdsub { - font-size: smaller; - padding-left: 5.25em; -} - -.tdpg { - vertical-align: bottom; - text-align: right; -} - -.tp { - padding-top: 0.75em; - padding-bottom: 0.25em; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 10%; -} - -.box { - margin: auto; - max-width: 25em; - border: thin solid black; -} - -.box-top { - border: thin solid black; - padding: 0.5em; -} - -.box-middle { - border-left: thin solid black; - border-right: thin solid black; - padding: 0.5em; -} - -.box-bottom { - border: thin solid black; - padding: 0.5em; -} - -.center { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.figcenter { - margin: 3em auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.footnotes { - margin-top: 1em; - border: dashed 1px; -} - -.footnote { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - font-size: 0.9em; -} - -.footnote .label { - position: absolute; - right: 84%; - text-align: right; -} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: none; -} - -.larger { - font-size: 150%; -} - -.noindent { - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - right: 4%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; -} - -table .pagenum { - font-size: 100%; /* because some td elements have font-size: smaller; set */ -} - -.poetry-container { - text-align: center; - margin: 1em; -} - -.poetry { - display: inline-block; - text-align: left; -} - -.poetry .stanza { - margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; -} - -.poetry .verse { - padding-left: 3em; -} - -.poetry .indent0 { - text-indent: -3em; -} - -.poetry .indent2 { - text-indent: -2em; -} - -.poetry .indent10 { - text-indent: 2em; -} - -.smaller { - font-size: 80%; -} - -.smcap { - font-variant: small-caps; - font-style: normal; -} - -.allsmcap { - font-variant: small-caps; - font-style: normal; - text-transform: lowercase; -} - -.titlepage { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 3em; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -@media handheld { - -img { - max-width: 100%; - width: auto; - height: auto; -} - -.poetry { - display: block; - margin-left: 1.5em; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 5%; -} -} - - </style> - </head> -<body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Art principles in literature, by Francis P. Donnelly</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Art principles in literature</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Francis P. Donnelly</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 01, 2021 [eBook #64443]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE ***</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p> - -<p class="center larger">ART PRINCIPLES<br /> -IN LITERATURE</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[ii]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;"> -<img src="images/macmillan.jpg" width="300" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -<span class="smaller">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MACMILLAN & CO., Limited</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> -MELBOURNE</span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">TORONTO</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p> - -<div class="box"> - -<div class="box-top"> - -<p class="center larger">ART PRINCIPLES<br /> -IN LITERATURE</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J.</span></p> - -</div> - -<div class="box-middle"> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50px;"> -<img src="images/flower.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" /> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="box-bottom"> - -<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -<span class="allsmcap">PUBLISHERS</span> NEW YORK <span class="allsmcap">MCMXXV</span></p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p> - -<p class="center smaller">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1923,<br /> -BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br /> -SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1923.<br /> -REPRINTED APRIL, 1925.</p> - -<p class="center smaller">REPRINTED JULY, 1928.</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</h2> - -</div> - -<p>In the <i>Art of Interesting</i> (Kenedy, 1920) the -writer began a discussion of the principles of art -and of their application to writing and speaking. In -this work the discussion is carried further and is not -restricted to the one feature of arousing and fixing -attention, especially in oratory, which was the chief -topic of the <i>Art of Interesting</i>. The following chapters -represent the reactions of the writer to literature -both as composed today and as taught in our -schools. Any active mind, bewildered by the ceaseless -experimenting in literature and education, and -not satisfied with a passive acceptance of even excellent -critics, is necessarily forced back upon first -principles. Such a mind will not yield to the despair -of skepticism, that there are no first principles, nor to -the despair of agnosticism, that there may be such -principles but we cannot know them, nor yet to the -despair of pragmatism, that we must wait and see -whether the human race ages from now will give us -assurance that there really are principles of art -because the last man has seen that these principles -have been found to work up to the moment prior to -which he joined Tutankhamen.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></p> - -<p>Art, just as morals and pure science, differs entirely -from the natural sciences, which are generalizations -based upon acquired information and must -change as long as the information upon which they -are based can be modified and enlarged. But where, -as in art or pure science, principles are based on final -truths, the principles have also a finality and can -only be rejected if their basis can be changed or -modified. Aristotle’s principles have something of -that finality. Aristotle had for his study a body of -literature that has for centuries met with the approval -of the best taste in every age and of every -critic. Aristotle’s biology or physics are not final, -but his ethics, his logic, his esthetics are in measurable -distance of finality except where some additions -have been made to the materials upon which he -based his analysis. In religion, because of revelation, -in music because of discoveries in instrumentation, -and perhaps in other arts, time has added to -the original store, but in literature there are few -additions to the fields which lay before Aristotle, -and subsequent ages have not developed any keener -analytical powers than those of Aristotle.</p> - -<p>It is Aristotle’s principles that in the main have -dominated the writer’s reactions to modern art and -literature. When Greek literature held an honored -place in our schools, there was less need of insisting -on obvious truths of art. The intense modernism<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span> -now predominating everywhere has driven classical -literature and classical methods from school and -life. History is modernized too or fails to supply -the vital contact with the ever-living past which -earlier schools experienced in the poets, historians, -orators and philosophers of Greece and Rome. So-called -cultural subjects in modern education are -chiefly informational. Culture is a word which -calls for definition, but on its intellectual side at -least, culture for the largest number of persons in -the world can be gauged most satisfactorily by their -appreciation of literature and by their capacity to -produce literature. The study of literature as an -art is the chief topic of this book, and Aristotle’s -great principles need all the more stressing now that -his philosophy of art and the supreme literature on -which he based his conclusions are passing away -from present-day consciousness.</p> - -<p>The chapters that follow are popular rather than -scientific in presentation. Readers who seek a fuller -and wider view may be interested in such a work as -Benedetto Croce’s <i>Æsthetic</i>, from the Italian by -Douglas Ainslie. Its historical summary, especially -for modern times, is valuable and good. For the -Greeks and earlier periods, Butcher’s <i>Aristotle’s -Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts</i> is easily best. -Professor Rhys Roberts’ editions of the works of -Dionysius, Longinus and Demetrius are excellent for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span> -the traditions of classical rhetoric, a tradition weak -in America.</p> - -<p>In theory Croce is an extreme intellectualist in -the principles of art. He locates all of esthetics in -pure intuition, which is “lyrical,” that is, emotional, -because it represents “the states of the soul,” “passionality, -feeling, personality.” For Croce “natural -beauty is simply a stimulus to esthetic reproduction, -which presupposes previous production.” He is -therefore an idealist in his conception of beauty. -Even monuments of art seem to be only “stimulants -to esthetic reproduction” and are not beautiful in -themselves. In another place, however, Croce -seems to be a realist. “Art is governed entirely by -imagination; its only riches are images. Art does -not classify objects nor pronounce them real or -imaginary nor qualify them nor define them. Art -feels and represents them. In as far as it apprehends -‘the real’ immediately before it is modified and -made clear by the concept, it must be called pure -intuition.”</p> - -<p>Quite to the other extreme in theory goes <i>The -Psychology of Beauty</i> by Ethel D. Puffer. This author -has much about sensations and their physiology -and but little about ideas. For Croce the last stage -is in the idea; for Puffer it would seem to be in the -work of art. “The low-lying wide expanse of some -of the old Dutch landscapists give us repose, not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span> -because they remind us of the peaceful happiness of -the land but because we cannot melt ourselves into -all those horizontal lines without the restful feeling -which accompanies such relaxation.” This passage -might almost class the writer with the <i>Einfühlung</i> -school,—the school which gives Ruskin’s “pathetic -fallacy” a number of advocates. Pathetic fallacy -was a complete misnomer when applied by Ruskin -to the well-known tropes of metaphor and personification. -Kingsley was not insane enough to imagine -that a wave was actually cruel and actually crawled. -He likened the wave that drowned to a wild animal. -But the school of Lipps in Germany desires you to -moan with the wind and smile with the rose and -lie flat with painted horizontal lines.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Puffer’s formula of stimulation with repose -and Croce’s formula of intuition with lyricism -can be reconciled with Aquinas’ definition of the -beautiful, <i>quæ visa placent</i>. A study of Maurice -De Wulf’s excellent little volume <i>L’Œuvre d’Art et -la Beauté</i> gives us briefly and clearly the neo-scholastic -solution of the esthetic problem. The book is -a good example of the reasonable discussion which -has won for scholastic philosophy the universal -designation as the philosophy of common sense. -Longhaye’s <i>Théorie des Belles Lettres</i>, which is -scholastic philosophy applied to literature, is another -clear and sane presentation of the principles -of the art.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></p> - -<p>The reader who desires to supplement the popular -exposition of this book with a systematic treatise on -the esthetic and its application to literature is recommended -to De Wulf and to Longhaye. English -is rich in criticism but is deficient in works treating -of the philosophy of beauty in literature.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> - -</div> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Connection with author’s <i>Art of Interesting</i>—Need of principles - of an art amidst violent experimentation in art and education—Aristotle’s - principles valid except where the basis of his - deductions has been modified—With Greek literature leaving - our schools, Greek taste is needed against excessive modernism—Recent - art discussions— Croce’s <i>Æsthetic</i>; Puffer’s - <i>Psychology of Beauty</i>; De Wulf’s <i>L’Œuvre d’Art et la - Beauté</i></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">v</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#PART_FIRST">PART FIRST</a><br />ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">I<br />ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>1. <span class="smcap">Individualism and Responsibility</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Talking to oneself in art—Chaos in religion, morals and - art from unchecked individualism—Altruism a better - principle—Responsibility inevitable—Responsibility a - help, no hindrance to the artist—Greek drama; Italian - Madonnas; Horace.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">II<br />ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>2. <span class="smcap">Vagaries of Individualism</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II">8</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Modern literature and art and a sense of humor—Fiction, - biographical and pathological—New poetry - shallow—Riot of emotionalism—Novel of satire, European - continental type originating in low comedy—Novel - of Scott, epic in origin—Nature, experience, - wisdom, the remedies of individualism.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">III<br />ART AND HUMAN NATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>1. <span class="smcap">The Universal Element</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III">14</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Art movements begin in nature—Art is social—Permanence - of literature due to universal appeal—The - camera and the canvas—Personality and individuality—Shock - of nerves not the mental thrill of art.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">IV<br />ART AND HUMAN NATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>2. <span class="smcap">Realism and Reality</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV">20</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Real cake of soap on a painted wave—Art a distinct - world from reality—Motivation, not through logical - discussion but through probable incident—Painting in - the cake of soap—Realism depressing because of - cynic moralizing—Evil in Shakespeare and Homer, - relieved by pathos and humor, not depressing. - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">V<br />ART AND THE DIVINE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>1. <span class="smcap">Religious Origin of Art</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V">26</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Rich tombs of the past testify to belief in immortality—Cro-Magnon - cave pictures probably religious—Earliest - art of all nations due to religion—Dancing, - song, music, sculpture, architecture, drama, epic—Gothic - cathedral of religious middle-ages, synthesis - of all arts.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">VI<br />ART AND THE DIVINE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>2. <span class="smcap">The Kinship of Art and Religion</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI">31</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Hebraism, Puritanism, Islamism, reacting against art - and the result—Explanation of the origin of art—Taine’s - environment theory—Spencer’s play theory—Theory - of fear and magic spells—Adequate explanation - found in man’s intellectual nature—Art like religion - intellectual—Art and religion idealistic—Personal - and emotional—Art and religion social in appeal—Sublimity - of art and the revelation of <i>Genesis</i>—Harmonious - equation between soul and the truth of - reality, between soul and the good of morality, same - as equation between soul and beauty, all founded - on the fact that both soul and triple reality are images - of God.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">VII<br />ART AND THE DIVINE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>3. <span class="smcap">Art in Its Relation to Virtue</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII">39</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">The theomorphism of man in the threefold tendency of - science, morality and art—Religion, a virtue; art, a - function of perceptions—Ruskin’s school of the religion - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</span> - of beauty—Moralizing not a function of art—Estheticism - neither asceticism nor sensualism—Evil in art - to be represented as evil—Evil to be a rationalized - element—Contemporary evil excites feelings of reality—Art - and religion ennobling—Art and religion purifying—Creation - and disinterestedness most divine elements - in art.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">VIII<br />THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">The critic’s equipment—Defective philosophy of some - modern critics, Mencken, Murry, Cohen—Ugly in art - and its subdual—Esthetic feeling not concupiscence—Disinterestedness - of beauty excludes sensuality of - appetites—Visceral reactions not from beauty</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VIII">48</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#PART_SECOND">PART SECOND</a><br />ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">IX<br />LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Literature taught for use in Greece, Rome, and elsewhere—Science - and history always changing; literature - lasting—Object of literature in university—True - humanism, equipping man’s faculties with art—Every - school subject teaches its like—Correlations of literature - and creation—Contemporary literature not suitable—Scientific - study partly; artistic study is wholly - satisfying</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IX">57</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">X<br />UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Necessity of unity—In university through profession—No - unity in college electivism—Unity impaired by - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[xv]</span> - departments and by specializing—Unity in France, - Germany and England—Departmental system destroying - the art appeal of literature—Science through - knowing; art through doing—Recent mental tests - accentuate expression and language—General education - through art of literature</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#X">64</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XI<br />THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Spread of science—System and eliminating of personality—Dissertations - for the doctorate—Scholarly - means encyclopedic—The impersonal lecturer—Justin - McCarthy’s teacher and his methods—Not scientific - specialization, but exercise of mental powers—Formulas - and personality—Another interesting teacher—Literature - educates equally with science—The ideal</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XI">70</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XII<br />EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Life full of emotions—Emotions intense in our crowded - civilization—Morale, organized emotion—Emotions - neglected in education—Education of facts dominating - schools—Twofold nature of emotions—Emotions - from concrete imagining—Kindled by contact—Literature - embodiment of emotions—Emotions developed - by self-expression and controlled by exercise</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XII">83</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XIII<br />KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Classics to be kept but taught differently—Former help - of translation—Literature overwhelmed by erudition—Germany, - France, England, America—True use of - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</span> - erudition—Natural sciences change; art endures—Reproduction, - the soul of literary teaching—Method - of training—Modern literatures not yet able to supplant - ancient literatures</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XIII">91</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XIV<br />THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Literary renaissances associated with Greek literature—Revivals - through Irish monks—Spain, France, Scholasticism—Germany - with Wolf, Winckelmann, Lessing—England - under Queen Anne and Queen Victoria—Youth - of civilization in Greece</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XIV">100</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XV<br />TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Story of Phidias’ statue and Homer—Homer tested by - art—Flaws in material—Absorption in immediate - effects—Told story different from story read—Outline - of a study on a broad scale—Variety, alternation, - growth in Homeric battling—Homeric palace, the - place of Homer’s recital</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XV">106</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XVI<br />THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Child-test in religion and morals, in the Bible—Homer’s - mother and child—Hector and Andromache—Child in - later literature rare—Latin writers—Conventionality - instead of Homeric naturalness</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XVI">114</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">XVII<br />THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Christ-Child in art—Christmas and the drama—In Ireland—Medieval - and Renaissance writers—Milton’s - <span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</span> - war-like child—Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, - Longfellow—Return of naturalness in Stevenson, - Carroll and others—Faith and its effects in Thompson - and Tabb</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XVII">119</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc"><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Mosaic of etymology—Ecclesiastical sphere—Diet, posies - and programs—Geography, zoology, politics—Pharmacies - and surgery—Schools and composition—Apology - and epitaph</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#GREEK_SPEAKS_FOR_ITSELF">129</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="tdc">NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdsub">Ownership not of the essence of beauty as of good—Perception - sufficient for the enjoyment of the beautiful—No - new faculty required—Pleasure is normal - life consciously localized—Esthetic Enjoyment in the - simple apprehension, not in judgment or inference as - such—Fact not of the essence of esthetic enjoyment, - which is had in fiction too—<i>Causa Exemplaris</i>—Imagination, - source of originality—Aristotle’s principles: - creation, motivation, unity, universality</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NOTE_THE_NATURE_OF_ESTHETIC_ENJOYMENT">134</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tp">A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE</td> - <td class="tp tdpg"><a href="#A_FORWARD-LOOKING_LESSON_IN_LITERATURE">159</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h1>ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE</h1> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_FIRST">PART FIRST<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE</span></h2> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY</h4> - -<p>A group was standing before a futurist or -cubist picture. The group did not know what -the picture was all about, but one spoke up in defense -of the bewildering work: “Well, after all, -art is a language, and why shouldn’t a man be permitted -to speak his own language?” A bystander, -not daring to address strangers, made answer under -his breath: “If art is a language, this artist is talking -to himself.” Maudlin, incoherent remarks, -disjointed utterances, and in general talking to one’s -self, all that, does not pass for high art among men, -but for something quite different. To talk to one’s -self is the extreme of individualism in conversation; -to ignore the world addressed through artistic composition -is the triumph of individualism in art.</p> - -<p>The abrupt break with all tradition in every art, -and the untrammeled expression of the individual,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span> -have worked out to the inevitable and bizarre conclusions -which a like rebellion has brought about in -religion and morals. Every man his own dogmatist; -every man his own moralist; that is the -individualism which has divided mankind into multitudinous -sects and has made millions of moral, -unmoral and immoral moralists eager for legislation -of infinite variety without any fixed principles -to enforce the observance of even one law. Conscience, -the executive impulse of all legislation, used -to be the voice of God, but individualism has made -it anything from a survival of the fittest or an -economic standard, through countless varieties all -the way to a Freudian complex.</p> - -<p>Individualism has run amuck in art from classicism -to cubism. It is a barren day which does not -produce a new system of religion or morals, and -only the occurrence of earthquake, war, fire or some -other tremendous upheaval keeps our journals from -recording some new theory of art, some Tomism, -Dickism or Harryism. Art for art’s sake has been -given an individualistic interpretation and has produced -the same rich crop, as the individualistic cry, -every man his own dogmatist and moralist, has produced—a -rich crop of weeds.</p> - -<p>If ever an individual could pursue his blissful way -oblivious of the existence of a surrounding universe, -surely he may not do so now when the universe -impinges upon him every moment through ticker, -telephone, wireless and unlimited “extras.” There<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span> -is, however, no such thing as unrestricted individualism. -Of God alone can be predicated existence for -its own sake. Everybody his own dogmatist means -ultimately everybody his own god. Art for art’s -sake, interpreted in an individualistic sense, would -not only destroy art but would destroy the world. -Art for art’s sake should read art for everybody’s -sake and for the sake of God, and such a reading -will be infinitely better for art’s sake.</p> - -<p>It was an Irish colleen, accepting matrimony as a -complete submergence of individuality, who replied -to a friend dwelling on the dangers of a long ocean -trip to be taken by the new bride and groom: “And -why should I be afraid, sure ’tis his loss if anything -happen to me now!” She was the counterpart of -the Irish lad who sang under similar circumstances, -“I’m not myself at all.” There you have the complete -altruism resulting from the perfect union of -matrimony. There is the antithesis of individualism, -and such matrimonial communism is far better -for every one than any cry of “wife for wife’s sake” -or “husband for husband’s sake.”</p> - -<p>It is quite evident that no artist can exempt himself -from responsibility as though his art were a -deity. If a picture or statue or poem would be an -incentive to murder or suicide, the artist must stay -his hand. He may not manufacture bombs for soul -destruction, no matter how artistic the container, -even if someone else is to supply the detonator. A -lie in beautiful language is a more ugly lie. Recent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span> -pretended upholders of the Volstead law have -printed an emphatic warning on compounds of -their manufacture: “Do not add such an ingredient -or this compound will violate the law.” May an -artist naïvely dissociate himself from responsibility -by stating: “Do not add human nature to my art-product -or you will violate the law”? Were the -artist a real creator, he would have to forecast results -and be dominated by a purpose. Nor may the -artist, like God, permit evil, because no artist has -omnipotence and infinite wisdom and justice and -mercy, governing the permission of evil and guaranteeing -good as the final result. May a man who -owns a wild tiger of surpassing beauty, trusting in -the right of property, parade down a crowded thoroughfare -with his jungle pet tethered to a thread?</p> - -<p>But why all these truisms? Because individualism -in art aims in principle and production not only -to free art from restrictions but even to exempt the -artist from responsibility. The artist may not talk -to himself unless he can find a South Sea island -where there is neither man nor God. Nor is it a -deadening of his artistic impulse for the artist to be -ruled by high purposes, but rather it is a stimulus and -an inspiration. Eschylus and Sophocles have a -sublimer beauty than Euripides because the earlier -dramatists recognized more fully and kept better in -view the religious purposes of Athenian drama. -Euripides, wishing to cater more to theatric effects, -succeeded in being more emotional and in achieving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> -a realistic but transient interest, the hectic flush that -marks decay and death in twilight and autumn and -sinister disease. Is the marked revival of Euripides -within recent years a sign of decadence?</p> - -<p>The Madonnas of Italian art received from the -painter a solemn beauty not only because they depict -Divine maternity, but even too because they -were to grace a religious shrine and to constitute -part of a religious service. That may be one reason -why the Madonnas of Italy are far superior -to the prettiness and sentimentality of more recent -Madonnas which are painted for private homes and -for ephemeral interest.</p> - -<p>The purpose of the artist is one thing and the -purpose of art is another thing. The purpose of a -watch is to keep time whatever purpose the watch-maker -may have. It is likely, however, that if he -makes the watch for his mother, he will produce -better results than if he worked for his usual wage -or than if he functioned as part of a machine, having -no clearly defined ulterior purpose. So an artist -will be inspired in painting, in sculpture, in music, -in all arts, to elicit better his full powers and to -achieve finer results when he toils for a cathedral -than when he works for a cabaret. Noble responsibility -conscientiously recognized and fulfilled is no -check, but rather a spur to the artist.</p> - -<p>“Art for art’s sake” may, however, be taken to -mean, “Embody beauty wherever found, or realize -to the full your ideal,” and such a meaning is excellent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span> -and fruitful unless excessive individualism -insists upon expressing its own perverted ideas of -beauty and its own eccentric ideals. When Horace -said, “Let justice be done though the heavens come -crashing down,” a line that might be rendered, “Justice -for justice’s sake,” he was far from advocating -the explosion of a bomb by some Roman anarchist -whose idea of justice was to bring all to a dead -level of ruin. The progressive improvement in the -realization of art-ideals may be very well illustrated -from the career of Horace. Horace gradually -worked himself free from the conventionality and -baseness of his epodes and earlier satires, experienced -the cleansing process of true humor in later -satires, took fire at the moral degeneracy of Rome -in the initial odes of the third and last book of his -first edited lyrics. There the <i>sæva indignatio</i> of -Horace brought him within distant sight of sublimity. -His progress in philosophy weighted the -wings of his song but dowered him with the crystal -and clean wisdom of his epistles, of which it has -been said one need not blot out a single line. Had -Horace retained the youthful vehemence of the republican -amid the enervating peace of the new empire, -he might have followed Dante and Milton -from lyric beauty to epic sublimity, or might have -risen with Shakespeare and Molière from song to -comedy or even to tragedy, but his hedonistic sleekness -and his excessive self-consciousness kept his -ripened philosophy in brief letters, when a more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span> -vigorous mentality with the help of philosophy -might have converted his ennobled power of satire -into comedy or transformed the lyric portraits of -his early days into tragedy or epic story.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>2. VAGARIES OF INDIVIDUALISM</h4> - -<p>Modern art has not followed Horace very -far. It has broken with conventionality as -Horace did with the <i>clichés</i> of Alexandria, but it -has not yet entered upon the path of right philosophy. -The <i>Spoon River Anthology</i>, a typical -specimen from the individualistic school of what -might be called localists or village gossips, is in -the epode-stage of Horace, the stage of personalities, -lubricity and garlic gruesomeness. Hopes -might be entertained that <i>Spoon River</i> and <i>Main -Street</i> and other individualistic photographs would -progressively improve with Horace except for one -sad deficiency: Horace had humor and laughed at -others, and even at himself; modern individualists -are so heavily armored with the seriousness of their -own views, that they don’t even smile. To imagine -the New Art laughing is impossible; if the New Art -had humor and laughed, it would cease to be New -Art and would join the larger brotherhood of art -uncapitalized. Had the new artists a sense of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> -humor, it would probably be their death sentence. -In the course of time they might catch sight of their -own art products, whether of painting or of poetry.</p> - -<p>Is it not an indication of individualism that so -many recent novels are biographies, that the stage -is not holding up the mirror to life but applying the -scalpel to an ulcer? The biography or personal -views of Scott and Shakespeare cannot be discovered -in their works. The modern pamphleteer distributes -his paradoxes among various mouthpieces -whose only difference is in name, and this is called -a play, when it is in reality propaganda. There are -probably now no less than 100,000 college graduates -turning college escapades and flirtations into chapters, -which their authors consider typical of life because -the incidents were individually experienced. -And, as the long stories of the day are biographies -or problems and as the drama is a diagnosis of -diseases, in the same way many of the short stories -are pathological, but all are tending to be individualistic. -The artist makes his own subjective experience -the full measure of his artistic expression -and seems to imagine that his own peculiarities are -good art because he sincerely expresses what he -feels. Individual nature is not human nature.</p> - -<p>Aristotle has described poetry as the universal -in the concrete. The “new poets” give the individual -in the concrete. Homer, Shakespeare, the -true poets, plumb to the depths of the human heart;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> -they voice ripened experience and enshrine mellow -wisdom, and so appeal to all men of all times. -Much of the new poetry ostentatiously disdains tradition -and rejects the wisdom of the ages in discarding -its dress. You may see the rouge on the -cheek and the freckle on the nose, but as far as life -and experience and heart are concerned, most of -the new poetry is pitiably young and callous. Meticulous -recording of disconnected and unrelated novelties -is no adequate substitute for the warmth and -depth of life crystallized by the ardent gaze of the -true poet out of his experience. New poetry is contemporaneous -with the invention and use of the -Kodak and has all the responsibility and profundity -of that instrument.</p> - -<p>Individualism has come to such a pass in modern -art that everything in it is resolving itself into pure -emotionalism, and that an emotionalism which does -not belong to art at all. Degenerates are the products -of civilization; they are decayed exotics. “The -higher the organism, the more noisome the decay,” -a science professor used to say when paying his respects -to diseased metaphysics. As only a believer -can blaspheme luridly, so when an artist goes wrong, -he goes wrong hideously. A pistol in the hands -of a marksman gone mad is more destructive than -in the hands of a savage. Colors, sounds, shapes, -fair words and gorgeous imaginings are instruments -of degradation and death if they are a finer veneer -over what is false. Individual vagaries and whims,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> -no matter how unusual, will not have the permanence -of art because they are based on no principles, -but devised simply to startle. Degrade the appeal -of beauty to a spinal thrill and your artist will pander -to concupiscence.</p> - -<p>It is noteworthy that Homer’s worst lapse in story-telling -takes place among the luxurious Phæacians, -ancient prototypes of degeneracy. Homer may -have felt justified artistically because he was depicting -the non-Grecian world through whose monsters -and marvels Odysseus was passing and making -the first collection of sailors’ yarns. But Homer -shocked even the pagan world and set an unhappy -precedent. Lucian and Ovid, Petronius and -Apuleius and the Byzantine eroticists made what -was incidental in Homer their chief concern and -practice. They perverted fiction into calculated -suggestiveness.</p> - -<p>That depraved and sensual theory of story-telling -was, however, more Aristophanic than Homeric, -despite the single unfortunate precedent in the -<i>Odyssey</i>. The tradition of Greek and Latin -comedy was carried on by the medieval troubadours -and by the story-tellers who catered to the decadent -nobility of Italy and France. They retorted on -their clerical censors and stimulated jaded appetites, -substituting in shameless intrigues priests and nuns -for the pagan gods. It was and is the glory of -Scott that he broke away from these evil traditions -which made the novel a hateful thing to our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> -forefathers. Scott deserted the continental school -of novelists and their English imitators, Fielding, -Sterne, Smollett, the last of all Byron. Scott gave -up the satirical purposes which handed on in fiction -the vulgar devices of low comedy. He went to history, -to chivalry, to healthy men and women and -created romances, not pathological studies. English, -Irish and American fiction for a whole century -yielded to the healthy and bracing impulse of Scott, -but the younger novelists in vogue today in England, -Ireland and America have gone back to the -continental type, individual, pathological biographical -problems, forsaking Scott’s revival through balladry -of the best Homeric manner, where men -“drank delight of battle with their peers far on the -ringing plains of Troy.”</p> - -<p>The individualist must emancipate himself by -the contemplation of nature. Pathological specimens, -freakish oddities, all the surface impressions -of the local colorists are not nature any more than -a face contorted with a toothache is a man’s likeness. -Such exceptional exhibitions cannot form the -enduring basis of art. Personal experience must -be widened by length of time, by merging into the -stream of wisdom, flowing freighted from the past, -or must, in exceptional cases, be won quickly by that -intense and probing comprehension of genius, which -seems almost Divine intuition. Excessive individualism, -like the latest fashion, will be quaint and incongruous -on the morrow. Homer lives eternal because<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> -through strange names and strange language -and strange costumes we see our own sun and fields -and ocean and sky and put our fingers on a pulse -which registers the beat of a heart throbbing as ours.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND HUMAN NATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>1. THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENT</h4> - -<p>A serious defect in most modern art movements -is that they start from art; they are -modifications of previous art movements. True art -movements start from human nature. When perfection -in any art is standardized, when tradition -and conventionality prevail, and the artist has originality -enough to chafe at the restraints of classicism -but not originality enough to reveal finer ideals -through classic expression, his temptation is to rebel -at conventionalities and to deem himself original -because he is unconventional. He wishes to be different -from other artists and seeks for the difference -by discarding the traditional medium rather than -by improving his own personal message. He prefers -to be different and even original by cutting his ginger-bread -into the shape of automobiles and air-planes -instead of going back to mother’s classic make -and blending his ingredients into a new creation, -a creation which will make fresh appeal even in -former animal shapes or in the traditional ginger-bread -cart-wheels.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span></p> - -<p>Art is a social institution. If not by the people, -art is of the people, and certainly for the people. -When Greek literary art grew conventional in its -different forms, the artists went back to the people -for another medium to be transfigured by art. Ruskin -has called architecture a “glorified roof.” The -sonata is a glorified folk melody; epic is glorified -folk lore; and Greek drama is a glorified folk song, -as Elizabethan drama is a glorified folk chronicle. -Both dramas have their roots in the religious services -of the people. Homer told us about the public -he had, but the nineteenth century would not trust -his word until Schliemann dug up the great halls -where Demodokos and his fellows told the people -their own folk stories in a glorified, artistic form. -Greek lyric and Greek pastoral were as public as -Greek oratory, Greek choruses, temples and statuary. -It was left for Roman conquerors to begin the -segregation of art into the cold storage of the -modern millionaire and of the modern museum.</p> - -<p>The permanence of Greek art is based upon that -public appeal. Art is long because it embodies -nature, and most of all human nature. Homer -has appealed to man, woman and child for thousands -of years. His human nature is our human -nature despite external differences of every -kind. Homer himself was aware of the appeal -of nature in art. On the shield of Achilles, he -marveled at the field which grew black behind the -plowing, a marvel of Homer’s close study of nature<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> -as well as an expression of his ideal for art. Nature -is a language all can understand and human nature -is a language all must and do understand. When -lament was made over the body of Patroklos, the -elegy of Briseis stirred all, “and thereon the women -wailed, in semblance for Patroklos, but each for her -own woe.” Similar is the appeal of art where in -semblance of something else, each sees what belongs -to self. Aristotle in seeking to explain the -characteristic pleasure of art ascribes it to <i>mimesis</i> -or re-presentation in another medium. Such staging, -he says, not only robs the terrifying of its terrors -but enables all to understand and reason to -the nature of each art product. Such understanding -and reasoning mean surely something more than the -mere recognition of photographic accuracy and likeness. -If we may press the meaning of the Greek -word used for reason, the process of art enjoyment -is similar to the syllogistic process which involves -an appeal to a general statement. The process is -one which recognizes the general in a particular -case, as the grief of Briseis found an echoing grief -in every heart.</p> - -<p>Whether Aristotle and this interpretation of -him is correct or not, it is evident that art must -generalize. Art must select, both by choice of the -artist and by the limitations of his medium. Art -does not photograph, because it has no sensitive -plate for its medium. The photographer’s art -largely precedes the camera and consists in selecting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> -that pose and that expression, out of many, which -is yours. The camera is nature, controlled by -mechanism, and is not art. If the photographer or -painter or sculptor photographed you in some passing -spasm, we should not learn and reason that it -was you. The spasm was realism and fact, but -it was peculiar and individual; it was not you whom -we have known and generalized from experience. -In such a case, Aristotle says shrewdly, we might -get artistic pleasure from the workmanship or -colors, that is, from the medium and the mechanics -of art, but we should have no artistic pleasure from -the soul and substance of the art product because -the product found no prototype in our experience, -because we could not define it or generalize it. Art -selects. It cannot give everything, and if it would -be true, it must give what all may understand; it -must give what is generally true, and what is generally -true of all men is human nature.</p> - -<p>Selective idealism has usually the advantage of -being intelligible, but it labors under the disadvantage -of becoming merely intelligible. It gives the -truth, but through familiarity the beauty or artistic -appeal of the truth has been dulled and tarnished, -or, like the dandelion, until a Lowell gives it a -new luster, its very commonness leaves us unmoved. -We enjoy human nature in Homer because -he was the creator of sleeping winds and of -rosy-fingered dawns and of the mother’s smile alight -through tears. A modern who would transfer these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span> -same touches to his own composition would leave -us cold. He too must create; he must be personal, -but he must not be individual. Personality is the -knowing and loving principle, and looks to the many -with its thoughts and wishes. Individuality is the -principle of separation and isolation and is looking -inward, not outward. When the artist, therefore, -creates and gives his own winds or dawn or -mother love, he should speak to us in his own concrete -embodiments of nature, and of human nature, -using a language man understands. If selective -idealism tends to become merely intelligible and -unappealing, individualism tends to become unintelligible -and to mystify.</p> - -<p>The poet, the novelist, the painter have more -depth than silver nitrate on a photographic plate. -Artists do not simply mirror nature; they do not -catch at the odd or freakish. That is photography, -not creation. Horace did not give us a moving picture -of a falling tree, but he saw the humor and -human interest of that “sorry log.” Burns did not -give us an anatomical study of the typhus-carrier on -a lady’s bonnet in a kirk, making it crawl upon ourselves -and sending us after the kerosene can and -bath tub, but Burns soared away, from that sight -with Horatian humor and Horatian human nature, -into the immortal lines, “O wad some power the -giftie gie us.” The artist who confounds the generalized -mental attractiveness found in true art with -the shock of nerves or the tickling of concupiscence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span> -or with misguided realism, will not produce things -of beauty. He gets a thrill, but it is not the permanent, -undying thrill of art, not the thing of -beauty, which is a joy forever.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND HUMAN NATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>2. REALISM AND REALITY</h4> - -<p>At an exhibition in New York City there was -displayed a picture of an ocean wave upon the -crest of which the artist had nailed a real bar of -soap. The first idea of the spectator was to consider -this peculiar product an advertisement, but -it seems to have been intended as a serious, if perverted, -attempt at art. If the artist was not slyly -proposing the caricature of excessive realism, the -cake of soap will serve well as a parable for those -artists who do not distinguish between realism and -reality.</p> - -<p>The ultra-realist forgets that art is a creation, -the making of another world. The artist cannot -really create what he puts into his new world of -sight or hearing or imagination, of color, of sound, -of words. If he could actually make something new, -not based on nature or on human nature, he would -do so on the penalty of being unintelligible. Neither -should he go to the other extreme and not leave the -world of reality at all. He may not eat his cake -and have it. If what he takes from actuality is not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> -merged fully into his art form, he tries to give us -fact and fiction, history and art, in the same product, -and he nails a piece of soap on a painted wave.</p> - -<p>Aristotle insists above all on probability in art, -or motivation, as it is now commonly called. A -probable or well-motived impossibility, he says, is -more artistic and pleasing than an improbable, that -is, an unmotived fact. For a like reason he demands -that fiction be more philosophical than history. -We accept a chronicle of facts without necessarily -being aware of their causal connections. In -the realms of art the connection must be established. -This principle, so fruitful for art, is not to be understood -as justifying or approving that school of -subjective novelists which is parsimonious in happenings -but diffuse in reasoning and gives us a maximum -of discussion with a minimum of incident. -Aristotle is thinking more of the people who witness -the drama. The spectators want the motivation -and plausibility of action rather than that of -logic. The soliloquy has gone from the stage; the -printed soliloquy should be curtailed in the novel. -A true understanding of motivation will send all -artists back to nature and to human nature for -those incidents which are the springs of action -and do not require lengthy logic to labor at their -explanation. Homer is completely lacking in logical -refining. Incident leads to feeling and talk, which -gives rise to further incident. Action, feeling and -character, Aristotle’s trinity of art subjects, are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> -mingled and detailed, and the story moves on in a -way plausible and pleasing to Homeric audiences. -When Homer runs short of motivation, he does not -resort to logic; he refers the causality to the gods, -as modern writers refer all insoluble problems to -evolution, which puts hardly more restrictions upon -imagination than Homeric mythology.</p> - -<p>The artist must transfer his product wholly to -the world of art. Sculptured horses must not neigh, -nor painted flowers give perfume, but neighing and -scents may be suggested even in stone, and in lines -by art happenings, which all may read running if the -artist will use the language of human nature. He -should paint his cake of soap in, not nail it on. If -the exigencies of the story demand it, costumes of the -night or costumes of bathing may be in place, but -it is nailing on a cake of soap, it is outraging probabilities, -to force a story into a setting or to adopt a -style of dress or of undress simply for the sake of -producing a shock. That is the shock of reality, -not of art and beauty. Should the dramatist have -an excellent quartet and stop the play in order to -give a song, he is nailing on a piece of soap, which -may be magnificent soap, but it is not art.</p> - -<p>Why is the so-called realism depressing? Why is -the Russian novelist left for the connoisseur but is -caviar to the general? Is it the presence or absence -of evil? Hardly that. Homer’s stories are full of -evil and of death; Sophocles’ <i>King Œdipus</i> and the -<i>Prometheus</i> of Eschylus are surcharged with evil,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> -but they do not depress. Euripides, on the other -hand, and Lucian have more alleged realism and are -depressing, even when they cause a smile. The realist -is cynical, and cynics do not soar off into the world -of art, but keep tethering themselves to the real -world. They do not lose themselves in their story -because they are always thinking of keeping some -one’s nose against their grindstone. Why should the -optimistic moralizing of Polyanna be resented by -critics any more than the cynic moralizing of Shaw -or of <i>Main Street</i>? The cheerful idiot and the purblind -dyspeptic are depressing in real life, especially -when they are moralizing, but in and out of art we -can laugh at the idiot, while we squirm at the assumed -superiority of the cynic. The moralizing is -a cake of soap.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare is not depressing and Homer is not -depressing. They do not blink the facts of life, and -beyond the humor and humanity which saves them -and their audience, they lose themselves in their -story. The evil they depict is true evil, so recognized, -in their art-world. It is, besides, evil called -for by their story, not lugged in for a moral or to -exemplify a theory of art. They know that drab -is not the only color in life. They know that bright -things are as real as black things, but they are not -illustrating a theory but giving us a story. We pass -with them into a fictitious world, and the things -which depress the denizens of that world do not -depress us if we are not brought back to reality by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> -stumbling on a cake of real soap, not integrated -with the story.</p> - -<p>The sight of his dog Argos made the heart of -Odysseus sink. Even for those who think ugliness -the only reality, Argos was covered with realities -and squatted on reality. He depressed his master -but he does not depress us. He lies upon Main -Street and has a Polyanna wag to his tail. His optimism -and his pessimism are, however, not tacked -on. “And lo, a hound raised up his head and -pricked his ears, Argos, the hound of Odysseus.... -Despised he lay (his master being afar) in the -deep dung of mules and swine.... There lay the -dog Argos, full of vermin. Yet even now when he -was aware of Odysseus standing by, he wagged his -tail and dropped both his ears, but nearer to his -master he had not the strength to draw. But Odysseus -looked aside and wiped a tear.” Argos is the -ideal dog of a far away master; “who has lost his -dominion,” as Eumæus, the shepherd of Odysseus, -says. Argos registers the fate of his master. We -feel, but we do not feel depressed. It is human; -it is all inevitable; it is real as life but perfectly -idealized by perfect transfer to the realm of art. -Eumæus gives us the morality of it, the truth of it, -but he is far from moralizing, either pessimistically -or optimistically. Argos is the dog Schneider that -Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle could not find to recognize -him; he is the picture in brief of his master’s -fate. Eumæus is as free from all obtrusive soap<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> -as Argos himself. The dog’s fate is ascribed to the -careless women who “are no more inclined to honest -service when their masters have lost dominion, for -Zeus takes away the half of a man’s virtue when the -day of slavery comes upon him.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="V">V<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND THE DIVINE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>1. RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF ART</h4> - -<p>The recent discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen -has aroused the interest of the -world. The perseverance of the explorer, the variety, -artistic excellence and intrinsic value of the discovery -gave the news a place in the press and -signalized the latest triumph of the spade, which -Schliemann converted into the best of historians. -Dig in your back-yard, and you can read its past -in the layers before your eyes. Make a cross-section -of the country, and successive deposits will tell you -its story. Lay bare the strata of the earth, and the -buried fossils, the minerals, the gas, the oil, reveal -the history of the world. Grave-digging is the most -productive occupation to which science, art and even -commerce can now be vocationally guided.</p> - -<p>What was it that enriched the Egyptian tomb and -other tombs of the past in which man was buried? -It was religion, and specifically it was belief in the -immortality of the soul. The latest opened tomb -repeats the truth that was manifest in the pyramids -of Egypt, which were temples as well as tombs. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> -beehive tombs of Mycenæ from which Schliemann -actually shoveled gold ornaments of various kinds -were also temples as well as tombs. The altar-stones -in Catholic churches with their tiny <i>loculi</i> for -the relic of a saint keep still the memory of the -days when persecuted Christians found the Catacombs -of the dead places of worship as well as of -escape from the persecutor.</p> - -<p>The caves of Cro-Magnon and Aurignac and -other ancient deposits in France and Spain have -disclosed the earliest evidence of man’s art. The -man was no mean artist, and the coloring and skillful -drawing have astonished every one. Why dark -caverns, inaccessible to light, should have been so -decorated has puzzled observers. Reinach calls -the pictures early “magic,” painting of animals to -capture them. But there are paintings of men as -well as of bisons and reindeer. Professor Osborne -is quoted as saying that it seems to be art for art’s -sake, namely, that the sheer pleasure of the drawing -is its reason. An admission, it would seem, -that the professor has no real explanation to offer. -Sir Bertram Windle has recently asserted the religious -origin of these pictures. They would seem to -be the earliest appearance of stained-glass windows. -The caves were temples, and the explanation is -confirmed by a comparison with the beehive tombs -of Mycenæ and with the Egyptian tombs. The -altar, the sacrifice, the victims, the food, clothing -and other accompaniments of life, are all evidences<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> -of religious feelings and a belief in a continued existence. -The absence of the bodies in these caves -may easily be accounted for. Fleeting time with -prowling animals has destroyed them while it left -the pictures on the wall. Art is even longer than -Longfellow imagined.</p> - -<p>If the earliest art so far found is religious in -origin, these so called Cro-Magnon or Aurignacian -artists exemplify again what is a commonplace in -the history of art. It would be easy to add to the -following statements found under “Art” in Hasting’s -<i>Dictionary of Religion</i>: “The religious aspect -of art in Egypt includes almost all that is known of -it.” “There is hardly any doubt that the high level -of Assyrian and Babylonian art is due to the deep -religious feeling of the two nations.” “The history -of art in Greece is throughout its course intimately -connected with religion.” The fact is beyond all -denying. Religion and art are united, in music and -song, from the dances of savages to the Hebrew -psalms and the stateliest liturgies; in painting, from -the early caveman to the modern man; in sculpture, -from the crudest icons dug up at Troy to the idol -statues of Greece and Rome, in the lions and bulls of -buried Mycenæ and Crete, of Assyria and Egypt, -in the tiny seal rings, in the ornaments and statuary -of our modern churches; in oratory, from the prayers -of the priest in the <i>Iliad</i>, to the fulminations of -the prophet and the eloquence of the pulpit; even in -civic oratory we find Demosthenes and Cicero in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span> -their sublimest heights touching upon religious motives; -in the poetry of incantation, of oracle, of -revelation, in liturgy and drama; in the little tale of -the fable and in the mighty story of the epic, for -the full sweep of which Homer and Virgil, Dante -and Milton must stage their events upon the background -of a Divine Providence; in architecture, -from the tombs and temples of the eastern world, -to the temples of the Aztecs and to the Gothic -cathedral.</p> - -<p>Aquinas gave in his <i>Summa</i> a synthesis of all -science; Dante gave in his <i>Divina Comedia</i> a synthesis -of man’s life and destiny; the Gothic cathedral -of the same age gave a synthesis of all the arts in -one structure, exemplifying in fullness and excellence -the mutual interaction of art and religion in the -middle ages, where manifestly religion held sway -as never before or since. The Morgan “Collection” -in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in New -York exhibits the dusty wreckage of that wonderful -union of religion and art. No poet’s imagination -is needed to rebuild those fragments into that marvelous -structure, under whose myriad statuary of -serious saints and grotesque gargoyles, you pass -through carved portals into the spacious aisles over -which arches leap aspiringly. The painter fascinates -you with the story of many colors in the windows. -The weaver hangs other pictures on the rich tapestry -curtaining the walls. The wood-carver is everywhere -evoking beauty with cunning fingers. Music<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> -and song in the dramatic and antiphonal liturgy, -the sublime eloquence of the pulpit in turn charm -and rest the ears.</p> - -<p>The minutest detail is as artistic as the rich -magnificence. The missal on the altar will be a -“Book of Kells,” a reflection on illuminated parchment -of the religious and monastic life which produced -it, by its patience, learning, devotion, silent -application, and scrupulous exactness; “examined -with a microscope for hours,” says an authority, -“without detecting a false line or irregular interlacement.” -Near the missal of the Gothic cathedral -would be found a jeweled chalice, like that of Ardagh, -with three hundred and fifty-four distinct -pieces, classic and rich in all kinds of ornament. -Baldwin Brown was surely right in declaring: “It is -probable that nothing more artistically beautiful has -ever been seen than the Gothic cathedral,” and the -Gothic cathedral is the crowning glory of a deeply -religious age.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND THE DIVINE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>2. THE KINSHIP OF ART AND RELIGION</h4> - -<p>The history of art from its lowest manifestations -to its highest gives evidence of its union -and intimacy with religion. The fact is admitted, -and might easily be confirmed by the very way in -which religious movements violently reacted against -art. Hebraism knew the power of art over its -followers, and Hebraic antagonism to sculpture -and painting served to give religious impulse freer -outlet in Hebrew poetry and oratory and other -literature. The Bible is the supreme illustration of -the influence of religion upon literary art. Islamism -opposed art, but gradually succumbed to its influence -at least in architecture. That Islam has not yielded -more to art is an evidence of arrested civilization, -as well as of baser and more sensual religious feelings. -Puritanism, the intensest form of Protestantism, -opposed art in all its manifestations, but Puritanism -either diverted art energy to poetry and -literature or provoked excesses by its attempt to -check the natural impulses of art, and Puritanism<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> -finally yielded to art. It is clear then that religious -opposition to art serves but to show more strikingly -the union of religion and art. The religion that -opposes art must direct the art impulse into other -channels or the religion degenerates. By their -nature religion and art are congenial.</p> - -<p>What now is the explanation of this close and continuous -union of art and religion, found everywhere -and in all ages? Taine and his school, led astray -by some details in the artist’s subject matter, have -tried to explain art by environment; but environment -is an explanation absurd in itself, and cannon -be adequate for an ubiquitous fact which transcends -all environment. The theorists who ascribe the -origin of art to play and the deploying of superfluous -energies liken, with Herbert Spencer, the art -impulse to the acts of a kitten playing with a ball. -Play may be partly an excess of energy, but not all -energy is artistic, and animal play is the stirring of -appetite, bearing but a slight, superficial resemblance -to man’s early strivings for artistic expression. How -many games are imitative and made more attractive -by art! From the very first, mind enters into early -and even child art, and at the last the devotion of -the artists to their ideals in the higher manifestations -of art, a devotion quite unlike play, shows that -the art impulse is essentially different from the instinctive -impulse of the kitten, which pounces on a -rat as it pounced on a ball of wool.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span></p> - -<p>Another school, striving to explain the connection -between art and religion, takes a directly opposite -view to the play theory. Fear and magic are, -according to these authors, the controlling factors. -The difficulty in this theory is the utterly selfish element -in the fear and magic impulse, whereas the art -impulse is disinterested and unselfish. Besides, religious -belief precedes the fear and magic propitiation -of offended powers. The voodoo and the hoodoo -mark degradations of religious impulses. Impulses -in harmony with man’s nature may go down as well -as up, and even should we suppose that the unselfish -impulse of art, which finally becomes the evidence -and glory of man’s highest civilization, could be -traced back to the sordid details of selfish superstition, -why should such an ugly duckling evolve into -a fair swan? Devolution and degradation are easier -than evolution. Why did the art impulse take the -narrow, upward path and shun the broad way down -to perdition?</p> - -<p>The perfection of the oak must have been in the -potency of the acorn. The oak could not come from -a peanut, nor can all the powers of sun, rain and -soil or any other factor of the environment evolve -the fruit of the peanut vine into the majesty of the -oak. We can explain by an extrinsic cause the -stunting of an oak or the rotting of an oak, but we -cannot account for the existence of the oak—except -by an acorn. We may find perhaps a thwarted or -corrupted art tendency in superstitious fear and its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> -products, but that element of fear could not write a -poem or compose a sonata or rear a Gothic cathedral. -The perfection reached by the art product -must have been in the potency of the first artistic -impulse in germ.</p> - -<p>Religion and art were then united potentially in -the original art impulse just as the strength and -lofty beauty of the oak were latent in the acorn. -The art impulse is natural to man; it is intellectual. -It requires brains to be artistic, as it requires brains -to laugh, and no animal has done either or will ever -do either. The bird in building its nest displays an -intelligence not its own; its nest building is inherited -just as its song is. Jean Fabre’s observations have -shown conclusively the wonders of instinct, coupled -with the stupidity of the creature possessing the instinct. -But the earliest scrawl or daub of the child -displays the mind working on matter and the deliberate -shaping of means to an end. All intellectual -testers from Simon-Binet to the latest have found -the making or interpreting of pictures a measure of -intellectual power. They are right. Art is rationalized -pigments or sounds or words with their images -or some other rationalized material. Dr. James -Harvey Robinson in <i>Mind in the Making</i> says that -we are wrong in rationalizing the past to make up -our minds, and how does he show it? By rationalizing -another past for us. The truth is we must -rationalize the past, and Dr. Robinson should induce -us, not to stop rationalizing, but to rationalize correctly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> -and should give us something better than universal -skepticism with which to rationalize. The -art tendency is one with the religious tendency in -being rational and intellectual.</p> - -<p>Art and religion strive for high ideals; they are -disinterested and unselfish. LaFarge says to Saint -Gaudens: “That work is not worthy of you,” and -Saint Gaudens picks up a hammer and smashes the -sculpture. That is an instance paralleling the heroic -following of religious ideals with like sacrifices. -Was it fear of bogies or love of their dead which -filled so many tombs with precious articles? Believing -in immortality, Egyptians and Myceneans gave to -the dead what was most precious, and what was -most precious was the finest art in the costliest -material. Love keeps graves green: fear erects a -crematory.</p> - -<p>Art and religion are personal and emotional. -Each has its own proper expression. Of religion -the expression is worship and of art it is concrete -embodiment of the ideal, and in both cases the expression -is intimately personal and permeated with -feeling. Art is more sensible and so more emotional -because its expression must be presented to the -senses or at least to the imagination. Religion -whose primary expression is an act of the will, need -not of its nature be attended with emotion or external -display but it usually is, and feeling and expression -commonly help to the fuller expression of -religion. The rapture of art and the ecstasy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> -religion, though differing in much, have also much -in common.</p> - -<p>In their social appeal art and religion are akin. -The artist and the saint have their hours of solitary -contemplation. St. Peter at Pentecost, describing -the religious ecstasy of the inspired apostles, cried -out: “These are not drunk as you suppose,” and, -continuing, he quoted the prophet Joel: “Your young -men shall see visions and your old men shall dream -dreams.” In the forming of their visions and -dreams saint and artist are alike, though the substance -of their visions differ. They are alike also -in their impulse to give their visions expression and -to influence men with them. Religion is apostolic -and art is social, and that is why in history they have -gone forth so often hand in hand to subdue the -world. Whole nations had to conspire to erect the -Egyptian pyramids, the tower of Babel, the temples -of Israel, of Rome, of Greece and of the Orient, -and the Gothic cathedrals. Only a union of art and -religion could produce such stupendous results. -Patriotism and the state have at times come near to -these great effects, when patriotism or love of country -assumed the nature of religion. To produce -these national monuments a lasting cause as well as a -cause of wide appeal was necessary. Here again art -and religion are akin. Art is long, and religion is -immortal.</p> - -<p>Art reaches its highest and most perfect expression -in the sublime. Here religion does not walk hand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span> -in hand with art, but bears art on high and gives -to art some of its own divinity by endowing the artistic -expression with sublimity. The literature of the -Bible attained to heights which writers of other nations -could not dream of nor ambition. Genesis sets -poets and all artists upon a lofty eminence. By the -revelation of creation, the imagination and the vision -of the artist became coterminous almost with that -of the Creator. Newton’s theory of gravitation -which shepherded the starry hosts of the universe -into one obedient flock, gives us a realization of the -effect of Genesis upon the world’s imagination. The -creation <i>motif</i> in literature emancipating man’s imagination, -enlarging the boundaries of vision, and -dowering the artist with sublimity, deserves a -treatise by itself and a history worthy of its -greatness.</p> - -<p>Art and religion are united in fact, so history -teaches; art and religion are akin, so the study of -their attributes reveals. What then is the only and -full explanation of that fact and of that harmony? -Philosophers hold that the only and the full explanation -of the harmony subsisting between the -mind and reality, which is called truth, is found in -the fact that both mind and reality are reproductions -in creation of God’s truthful knowledge of Himself. -Ethicists hold that the only and full explanation of -the harmony subsisting between the will and law, -which is called moral good, is found in the fact that -both will and law are reproductions in the finite of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> -God’s love of Himself. So philosophers must hold -that the full and only explanation of the harmony -subsisting between the soul and art, which is called -the expression of the beautiful, is found in the fact -that like the innate tendency to truth and good, the -tendency to beauty is a reproduction of God’s contemplation -of Himself. Creation, as has often been -declared, is a manifestation of the art of God, a -mimetic presentation in finite matter and spirit of -the infinite ideal. All advance in truth and virtue -is an approach to divine truth and goodness, and all -true progress in art is an approach to divine beauty. -“Filled with enthusiasm,” says De Wulf in <i>L’Œuvre -d’Art et la Beauté</i>, “before the greatness of the artist’s -power, Dante Alighieri compares it to that of -Omnipotence:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“‘Your art like the grand-child of God’</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse center">(<i>Inferno</i>, XI, 103).</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Art is the grand-child of God because it is the -offspring of man’s creative power as man himself -has come from the hands of God.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART AND THE DIVINE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>3. ART IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE</h4> - -<p>The fact that religion and art are connected is -abundantly established by history. The naturalness -of that connection is made clear by the -many traits art and religion possess in common. As -philosophers have argued to the existence of God -from the fact that the universal belief in His existence -can be accounted for satisfactorily on no -other supposition; as philosophers also argue to the -immortality of the soul from man’s universal and -inevitable tendency to unending existence, so in like -manner, it may be argued that since always and -everywhere the art impulse is connected in its origin -and growth with religion, that impulse too, like -belief in God and desire of immortality and conscience -for law and tendency to truth, is a projection -of the divine upon humanity, not the anthropomorphism -of God but the theomorphism of man. The -structure of our eye, made to respond to light, justifies -us in concluding there is light. The nature of the -soul, which can respond to infinite beauty, justifies -us in concluding there is infinite beauty. He who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> -said, “Let there be light,” said also, “Let us make -man after our own image and likeness.”</p> - -<p>An explanation of the nature of these two human -acts of art and religion will disclose more analogies -while revealing essential differences. Religion is a -virtue of the will, a habit developed by the free act -of man, a virtue which culminates in worship of -God as the supreme being. The impulse of art has -not been analyzed as fully and as satisfactorily as -the virtue of religion, but from Aristotle’s analysis -in the <i>Poetics</i>, through the Neo-Platonists and the -Scholastics down to Kant and his followers, there is -common agreement that the tendency to beauty does -not belong to the inclination towards good, actuating -appetite and will, but that the enjoyment of beauty -is a function of the perceptions, the imagination, and -the mind. The admitted disinterestedness of the -art impulse is the paramount and irresistible evidence -that it differs essentially from the self-seeking tendency -of will and appetite which cannot be indifferent -to good, since good is the very cause and condition of -the appetite’s existence. The enjoyment of a painted -fruit is akin to the enjoyment of verified theory or -of a triumphant conclusion, and not like the satisfaction -felt in the ownership of the painting of fruit -or in the actual craving or eating of the fruit.</p> - -<p>It is evident, therefore, why a man may be artistic -without being religious. There is no more difficulty -in understanding why an artist is not a saint than -in knowing that conscience is one thing and acting up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span> -to it another thing. Improvement in art does not -always mean improvement in morals or in religion, -any more than to know is to will. Nor, on the other -hand, will the evil of an artist or of his work be -evidence against the divinity of art. The divine -origin of conscience and the natural law is evident in -the vice of the sinner as in the virtues of the saint. -The essential difference between art and religion -shows also that the school in which the prophet is -Ruskin, the school which finds a religion in the -beauty of world or of art, is incorrect in its teaching. -Love and fear are the mainsprings of action, -the incentives to virtue. Beauty may grace the attraction -of good; it cannot take the place of good in -virtue and religion. Estheticism is not asceticism. -Francis of Assisi was a poet and a saint, Francesca -da Rimini enjoyed poetry, might have been a poet, -but was not always a saint, and many a Francisco -and Francesca may be found neither artistic nor -religious, as many are talented without being virtuous -and virtuous without being talented.</p> - -<p>Despite the sad lack of harmony between the -beauty of their art and the virtue of their lives, artists -have nevertheless always been revered. The -honor of their art has won them in their lapses a -gentleness of treatment not accorded to less favored -mortals. They are fallen angels if they fall.</p> - -<p>Does the union of religion and art mean then -that the artist must be a moralist? To moralize is -not a function of art as such. I enjoy the beauty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> -of a tree without any feeling that it conveys a truth -or inculcates a virtue. The artist may transfer the -tree to canvas, where I enjoy it as I did in nature -without any accessory implication, informing or -ethical. Joyce Kilmer may put the tree in a poem -and with it add beauty to the truth that, “only God -can make a tree.” The psalmist may put a tree in -his sacred hymn and with it add beauty to his praise -of the life of a good man, who shall be “like a tree -planted near the running waters.” Logical truth -and moral good are not excluded from art, although -the artist by profession is not a teacher. Modern -critics are often inconsistent and hypocritical in welcoming -every dramatist or poet or novelist who undisguisedly -advocates various theories, but will be -withering in their scorn for any one who advocates -the ten commandments. To moralize, to dogmatize, -to theorize is not the function of art, and though -these actions are not incompatible with the functions -of art, very rarely in the history of art has it been -successful when it undertook to teach or to preach. -Didactic poetry, satire poetry and propaganda -drama, have great difficulty in becoming poetry and -remaining poetry.</p> - -<p>Religion then is a virtue of the will, resulting in -acts of worship; art, a power of the mind, resulting -in various artistic creations. Religion may remain -wholly spiritual, even in its expression, but, though -the mind’s appreciation of beauty may rest on purely -spiritual and intellectual objects, such as theories or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> -virtues or God and heaven, art must express itself -in sensible objects. Even in literature, the most intellectual -of arts, words and pictures of the imagination -are essential. Angels might be conceived as -having an art whose sole medium was spiritual ideas, -not so man, whose mind works through imagination. -Aquinas, stressing the intellectual nature of beauty, -calls attention to the fact that while men speak of -beautiful sights and beautiful sounds, they will rarely -and only figuratively consider the acts of other -senses, as taste, touch and scent, beautiful. The actions -of these senses are immersed in the material, -whereas sight and hearing are closer to the intellectual -and spiritual. Man has not yet succeeded in -making a fine art whose medium would be tastes and -touches and fragrances. The unselfish enjoyment of -art cannot be released in objects so material and so -near to the appetites. The sensualist is not an -artist in yielding to sense enjoyment, although he -may wish to give his unhallowed ways an artistic -gloss. The one who sees only an apple pie in rosy -apples or senses slumbrous ease in soft velvets and -in iridescent silks or perceives only the perfume in -flower and fruit, is not experiencing esthetic emotions, -but rather stirrings of the bodily appetites. -If estheticism is not asceticism, neither is it, on the -other hand, concupiscence or mere sensualism.</p> - -<p>Does the connection between art and religion exclude -the presentation of evil in art? Art would be -much handicapped if it were restricted entirely to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> -good objects. Art is a manifestation of man’s intellect -and must act in accord with the nature of that -faculty. If evil is artistically presented, it must be -depicted as evil. To present moral evil as a good is -a falsification as repugnant to the mind as would be -the painting of a blue sunrise, of a green moon or -of a black-and-tan sea, and as absurd as the sculpture -of a five-legged lion. The enlightened mind -rejects such physical monstrosities, and the enlightened -mind, despite the lower appetites, rejects moral -disorders with equal, if not greater, repugnance.</p> - -<p>Again, art requires that the evil, the moral ugliness -or physical ugliness, be a necessary and rational -part of the presentation. A fact of nature becomes -at once the material of science, because science concerns -itself with unadorned truth. But for a fact -of nature to be material of art, it must be idealized, -that is, it must be made an integral part of the art -product. The pleasure of art does not arise from -deception but from illusion which does not deceive. -Painted grapes might deceive birds; but did they -deceive men, then the effect would not be that of art -but of reality. The evil or ugly can never be pleasant -as long as it is present and actual. The transfer -of evil to the world of art if it becomes an integral, -justified and rationalized part of the illusion, is -usually enough to rob evil of its actuality and unpleasantness.</p> - -<p>Sometimes in contemporary realism, with every -justification of ugliness from the art product, there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> -is depression and not true art pleasure, because we -cannot forget the actual world when contemplating -the imaginary world of art. Suppose “Macbeth” -or “Œdipus” were really historical and were acted -in the presence of their contemporaries or of the -next generation. Would there be satisfaction and -the emotional relief arising from illusion? Hardly. -Memories would be too much lacerated with the actual -to surrender to the illusion of art and to enjoy -its contemplation. Actuality would put back the salt -into the tears that else might have been sweetened -by transfer of evil to remote and imaginary realms. -The Greeks and Shakespeare were right in making -their tragedies historical, whereas modern realists -are somber with pessimism because they never forsake -the actual.</p> - -<p>Art and religion are both concerned with life and -so they both must touch evil and ugliness, unhappily -a large part of life. Religion as a virtue -must overcome evil and not permit it to master the -will. Art depicts evil in such a way as not to offend -the enlightened mind, by approval of evil or by the -artistically unjustified introduction of evil or by actual -experience of evil. In all these cases the mind -would not experience the true and lasting pleasure -of art. The taste of fruit passes; the contemplation -of painted fruit is a joy forever. Art pleasure is -not the playing with toys, as Plato would seem to -make it, but the fine occupation of rational minds, -which Aristotle made it, an occupation worthy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> -man because art interprets nature and man to himself, -because art exercises man’s rational faculties, -because art releases man’s emotions under conditions -where the evil of actual life is removed. Macbeth -and Œdipus in life were saddening spectacles; the -echo of that sadness felt through dramatic representation -has high pleasure for the mind.</p> - -<p>The cathartic function of art brings it close to -the virtuous and the divine. What virtue does -really, art does ideally, transforming evil into good. -The vicarious sacrifice of Calvary was the catharsis -of mankind, an infinite cleansing, compared with -which the vicarious feeling of dramatically enacted -evil is but as a drop to the ocean. Close to the divine, -too, although at the same time infinitely -remote, is the creation of art. Wisdom and love -inspired God in His creation, but so also did the -quest of beauty. Aquinas called the universe God’s -sermon, and the universe is a divine picturing and -sculpturing and harmonizing. The artist follows -far after, rethinking through finite images the ideals -which filled the thoughts of the Divine Artist.</p> - -<p>In idealizing, in creating, is art akin to the divine, -and, lastly, in its disinterestedness is art divine. All -appreciation of beauty is divine. Contemplation -will be the occupation of eternity, and contemplation -is the proper and the congenial attitude of the soul -towards beauty. Good inspires love and attracts to -union, but when union has been effected in eternity, -the enraptured ecstasy of the beautiful will be the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> -soul’s unending activity. Beauty is the supreme excellence -of truth, the polish on the granite of fact, -the uncloying fascination arrested upon perfection. -In eternity infinite good and infinite truth, obscured -in time, will stream into the soul unclouded and refulgent, -and beauty will grace love and crown -wisdom.</p> - -<p>The millions of mankind who admire the red of -every morning, and the forests breaking green -through the silver mists and the birds in awakened -song rising from the flowers to the brightening sky, -these millions do not begrudge one another such -beautiful spectacles, nor are they mutually jealous -as they listen to beautiful sounds. That unselfish, -that unenvious contemplation of beauty marks off -man from animals by an impassable chasm and makes -him an image of the self-sufficing Creator, the source -of all beauty, the exemplar of all beauty, whom the -Blessed forever contemplate and forever enjoy, unenvying -and unenviously.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>“What is the prime requisite of a critic?” -was the question. “His sincerity,” said -one; “his sympathy,” said a second; “his philosophy,” -said a third, “because everything he says -will be ruled by his principles, even his sincerity and -sympathy.” The answer of the third speaker is -pertinent to a symposium printed in the <i>New Republic</i> -on the function of criticism.</p> - -<p>It is the common view of the seven writers that -criticism is an art and the critics, artists, but no one, -except Mr. Francis Hackett, tries to show what the -label of artist means. Mr. Dickinson Miller, a professor -in a theological seminary, very justly and -quite fittingly insists on the social responsibility of -the artist, as one who deals with life. Mr. Lovett -goes to history and prepares the ground for a discussion -of principles by grouping critics in several -classes. Mr. Clive takes the humblest and most -practical view of the critic, calling him an appraiser, -a function which Mr. H. L. Mencken vehemently -repudiates and places a chip on his shoulder while -belligerently proclaiming himself impressionistic.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> -He makes one deep remark which would seem to -put him in the same school of esthetics with Mr. -Hackett. Presumably with humorous intent, or perhaps -seriously, Mr. Mencken locates the artistic -impulse in “hormones and intestinal flora.” Hormones -are secretions of the glands (we just looked it -up!) and “intestinal flora” may mean ferments. -Mr. Mencken is abreast of the times. Graft on a -new gland and masticate yeast, these are the new -specifics for all the ills that flesh is heir to.</p> - -<p>The other contributors to this interesting symposium, -though not, with the exception of Mr. -Hackett, delving as deep as Mr. Mencken, would -appear to be in philosophy individualists and subjectivists. -The former editor of the <i>Athenæum</i>, -Mr. J. Middleton Murry, accepts the dictum of -Rémy de Gourmont: “Erect personal impressions -into laws,” as the “true motto of a critic.” Mr. -Murry is, however, too sensible to accord to individual -impressions undue freedom and with some -violence to his consistency asserts that personal laws -stand or fall by their agreement with common experience -and with human nature.</p> - -<p>Mr. Morris Cohen puts himself into a fallacious -dilemma from which he does not successfully extricate -himself. According to Mr. Cohen, all critics -are led by personal impressions or by the authority -of others. He should know that between the blind -feeling of impressionism and the blind faith of authority -there is enlightened reason. Mr. Cohen does<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> -not take the path of reason, but endeavors to escape -the horns of his own dilemma by recourse to pragmatism. -He claims, what will be news to historians -of philosophy, that Euclid was the first pragmatist, -although in the next breath Mr. Cohen states that -“mathematicians of the nineteenth century have -shown that Euclid’s axioms are mere guesses to be -justified by their consequences in the factual realm.” -“Factual realm” seems to mean the indefinitely remote -future of pragmatism where the gold of truth -is separated from meaner elements. Some chosen -spirits of the “factual realm” now assure us that the -“self-evident principles” of Euclid are “guesses.” -Mr. Cohen is equipped to write an inside history of -philosophy with some entirely original features. -The “factual realm” leads back to skepticism, and -Mr. Cohen is still impaled by his dilemma.</p> - -<p>Mr. Francis Hackett makes the most serious attempt -to get at the philosophy of criticism and of -art, and attacks at once the question of the beautiful. -It is evidence of his thoroughness that he goes -straightway to the great problem of esthetics, “Can -an object be at once beautiful and evil?” Mr. -Hackett answers promptly in the negative, but then -proceeds to confuse the point by going to another -and different question, “Can evil or an ugly object -be represented in art?” The answer to this question -is evident. The elopement of Helen, the patricide -and incest of Œdipus, the galleries of Dante’s Inferno -and Purgatorio, and countless other happenings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> -in the world of art, show that the evil and the -ugly have been and may be represented in art. “I -can hardly conceive,” says Mr. Hackett, “an artist -as subduing a cancerous object to an esthetic design.” -But why not? Marriage with one’s mother is more -repugnant than a cancer, and yet it was handled successfully -by Sophocles, however repulsive some of his -imitators have been in their details.</p> - -<p>The very transfer to the realm of art robs the -ugly object of its actuality and imminence. Surely -the ugly and evil have been and may be represented -in art, but such objects may not be represented as -beautiful and good. That were as false and untrue -to nature as a centipede cow in a picture. Perhaps -a cancer could not appear in a picture or poem or -story except by suggestion. A stark realism would -disgust, but a true artist might subdue a cancerous -object to artistic design as effectively as Homer subdued -in his story the fleas of the dog, Argos, and -the dung-heap where he lay.</p> - -<p>Beauty in art would lose one of its charms, the -splendor of contrast, did not admitted ugliness or -evil occur in art. Bad art disgusts and so does badness -in art, when badness is approved or when it is -projected into art for purposes not artistic. Mr. -Hackett’s real trouble is that he has not properly -isolated the feeling of art awakened by beauty. He -thinks that the esthetic sense is sexual and visceral. -If the mouth waters at painted fruit, would Mr. -Hackett call art salival? Human beings are composites,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> -and external objects while producing their -essential and proper effects may have concomitant -effects accidentally brought into being. To admire -the beauty of an apple is an esthetic feeling entirely -distinct in cause and faculty and in operation from -the feeling of sensible satisfaction, anticipated or -actual, which comes to the taste-buds, and different -again from any visceral qualms that may arise from -associated ideas of unhappy experience with other -apples.</p> - -<p>Mr. Hackett has been led astray by not distinguishing -the disinterested emotions of beauty from -the selfish emotions of appetite. He calls beauty, -“disinterested satisfaction,” and in that word “disinterested” -he has a fact about beauty, a fact solving -his problems, a fact which has been admitted by -every one who has studied the subject, and a fact -which is capable of experimental demonstration at -any moment. Professor Phelps of Yale once called -esthetic emotions a spinal thrill; Mr. Mencken -would call them “hormones or intestinal flora”; and -Mr. Hackett declares that “the true sources of -esthetic satisfaction and dissatisfaction are deep in -our emotional and visceral life.” The one essential -quality of disinterestedness, found in esthetic satisfaction, -shows the absurdity of all such statements. -Bodily emotions are all the outcome of appetites, -and appetites are never disinterested but always self-seeking -by their very nature. They are actuated by -good; they tend to an end, an end which they do<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> -not and cannot seek disinterestedly. Even the act -of the highest disinterested love may be akin to the -sense of beauty, but it is not as wholly disinterested -because that unselfish love is still seeking good, and -good as such does not come within the purview of -beauty at all. It is impossible to be disinterested -towards good or evil.</p> - -<p>Mr. Hackett speaks of beauty being a “sensuous -satisfaction.” Here again there is a confusion between -beauty of art and other beauty. Art appeals -to the senses because art presents its beauty in concrete -embodiments. To that extent the satisfaction -of beauty arises from sensible objects, but the feeling -of beauty transcends mere sensation. “Art is -long.” “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” The -satisfaction of appetite is passing; the satisfaction -of beauty abides. Mr. Hackett does well to seek -the springs of beauty in personality. Personality is -an abiding principle of intellectual beings. The enduring -joy of beauty argues to an abiding principle -which bears the dynamic charge of that joy. Beauty -supposes a soul.</p> - -<p>“Beauty is a light that may follow any reality -whatever and give us the power to release our emotions -happily in the presence of that reality.” So -states Mr. Hackett, and he is right, if he gives the -correct meaning to “emotions.” Light or luster -has been recognized from all time as an objective -element of beauty, which has been defined as the -light of truth. Mr. Hackett paraphrases a definition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span> -which has been incorrectly attributed to Plato. -Kleutgen has defined beauty as the perfection of anything -resplendently manifested.</p> - -<p>Let us hope that Mr. Hackett will remove “visceral” -from among the qualities of beauty and preclude -critics from adding a fiftieth explanation of -Aristotle’s <i>catharsis</i> to the forty-nine varieties already -set forth. Wearers of Murphy buttons or -those who have lost or may lose sections of the intestinal -tract should be assured in an amended edition -of Mr. Hackett’s esthetics that their sense of beauty -has not been abbreviated or impaired. Sane -philosophy is the prime requisite of true criticism.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_SECOND">PART SECOND<br /> -<span class="smaller">ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE</span></h2> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX<br /> -<span class="smaller">LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The teacher of literature today is looking backward -when he should be looking forward. -Greek literature, Latin literature and, to a large -extent, English literature are not orientated; they -do not face the rising sun. It was not so in the Greek -schools of Greek literature. Gorgias and Isocrates -taught literature for the morrow, and for practical -and immediately practical purposes. In the Roman -schools it was so from first to last. Recall Cicero’s -studies under Greek rhetoricians and Cicero’s own -preachment in the <i>Archias</i> speech. “Shame on those -who bury themselves so deep in literature that they -harvest nothing for the good of all and bring nothing -to light for our eyes to look upon.” Recall -Quintilian’s <i>Institutes of Oratory</i>, and all the intervening -schools of Rome. Rome had no vocational -schools for road-building, but Rome did have schools -of grammar, poetry, rhetoric and philosophy where -it trained leaders with vision and with the power -to act. The brains of Rome trained in literature -guided barbarian hands to lay down the roads over -which Christianity traveled and civilization came -down to us.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p> - -<p>Literature looked forward in every period of the -world’s schooling. Ausonius and Isidore, Alcuin and -Petrarch, Boileau and Pope, England and France, -and even Germany until about the middle of the -nineteenth century and America until a little later, -kept the literatures of Greece and Rome orientated -to the future by teaching them as arts, by making -composition of literature the goal of the teaching of -literature.</p> - -<p>Science is ever growing old; history is always -being rewritten; literature is ever young. We know -more about Homer’s history than Longinus knew, -but we do not taste the delight of his poetry any -better than Longinus tasted it. “Handing on the -torch of learning” is a trite phrase, but it is literally -verified in the true teaching of literature. Each -age adds to the advance of science and information, -but art is long. Literature and art do not belong to -the past. Literally and without figure of speech they -are the past living in the present. They are the -flaming torch, kindled in the past, never dimming -and never to dim.</p> - -<p>Write a history of artists; do not write a history -of art. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” The -information of science changes every moment; the -appreciation of art once gained is enduring. The -<i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i> has rewritten all its science -and history; it reprints its appreciations of Sophocles -by Campbell and of Demosthenes by Jebb and even -of Johnson by Macaulay. Where the cause is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span> -same, the effect is the same, and so the beauty of -Homer’s rosy-fingered dawn awakens still the same -appreciation.</p> - -<p>Of literature as a subject of investigation in -university or graduate work there is here no question. -The investigator studies the origin, the development, -the history of literature. He looks backward; -his purpose is to amass information and to -codify a science. That is not or should not be the -purpose of the teacher in high school and college. -He is educating; he wishes to set in operation and -perfect the faculties of the class before him, to impress -upon every faculty its own proper art, that is, -its habitual and excellent way of acting. The school -teacher is concerned with the education of acts; the -university lecturer with the education of facts.</p> - -<p>Take the <i>Ratio Studiorum</i> of the Jesuits, a system -embodying the traditions of education and not differing -fundamentally from other systems of its time. -The <i>Ratio Studiorum</i> had no history of literature -or lectures on the evolution of literature. It did -not approach literature as a science but as an art. It -took the standard authors of Latin and Greek. -Cicero was the staple of every class in Latin because -for nearly every kind of Latinity, history and poetry -excepted, he was a model. Cicero was analyzed, -was appreciated, was imitated, that the student -might express himself in writing and speaking as -clearly, as interestingly, as forcibly as Cicero, that -the student might be master of acts of literature, not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> -of facts about literature. That was and is humanism; -that is, making a man a man by equipping all -his faculties with the art proper to each. The humanities -were so called because they embody man. -Science is classified nature; literature is nature -brought into touch with man’s personality and transmuted -into art, man’s only creation.</p> - -<p>You cannot get grapes from thorns or figs from -thistles. Every other subject in the curriculum produces -its kind; so should literature. Mathematics -makes mathematicians, chemistry chemists, and physics -physicists. Art should produce artists; literature -should result in literature, in artistic expression, -but it is made to produce historians, biographers, -perhaps critics. The history of literature, -the evolution of literature should be put out of high -school and college and relegated to the university -or handed over to the lectures on history, leaving -the valuable time of literature for appreciation and -expression.</p> - -<p>Today we have literature in one class and composition -in another and perhaps rhetoric in another. -Departments are the offspring of universities and -the instruments of science. The rational school of -literary expression correlates author, precept and -exercise. Information may be imparted piecemeal -and from different sources; it is multitudinous and -capable of division. Formation is one and united; -it is the faculty or power brought to the perfection -of self-expression. Art requires a teacher and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> -unifying of means; science may have a score of lecturers -as its truths are found in a score of books. -Let the teacher of literature therefore take standard -literature, make it understood, feel its personality -that students may feel it, note and appreciate its -beauty that others may take fire or at least get heat -from the enthusiasm kindled within him, and then -let the teacher see to it that his class express their -own selves as the author expressed himself. Let -students do for Lincoln what Shakespeare did for -Julius Cæsar. If they cannot do a play, perhaps -they can do an act; if they cannot create a character, -perhaps they can give one characteristic action; if -they cannot write a description or tell a story, perhaps -they can supply a noun for Lincoln or visualize -his deeds in a verb or paint him in an epithet or -coin him in a metaphor. And all this, not for an -Elizabethan public, but for the students’ own public -here and now, looking forward, not backward.</p> - -<p>Desperate efforts have been made to galvanize -literary courses by lectures on modern novels, current -magazines and daily papers. The lamentable -fact is that most recent products are not literature; -that if there is in them art, it has not been made -available for students, as the art of literary classics -has been made available by centuries of criticism, -and that, finally, the contents of contemporary writings -are so easy of access and so inviting to the -reader and yet often so ephemeral, that the artistic -form is neglected. There is no contemporary history,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> -neither is there contemporary criticism. Literature, -like all art, must pass beyond the prejudices -and passions of the day to be known and appreciated -as art at all. It is for the enlightened teacher of -literature to make the students embody their own -experience in the finest art molds of the past, not -distracting them by the multiplicity of modern literature, -but holding up the ideals, like torches, to light -the paths before them and, like expert guides, to -direct the trembling steps of beginners to new goals.</p> - -<p>Literature is not the study of words. Grammar -or philology is the study of words. Science dehumanizes -everything; it eliminates the personal -equation; it is objective, unimpassioned, impersonal, -subordinating everything to laws and principles. -Literature is the opposite in every respect. It is -embodied humanity. Science contains some of man’s -operations; literature enshrines all; not truth alone, -but good and beauty as well; not simply the clear -idea, the accurate statement, the correct conclusion, -the consistent reasoning, but also the myriad visions -of the imagination, the subtle analogies, the suggestive -creations, haunting beauties and idealized good. -So literature actuates every power of man whether -that power is a constituent part of man’s soul or is -a bodily power whose operation by reaction terminates -in man’s soul.</p> - -<p>As literature is therefore the whole man, so far as -humanity can be put in language, the understanding -of literature, its appreciation and most of all its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> -creation will make every power of the student operate, -if literature is taught as literature. Such results -will not come automatically; they come when the -teacher by true appreciation creates again before -the student the literary masterpiece and when the -student strives to rival the masterpiece in the expression -of his own experience and of his own dawning -humanity. Literature is looking forward when -it is making minds think and imaginations imagine -and reasons reason and tastes taste and emotions -thrill. Teach literature as an art, which it is; not -as a science, which it is not.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="X">X<br /> -<span class="smaller">UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>Unity is most useful, if not essential, to a satisfactory -course of studies. In the university this -unity is effected by the profession which the student -has chosen. His field of concentration in art, -literature, law, medicine, science, engineering or -divinity dictates to him his subjects, and his own -earnest choice, together with prescriptions and examinations, -insures unity and thoroughness in concentration -courses.</p> - -<p>Lecturing is the predominant method of the university -because professors of higher branches are -few and students are comparatively numerous. Lecturing -is the weakest and most ineffective of all -means of education, and is only saved from complete -failure by the serious purposes of university -students and much more by the sanction of -repetitions and examinations.</p> - -<p>In the colleges, however, with the advent of electivism -there was no unifying bond to the studies. -University methods of studies and lectures prevailed -where there were no university conditions. Thoroughgoing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> -electivists, like Dr. Eliot, admitted that -the purpose of the college was a general education -or culture, but held that any and every study could -give such general training. President Lowell, Dr. -Eliot’s successor, began to put order into the chaos -of extreme electivism. He saw his coaches on the -athletic fields build up expert athletes by a rigidly -prescribed course of training, and proclaimed the -analogy between body and mind, an analogy which -would have been all the more cogent had his philosophy -been materialistic like that of Dr. Eliot. -The prescribed examination in one department at -the end of four years is the latest advance of Harvard -toward definiteness and unity.</p> - -<p>All colleges in America took up electivism to some -extent, and even where studies were still prescribed -they adopted in their catalogs the language and -methods of electivism. No longer were there -classes, but everywhere you had courses and departments. -One effect of this system has been to make -coördinate and of equal importance many subjects -which had formerly been subordinate. Colleges -whose major subject, or field of concentration, had -been language, with other subjects subordinate, now -tended to make every subject a major and every -field a field of concentration. The departmental -system has helped to impair unity of education by -disturbing the hierarchy of studies and by removing -all subordination. It does not appear to be feasible -to concentrate on everything. In some cases colleges<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> -seem about to give up the general-training idea -and are tending to make their whole course subservient -to a profession, obliging every one to take a -pre-medical course because the American Medical -Association is mighty and medical schools are very -exacting.</p> - -<p>Formerly high schools and colleges made language -or self-expression the field of concentration, and -other subjects, like history, mathematics, sciences, -were kept subordinate. College and high school -had then one purpose, which unified all their studies, -as a profession unified lectures in the university—that -purpose was the mastery of the art of expression. -The French lycées, the German gymnasia, -the English public schools, the Jesuit <i>Ratio Studiorum</i>, -prepared for the university by making students -masters of writing and speaking. The writer -and speaker could express himself; his intellectual -faculties could work properly, and therefore they -had received a general training which prepared them -for professional work of a special kind. The field -of concentration was shown in the names of the -classes. The teachers were teachers, not of Latin, -Greek, English, but of grammar, of poetry, of oratory, -of clear, interesting, forceful expression.</p> - -<p>The departmental system destroys this fine unity -or renders it very difficult of attainment. The departmental -system has been perhaps the chief reason -why the classics have been taught as means towards -the acquisition of various sciences rather than as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> -exemplifications of literary art. It is as literature -and as models of perfect expression that the classics -have hitherto survived; as literature and models of -expression they were taught in the days preceding -the university system of departments. Cicero was a -model of letter-writing, of essay-writing, of speech-making. -He was chosen with a view to composition; -he was graded with a view to composition.</p> - -<p>How can a department teacher preserve the -former unity of system, where all literature was -studied with one dominating purpose, self-expression? -If the grade of the class is rhetoric or oratorical -expression, will each department teach its -own authors, Greek, Latin and English, following -the same rhetorical precepts in the same order, or -will each department follow its own terminology -and its own order, or will, as has happened everywhere, -the teaching of rhetoric be relegated to -English or to a separate professor, leaving Cicero -and Demosthenes to be taught as grammatical -documents or historical documents or as legal documents, -not as speeches, not as models of oratorical -expression? Will the professor of Latin teach -Virgil as epic poetry, and the professor of Greek -teach Homer as epic poetry, and the professor of -English teach Milton as epic poetry, or will the -teaching of poetry be avoided by the Greek and -Latin departments entirely? Cicero and Demosthenes -survive because they are orators; Homer -and Virgil live because they are epic poets, but the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> -departmental system either forgets that fact entirely -or has three professors teaching the same -thing with confusion in the order and in the rules -of art. The departmental system, which is a university -device adapted for specialization, makes -unity of education extremely difficult, and has taken -all the interest out of literature by teaching it as -everything else but literature!</p> - -<p>Besides, as art is the power of doing, and science -is chiefly systematized information, the process of -education for doing will be different from the process -of acquiring information. Too many cooks -may spoil the broth because cooking is an art, but -too many sign-posts may not always confuse the -traveler. It is far easier to divide information -among various agents and impart it piecemeal than -to apportion the different faculties used in an art -to different individuals who will train them to act -together harmoniously. Different teachers may -very well teach the geography of different countries, -but it would not be feasible to let one teacher -have the right hand and another the left in teaching -the art of piano-playing.</p> - -<p>Omitting the effect of personality, which is paramount -in art, as the history of all religious movements -shows it also to have been in the formation -of character and in virtue, one cannot fail to see -that departments cannot well coöperate in giving -the formation of art. In fact, practically the art -of composition has ceased to be the field of concentration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span> -in modern high schools and colleges. All -literatures, even English, are taught mostly as -sciences. The only wholesome reaction in modern -education against the predominance of science or -systematized information is found in the present -vogue for psychological tests. These are professedly -tests of power, not of mere information, -and in them the power of self-expression through -language is preëminent. All the examinations are -conditioned by the necessary medium of language, -and by far the greater number of tests are and must -always be tests in linguistic expression.</p> - -<p>Language is the only practical measure of intelligence, -and if such tests win favor, they may result -in establishing once more the art of expression -as the field of concentration or major subject in high -schools and colleges which give a general education. -Language, when taught as an art, educates the mind, -giving it the powers of expression which are the -guaranties of the mind’s adequate education. Professors -become teachers of an art, not lecturers in -a science. Perfect unity is found where the finest -models of self-expression in all languages, especially -the classical languages, are directed by one teacher -to the mastery of the art of expression in one’s -own language.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The nineteenth century was a century of science. -Its atmosphere was surcharged with scientific -discoveries and scientific theories, and radiated a -scientific influence in every direction. Among other -effects of that all-pervading spirit we may mention -two that entered the classroom and deeply modified -the teaching of literature. Science insisted on concrete -results and tended to emphasize mechanical -methods, enhancing system at the expense of -personality.</p> - -<p>System was looked upon in some sense as automatic. -Such a widespread delusion, which is not -yet fully dissipated, was the logical outcome of the -mechanical explanation of the universe. The world -had evolved along the lines of inflexible laws. -Man was part of the machine, and though the -mechanism was complicated in his case, yet it was -nothing but mechanism after all. If system could -run the universe without the help of personality, it -would not be hard for it to run the little universe -of man. The same reasoning would hold in a classroom.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> -The teacher might be asked to touch the -button, but the system would do the rest.</p> - -<p>It would not seem to require much argumentation -to show the fallacy of such a theory. Do we -not all know that nothing in this world is wholly -automatic? Motion is a function of personality. -Perpetual motion in systems and organizations, -that would dispense with personality, is just as absurd -as the same proposal in the physical order. -Nothing in this world will run of itself without personal -coöperation. Somewhere there must be a -living, breathing, responsible individual. We may -have to travel a long way to find him, but we shall -find him, the man behind the motion. It is so with -machines; it is much more so with organizations -and systems and laws; it is most of all so in education. -Latin or German or physics or anything else -without a teacher (cf. catalog of correspondence -schools) are phrases that belong to the language of -advertisement which has omitted from its ethics the -chapter on lying. All success, all interest, all enthusiasm -are harvests whose sowing is in a human -head or human heart. Even the universe calls for -the constantly applied force of omnipotence to keep -it from disintegrating into nothingness and the -watchfulness of Providence to prevent it from wrecking -itself. While writers on education have been -tracing the causes of the decrease of interest in the -classics have they not been overlooking the necessary -factor of personality?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span></p> - -<p>The other depressing effect upon education exercised -by the scientific atmosphere was the insistence -upon concrete results, leading likewise to the elimination -of human interest. Science said to every -branch of knowledge, “Collect your data, classify -your instances, make your deductions, enunciate -your laws.” The literary classics were bade to -stand and deliver. They had to have data and deductions -and laws. Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes -and Cicero became the chosen camping-ground -of the specialists. The pupils that finished -the <i>Iliad</i> with a taste developed, an imagination -warmed, a soul uplifted, might be refused a degree. -The pupil who had Homer undergo the surgical -operations of specialism, who had him pigeon-holed, -who had him weighed and counted, was the honor -man of the class. He could write an essay on -Homeric Æolisms or Homeric ship-building or -Homeric word-building. He knew more about Homeric -pottery than Homeric poetry. What if -his heart never beat faster as he read; what if he -was too busy measuring the length of Homeric -swords or analyzing the metal of Homeric -armor, to drink in the imaginative delight of battle, -with Homeric peers, “far on the ringing plains of -windy Troy,” he was scientific, he had some concrete -results to show for his schooling, and he was -the pet child of the century. Assets of the mind -could not be weighed or measured; his doctor’s dissertation -in his grip could. It contained just twenty-five<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> -thousand words, and weighed one pound and a -half, and had a superficial area of about a hundred -square yards.</p> - -<p>The final outcome of the baneful influence of the -scientific atmosphere is the almost complete perversion -of the good old word, scholar. No one can -lay claim now to the title scholarly, unless he is -equipped with a formidable array of facts and -figures. He must bristle with the fretful quills -of half a hundred sciences. In the study of the -classics he is so busy with the words of the text that -he has not time for their meaning. When he has -settled the conflicting claims of innumerable variant -readings and all the arguments for the same, he -has no leisure left for the old-fashioned practice -of trying to appreciate the accepted reading. Scholarship -is now a matter of memory, a something that -deals with introductions, footnotes, excursuses and -critical apparatuses. Plead guilty to an ignorance -of all this, and you may be indulgently permitted to -call yourself judicious, appreciative, discerning, -capable of enjoying a literary masterpiece, but you -could not presume to call yourself scholarly. Justin -McCarthy, in an article about his old schoolmaster, -alludes to the same fact. “I never knew a -scholar,” he declares, “so thorough who was less -of a pedant, but I ought to say, perhaps, that the -general character of his teaching was not what -would be called in our days scholarly.”</p> - -<p>This steady elimination of the subjective element<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> -of education with the corresponding development -of the objective side during the years of the -nineteenth century, all tended to the extinction of -the individual. Another factor also coöperated in -achieving this result. The classes in school and college -grew more numerous, and the schoolmaster became -in turn a teacher, a professor, a lecturer. -With each change he drew further away from his -hearers. The greater the audience the weaker the -personal note, the less individual the expression. -The lecturer on a classical author must stray more -from the text than the teacher. He is necessarily -more general and hence more impersonal. He feels -bound to give facts more than impressions. He is -committed to the formulating of theories based on -a dissection of the text, and shrinks from setting -forth the feelings which a masterpiece excites. The -lecturer tends to subordinate the author to his lecture, -where the teacher’s more humble lot leads him -to efface himself in the presence of the author.</p> - -<p>This leads us to set forth the proper attitude of -the teacher toward the text, and we could not begin -the discussion better than by giving a further -description of Justin McCarthy’s old schoolmaster.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I have,” he wrote, in March, 1899, “the most delightful and -tender memories of my dear old schoolmaster in Cork. He was -not, indeed, the first schoolmaster I ever had, but he taught me -all or put me in the way of learning all that I have ever known, -and after this long lapse of time I feel as strongly as ever how<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> -much I owe him. His name was John Goulding, and he kept a -school in the city of Cork, my birthplace.</p> - -<p>“To make us understand what we were reading and enjoy it, -to make us wish to read more and understand it better—such -was the object of his whole method. There was very little of -what is called ‘getting by heart’ in his system, unless when he -wished to train memory merely for the sake of training it. -When we were studying some Latin author he told us all about -the author and the scenes described in the pages before us, and -he invited all manner of questions on the subject. He showed -us on the maps where the places were which the author was -describing, and he illustrated the author’s meaning as if he were -an artist illustrating a story.</p> - -<p>“I do not know to describe his method of teaching better -than by saying that it was literary rather than scholastic. His -great desire was that a boy should be able to read Greek and -Latin as easily as he read Shakespeare and Addison, and he -regarded grammar as a necessary means to that end, but not as -the end itself. He always took care that historical and geographical -knowledge should work in with and illustrate our -literary studies.</p> - -<p>“I can only say for myself that whatever love of books I may -have had I owe in the main to his teaching and to his influence, -and I can say with literal truthfulness that throughout a busy -life in public and in private his influence and teaching have -always been with me and are with me still.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>John Goulding would not be considered in our -day a remarkable pedagogist and has not bequeathed -his name to a system of education; yet -he presents many traits of the true teacher, and -these details of his life are pertinent to our question.</p> - -<p>The true commentator, whose suggestion we see<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> -in the Cork schoolmaster, will not be a philologist, -but will use philology; he will not be a grammarian, -but he will refuse no point of grammar that will -help. He will press every science into service, but -he will be the slave of none. He will remember -that his supreme object in teaching is not to compose -a dictionary of antiquities nor to collect extracts -for rhetoric or examples for grammar. His -object rather is and should be to bring the pupil to -the text, to bring the mind of the author to the mind -of the reader. Away from dictionary and grammar, -away from footnote and appendix, back to the -text, should be the teacher’s cry. The text should -be the center upon which every source of information -should be focused, not the center from which -to radiate to the cheerless circumference of specializations. -We do not contend for superficiality, for -slipshod grammar, for inaccurate erudition. Thoroughness, -care, accuracy, must rule in the classroom. -We are simply for liberal education, which opposes -early specialization in courses and must equally oppose -it in the teaching of literature.</p> - -<p>The study of the classics should key up the whole -intellectual apparatus. It should sharpen the critical -faculties, warm the imagination, cultivate the -judgment, develop the taste, ennoble the appreciation, -exercise, partially at least, the reasoning -faculty, and finally endow the student with perfected -powers of expression. To subordinate literature to -any one of the swarm of sciences that sprang into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> -life last century is to limit its efficiency and degrade -it as a means of general culture.</p> - -<p>The teacher, however, must not look for an infallible -recipe in this matter. He cannot expect -to stir up interest in the pupils by any prescribed -formula, by a rigid system of handling the text. A -scheme of suggestions may be drawn up, topics for -discussion or observation may be arranged. Such -devices are helpful, but they should not become -stereotyped, because they deaden when they are -hard and fast. It is a mark of a crystal to settle -into straight lines at fixed angles; it is characteristic -of organisms to be yielding and pliable in their -outlines, while they retain their life. The meaning -is the life of the text, the meaning as it was in the -author’s mind, with all the associations that it had -for him. Let the meaning be the guide, and the -explanation will not be dead. Let the teacher use -systems and hints and topics and all other devices -as helps to arrive at the sense and meaning, not as -inflexible molds into which he must always pour his -commentary. A chemist may have weighed and -labeled all the constituent elements of a living cell, -and he may even succeed in mingling them in such -a way as to have all these elements in the very -places they are in life, but his mixture will not have -the principle of life, that wonderful, unanalyzable -bond that unites into one organism, permeates and -vivifies the separate atoms and molecules. Because -his analysis is complete and perfect, it does not follow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> -that his synthesis will be complete and perfect. -Neither may a teacher expect to get the synthesis -of a vital, interesting commentary from the detailed -formula of the literary laboratory. He must have -his finger on the pulse; he must have seized the beating, -warm heart; he must have grasped the permeating, -vivifying soul of his author, if he would -make his commentary living, and there is no other -way to the heart blood of an author, except by loving, -enthusiastic meditation of his full meaning.</p> - -<p>I remember the first time in class that Homer -ceased to be for me an example factory for grammar -or a shop for Grecian antiquities. We had been -translating Homer and parsing Homer; we now -began to read him. The change was as easy as it -was pleasant. The teacher simply went back behind -the dictionary and the grammar, behind the -cases and the tenses, to the author’s meaning. He -made us see the old priest of Apollo walking along -the seashore. He made us realize the fact that he -was coming to speak for his daughter. Our attention -was called to the completeness and appropriateness -of his little speech. In a word, we began to -move in the poet’s world. We had used the grammar -and dictionary to get there, but when we -reached our destination, we alighted from the train. -We were bound for the land of Homer, not for that -of Goodwin or Liddell & Scott, and the sooner we -left our dusty, noisy cars, the better for us. Our professor -knew the translation and knew the grammar,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span> -but he had left them behind him. He was on higher -levels, and he threw away his mountain staff and -his guide rope. We were with him there, and we -entered into his enthusiasm for the broad view before -us. Homer had been for us a venerable mausoleum -of well-preserved and dignified, but very -dead mummies. His enthusiasm let the life and -light into that ancient tomb, and the mummies took -off their wraps and lived and moved. From that -day of resurrection until the present, Homer has -lived for me; from that time I have heard the -Homeric heart beat and felt the Homeric pulse -throb.</p> - -<p>Nor need the teacher who follows these methods -have fear that he is going wrong, or that he is -neglecting the proper education of his pupils. He -is achieving, too, concrete results, an achievement -that must not be considered the monopoly of science. -Science may not supplant literature in the school-room. -It would be a sad day for both if ever it -did. As regards observation and induction, it has -not been our wish to protest against the use of these -methods, but rather against the limiting of their -scope. To observe grammar only or archeology or -philology and neglect the author’s meaning is as -ridiculous as to observe the paint and not the picture, -to put a microscope to the marble and not -notice the statue. We do not want less development, -rather we want more. Develop the powers -of observation, but do not think that the only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> -powers are the senses. The world of imagination -and the world of thought offer wider fields for observation -than the world of external sense. The -horizon of the mind is not restricted to the sky line -that narrows the vision of the eye.</p> - -<p>If you train the powers of observation in the laboratory -by asking the pupil to see, to touch, to taste, -to smell, train them, too, in the classroom, by asking -them to listen to the harmony of a sentence, to -trace out the development of a thought, to appreciate -the wit, the beauty, the sublimity of a passage. -There was observation and training of the -powers of observation before the test tube was -blown or the dynamo was wound. Science has -opened up new and wonderful worlds, not one of -which would we see closed; but the lands of literature -have not ceased for that reason to be inviting, -and the soul, wearied with facts and hampered with -figures, gladly escapes into the restful regions of -higher and ampler realities.</p> - -<p>The crossing of the borders of mere expression, -the living and moving in the realms of meaning, the -appreciative following of an author’s mind in all -journeyings, may not develop grammarians or philologists -or ethnologists or archeologists. Perhaps -it is not the life-work of classical literature to stock -the market with such commodities. The student -who travels with a master-mind through the land -of thought, now captivated with a view just under -his eyes, again catching a glimpse of some far-off<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> -scene, all the more glorious in promise, because it -lacks definiteness of detail, such a one may turn out -to be more of a tourist than a local antiquarian and -may suffer some inconveniences in consequence. He -will be set right by the local antiquarian on names -and dates connected with some obscure town, but -in turn he will convey to his learned friend some -ideas on the relative importance of localities and -on the topography of the whole country. The -tourist will not be provincial or municipal or suburban. -He will not mistake his native hamlet for -the world or make it the sole standard of excellence. -The tourist will give you a map; the local -antiquarian will draw up a surveyor’s chart, with -the number of inches to the grade and the number -of feet to the surface. Should not the teacher of -literature consider it his duty to encourage the -tourist, to introduce the student into the world of -meaning, and not to keep him with theodolite and -the leveling-rod along the borders of expression, -counting words, measuring phrases, or drawing up -lifeless charts of tabulated facts? When the student -has come home from his travels, he may, if -he chooses, lay aside his guide book, and, having -seen the world, confine his energies to mastering a -portion of it. If, however, he should have brought -home from his wanderings nothing more than a -love of literature and all that means, will his -teacher’s life have been in vain? John Goulding of -Cork might be considered not entirely useless, if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> -he gave us no more than Justin McCarthy, who thus -describes the results of his master’s work:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I do not venture to say that Mr. Goulding’s method of -teaching was directly adapted to create a thoroughly scholastic -knowledge of Greek and Latin, and I do not know whether his -pupils would have been likely by means of his instruction alone -to take honors in any university competition, but I know that it -made all of us, who had a taste for such, ready and fluent -readers in Greek and Latin and as familiar with most of the -Greek and Latin poets as with Shakespeare and Keats. It was -in truth literary rather than scholastic instruction.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII<br /> -<span class="smaller">EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>Life is full to the brim with emotions. Not -war only nor political rallies nor the excited -throngs at sports are vibrant with emotion, but there -is not a single act of life which has not some emotion, -quiet or intense, as its source, its companion -and its effect. Man ought to be ruled by cold reason, -but he responds to feelings and succumbs to -feelings.</p> - -<p>Today more than ever in the history of the world -is emotionalism rampant. Civilization has made -mankind a crowd. We touch elbows with the world. -The Egyptian hermit has now “the privacy of a -goldfish in a glass bowl.” An individual by himself -may indeed deliberate and philosophize, but -a crowd feels and acts. As soon as it stops cheering, -it begins to disintegrate into thinking individuals, -who creep silently back to the hermitage -of home. The war, with its drives of all kinds, the -elections, the athletic contests, have made us -familiar with the nature of a crowd. The mob is a -high-pressure crowd, and the feelings which burn -in the crowd explode violently in a mob. Civilization<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> -has brought mankind into the closeness of a -crowd, but not yet to the explosive confusion of a -mob.</p> - -<p>War taught us too the great value of morale. -What is morale? What is that light in the sky, that -solid ground under foot, that winged buoyancy of -the heart? Morale might be described as organized -emotion. A crowd is fickle because it feels instead -of reasons. Morale is the counter-force to fickleness. -Emotions are awakened, are focused on a -given point, are stabilized, and the result is morale. -Courage hardens to pluck, duty flames into devotion -and bravery is transfigured into heroism.</p> - -<p>Life therefore is flooded with emotion, all the -way from every action of the individual up to the -responsive crowd, yielding to panic, exploding into -violence or steadied by morale. What then is education -doing for the emotions? Whether education -be considered a development of the individual -capacities, or an adjustment of man to the community, -education should not neglect the emotions. -The controlling tendencies, however, of the modern -school would seem to ignore or belittle emotions. -Modern schools pride themselves on being practical -and scientific. They have become more immersed -in matter than in man. They are materialistic -in the wide sense, or naturalistic, but they are -less and less humanistic. Three great fields lie before -the spirit of man, the field of truth, the field -of beauty and the field of good. No traveler can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> -reach beauty and good except through truth, but -education seems to think its work is done if it travels -the regions of truth and ignores the regions of -beauty and good.</p> - -<p>All education formerly could be divided into two -stages, the earlier of preparation, the later of application. -The individual was taught to speak and -write and was equipped with the general information -necessary to all. He who was able to speak and -write was able to express himself, and self-expression, -which argued that man’s powers were working -normally, was the satisfactory goal in the first stage -of education. After the development of the individual -came his application to the study of his life-work -in professional schools and universities.</p> - -<p>In the former of these two stages, as self-expression -was the end, language was the chief and almost -exclusive means. Sciences were relegated to the university -and informational subjects were left strictly -subordinated, and the whole course was predominately -humanistic. Modern education has profoundly -changed this simple arrangement. The -university method of education and electivism and -specialization have been advanced to college, to -high school and to grade school. Many natural -sciences have been systematized and brought into -early classes. The university chemistry and -physics of fifty years ago are now in the grades. Besides -professional courses, pre-medical, pre-law, -pre-divinity, pre-engineering, pre-journalism, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> -in general pre-professional studies are in our schools -or at the doors. The trades are not behind the -professions. The million trades which concern -themselves with the production of raw material or -with the manufacture of raw material into finished -products or with the distribution of finished products, -all these are knocking at the door or looking -in the window of our school. Nor is that all. As -the professions want pre-professional and the trades -pre-trade courses, so the state demands pre-citizen -courses in civic and hygienics and military tactics, -and the home exacts pre-family courses in eugenics -and many domestic sciences. Do not close your curriculum -list yet. The profession, the trade, the -home, the state are not all, and to leave out religion, -which calls for pre-religious courses in private -schools, we have the whole field of sport and -play in pre-dancing, pre-ball-playing, and at last pre-movies. -To make the conquest of the practical -complete, it is seriously advocated by a special committee -of the N. E. A. that this bewildering multiplicity -of sciences, professions, trades, civic, domestic -and amusement courses should be begun at the -junior high school or seventh grade.</p> - -<p>There is the contrast. Life is emotional. The -early schools that used to be devoted chiefly to writing -and speaking, are now crowded with a multiplicity -of fact subjects, and even language and literature, -the most humanistic and emotional subjects -of our courses, are taught theoretically by university<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> -and scientific methods. In the Jesuit <i>Ratio Studiorum</i>, -which did not differ essentially from other -systems, four years of the lower schools were given -to correct expression of the truth, one year to the -element of interest, or beauty, in expression, and one -whole year to the element of force, or good, in expression. -These two latter classes were called humanities -and rhetoric and correspond to the present -freshman and sophomore classes in Jesuit -colleges.</p> - -<p>The reason why a whole year was given to the -elements of interest and force in self-expression is -found in the twofold nature of emotions. One set -of emotions arises from the apprehension of good -or avoidance of evil. Another set arises from the -perception of the novel, humorous and beautiful. -These latter comprehend the emotions of surprise, -wonder, delight, awe, in general, the esthetic emotions. -The other emotions, called appetitive, include -love and hate, with desire and fear, joy and sadness, -pity and anger and many others.</p> - -<p>Fortunately for the teacher the teaching of emotions -is somewhat simplified by the fact that both -kinds of emotions respond, not to abstract truth but -to truth in the concrete and concrete truth takes on -beauty or good and awakens emotions through the -imaginations of teacher and student. Teachers who -themselves imagine will awaken emotions and educate -emotions by exercising them. Teachers who -imagine will make pupils imagine by making them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> -translate all truth from the abstract to the concrete. -The perpetual question on the lips of the -teacher, “For instance?” will embody truth in the -concrete, exercise students in imagination and make -truth emotional and abiding.</p> - -<p>Interesting and enthusiastic teachers are always -training emotions. Emotion is not imparted by instruction; -it is kindled by contact. Teachers who -have their subjects transferred from dead books to -their warm, living imaginations, will be interesting, -will be moving. They will excite surprise and wonder -by novelty and beauty of presentation. They -will make their classes expand with love or shrink -in horror at the pictures of good or evil.</p> - -<p>After imagination and actual feeling on the part -of both student and teacher, the next best means of -educating emotions is the stimulating of action, especially -in the way of original self-expression through -the written and spoken word. One of the happy -tendencies of our modern education is the restoring -of oral expression to its former high place.</p> - -<p>These means just mentioned will be helpful in -any subject of the curriculum, but the principal instrument -in the schools for training the emotions -will be literature. Literature is the embodiment of -human emotions, in story, in essay, poem, and -speech. The schools must hold on to the teaching -of literature. They must make a stand against the -imperialism of facts and so-called practical subjects. -The schools must never forget that it is at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> -least just as practical to have a heart in life as to -have a head. A modern French scholar has said: -“Humanities and letters are man himself, to remove -them from education, it would be necessary -to commence by taking man from man.”</p> - -<p>Instruction in trades is a knack, not an education -of man. A savage can learn to run an automobile, -and there are many today running automobiles, -but a savage does not enjoy literature or produce -literature. Science has its center outside of man, it -is impersonal and unemotional. Literature is human, -is personal, it appeals to the heart which must -not be starved while the head is stuffed.</p> - -<p>But even when the teachers of literature have -the works of man in their hands, they must not rob -them of all emotions by making their teaching of -them historical only, or analytical only or theoretical -only, lowering Macbeth to a footnote in Scottish -history or to an argument for the theory of the -romantic movement or to a dissertation on the psychology -of temptation. Literature must be taught -as literature, not as history, not as ethics. Literature -should be taught as an art, not as a science. -The teacher should keep self-expression in view. -The teacher will consider the work of literature as -the expression of a man. Before the class the -masterpiece of literature will grow and crystallize -into unity. The students will watch its creation; -they will reflect the light from the eyes of an enthusiastic -teacher; they will grasp the truth vividly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span> -and emotionally; they will be thrilled with the -truth that has taken shape in their teacher’s imagination, -that has been dramatized before them in -suggestive detail, that will teach the students themselves -how to think, how to imagine, how to find -for the embodied truth a local habitation and a -name, how to express themselves in words which -fascinate and inflame.</p> - -<p>So will the emotions by their exercise be developed -and by their expression be controlled. The -world of the classroom is a little world and its tiny -emotions are as dew-drops to a deluge, but for the -young hearts in school the world of the classroom -is a gigantic world and its slight emotions are adequate -to teach beginners. For a dew drop may be -a deluge for a violet and its very food and life.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>This is not the time to drop Latin or Greek -openly or under the subterfuge of optional -electives. Colleges everywhere are crowded. Buildings -are too small for the students; classes are too -large for the professors. Now is the time to impose -stricter conditions rather than to open wider -the doors to colleges, and now is the proper time -to restore the classical languages, and especially -Greek, if not to favor, because knowledge maketh -a bloody entrance, and its weapons are resented, at -least to respectable toleration, by teaching them in -the right way. Do not empty the baby with the -bath, but do draw off the stagnant waters and let -the bright showers sparkle and sing and refresh. -Don’t throw out Greek, but do teach Greek as -literature, as the art of self-expression, as a practical -and permanent possession of the student -through appreciation and through composition in -his own language.</p> - -<p>Greek authors used to be put in the students’ -hands with a Latin paraphrase. In Jesuit schools -the explanation of the author included a translation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> -which might be dictated to the class. This was -done because in Latin, and especially in Greek, -which was not the language to be used in life, the -proper and real work began after the interpretation -was known. That proper work was artistic -appreciation and artistic reproduction in one’s own -language, formerly Latin and now various languages. -Rather than cast out Greek, furnish the -students with Loeb or Jebb or Murray or Lang, -shorten grammatical drill, and then center attention -on the appreciation and the reproduction of the -finest literary art of all ages, exacting compositions -written and spoken in the student’s own language. -This is not a revolutionary proposal, the system -now prevalent is revolutionary; but it is a proposal -to relegate to the university the specialism and scientific -handling of literature, and an earnest plea -to retain or restore to the classics, especially Greek, -their age-old method, proper to the general training -of academy and of college and profitable to -every student if the art of speaking and writing is of -lifelong utility.</p> - -<p>The teaching of literature has a handicap which -is not found in the teaching of other arts. A -painter must know some practical facts about preparing -and applying paints, but he need not know -the whole chemistry of pigments or the physics of -colors. The sculptor must choose the right kind of -marble, but he does not take a course in geology. -In all arts except literature the contact with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> -artist’s work is almost immediate. But in literature -a language must be mastered, and in mastering -that language a thousand sciences have obtruded -themselves between the student and the masterpiece. -Gustav Foch of Leipsic published some years ago a -catalog of dissertations printed in Germany during -the latter part of the nineteenth century. The catalog, -which was by no means complete, containing -only the items he was prepared to furnish, listed -27,000 titles. This formidable number concerned -itself entirely with the Greek and Roman writers -and embodied special studies on the history, the -evolution, the text, the erudition of classical literature. -Practically nothing of this immense flood of -special dissertations touched on the art of literature.</p> - -<p>Now, if all this tremendous erudition were left -to the university, where it properly belongs, not -much harm would be done; but unhappily the study -of literature as a science has almost completely excluded -its study as an art. The small school of Dissen, -Rehdantz and Blass, who represented in Germany -the artistic appreciation of Greek literature, -was submerged by the immensely greater number -of scientific investigators. The classical poets, with -the exception of Homer, fared better than the -prose authors; but all literature, instead of being a -help to the art of composition, was subordinated -to establishing a theory or to exemplifying a -generalization.</p> - -<p>France resisted almost entirely this scientific obsession<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> -of literature. England held out long. In -both of these nations composition in the classical -languages was a fixed feature of the schools. Victorian -literature is steeped in the classics, especially -of Greece; the golden age of England’s eloquence, -the age of Chatham, Fox and Burke, preceded the -scientific era of classicism and was the product of -artistic appreciation and of composition.</p> - -<p>What of America? The earlier schools followed -French and English traditions and taught -the classics with literary appreciation and with -fruitful results for the literature of America. Then -later America sent its professors to Germany; -specialism and the departmental system separated -literature entirely from the classics; composition -ceased except as a means of learning grammar, thus -establishing a complete reversal of the original practice, -where grammar was a means to composition.</p> - -<p>It would be untrue to say that all the erudition, -discovered and systematized by numerous sciences -and centering upon the classics, was useless or unprofitable. -Even the immense library which the -Wolfian theory of Homeric origins brought into -existence has not been entirely in vain. Germany of -the nineteenth century was the Alexandria of the -modern world, and as Alexandrian criticism was the -forerunner of the best in Latin literature, perhaps -the immense activity of scientific investigators may -have an artistic outcome. A selection of what is -good and true, and a clear, concise presentation of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> -well-established facts, such as Père Laurand gives -in his excellent series, <i>Manuels des Etudes Grecques -et Latines</i> (Picard, Paris), will help the study of -the classics. Erudition should take now its proper -place of subordination. The classics should resume -the functions which history, evolution, origins and -other scientific approaches have taken away; the -classics should once more be studied primarily as -works of art. The medium and materials do not -dominate other arts; they should not dominate literature. -Self-expression is the goal of all art; it -should be the goal of literature.</p> - -<p>Have the teachers of the classics lost faith? Is -artistic appreciation an idle thing or is it a thing of -beauty, a joy forever? The experimental sciences -are always changing in facts and theories. The -chemistry of a century ago is absurd; the chemistry -of twenty-five years ago is antiquated; the chemistry -of today will be old tomorrow. As Remsen long -ago saw and insisted on, what is valuable in the -teaching of chemistry are the processes, not the -theories, which will likely change tomorrow. -Chemistry, as a science, is a bit of classified information -always modified by research. Art and artistic -appreciation is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. -Give a man appreciation of literature; let him taste -the beauty of Homer and of Sophocles and of -Demosthenes, and you have given him, not a catalog -of facts which must always be rectified, not a -theory which must change with the facts, but a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> -precious treasure in the mind which will always remain. -In teaching chemistry the processes are more -important than the temporary information; in the -teaching of literature the processes are at least -equally valuable, and besides last through life in -abiding taste and in perfected self-expression.</p> - -<p>Formerly reproduction was the aim of the -teacher of the classics. “Reproduction is the soul -of the explanation or prelection,” is the way early -Jesuit pedagogy put it, and every student of philosophy -knows what the soul or formal cause contributes -to the effect. How many in explaining classical -literature today guide themselves throughout -by the principle that their students are to reproduce -artistically the masterpiece which they explain? -No doubt professors insist upon the formation -of clear ideas and further demand explicit judgments -in the way of propositions. Most too require -that the links of reasoning be sharply and definitely -stated. Interpretation, in a word, is well done. -The intellectual element of the masterpiece is -handled satisfactorily. But what of the artistic -form? Does the literature take shape in the student’s -imagination? Is the picture realized in the -teacher’s imagination and then by suggestion, -through the sparkling eye and sympathetic voice and -interpreting gesture, by vivid, though not histrionic, -dramatization, is the author’s message staged in -the student’s imagination? Scientific analysis, especially -where a text becomes a tag to some learned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> -generalization, often prevents imaginative realization -and thus precludes artistic appreciation of -literature.</p> - -<p>The teaching of the classics has been and is now -justified by the general training they impart, but it -is chiefly when taught as literature that they impart -that general training. If the classics are subordinated -to the university lecturer’s specialty, then the -classics are imparting little general training and -have hardly more right in the classroom, except for -indirect results which may accrue from contact with -art, than have special courses in conchology or entomology. -Let the teacher look upon the classics -as art to be reproduced after being appreciated, -and a general training will be the outcome. Composition -should be made the aim of literature.</p> - -<p>Idioms of languages, and their vocabulary and -their structure differ, but thought and imagination -may be the same. Set all the languages of the world -before a moving-picture, and each language will -tell the common story on the screen to its children in -its own way of speaking. So the student of any -language may learn from Homer how to select -details and group them into artistic wholes, how to -carry on the narrative through significant and -choice events, how to dwell on the important and -touch lightly on the insignificant, how to relieve a -story and intensify a part of it by appropriate comparisons. -As the student learns how to tell a story, -so too may he master the art of describing a scene,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> -of creating a character, of making a speech. He -will be taught the way to focus an idea and give it -discriminating expression by the right word, the -way to embody good or evil in concrete and picturesque -words and the way to be proficient in all the -elements and processes of composition. The Greek -Homer made the Latin Æneid, the Greek Theocritus -made the Latin Eclogue and, if Stedman is right, -also the Tennysonian Idyll. The literary art of -Greek and Latin has given and will give artistic -form to the student’s vernacular.</p> - -<p>The classics will give a general training if they -are made to do so. Literature will not impart a -general training automatically. Art is a habit arising -from a repetition of acts. The art of thinking is -mastered by thinking, and the art of imagining by -imagining, and that thinking and imagining will be -done well if done under the guidance of masters. -Has the literary art of Greece, which created Latin -literature and directly and indirectly shaped the -literature of all civilization, done its full work? -Who can believe it? Every generation since Homer -has been influenced by the art of Homer in translation -and imitation, and no generations more so than -those of Cowper and Morris and Lang in England -and of Bryant and Palmer in America. The time -may come when literary taste and literary art will be -as well studied and demonstrated in modern languages -as in those of Latin and Greek; the time may -come when modern classics may be as well adapted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> -for education as the classics of Greek and Rome -which have been in the classroom for century upon -century, but that time does not appear to be tomorrow -or the day after. If the art of self-expression -is the best test of education, if the art of self-expression -is the most practical thing in life and the -most permanent treasure that can be gained in -school, then Greek literature, the finest masterpiece -of self-expression, should remain, and Greek literature -should be taught, as for centuries it was taught, -with interpretation and translation furnished to the -student, leaving the time of training to be devoted -not to special sciences proper to the university, but -to the general training in appreciation and expression, -proper to academy and college.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>This title is not an advertisement for a patent -medicine; it is the brief statement of an important -historical fact. “Every schoolboy knows” -that the revival of learning in Italy came from the -vitalizing touch of Greek. Out of that renaissance, -which the Jesuits took over and embodied in their -system of teaching, grew modern scholarship in -England through Linacre, Lilly, Colet and More, -the forerunners of the Elizabethans. It was the -beginning of modern scholarship in Germany, -through Erasmus, the friend of these Englishmen, -and through Melanchthon, whose name, like that -of Erasmus, marks the power of Greek: out of that -renaissance sprang the rejuvenated civilization of -our day. Every schoolboy knows that Greek -brought the modern world to life, but is it as well -known or remembered that Greek has always been -vivifying everything it touched?</p> - -<p>The civilization of Rome in every part felt the -influence of Greece. Rome conquered the world by -force of arms, but itself was humanized and then -humanized the world through Greece. Every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span> -modern language today feels the force of Isocrates -and Demosthenes through Cicero, and of Alcæus -and Sappho through Horace, and of Greek tragedy -through Seneca and of Homer through Virgil. -When later the barbarians of the north severed -Rome from Greece and the Roman Empire and -its civilization lay dead, who brought the world to -life again? “When the accurate knowledge of -Latin was declining in Gaul, even Greek was not -unknown in Ireland.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It was the Irish monks who -freshened into flame the blackening embers of -European civilization and began its restoration. -The revival was brought about through the schools -of Bobbio and St. Gall, mostly indeed as the scattered -books of their libraries show, by means of Latin -literature but always with the help of Greek, as the -same libraries testify. That was an earlier renaissance -in Italy and Switzerland. And who was the -leading figure in the revival in Spain about the -same time? It was the Greek scholars, Isidore of -Seville and, a little earlier, Hosius of Cordova, and, -a little later, John of Gerona. Then France began -to grope out of barbarism under the leadership of -Charlemagne, resuming close relations with Greece -and importing the Irish monks, Clement and Dungal, -and the English monk, Alcuin. But it was under -Charlemagne’s successor, Charles the Bald, that -this new renaissance took on a fresh energy which -did not spend itself before the decline of scholasticism.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> -John Scotus, John the Irishman, who styled -himself in his translation of Dionysius from the -Greek by the title of Erin-born, for a quarter of -a century kept France intellectually alive, and did -it chiefly by his Greek. John, the Erin-born, was the -forerunner of scholastic philosophy, which caught -the vital force of Greek through another channel -also. When Spain was conquered by barbarians -and lost its civilization, where did its Arabian conquerors -go for the seeds of the new life? The -Arabs went to Greece, gave Aristotle in translation -to Europe, and ushered in the golden age of -medieval philosophy. Rightly does Traini (1345), -on an altar-piece in Pisa, picture St. Thomas -Aquinas receiving the light of knowledge from -Christ through the Greek New Testament and -from Aristotle on his right and from Plato on his -left. As Aquinas combined patristic and scholastic -theology, he merged in his works the twofold Greek -influences of Plato and Aristotle, who were the human -aids in each of these theologies.</p> - -<p>Pass over several centuries to the time when the -Italian renaissance had grown senile and when -scholarship left Spain, Italy and, to a large extent, -France, and found its home in the north. These -nations lost touch with Greek and their scholarship -died down, while life moved northward in the wake -of Greek. When F. A. Wolf went to Halle about -the beginning of the nineteenth century, he represented -the reaction against the realism of that day,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> -and “his conflict with the school of useful knowledge -brought into clear relief his ideal of a culture -founded on Greek traditions.”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Time has shown -that Wolf’s theories of Homeric authorship are all -wrong, but the stimulus he gave to scholarship -lasted all through the nineteenth century, and to -no other single influence more than to Wolf may -Germany ascribe its undoubted supremacy in classical -learning during the last century. His inspiration -came from the Greek, and in his vitalizing of -Germany he was associated with others who had -felt the same inspiration and were already beginning -the influence that still in a measure persists: -Heyne in the classics, Lessing in criticism and -Winckelmann in art.</p> - -<p>England’s partial reawakening under Queen -Anne saw Bentley, the Greek scholar, and his contemporary, -Pope, translator of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, -and let scholars say what they will about Pope’s -translation, they cannot impugn the fine criticism of -his introductions or the lasting influence for good of -his versions. Passing over the prime of English -eloquence, whose living roots, as Goodrich has -shown, are in Greek literature, we come to the -fresh memories of our own time and to the Victorian -era. Again it is Greek which vitalizes every branch -of literature, philosophy and art with new and unexpected -truth and life. Without Greek the Victorian -revival would not have come about. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> -poetry recall Keats, who awoke to life through the -reflected glory of Homer; recall Cowper, translator -of Homer, and Byron, who died for Greece, and -Moore, who translated Anacreon, and Landor and -Arnold and Tennyson and Browning, all of whom -took substance and form and fire from Greek -sources. In essay-writing you have Brougham, eloquent -advocate of Greek oratory; De Quincey, who -could, as his tutor said, at the age of thirteen -harangue a Greek crowd; Macaulay, who, even in -manhood, weeps over his Homer on the streets of -London. In art there are Ruskin and Morris and -Pater, who are saturated with Greek thought. -Think of statesmanship and you will recall Lord -Derby and Gladstone, political rivals, at one in their -love of Homer; think of criticism, and Lang, Saintsbury, -Blackie, Butcher and Jebb will say that -through Greek they have dominated modern criticism; -think of history, and the names of Rawlinson -and Grote and Hallam, Grecians, will come forward -in your mind. History! Why, you will remember -that all ancient history has recently been -rewritten with the spade, and it was Schliemann -under the spell of Homer who turned the first sod.</p> - -<p>Go over the great names in literature and art, in -philosophy, theology and scripture, in the sciences -of history, mathematics, law, government, and you -will find Greek giving life and vigor. Even in the -newer sciences founded on observation and experience, -which have come into being within a century,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> -whenever an observer gets beyond the elementary -stage of research and classification, he will resort -to Greece for principles and intellectual categories -just as he borrows the language of Greece with -which to name his discoveries. History shows that -every people and every system of education and -every house of learning, when it gives up Greek, is -headed towards inferiority and decay, but when it -turns with fresh endeavor toward Greek it reaches -forth to life and to light. Nor is all this surprising -or strained. Our civilization was born and grew -for centuries in Greece. Our Christianity was early -translated into the language of Greece and for centuries -spoke and thought chiefly in that tongue. So -then in our minds and souls our youth will ever -have been Greek, and from Greek must ever come, -as it has come in the past, the new blood that will -flush with dynamic energy the anemic arteries of -cosmos, the world, and of the microcosm, man.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV<br /> -<span class="smaller">TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The story of Phidias and his pupil, Alcamenes -has often been told. They competed for a -prize in sculpture. The statue of Alcamenes was -about to be chosen because of its exquisite finish -when Phidias objected to any decision until the -statues should be put in the high position they were -designed to occupy. At once, the opinions of the -judges were reversed, for the apparently rough -lines of Phidias’s creation stood out in sublime majesty, -while the polish of Alcamenes’s was lost when -the statues were raised aloft. The story illustrates -a splendid rule of art which has often been -forgotten in the study of Homer. The epics of -Homer were not made for the test-tube and the -microscope. They were not made even for readers; -they were composed for listeners. Put them on their -proper pedestals and the minutiæ revealed by the -grammarian’s microscope will be lost in the grand -sweep of the story. You would as soon halt Shakespeare’s -<i>Macbeth</i> because of the anachronisms, or -condemn Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” because<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span> -of modern masonry in the walls or carpentry in the -table, as apply the philological and archeological -tests of the higher critics to Homer.</p> - -<p>Apply the tests of art to Homer and judge him by -those. Take the matter of the contradictions which -critics have talked so much about. In many cases, -especially where mythology was concerned, the material -the poet had to handle bristled with inconsistencies -and contradictions. Long ago Aristotle laid -down the sensible rule for drama, and it is equally -true for epic poetry, that the poet is not responsible -for the improbabilities in his materials. The sculptor -may have flaws in his block of marble; the -painter may have defects in his lead or oil, or pigments; -and the epic poet found contradictions in -the fairy stories of mankind which he wove into the -story he sang. That one consideration will sweep -away instantly heaps of higher criticism.</p> - -<p>Again, the artist is more taken up with the end -than he is with the means. In the fervor of his -composition he wreaks himself upon expression, he -burns to embody his ideal and, engrossed in that, -he is likely to be less observant of the material of -his art. The achieving of the effect is more to him -than mathematical accuracy in the use of the instruments -by which he achieves the effect. He makes -his hero win his battle; he may unhappily forget -some of the tactics or even the geography of the -battlefield. His object is not to teach the art of -warfare or furnish the topography of the country,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> -but to tell an interesting story in an interesting way. -The <i>Iliad</i> has a wall that vexes many critics. It -was built in the tenth year of the war, which was no -time to build a wall, and was put up simply because -Achilles left the field. Besides, according to these -critics the wall appears and disappears strangely. -So the conclusion is: Homer did not build the wall, -but some other poet came along and projected his -masonry into the epic. In answer it has been shown -that the wall behaves very well, but, whether it does -or not, it matters little. The poet is not a surveyor -or a street commissioner. He wished to make his -story interesting, to make the character of Achilles -prominent, to bring some agreeable variety into -what might prove a monotonous catalog of similar -battles. Those are reasons enough for a poet to -build a Chinese wall or reduce it to dust when he -does not want it, or conveniently overlook it in the -heat of an imaginary charge.</p> - -<p>A story-teller is more concerned to please his -hearers than to guard against inconsistencies which -they would never detect as listeners, and which even -close readers did not detect for about thirty centuries. -A work of art is not to be judged as a mass -of machinery is, nor is a poem to be scrutinized with -dictionary and grammar as you would a schoolboy’s -exercise. This is the statue of Phidias over again. -A stage scene will differ somewhat from a miniature, -and an epic takes liberties with walls and rivers and -even mountains and oceans, liberties which would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> -not be tolerated in a quatrain. These principles -are as obvious as daylight, but apostles of the obvious -are needed in abundance in the harvest fields -of higher criticism.</p> - -<p>What is needed for Homer is a study of his art -in a broad but not shallow way, comprehensive and -fundamental like Aristotle’s brief discussion. For -the wonderfully analytical mind of Aristotle -Homer’s <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> were models of unity, -because he looked upon them as works of art, not -scrap-heaps of philology and archeology. Put the -poems of Homer on the pedestals for which he -made them, for listeners who had to be entertained -and clamored for variety. “It is a trait of Homer,” -says a writer, “constantly to shift the scene. The -motive may be weak, but the eye of the poet was not -on the motive, but on the scene; so he not only shifts -the scene but varies the description of the events.” -The poet’s eye, it might be added, is also like the -orator’s, fixed steadily on his audience, and the audience -must be relieved even if masonry or geography -suffer.</p> - -<p>The paramount principles of variety and growth -of interest which govern every good story hold sway -in Homer. Take a staple action of the <i>Iliad</i>, the -battles. Homer’s audience wanted fighting, yet -jaded listeners and the artistic poet knew there must -be in the fighting variety and growth of interest. -Even in the matter of killing men, which seems to -us unimportant but which would not be to an audience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> -of fighters, Homer has shown a wonderful -variety. A German professor has diagnosed the -Homeric surgery with all the thoroughness of his -class. The conclusions may be found in Seymour’s -<i>Life in the Homeric Age</i>. The number and variety -of the wounds, the weapons used, the percentages -of fatalities, are all given in full detail. “Hardly -could the poet have covered more completely the -possibilities of wounds for the human body if he had -proceeded systematically and mechanically.” Some -will have it that Homer was a surgeon and an army -doctor. Certainly the history of anatomy has its -first chapter in the <i>Iliad</i>.</p> - -<p>But to pass over the variety displayed in the -wounds and other smaller points, consider the actual -fighting. For the maneuvers we may refer to two -interesting chapters in Lang’s <i>World of Homer</i>, -where the variety and consistency of Homeric warfare -are well described and defended against the -dissectionists. The point, however, we are working -toward is the variety shown in even the external -circumstances of the warfare. A closer study -than we can afford to give would reveal more -variety, but we may mention the plain, the wall, -the river, the night as in the tenth book, the mist. -These are the various circumstances which the poet -introduces into his battles, relieving the monotony -and sustaining the interest. There is no falling off. -The different heroes, too, succeed one another; the -victory alternates from one side to the other; the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> -battle on earth has its echo among the gods. The -interest rises. Patroclos enters the fight, and then -his fallen body becomes the center of the struggle, -as the wall and the ships had been before. Something, -too, is left for Achilles. Ferocious as may -have been the fighting before, it becomes a veritable -shambles when Achilles enters the fray. Never -were such frightful wounds, never such rivers of -blood as may be witnessed in Book XX “when the -black earth ran blood,” “when beneath the great-hearted -Achilles his whole-hooved horses trampled -corpses and shields together; and with blood all the -axle-tree below was sprinkled and the rims that ran -around the car, for blood-drops from the horses’ -hooves splashed them and blood-drops from the -tires of the wheels. But the son of Peleus pressed on -to win his glory, flecking with gore his irresistible -hands.”</p> - -<p>Then follows the battle in the river, and finally -the battle of the gods themselves, and after the -necessary relief and lull and reawakening of interest -comes the last battle of all and the climax of the -poem in the conflict of Achilles and Hector.</p> - -<p>A study of the art of Homer along its great lines -will give us the true principles upon which to judge -him. Such a study will put him in the right perspective. -The statue of Phidias will mount on high -where its artist wished to have it enshrined. The -<i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> were meant to cross the bronze -threshold of some great palace, “where there was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span> -gleam as it were of sun or moon through the high -roofed hall of a great-hearted King. Brazen were -the walls which ran this way and that from the -threshold to the inmost chamber, and round then -was a frieze of blue and within were seats arrayed -against the wall this way and that.” Then “after the -men had put from them the desire of meat and -drink,” they called upon the minstrel. “For minstrels -from all men on earth get their meed of honor -and worship; inasmuch as the muse teacheth them -the paths of song and loveth the tribe of minstrels.” -“And the minstrel being stirred by the god began -and showed forth his minstrelsy and took up the -tale where it tells how the Argives sailed away.” -That was the setting of the Homeric Epic, and thus -speaks one whose “heart had melted at the song and -whose tears wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids.” -“Verily it is a good thing to list to a minstrel, like -to the gods in voice. Nay, as for me, I say there is -no more gracious or perfect delight than when a -whole people makes merry, and the men sit orderly -at feasts in the halls and listen to the singer and the -tables by them are laden with bread and flesh, and -pours it into cups. This fashion seems to me the -fairest thing in the world.”</p> - -<p>There is the place that Homer chose for his -matchless poems, and there they should be judged. -The hearts that melt with song are not searching -for digammas or Æolic forms. They want the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> -story, the long voyages and the strange adventures, -the swaying lines of battle and the prowess of -heroes. They look for and recognize the different -characters which must be as varied and as clearly -marked as in the life around them. They must not -be surfeited with too much of anything. Voyages -and battles must vary and grow in intensity and be -crossed with pictures of nature, brief but thrilling -and immensely relieving,—the lion, the wheat field, -the tossing ocean and the steady downfall of an -unending snow storm. With these and the plot entangling -and disentangling, the listeners to Homeric -song and story will not look for that polished -smoothness and frigid exactness, the absence of -which vexes the minds of modern Germany. Phidias’ -statue occupies its proper pedestal, and the true -judges award to Phidias his well-deserved prize.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>Their elders are too busy these days devising -tests for the children. Is it not time for the -children to retort on their testers? “Having pried -and prodded into us to see if we measure up to you, -dear elders, let us now see,” the children may well -say, “whether you measure up to us.” A great -philosopher wished to make man the measure of -everything. We have a truer, a divine philosophy, -a philosophy all the more persuasive, and that philosophy -makes the child the measure and test of -man’s worth and the arbiter of his eternal destiny. -“Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God, -as a child, shall not enter it.” The millstone mooring -the scandalizer in the ooze of ocean’s darkest -depths and the angels who see the face of their little -one’s Father, these are the extreme sanctions which -guarantee the accuracy of the child-test for the -measurement of man.</p> - -<p>The child-test has often been applied to man’s -morals. Onan and Sanger, Sparta and China, Calvin’s -unchristian infant damnation and the Christless -infant sanctification of Pelagius, Malthus with his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> -“Decrease and subtract” and Moses with his “Increase -and multiply,” all, from individuals to nations, -are ample evidence that the child is set for the ruin -and resurrection of many in Israel. The child-test -is surely potent in rating the world’s moral morons -and moral geniuses.</p> - -<p>Can the child-test be applied to man’s art and literature? -Recall the words of Job, “Who shut up -the sea with doors, when I made a cloud the garment -thereof and wrapt it in a mist in swaddling bands?” -That view of the sea in the swaddling bands of infancy -is a proof of an imagination looking at the -universe with the eyes of the Creator. The child-test -is a measure of the sublimity of Hebrew literature. -The revelation of Genesis gave the literature -of the Bible an outlook never reached by other -literatures. As the promise of the Messiah kept a -hallowing guard over the cradles of Israel, so the -vision of the Creator blotted out from the concepts -of the Hebrew imagination the crude and monstrous -nativities which make all pagan mythologies hybrid -and miscegenetic.</p> - -<p>Homer has fewer than others have of these nightmares, -but it is not in them nor in the tinsel sublimity -of his divine machinery that Homer has touched a -wider circle of readers than any of his epic brethren. -Rather it is in his unaffected and transparent portrayal -of the human nature we all understand that -Homer has set the heart of the world throbbing -faster. Not the celibate Virgil, nor the Puritanic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> -Milton, dissolver of matrimony, nor yet Dante, -idealizer of the maiden Beatrice, gave us childhood -and motherhood as Homer has done. Homer is no -sentimentalist, but he has wider sympathies with -mother and child than any author on the rolls of -literature. The mother cow, lowing over its first-born; -the mother dog, growling in defense of its -litter; the mother lion, all its brow wrinkled with -the greatest frown ever sketched; the mother bird, -starving and dying for its young, yes, even the -mother wasp, solicitous for its menaced brood (note -that, S. P. C. A.!) these are evidences of Homer’s -tenderness. Achilles likens his friend Patroclus to a -little maid fondly catching at her mother’s dress and -getting in her way with persistent tearful pleading -till the mother takes her up. In the <i>Iliad</i>, Helen’s -sorrow for her abandoned Hermione is a pleasing -element in her repentance. Odysseus proudly styles -himself the father of Telemachus; the mother of -Odysseus dies for longing of him, and his father, -Laertes, in the most exquisite of the many recognition -scenes of the <i>Odyssey</i>, passes from view in that -story, while his long-absent son tells him of the fruit -trees, “which,” says Odysseus, “thou once gavest -me for mine own, and I was begging of thee this and -that, being but a child and following thee through -the garden.” We have natural sketches of the babyhood -of his two heroes, Achilles and Odysseus.</p> - -<p>Yet, more than all these pictures, stands out in -the world’s imagination Hector’s boy, whose future<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> -fate Andromache, after Hector’s death, details with -a mother’s despairing vividness, whose childish terror -at his father’s helmet, while Andromache smiles -through her tears, has brought home to unnumbered -thousands the grim specter of war. That scene has -etched itself so deeply into the heart of mankind that -it has almost ruined Homer’s poem, alienating universal -sympathy from Achilles to Hector.</p> - -<p>After Homer, the child <i>motif</i> in literature is less -in evidence. Drama, of its nature, has little place -for the child except to put a keener poignancy in -tragedy. So Sophocles used the children of Œdipus. -So in his time did Shakespeare with the princes of -<i>Richard III</i>, with Marcellus in <i>Coriolanus</i>, with -Macduff’s sprightly lad, and with others. Theocritus -has a child to furnish an aside for the gossipy -Syracusan dames. Anacreon introduces the counterfeit -of childhood in the Cupids, whose sophisticated -conventionality checked invention in Elizabethan -lyrics as it did in art from Pompeii to Rubens and -later. Cupids are symbols, children of the brain, -not of the heart, and figure in song and painting as -signs. They have a message for the mind; they do -not touch the feelings, while on the other hand, they -free the artist from seeking in life the expressive -significance that Homer gave the child.</p> - -<p>Literature had to wait long for the naturalness of -Homer to reappear. Virgil has a little of it in -Ascanius, another Cupid, and it is significant that -Virgil’s one outstanding natural touch is found in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> -the famous Messianic eclogue: <i>Incipe, parve puer, -risu cognoscere matrem.</i> As for other Latins, -whether it be bachelorship or the erotic preoccupation -of the lyricists, or the supreme power of the -father in Roman customs and law, Latin literature -does not mirror for us prominently the child and -mother nor reflect their natural attractiveness as -found in Homer. Well, even Greece seems to have -lost the art, and a new inspiration was needed. That -inspiration came with the Divine Child of Bethlehem.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="XVII">XVII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE</span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>The influence of the Christ-Child on painting -was tremendous and lasting. A history of -Christian art could be written around the Madonna, -and the subject has attracted the notice of many -writers, indexed in art libraries. Alice Meynell has -treated the subject attractively and with her studious -insight in the <i>Children of the Old Masters</i>. In the -Catacombs, Christian art felt and portrayed the -Divine Child and His Mother. Byzantine ornamentation -and mosaics gave the Child a rigid majesty -which veiled His winsomeness, but the master painters -came closer to childhood and brought Madonnas -from the walls of crypts and of cathedrals to the -devotional shrine and the chapel, making the Child -less architectural and more natural.</p> - -<p>In literature the Christ-Child had equal influence -until Puritanism tried to remove Christmas from the -calendar. Drama originated in the liturgy of Easter -and of Christmas, and although Holy Week was -more elaborate and in substance more dramatic, -Christmas to Twelfth Night, offering more incentive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> -to play and song and more holidays, exercised a -larger influence on the stage. In lyric poetry at the -beginning of the sixth century we have already the -familiar, intimate and loving contact with the Christ-Child, -which finds its latest expression in Thompson -and Tabb. St. Ita, the Irish saint (480-570), is of -their faith and tenderness in the song of “Isucan,” -“Little Jesus,” given in Sigerson’s <i>Bards of the Gael -and Gall</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Jesukin</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lives my little cell within</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Jesu of the skies who art</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Next my heart thro’ every night.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">The bambino shines through medieval song in Adam -of St. Victor and in other writers of hymns. The -Catholic writers of the Renaissance celebrate the -same theme in the revived meters of classicism. -Sarbievius, the Jesuit lyricist of Poland, is full of the -Christ-Child, and in his well-known lines “To the -Violet” he calls upon that “dawn of spring” to -crown his “Little Lad” with its flowers in place of -the gold and gems and purple which weighted the -Infant. Sarbievius was doing what the painters did, -discarding the Byzantine ornament and convention.</p> - -<p>Test Puritanism with the child and it fails; test it -with the Christ-Child, and you will get the ponderous -“Hymn to the Nativity” of Milton, an imperialistic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> -ode which must have gladdened Cromwell. No -familiarity there, no mirthfulness, no Jesukin with -violets for crown jewels, not even Byzantine immobility. -Milton does not even doff the helmet of -war, as Hector did; no, he sees</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent10">from Juda’s land</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dreaded Infant’s hand;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The rays of Bethlehem blind his [Osiris’] dusky eyes.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">... Our Babe to show His Godhead true</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Can in His swaddling clothes control the damnèd crew.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A Prince of Peace indeed with a mailed fist! -Merry medieval England would not recognize -Jesukin in Miltonic panoply. Fortunately for art it -had attained excellence before the Puritanic blight -fell upon the world, but for literature in the English -language we must wait until the nineteenth century -to see the child come to its own. Wordsworth -attempted a revival of Plato’s philosophy and found -immortality, if not familiarity, in childhood when -he wrote his “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.” -Wordsworth took a more fruitful lesson -from the Greeks when he went back to nature in -other poems to study childhood. Even before him, -Blake, painter and poet, influenced no doubt by the -traditions of painting, began to see the heart in -childhood. The interminable moralizing stories of -Ann and Jane Taylor and of Elizabeth Turner, -which date from this time, are heavy with grown up -condescension. E. V. Lucas would have done better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span> -to republish in his <i>Book of Verses for Children</i> the -graceful and humorous lessons of the Greek fables -than perpetuate Taylor and Turner.</p> - -<p>After Wordsworth we see the child <i>motif</i> gradually -taking a larger place in the literature of England -and America. Despite Francis Thompson’s -vigorous effort in his famous essay, he has not succeeded -in making Shelley pass the child-test. Shelley -had no faith, no humility, no humor, no real tenderness, -and even granting him the dreaming power of -childhood, which in Thompson’s essay is largely -a reflection of Thompson, Shelley had not the heard -of a child to enter into the Kingdom. Walter -Scott’s friendship for Marjorie Fleming shows that -the great poet and novelist had the necessary qualifications, -but no performance comes now to mind -except a lullaby and the glorification of merry England -at Christmas. Swinburne glimpses gleams of a -baby’s pink toes and lists to low laughter of mouths -of gold. The child is picturesque for him. Moore, -Byron, Browning, for different reasons, fail in the -child-test. Tennyson touched the surface, although -in the “Princess” he came close to the mystery. -Patmore, uxorious and paternal, came closer and -even touched the depths of the child in “Toys.” -Longfellow and Whittier were of the same school.</p> - -<p>It was Stevenson, in a <i>Child’s Garden of Verses</i> -who brought back into poetry, as Lewis Carroll did -in prose and verse, the natural child that Homer -saw about him, and that painting discerned in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> -the Babe of Bethlehem. Humor, imagination, sympathy, -these were the factors which discovered the -heart of childhood for our modern world. Barry -and Belloc in England, Eugene Field and Riley in -America, Earls and “Tom” Daly and many others -have furthered the discoveries. There is no hope -for the child in the “New Poetry” which takes itself -too seriously. Who would hold up the world if the -“new poets” started in to mind the baby?</p> - -<p>One more element was needed, and sorely needed, -to enter fully into the mystery of the child. That -element is faith. Evolution looked on the child as -an epitome of its theory; pedagogy plotted out, -weighed and measured the child and drew up formidable -statistics; eugenics faced the child as though it -were a dire microbe, source of poverty, ignorance, -bootlegging, war, pestilence and famines. The modern -child had and still has before it a dismal prospect. -It is the camping ground of the specialist, the -experimental laboratory of the theorist, and the -peculiarly delectable victim of physical and moral -vivisectionists. Faith must save the child, faith in -the Babe of Bethlehem. Tabb and Thompson had -that faith. They are the counterpart in literature of -a St. Anthony or a St. Stanislaus in life and art. -They play with the Child Jesus. Isucan has come -into His own again. Tabb sings in “Out of -Bounds”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O comrades, let us one and all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Join in to get Him back his ball!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span></p> - -<p>And Francis Thompson with medieval intimacy -asks in “Ex Ore Infantium”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And did Thy Mother at the night</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And didst Thou feel quite good in bed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Kissed, and sweet, and Thy prayers said?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven,” said -Thompson. He will surely be at home there, and -Tabb and many another will be with him.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span></p> - -<p>The first seven chapters of this work -were given in substance as lectures at -the Champlain Assembly, Cliff Haven, -N. Y.</p> - -<p><a href="#XII">Chapter XII</a>, Educating the Emotions, -is a summary of an address given to the -Public School Teachers of Rhode Island.</p> - -<p>Other chapters have appeared in <i>America</i>, -<i>Catholic World</i>, <i>Educational Review -of Washington</i>, <i>School Interests</i>, <i>Classical -Weekly</i>, <i>Magnificat</i> and are reproduced -through the courtesy of the editors.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</h2> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="GREEK_SPEAKS_FOR_ITSELF">GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF<br /> -<span class="smaller">AN ETYMOLOGICAL PHANTASY<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></span></h3> - -</div> - -<p>During a period of lethargy I was petrified at a phantom, -bounding from my lexicon, with this cataract of phrases: -“Are you Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, -or Christian? Without me, you are anonymous. Do you -stigmatize heresy and schism, hypocrisy and blasphemy. Do you -blame schemers against the Mosaic decalog? Do you impose -anathemas in apostates, idolaters and atheists or exorcise the -devil and his demons with their diabolical pomps? Are you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span> -zealous for proselytes, and to baptize neophytes after catechism, -and to canonize orthodox martyrs with halos and emblems, -scandalizing frenzied iconoclasts? Then all that is done -through me.</p> - -<p>The ecclesiastical sphere is practically mine. I am the architect -of churches, cathedrals and basilicas, from the asphalt base -in the crypts of the catacomb, up to the apse and the chimes in -the dome. I am architect of monasteries for monks and -anchorites, and of asylums for orphans and lepers and maniacs. -Mine is the Hierarchy, from the Pope on his dais with his tiara, -to the mitered Bishop in his diocese, and to the parish priest in -his presbytery. Deacons and acolytes, clergy and laity, Papal -encyclicals, diocesan synods, parochial homilies, and all dogmatic -theology, with its mysteries and myriad topics, are mine. The -Bible is mine from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy of the Pentateuch, -to the Paralipomenon and the Psalms, to patriarchs and prophets, -to the Evangelists of Christ, to the Epistles and Apocalypse -of His Apostles. Epiphany, Pentecost, the Parasceve are mine -The tunes of the hymns, the quiring of anthems, the Gregorian -tones of the litanies and antiphons are melodious through -me and I composed the canon of liturgy with its symbols.</p> - -<p>Go to your home with me. Bushels of anthracite for the -chimney, and a diet of fancied nectar! Chairs and plates and -dishes; oysters; butter and treacle; perch or trout or sardines -in olive oil; the aroma of capon or partridge or pheasant; celery -and asparagus and peppers; cherries and dates and currants, -citrons and melons, prunes and quinces and plums; pumpkins -marmalade and pastry; chestnuts and pippins; masses of purple -hyacinths, with lily and crocus, with geraniums and heliotropes, -with narcissus and peony, with asters and orchids and posies of -roses. What zest! Isn’t that a panorama of paradise to -tantalize you? Be not economical or dyspeptic. Masticate -beneath your mustache. Let choruses echo in the parlor with -music of organ and guitar, or let there be anecdotes on the -piazza around a bottle of cheering tonic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span></p> - -<p>I telephone or telegraph for my “auto,” and my machine goes -to my theater or hippodrome. There is on my program the -symphony orchestra with harmonious melodies; or on my -program are scenes melancholy with tragedy, or hilarious with -pantomime and melodrama, with comic monolog or dramatic -dialog, with cyclists, gymnasts and acrobats. After the drama -or kinematic photography, with match and lamp you go to attic -canopies, and to the climes of Morpheus. For all these you are -to reimburse me with the treasuries of the purse.</p> - -<p>Go with me to the ocean, opposing the stratagems and tactics -of barbarous pirates, to meander by gulf and isthmus and -archipelago, nomads through all climates, charting geography -with my nautical atlases, from the Arctic to the Antarctic -through the tropic zone, from Polynesia to its antipodes. Then -for my astronomy! What a panorama through my telescope in -the crystal atmosphere! Above the horizon in the empyrean are -my planets and comets and meteors and galaxies of asteroids.</p> - -<p>Without me where is your “zoo” with its panthers and -leopards with dolphin and crocodile and hippopotamus, with -lynxes and hyenas, with ostrich and pelican, with buffalo and -dromedary, with ichneumons and scorpions, with the gigantic -elephant and its proboscis and the pygmy squirrel! Oh, what of -my chimerical and utopian “zoo,” with the phenix and dragon -and griffins and chameleons and gorgons and gnomes and -basilisks and sphinxes and hybrids!</p> - -<p>But I am not archaic; the scope of my dynamic energy is -practical and not eccentric. Mine are politics, the diadems of -monarchs, the scepters of tyrants, barbarous anarchy and -despotic autocracy, the panics of demagogue and the parliaments -of autonomy and democracy. Chemistry and chemical analysis, -physics with phenomena of electricity, acoustics, and optics, -mechanics, botany, geology, entomology, and all the “ologies” -with their technical glossaries; they are mine.</p> - -<p>So are all the apothecaries and pharmacies with glycerine and -licorice and creosote and the antidotes for quinsy; for catarrh,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span> -dropsy, neuralgia, and for every “-itis” and “-osis”; emetics for -the stomach; the cathartics, calomel and castor-oil; doses of -paregoric for colic; plasters for imposthumes; arsenic for -spasms of epilepsy, and tonics for anemic arteries; a peptonoic -diet for dysentery; oxygen against bronchial phlegm; bromides -for asthma; iodine for pleurisy and parasites; narcotics to calm -hysteria; antipyrin for agonizing rheumatism; antitoxins for -diphtheria and for the deleterious microbes of cholera or -typhoid, and bottles of panaceas.</p> - -<p>Anatomy is mine and the surgeon, diagnosing symptoms, -charting septic organs on the diagrams, trepanning the cranium, -cauterizing for hemorrhage, is mine; so are his sponges and -syringes and silk and his styptics, and his prophylactic hygiene, -and his anæsthetics, chloroform and ether, and his antiseptics -against bacteria and gangrene, and his autopsy and his skeletons.</p> - -<p>The school is mine with its desks, its programs and schedule -and the scholars, from their alphabet to their diploma, their -arithmetic and geometry, their gymnasiums and athletics, and -the school diamond and amphitheater. Pause before you ostracize -me from my schools.</p> - -<p>Would you be an essayist, sketching graphic stories or typical -characters; an historian, cataloging the treasures of archives, -and chronicling epochs of catastrophe and calm; or a philosopher, -systematizing theories of Stoics, Hedonists, Peripatetics -and Scholastics; or a poet, composing idylls and madrigals, -lyrics and odes with strophes and the epics with episodes, you -are mine. Without me you have not talents or ideas or paper -or ink. Mine are your grammar and syntax, your syllables, -your paragraphs with their commas and colons and parentheses, -your lexicons and encyclopedias and card-catalogs, your topics -and themes for ecstatic rhapsodies or for austere logic, your -fantastic paradoxes and your idiotic theories. ’Tis I who -phrase for you your axioms, caustic criticisms, laconic epigrams, -all your irony and sardonic sarcasm. If your technique is -idiomatic, your methods puzzling or crystal, your tropes are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> -metaphors graphic, your fancies hectic or anæmic, you are mine. -I am your enthusiastic stenographer, jotting down and synopsizing -your ideas and typing them to be stereotyped in your -authentic tomes, whether anonymous or under a pseudonym.</p> - -<p>I apologize for my tautologies, for this monotonous labyrinth, -for the phalanx of technicalities and for the etymological mosaic -which strangles your larynx with “ics” and “isms.” Whether -it is all abysmal bathos, or the climax and acme of the practical, -I am to blame for it.</p> - -<p>But pause before you ostracize me from my schools; pause ere -the nemesis of chaos and disaster is yours; but if you are to -be characterized as adamant and without sympathy, let the poets -echo a threnody about my coffin; let there be a chorus of pæans -under the cypress and cedar, the larch and osier, the myrtle and -amaranth, about my cenotaph; let there be in my cemetery a -mausoleum with a monolith, and on it my epitaph:</p> - -<p>The Lexicons of Europe Are the Trophies of Greece.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="NOTE_THE_NATURE_OF_ESTHETIC_ENJOYMENT">NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT</h3> - -</div> - -<p>Esthetic pleasure or the enjoyment of the beautiful is -generally admitted to be disinterested. Possession and -ownership do not enter into the esthetic act. The ownership of -Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is not an object of indifference or of -disinterested attention. Thieves scheme for the ownership, -thousands covet it, guards protect it. But the enjoyment of -“Mona Lisa” is not selfish and exclusive in its nature. Esthetic -enjoyment makes abstraction of possession and of selfish good. -It follows therefore that esthetic enjoyment is a function of -man’s knowledge, not of man’s desires and appetites. The only -condition upon which the appetites, whether bodily or spiritual, -can operate is that they be energized by personal good. Volition -may be free, but it cannot be disinterested. You may enjoy -another’s picture; you cannot eat his dinner, nor can you be -indifferent to what you know to be for your good.</p> - -<p>Some have asserted that esthetic enjoyment belongs to a -special power apart from both knowledge and appetite. There -is however no need of such power. Certainly beauty must be -known to be enjoyed, but is not the knowledge itself adequate to -produce the characteristic effect of beauty? Is not Aquinas -right in saying, “Pulchrum dicitur id cujus ipsa apprehensio -placet” (that is called beautiful which simply by its perception -pleases)? Good, being an end, cannot delight solely by being -perceived; good must be attained. But for beauty, is not its -very perception an enjoyment? The solution of this question -will be found in the nature of enjoyment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p> - -<p>Emotions and feelings, pleasure and pain are easy to understand -and for that reason difficult to express in satisfactory -formulas. By its very nature every faculty of man operating -normally has an accompanying pleasure, while if operating -abnormally it has pain. The faculty itself is therefore the -subject of the feeling just as life is inherent in the organism. -Indeed feeling is consciously localized life. The feeling of the -toe is felt by the toe; the joy of seeing is felt by the eye. No -distinct power is required to carry the feeling. So it is with -esthetic emotions. The mind itself feels the delight of beauty. -Esthetic enjoyment is a function of perception.</p> - -<p>Does esthetic enjoyment belong to the senses and to the -imagination? Here again there is difference of opinion. It is -probable, however, that sensible perception has no accompanying -esthetic pleasure. St. Augustine appealed to experience and -declared that esthetic enjoyment of the beauty, say, of the sun, -was possible, even when the sight suffered pain. A better -reason may be found in the behavior of animals which, though -clothed in beauty, give us no certain evidence of esthetic -appreciation and enjoyment.</p> - -<p>Esthetic enjoyment therefore belongs to intellectual cognition. -Now the intellect has many operations. Which one of these -carries the esthetic pleasure or esthetic pain, which one is -charged with the vital thrill that creates and appreciates the -world of art? The mind reasons, the mind judges, the mind -apprehends. Esthetic enjoyment belongs to the last. Judgments -and inferences may be objects of esthetic enjoyment; to reason, -to judge may precede or follow or may be even necessary conditions, -but the esthetic act is most probably one of simple -apprehension. There would seem to be general agreement that -contemplation is the characteristic attitude of the mind in the -presence of beauty. Aquinas excludes distinctly the idea of end -from beauty. Beauty is a form which we contemplate. Croce -calls the esthetic perception intuition. Theodore Watts-Dunton<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span> -seems to be describing the same act when he calls poetry “the -renascence of wonder.” The efforts of reasoning and of judging -appear to be alien to the mental attitude in the presence of -beauty.</p> - -<p>The simple apprehension is concerned with what is termed -ontological truth, whereas reasoning and judging result in -logical truth. Now, just as esthetic enjoyment abstracts from -possession or good, so does it abstract from the affirmations -belonging to the logical truth of judgment and of rational -inference. There is esthetic enjoyment of fiction as well as of -fact. Aristotle long ago saw that although the substance of art -must be the persons, actions and feelings of man, the pleasure -found in the work of art does not arise from its correspondence -with reality. The correspondence with reality gives the satisfaction -of logical truth, of scientific truth, of historical fact. -The truth which is the object of esthetic pleasure in art is the -truth of consistency, of realization of ideal, the truth of reasonable -congruity, of plot in a wide sense of the term. This vision, -this dream of the artist, scholastic philosophers call <i>causa -exemplaris</i> or ideal. If we are right in our understanding of -Croce, his intuition is nothing else but the simple apprehension -of the ideal. Esthetic enjoyment comes also, as is clear, from -the simple apprehension of beauty in natural realities where -there is no fiction of art.</p> - -<p>To localize the esthetic enjoyment in this way does not determine -the constituent elements of beauty, but clear definitions -help to exclude many false notions of beauty. The ideal of the -artist is embodied in his imagination before it is expressed in its -proper medium. The art of man always must have a medium -which can be perceived by the senses. That is why a vigorous -imagination, which stores up and dispenses to its owner quickly -and abundantly of its riches, is so useful to the artist. Through -his imagination the artist is original and personal. The pure -thought of science is abstract and alike in all minds; the artistic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span> -vision formed from individual experience will be different in -every one. Therefore no two artists expressing themselves in -the concrete can be alike as no two scenes of nature are alike -in beauty.</p> - -<p>Aristotle put the pleasure of art in perception. Art for him is -a <i>mimesis</i>, which does not mean an imitation, in the sense of -mirroring or copying. That was Plato’s notion, which Aristotle -combated. Art is, in Aristotle, a power analogous to nature, -working like nature in another and limited world, of sound, of -color, of human thoughts. Art is fiction, a dramatizing, a -staging of life, to be judged, not by correspondence with fact, -but by its own plausible and convincing rationalization. No one -has done more for art than Aristotle in his insistence upon the -necessity of cause and effect, of a motivation, sufficient at least -for the artist’s public. Intrinsic unity, the fruit of perfect -motivation, was another necessary requisite in Aristotle’s analysis -of art. It is only when the varied elements of the artist’s -imaginative experience have fused themselves into a unity by -having a well-motivated beginning, middle and end that the mind -feels the beauty of its vision.</p> - -<p>Universality in art is another fruitful idea of Aristotle. -While confined to his sensible medium, the artist must link up -the separate elements of his vision more closely than in the -realm of fact. He will by that very reason be general and -universal because his motivation must approve itself to all. A -moving picture of the death of Cæsar as it really occurred -would be valuable history. It would, however, be individual. -Shakespeare’s death of Cæsar has a beginning, middle and end, -and the spectators see in it the working out of a plot in which -every word and act has been carefully planned and fitted into -the design. The individuating notes are left out, and the death -of a Cæsar has universal appeal.</p> - -<p>Artistic creation, motivation, unity, universality, these are -great principles of art formulated by Aristotle and not likely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span> -ever to be superseded. The cognitive idea of beauty and those -principles of Aristotle have been followed in the chapters of -this book.</p> - -<p>For further discussion of the nature of esthetic pleasure, see -author’s “Art of Interesting,” Chap. V, Interest from Emotions; -Chap. XVII, Is Esthetic Emotion a Spinal Thrill?</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span></p> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="A_FORWARD-LOOKING_LESSON_IN_LITERATURE">A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE<br /> -<span class="smaller">(<i>To exemplify <a href="#IX">Chapter IX</a></i>)</span></h3> - -</div> - -<h4>THE METHOD</h4> - -<p>THE dry bones in the cold print of this lesson are to be -galvanized into life by a teacher in constant touch with -the class and enlisting the coöperation by questions, by having -the passage read aloud, by writing on the board, by interchanges -of ideas, by lively disputes between individuals. No mere -lecture with passive listeners, no mere study period with a -passive overseer, but real teaching, which is a fine conversation, -directed upon select subjects and carried to a destined end under -expert guidance.</p> - -<p>All of the technical terms, apprehension, judgment, inference -and the rest are to be omitted. The intelligent use of such -terms belongs to college, although the operations and objects -which the terms designate belong to all grades. Through -simple, untechnical questions the whole truth may be understood -by each, and every student may be made to go through operations -which are of daily occurrence and which the student must -make habitual by repeated exercise to insure a mastery of the -art of expression. The teacher is an expert mental director, and, -setting before the class a good passage of literature, he will -make them think again and put in order again and express again -what the author has done; he will make them conceive, arrange -and express thoughts of their own with the excellence which -teacher and class have noted and appreciated in the passage. -The teacher of literature will be no lecturer in history or in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span> -philosophy or in mathematics, but will be like the teacher of -music or like the physical trainer, who makes his class go -through exercises which he himself has exemplified and which -the class immediately practice to acquire bodily skill then and -for the future.</p> - -<p>A passage of poetry is designedly taken in this lesson to show -how poetry can be made to contribute to the art of expression. -Literature for some is history, for others philosophy. These -center attention on the facts or ideas. Literature for others is -a dreamy, mysterious thing, which you must look at with awe, -speak about with esoteric rhapsody and carefully lock up again -in a glass case. A forward looking lesson in literature must -know what the passage means, but is usually not concerned with -the origin and past history of the author’s meaning. The -forward-looking lesson will not pretend to solve all the mysteries -of art and beauty but will take out of the clouds and put -clearly before the class some point in the art of expression, a -point which will be practical and of everyday use. Such a lesson -will be as decidedly vocational as hammering a nail or rigging -up a radio set or rushing around a gymnasium.</p> - -<p>The purpose ever before the literature teacher’s mind is -appreciation, leading to mental action and through repeated -action to the art of expression.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse center">THE LESSON</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And leaves the world to darkness and to me.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<h4>I. ANALYSIS OF THOUGHT</h4> - -<p>1. <i>Understanding.</i>—The meaning of each word, the meaning -of each line, the meaning of the whole stanza. This should not -be a mere passive understanding. Students should be made to -reëxpress the ideas, not only by paraphrase in other words but -especially by <i>imaginative realization</i>. “For instance,” “Just<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> -like what?” are two phrases to be often on the teacher’s lips. -“Have you a heard a curfew?” “Have you heard a knell tolling?” -“Did you ever see in picture or in reality a lowing herd winding -o’er the lea?” A thought illustrated by the thinker’s imagination -is realized fully, is felt as well as grasped, and will persist.</p> - -<p>2. <i>Judgment.</i>—What is the logical subject and logical predicate -of each line and of the whole stanza? That is, what is the -author’s chief topic and what does he say about it? This need -not always be the grammatical subject of the passage. The art -of expression is not only apprehending by vivid understanding, -but it is also judging by predication, by affirming or denying -something of the subject. There is not a class of any grade -which cannot profitably exercise itself in clear and concise -judgements. The successive judgements briefly put are: The bell -tells the end of day: the cows return to the barn: the ploughman -comes home: I am left alone in the darkness.</p> - -<p>3. <i>Reasoning.</i>—As as single sentence may be analyzed into a -definite subject and a definite predicate for a judgment, so two -or more sentences may be compared to grasp the relation between -them. Poetry does not go through a process of reasoning. -It states thoughts and presents pictures, permitting the mind to -infer. The three pictures in the opening lines have a common -trait which the mind detects: all three pictures are signs of -nightfall. The mind draws an inference which is inductive in -nature, and the whole stanza may be briefly stated: The coming -of night leaves me alone in darkness.</p> - -<p>These stages in analyzing the thought are elaborated here. -In practice they may be expedited. Before being read, the judgment -and inference may be presented as problems for solution: -What does the writer say in each line? What one idea is found -in the first three lines? What will be the title, the head-line, -the summary of each line and of the whole stanza?<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span></p> - -<h4>II. ANALYSIS OF FORM</h4> - -<p>Form includes not only the words and sentences, their choice -and their arrangement, but also the texture and color of the -thoughts and their modification ending in their perfect expression, -as contrasted with the bare and limited statements already -determined. In the study of literature, words are not merely -materials for philologizing, or merely sentences, free opportunities -for grammatical anatomizing with all the bones properly -numbered and labeled. Such analyses look chiefly backward and -are not productive of writers. Language anatomy has its great -utility, but literature, or the art of expression, must look to the -flesh and blood of the thoughts, to the personality, to the -imagination, to the concrete embodiment of the writer’s art. -The student will take up, therefore, the thought already -analyzed and note and appreciate how his author has clothed -the ideas, the judgments, the reasoning. He will reënact the -creative process the author went through, and so here, with a -view to expression, he will strive to rival the excellence of Gray, -but will do so with his own thoughts.</p> - -<p><i>Grading.</i>—At this stage the teacher may point out incidentally -many excellences in the art of expression, but will drill and have -practice on the particular excellence in expression, proper to his -class. The textbook ordinarily determines the grade, but if -there is no textbook or prescribed program, the teacher will -determine his own order of matter.</p> - -<p><i>Right Word.</i>—Let us suppose the teacher is teaching the art -of using the right word (<i>Model English</i>, 3), the word which -states the thing exactly in kind. He may center attention on the -line:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The class will be drilled in the author’s choice of the right -word by considering other possible but less exact combinations, -e.g.: A number of noisy cows went reluctantly along. After<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span> -this drill, the class will appreciate what the right word is and be -ready for the expression of their own ideas in right words. -They are not to paraphrase Gray’s meaning. That has already -been done, but they are to provide subject-matter of their own -and express it with a like excellence. Did they continue to -speak of cows, they could not better Gray, but if they speak of -bees or bloodhounds or cavalry or autumn leaves or rioters or -anything else that has come under their experience in life or in -reading, they might approach the exactness of Gray in giving the -right word for the sound, for the collection, for the action, for -the manner and for the place.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p><i>Bees</i>: the buzzing swarm of bees circled thickly about the -hive.</p> - -<p><i>Bloodhounds</i>: the baying pack of hounds followed the trail -eagerly.</p> - -<p><i>Cavalry</i>: the clattering squadron of cavalry galloped swiftly -along the road.</p> - -<p><i>Autumn</i>: the heaps of rustling leaves were swept into every -corner by autumn winds.</p> - -<p><i>Rioters</i>: the yelling mob of rioters rushed wildly towards the -jail.</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Imagination.</i>—Suppose the teacher is giving a lesson in -imagination (“Model English,” Chap. X). If one of the -<i>General Methods</i>, say <i>Reflecting</i> (No. 69), is to be taught, then -the class must vividly picture in their imaginations Gray’s -stanza. With the help of books on the desk and with a gesture -or two the scene and all its characters may be <i>dramatized</i>. All -this suggestively rather than with exact mimicry, unless there is -in question a passage that may be reproduced by the class in a -miniature pageant or play. To test whether the class is actually -imagining, have them quickly number, one after another, the -things they see and hear directly by the words and indirectly -suggested by the words. Or test in another way. Let each -draw an outline of the frame of a picture and show how they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> -would illustrate any line or the whole stanza, putting numbers -on the blank space to locate the details and explaining to the side -what the numbers stand for.</p> - -<p>Suppose a <i>particular method, significant part for the whole</i> -(No. 73) be the matter of the lesson, then the whole which is -expressed by Gray is “evening,” or “parting day,” pictured by -three significant details—curfew, cows and ploughman. Have -the class take an opposite situation—not evening in a graveyard -in preparation for gloomy thoughts, but morning on the farm -looking to a busy, joyous day. Or again, what significant details -will suggest the hush of evening in a city or on the sea; noon in a -factory, closing of school in the afternoon, coming of winter in -December, dawning of spring in April, etc. Interest may be -accentuated if one student gives the details and others imagine -what is the whole suggested. For example: The cock crows a -greeting to the rising sun; the team of horses is hitched to the -mowing machine, and soon the clicking knives lay low the -waving grass (farm); the crank is whirled about with a swift -revolution and jerking stop; the low purr of a hidden engine -steals upon the ear and a cloud of dust swallows up the rattling -car (a Ford); a sprig of shamrock graces the lapel of the coat; -green ribbons flaunt gayly above ruddy cheeks, and down the -street steps a band jigging Garryowen (St. Patrick’s Day). In -the same way elements of force or interest, metrical charm or -poetic thought and many other points could be taught from this -stanza, according to the grade of the class before the teacher. -Whatever the passage taken, once the grade has been settled, the -artistic drill should be carried through the stages of grasping -the thought definitely, of appreciating it with discrimination, of -repeating the process of creation, of dramatizing the complete -product, and finally of self-expression on the part of the student, -striving to rival the author in the excellence he has studied.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Cf. De Wulf: <i>L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté</i>, p. 40.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Sandys: <i>History of Classical Scholarship</i>, I, 438.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Sandys, III, 54.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> This “mosaic of etymology” which I offer is not, I think, simply -an ingenious <i>tour de force</i>. It has a significance and a practical -value. It may illustrate the composite nature of the English -language; it may amuse a curious reader; it may enliven a Greek -class with the touch of actuality; it may disclose dim vistas into -the distant past through the medium of everyday language, exemplifying -history through common things. All the words of this -phantasy are of Greek origin, except the article, the pronouns, -the prepositions and conjunctions, and a few other small words: -“so, as, then, home, let, go, do, all” and parts of the verb “to be.” -Skeat’s <i>Etymological Dictionary</i> (Student’s edition) is the authority. -The exclusively technical words of modern sciences which -are almost wholly Greek have not, for the most part, been mentioned. -It is needless to remark that the prescriptions of the -phantom’s pharmacy are not authoritative.</p> - -<p>This <i>jeu d’esprit</i> has attracted so much attention as to be reprinted -by the American Classical Association and to be noticed -by several metropolitan editors. That attention is the motive for -giving the article permanent position in a book with which a novel -plea for Greek has a certain, though remote, connection.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> For analysis of thought, see <i>Model English</i>, bk. II, chap. X, -by F. P. Donnelly, S. J. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, New York and -Chicago.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE ***</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for -copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very -easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation -of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project -Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may -do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected -by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark -license, especially commercial redistribution. -</div> - -<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br /> -<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br /> -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person -or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the -Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when -you share it without charge with others. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country other than the United States. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work -on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the -phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: -</div> - -<blockquote> - <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most - other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions - whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms - of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online - at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you - are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws - of the country where you are located before using this eBook. - </div> -</blockquote> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg™ License. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format -other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain -Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -provided that: -</div> - -<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'> - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation.” - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ - works. - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works. - </div> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of -the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set -forth in Section 3 below. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right -of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™ -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, -Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up -to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website -and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread -public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state -visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Most people start at our website which has the main PG search -facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. -</div> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/64443-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/64443-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 6e0e42a..0000000 --- a/old/64443-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/64443-h/images/flower.jpg b/old/64443-h/images/flower.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 89f1d76..0000000 --- a/old/64443-h/images/flower.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/64443-h/images/macmillan.jpg b/old/64443-h/images/macmillan.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index cab246b..0000000 --- a/old/64443-h/images/macmillan.jpg +++ /dev/null |
