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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Dance of Life, by Havelock Ellis
-
-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
-www.gutenberg.org. 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.
-
-Title: The Dance of Life
-
-Author: Havelock Ellis
-
-Release Date: June 27, 2021 [eBook #65714]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Tim Lindell, David King, and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was
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-             Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANCE OF LIFE ***
-
-
-
-
-                           THE DANCE OF LIFE
-
-
-
-
-                           THE DANCE OF LIFE
-
-                                   BY
-                             HAVELOCK ELLIS
-
-         AUTHOR OF “IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS,” “AFFIRMATIONS,”
-                       “ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME,” ETC.
-
-                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
-                        HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
-                     The Riverside Press Cambridge
-
-
-
-
-    COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HAVELOCK ELLIS
-
-    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
-
-    SECOND IMPRESSION, JUNE, 1923
-    THIRD IMPRESSION, AUGUST, 1923
-    FOURTH IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1923
-    FIFTH IMPRESSION, OCTOBER, 1923
-    SIXTH IMPRESSION, NOVEMBER, 1923
-    SEVENTH IMPRESSION, DECEMBER, 1923
-    EIGHTH IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY, 1924
-    NINTH IMPRESSION, JULY, 1924
-    TENTH IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924
-    ELEVENTH IMPRESSION, OCTOBER, 1924
-    TWELFTH IMPRESSION, DECEMBER, 1924
-
-
-    The Riverside Press
-    CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
-    PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
-
-
-
-
-                                PREFACE
-
-
-THIS book was planned many years ago. As to the idea running through it,
-I cannot say when that arose. My feeling is, it was born with me. On
-reflection, indeed, it seems possible the seeds fell imperceptibly in
-youth—from F. A. Lange, maybe, and other sources—to germinate unseen in
-a congenial soil. However that may be, the idea underlies much that I
-have written. Even the present book began to be written, and to be
-published in a preliminary form, more than fifteen years ago. Perhaps I
-may be allowed to seek consolation for my slowness, however vainly, in
-the saying of Rodin that “slowness is beauty,” and certainly it is the
-slowest dances that have been to me most beautiful to see, while, in the
-dance of life, the achievement of a civilisation in beauty seems to be
-inversely to the rapidity of its pace.
-
-Moreover, the book remains incomplete, not merely in the sense that I
-would desire still to be changing and adding to each chapter, but even
-incomplete by the absence of many chapters for which I had gathered
-material, and twenty years ago should have been surprised to find
-missing. For there are many arts, not among those we conventionally call
-“fine,” which seem to me fundamental for living. But now I put forth the
-book as it stands, deliberately, without remorse, well content so to do.
-
-Once that would not have been possible. A book must be completed as it
-had been originally planned, finished, rounded, polished. As a man grows
-older his ideals change. Thoroughness is often an admirable ideal. But
-it is an ideal to be adopted with discrimination, having due reference
-to the nature of the work in hand. An artist, it seems to me now, has
-not always to finish his work in every detail; by not doing so he may
-succeed in making the spectator his co-worker, and put into his hands
-the tool to carry on the work which, as it lies before him, beneath its
-veil of yet partly unworked material, still stretches into infinity.
-Where there is most labour there is not always most life, and by doing
-less, provided only he has known how to do well, the artist may achieve
-more.
-
-He will not, I hope, achieve complete consistency. In fact a part of the
-method of such a book as this, written over a long period of years, is
-to reveal a continual slight inconsistency. That is not an evil, but
-rather the avoidance of an evil. We cannot remain consistent with the
-world save by growing inconsistent with our own past selves. The man who
-consistently—as he fondly supposes “logically”—clings to an unchanging
-opinion is suspended from a hook which has ceased to exist. “I thought
-it was she, and she thought it was me, and when we come near it weren’t
-neither one of us”—that metaphysical statement holds, with a touch of
-exaggeration, a truth we must always bear in mind concerning the
-relation of subject and object. They can neither of them possess
-consistency; they have both changed before they come up with one
-another. Not that such inconsistency is a random flux or a shallow
-opportunism. We change, and the world changes, in accordance with the
-underlying organisation, and inconsistency, so conditioned by truth to
-the whole, becomes the higher consistency of life. I am therefore able
-to recognise and accept the fact that, again and again in this book, I
-have come up against what, superficially regarded, seemed to be the same
-fact, and each time have brought back a slightly different report, for
-it had changed and I had changed. The world is various, of infinite
-iridescent aspect, and until I attain to a correspondingly infinite
-variety of statement I remain far from anything that could in any sense
-be described as “truth.” We only see a great opal that never looks the
-same this time as when we looked last time. “He never painted to-day
-quite the same as he had painted yesterday,” Elie Faure says of Renoir,
-and it seems to me natural and right that it should have been so. I have
-never seen the same world twice. That, indeed, is but to repeat the
-Heraclitean saying—an imperfect saying, for it is only the half of the
-larger, more modern synthesis I have already quoted—that no man bathes
-twice in the same stream. Yet—and this opposing fact is fully as
-significant—we really have to accept a continuous stream as constituted
-in our minds; it flows in the same direction; it coheres in what is more
-or less the same shape. Much the same may be said of the ever-changing
-bather whom the stream receives. So that, after all, there is not only
-variety, but also unity. The diversity of the Many is balanced by the
-stability of the One. That is why life must always be a dance, for that
-is what a dance is: perpetual slightly varied movements which are yet
-always held true to the shape of the whole.
-
-We verge on philosophy. The whole of this book is on the threshold of
-philosophy. I hasten to add that it remains there. No dogmas are here
-set forth to claim any general validity. Not that even the technical
-philosopher always cares to make that claim. Mr. F. H. Bradley, one of
-the most influential of modern English philosophers, who wrote at the
-outset of his career, “On all questions, if you push me far enough, at
-present I end in doubts and perplexities,” still says, forty years
-later, that if asked to define his principles rigidly, “I become
-puzzled.” For even a cheese-mite, one imagines, could only with
-difficulty attain an adequate metaphysical conception of a cheese, and
-how much more difficult the task is for Man, whose everyday intelligence
-seems to move on a plane so much like that of a cheese-mite and yet has
-so vastly more complex a web of phenomena to synthetise.
-
-It is clear how hesitant and tentative must be the attitude of one who,
-having found his life-work elsewhere than in the field of technical
-philosophy, may incidentally feel the need, even if only playfully, to
-speculate concerning his function and place in the universe. Such
-speculation is merely the instinctive impulse of the ordinary person to
-seek the wider implications bound up with his own little activities. It
-is philosophy only in the simple sense in which the Greeks understood
-philosophy, merely a philosophy of life, of one’s own life, in the wide
-world. The technical philosopher does something quite different when he
-passes over the threshold and shuts himself up in his study—
-
-                        “Veux-tu découvrir le monde,
-                        Ferme tes yeux, Rosemonde”—
-
-and emerges with great tomes that are hard to buy, hard to read, and,
-let us be sure, hard to write. But of Socrates, as of the English
-philosopher Falstaff, we are not told that he wrote anything.
-
-So that if it may seem to some that this book reveals the expansive
-influence of that great classico-mathematical Renaissance in which it is
-our high privilege to live, and that they find here “relativity” applied
-to life, I am not so sure. It sometimes seems to me that, in the first
-place, we, the common herd, mould the great movements of our age, and
-only in the second place do they mould us. I think it was so even in the
-great earlier classico-mathematical Renaissance. We associate it with
-Descartes. But Descartes could have effected nothing if an innumerable
-crowd in many fields had not created the atmosphere by which he was
-enabled to breathe the breath of life. We may here profitably bear in
-mind all that Spengler has shown concerning the unity of spirit
-underlying the most diverse elements in an age’s productivity. Roger
-Bacon had in him the genius to create such a Renaissance three centuries
-earlier; there was no atmosphere for him to live in and he was stifled.
-But Malherbe, who worshipped Number and Measure as devoutly as
-Descartes, was born half a century before him. That silent, colossal,
-ferocious Norman—vividly brought before us by Tallement des Réaux, to
-whom, rather than to Saint-Simon, we owe the real picture of
-seventeenth-century France—was possessed by the genius of destruction,
-for he had the natural instinct of the Viking, and he swept all the
-lovely Romantic spirit of old France so completely away that it has
-scarcely ever revived since until the days of Verlaine. But he had the
-Norman classico-mathematical architectonic spirit—he might have said,
-like Descartes, as truly as it ever can be said in literature, _Omnia
-apud me mathematica fiunt_—and he introduced into the world a new rule
-of Order. Given a Malherbe, a Descartes could hardly fail to follow, a
-French Academy must come into existence almost at the same time as the
-“Discours de la Méthode,” and Le Nôtre must already be drawing the
-geometrical designs of the gardens of Versailles. Descartes, it should
-be remembered, could not have worked without support; he was a man of
-timid and yielding character, though he had once been a soldier, not of
-the heroic temper of Roger Bacon. If Descartes could have been put back
-into Roger Bacon’s place, he would have thought many of Bacon’s
-thoughts. But we should never have known it. He nervously burnt one of
-his works when he heard of Galileo’s condemnation, and it was fortunate
-that the Church was slow to recognise how terrible a Bolshevist had
-entered the spiritual world with this man, and never realised that his
-books must be placed on the Index until he was already dead.
-
-So it is to-day. We, too, witness a classico-mathematical Renaissance.
-It is bringing us a new vision of the universe, but also a new vision of
-human life. That is why it is necessary to insist upon life as a dance.
-This is not a mere metaphor. The dance is the rule of number and of
-rhythm and of measure and of order, of the controlling influence of
-form, of the subordination of the parts to the whole. That is what a
-dance is. And these same properties also make up the classic spirit, not
-only in life, but, still more clearly and definitely, in the universe
-itself. We are strictly correct when we regard not only life but the
-universe as a dance. For the universe is made up of a certain number of
-elements, less than a hundred, and the “periodic law” of these elements
-is metrical. They are ranged, that is to say, not haphazard, not in
-groups, but by number, and those of like quality appear at fixed and
-regular intervals. Thus our world is, even fundamentally, a dance, a
-single metrical stanza in a poem which will be for ever hidden from us,
-except in so far as the philosophers, who are to-day even here applying
-the methods of mathematics, may believe that they have imparted to it
-the character of objective knowledge.
-
-I call this movement of to-day, as that of the seventeenth century,
-classico-mathematical. And I regard the dance (without prejudice to a
-distinction made later in this volume) as essentially its symbol. This
-is not to belittle the Romantic elements of the world, which are equally
-of its essence. But the vast exuberant energies and immeasurable
-possibilities of the first day may perhaps be best estimated when we
-have reached their final outcome on the sixth day of creation.
-
-However that may be, the analogy of the two historical periods in
-question remains, and I believe that we may consider it holds good to
-the extent that the strictly mathematical elements of the later period
-are not the earliest to appear, but that we are in the presence of a
-process that has been in subtle movement in many fields for half a
-century. If it is significant that Descartes appeared a few years after
-Malherbe, it is equally significant that Einstein was immediately
-preceded by the Russian ballet. We gaze in admiration at the artist who
-sits at the organ, but we have been blowing the bellows; and the great
-performer’s music would have been inaudible had it not been for us.
-
-This is the spirit in which I have written. We are all engaged—not
-merely one or two prominent persons here and there—in creating the
-spiritual world. I have never written but with the thought that the
-reader, even though he may not know it, is already on my side. Only so
-could I write with that sincerity and simplicity without which it would
-not seem to me worth while to write at all. That may be seen in the
-saying which I set on the forefront of my earliest book, “The New
-Spirit”: he who carries farthest his most intimate feelings is simply
-the first in file of a great number of other men, and one becomes
-typical by being to the utmost degree one’s self. That saying I chose
-with much deliberation and complete conviction because it went to the
-root of my book. On the surface it obviously referred to the great
-figures I was there concerned with, representing what I regarded—by no
-means in the poor sense of mere modernity—as the New Spirit in life.
-They had all gone to the depths of their own souls and thence brought to
-the surface and expressed—audaciously or beautifully, pungently or
-poignantly—intimate impulses and emotions which, shocking as they may
-have seemed at the time, are now seen to be those of an innumerable
-company of their fellow men and women. But it was also a book of
-personal affirmations. Beneath the obvious meaning of that motto on the
-title-page lay the more private meaning that I was myself setting forth
-secret impulses which might some day be found to express the emotions
-also of others. In the thirty-five years that have since passed, the
-saying has often recurred to my mind, and if I have sought in vain to
-make it mine I find no adequate justification for the work of my life.
-
-And now, as I said at the outset, I am even prepared to think that that
-is the function of all books that are real books. There are other
-classes of so-called books: there is the class of history books and the
-class of forensic books, that is to say, the books of facts and the
-books of argument. No one would wish to belittle either kind. But when
-we think of a book proper, in the sense that a Bible means a book, we
-mean more than this. We mean, that is to say, a revelation of something
-that had remained latent, unconscious, perhaps even more or less
-intentionally repressed, within the writer’s own soul, which is,
-ultimately, the soul of mankind. These books are apt to repel; nothing,
-indeed, is so likely to shock us at first as the manifest revelation of
-ourselves. Therefore, such books may have to knock again and again at
-the closed door of our hearts. “Who is there?” we carelessly cry, and we
-cannot open the door; we bid the importunate stranger, whatever he may
-be, to go away; until, as in the apologue of the Persian mystic, at last
-we seem to hear the voice outside saying: “It is thyself.”
-
-H. E.
-
-
-
-
-                                CONTENTS
-
-
-I. INTRODUCTION 1
-
-II. THE ART OF DANCING 36
-
-III. THE ART OF THINKING 68
-
-IV. THE ART OF WRITING 141
-
-V. THE ART OF RELIGION 191
-
-VI. THE ART OF MORALS 244
-
-VII. CONCLUSION 285
-
-INDEX 359
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER I
-                              INTRODUCTION
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-IT has always been difficult for Man to realise that his life is all an
-art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For
-that is always how he has more or less acted it. At the beginning,
-indeed, the primitive philosopher whose business it was to account for
-the origin of things usually came to the conclusion that the whole
-universe was a work of art, created by some Supreme Artist, in the way
-of artists, out of material that was practically nothing, even out of
-his own excretions, a method which, as children sometimes instinctively
-feel, is a kind of creative art. The most familiar to us of these
-primitive philosophical statements—and really a statement that is as
-typical as any—is that of the Hebrews in the first chapter of their Book
-of Genesis. We read there how the whole cosmos was fashioned out of
-nothing, in a measurable period of time by the art of one Jehovah, who
-proceeded methodically by first forming it in the rough, and gradually
-working in the details, the finest and most delicate last, just as a
-sculptor might fashion a statue. We may find many statements of the like
-kind even as far away as the Pacific.[1] And—also even at the same
-distance—the artist and the craftsman, who resembled the divine creator
-of the world by making the most beautiful and useful things for Mankind,
-himself also partook of the same divine nature. Thus, in Samoa, as also
-in Tonga, the carpenter, who built canoes, occupied a high and almost
-sacred position, approaching that of the priest. Even among ourselves,
-with our Roman traditions, the name Pontiff, or Bridge-Builder, remains
-that of an imposing and hieratic personage.
-
-But that is only the primitive view of the world. When Man developed,
-when he became more scientific and more moralistic, however much his
-practice remained essentially that of the artist, his conception became
-much less so. He was learning to discover the mystery of measurement; he
-was approaching the beginnings of geometry and mathematics; he was at
-the same time becoming warlike. So he saw things in straight lines, more
-rigidly; he formulated laws and commandments. It was, Einstein assures
-us, the right way. But it was, at all events in the first place, most
-unfavourable to the view of life as an art. It remains so even to-day.
-
-Yet there are always some who, deliberately or by instinct, have
-perceived the immense significance in life of the conception of art.
-That is especially so as regards the finest thinkers of the two
-countries which, so far as we may divine,—however difficult it may here
-be to speak positively and by demonstration,—have had the finest
-civilisations, China and Greece. The wisest and most recognisably
-greatest practical philosophers of both these lands have believed that
-the whole of life, even government, is an art of definitely like kind
-with the other arts, such as that of music or the dance. We may, for
-instance, recall to memory one of the most typical of Greeks. Of
-Protagoras, calumniated by Plato,—though, it is interesting to observe
-that Plato’s own transcendental doctrine of Ideas has been regarded as
-an effort to escape from the solvent influence of Protagoras’ logic,—it
-is possible for the modern historian of philosophy to say that “the
-greatness of this man can scarcely be measured.” It was with measurement
-that his most famous saying was concerned: “Man is the measure of all
-things, of those which exist and of those which have no existence.” It
-was by his insistence on Man as the active creator of life and
-knowledge, the artist of the world, moulding it to his own measure, that
-Protagoras is interesting to us to-day. He recognised that there are no
-absolute criteria by which to judge actions. He was the father of
-relativism and of phenomenalism, probably the initiator of the modern
-doctrine that the definitions of geometry are only approximately true
-abstractions from empirical experiences. We need not, and probably
-should not, suppose that in undermining dogmatism he was setting up an
-individual subjectivism. It was the function of Man in the world, rather
-than of the individual, that he had in mind when he enunciated his great
-principle, and it was with the reduction of human activity and conduct
-to art that he was mainly concerned. His projects for the art of living
-began with speech, and he was a pioneer in the arts of language, the
-initiator of modern grammar. He wrote treatises on many special arts, as
-well as the general treatise “On the Art” among the pseudo-Hippocratic
-writings,—if we may with Gomperz attribute it to him,—which embodies the
-spirit of modern positive science.[2]
-
-Hippias, the philosopher of Elis, a contemporary of Protagoras, and like
-him commonly classed among the “Sophists,” cultivated the largest ideal
-of life as an art which embraced all arts, common to all mankind as a
-fellowship of brothers, and at one with natural law which transcends the
-convention of human laws. Plato made fun of him, and that was not hard
-to do, for a philosopher who conceived the art of living as so large
-could not possibly at every point adequately play at it. But at this
-distance it is his ideal that mainly concerns us, and he really was
-highly accomplished, even a pioneer, in many of the multifarious
-activities he undertook. He was a remarkable mathematician; he was an
-astronomer and geometer; he was a copious poet in the most diverse
-modes, and, moreover, wrote on phonetics, rhythm, music, and mnemonics;
-he discussed the theories of sculpture and painting; he was both
-mythologist and ethnologist, as well as a student of chronology; he had
-mastered many of the artistic crafts. On one occasion, it is said, he
-appeared at the Olympic gathering in garments which, from the sandals on
-his feet to the girdle round his waist and the rings on his fingers, had
-been made by his own hands. Such a being of kaleidoscopic versatility,
-Gomperz remarks, we call contemptuously a Jack-of-all-trades. We believe
-in subordinating a man to his work. But other ages have judged
-differently. The fellow citizens of Hippias thought him worthy to be
-their ambassador to the Peloponnesus. In another age of immense human
-activity, the Renaissance, the vast-ranging energies of Leo Alberti were
-honoured, and in yet a later like age, Diderot—Pantophile as Voltaire
-called him—displayed a like fiery energy of wide-ranging interests,
-although it was no longer possible to attain the same level of
-wide-ranging accomplishment. Of course the work of Hippias was of
-unequal value, but some of it was of firm quality and he shrank from no
-labour. He seems to have possessed a gracious modesty, quite unlike the
-conceited pomposity Plato was pleased to attribute to him. He attached
-more importance than was common among the Greeks to devotion to truth,
-and he was cosmopolitan in spirit. He was famous for his distinction
-between Convention and Nature, and Plato put into his mouth the words:
-“All of you who are here present I reckon to be kinsmen and friends and
-fellow citizens, and by nature, not by law; for by nature like is akin
-to like, whereas law is the tyrant of mankind, and often compels us to
-do many things that are against nature.” Hippias was in the line of
-those whose supreme ideal is totality of existence. Ulysses, as Benn
-remarks, was in Greek myth the representative of the ideal, and its
-supreme representative in real life has in modern times been Goethe.[3]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-BUT, in actual fact, is life essentially an art? Let us look at the
-matter more closely, and see what life is like, as people have lived it.
-This is the more necessary to do since, to-day at all events, there are
-simple-minded people—well-meaning honest people whom we should not
-ignore—who pooh-pooh such an idea. They point to the eccentric
-individuals in our Western civilisation who make a little idol they call
-“Art,” and fall down and worship it, sing incomprehensible chants in its
-honour, and spend most of their time in pouring contempt on the people
-who refuse to recognise that this worship of “Art” is the one thing
-needed for what they may or may not call the “moral uplift” of the age
-they live in. We must avoid the error of the good simple-minded folk in
-whose eyes these “Arty” people loom so large. They are not large, they
-are merely the morbid symptoms of a social disease; they are the
-fantastic reaction of a society which as a whole has ceased to move
-along the true course of any real and living art. For that has nothing
-to do with the eccentricities of a small religious sect worshipping in a
-Little Bethel; it is the large movement of the common life of a
-community, indeed simply the outward and visible form of that life.
-
-Thus the whole conception of art has been so narrowed and so debased
-among us that, on the one hand, the use of the word in its large and
-natural sense seems either unintelligible or eccentric, while, on the
-other hand, even if accepted, it still remains so unfamiliar that its
-immense significance for our whole vision of life in the world is
-scarcely at first seen. This is not altogether due to our natural
-obtusity, or to the absence of a due elimination of subnormal stocks
-among us, however much we may be pleased to attribute to that dysgenic
-factor. It seems largely inevitable. That is to say that, so far as we
-in our modern civilisation are concerned, it is the outcome of the
-social process of two thousand years, the result of the breakup of the
-classic tradition of thought into various parts which under post-classic
-influences have been pursued separately.[4] Religion or the desire for
-the salvation of our souls, “Art” or the desire for beautification,
-Science or the search for the reasons of things—these conations of the
-mind, which are really three aspects of the same profound impulse, have
-been allowed to furrow each its own narrow separate channel, in
-alienation from the others, and so they have all been impeded in their
-greater function of fertilising life.
-
-It is interesting to observe, I may note in passing, how totally new an
-aspect a phenomenon may take on when transformed from some other channel
-into that of art. We may take, for instance, that remarkable phenomenon
-called Napoleon, as impressive an individualistic manifestation as we
-could well find in human history during recent centuries, and consider
-two contemporary, almost simultaneous, estimates of it. A distinguished
-English writer, Mr. H. G. Wells, in a notable and even famous book, his
-“Outline of History,” sets down a judgment of Napoleon throughout a
-whole chapter. Now Mr. Wells moves in the ethico-religious channel. He
-wakes up every morning, it is said, with a rule for the guidance of
-life; some of his critics say that it is every morning a new rule, and
-others that the rule is neither ethical nor religious; but we are here
-concerned only with the channel and not with the direction of the
-stream. In the “Outline” Mr. Wells pronounces his ethico-religious
-anathema of Napoleon, “this dark little archaic personage, hard,
-compact, capable, unscrupulous, imitative, and neatly vulgar.” The
-“archaic”—the old-fashioned, outworn—element attributed to Napoleon, is
-accentuated again later, for Mr. Wells has an extremely low opinion
-(hardly justifiable, one may remark in passing) of primitive man.
-Napoleon was “a reminder of ancient evils, a thing like the bacterium of
-some pestilence”; “the figure he makes in history is one of almost
-incredible self-conceit, of vanity, greed, and cunning, of callous
-contempt and disregard of all who trusted him.” There is no figure, Mr.
-Wells asserts, so completely antithetical to the figure of Jesus of
-Nazareth. He was “a scoundrel, bright and complete.”
-
-There is no occasion to question this condemnation when we place
-ourselves in the channel along which Mr. Wells moves; it is probably
-inevitable; we may even accept it heartily. Yet, however right along
-that line, that is not the only line in which we may move. Moreover—and
-this is the point which concerns us—it is possible to enter a sphere in
-which no such merely negative, condemnatory, and dissatisfying a
-conclusion need be reached. For obviously it is dissatisfying. It is not
-finally acceptable that so supreme a protagonist of humanity, acclaimed
-by millions, of whom many gladly died for him, and still occupying so
-large and glorious a place in the human imagination, should be dismissed
-in the end as merely an unmitigated scoundrel. For so to condemn him is
-to condemn Man who made him what he was. He must have answered some
-lyric cry in the human heart. That other sphere in which Napoleon wears
-a different aspect is the sphere of art in the larger and fundamental
-sense. Élie Faure, a French critic, an excellent historian of art in the
-ordinary sense, is able also to grasp art in the larger sense because he
-is not only a man of letters but of science, a man with medical training
-and experience, who has lived in the open world, not, as the critic of
-literature and art so often appears to be, a man living in a damp
-cellar. Just after Wells issued his “Outline,” Élie Faure, who probably
-knew nothing about it since he reads no English, published a book on
-Napoleon which some may consider the most remarkable book on that
-subject they have ever come across. For to Faure Napoleon is a great
-lyric artist.
-
-It is hard not to believe that Faure had Wells’s chapter on Napoleon
-open before him, he speaks so much to the point. He entitled the first
-chapter of his “Napoléon” “Jesus and He,” and at once pierces to what
-Wells, too, had perceived to be the core of the matter in hand: “From
-the point of view of morality he is not to be defended and is even
-incomprehensible. In fact he violates law, he kills, he sows vengeance
-and death. But also he dictates law, he tracks and crushes crime, he
-establishes order everywhere. He is an assassin. He is also a judge. In
-the ranks he would deserve the rope. At the summit he is pure,
-distributing recompense and punishment with a firm hand. He is a monster
-with two faces, like all of us perhaps, in any case like God, for those
-who have praised Napoleon and those who have blamed him have alike not
-understood that the Devil is the other face of God.” From the moral
-point of view, Faure says (just as Wells had said), Napoleon is
-Antichrist. But from this standpoint of art, all grows clear. He is a
-poet of action, as Jesus was, and like him he stands apart. These two,
-and these two alone among the world’s supremely great men of whom we
-have any definite knowledge, “acted out their dream instead of dreaming
-their action.” It is possible that Napoleon himself was able to estimate
-the moral value of that acted dream. As he once stood before the grave
-of Rousseau, he observed: “It would have been better for the repose of
-France if that man and I had never existed.” Yet we cannot be sure. “Is
-not repose the death of the world?” asks Faure. “Had not Rousseau and
-Napoleon precisely the mission of troubling that repose? In another of
-the profound and almost impersonal sayings that sometimes fell from his
-lips, Napoleon observed with a still deeper intuition of his own
-function in the world: “I love power. But it is as an artist that I love
-it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out of it sounds
-and chords and harmonies. I love it as an artist.” As an artist! These
-words were the inspiration of this finely illuminating study of
-Napoleon, which, while free from all desire to defend or admire, yet
-seems to explain Napoleon, in the larger sense to justify his right to a
-place in the human story, so imparting a final satisfaction which Wells,
-we feel, could he have escaped from the bonds of the narrow conception
-of life that bound him, had in him the spirit and the intelligence also
-to bestow upon us.
-
-But it is time to turn from this aside. It is always possible to dispute
-about individuals, even when so happy an illustration chances to come
-before us. We are not here concerned with exceptional persons, but with
-the interpretation of general and normal human civilisations.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-I TAKE, almost at random, the example of a primitive people. There are
-many others that would do as well or better. But this happens to come to
-hand, and it has the advantage not only of being a primitive people, but
-one living on an island, so possessing until lately its own
-little-impaired indigenous culture, as far as possible remote in space
-from our own; the record also has been made, as carefully and as
-impartially as one can well expect, by a missionary’s wife who speaks
-from a knowledge covering over twenty years.[5] It is almost needless to
-add that she is as little concerned with any theory of the art of life
-as the people she is describing.
-
-The Loyalty Islands lie to the east of New Caledonia, and have belonged
-to France for more than half a century. They are thus situated in much
-the same latitude as Egypt is in the Northern hemisphere, but with a
-climate tempered by the ocean. It is with the Island of Lifu that we are
-mainly concerned. There are no streams or mountains in this island,
-though a ridge of high rocks with large and beautiful caves contains
-stalactites and stalagmites and deep pools of fresh water; these pools,
-before the coming of the Christians, were the abode of the spirits of
-the departed, and therefore greatly reverenced. A dying man would say to
-his friends: “I will meet you all again in the caves where the
-stalactites are.”
-
-The Loyalty Islanders, who are of average European stature, are a
-handsome race, except for their thick lips and dilated nostrils, which,
-however, are much less pronounced than among African negroes. They have
-soft large brown eyes, wavy black hair, white teeth, and rich brown skin
-of varying depth. Each tribe has its own well-defined territory and its
-own chief. Although possessing high moral qualities, they are a
-laughter-loving people, and neither their climate nor their mode of life
-demands prolonged hard labour, but they can work as well as the average
-Briton, if need be, for several consecutive days, and, when the need is
-over, lounge or ramble, sleep or talk. The basis of their culture—and
-that is doubtless the significant fact for us—is artistic. Every one
-learned music, dancing, and song. Therefore it is natural for them to
-regard rhythm and grace in all the actions of life, and almost a matter
-of instinct to cultivate beauty in all social relationships. Men and
-boys spent much time in tattooing and polishing their brown skins, in
-dyeing and dressing their long wavy hair (golden locks, as much admired
-as they always have been in Europe, being obtained by the use of lime),
-and in anointing their bodies. These occupations were, of course,
-confined to the men, for man is naturally the ornamental sex and woman
-the useful sex. The women gave no attention to their hair, except to
-keep it short. It was the men also who used oils and perfumes, not the
-women, who, however, wore bracelets above the elbow and beautiful long
-strings of jade beads. No clothing is worn until the age of twenty-five
-or thirty, and then all dress alike, except that chiefs fasten the
-girdle differently and wear more elaborate ornaments. These people have
-sweet and musical voices and they cultivate them. They are good at
-learning languages and they are great orators. The Lifuan language is
-soft and liquid, one word running into another pleasantly to the ear,
-and it is so expressive that one may sometimes understand the meaning by
-the sound. In one of these islands, Uvea, so great is the eloquence of
-the people that they employ oratory to catch fish, whom indeed they
-regard in their legends as half human, and it is believed that a shoal
-of fish, when thus politely plied with compliments from a canoe, will
-eventually, and quite spontaneously, beach themselves spellbound.
-
-For a primitive people the art of life is necessarily of large part
-concerned with eating. It is recognised that no one can go hungry when
-his neighbour has food, so no one was called upon to make any great
-demonstration of gratitude on receiving a gift. Help rendered to another
-was help to one’s self, if it contributed to the common weal, and what I
-do for you to-day you will do for me to-morrow. There was implicit
-trust, and goods were left about without fear of theft, which was rare
-and punishable by death. It was not theft, however, if, when the owner
-was looking, one took an article one wanted. To tell a lie, also, with
-intent to deceive, was a serious offence, though to tell a lie when one
-was afraid to speak the truth was excusable. The Lifuans are fond of
-food, but much etiquette is practised in eating. The food must be
-conveyed to the mouth gracefully, daintily, leisurely. Every one helped
-himself to the food immediately in front of him, without hurry, without
-reaching out for dainty morsels (which were often offered to women), for
-every one looked after his neighbour, and every one naturally felt that
-he was his brother’s keeper. So it was usual to invite passers-by
-cordially to share in the repast. “In the matter of food and eating,”
-Mrs. Hadfield adds, “they might put many of our countrymen to shame.”
-Not only must one never eat quickly, or notice dainties that are not
-near one, but it would be indelicate to eat in the presence of people
-who are not themselves eating. One must always share, however small
-one’s portion, and one must do so pleasantly; one must accept also what
-is offered, but slowly, reluctantly; having accepted it, you may, if you
-like, openly pass it on to some one else. In old days the Lifuans were,
-occasionally, cannibals, not, it would seem, either from necessity or
-any ritual reason, but because, like some peoples elsewhere, they liked
-it, having, indeed, at times, a kind of craving for animal food. If a
-man had twenty or thirty wives and a large family, it would be quite
-correct if, now and then, he cooked one of his own children, although
-presumably he might prefer that some one else’s child was chosen. The
-child would be cooked whole, wrapped in banana or coconut leaves. The
-social inconveniences of this practice have now been recognised. But
-they still feel the utmost respect and reverence for the dead and fail
-to find anything offensive or repulsive in a corpse. “Why should there
-be, seeing it was once our food?” Nor have they any fear of death. To
-vermin they seem to have little objection, but otherwise they have a
-strong love of cleanliness. The idea of using manure in agricultural
-operations seems to them disgusting, and they never do use it. “The sea
-was the public playground.” Mothers take their little ones for sea-baths
-long before they can walk, and small children learn to swim as they
-learn to walk, without teaching. With their reverence for death is
-associated a reverence for old age. “Old age is a term of respect, and
-every one is pleased to be taken for older than he is since old age is
-honoured.” Still, regard for others was general—not confined to the
-aged. In the church nowadays the lepers are seated on a separate bench,
-and when the bench is occupied by a leper healthy women will sometimes
-insist on sitting with him; they could not bear to see the old man
-sitting alone as though he had no friends. There was much demonstration
-on meeting friends after absence. A Lifuan always said “Olea” (“Thank
-you”) for any good news, though not affecting him personally, as though
-it were a gift, for he was glad to be able to rejoice with another.
-Being divided into small tribes, each with its own autocratic chief, war
-was sometimes inevitable. It was attended by much etiquette, which was
-always strictly observed. The Lifuans were not acquainted with the
-civilised custom of making rules for warfare and breaking them when war
-actually broke out. Several days’ notice must be given before
-hostilities were commenced. Women and children, in contrast to the
-practice of civilised warfare, were never molested. As soon as half a
-dozen fighters were put out of action on one side, the chief of that
-side would give the command to cease fighting and the war was over. An
-indemnity was then paid by the conquerors to the vanquished, and not, as
-among civilised peoples, by the vanquished to the conquerors. It was
-felt to be the conquered rather than the conqueror who needed
-consolation, and it also seemed desirable to show that no feeling of
-animosity was left behind. This was not only a delicate mark of
-consideration to the vanquished, but also very good policy, as, by
-neglecting it, some Europeans may have had cause to learn. This whole
-Lifuan art of living has, however, been undermined by the arrival of
-Christianity with its usual accompaniments. The Lifuans are substituting
-European vices for their own virtues. Their simplicity and confidence
-are passing away, though, even yet, Mrs. Hadfield says, they are
-conspicuous for their honesty, truthfulness, good-humour, kindness, and
-politeness, remaining a manly and intelligent people.
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-THE Lifuans furnish an illustration which seems decisive. But they are
-savages, and on that account their example may be invalidated. It is
-well to take another illustration from a people whose high and
-long-continued civilisation is now undisputed.
-
-The civilisation of China is ancient: that has long been a familiar
-fact. But for more than a thousand years it was merely a legend to
-Western Europeans; none had ever reached China, or, if they had, they
-had never returned to tell the tale; there were too many fierce and
-jealous barbarians between the East and the West. It was not until the
-end of the thirteenth century, in the pages of Marco Polo, the Venetian
-Columbus of the East,—for it was an Italian who discovered the Old World
-as well as the New,—that China at last took definite shape alike as a
-concrete fact and a marvellous dream. Later, Italian and Portuguese
-travellers described it, and it is interesting to note what they had to
-say. Thus Perera in the sixteenth century, in a narrative which Willes
-translated for Hakluyt’s “Voyages,” presents a detailed picture of
-Chinese life with an admiration all the more impressive since we cannot
-help feeling how alien that civilisation was to the Catholic traveller
-and how many troubles he had himself to encounter. He is astonished, not
-only by the splendour of the lives of the Chinese on the material side,
-alike in large things and in small, but by their fine manners in all the
-ordinary course of life, the courtesy in which they seemed to him to
-exceed all other nations, and in the fair dealing which far surpassed
-that of all other Gentiles and Moors, while in the exercise of justice
-he found them superior even to many Christians, for they do justice to
-unknown strangers, which in Christendom is rare; moreover, there were
-hospitals in every city and no beggars were ever to be seen. It was a
-vision of splendour and delicacy and humanity, which he might have seen,
-here and there, in the courts of princes in Europe, but nowhere in the
-West on so vast a scale as in China.
-
-The picture which Marco Polo, the first European to reach China (at all
-events in what we may call modern times), presented in the thirteenth
-century was yet more impressive, and that need not surprise us, for when
-he saw China it was still in its great Augustan age of the Sung Dynasty.
-He represents the city of Hang-Chau as the most beautiful and sumptuous
-in the world, and we must remember that he himself belonged to Venice,
-soon to be known as the most beautiful and sumptuous city of Europe, and
-had acquired no small knowledge of the world. As he describes its life,
-so exquisite and refined in its civilisation, so humane, so peaceful, so
-joyous, so well ordered, so happily shared by the whole population, we
-realise that here had been reached the highest point of urban
-civilisation to which Man has ever attained. Marco Polo can think of no
-word to apply to it—and that again and again—but Paradise.
-
-The China of to-day seems less strange and astonishing to the Westerner.
-It may even seem akin to him—partly through its decline, partly through
-his own progress in civilisation—by virtue of its direct and practical
-character. That is the conclusion of a sensitive and thoughtful
-traveller in India and Japan and China, G. Lowes Dickinson. He is
-impressed by the friendliness, the profound humanity, the gaiety, of the
-Chinese, by the unequalled self-respect, independence, and courtesy of
-the common people. “The fundamental attitude of the Chinese towards life
-is, and has always been, that of the most modern West, nearer to us now
-than to our mediæval ancestors, infinitely nearer to us than India.”[6]
-
-So far it may seem scarcely as artists that these travellers regard the
-Chinese. They insist on their cheerful, practical, social,
-good-mannered, tolerant, peaceable, humane way of regarding life, on the
-remarkably educable spirit in which they are willing, and easily able,
-to change even ancient and deep-rooted habits when it seems convenient
-and beneficial to do so; they are willing to take the world lightly, and
-seem devoid of those obstinate conservative instincts by which we are
-guided in Europe. The “Resident in Peking” says they are the least
-romantic of peoples. He says it with a _nuance_ of dispraise, but Lowes
-Dickinson says precisely the same thing about Chinese poetry, and with
-no such _nuance_: “It is of all poetry I know the most human and the
-least symbolic or romantic. It contemplates life just as it presents
-itself, without any veil of ideas, any rhetoric or sentiment; it simply
-clears away the obstruction which habit has built up between us and the
-beauty of things and leaves that, showing in its own nature.” Every one
-who has learnt to enjoy Chinese poetry will appreciate the delicate
-precision of this comment. The quality of their poetry seems to fall
-into line with the simple, direct, childlike quality which all observers
-note in the Chinese themselves. The unsympathetic “Resident in Peking”
-describes the well-known etiquette of politeness in China: “A Chinaman
-will inquire of what noble country you are. You return the question, and
-he will say his lowly province is so-and-so. He will invite you to do
-him the honour of directing your jewelled feet to his degraded house.
-You reply that you, a discredited worm, will crawl into his magnificent
-palace.” Life becomes all play. Ceremony—the Chinese are unequalled for
-ceremony, and a Government Department, the Board of Rites and
-Ceremonies, exists to administer it—is nothing but more or less
-crystallised play. Not only is ceremony here “almost an instinct,” but,
-it has been said, “A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms.” We are coming
-near to the sphere of art.
-
-The quality of play in the Chinese character and Chinese civilisation
-has impressed alike them who have seen China from afar and by actual
-contact. It used to be said that the Chinese had invented gunpowder long
-before Europeans and done nothing with it but make fireworks. That
-seemed to the whole Western world a terrible blindness to the valuable
-uses of gunpowder, and it is only of late years that a European
-commentator has ventured to remark that “the proper use of gunpowder is
-obviously to make fireworks, which may be very beautiful things, not to
-kill men.” Certainly the Chinese, at all events, appreciate to the full
-this proper use of gunpowder. “One of the most obvious characteristics
-of the Chinese is their love of fireworks,” we are told. The gravest
-people and the most intellectual occupy themselves with fireworks, and
-if the works of Bergson, in which pyrotechnical allusions are so
-frequent, are ever translated into Chinese, one can well believe that
-China will produce enthusiastic Bergsonians. All toys are popular;
-everybody, it is said, buys toys of one sort or another: paper
-windmills, rattles, Chinese lanterns, and of course kites, which have an
-almost sacred significance. They delight, also, in more complicated
-games of skill, including an elaborate form of chess, far more difficult
-than ours.[7] It is unnecessary to add that to philosophy, a higher and
-more refined form of play, the Chinese are peculiarly addicted, and
-philosophic discussion is naturally woven in with an “art of exquisite
-enjoyment”—carried probably to greater perfection than anywhere else in
-the world. Bertrand Russell, who makes this remark, in the suggestive
-comments on his own visit to China, observes how this simple,
-child-like, yet profound attitude towards life results in a liberation
-of the impulses to play and enjoyment which “makes Chinese life
-unbelievably restful and delightful after the solemn cruelties of the
-West.” We are reminded of Gourmont’s remark that “pleasure is a human
-creation, a delicate art, to which, as for music or painting, only a few
-are apt.”
-
-The social polity which brings together the people who thus view life is
-at once singular and appropriate. I well remember how in youth a new
-volume of the Sacred Books of the East Series, a part of the Confucian
-Lî-kî, came into my hands and how delighted I was to learn that in China
-life was regulated by music and ceremony. That was the beginning of an
-interest in China that has not ceased to grow, though now, when it has
-become a sort of fashion to exalt the spiritual qualities of the Chinese
-above those of other peoples, one may well feel disinclined to admit any
-interest in China. But the conception itself, since it seems to have had
-its beginning at least a thousand years before Christ, may properly be
-considered independently of our Western fashions. It is Propriety—the
-whole ceremony of life—in which all harmonious intercourse subsists; it
-is “the channel by which we apprehend the ways of Heaven,” in no
-supernatural sense, for it is on the earth and not in the skies that the
-Confucian Heaven lies concealed. But if human feelings, the
-instincts—for in this matter the ancient Chinese were at one with our
-modern psychologists,—are the field that has to be cultivated, and it is
-ceremony that ploughs it, and the seeds of right action that are to be
-planted on it, and discipline that is to weed it, and love that is to
-gather in the fruits, it is in music, and the joy and peace that
-accompany music, that it all ends. Indeed, it is also in music that it
-all begins. For the sphere in which ceremonies act is Man’s external
-life; his internal life is the sphere of music. It is music that moulds
-the manners and customs that are comprised under ceremony, for Confucius
-held that there can be music without sound where “virtue is deep and
-silent”; and we are reminded of the “Crescendo of Silences” on the
-Chinese pavilion in Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s story, “Le Secret de
-l’ancienne Musique.” It is music that regulates the heart and mind and
-with that development brings joy, and joy brings repose. And so “Man
-became Heaven.” “Let ceremonies and music have their course until the
-earth is filled with them!”
-
-It is sometimes said that among Chinese moralists and philosophers
-Lao-tze, the deepest of them all, alone stands aside from the chorus in
-praise of music and ceremony. When once Confucius came to consult
-Lao-tze concerning the rules of propriety, and reverence for the
-teaching of the sages of antiquity, we are told, Lao-tze replied: “The
-men of whom you speak, sir, have, if you please, together with their
-bones, mouldered.” Confucius went away, puzzled if not dissatisfied He
-was willing to work not only from within outwards, but from without
-inwards, because he allowed so large a place for social solidity, for
-traditionalism, for paternalism, though he recognised that ceremony is
-subordinate in the scheme of life, as colour is in a painting, the
-picture being the real thing. Lao-tze was an individualist and a mystic.
-He was little concerned with moralities in the ordinary sense. He
-recognised no action but from within outwards. But though Confucius
-could scarcely have altogether grasped his conception, he was quite able
-to grasp that of Confucius, and his indifference to tradition, to rule
-and propriety was simply an insistence on essential reality, on “music.”
-“Ceremonies,” he said, “are the outward expression of inward feeling.”
-He was no more opposed to the fundamental Chinese conception than George
-Fox was opposed to Christianity in refusing to observe the mere forms
-and ceremonies of the Church. A sound Confucianism is the outward
-manifestation of Taoism (as Lao-tze himself taught it), just as a sound
-socialism is the outward manifestation of a genuine individualism. It
-has been well said that Chinese socialistic solidarity rests on an
-individualistic basis, it is not a bureaucratic State socialism; it
-works from within outward. (One of the first European visitors to China
-remarked that there a street was like a home.) This is well shown by so
-great and typical a Chinese philosopher as Meh-ti,[8] who lived shortly
-after Confucius, in the fifth century B.C. He taught universal love,
-with universal equality, and for him to love meant to act. He admitted
-an element of self-interest as a motive for such an attitude. He desired
-to universalise mutual self-help. Following Confucius, but yet several
-centuries before Jesus, he declared that a man should love his
-neighbour, his fellow man, as himself. “When he sees his fellow hungry,
-he feeds him; when he sees him cold, he clothes him; ill, he nurses him;
-dead, he buries him.” This, he said, was by no means opposed to filial
-piety; for if one cares for the parents of others, they in turn will
-care for his. But, it was brought against him, the power of egoism? The
-Master agreed. Yet, he said, Man accepts more difficult things. He can
-renounce joy, life itself, for even absurd and ridiculous ends. A single
-generation, he added, such is the power of imitation, might suffice to
-change a people’s customs. But Meh-ti remained placid. He remarked that
-the great ones of the earth were against human solidarity and equality;
-he left it at that. He took no refuge in mysticism. Practical social
-action was the sole end he had in view, and we have to remember that his
-ideals are largely embodied in Chinese institutions.[9]
-
-We may understand now how it is that in China, and in China alone among
-the great surviving civilisations, we find that art animates the whole
-of life, even its morality. “This universal presence of art,” remarks an
-acute yet discriminating observer, Émile Hovelaque, whom I have already
-quoted,[10] “manifested in the smallest utensil, the humblest stalls,
-the notices on the shops, the handwriting, the rhythm of movement,
-always regular and measured, as though to the tune of unheard music,
-announces a civilisation which is complete in itself, elaborated in the
-smallest detail, penetrated by one spirit, which no interruption ever
-breaks, a harmony which becomes at length a hallucinatory and
-overwhelming obsession.” Or, as another writer has summed up the Chinese
-attitude: “For them the art of life is one, as this world and the other
-are one. Their aim is to make the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.”
-
-It is obvious that a natural temperament in which the art-impulse is so
-all-embracing, and the æsthetic sensibility so acute, might well have
-been of a perilous instability. We could scarcely have been surprised
-if, like that surpassing episode in Egyptian history of which Akhenaten
-was the leader and Tell-el-Amarna the tomb, it had only endured for a
-moment. Yet Chinese civilisation, which has throughout shown the
-dominating power of this sensitive temperament, has lasted longer than
-any other. The reason is that the very excesses of their temperament
-forced the Chinese to fortify themselves against its perils. The Great
-Wall, built more than two thousand years ago, and still to-day almost
-the most impressive work of man on the earth, is typical of this
-attitude of the Chinese. They have exercised a stupendous energy in
-fortifying themselves against the natural enemies of their own
-temperament. When one looks at it from this point of view, it is easy to
-see that, alike in its large outlines and its small details, Chinese
-life is always the art of balancing an æsthetic temperament and guarding
-against its excesses. We see this in the whole of the ancient and still
-prevailing system of Confucian morality with its insistence on formal
-ceremony, even when, departing from the thought of its most influential
-founder,—for ceremonialism in China would have existed even if Confucius
-had not lived,—it tended to become merely an external formalism. We see
-it in the massive solidarity of Chinese life, the systematic social
-organisation by which individual responsibility, even though leaving
-individuality itself intact, is merged in the responsibility of the
-family and the still larger group. We see it in the whole drift of
-Chinese philosophy, which is throughout sedative and contemplative. We
-see it in the element of stoicism on the one hand and cruelty on the
-other which in so genuinely good-natured a people would otherwise seem
-puzzling. The Chinese love of flowers and gardens and landscape scenery
-is in the same direction, and indeed one may say much the same of
-Chinese painting and Chinese poetry.[11] That is why it is only to-day
-that we in the West have reached the point of nervous susceptibility
-which enables us in some degree to comprehend the æsthetic supremacy
-which the Chinese reached more than a thousand years ago.
-
-Thus, during its extremely long history—for the other great
-civilisations with which it was once contemporary have passed away or
-been disintegrated and transformed—Chinese civilisation has borne
-witness to the great fact that all human life is art. It may be because
-they have realised this so thoroughly that the Chinese have been able to
-preserve their civilisation so long, through all the violent shocks to
-which it has been subjected. There can be no doubt, however, that,
-during the greater part of the last thousand years, there has been,
-however slow and gradual, a decline in the vitality of Chinese
-civilisation, largely due, it may well be, to the crushing pressure of
-an excessive population. For, however remarkable the admiration which
-China arouses even to-day, its finest flowering periods in the special
-arts lie far in the past, while in the art of living itself the Chinese
-have long grown languid. The different reports of ancient and modern
-travellers regarding one definite social manifestation, the prevalence
-of beggary, cannot fail to tell us something regarding the significant
-form of their social life. Modern travellers complain of the plague
-constituted by the prevalence of beggars in China; they are even a fixed
-and permanent institution on a trades-union basis. But in the sixteenth
-century Galeotto Perera noticed with surprise in China the absence of
-beggars, as Marco Polo had before him, and Friar Gaspar de Cruz remarked
-that the Chinese so abhorred idleness that they gave no alms to the poor
-and mocked at the Portuguese for doing so: “Why give alms to a knave?
-Let him go and earn it.” Their own priests, he adds, they sometimes
-whipped as being knaves. (It should be noted at the same time that it
-was considered reasonable only to give half the day to work, the other
-half to joy and recreation.) But they built great asylums for the
-helpless poor, and found employment for blind women, gorgeously dressed
-and painted with ceruse and vermilion, as prostitutes, who were more
-esteemed in early China than they have been since. That is a curious
-instance of the unflinching practicality still shown by the Chinese in
-endless ways. The undoubted lassitude in the later phases of this
-long-lived Chinese culture has led to features in the art of life, such
-as beggary and dirt among the poor, not manifested in the younger
-offshoot of Chinese and Korean culture in Japan, though it is only fair
-to point out that impartial English observers, like Parker, consider
-this prevalence of vermin and dirt as simply due to the prevalence of
-poverty, and not greater than we find among the poor in England and
-elsewhere in the West. Marco Polo speaks of three hundred public baths
-in one city alone in his time. We note also that in the more specialised
-arts the transcendence of China belongs to the past, and even sometimes
-a remote past. It is so in the art of philosophy, and the arts of poetry
-and painting. It is so also in the art of pottery, in which Chinese
-supremacy over the rest of the world has been longest recognised—has not
-the word “china” for centuries been our name for the finest pottery?—and
-is most beyond measure. Our knowledge of the pottery of various cultures
-excels that of any other human products because of all it is the most
-perdurable. We can better estimate their relative æsthetic worth now
-than in the days when a general reverence for Greek antiquity led to a
-popular belief in the beauty of Greek pottery, though scarcely a single
-type of its many forms can fairly be so considered or even be compared
-to the products of the Minoan predecessors of Greek culture, however
-interesting they may still remain for us as the awkward and
-inappropriate foundation for exquisite little pictures. The greatest age
-of this universal human art was in China and was over many centuries
-ago. But with what devotion, with what absolute concentration of the
-spirit, the Chinese potters of the great period struggled with the
-problem of art is finely illustrated by the well-known story which an
-old Chinese historian tells of the sacrifice of the divine T’ung, the
-spirit who protects potters. It happened that a complicated problem had
-baffled the potters. T’ung laid down his life to serve them and to
-achieve the solution of the problem. He plunged into the fire and the
-bowl came out perfect. “The vessel’s perfect glaze is the god’s fat and
-blood; the body material is the god’s body of flesh; the blue of the
-decoration, with the brilliant lustre of gems, is the essence of the
-god’s pure spirit.” That story embodies the Chinese symbol of the art of
-living, just as we embody our symbol of that art in the Crucifixion of
-Jesus. The form is diverse; the essence is the same.
-
-
-
-
-                                   V
-
-
-IT will be seen that when we analyse the experiences of life and look at
-it simply, in the old-fashioned way, liberated from the artificial
-complexities of a temporary and now, it may be, departing civilisation,
-what we find is easy to sum up. We find, that is to say, that Man has
-forced himself to move along this line, and that line, and the other
-line. But it is the same water of life that runs in all these channels.
-Until we have ascended to a height where this is clear, to see all our
-little dogmatisms will but lead us astray.
-
-We may illuminatingly change the analogy and turn to the field of
-chemistry. All these various elements of life are but, as it were,
-allotropic forms of the same element. The most fundamental among these
-forms is that of art, for life in all its forms, even morality in the
-narrowest sense, is, as Duprat has argued, a matter of technique, and
-technique at once brings us to the elements of art. If we would
-understand what we are dealing with, we may, therefore, best study these
-forms under that of art.
-
-There is, however, a deeper chemical analogy than this to be seen. It
-may well be, indeed, that it is more than an analogy. In chemistry we
-are dealing, not merely with the elements of life, but with the elements
-of the world, even of what we call our universe. It is not unreasonable
-to think that the same law holds good for both. We see that the forms of
-life may all be found, and then better understood, in one form. Some
-day, perhaps, we shall also see that that fact is only a corollary of
-the larger fact—or, if any one prefers so to regard it, the smaller
-fact—that the chemical elements of our world can be regarded as all only
-transmutations of one element. From of old, men instinctively divined
-that this might be so, though they were merely concerned to change the
-elements into gold, the element which they most highly valued. In our
-own times this transmutation is beginning to become, on a minute scale,
-a demonstrable fact, though it would seem easier to transmute elements
-into lead than into gold. Matter, we are thus coming to see, may not be
-a confused variety of separate substances, but simply a different
-quantitative arrangement of a single fundamental stuff, which might
-possibly be identical with hydrogen or some other already known element.
-Similarly we may now believe that the men of old who thought that all
-human life was made of one stuff were not altogether wrong, and we may,
-with greater assurance than they were able to claim, analyse the modes
-of human action into different quantitative or other arrangements of
-which the most fundamental may well be identical with art.
-
-This may perhaps become clearer if we consider more in detail one of the
-separate arts, selecting the most widely symbolic of all, the art that
-is most clearly made of the stuff of life, and so able to translate most
-truly and clearly into beautiful form the various modalities of life.
-
-Footnote 1:
-
-  See, for instance, Turner’s _Samoa_, chap. 1. Usually, however, in the
-  Pacific, creation was accomplished, in a more genuinely evolutionary
-  manner, by a long series of progressive generations.
-
-Footnote 2:
-
-  Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, vol. I, book III, chap. VI.
-
-Footnote 3:
-
-  I have here mainly followed Gomperz (_Greek Thinkers_, vol. I, pp.
-  430-34); there is not now, however, much controversy over the position
-  of Hippias, which there is now, indeed, rather a tendency to
-  exaggerate, considering how small is the basis of knowledge we
-  possess. Thus Dupréel (_La Légende Socratique_, p. 432), regarding him
-  as the most misunderstood of the great Sophists, declares that Hippias
-  is “the thinker who conceived the universality of science, just as
-  Prodicus caught glimpses of the synthesis of the social sciences.
-  Hippias is the philosopher of science, the Great Logician, just as
-  Prodicus is the Great Moralist.” He compares him to Pico della
-  Mirandola as a Humanist and to Leibnitz in power of wide synthesis.
-
-Footnote 4:
-
-  Strictly speaking, in the technical sense of that much-abused word,
-  this is “decadence.” (I refer to the sense in which I defined
-  “decadence” many years ago in _Affirmations_, pp. 175-87.) So that
-  while the minor arts have sometimes been classic and sometimes
-  decadent, the major art of living during the last two thousand years,
-  although one can think of great men who have maintained the larger
-  classic ideal, has mainly been decadent.
-
-Footnote 5:
-
-  Emma Hadfield, _Among the Natives of the Loyalty Group_. 1920. It
-  would no doubt have been more satisfactory to select a people like the
-  Fijians rather than the Lifuans, for they represented a more robust
-  and accomplished form of a rather similar culture, but their culture
-  has receded into the past,—and the same may be said of the Marquesans
-  of whom Melville left, in _Typee_, a famous and delightful picture
-  which other records confirm,—while that of the Lifuans is still
-  recent.
-
-Footnote 6:
-
-  G. Lowes Dickinson, _An Essay on the Civilisations of India, China,
-  and Japan_ (1914), p. 47. No doubt there are shades to be added to
-  this picture. They may be found in a book, published two years
-  earlier, _China as it Really Is_, by “a Resident in Peking” who claims
-  to have been born in China. Chinese culture has receded, in part
-  swamped by over-population, and concerning a land where to-day, it has
-  lately been said, “magnificence, crudity, delicacy, fetidity, and
-  fragrance are blended,” it is easy for Westerners to show violent
-  difference of opinion.
-
-Footnote 7:
-
-  See, for instance, the chapter on games in Professor E. H. Parker’s
-  _China: Past and Present_. Reference may be made to the same author’s
-  important and impartial larger work, _China: Its History_, with a
-  discriminating chapter on Chinese personal characteristics. Perhaps,
-  the most penetrating study of Chinese psychology is, however, Arthur
-  H. Smith’s _Chinese Characteristics_.
-
-Footnote 8:
-
-  His ideas have been studied by Madame Alexandra David, _Le Philosophe
-  Meh-ti et l’Idée de Solidarité_. London, 1907.
-
-Footnote 9:
-
-  Eugène Simon, _La Cité Chinoise_.
-
-Footnote 10:
-
-  E. Hovelaque, _La Chine_ (Paris, 1920), p. 47.
-
-Footnote 11:
-
-  This point has not escaped the more acute students of Chinese
-  civilisation. Thus Dr. John Steele, in his edition of the _I-Li_,
-  remarks that “ceremonial was far from being a series of observances,
-  empty and unprofitable, such as it degenerated into in later time. It
-  was meant to inculcate that habit of self-control and ordered action
-  which was the expression of a mind fully instructed in the inner
-  meaning of things, and sensitive to every impression.” Still more
-  clearly, Reginald Farrer wrote, in _On the Eaves of the World_, that
-  “the philosophic calm that the Chinese deliberately cultivate is their
-  necessary armour to protect the excessive susceptibility to emotion.
-  The Chinese would be for ever the victims of their nerves had they not
-  for four thousand years pursued reason and self-control with
-  self-protective enthusiasm.”
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER II
-                           THE ART OF DANCING
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-DANCING and building are the two primary and essential arts. The art of
-dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves
-first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the
-beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end
-they unite. Music, acting, poetry proceed in the one mighty stream;
-sculpture, painting, all the arts of design, in the other. There is no
-primary art outside these two arts, for their origin is far earlier than
-man himself; and dancing came first.[12]
-
-That is one reason why dancing, however it may at times be scorned by
-passing fashions, has a profound and eternal attraction even for those
-one might suppose farthest from its influence. The joyous beat of the
-feet of children, the cosmic play of philosophers’ thoughts rise and
-fall according to the same laws of rhythm. If we are indifferent to the
-art of dancing, we have failed to understand, not merely the supreme
-manifestation of physical life, but also the supreme symbol of spiritual
-life.
-
-The significance of dancing, in the wide sense, thus lies in the fact
-that it is simply an intimate concrete appeal of a general rhythm, that
-general rhythm which marks, not life only, but the universe, if one may
-still be allowed so to name the sum of the cosmic influences that reach
-us. We need not, indeed, go so far as the planets or the stars and
-outline their ethereal dances. We have but to stand on the seashore and
-watch the waves that beat at our feet, to observe that at nearly regular
-intervals this seemingly monotonous rhythm is accentuated for several
-beats, so that the waves are really dancing the measure of a tune. It
-need surprise us not at all that rhythm, ever tending to be moulded into
-a tune, should mark all the physical and spiritual manifestations of
-life. Dancing is the primitive expression alike of religion and of
-love—of religion from the earliest human times we know of and of love
-from a period long anterior to the coming of man. The art of dancing,
-moreover, is intimately entwined with all human tradition of war, of
-labour, of pleasure, of education, while some of the wisest philosophers
-and the most ancient civilisations have regarded the dance as the
-pattern in accordance with which the moral life of men must be woven. To
-realise, therefore, what dancing means for mankind—the poignancy and the
-many-sidedness of its appeal—we must survey the whole sweep of human
-life, both at its highest and at its deepest moments.
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-“WHAT do you dance?” When a man belonging to one branch of the great
-Bantu division of mankind met a member of another, said Livingstone,
-that was the question he asked. What a man danced, that was his tribe,
-his social customs, his religion; for, as an anthropologist has put it,
-“a savage does not preach his religion, he dances it.”
-
-There are peoples in the world who have no secular dances, only
-religious dances; and some investigators believe with Gerland that every
-dance was of religious origin. That view may seem too extreme, even if
-we admit that some even of our modern dances, like the waltz, may have
-been originally religious. Even still (as Skene has shown among the
-Arabs and Swahili of Africa) so various are dances and their functions
-among some peoples that they cover the larger part of life. Yet we have
-to remember that for primitive man there is no such thing as religion
-apart from life, for religion covers everything. Dancing is a magical
-operation for the attainment of real and important ends of every kind.
-It was clearly of immense benefit to the individual and to society, by
-imparting strength and adding organised harmony. It seemed reasonable to
-suppose that it attained other beneficial ends, that were incalculable,
-for calling down blessings or warding off misfortunes. We may conclude,
-with Wundt, that the dance was, in the beginning, the expression of the
-whole man, for the whole man was religious.[13]
-
-Thus, among primitive peoples, religion being so large a part of life,
-the dance inevitably becomes of supreme religious importance. To dance
-was at once both to worship and to pray. Just as we still find in our
-Prayer Books that there are divine services for all the great
-fundamental acts of life,—for birth, for marriage, for death,—as well as
-for the cosmic procession of the world as marked by ecclesiastical
-festivals, and for the great catastrophes of nature, such as droughts,
-so also it has ever been among primitive peoples. For all the solemn
-occasions of life, for bridals and for funerals, for seed-time and for
-harvest, for war and for peace, for all these things there were fitting
-dances. To-day we find religious people who in church pray for rain or
-for the restoration of their friends to health. Their forefathers also
-desired these things, but, instead of praying for them, they danced for
-them the fitting dance which tradition had handed down, and which the
-chief or the medicine-man solemnly conducted. The gods themselves
-danced, as the stars dance in the sky—so at least the Mexicans, and we
-may be sure many other peoples, have held; and to dance is therefore to
-imitate the gods, to work with them, perhaps to persuade them to work in
-the direction of our own desires. “Work for us!” is the song-refrain,
-expressed or implied, of every religious dance. In the worship of solar
-deities in various countries, it was customary to dance round the altar,
-as the stars dance round the sun. Even in Europe the popular belief that
-the sun dances on Easter Sunday has perhaps scarcely yet died out. To
-dance is to take part in the cosmic control of the world. Every sacred
-Dionysian dance is an imitation of the divine dance.
-
-All religions, and not merely those of primitive character, have been at
-the outset, and sometimes throughout, in some measure saltatory. That
-was recognised even in the ancient world by acute observers, like
-Lucian, who remarks in his essay on dancing that “you cannot find a
-single ancient mystery in which there is no dancing; in fact most people
-say of the devotees of the Mysteries that ‘they dance them out.’” This
-is so all over the world. It is not more pronounced in early
-Christianity, and among the ancient Hebrews who danced before the ark,
-than among the Australian aborigines whose great corroborees are
-religious dances conducted by the medicine-men with their sacred staves
-in their hands. Every American Indian tribe seems to have had its own
-religious dances, varied and elaborate, often with a richness of meaning
-which the patient study of modern investigators has but slowly revealed.
-The Shamans in the remote steppes of Northern Siberia have their
-ecstatic religious dances, and in modern Europe the Turkish
-dervishes—perhaps of related stock—still dance in their cloisters
-similar ecstatic dances, combined with song and prayer, as a regular
-part of devotional service.
-
-These religious dances, it may be observed, are sometimes ecstatic,
-sometimes pantomimic. It is natural that this should be so. By each road
-it is possible to penetrate towards the divine mystery of the world. The
-auto-intoxication of rapturous movement brings the devotees, for a while
-at least, into that self-forgetful union with the not-self which the
-mystic ever seeks. The ecstatic Hindu dance in honour of the pre-Aryan
-hill god, afterwards Siva, became in time a great symbol, “the clearest
-image of the _activity_ of God,” it has been called, “which any art or
-religion can boast of.”[14] Pantomimic dances, on the other hand, with
-their effort to heighten natural expression and to imitate natural
-process, bring the dancers into the divine sphere of creation and enable
-them to assist vicariously in the energy of the gods. The dance thus
-becomes the presentation of a divine drama, the vital reënactment of a
-sacred history, in which the worshipper is enabled to play a real
-part.[15] In this way ritual arises.
-
-It is in this sphere—highly primitive as it is—of pantomimic dancing
-crystallised in ritual, rather than in the sphere of ecstatic dancing,
-that we may to-day in civilisation witness the survivals of the dance in
-religion. The divine services of the American Indian, said Lewis Morgan,
-took the form of “set dances, each with its own name, songs, steps, and
-costume.” At this point the early Christian, worshipping the Divine
-Body, was able to join in spiritual communion with the ancient Egyptian
-or the later Japanese[16] or the modern American Indian. They are all
-alike privileged to enter, each in his own way, a sacred mystery, and to
-participate in the sacrifice of a heavenly Mass.
-
-What by some is considered to be the earliest known Christian ritual—the
-“Hymn of Jesus” assigned to the second century—is nothing but a sacred
-dance. Eusebius in the third century stated that Philo’s description of
-the worship of the Therapeuts agreed at all points with Christian
-custom, and that meant the prominence of dancing, to which indeed
-Eusebius often refers in connection with Christian worship. It has been
-supposed by some that the Christian Church was originally a theatre, the
-choir being the raised stage, even the word “choir,” it is argued,
-meaning an enclosed space for dancing. It is certain that at the
-Eucharist the faithful gesticulated with their hands, danced with their
-feet, flung their bodies about. Chrysostom, who referred to this
-behaviour round the Holy Table at Antioch, only objected to drunken
-excesses in connection with it; the custom itself he evidently regarded
-as traditional and right.
-
-While the central function of Christian worship is a sacred drama, a
-divine pantomime, the associations of Christianity and dancing are by no
-means confined to the ritual of the Mass and its later more attenuated
-transformations. The very idea of dancing had a sacred and mystic
-meaning to the early Christians, who had meditated profoundly on the
-text, “We have piped unto you and ye have not danced.” Origen prayed
-that above all things there may be made operative in us the mystery “of
-the stars dancing in Heaven for the salvation of the Universe.” So that
-the monks of the Cistercian Order, who in a later age worked for the
-world more especially by praying for it (“orare est laborare”), were
-engaged in the same task on earth as the stars in Heaven; dancing and
-praying are the same thing. St. Basil, who was so enamoured of natural
-things, described the angels dancing in Heaven, and later the author of
-the “Dieta Salutis” (said to have been St. Bonaventura), which is
-supposed to have influenced Dante in assigning so large a place to
-dancing in the “Paradiso,” described dancing as the occupation of the
-inmates of Heaven, and Christ as the leader of the dance. Even in more
-modern times an ancient Cornish carol sang of the life of Jesus as a
-dance, and represented him as declaring that he died in order that man
-“may come unto the general dance.”[17]
-
-This attitude could not fail to be reflected in practice. Genuine
-dancing, not merely formalised and unrecognisable dancing, such as the
-traditionalised Mass, must have been frequently introduced into
-Christian worship in early times. Until a few centuries ago it remained
-not uncommon, and it even still persists in remote corners of the
-Christian world. In English cathedrals dancing went on until the
-fourteenth century. At Paris, Limoges, and elsewhere in France, the
-priests danced in the choir at Easter up to the seventeenth century, in
-Roussillon up to the eighteenth century. Roussillon is a Catalan
-province with Spanish traditions, and it is in Spain, where dancing is a
-deeper and more passionate impulse than elsewhere in Europe, that
-religious dancing took firmest root and flourished longest. In the
-cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, Valencia, and Jeres there was formerly
-dancing, though it now only survives at a few special festivals in the
-first.[18] At Alaro in Mallorca, also at the present day, a dancing
-company called Els Cosiers, on the festival of St. Roch, the patron
-saint of the place, dance in the church in fanciful costumes with
-tambourines, up to the steps of the high altar, immediately after Mass,
-and then dance out of the church. In another part of the Christian
-world, in the Abyssinian Church—an offshoot of the Eastern
-Church—dancing is also said still to form part of the worship.
-
-Dancing, we may see throughout the world, has been so essential, so
-fundamental, a part of all vital and undegenerate religion, that,
-whenever a new religion appears, a religion of the spirit and not merely
-an anæmic religion of the intellect, we should still have to ask of it
-the question of the Bantu: “What do you dance?”
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-Dancing is not only intimately associated with religion, it has an
-equally intimate association with love. Here, indeed, the relationship
-is even more primitive, for it is far older than man. Dancing, said
-Lucian, is as old as love. Among insects and among birds it may be said
-that dancing is often an essential part of love. In courtship the male
-dances, sometimes in rivalry with other males, in order to charm the
-female; then, after a short or long interval, the female is aroused to
-share his ardour and join in the dance; the final climax of the dance is
-the union of the lovers. Among the mammals most nearly related to man,
-indeed, dancing is but little developed: their energies are more
-variously diffused, though a close observer of the apes, Dr. Louis
-Robinson, has pointed out that the “spasmodic jerking of the
-chimpanzee’s feeble legs,” pounding the partition of his cage, is the
-crude motion out of which “the heavenly alchemy of evolution has created
-the divine movements of Pavlova”; but it must be remembered that the
-anthropoid apes are offshoots only from the stock that produced Man, his
-cousins and not his ancestors. It is the more primitive love-dance of
-insects and birds that seems to reappear among human savages in various
-parts of the world, notably in Africa, and in a conventionalised and
-symbolised form it is still danced in civilisation to-day. Indeed, it is
-in this aspect that dancing has so often aroused reprobation, from the
-days of early Christianity until the present, among those for whom the
-dance has merely been, in the words of a seventeenth-century writer, a
-series of “immodest and dissolute movements by which the cupidity of the
-flesh is aroused.”
-
-But in nature and among primitive peoples it has its value precisely on
-this account. It is a process of courtship and, even more than that, it
-is a novitiate for love, and a novitiate which was found to be an
-admirable training for love. Among some peoples, indeed, as the Omahas,
-the same word meant both to dance and to love. By his beauty, his
-energy, his skill, the male must win the female, so impressing the image
-of himself on her imagination that finally her desire is aroused to
-overcome her reticence. That is the task of the male throughout nature,
-and in innumerable species besides Man it has been found that the school
-in which the task may best be learnt is the dancing-school. Those who
-have not the skill and the strength to learn are left behind, and, as
-they are probably the least capable members of the race, it may be in
-this way that a kind of sexual selection has been embodied in
-unconscious eugenics, and aided the higher development of the race. The
-moths and the butterflies, the African ostrich and the Sumatran argus
-pheasant, with their fellows innumerable, have been the precursors of
-man in the strenuous school of erotic dancing, fitting themselves for
-selection by the females of their choice as the most splendid
-progenitors of the future race.[19]
-
-From this point of view, it is clear, the dance performed a double
-function. On the one hand, the tendency to dance, arising under the
-obscure stress of this impulse, brought out the best possibilities the
-individual held the promise of; on the other hand, at the moment of
-courtship, the display of the activities thus acquired developed on the
-sensory side all the latent possibilities of beauty which at last became
-conscious in man. That this came about we cannot easily escape
-concluding. How it came about, how it happens that some of the least
-intelligent of creatures thus developed a beauty and a grace that are
-enchanting even to our human eyes, is a miracle, even if not affected by
-the mystery of sex, which we cannot yet comprehend.
-
-When we survey the human world, the erotic dance of the animal world is
-seen not to have lost, but rather to have gained, influence. It is no
-longer the males alone who are thus competing for the love of the
-females. It comes about by a modification in the earlier method of
-selection that often not only the men dance for the women, but the women
-for the men, each striving in a storm of rivalry to arouse and attract
-the desire of the other. In innumerable parts of the world the season of
-love is a time which the nubile of each sex devote to dancing in each
-other’s presence, sometimes one sex, sometimes the other, sometimes
-both, in the frantic effort to display all the force and energy, the
-skill and endurance, the beauty and grace, which at this moment are
-yearning within them to be poured into the stream of the race’s life.
-
-From this point of view we may better understand the immense ardour with
-which every part of the wonderful human body has been brought into the
-play of the dance. The men and women of races spread all over the world
-have shown a marvellous skill and patience in imparting rhythm and
-measure to the most unlikely, the most rebellious regions of the body,
-all wrought by desire into potent and dazzling images. To the vigorous
-races of Northern Europe in their cold damp climate, dancing comes
-naturally to be dancing of the legs, so naturally that the English poet,
-as a matter of course, assumes that the dance of Salome was a “twinkling
-of the feet.”[20] But on the opposite side of the world, in Japan and
-notably in Java and Madagascar, dancing may be exclusively dancing of
-the arms and hands, in some of the South Sea Islands of the hands and
-fingers alone. Dancing may even be carried on in the seated posture, as
-occurs at Fiji in a dance connected with the preparation of the sacred
-drink, ava. In some districts of Southern Tunisia dancing, again, is
-dancing of the hair, and all night long, till they perhaps fall
-exhausted, the marriageable girls will move their heads to the rhythm of
-a song, maintaining their hair in perpetual balance and sway. Elsewhere,
-notably in Africa, but also sometimes in Polynesia, as well as in the
-dances that had established themselves in ancient Rome, dancing is
-dancing of the body, with vibratory or rotatory movements of breasts or
-flanks. The complete dance along these lines is, however, that in which
-the play of all the chief muscle-groups of the body is harmoniously
-interwoven. When both sexes take part in such an exercise, developed
-into an idealised yet passionate pantomime of love, we have the complete
-erotic dance. In the beautiful ancient civilisation of the Pacific, it
-is probable that this ideal was sometimes reached, and at Tahiti, in
-1772, an old voyager crudely and summarily described the native dance as
-“an endless variety of posturings and wagglings of the body, hands,
-feet, eyes, lips, and tongue, in which they keep splendid time to the
-measure.” In Spain the dance of this kind has sometimes attained its
-noblest and most harmoniously beautiful expression. From the narratives
-of travellers, it would appear that it was especially in the eighteenth
-century that among all classes in Spain dancing of this kind was
-popular. The Church tacitly encouraged it, an Aragonese Canon told
-Baretti in 1770, in spite of its occasional indecorum, as a useful
-safety-valve for the emotions. It was not less seductive to the foreign
-spectator than to the people themselves. The grave traveller Peyron,
-towards the end of the century, growing eloquent over the languorous and
-flexible movements of the dance, the bewitching attitude, the voluptuous
-curves of the arms, declares that, when one sees a beautiful Spanish
-woman dance, one is inclined to fling all philosophy to the winds. And
-even that highly respectable Anglican clergyman, the Reverend Joseph
-Townsend, was constrained to state that he could “almost persuade
-myself” that if the fandango were suddenly played in church the gravest
-worshippers would start up to join in that “lascivious pantomime.” There
-we have the rock against which the primitive dance of sexual selection
-suffers shipwreck as civilisation advances. And that prejudice of
-civilisation becomes so ingrained that it is brought to bear even on the
-primitive dance. The pygmies of Africa are described by Sir H. H.
-Johnston as a very decorous and highly moral people, but their dances,
-he adds, are not so. Yet these dances, though to the eyes of Johnston,
-blinded by European civilisation, “grossly indecent,” he honestly, and
-inconsistently, adds, are “danced reverently.”
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-From the vital function of dancing in love, and its sacred function in
-religion, to dancing as an art, a profession, an amusement, may seem, at
-the first glance, a sudden leap. In reality the transition is gradual,
-and it began to be made at a very early period in diverse parts of the
-globe. All the matters that enter into courtship tend to fall under the
-sway of art; their æsthetic pleasure is a secondary reflection of their
-primary vital joy. Dancing could not fail to be first in manifesting
-this tendency. But even religious dancing swiftly exhibited the same
-transformation; dancing, like priesthood, became a profession, and
-dancers, like priests, formed a caste. This, for instance, took place in
-old Hawaii. The hula dance was a religious dance; it required a special
-education and an arduous training; moreover, it involved the observance
-of important taboos and the exercise of sacred rites; by the very fact
-of its high specialisation it came to be carried out by paid performers,
-a professional caste. In India, again, the Devadasis, or sacred dancing
-girls, are at once both religious and professional dancers. They are
-married to gods, they are taught dancing by the Brahmins, they figure in
-religious ceremonies, and their dances represent the life of the god
-they are married to as well as the emotions of love they experience for
-him. Yet, at the same time, they also give professional performances in
-the houses of rich private persons who pay for them. It thus comes about
-that to the foreigner the Devadasis scarcely seem very unlike the
-Ramedjenis, the dancers of the street, who are of very different origin,
-and mimic in their performances the play of merely human passions. The
-Portuguese conquerors of India called both kinds of dancers
-indiscriminately Balheideras (or dancers) which we have corrupted in
-Bayaderes.[21]
-
-In our modern world professional dancing as an art has become altogether
-divorced from religion, and even, in any biological sense, from love; it
-is scarcely even possible, so far as Western civilisation is concerned,
-to trace back the tradition to either source. If we survey the
-development of dancing as an art in Europe, it seems to me that we have
-to recognise two streams of tradition which have sometimes merged, but
-yet remain in their ideals and their tendencies essentially distinct. I
-would call these traditions the Classical, which is much the more
-ancient and fundamental, and may be said to be of Egyptian origin, and
-the Romantic, which is of Italian origin, chiefly known to us as the
-ballet. The first is, in its pure form, solo dancing—though it may be
-danced in couples and many together—and is based on the rhythmic beauty
-and expressiveness of the simple human personality when its energy is
-concentrated in measured yet passionate movement. The second is
-concerted dancing, mimetic and picturesque, wherein the individual is
-subordinated to the wider and variegated rhythm of the group. It may be
-easy to devise another classification, but this is simple and
-instructive enough for our purpose.
-
-There can scarcely be a doubt that Egypt has been for many thousands of
-years, as indeed it still remains, a great dancing centre, the most
-influential dancing-school the world has ever seen, radiating its
-influence to south and east and north. We may perhaps even agree with
-the historian of the dance who terms it “the mother-country of all
-civilised dancing.” We are not entirely dependent on the ancient
-wall-pictures of Egypt for our knowledge of Egyptian skill in the art.
-Sacred mysteries, it is known, were danced in the temples, and queens
-and princesses took part in the orchestras that accompanied them. It is
-significant that the musical instruments still peculiarly associated
-with the dance were originated or developed in Egypt; the guitar is an
-Egyptian instrument and its name was a hieroglyph already used when the
-Pyramids were being built; the cymbal, the tambourine, triangles,
-castanets, in one form or another, were all familiar to the ancient
-Egyptians, and with the Egyptian art of dancing they must have spread
-all round the shores of the Mediterranean, the great focus of our
-civilisation, at a very early date.[22] Even beyond the Mediterranean,
-at Cadiz, dancing that was essentially Egyptian in character was
-established, and Cadiz became the dancing-school of Spain. The Nile and
-Cadiz were thus the two great centres of ancient dancing, and Martial
-mentions them both together, for each supplied its dancers to Rome. This
-dancing, alike whether Egyptian or Gaditanian, was the expression of the
-individual dancer’s body and art; the garments played but a small part
-in it, they were frequently transparent, and sometimes discarded
-altogether. It was, and it remains, simple, personal, passionate
-dancing, classic, therefore, in the same sense as, on the side of
-literature, the poetry of Catullus is classic.[23]
-
-Ancient Greek dancing was essentially classic dancing, as here
-understood. On the Greek vases, as reproduced in Emmanuel’s attractive
-book on Greek dancing and elsewhere, we find the same play of the arms,
-the same sideward turn, the same extreme backward extension of the body,
-which had long before been represented in Egyptian monuments. Many
-supposedly modern movements in dancing were certainly already common
-both to Egyptian and Greek dancing, as well as the clapping of hands to
-keep time which is still an accompaniment of Spanish dancing. It seems
-clear, however, that, on this general classic and Mediterranean basis,
-Greek dancing had a development so refined and so special—though in
-technical elaboration of steps, it seems likely, inferior to modern
-dancing—that it exercised no influence outside Greece. Dancing became,
-indeed, the most characteristic and the most generally cultivated of
-Greek arts. Pindar, in a splendid Oxyrhynchine fragment, described
-Hellas, in what seemed to him supreme praise, as “the land of lovely
-dancing,” and Athenæus pointed out that he calls Apollo the Dancer. It
-may well be that the Greek drama arose out of dance and song, and that
-the dance throughout was an essential and plastic element in it. Even if
-we reject the statement of Aristotle that tragedy arose out of the
-Dionysian dithyramb, the alternative suppositions (such as Ridgeway’s
-theory of dancing round the tombs of the dead) equally involve the same
-elements. It has often been pointed out that poetry in Greece demanded a
-practical knowledge of all that could be included under “dancing.”
-Æschylus is said to have developed the technique of dancing and
-Sophocles danced in his own dramas. In these developments, no doubt,
-Greek dancing tended to overpass the fundamental limits of classic
-dancing and foreshadowed the ballet.[24]
-
-The real germ of the ballet, however, is to be found in Rome, where the
-pantomime with its concerted and picturesque method of expressive action
-was developed, and Italy is the home of Romantic dancing. The same
-impulse which produced the pantomime produced, more than a thousand
-years later in the same Italian region, the modern ballet. In both
-cases, one is inclined to think, we may trace the influence of the same
-Etruscan and Tuscan race which so long has had its seat there, a race
-with a genius for expressive, dramatic, picturesque art. We see it on
-the walls of Etruscan tombs and again in pictures of Botticelli and his
-fellow Tuscans. The modern ballet, it is generally believed, had its
-origin in the spectacular pageants at the marriage of Galeazzo Visconti,
-Duke of Milan, in 1489. The fashion for such performances spread to the
-other Italian courts, including Florence, and Catherine de’ Medici, when
-she became Queen of France, brought the Italian ballet to Paris. Here it
-speedily became fashionable. Kings and queens were its admirers and even
-took part in it; great statesmen were its patrons. Before long, and
-especially in the great age of Louis XIV, it became an established
-institution, still an adjunct of opera but with a vital life and growth
-of its own, maintained by distinguished musicians, artists, and dancers.
-Romantic dancing, to a much greater extent than what I have called
-Classic dancing, which depends so largely on simple personal qualities,
-tends to be vitalised by transplantation and the absorption of new
-influences, provided that the essential basis of technique and tradition
-is preserved in the new development. Lulli in the seventeenth century
-brought women into the ballet; Camargo discarded the complicated
-costumes and shortened the skirt, so rendering possible not only her own
-lively and vigorous method, but all the freedom and airy grace of later
-dancing. It was Noverre who by his ideas worked out at Stuttgart, and
-soon brought to Paris by Gaetan Vestris, made the ballet a new and
-complete art form; this Swiss-French genius not only elaborated plot
-revealed by gesture and dance alone, but, just as another and greater
-Swiss-French genius about the same time brought sentiment and emotion
-into the novel, he brought it into the ballet. In the French ballet of
-the eighteenth century a very high degree of perfection seems thus to
-have been reached, while in Italy, where the ballet had originated, it
-decayed, and Milan, which had been its source, became the nursery of a
-tradition of devitalised technique carried to the finest point of
-delicate perfection. The influence of the French school was maintained
-as a living force into the nineteenth century,—when it was renovated
-afresh by the new spirit of the age and Taglioni became the most
-ethereal embodiment of the spirit of the Romantic movement in a form
-that was genuinely classic,—overspreading the world by the genius of a
-few individual dancers. When they had gone, the ballet slowly and
-steadily declined. As it declined as an art, so also it declined in
-credit and in popularity; it became scarcely respectable even to admire
-dancing. Thirty or forty years ago, those of us who still appreciated
-dancing as an art—and how few they were!—had to seek for it painfully
-and sometimes in strange surroundings. A recent historian of dancing, in
-a book published so lately as 1906, declared that “the ballet is now a
-thing of the past, and, with the modern change of ideas, a thing that is
-never likely to be resuscitated.” That historian never mentioned Russian
-ballet, yet his book was scarcely published before the Russian ballet
-arrived to scatter ridicule over his rash prophecy by raising the ballet
-to a pitch of perfection it can rarely have surpassed, as an expressive,
-emotional, even passionate form of living art.
-
-The Russian ballet was an offshoot from the French ballet and
-illustrates once more the vivifying effect of transplantation on the art
-of Romantic dancing. The Empress Anna introduced it in 1735 and
-appointed a French ballet-master and a Neapolitan composer to carry it
-on; it reached a high degree of technical perfection during the
-following hundred years, on the traditional lines, and the principal
-dancers were all imported from Italy. It was not until recent years that
-this firm discipline and these ancient traditions were vitalised into an
-art form of exquisite and vivid beauty by the influence of the soil in
-which they had slowly taken root. This contact, when at last it was
-effected, mainly by the genius of Fokine and the enterprise of
-Diaghilev, involved a kind of revolution, for its outcome, while genuine
-ballet, has yet all the effect of delicious novelty. The tradition by
-itself was in Russia an exotic without real life, and had nothing to
-give to the world; on the other hand, a Russian ballet apart from that
-tradition, if we can conceive such a thing, would have been formless,
-extravagant, bizarre, not subdued to any fine æsthetic ends. What we see
-here, in the Russian ballet as we know it to-day, is a splendid and
-arduous technical tradition, brought at last—by the combined skill of
-designers, composers, and dancers—into real fusion with an environment
-from which during more than a century it had been held apart; Russian
-genius for music, Russian feeling for rhythm, Russian skill in the use
-of bright colour, and, not least, the Russian orgiastic temperament, the
-Russian spirit of tender poetic melancholy, and the general Slav passion
-for folk-dancing, shown in other branches of the race also, Polish,
-Bohemian, Bulgarian, and Servian. At almost the same time what I have
-termed Classic dancing was independently revived in America by Isadora
-Duncan, bringing back what seemed to be the free naturalism of the Greek
-dance, and Ruth St. Denis, seeking to discover and revitalise the
-secrets of the old Indian and Egyptian traditions. Whenever now we find
-any restored art of theatrical dancing, as in the Swedish ballet, it has
-been inspired more or less, by an eclectic blending of these two revived
-forms, the Romantic from Russia, the Classic from America. The result
-has been that our age sees one of the most splendid movements in the
-whole history of the ballet.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-
-Dancing as an art, we may be sure, cannot die out, but will always be
-undergoing a rebirth. Not merely as an art, but also as a social custom,
-it perpetually emerges afresh from the soul of the people. Less than a
-century ago the polka thus arose, extemporised by the Bohemian servant
-girl Anna Slezakova out of her own head for the joy of her own heart,
-and only rendered a permanent form, apt for world-wide popularity, by
-the accident that it was observed and noted down by an artist. Dancing
-has for ever been in existence as a spontaneous custom, a social
-discipline. Thus it is, finally, that dancing meets us, not only as
-love, as religion, as art, but also as morals.
-
-All human work, under natural conditions, is a kind of dance. In a large
-and learned book, supported by an immense amount of evidence, Karl
-Bücher has argued that work differs from the dance, not in kind, but
-only in degree, since they are both essentially rhythmic. There is a
-good reason why work should be rhythmic, for all great combined efforts,
-the efforts by which alone great constructions such as those of
-megalithic days could be carried out, must be harmonised. It has even
-been argued that this necessity is the source of human speech, and we
-have the so-called Yo-heave-ho theory of languages. In the memory of
-those who have ever lived on a sailing ship—that loveliest of human
-creations now disappearing from the world—there will always linger the
-echo of the chanties which sailors sang as they hoisted the topsail yard
-or wound the capstan or worked the pumps. That is the type of primitive
-combined work, and it is indeed difficult to see how such work can be
-effectively accomplished without such a device for regulating the
-rhythmic energy of the muscles. The dance rhythm of work has thus acted
-socialisingly in a parallel line with the dance rhythms of the arts, and
-indeed in part as their inspirer. The Greeks, it has been too fancifully
-suggested, by insight or by intuition understood this when they fabled
-that Orpheus, whom they regarded as the earliest poet, was specially
-concerned with moving stones and trees. Bücher has pointed out that even
-poetic metre may be conceived as arising out of work; metre is the
-rhythmic stamping of feet, as in the technique of verse it is still
-metaphorically called; iambics and trochees, spondees and anapæsts and
-dactyls, may still be heard among blacksmiths smiting the anvil or
-navvies wielding their hammers in the streets. In so far as they arose
-out of work, music and singing and dancing are naturally a single art. A
-poet must always write to a tune, said Swinburne. Herein the ancient
-ballad of Europe is a significant type. It is, as the name indicates, a
-dance as much as a song, performed by a singer who sang the story and a
-chorus who danced and shouted the apparently meaningless refrain; it is
-absolutely the chanty of the sailors and is equally apt for the purposes
-of concerted work.[25] Yet our most complicated musical forms are
-evolved from similar dances. The symphony is but a development of a
-dance suite, in the first place folk-dances, such as Bach and Handel
-composed. Indeed a dance still lingers always at the heart of music and
-even the heart of the composer. Mozart, who was himself an accomplished
-dancer, used often to say, so his wife stated, that it was dancing, not
-music, that he really cared for. Wagner believed that Beethoven’s
-Seventh Symphony—to some of us the most fascinating of them and the most
-purely musical—was an apotheosis of the dance, and, even if that belief
-throws no light on the intention of Beethoven, it is at least a
-revelation of Wagner’s own feeling for the dance.
-
-It is, however, the dance itself, apart from the work and apart from the
-other arts, which, in the opinion of many to-day, has had a decisive
-influence in socialising, that is to say in moralising, the human
-species. Work showed the necessity of harmonious rhythmic coöperation,
-but the dance developed that rhythmic coöperation and imparted a
-beneficent impetus to all human activities. It was Grosse, in his
-“Beginnings of Art,” who first clearly set forth the high social
-significance of the dance in the creation of human civilisation. The
-participants in a dance, as all observers of savages have noted, exhibit
-a wonderful unison; they are, as it were, fused into a single being
-stirred by a single impulse. Social unification is thus accomplished.
-Apart from war, this is the chief factor making for social solidarity in
-primitive life; it was indeed the best training for war. It has been a
-twofold influence; on the one hand, it aided unity of action and method
-in evolution: on the other, it had the invaluable function—for man is
-naturally a timid animal—of imparting courage; the universal drum, as
-Louis Robinson remarks, has been an immense influence in human affairs.
-Even among the Romans, with their highly developed military system,
-dancing and war were definitely allied; the Salii constituted a college
-of sacred military dancers; the dancing season was March, the war-god’s
-month and the beginning of the war season, and all through that month
-there were dances in triple measure before the temples and round the
-altars, with songs so ancient that not even the priests could understand
-them. We may trace a similar influence of dancing in all the coöperative
-arts of life. All our most advanced civilisation, Grosse insisted, is
-based on dancing. It is the dance that socialised man.
-
-Thus, in the large sense, dancing has possessed peculiar value as a
-method of national education. As civilisation grew self-conscious, this
-was realised. “One may judge of a king,” according to ancient Chinese
-maxim, “by the state of dancing during his reign.” So also among the
-Greeks; it has been said that dancing and music lay at the foundation of
-the whole political and military as well as religious organisation of
-the Dorian states.
-
-In the narrow sense, in individual education, the great importance of
-dancing came to be realised, even at an early stage of human
-development, and still more in the ancient civilisations. “A good
-education,” Plato declared in the “Laws,” the final work of his old age,
-“consists in knowing how to sing and dance well.” And in our own day one
-of the keenest and most enlightened of educationists has lamented the
-decay of dancing; the revival of dancing, Stanley Hall declares, is
-imperatively needed to give poise to the nerves, schooling to the
-emotions, strength to the will, and to harmonise the feelings and the
-intellect with the body which supports them.
-
-It can scarcely be said that these functions of dancing are yet
-generally realised and embodied afresh in education. For, if it is true
-that dancing engendered morality, it is also true that in the end, by
-the irony of fate, morality, grown insolent, sought to crush its own
-parent, and for a time succeeded only too well. Four centuries ago
-dancing was attacked by that spirit, in England called Puritanism, which
-was then spread over the greater part of Europe, just as active in
-Bohemia as in England, and which has, indeed, been described as a
-general onset of developing Urbanism against the old Ruralism. It made
-no distinction between good and bad, nor paused to consider what would
-come when dancing went. So it was that, as Remy de Gourmont remarks, the
-drinking-shop conquered the dance, and alcohol replaced the violin.
-
-But when we look at the function of dancing in life from a higher and
-wider standpoint, this episode in its history ceases to occupy so large
-a place. The conquest over dancing has never proved in the end a matter
-for rejoicing, even to morality, while an art which has been so
-intimately mixed with all the finest and deepest springs of life has
-always asserted itself afresh. For dancing is the loftiest, the most
-moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere
-translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. It is the only
-art, as Rahel Varnhagen said, of which we ourselves are the stuff. Even
-if we are not ourselves dancers, but merely the spectators of the dance,
-we are still—according to that Lippsian doctrine of _Einfühlung_ or
-“empathy” by Groos termed “the play of inner imitation”—which here, at
-all events, we may accept as true—feeling ourselves in the dancer who is
-manifesting and expressing the latent impulses of our own being.
-
-It thus comes about that, beyond its manifold practical significance,
-dancing has always been felt to possess also a symbolic significance.
-Marcus Aurelius was accustomed to regard the art of life as like the
-dancer’s art, though that Imperial Stoic could not resist adding that in
-some respects it was more like the wrestler’s art. “I doubt not yet to
-make a figure in the great Dance of Life that shall amuse the spectators
-in the sky,” said, long after, Blake, in the same strenuous spirit. In
-our own time, Nietzsche, from first to last, showed himself possessed by
-the conception of the art of life as a dance, in which the dancer
-achieves the rhythmic freedom and harmony of his soul beneath the shadow
-of a hundred Damoclean swords. He said the same thing of his style, for
-to him the style and the man were one: “My style,” he wrote to his
-intimate friend Rohde, “is a dance.” “Every day I count wasted,” he said
-again, “in which there has been no dancing.” The dance lies at the
-beginning of art, and we find it also at the end. The first creators of
-civilisation were making the dance, and the philosopher of a later age,
-hovering over the dark abyss of insanity, with bleeding feet and muscles
-strained to the breaking point, still seems to himself to be weaving the
-maze of the dance.
-
-Footnote 12:
-
-  It is even possible that, in earlier than human times, dancing and
-  architecture may have been the result of the same impulse. The nest of
-  birds is the chief early form of building, and Edmund Selous has
-  suggested (_Zoölogist_, December, 1901) that the nest may first have
-  arisen as an accidental result of the ecstatic sexual dance of birds.
-
-Footnote 13:
-
-  “Not the epic song, but the dance,” Wundt says (_Völkerpsychologie_,
-  3d ed. 1911, Bd. 1, Teil 1, p. 277), “accompanied by a monotonous and
-  often meaningless song, constitutes everywhere the most primitive,
-  and, in spite of that primitiveness, the most highly developed art.
-  Whether as a ritual dance, or as a pure emotional expression of the
-  joy in rhythmic bodily movement, it rules the life of primitive men to
-  such a degree that all other forms of art are subordinate to it.”
-
-Footnote 14:
-
-  See an interesting essay in _The Dance of Siva: Fourteen Indian
-  Essays_, by Ananda Coomaraswamy. New York, 1918.
-
-Footnote 15:
-
-  This view was clearly put forward, long ago, by W. W. Newell at the
-  International Congress of Anthropology at Chicago in 1893. It has
-  become almost a commonplace since.
-
-Footnote 16:
-
-  See a charming paper by Marcella Azra Hincks, “The Art of Dancing in
-  Japan,” _Fortnightly Review_, July, 1906. Pantomimic dancing, which
-  has played a highly important part in Japan, was introduced into
-  religion from China, it is said, in the earliest time, and was not
-  adapted to secular purposes until the sixteenth century.
-
-Footnote 17:
-
-  I owe some of these facts to an interesting article by G. R. Mead,
-  “The Sacred Dance of Jesus,” _The Quest_, October, 1910.
-
-Footnote 18:
-
-  The dance of the Seises in Seville Cathedral is evidently of great
-  antiquity, though it was so much a matter of course that we do not
-  hear of it until 1690, when the Archbishop of the day, in opposition
-  to the Chapter, wished to suppress it. A decree of the King was
-  finally obtained permitting it, provided it was performed only by men,
-  so that evidently, before that date, girls as well as boys took part
-  in it. Rev. John Morris, “Dancing in Churches,” _The Month_, December,
-  1892; also a valuable article on the Seises by J. B. Trend, in _Music
-  and Letters_, January, 1921.
-
-Footnote 19:
-
-  See, for references, Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of
-  Sex_, vol. III; _Analysis of the Sexual Impulse_, pp. 29, etc.; and
-  Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, vol. I, chap. XIII, p. 470.
-
-Footnote 20:
-
-  At an earlier period, however, the dance of Salome was understood much
-  more freely and often more accurately. As Enlart has pointed out, on a
-  capital in the twelfth-century cloister of Moissac, Salome holds a
-  kind of castanets in her raised hands as she dances; on one of the
-  western portals of Rouen Cathedral, at the beginning of the sixteenth
-  century, she is dancing on her hands; while at Hemelverdeghem she is
-  really executing the _morisco_, the “_danse du ventre_.”
-
-Footnote 21:
-
-  For an excellent account of dancing in India, now being degraded by
-  modern civilisation, see Otto Rothfeld, _Women of India_, chap. VII,
-  “The Dancing Girl,” 1922.
-
-Footnote 22:
-
-  I may hazard the suggestion that the gypsies may possibly have
-  acquired their rather unaccountable name of Egyptians, not so much
-  because they had passed through Egypt, the reason which is generally
-  suggested,—for they must have passed through many countries,—but
-  because of their proficiency in dances of the recognised Egyptian
-  type.
-
-Footnote 23:
-
-  It is interesting to observe that Egypt still retains, almost
-  unchanged through fifty centuries, its traditions, technique, and
-  skill in dancing, while, as in ancient Egyptian dancing, the garment
-  forms an almost or quite negligible element in the art. Loret remarks
-  that a charming Egyptian dancer of the Eighteenth Dynasty, whose
-  picture in her transparent gauze he reproduces, is an exact portrait
-  of a charming Almeh of to-day whom he has seen dancing in Thebes with
-  the same figure, the same dressing of the hair, the same jewels. I
-  hear from a physician, a gynæcologist now practising in Egypt, that a
-  dancing-girl can lie on her back, and with a full glass of water
-  standing on one side of her abdomen and an empty glass on the other,
-  can by the contraction of the muscles on the side supporting the full
-  glass, project the water from it, so as to fill the empty glass. This,
-  of course, is not strictly dancing, but it is part of the technique
-  which underlies classic dancing and it witnesses to the thoroughness
-  with which the technical side of Egyptian dancing is still cultivated.
-
-Footnote 24:
-
-  “We must learn to regard the form of the Greek drama as a dance form,”
-  says G. Warre Cornish in an interesting article on “Greek Drama and
-  the Dance” (_Fortnightly Review_, February, 1913), “a musical
-  symphonic dance-vision, through which the history of Greece and the
-  soul of man are portrayed.”
-
-Footnote 25:
-
-  It should perhaps be remarked that in recent times it has been denied
-  that the old ballads were built up on dance songs. Miss Pound, for
-  instance, in a book on the subject, argues that they were of
-  aristocratic and not communal origin, which may well be, though the
-  absence of the dance element does not seem to follow.
-
-
-
-
-                              CHAPTER III
-                          THE ART OF THINKING
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-HERBERT SPENCER pointed out, in his early essay on “The Genesis of
-Science,” that science arose out of art, and that even yet the
-distinction is “purely conventional,” for “it is impossible to say when
-art ends and science begins.” Spencer was here using “art” in the
-fundamental sense according to which all practice is of the nature of
-art. Yet it is of interest to find a thinker now commonly regarded as so
-prosaic asserting a view which to most prosaic people seems fanciful. To
-the ordinary solid man, to any would-be apostle of common sense,
-science—and by “science” he usually means applied science—seems the
-exact opposite of the vagaries and virtuosities that the hard-headed
-_homme moyen sensuel_ is accustomed to look upon as “art.”
-
-Yet the distinction is modern. In classic times there was no such
-distinction. The “sciences”—reasonably, as we may now see, and not
-fancifully as was afterwards supposed—were “the arts of the mind.” In
-the Middle Ages the same liberal studies—grammar, logic, geometry,
-music, and the rest—could be spoken of either as “sciences” or as
-“arts,” and for Roger Bacon, who in the thirteenth century was so
-genuine a man of science, every branch of study or learning was a
-“scientia.” I am inclined to think that it was the Mathematical
-Renaissance of the seventeenth century which introduced the undue
-emphasis on the distinction between “science” and “art.” “All the
-sciences are so bound together,” wrote Descartes, the banner-bearer of
-that Renaissance, in his “Règles pour la Direction de l’Esprit,” “that
-it is much easier to learn them all at once than to learn one alone by
-detaching it from the others.” He added that we could not say the same
-of the arts. Yet we might perhaps say of arts and sciences that we can
-only understand them all together, and we may certainly say, as
-Descartes proceeded to say of the sciences alone, that they all emanate
-from the same focus, however diversely coloured by the media they pass
-through or the objects they encounter. At that moment, however, it was
-no doubt practically useful, however theoretically unsound, to
-overemphasise the distinction between “science,” with its new
-instrumental precision, and “art.”[26] At the same time the tradition of
-the old usage was not completely put aside, and a Master of “Arts”
-remained a master of such sciences as the directors of education
-succeeded in recognising until the middle of the nineteenth century. By
-that time the development of the sciences, and especially of the
-physical sciences, as “the discovery of truth,” led to a renewed
-emphasis on them which resulted in the practical restriction of the term
-“art” to what are ordinarily called the fine arts. More formally,
-science became the study of what were supposed to be demonstrable and
-systematically classifiable truths regarding the facts of the world; art
-was separated off as the play of human impulses in making things. Sir
-Sidney Colvin, in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” after discussing the
-matter (which Mill had already discussed at length in his “Logic” and
-decided that the difference is that Science is in the Indicative Mood
-and Art in the Imperative Mood), concluded that science is “ordered
-knowledge of natural phenomena and of the relations between them,” or
-that “Science consists in knowing, Art consists in doing.” Men of
-science, like Sir E. Ray Lankester, accepted this conclusion. That was
-as far as it was possible to go in the nineteenth century.
-
-But the years pass, and the progress of science itself, especially the
-sciences of the mind, has upset this distinction. The analysis of
-“knowing” showed that it was not such a merely passive and receptive
-method of recognising “truth” as scientists had innocently supposed.
-This is probably admitted now by the Realists among philosophers as well
-as by the Idealists. Dr. Charles Singer, perhaps our most learned
-historian of science, now defines science, no longer as a body of
-organized knowledge, but as “the process which makes knowledge,” as
-“knowledge in the making”; that is to say, “the growing edge between the
-unknown and the known.”[27] As soon as we thus regard it, as a _making_
-process, it becomes one with art. Even physical science is perpetually
-laying aside the “facts” which it thought it knew, and learning to
-replace them by other “facts” which it comes to know as more
-satisfactory in presenting an intelligible view of the world. The
-analysis of “knowing” shows that this is not only a legitimate but an
-inevitable process. Such a process is active and creative. It clearly
-partakes at least as much of the nature of “doing” as of “knowing.” It
-involves qualities which on another plane, sometimes indeed on the same
-plane, are essentially those involved in doing. The craftsman who moulds
-conceptions with his mind cannot be put in a fundamentally different
-class from the craftsman who moulds conceptions with his hand, any more
-than the poet can be put in a totally different class from the painter.
-It is no longer possible to deny that science is of the nature of art.
-
-So it is that in the fundamental sense, and even, it will have to be
-added, in a sense that comprehends the extravagancies of wild variations
-from the norm, we have to recognise that the true man of science is an
-artist. Like the lunatic, the lover, the poet (as a great physician, Sir
-William Osler, has said), the student is “of imagination all compact.”
-It was by his “wonderful imagination,” it has been well pointed out,
-that Newton was constantly discovering new tracks and new processes in
-the region of the unknown. The extraordinary various life-work of
-Helmholtz, who initiated the valuation of beauty on a physiological
-basis, scientifically precise as it was, had, as Einstein has remarked,
-an æsthetic colouring. “There is no such thing as an unimaginative
-scientific man,” a distinguished professor of mechanics and mathematics
-declared some years ago, and if we are careful to remember that not
-every man who believes that his life is devoted to science is really a
-“scientific man,” that statement is literally true.[28] It is not only
-true of the scientific man in the special sense; it is also true of the
-philosopher. In every philosopher’s work, a philosophic writer has
-remarked, “the construction of a complete system of conceptions is not
-carried out simply in the interests of knowledge. Its underlying motive
-is æsthetic. It is the work of a creative artist.”[29] The intellectual
-lives of a Plato or a Dante, Professor Graham Wallas from a different
-standpoint has remarked, “were largely guided and sustained by their
-delight in the sheer beauty of the rhythmic relation between law and
-instance, species and individual, or cause and effect.”[30]
-
-That remark, with its reference to the laws and rhythm in the universe,
-calls to mind the great initiator, so far as our knowledge extends back,
-of scientific research in our European world. Pythagoras is a dim
-figure, and there is no need here to insist unduly on his significance.
-But there is not the slightest doubt about the nature of that
-significance in its bearing on the point before us. Dim and legendary as
-he now appears to us, Pythagoras was no doubt a real person, born in the
-sixth century before Christ, at Samos, and by his association with that
-great shipping centre doubtless enabled to voyage afar and glean the
-wisdom of the ancient world. In antiquity he was regarded, Cicero
-remarks, as the inventor of philosophy, and still to-day he is estimated
-to be one of the most original figures, not only of Greece, but the
-world. He is a figure full of interest from many points of view, however
-veiled in mist, but he only concerns us here because he represents the
-beginning of what we call “science”—that is to say, measurable knowledge
-at its growing point—and because he definitely represents it as arising
-out of what we all conventionally recognise as “art,” and as, indeed,
-associated with the spirit of art, even its most fantastic forms, all
-the way. Pythagoras was a passionate lover of music, and it was thus
-that he came to make the enormously fruitful discovery that pitch of
-sound depends upon the length of the vibrating chord. Therein it became
-clear that law and spatial quantity ruled even in fields which had
-seemed most independent of quantitative order. The beginning of the
-great science of mechanics was firmly set up. The discovery was no
-accident. Even his rather hostile contemporary Heraclitus said of
-Pythagoras that he had “practised research and inquiry beyond all other
-men.” He was certainly a brilliant mathematician; he was, also, not only
-an astronomer, but the first, so far as we know, to recognise that the
-earth is a sphere,—so setting up the ladder which was to reach at last
-to the Copernican conception,—while his followers took the further step
-of affirming that the earth was not the centre of our cosmic system, but
-concentrically related. So that Pythagoras may not only be called the
-Father of Philosophy, but, with better right the Father of Science in
-the modern exact sense. Yet he remained fundamentally an artist even in
-the conventional sense. His free play of imagination and emotion, his
-delight in the ravishing charm of beauty and of harmony, however it may
-sometimes have led him astray,—and introduced the reverence for Number
-which so long entwined fancy too closely with science,—yet, as Gomperz
-puts it, gave soaring wings to the power of his severe reason.[31]
-
-One other great dim figure of early European antiquity shares with
-Pythagoras the philosophic dominance over our world, and that is the
-Platonic Socrates, or, as we might perhaps say, the Socratic Plato. And
-here, too, we are in the presence of a philosopher, if not a scientist,
-who was a supreme artist. Here again, also, we encounter a legendary
-figure concealing a more or less real human person. But there is a
-difference. While all are agreed that, in Pythagoras we have a great and
-brilliant figure dimly seen, there are many who consider that in
-Socrates we have a small and dim figure grown great and brilliant in the
-Platonic medium through which alone he has been really influential in
-our world, for without Plato the name of Socrates would have scarcely
-been mentioned. The problem of the Pythagorean legend may be said to be
-settled. But the problem of the Socratic legend is still under
-discussion. We cannot, moreover, quite put it aside as merely of
-academic interest, for its solution, if ever reached, would touch that
-great vital problem of art in the actual world with which we are here
-throughout concerned.
-
-If one examines any large standard history of Greece, like Grote’s to
-mention one of the oldest and best, one is fairly sure to find a long
-chapter on the life of Socrates. Such a chapter is inserted, without
-apology, without explanation, without compunction, as a matter of
-course, in a so-called “history,” and nearly every one, even to-day,
-still seems to take it as a matter of course. Few seem to possess the
-critical and analytical mind necessary for the examination of the
-documents on which the “history” rests. If they approached this chapter
-in a questioning spirit, they might perhaps discover that it was not
-until about half a century after the time of the real Socrates that any
-“historical” evidence for the existence of our legendary Socrates begins
-to appear.[32] Few people seem to realise that even of Plato himself we
-know nothing certain that could not be held in a single sentence. The
-“biographies” of Plato began to be written four hundred years after his
-death. It should be easy to estimate their value.
-
-There are three elements—one of them immeasurably more important than
-the other two—of which the composite portrait of our modern Socrates is
-made up: Xenophon, Plato, the dramatists. To the contribution furnished
-by the first, not much weight is usually attached. Yet it should really
-have been regarded as extremely illuminating. It suggests that the
-subject of “Socrates” was a sort of school exercise, useful practice in
-rhetoric or in dialectics. The very fact that Xenophon’s Socrates was so
-reminiscent of his creator ought to have been instructive.[33] It has,
-however, taken scholars some time to recognise this, and Karl Joël, who
-spent fifteen of the best years of his life over the Xenophontic
-Socrates, to discover that the figure was just as much a fiction as the
-Platonic Socrates, has lately confessed that he thinks those years
-rather wasted. It might have been clear earlier that what Plato had done
-was really just the same thing so far as method was concerned, though a
-totally different thing in result because done by the most richly
-endowed of poet-philosophers, the most consummate of artists. For that
-is probably how we ought to regard Plato, and not, like some, as merely
-a great mystificator. It is true that Plato was the master of irony, and
-that “irony,” in its fundamental meaning, is, as Gomperz points out,
-“pleasure in mystifying.” But while Plato’s irony possesses a
-significance which we must always keep before us, it is yet only one of
-the elements of his vast and versatile mind.
-
-It is to the third of these sources that some modern investigators are
-now inclined to attach primary significance. It was on the stage—in the
-branch of drama that kept more closely in touch with life than that
-which had fallen into the hands of the prose dialecticians and
-rhetoricians—that we seem to find the shadow of the real Socrates. But
-he was not the Socrates of the dramatic dialogues of Plato or even of
-Xenophon; he was a minor Sophist, an inferior Diogenes, yet a remarkable
-figure, arresting and disturbing, whose idiosyncrasies were quite
-perceptible to the crowd. It was an original figure, hardly the
-embodiment of a turning-point in philosophy, but fruitful of great
-possibilities, so that we could hardly be surprised if the master of
-philosophic drama took it over from real life and the stage for his own
-purposes.
-
-To make clear to myself the possible way—I am far from asserting it was
-the actual way—in which our legendary Socrates arose, I sometimes think
-of Chidley. Chidley was an Australian Sophist and Cynic, in the good
-sense of both these words, and without doubt, it seems to me, the most
-original and remarkable figure that has ever appeared in Australia, of
-which, however, he was not a native, though he spent nearly his whole
-life there. He was always poor, and like most philosophers he was born
-with a morbid nervous disposition, though he acquired a fine and robust
-frame. He was liable not only to the shock of outward circumstances but
-of inward impulses; these he had in the past often succumbed to, and
-only slowly and painfully gained the complete mastery over as he gained
-possession of his own philosophy. For all his falls, which he felt
-acutely, as Augustine and Bunyan as well as Rousseau felt such lapses,
-there was in him a real nobility, an even ascetic firmness and purity of
-character. I never met him, but I knew him more intimately, perhaps,
-than those who came in contact with him. For many years I was in touch
-with him, and his last letter was written shortly before his death; he
-always felt I ought to be persuaded of the truth he had to reveal and
-never quite understood my sympathetic attitude of scepticism. He had
-devoured all the philosophic literature he could lay hold of, but his
-philosophy—in the Greek sense, as a way of life, and not in our modern
-sense as a system of notions—was his own: a new vision of Nature’s
-simplicity and wholeness, only new because it had struck on a new
-sensibility and sometimes in excessive and fantastic ways, but he held
-his faith with unbending devotion, and never ceased to believe that all
-would accept the vision when once they beheld it. So he went about the
-streets in Sydney, clad (as a concession to public feeling) in bathing
-drawers, finding anywhere he could the Stoa which might serve for him,
-to argue and discuss, among all who were willing, with eager faith, keen
-mind, and pungent speech. A few were won, but most were disturbed and
-shocked. The police persistently harassed him; they felt bound to
-interfere with what seemed such an outrage on the prim decency of the
-streets; and as he quietly persisted in following his own course, and it
-was hard to bring any serious charge against him, they called in the aid
-of the doctors, and henceforth he was in and out of the asylum instead
-of the prison. No one need be blamed; it was nobody’s fault; if a man
-transgresses the ordinary respectable notions of decency, he must be a
-criminal, and if he is not a criminal, he must be a lunatic; the social
-organisation takes no account of philosophers; the philosophic
-Hipparchia and her husband must not nowadays consummate their marriage
-in public, and our modern philosophers meekly agree that philosophy is
-to have nothing to do with a life. Every one in the case seems to have
-behaved with due conventional propriety, just as every one behaved
-around the deathbed of Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilitch. It was Chidley’s deathbed
-they were preparing, and he knew it, but he unflinchingly grasped the
-cup they held out to him and drank it to the dregs. He felt he could do
-no other. There was no fabled hemlock in it, but it was just as deadly
-as though it had been accompanied by all the dramatic symbolisation of a
-formal condemnation to death, such as had really been recorded (Plato
-well knew) in old Athenian annals. There was no Plato in Sydney. But if
-there had been, it is hard to conceive any figure more fit for the ends
-of his transforming art. Through that inspiring medium the plebeian
-Sophist and Cynic, while yet retaining something of the asperity of his
-original shape, would have taken on a new glory, his bizarreries would
-have been spiritualised and his morbidities become the signs of mystic
-possession, his fate would have appeared as consecrated in form as it
-genuinely was in substance, he would have been the mouthpiece, not only
-of the truths he really uttered, but of a divine eloquence on the verge
-of which he had in real life only trembled, and, like Socrates in the
-hands of Plato, he would have passed, as all the finest philosophy
-passes at last, into music.[34] So in the end Chidley would have entered
-modern history, just as Socrates entered ancient history, the Saint and
-Martyr of Philosophy.[35]
-
-If it should so be that, as we learn to see him truly, the figure of the
-real Socrates must diminish in magnitude, then—and that is the point
-which concerns us here—the glory of the artist who made him what he has
-become for us is immensely enhanced. No longer the merely apt and
-brilliant disciple of a great master, he becomes himself master and
-lord, the radiant creator of the chief figure in European philosophy,
-the most marvellous artist the world has ever known. So that when we
-look back at the spiritual history of Europe, it may become possible to
-say that its two supreme figures, the Martyr of Philosophy and the
-Martyr of Religion, were both—however real the two human persons out of
-which they were formed—the work of man’s imagination. For there, on the
-one hand, we see the most accomplished of European thinkers, and on the
-other a little band of barbarians, awkwardly using just the same Greek
-language, working with an unconscious skill which even transcends all
-that conscious skill could have achieved, yet both bearing immortal
-witness to the truth that the human soul only lives truly in art and can
-only be ruled through art. So it is that in art lies the solution of the
-conflicts of philosophy. There we see Realism, or the discovery of
-things, one with Idealism, or the creation of things. Art is the
-embodied harmony of their conflict. That could not be more exquisitely
-symbolised than by these two supreme figures in the spiritual life of
-Europe, the Platonic Socrates and the Gospel Jesus, both alike presented
-to us, it is so significant to observe, as masters of irony.
-
-There has never again been so great an artist in philosophy, so supreme
-a dramatist, as Plato. But in later times philosophers themselves have
-often been willing to admit that even if they were not, like Plato,
-dramatists, there was poetry and art in their vocation. “One does not
-see why the sense for Philosophy should be more generally diffused than
-that for poetry,” remarked Schelling, evidently regarding them as on the
-same plane. F. A. Lange followed with his memorable “History of
-Materialism,” in which the conception of philosophy as a poetic art was
-clearly set forth. “Philosophy is pure art,” says in our own days a
-distinguished thinker who is in especially close touch with the
-religious philosophy of the East. “The thinker works with laws of
-thought and scientific facts in just the same sense as the musical
-composer with tones. He must find accords, he must think out sequences,
-he must set the part in a necessary relation to the whole. But for that
-he needs art.”[36] Bergson regards philosophy as an art, and Croce, the
-more than rival of Bergson in popular esteem, and with interesting
-points of contact with the French philosopher, though his standpoint is
-so different, has repeatedly pointed out—as regards Nietzsche, for
-instance, and even as regards a philosopher to whom he is so closely
-related as Hegel—that we may read philosophy for its poetic rather than
-its historic truth. Croce’s position in this matter is not, indeed, easy
-to state quite simply. He includes æsthetics in philosophy, but he would
-not regard philosophy as an art. For him art is the first and lowest
-stratum in the mind, not in rank, but in order, and on it the other
-strata are laid and combine with it. Or, as he elsewhere says, “art is
-the root of our whole theoretic life. Without root there can be neither
-flower nor fruit.”[37] But for Croce art is not itself flower or fruit.
-The “Concept” and other abstractions have to be brought in before Croce
-is satisfied that he has attained reality. It may, perhaps, indeed, be
-permitted, even to an admirer of the skill with which Croce spreads out
-such wide expanses of thought, to suggest that, in spite of his anxiety
-to keep close to the concrete, he is not therein always successful, and
-that he tends to move in verbal circles, as may perhaps happen to a
-philosopher who would reduce the philosophy of art to the philosophy of
-language. But, however that may be, it is a noteworthy fact that the
-close relationship of art and philosophy is admitted by the two most
-conspicuous philosophers of to-day, raised to popular eminence in spite
-of themselves, the Philosopher of Other-worldliness and the Philosopher
-of This-worldliness.
-
-If we turn to England, we find that, in an age and a land wherein it was
-not so easy to make the assertion as it has now more generally become,
-Sir Leslie Stephen, in harmony, whether or not he knew it, with F. A.
-Lange, wrote to Lord Morley (as he later became) in the last century: “I
-think that a philosophy is really made more of poetry than of logic; and
-the real value of both poetry and philosophy is not the pretended
-reasoning, but the exposition in one form or other of a certain view of
-life.” It is, we see, just what they have all been saying, and if it is
-true of men of science and philosophers, who are the typical
-representatives of human thinking, it is even true of every man on earth
-who thinks, ever since the day when conscious thinking began. The world
-is an unrelated mass of impressions, as it first strikes our infant
-senses, falling at random on the sensory mechanism, and all appearing as
-it were on the same plane. For an infant the moon is no farther away
-than his mother’s breast, even though he possesses an inherited mental
-apparatus fitted to coördinate and distinguish the two. It is only when
-we begin to think, that we can arrange these unrelated impressions into
-intelligible groups, and thinking is thus of the nature of art.[38]
-
-All such art, moreover, may yet be said to be an invention of fictions.
-That great and fundamental truth, which underlies so much modern
-philosophy, has been expounded in the clearest and most detailed manner
-by Hans Vaihinger in his “Philosophie des Als Ob.”
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-HANS VAIHINGER is still little known in England;[39] and that is the
-more remarkable as he has always been strongly attached to English
-thought, of which his famous book reveals an intimate knowledge. In
-early life he had mixed much with English people, for whom he has a deep
-regard, and learnt to revere, not only Darwin, but Hume and J. S. Mill,
-who exerted a decisive influence on his own philosophic development. At
-the beginning of his career he projected a history of English
-philosophy, but interest in that subject was then so small in Germany
-that he had regretfully to abandon his scheme, and was drawn instead,
-through no active effort on his part, to make the study of Kant the
-by-product of his own more distinctive work, yet it was a fitting study,
-for in Kant he saw the germs of the doctrine of the “as if,” that is to
-say, the practical significance of fiction in human life, though that is
-not the idea traditionally associated with Kant, who, indeed, was not
-himself clear about it, while his insight was further darkened by his
-reactionary tendencies; yet Vaihinger found that it really played a
-large part in Kant’s work and might even be regarded as his special and
-personal way of regarding things; he was not so much a metaphysician,
-Vaihinger remarks, as a metaphorician. Yet even in his Kantian studies
-the English influence was felt, for Vaihinger’s work has here been to
-take up the Neo-Kantism of F. A. Lange and to develop it in an empirical
-and positivistic direction.
-
-There was evidently something in Vaihinger’s spirit that allied him to
-the English spirit. We may see that in his portrait; it is not the face
-of the philosophic dreamer, the scholarly man of the study, but the
-eager, forceful head of the practical man of action, the daring
-adventurer, the man who seems made to struggle with the concrete things
-of the world, the kind of man, that is to say, whom we consider
-peculiarly English. That, indeed, is the kind of man he would have been;
-that is the kind of life, a social life full of activity and of sport,
-that he desired to lead. But it was impossible. An extreme and lifelong
-short-sightedness proved a handicap of which he has never ceased to be
-conscious. So it came about that his practical energy was, as it were,
-sublimated into a philosophy which yet retained the same forceful
-dynamic quality.
-
-For the rest, his origin, training, and vocation seem all to have been
-sufficiently German. He came, like many other eminent men, out of a
-Swabian parsonage, and was himself intended for theology, only branching
-off into philosophy after his university career was well advanced. At
-the age of sixteen he was deeply influenced, as so many others have
-been, by Herder’s “Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit”; that not only
-harmonised with his own tendency at the time towards a mixed theism and
-pantheism, but it first planted within him the conception of evolution
-in human history, proceeding from an animal origin, which became a
-fundamental element of his mental constitution. When a year later he
-came across Darwin’s doctrines he felt that he knew them beforehand.
-These influences were balanced by that of Plato, through whose “Ideas”
-he caught his first glimpse of an “As-If world.” A little later the
-strenuous training of one of his teachers in the logical analysis of
-Latin syntax, especially in the use of the conjunctions, furnished the
-source from which subsequently he drew that now well-known phrase. It
-was in these years that he reached the view, which he has since
-definitely advocated, that philosophy should not be made a separate
-study, but should become a natural part and corollary of every study,
-since philosophy cannot be fruitfully regarded as a discipline by
-itself. Without psychology, especially, he finds that philosophy is
-merely “a methodic abstraction.” A weighty influence of these days was
-constituted by the poems and essays of Schiller, a Swabian like himself,
-and, indeed, associated with the history of his own family. Schiller was
-not only an inspiring influence, but it was in Schiller’s saying, “Error
-alone is life, and knowledge is death,” that he found (however
-unjustifiably) the first expression of his own “fictionalism,” while
-Schiller’s doctrine of the play impulse as the basis of artistic
-creation and enjoyment seemed the prophecy of his own later doctrine,
-for in play he saw later the “as if” as the kernel of æsthetic practice
-and contemplation.
-
-At the age of eighteen Vaihinger proceeded to the Swabian University of
-Tübingen and here was free to let his wide-ranging, eager mind follow
-its own impulses. He revealed a taste for the natural sciences and with
-this the old Greek nature philosophers, especially Anaximander, for the
-sake of their anticipations of modern evolutionary doctrines. Aristotle
-also occupied him, later Spinoza, and, above all, Kant, though it was
-chiefly the metaphysical antinomies and the practical reason which
-fascinated him. As ever, it was what made for practice that seemed
-mostly to concern him. Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, the
-official German idealists, said nothing to him. He turned from them to
-Schopenhauer, and thence he drew the pessimisms, the irrationalism, and
-the voluntarism which became permanent features of his system of
-thought. The irrationalism, as he himself points out, was completely
-opposed to all early influences on him, but it lay in his own personal
-circumstances. The contrast between his temperamental impulse to
-energetic practical action in every direction, and the reserve,
-passivity, and isolation which myopia enforced, seemed to him absolutely
-irrational and sharpened his vision for all the irrationality of
-existence. So that a philosophy which, like Schopenhauer’s, truthfully
-recognised and allowed for the irrational element in existence came like
-a revelation. As to Vaihinger’s pessimism, that, as we might expect, is
-hardly of what would be generally considered a pessimistic character. It
-is merely a recognition of the fact that most people are over-sanguine
-and thereby come to grief, whereas a little touch of pessimism would
-have preserved them from much misery. Long before the Great War,
-Vaihinger felt that many Germans were over-sanguine regarding the
-military power of their Empire, and of Germany’s place in the world, and
-that such optimism might easily conduce to war and disaster. In 1911 he
-even planned to publish anonymously in Switzerland a pamphlet entitled
-“Finis Germaniæ,” with the motto “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius
-dementat,” and was only prevented by a sudden development of the
-eye-trouble. Vaihinger points out that an unjustified optimism had for a
-long time past led in the politics of Germany—and also, he might have
-said, of the countries later opposed to her—to lack of foresight,
-over-haste, and arrogance; he might have added that a very slight touch
-of pessimism would also have enabled these countries, on both sides, to
-discover the not very remote truth that even the victors in such a
-contest would suffer scarcely less than the conquered. In early life
-Vaihinger had playfully defined Man as a “species of ape afflicted by
-megalomania”; he admits that, whatever truth lies behind the definition,
-the statement is somewhat exaggerated. Yet it is certainly strange to
-observe, one may comment, how many people seem to feel vain of their own
-ungratified optimism when the place where optimism most flourishes is
-the lunatic asylum. They never seem to pause to reflect on the goal that
-lies ahead of them, though there must be few who on looking back cannot
-perceive what terrible accidents they might have foreseen and avoided by
-the aid of a little pessimism. When the gods, to ruin a man, first make
-him mad, they do it, almost invariably, by making him an optimist. One
-might hazard the assertion that the chief philosophic distinction
-between classic antiquity and modern civilisation is the prevalence in
-the latter of a facile optimism; and the fact that of all ancient
-writers the most popular in modern times has been the complacently
-optimistic (or really hedonistic) Horace is hardly due to his technical
-virtuosity. He who would walk sanely amid the opposing perils in the
-path of life always needs a little optimism; he also needs a little
-pessimism.
-
-Reference has been made to Vaihinger’s devouring appetite for knowledge.
-This, indeed, was extraordinary, and of almost universal range. There
-seem to have been few fields with which he failed to come in touch,
-either through books or by personal intercourse with experts. He found
-his way into all the natural sciences, he was drawn to Greek archæology
-and German philosophy; he began the study of Sanscrit with Roth. Then,
-realising that he had completely neglected mathematics, he devoted
-himself with ardour to analytic geometry and infinitesimals, a study
-which later he found philosophically fruitful. Finally, in 1874, he may
-be said to have rounded the circle of his self-development by reading
-the just published enlarged and much improved edition of F. A. Lange’s
-“History of Materialism.” Here he realised the presence of a spirit of
-the noblest order, equipped with the widest culture and the finest
-lucidity of vision, the keenest religious radicalism combined with
-large-hearted tolerance and lofty moral equilibrium, all manifested in a
-completed master-work. Moreover, the standpoint of F. A. Lange was
-precisely that which Vaihinger had been independently struggling
-towards, for it brought into view that doctrine of the place of fiction
-in life which he had already seen ahead. It is not surprising that he
-should generously and enthusiastically acclaim Lange as master and
-leader, though his subsequent work is his own, and has carried ideas of
-which Lange held only the seeds to new and fruitful development.[40]
-
-It was in 1876-77 that Vaihinger wrote his book, a marvellous
-achievement for so youthful a thinker, for he was then only about
-twenty-five years of age. A final revision it never underwent, and there
-remain various peculiarities about the form into which it is cast. The
-serious failure in eyesight seems to have been the main reason for
-delaying the publication of a work which the author felt to be too
-revolutionary to put forth in an imperfect form. He preferred to leave
-it for posthumous publication.
-
-But the world was not standing still, and during the next thirty years
-many things happened. Vaihinger found the new sect of Pragmatists coming
-into fashion with ideas resembling his own, though in a cruder shape,
-which seemed to render philosophy the “meretrix theologorum.” Many
-distinguished thinkers were working towards an attitude more or less
-like his own, especially Nietzsche, whom (like many others even to-day)
-he had long regarded with prejudice and avoided, but now discovered to
-be “a great liberator” with congenial veins of thought. Vaihinger
-realised that his conception was being independently put forward from
-various sides, often in forms that to him seemed imperfect or vicious.
-It was no longer advisable to hold back his book. In 1911, therefore,
-“Die Philosophie des Als Ob” appeared.
-
-The problem which Vaihinger set out to solve was this: How comes it
-about that with consciously false ideas we yet reach conclusions that
-are in harmony with Nature and appeal to us as Truth? That we do so is
-obvious, especially in the “exact” branches of science. In mathematics
-it is notorious that we start from absurdities to reach a realm of law,
-and our whole conception of the nature of the world is based on a
-foundation which we believe to have no existence. For even the most
-sober scientific investigator in science, the most thoroughgoing
-Positivist, cannot dispense with fiction; he must at least make use of
-categories, and they are already fictions, analogical fictions, or
-labels, which give us the same pleasure as children receive when they
-are told the “name” of a thing. Fiction is, indeed, an indispensable
-supplement to logic, or even a part of it; whether we are working
-inductively or deductively, both ways hang closely together with
-fiction; and axioms, though they seek to be primary verities, are more
-akin to fiction. If we had realised the nature of axioms, the doctrine
-of Einstein, which sweeps away axioms so familiar to us that they seem
-obvious truths, and substitutes others which seem absurd because they
-are unfamiliar, might not have been so bewildering.
-
-Physics, especially mathematical physics, Vaihinger explains in detail,
-has been based, and fruitfully based, on fictions. The infinite,
-infinitely little or infinitely great, while helpful in lightening our
-mental operations, is a fiction. The Greeks disliked and avoided it, and
-“the gradual formation of this conception is one of the most charming
-and instructive themes in the history of science,” indeed, one of the
-most noteworthy spectacles in the history of the human spirit; we see
-the working of a logical impulse first feeling in the dark, gradually
-constructing ideas fitted to yield precious service, yet full of
-hopeless contradictions, without any relation to the real world. That
-absolute space is a fiction, Vaihinger points out, is no new idea.
-Hobbes had declared it was only a _phantasma_; Leibnitz, who agreed,
-added that it was merely “the idolum of a few modern Englishmen,” and
-called time, extension, and movement “_choses idéales_.” Berkeley, in
-attacking the defective conceptions of the mathematicians, failed to see
-that it was by means of, and not in spite of, these logically defective
-conceptions that they attained logically valuable results. All the marks
-of fiction were set up on the mathematician’s pure space; it was
-impossible and unthinkable: yet it proved useful and fruitful.
-
-The tautological fiction of “Force”—an empty reduplication of the fact
-of a succession of relationships—is one that we constantly fall back on
-with immense satisfaction and with the feeling of having achieved
-something; it has been a highly convenient fiction which has aided
-representation and experience. It is one of the most famous, and also,
-it must be added, one of the most fatal of fantasies. For when we talk
-of, for instance, a “life-force” and its _élan_, or whatever other
-dainty term we like to apply to it, we are not only summarily mingling
-together many separate phenomena, but we are running the risk that our
-conception may be taken for something that really exists. There is
-always temptation, when two processes tend to follow each other, to call
-the property of the first to be followed by the other its “force,” and
-to measure that force by the magnitude of the result. In reality we only
-have succession and coexistence, and the “force” is something that we
-imagine.
-
-We must not, therefore, treat our imagination with contempt as was
-formerly the fashion, but rather the reverse. The two great periods of
-English Philosophy, Vaihinger remarks, ended with Ockham and with Hume,
-who each took up, in effect, the fictional point of view, but both too
-much on the merely negative side, without realising the positive and
-constructive value of fictions. English law has above all realised it,
-even, he adds, to the point of absurdity. Nothing is so precious as
-fiction, provided only one chooses the right fiction. “Matter” is such a
-fiction. There are still people who speak with lofty contempt of
-“Materialism”; they mean well, but they are unhappy in their terms of
-abuse. When Berkeley demonstrated the impossibility of “matter,” he
-thought he could afford to throw away the conception as useless. He was
-quite wrong; it is logically contradictory ideas that are the most
-valuable. Matter is a fiction, just as the fundamental ideas with which
-the sciences generally operate are mostly fictions, and the scientific
-materialisation of the world has proved a necessary and useful fiction,
-only harmful when we regard it as hypothesis and therefore possibly
-true. The representative world is a system of fictions. It is a symbol
-by the help of which we orient ourselves. The business of science is to
-make the symbol ever more adequate, but it remains a symbol, a means of
-action, for action is the last end of thinking.
-
-The “atom,” to which matter is ultimately reduced, is regarded by
-Vaihinger as equally a fiction, though it was at first viewed as an
-hypothesis, and it may be added that since he wrote it seems to have
-returned to the stage of hypothesis.[41] But when with Boscovich the
-“atom” was regarded as simply the bearer of energy, it became “literally
-a hypostatised nothing.” We have to realise at the same time that every
-“thing” is a “summatory fiction,” for to say, as is often said, that a
-“thing” has properties and yet has a real existence apart from its
-properties is obviously only a convenient manner of speech, a “verbal
-fiction.” The “force of attraction,” as Newton himself pointed out,
-belongs to the same class of summatory fictions.
-
-Vaihinger is throughout careful to distinguish fiction alike from
-hypothesis and dogma. He regards the distinction as, methodologically,
-highly important, though not always easy to make. The “dogma” is put
-forward as an absolute and unquestionable truth; the “hypothesis” is a
-possible or probable truth, such as Darwin’s doctrine of descent; the
-“fiction” is impossible, but it enables us to reach what for us is
-relatively truth, and, above all, while hypothesis simply contributes to
-knowledge, fiction thus used becomes a guide to practical action and
-indispensable to what we feel to be progress. Thus the mighty and
-civilising structure of Roman law was built up by the aid of what the
-Romans themselves recognised as fictions, while in the different and
-more flexible system of English laws a constant inspiration to action
-has been furnished by the supposed privileges gained by Magna Carta,
-though we now recognise them as fictitious. Many of our ideas tend to go
-through the three stages of Dogma, Hypothesis, and Fiction, sometimes in
-that order and sometimes in the reverse order. Hypothesis especially
-presents a state of labile stability which is unpleasant to the mind, so
-it tends to become either dogma or fiction. The ideas of Christianity,
-beginning as dogmas, have passed through all three stages in the minds
-of thinkers during recent centuries: the myths of Plato, beginning as
-fiction, not only passed through the three stages, but then passed back
-again, being now again regarded as fiction. The scientifically valuable
-fiction is a child of modern times, but we have already emerged from the
-period when the use of fiction was confined to the exact sciences.
-
-Thus we find fiction fruitfully flourishing in the biological and social
-sciences and even in the highest spheres of human spiritual activity.
-The Linnæan and similar classificatory systems are fictions, even though
-put forward as hypotheses, having their value simply as pictures, as
-forms of representation, but leading to contradictions and liable to be
-replaced by other systems which present more helpful pictures. There are
-still people who disdain Adam Smith’s “economic man,” as though
-proceeding from a purely selfish view of life, although Buckle,
-forestalling Vaihinger, long ago explained that Smith was deliberately
-making use of a “valid artifice,” separating facts that he knew to be in
-nature inseparable—he based his moral theory on a totally different kind
-of man—because so he could reach results approximately true to the
-observed phenomena. Bentham also adopted a fiction for his own system,
-though believing it to be an hypothesis, and Mill criticised it as being
-“geometrical”; the criticism is correct, comments Vaihinger, but the
-method was not thereby invalidated, for in complicated fields no other
-method can be fruitfully used.
-
-The same law holds when we approach our highest and most sacred
-conceptions. It was recognised by enlightened philosophers and
-theologians before Vaihinger that the difference between body and soul
-is not different from that between matter and force,—a provisional and
-useful distinction,—that light and darkness, life and death, are
-abstractions, necessary, indeed, but in their application to reality
-always to be used with precaution. On the threshold of the moral world
-we meet the idea of Freedom, “one of the weightiest conceptions man has
-ever formed,” once a dogma, in course of time an hypothesis, now in the
-eyes of many a fiction; yet we cannot do without it, even although we
-may be firmly convinced that our acts are determined by laws that cannot
-be broken. Many other great conceptions have tended to follow the same
-course. God, the Soul, Immortality, the Moral World-Order. The critical
-hearers understand what is meant when these great words are used, and if
-the uncritical misunderstand, that, adds Vaihinger, may sometimes be
-also useful. For these things are Ideals, and all Ideals are, logically
-speaking, fictions. As Science leads to the Imaginary, so Life leads to
-the Impossible; without them we cannot reach the heights we are born to
-scale. “Taken literally, however, our most valuable conceptions are
-worthless.”
-
-When we review the vast field which Vaihinger summarises, we find that
-thinking and existing must ever be on two different planes. The attempt
-of Hegel and his followers to transform subjective processes into
-objective world-processes, Vaihinger maintains, will not work out. The
-Thing-in-Itself, the Absolute, remains a fiction, though the ultimate
-and most necessary fiction, for without it representation would be
-unintelligible. We can only regard reality as a Heraclitean flux of
-happening—though Vaihinger fails to point out that this “reality” also
-can only be an image or symbol—and our thinking would itself be fluid if
-it were not that by fiction we obtain imaginary standpoints and
-boundaries by which to gain control of the flow of reality. It is the
-special art and object of thinking to attain existence by quite other
-methods than that of existence itself. But the wish by so doing to
-understand the world is both unrealisable and foolish, for we are only
-trying to comprehend our own fictions. We can never solve the so-called
-world-riddle because what seem riddles to us are merely the
-contradictions we have ourselves created. Yet, though the way of
-thinking cannot be the way of being, since they stand on such different
-foundations, thinking always has a kind of parallelism with being, and
-though we make our reckoning with a reality that we falsify, yet the
-practical result tends to come out right. Just because thinking is
-different from reality, its forms must also be different in order to
-correspond with reality. Our conceptions, our conventional signs, have a
-fictive function to perform; thinking in its lower grades is comparable
-to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.
-
-Imagination is thus a constitutive part of all thinking. We may make
-distinctions between practical scientific thinking and disinterested
-æsthetic thinking. Yet all thinking is finally a comparison. Scientific
-fictions are parallel with æsthetic fictions. The poet is the type of
-all thinkers: there is no sharp boundary between the region of poetry
-and the region of science. Both alike are not ends in themselves, but
-means to higher ends.
-
-Vaihinger’s doctrine of the “as if” is not immune from criticism on more
-than one side, and it is fairly obvious that, however sound the general
-principle, particular “fictions” may alter their status, and have even
-done so since the book was written. Moreover, the doctrine is not always
-quite congruous with itself. Nor can it be said that Vaihinger ever
-really answered the question with which he set out. In philosophy,
-however, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the
-things that are met with by the way. And Vaihinger’s philosophy is not
-only of interest because it presents so clearly and vigorously a
-prevailing tendency in modern thought. Rightly understood, it supplies a
-fortifying influence to those who may have seen their cherished
-spiritual edifice, whatever it may be, fall around them and are tempted
-to a mood of disillusionment. We make our own world; when we have made
-it awry, we can remake it, approximately truer, though it cannot be
-absolutely true, to the facts. It will never be finally made; we are
-always stretching forth to larger and better fictions which answer more
-truly to our growing knowledge and experience. Even when we walk, it is
-only by a series of regulated errors, Vaihinger well points out, a
-perpetual succession of falls to one side and the other side. Our whole
-progress through life is of the same nature; all thinking is a regulated
-error. For we cannot, as Vaihinger insists, choose our errors at random
-or in accordance with what happens to please us; such fictions are only
-too likely to turn into deadening dogmas: the old _vis dormitiva_ is the
-type of them, mere husks that are of no vital use and help us not at
-all. There are good fictions and bad fictions just as there are good
-poets and bad poets. It is in the choice and regulation of our errors,
-in our readiness to accept ever-closer approximations to the
-unattainable reality, that we think rightly and live rightly. We triumph
-in so far as we succeed in that regulation. “A lost battle,” Foch,
-quoting De Maistre, lays down in his “Principes de Guerre,” “is a battle
-one thinks one has lost”; the battle is won by the fiction that it is
-won. It is so also in the battle of life, in the whole art of living.
-Freud regards dreaming as fiction that helps us to sleep; thinking we
-may regard as fiction that helps us to live. Man lives by imagination.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-YET what we consider our highest activities arise out of what we are
-accustomed to regard as the lowest. That is, indeed, merely a necessary
-result of evolution; bipeds like ourselves spring out of many-limbed
-creatures whom we should now regard as little better than vermin, and
-the adult human creature whose eyes, as he sometimes imagines, are fixed
-on the stars, was a few years earlier merely a small animal crawling on
-all fours. The impulse of the philosopher, of the man of science, of any
-ordinary person who sometimes thinks about seemingly abstract or
-disinterested questions—we must include the whole range of the play of
-thought in response to the stimulus of curiosity—may seem at the first
-glance to be a quite secondary and remote product of the great primary
-instincts. Yet it is not difficult to bring this secondary impulse into
-direct relation with the fundamental primary instincts, even, and
-perhaps indeed chiefly, with the instinct of sex. On the mental
-side—which is not, of course, its fundamental side—the sexual instinct
-is mainly, perhaps solely, a reaction to the stimulus of curiosity.
-Beneath that mental surface the really active force is a physiologically
-based instinct urgent towards action, but the boy or girl who first
-becomes conscious of the mental stimulus is unaware of the instinct it
-springs from, and may even disregard as unimportant its specific
-physiological manifestations. The child is only conscious of new
-curiosities, and these it persistently seeks to satisfy at any available
-or likely source of information, aided by the strenuous efforts of its
-own restlessly active imagination. It is in exactly the same position as
-the metaphysician, or the biologist, or any thinker who is faced by
-complex and yet unsolved problems. And the child is at first baffled by
-just the same kind of obstacles, due, not like those of the thinker, to
-the silence of recalcitrant Nature, but to the silence of parents and
-teachers, or to their deliberate efforts to lead him astray.
-
-Where do babies come from? That is perhaps for many children the
-earliest scientific problem that is in this way rendered so difficult of
-solution. No satisfying solution comes from the sources of information
-to which the child is wont to appeal. He is left to such slight
-imperfect observations as he can himself make; on such clues his
-searching intellect works and with the aid of imagination weaves a
-theory, more or less remote from the truth, which may possibly explain
-the phenomena. It is a genuine scientific process—the play of intellect
-and imagination around a few fragments of observed fact—and it is
-undoubtedly a valuable discipline for the childish mind, though if it is
-too prolonged it may impede or distort natural development, and if the
-resulting theory is radically false it may lead, as the theories of
-scientific adults sometimes lead, if not speedily corrected, to various
-unfortunate results.
-
-A little later, when he has ceased to be a child and puberty is
-approaching, another question is apt to arise in the boy’s mind: What is
-a woman like? There is also, less often and more carefully concealed,
-the corresponding curiosity in the girl’s mind. Earlier this question
-had seemed of no interest; it had never even occurred to ask it; there
-was little realisation—sometimes none at all—of any sexual difference.
-Now it sometimes becomes a question of singular urgency, in the solution
-of which it is necessary for the boy to concentrate all the scientific
-apparatus at his command. For there may be no ways of solving it
-directly, least of all for a well-behaved, self-respecting boy or a shy,
-modest girl. The youthful intellect is thus held in full tension, and
-its developing energy directed into all sorts of new channels in order
-to form an imaginative picture of the unknown reality, fascinating
-because incompletely known. All the chief recognised mental processes of
-dogma, hypothesis, and fiction, developed in the history of the race,
-are to this end instinctively created afresh in the youthful individual
-mind, endlessly formed and re-formed and tested in order to fill in the
-picture. The young investigator becomes a diligent student of literature
-and laboriously examines the relevant passages he finds in the Bible or
-other ancient primitive naked books. He examines statues and pictures.
-Perhaps he finds some old elementary manual of anatomy, but here the
-long list of structures with Latin names proves far more baffling than
-helpful to the youthful investigator who can in no possible way fit them
-all into the smooth surface shown by the statues. Yet the creative and
-critical habit of thought, the scientific mind generated by this search,
-is destined to be of immense value, and long outlives the time when the
-eagerly sought triangular spot, having fulfilled its intellectual
-function, has become a familiar region, viewed with indifference, or at
-most a homely tenderness.
-
-That was but a brief and passing episode, however permanently beneficial
-its results might prove. With the achievement of puberty, with the
-coming of adolescence, a larger and higher passion fills the youth’s
-soul. He forgets the woman’s body, his idealism seems to raise him above
-the physical: it is the woman’s personality—most likely some particular
-woman’s personality—that he desires to know and to grasp.
-
-A twofold development tends to take place at this age—in those youths,
-that is to say, who possess the latent attitude for psychic
-development—and that in two diverse directions, both equally away from
-definite physical desire, which at this age is sometimes, though not
-always, at its least prominent place in consciousness. On the one hand
-there is an attraction for an idealised person—perhaps a rather remote
-person, for such most easily lend themselves to idealisation—of the
-opposite (or occasionally the same) sex, it may sometimes for a time
-even be the heroine of a novel. Such an ideal attraction acts as an
-imaginative and emotional ferment. The imagination is stimulated to
-construct for the first time, from such material as it has come across,
-or can derive from within, the coherent picture of a desirable person.
-The emotions are trained and disciplined to play around the figure thus
-constructed with a new impersonal and unselfish, even self-sacrificing,
-devotion. But this process is not enough to use up all the energies of
-the developing mind, and the less so as such impulses are unlikely by
-their very nature to receive any considerable degree of gratification,
-for they are of a nature to which no adequate response is possible.
-
-Thus it happens in adolescence that this new stream of psychic energy,
-emotional and intellectual, generated from within, concurrently with its
-primary personal function of moulding the object of love, streams over
-into another larger and more impersonal channel. It is, indeed, lifted
-on to a higher plane and transformed, to exercise a fresh function by
-initiating new objects of ideal desire. The radiant images of religion
-and of art as well as of science—however true it may be that they have
-also other adjuvant sources—thus begin to emerge from the depths beneath
-consciousness. They tend to absorb and to embody the new energy, while
-its primary personal object may sink into the background, or at this age
-even fail to be conscious at all.
-
-This process—the process in which all abstract thinking is born as well
-as all artistic creation—must to some slight extent take place in every
-person whose mental activity is not entirely confined to the immediate
-objects of sense. But in persons of more complex psychic organisation it
-is a process of fundamental importance. In those of the highest complex
-organisation, indeed, it becomes what we term genius. In the most
-magnificent achievements of poetry and philosophy, of art and of
-science, it is no longer forbidden to see the ultimate root in this
-adolescent development.
-
-To some a glimpse of this great truth has from time to time appeared.
-Ferrero, who occupied himself with psychology before attaining eminence
-as a brilliant historian, suggested thirty years ago that the art
-impulse and its allied manifestations are transformed sexual instinct;
-the sexual impulse is “the raw material, so to speak, from which art
-springs”; he connected that transformation with a less development of
-the sexual emotions in women; but that was much too hasty an assumption,
-for apart from the fact that such transformation could never be
-complete, and probably less so in women than in men, we have also to
-consider the nature of the two organisms through which the transformed
-emotions would operate, probably unlike in the sexes, for the work done
-by two machines obviously does not depend entirely upon feeding them
-with the same amount of fuel, but also on the construction of the two
-engines. Möbius, a brilliant and original, if not erratic, German
-psychologist, who was also concerned with the question of difference in
-the amount of sexual energy, regarded the art impulse as a kind of
-sexual secondary character. That is to say, no doubt,—if we develop the
-suggestion,—that just as the external features of the male and his
-external activities, in the ascending zoölogical series, have been
-developed out of the impulse of repressed organic sexual desire striving
-to manifest itself ever more urgently in the struggle to overcome the
-coyness of the female, so on the psychic side there has been a parallel
-impulse, if of later development, to carry on the same task in forms of
-art which have afterwards acquired an independent activity and a yet
-further growth dissociated from this primary biological function. We
-think of the natural ornaments which adorn male animals from far down in
-the scale even up to man, of the additions made thereto by tattooing and
-decoration and garments and jewels, of the parades and dances and songs
-and musical serenades found among lower animals as well as Man, together
-with the love-lyrics of savages, furnishing the beginnings of the most
-exquisite arts of civilisation.
-
-It is to be noted, however, that these suggestions introduce an
-assumption of male superiority, or male inferiority—according to our
-scheme of values—which unnecessarily prejudices and confuses the issue.
-We have to consider the question of the origin of art apart from any
-supposed predominance of its manifestations in one sex or the other. In
-my own conception—put forward a quarter of a century ago—of what I
-called auto-erotic activities, it was on such a basis that I sought to
-place it, since I regarded those auto-erotic phenomena as arising from
-the impeded spontaneous sexual energy of the organism and extending from
-simple physical processes to the highest psychic manifestations; “it is
-impossible to say what finest elements in art, in morals, in
-civilisation generally, may not really be rooted in an auto-erotic
-impulse,” though I was careful to add that the transmutation of sexual
-energy into other forms of force must not be regarded as itself
-completely accounting for all the finest human aptitudes of sympathy and
-art and religion.[42]
-
-It is along this path, it may perhaps be claimed,—as dimly glimpsed by
-Nietzsche, Hinton, and other earlier thinkers,—that the main explanation
-of the dynamic process by which the arts, in the widest sense, have come
-into being, is now chiefly being explored. One thinks of Freud and
-especially of Dr. Otto Rank, perhaps the most brilliant and clairvoyant
-of the younger investigators who still stand by the master’s side. In
-1905 Rank wrote a little essay on the artist[43] in which this mechanism
-is set forth and the artist placed, in what the psycho-analytic author
-considers his due place, between the ordinary dreamer at one end and the
-neurotic subject at the other, the lower forms of art, such as
-myth-making, standing near to dreams, and the higher forms, such as the
-drama, philosophy, and the founding of religions, near to
-psycho-neurosis, but all possessing a sublimated life-force which has
-its root in some modification of sexual energy.
-
-It may often seem that, in these attempts to explain the artist, the man
-of science is passed over or left in the background, and that is true.
-But art and science, as we now know, have the same roots. The supreme
-men of science are recognisably artists, and the earliest forms of art,
-which are very early indeed,—Sir Arthur Evans has suggested that men may
-have drawn before they talked,—were doubtless associated with magic,
-which was primitive man’s science, or, at all events, his nearest
-approximation to science. The connection of the scientific instinct with
-the sexual instinct is not, indeed, a merely recent insight. Many years
-ago it was clearly stated by a famous Dutch author. “Nature, who must
-act wisely at the risk of annihilation,” wrote Multatuli at the
-conclusion of his short story, “The Adventures of Little Walter,” “has
-herein acted wisely by turning all her powers in one direction.
-Moralists and psychologists have long since recognised, without
-inquiring into the causes, that curiosity is one of the main elements of
-love. Yet they were only thinking of sexual love, and by raising the two
-related termini in corresponding wise on to a higher plane I believe
-that the noble thirst for knowledge springs from the same soil in which
-noble love grows. To press through, to reveal, to possess, to direct,
-and to ennoble, that is the task and the longing, alike of the lover and
-the natural discoverer. So that every Ross or Franklin is a Werther of
-the Pole, and whoever is in love is a Mungo Park of the spirit.”
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-AS soon as we begin to think about the world around us in what we vainly
-call a disinterested way—for disinterest is, as Leibnitz said, a
-chimera, and there remains a superior interest—we become youths and
-lovers and artists, and there is at the same time a significant strain
-of sexual imagery in our thought.[44] Among ourselves this is not always
-clear; we have been dulled by the routine of civilisation and the
-artificial formalities of what is called education. It is clear in the
-mythopœic creation of comparative primitive thought, but in civilisation
-it is in the work of men of genius—poets, philosophers, painters, and,
-as we have to recognise, men of science—that this trait is most
-conspicuously manifested. To realise this it is sufficient to
-contemplate the personality and activity of one of the earliest great
-modern men of science, of Leonardo da Vinci. Until recent times it would
-have seemed rather strange so to describe Leonardo da Vinci. He still
-seemed, as he was in his own time, primarily a painter, an artist in the
-conventionally narrow sense, and as such one of the greatest, fit to
-paint, as Browning put it, one of the four walls of the New Jerusalem.
-Yet even his contemporaries who so acclaimed him were a little worried
-about Leonardo in this capacity. He accomplished so little, he worked so
-slowly, he left so much unfinished, he seemed to them so volatile and
-unstable. He was an enigma to which they never secured the key. They
-failed to see, though it is clearly to be read even in his face, that no
-man ever possessed a more piercing concentration of vision, a more fixed
-power of attention, a more unshakable force of will. All that Leonardo
-achieved in painting and in sculpture and in architecture, however novel
-or grandiose, was, as Solmi, the highly competent Vincian scholar has
-remarked, merely a concession to his age, in reality a violence done to
-his own nature, and from youth to old age he had directed his whole
-strength to one end: the knowledge and the mastery of Nature. In our own
-time, a sensitive, alert, widely informed critic of art, Bernhard
-Berenson, setting out with the conventional veneration for Leonardo as a
-painter, slowly, as the years went by and his judgment grew more mature,
-adopted a more critical attitude, bringing down his achievements in art
-to moderate dimensions, yet without taking any interest in Leonardo as a
-stupendous artist in science. We may well understand that vein of
-contempt for the crowd, even as it almost seems the hatred for human
-society, the spirit of Timon, which runs across Leonardo’s writings,
-blended, no doubt inevitably blended, with his vein of human sweetness.
-This stern devotee of knowledge declared, like the author of “The
-Imitation of Christ,” that “Love conquers all things.” There is here no
-discrepancy. The man who poured a contemptuous flood of irony and
-denunciation over the most sacred social institutions and their most
-respectable representatives was the same man—the Gospels tell us—who
-brooded with the wings of a maternal tenderness over the pathos of human
-things.
-
-When, indeed, our imagination plays with the idea of a future Overman,
-it is Leonardo who comes before us as his forerunner. Vasari, who had
-never seen Leonardo, but has written so admirable an account of him, can
-only describe him as “supernatural” and “divine.” In more recent times
-Nietzsche remarked of Leonardo that “there is something super-European
-and silent in him, the characteristic of one who has seen too wide a
-circle of things good and evil.” There Nietzsche touches, even though
-vaguely, more nearly than Vasari could, the distinguishing mark of this
-endlessly baffling and enchanting figure. Every man of genius sees the
-world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
-But it is usually a measurable angle. We cannot measure the angle at
-which Leonardo stands; he strikes athwart the line of our conventional
-human thought in ways that are sometimes a revelation and sometimes an
-impenetrable mystery. We are reminded of the saying of Heraclitus: “Men
-hold some things wrong and some right; God holds all things fair.” The
-dispute as to whether he was above all an artist or a man of science is
-a foolish and even unmeaning dispute. In the vast orbit in which
-Leonardo moved the distinction had little or no existence. That was
-inexplicable to his contemporaries whose opinions Vasari echoes. They
-could not understand that he was not of the crowd of makers of pretty
-things who filled the workshops of Florence. They saw a man of beautiful
-aspect and fine proportions, with a long curled beard and wearing a
-rose-coloured tunic, and they called him a craftsman, an artist, and
-thought him rather fantastic. But the medium in which this artist worked
-was Nature, the medium in which the scientist works; every problem in
-painting was to Leonardo a problem in science, every problem in physics
-he approached in the spirit of the artist. “Human ingenuity,” he said,
-“can never devise anything more simple and more beautiful, or more to
-the purpose, than Nature does.” For him, as later for Spinoza, reality
-and perfection were the same thing. Both aspects of life he treats as
-part of his task—the extension of the field of human knowledge, the
-intension of the power of human skill; for art, or, as he called it,
-practice, without science, he said, is a boat without a rudder.
-Certainly he occupied himself much with painting, the common medium of
-self-expression in his day, though he produced so few pictures; he even
-wrote a treatise on painting; he possessed, indeed, a wider perception
-of its possibilities than any artist who ever lived. “Here is the
-creator of modern landscape!” exclaimed Corot before Leonardo’s
-pictures, and a remarkable description he has left of the precise
-effects of colour and light produced when a woman in white stands on
-green grass in bright sunshine shows that Leonardo clearly apprehended
-the _plein-airiste’s_ problem. Doubtless it will prove possible to show
-that he foresaw still later methods. He rejected these methods because
-it seemed to him that the artist could work most freely by moving midway
-between light and darkness, and, indeed, he, first of painters,
-succeeded in combining them—just as he said also that Pleasure and Pain
-should be imaged as twins since they are ever together, yet back to back
-because ever contrary—and devised the method of _chiaroscuro_, by which
-light reveals the richness of shade and shade heightens the brightness
-of light. No invention could be more characteristic of this man whose
-grasp of the world ever involved the union of opposites, and the
-opposites both apprehended more intensely than falls to the lot of other
-men.
-
-Yet it is noteworthy that Leonardo constantly speaks of the artist’s
-function as searching into and imitating Nature, a view which the
-orthodox artist anathematises. But Leonardo was not the orthodox artist,
-not even, perhaps, as he is traditionally regarded, one of the world’s
-supreme painters. For one may sympathise with Mr. Berenson’s engaging
-attempt—unconvincing as it has seemed—to “expose” Leonardo. The drawings
-Mr. Berenson, like every one else, admires whole-heartedly, but, save
-for the unfinished “Adoration,” which he regards as a summit of art, he
-finds the paintings mostly meaningless and repellent. He cannot rank
-Leonardo as an artist higher than Botticelli, and concludes that he was
-not so much a great painter as a great inventor in painting. With that
-conclusion it is possible that Leonardo himself would have agreed.
-Painting was to him, he said, a subtle invention whereby philosophical
-speculation can be applied to all the qualities of forms. He seemed to
-himself to be, here and always, a man standing at the mouth of the
-gloomy cavern of Nature with arched back, one hand resting on his knee
-and the other shading his eyes, as he peers intently into the darkness,
-possessed by fear and desire, fear of the threatening gloom of that
-cavern, desire to discover what miracle it might hold. We are far here
-from the traditional attitude of the painter; we are nearer to the
-attitude of that great seeker into the mysteries of Nature, one of the
-very few born of women to whom we can ever even passingly compare
-Leonardo, who felt in old age that he had only been a child gathering
-shells and pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of truth.
-
-It is almost as plausible to regard Leonardo as primarily an engineer as
-primarily a painter. He offered his services as a military engineer and
-architect to the Duke of Milan and set forth at length his manifold
-claims which include, one may note, the ability to construct what we
-should now, without hesitation, describe as “tanks.” At a later period
-he actually was appointed architect and engineer-general to Cæsar
-Borgia, and in this capacity was engaged on a variety of works. He has,
-indeed, been described as the founder of professional engineering. He
-was the seer of coming steam engines and of steam navigation and
-transportation. He was, again, the inventor of innumerable varieties of
-ballistic machines and ordnance, of steam guns and breech-loading arms
-with screw breech-lock. His science always tended to become applied
-science. Experience shows the road to practice, he said, science is the
-guide to art. Thus he saw every problem in the world as in the wide
-sense a problem in engineering. All nature was a dynamic process of
-forces beautifully effecting work, and it is this as it were distinctive
-vision of the world as a whole which seems to give Leonardo that
-marvellous flair for detecting vital mechanism in every field. It is
-impossible even to indicate summarily the vast extent of the region in
-which he was creating a new world, from the statement, which he set down
-in large letters, “The sun does not move,” the earth being, he said, a
-star, “much like the moon,” down to such ingenious original devices as
-the construction of a diving-bell, a swimming-belt, and a parachute of
-adequate dimensions, while, as is now well known, Leonardo not only
-meditated with concentrated attention on the problem of flight, but
-realised scientifically the difficulties to be encountered, and made
-ingenious attempts to overcome them in the designing of flying-machines.
-It is enough—following expert scientific guidance—to enumerate a few
-points: he studied botany in the biological spirit; he was a founder of
-geology, discovering the significance of fossils and realising the
-importance of river erosion; by his studies in the theories of mechanics
-and their utilization in peace and war he made himself the prototype of
-the modern man of science. He was in turn biologist in every field of
-vital mechanism, and the inaugurator before Vesalius (who, however, knew
-nothing of his predecessor’s work) of the minute study of anatomy by
-direct investigation (after he had found that Galen could not be relied
-on) and _post-mortem_ dissections; he nearly anticipated Harvey’s
-conception of the circulation of the blood by studying the nature of the
-heart as a pump. He was hydraulician, hydrographer, geometrician,
-algebraist, mechanician, optician.[45] These are but a few of the fields
-in which Leonardo’s marvellous insight into the nature of the forces
-that make the world and his divining art of the methods of employing
-them to human use have of late years been revealed. For centuries they
-were concealed in notebooks scattered through Europe and with difficulty
-decipherable. Yet they are not embodied in vague utterances or casual
-intuitions, but display a laborious concentration on the precise details
-of the difficulties to be overcome; nor was patient industry in him, as
-often happens, the substitute for natural facility, for he was a person
-of marvellous natural facility, and, like such persons, most eloquent
-and persuasive in speech. At the same time his more general and
-reflective conclusions are expressed in a style combining the maximum of
-clarity with the maximum of concision,—far, indeed, removed from the
-characteristic florid redundancy of Italian prose,—which makes Leonardo,
-in addition to all else, a supreme master of language.[46]
-
-Yet the man to whom we must credit these vast intellectual achievements
-was no abstracted philosopher shut up in a laboratory. He was, even to
-look upon, one of the most attractive and vivid figures that ever walked
-the earth. As has sometimes happened with divine and mysterious persons,
-he was the natural child of his mother, Caterina, of whom we are only
-told that she was “of good blood,” belonging to Vinci like Ser Piero the
-father, and that a few years after Leonardo’s birth she became the
-reputable wife of a citizen of his native town. Ser Piero da Vinci was a
-notary, of a race of notaries, but the busiest notary in Florence and
-evidently a man of robust vigour; he married four times and his youngest
-child was fifty years the junior of Leonardo. We hear of the
-extraordinary physical strength of Leonardo himself, of his grace and
-charm, of his accomplishments in youth, especially in singing and
-playing on the flute, though he had but an elementary school education.
-Except for what he learnt in the workshop of the many-sided but then
-still youthful Verrocchio, he was his own schoolmaster, and was thus
-enabled to attain that absolute emancipation from authority and
-tradition which made him indifferent even to the Greeks, to whom he was
-most akin. He was left-handed; his peculiar method of writing long
-raised the suspicion that it was deliberately adopted for concealment,
-but it is to-day recognised as simply the ordinary mirror-writing of a
-left-handed child without training. This was not the only anomaly in
-Leonardo’s strange nature. We now know that he was repeatedly charged as
-a youth on suspicion of homosexual offences; the result remains obscure,
-but there is some reason to think he knew the inside of a prison.
-Throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful youths,
-though no tradition of license or vice clings to his name. The precise
-nature of his sexual temperament remains obscure. It mocks us, but
-haunts us from out of his most famous pictures. There is, for instance,
-the “John the Baptist” of the Louvre, which we may dismiss with the
-distinguished art critic of to-day as an impudent blasphemy or brood
-over long, without being clearly able to determine into what obscure
-region of the Freudian Unconscious Leonardo had here adventured. Freud
-himself has devoted one of his most fascinating essays to a
-psychoanalytic interpretation of Leonardo’s enigmatic personality. He
-admits it is a speculation; we may take it or leave it. But Freud has
-rightly apprehended that in Leonardo sexual passion was largely
-sublimated into intellectual passion, in accordance with his own saying,
-“Nothing can be loved or hated unless first we have knowledge of it,”
-or, as he elsewhere said, “True and great love springs out of great
-knowledge, and where you know little you can love but little or not at
-all.” So it was that Leonardo became a master of life. Vasari could
-report of him—almost in the words it was reported of another supreme but
-widely different figure, the Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier—that “with the
-splendour of his most beautiful countenance he made serene every broken
-spirit.” To possess by self-mastery the sources of love and hate is to
-transcend good and evil and so to possess the Overman’s power of binding
-up the hearts that are broken by good and evil.
-
-Every person of genius is in some degree at once man, woman, and child.
-Leonardo was all three in the extreme degree and yet without any
-apparent conflict. The infantile strain is unquestioned, and, apart from
-the problem of his sexual temperament, Leonardo was a child even in his
-extraordinary delight in devising fantastic toys and contriving
-disconcerting tricks. His more than feminine tenderness is equally
-clear, alike in his pictures and in his life. Isabella d’Este, in asking
-him to paint the boy Jesus in the Temple, justly referred to “the
-gentleness and sweetness which mark your art.” His tenderness was shown
-not only towards human beings, but to all living things, animals and
-even plants, and it would appear that he was a vegetarian. Yet at the
-same time he was emphatically masculine, altogether free from weakness
-or softness. He delighted in ugliness as well as in beauty; he liked
-visiting the hospitals to study the sick in his thirst for knowledge; he
-pondered over battles and fighting; he showed no compunction in planning
-devilish engines of military destruction. His mind was of a definitely
-realistic and positive cast; though there seems no field of thought he
-failed to enter, he never touched metaphysics, and though his worship of
-Nature has the emotional tone of religion, even of ecstasy, he was
-clearly disdainful of the established religions, and perpetually shocked
-“the timid friends of God.” By precept and by practice he proclaimed the
-lofty solitude of the individual soul, and he felt only contempt for the
-herd. We see how this temper became impressed on his face in his own
-drawing of himself in old age, with that intent and ruthless gaze
-wrapped in intellectual contemplation of the outspread world.
-
-Leonardo comes before us, indeed, in the end, as a figure for awe rather
-than for love. Yet, as the noblest type of the Overman we faintly try to
-conceive, Leonardo is the foe, not of man, but of the enemies of man.
-The great secrets that with clear vision his stern grip tore from
-Nature, the new instruments of power that his energy wrought, they were
-all for the use and delight of mankind. So Leonardo is the everlasting
-embodiment of that brooding human spirit whose task never dies. Still
-to-day it stands at the mouth of the gloomy cavern of Nature, even of
-Human Nature, with bent back and shaded eyes, seeking intently to
-penetrate the gloom beyond, with the fear of that threatening darkness,
-with the desire of what redeeming miracle it yet perchance may hold.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-
-THAT Leonardo da Vinci was not only supremely great in science, but the
-incarnation of the spirit of science, the artist and lover of Nature, is
-a fact it is well to bear in mind. Many mistakes would be avoided if it
-were more clearly present to consciousness. We should no longer find the
-artists in design absurdly chafing under what they considered the
-bondage of the artists in thought. It would no longer be possible, as it
-was some years ago, and may be still, for a narrow-minded pedagogue like
-Brunetière, however useful in his own field, to be greeted as a prophet
-when he fatuously proclaimed what he termed “the bankruptcy of science.”
-Unfortunately so many of the people who masquerade under the name of
-“men of science” have no sort of title to that name. They may be doing
-good and honest work by accumulating in little cells the facts which
-others, more truly inspired by the spirit of science, may one day work
-on; they may be doing more or less necessary work by the application to
-practical life of the discoveries which genuine men of science have
-made. But they themselves have just as much, and no more, claim to use
-the name of “science” as the men who make the pots and dishes piled up
-in a crockery shop have to use the name of “art.”[47] They have not yet
-even learnt that “science” is not the accumulation of knowledge in the
-sense of piling up isolated facts, but the active organisation of
-knowledge, the application to the world of the cutting edge of a
-marvellously delicate instrument, and that this task is impossible
-without the widest range of vision and the most restless fertility of
-imagination.
-
-Of such more genuine men of science—to name one whom by virtue of
-several common interests I was sometimes privileged to come near—was
-Francis Galton. He was not a professional man of science; he was even
-willing that his love of science should be accounted simply a hobby.
-From the standpoint of the ordinary professional scientific man he was
-probably an amateur. He was not even, as some have been, a learned
-amateur. I doubt whether he had really mastered the literature of any
-subject, though I do not doubt that that mattered little. When he heard
-of some famous worker in a field he was exploring, he would look up that
-man’s work; so it was with Weismann in the field of heredity. And, as I
-would note with a smile in reading his letters, Galton was not able to
-spell Weismann’s name correctly.[48] His attitude in science might be
-said to be pioneering much like that of the pioneers of museums in the
-later seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries, men like Tradescant
-and Ashmole and Evelyn and Sloane: an insatiable curiosity in things
-that were only just beginning, or had not yet begun, to arouse
-curiosity. So it was that when I made some personal experiments with the
-Mexican cactus, mescal (_Anhalonium Lewinii_), to explore its
-vision-producing qualities, then quite unknown in England, Galton was
-eagerly interested and wanted to experiment on himself, though
-ultimately dissuaded on account of his advanced age. But, on this basis,
-Galton’s curiosity was not the mere inquisitiveness of the child, it was
-coördinated with an almost uniquely organised brain as keen as it was
-well-balanced. So that on the one hand his curiosity was transformed
-into methods that were endlessly ingenious and inventive, and on the
-other it was guided and held in check by inflexible caution and good
-sense. And he knew how to preserve that exquisite balance without any
-solemnity or tension or self-assertion, but playfully and graciously,
-with the most unfailing modesty. It was this rare combination of
-qualities—one may see it all in his “Inquiries into Human Faculty”—which
-made him the very type of the man of genius, operating, not by
-profession or by deliberate training, but by natural function, throwing
-light on the dark places of the world and creating science in
-out-of-the-way fields of human experience which before had been left to
-caprice or not even perceived at all. Throughout he was an artist and
-if, as is reported, he spent the last year of his life chiefly in
-writing a novel, that was of a piece with the whole of his marvellous
-activity; he had never been doing anything else. Only his romances were
-real.
-
-Galton’s yet more famous cousin, Charles Darwin, presents in equal
-purity the lover and the artist in the sphere of Nature and Science. No
-doubt there were once many obtuse persons to whom these names seemed
-scarcely to fit when applied to Darwin. There have been people to whom
-Darwin scarcely seemed a man of genius, merely a dry laborious
-pedestrian student of facts. He himself even—as many people find it
-difficult to forget—once lamented his indifference to poetry and art.
-But Darwin was one of those elect persons in whose subconscious, if not
-in their conscious, nature is implanted the realisation that “science
-_is_ poetry,” and in a field altogether remote from the poetry and art
-of convention he was alike poet and artist. Only a man so endowed could
-from a suggestion received on reading Malthus have conceived of natural
-selection as a chief moulding creative force of an infinite succession
-of living forms; so also of his fantastic theory of pangenesis. Even in
-trifling matters of experiment, such as setting a musician to play the
-bassoon in his greenhouse, to ascertain whether music affected plants,
-he had all the inventive imagination of poet or of artist. He was poet
-and artist—though I doubt if this has been pointed out—in his whole
-attitude towards Nature. He worked hard, but to him work was a kind of
-play, and it may well be that with his fragile health he could not have
-carried on his work if it had not been play. Again and again in his
-“Life and Letters” we find the description of his observations or
-experiments introduced by some such phrase as: “I was infinitely
-amused.” And he remarks of a biological problem that it was like a game
-of chess. I doubt, indeed, whether any great man of science was more of
-an artist than Darwin, more consciously aware that he was playing with
-the world, more deliciously thrilled by the fun of life. That man may
-well have found “poetry and art” dull who himself had created the theory
-of sexual selection which made the whole becoming of life art and the
-secret of it poetry.[49]
-
-It is not alone among biologists, from whose standpoint it may be judged
-easier to reach, since they are concerned with living Nature, that we
-find the attitude of the lover and the artist. We find it just as well
-marked when the man of genius plays in what some might think the arid
-field of the physicist. Faraday worked in a laboratory, a simple one,
-indeed, but the kind of place which might be supposed fatal to the true
-spirit of science, and without his researches in magnetic electricity we
-might have missed, with or without a pang, those most practical machines
-of our modern life, the dynamo and the telephone. Yet Faraday had no
-practical ends in view; it has been possible to say of him that he
-investigated Nature as a poet investigates the emotions. That would not
-have sufficed to make him the supreme man of science he was. His
-biographer, Dr. Bence Jones, who knew him well, concludes that Faraday’s
-first great characteristic was his trust in facts, and his second his
-imagination. There we are brought to the roots of his nature. Only, it
-is important to remember, these two characteristics were not separate
-and distinct. In themselves they may be opposing traits; it was because
-in Faraday they were held together in vital tension that he became so
-potent an instrument of research into Nature’s secrets. Tyndall, who was
-his friend and fellow worker, seems to have perceived this. “The force
-of his imagination,” wrote Tyndall, “was enormous,”—he “rose from the
-smallest beginnings to the greatest ends,” from “bubbles of oxygen and
-nitrogen to the atmospheric envelope of the earth itself,”—but “he
-bridled it like a mighty rider.” Faraday himself said to the same
-effect: “Let the imagination go, guarding it by judgment and principles,
-but holding it in and directing it by experiment.” Elsewhere he has
-remarked that in youth he was, and he might have added that he still
-remained, “a very lively imaginative person and could believe in the
-‘Arabian Nights’ as easily as in the ‘Encyclopædia’.” But he soon
-acquired almost an instinct for testing facts by experiment, for
-distrusting such alleged facts as he had not so tested, and for
-accepting all the conclusions that he had thus reached with a complete
-indifference to commonly accepted beliefs. (It is true he was a faithful
-and devout elder in the Sandemanian Church, and that is not the least
-fascinating trait in this fascinating man.) Tyndall has insisted on both
-of these aspects of Faraday’s mental activity. He had “wonderful
-vivacity,” he was “a man of excitable and fiery nature,” and “underneath
-his sweetness was the heat of a volcano.” He himself believed that there
-was a Celtic strain in his heredity; there was a tradition that the
-family came from Ireland; I cannot find that there are any Faradays, or
-people of any name resembling Faraday, now in Ireland, but Tyndall,
-being himself an Irishman, liked to believe that the tradition was
-sound. It would only account for the emotionally vivacious side of this
-nature. There was also the other side, on which Tyndall also insists:
-the love of order, the extreme tenacity, the high self-discipline able
-to convert the fire within into a clear concentrated glow. In the fusion
-of these two qualities “he was a prophet,” says Tyndall, “and often
-wrought by an inspiration to be understood by sympathy alone.” His
-expansive emotional imagination became the servant of truth, and sprang
-into life at its touch. In carrying out physical experiments he would
-experience a childlike joy and his eyes sparkled. “Even to his latest
-days he would almost dance for joy at being shown a new experiment.”
-Silvanus Thompson, in his book on Faraday, insists (as Tyndall had) on
-the association with this childlike joy in imaginative extravagance of
-the perpetual impulse to test and to prove, “yet never hesitating to
-push to their logical conclusions the ideas suggested by experiment,
-however widely they might seem to lead from the accepted modes of
-thought.” His method was the method of the “Arabian Nights,” transferred
-to the region of facts.
-
-Faraday was not a mathematician. But if we turn to Kepler, who moved in
-the sphere of abstract calculation, we find precisely the same
-combination of characteristics. It was to Kepler, rather than to
-Copernicus, that we owe the establishment of the heliocentric theory of
-our universe, and Kepler, more than any man, was the precursor of
-Newton. It has been said that if Kepler had never lived it is difficult
-to conceive who could have taken his place and achieved his special part
-in the scientific creation of our universe. For that pioneering part was
-required a singular blend of seemingly opposed qualities. Only a wildly
-daring, original, and adventurous spirit could break away from the
-age-long traditions and rigid preconceptions which had ruled astronomy
-for thousands of years. Only an endlessly patient, careful, laborious,
-precise investigator could set up the new revolutionary conceptions
-needed to replace these traditions and preconceptions. Kepler supplied
-this rare combination of faculties. He possessed the most absurdly
-extravagant imagination; he developed a greater regard for accuracy in
-calculation than the world had ever known. He was willing to believe
-that the earth was a kind of animal, and would not have been surprised
-to find that it possessed lungs or gills. At the same time so set was he
-on securing the precise truth, so patiently laborious, that some of his
-most elaborate calculations were repeated, and without the help of
-logarithms, even seventy times. The two essential qualities that make
-the supreme artist in science have never been so clearly made manifest
-as in Kepler.
-
-Kepler may well bring us to Einstein, the greatest pioneer in the
-comprehension of the universe since his day, and, indeed, one who is
-more than a pioneer, since he already seems to have won a place beside
-Newton. It is a significant fact that Einstein, though he possesses an
-extremely cautious, critical mind, and is regarded as conspicuous for
-his common sense, has a profound admiration for Kepler, whom he
-frequently quotes. For Einstein also is an imaginative artist.[50]
-
-Einstein is obviously an artist, even in appearance, as has often been
-noted by those who have met him; “he looks far more the musician than
-the man of science,” one writes, while those who know him well say that
-he is “essentially as much an artist as a discoverer.” As a matter of
-fact he is an artist in one of the most commonly recognised arts, being
-an accomplished musician, a good violinist, it is said, while
-improvisation on the piano, he himself says, is “a necessity of his
-life.” His face, we are told, is illumined when he listens to music; he
-loves Bach and Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner much less, while
-to Chopin, Schumann, and the so-called romantics in music, as we might
-anticipate, he is indifferent. His love of music is inborn; it developed
-when, as a child, he would think out little songs “in praise of God,”
-and sing them by himself; music, Nature, and God began, even at that
-early age, to become a kind of unity to him. “Music,” said Leibnitz, “is
-the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being
-aware that it is counting.” It is the most abstract, the most nearly
-mathematical of the arts—we may recall how music and mathematics had
-their scientific origin together in the discovery of Pythagoras—and it
-is not surprising that it should be Einstein’s favorite art.[51] It is
-even more natural that, next to music, he should be attracted to
-architecture—the art which Goethe called “frozen music”—for here we are
-actually plunged into mechanics, here statics and dynamics are
-transformed into visible beauty. To painting he is indifferent, but he
-is drawn to literature, although no great reader. In literature, indeed,
-it would seem that it is not so much art that he seeks as emotion; in
-this field it is no longer the austerely architectonic that draws him;
-thus he is not attracted to Ibsen; he is greatly attracted to Cervantes
-as well as Keller and Strindberg; he has a profound admiration for
-Shakespeare, but is cooler towards Goethe, while it would seem that
-there is no writer to whom he is more fervently attached than the most
-highly emotional, the most profoundly disintegrated in nervous
-organisation of all great writers, Dostoievsky, especially his
-masterpiece, “The Brothers Karamazov.” “Dostoievsky gives me more than
-any scientist, more than Gauss.” All literary analysis or æsthetic
-subtlety, it seems to Einstein, fails to penetrate to the heart of a
-work like “The Karamazovs,” it can only be grasped by the feelings. His
-face lights up when he speaks of it and he can find no word but “ethical
-satisfaction.” For ethics in the ordinary sense, as a system, means
-little to Einstein; he would not even include it in the sciences; it is
-the ethical joy embodied in art which satisfies him. Moreover, it is
-said, the keynote of Einstein’s emotional existence is the cry of
-Sophocles’ Antigone: “I am not here to hate with you, but to love with
-you.” The best that life has to offer, he feels, is a face glowing with
-happiness. He is an advanced democrat and pacifist rather than (as is
-sometimes supposed) a socialist; he believes in the internationality of
-all intellectual work and sees no reason why this should destroy
-national characteristics.
-
-Einstein is not—and this is the essential point to make clear—merely an
-artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play
-golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in
-the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which
-is exactly where art also is rooted. Of Max Planck, the physicist, for
-whom he has great admiration, Einstein has said: “The emotional
-condition which fits him for his task is akin to that of a devotee or a
-lover.” We may say the same, it would seem, of Einstein himself. He is
-not even to be included, as some might have supposed, in that rigid sect
-which asserts that all real science is precise measurement; he
-recognises that the biological sciences must be largely independent of
-mathematics. If mathematics were the only path of science, he once
-remarked, Nature would have been illegible for Goethe, who had a
-non-mathematical, even anti-mathematical, mind, and yet possessed a
-power of intuition greater than that of many an exact investigator.[52]
-All great achievements in science, he holds, start from intuition. This
-he constantly repeats, although he adds that the intuition must not
-stand alone, for invention also is required. He is disposed to regard
-many scientific discoveries commonly regarded the work of pure thought
-as really works of art. He would have this view embodied in all
-education, making education a free and living process, with no drilling
-of the memory and no examinations, mainly a process of appeal to the
-senses in order to draw out delicate reactions. With his end, and even
-for the sake of acquiring ethical personality, he would have every child
-learn a handicraft, joinery, bookbinding, or other, and, like Élie
-Faure,[53] he has great faith in the educational value of the cinema. We
-see that behind all Einstein’s activity lies the conception that the
-physicist’s work is to attain a picture, “a world-picture,” as he calls
-it. “I agree with Schopenhauer,” Einstein said at a celebration in
-honour of Planck in 1918, “that one of the most powerful motives that
-attract people to science and art is the longing to escape from everyday
-life with its painful coarseness and desolating bareness, and to break
-the fetters of their own ever-changing desires. It impels those of
-keener sensibility out of their personal existences into the world of
-objective perception and understanding. It is a motive force of like
-kind to that which drives the dweller in noisy confused cities to
-restful Alpine heights whence he seems to have an outlook on eternity.
-Associated with this negative motive is the positive motive which impels
-men to seek a simplified synoptic view of the world conformable to their
-own nature, overcoming the world by replacing it with this picture. The
-painter, the poet, the philosopher, the scientist, all do this, each in
-his own way.” Spengler has elaborately argued that there is a perfect
-identity of physics, mathematics, religion, and great art.[54] We might
-fairly be allowed to point to Einstein as a lofty embodiment of that
-identity.
-
-Here, where we reach the sphere of mathematics, we are among processes
-which seem to some the most inhuman of all human activities and the most
-remote from poetry. Yet it is here that the artist has the fullest scope
-for his imagination. “Mathematics,” says Bertrand Russell in his
-“Mysticism and Logic,” “may be defined as the subject in which we never
-know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”
-We are in the imaginative sphere of art, and the mathematician is
-engaged in a work of creation which resembles music in its orderliness,
-and is yet reproducing on another plane the order of the universe, and
-so becoming as it were a music of the spheres. It is not surprising that
-the greatest mathematicians have again and again appealed to the arts in
-order to find some analogy to their own work. They have indeed found it
-in the most various arts, in poetry, in painting, in sculpture, although
-it would certainly seem that it is in music, the most abstract of the
-arts, the art of number and of time, that we find the closest analogy.
-“The mathematician’s best work is art,” said Mittag-Lefler, “a high and
-perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear
-and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch each other.”
-And Sylvester wrote in his “Theory of Reciprocants”: “Does it not seem
-as if Algebra had attained to the dignity of a fine art, in which the
-workman has a free hand to develop his conceptions, as in a musical
-theme or a subject for painting? It has reached a point in which every
-properly developed algebraical composition, like a skilful landscape, is
-expected to suggest the notion of an infinite distance lying beyond the
-limits of the canvas.” “Mathematics, rightly viewed,” says Bertrand
-Russell again, “possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty
-cold and austere, like that of sculpture.... The true spirit of delight,
-the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the
-touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as
-surely as in poetry.”
-
-The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human
-thought. But it is the same ladder which we have all of us been always
-ascending, alike from the infancy of the individual and the infancy of
-the race. Molière’s Jourdain had been speaking prose for more than forty
-years without knowing it. Mankind has been thinking poetry throughout
-its long career and remained equally ignorant.
-
-Footnote 26:
-
-  It would not appear that the pioneers of the Mathematical Renaissance
-  of the twentieth century are inclined to imitate Descartes in this
-  matter. Einstein would certainly not, and many apostles of physical
-  science to-day (see, e.g., Professor Smithells, _From a Modern
-  University: Some Aims and Aspirations of Science_) insist on the
-  æsthetic, imaginative, and other “art” qualities of science.
-
-Footnote 27:
-
-  C. Singer. “What is Science?” _British Medical Journal_, 25th June,
-  1921. Singer refuses the name of “science” in the strict sense to
-  fields of completely organised knowledge which have ceased growing,
-  like human anatomy (though, of course, the anatomist still remains a
-  man of science by working outwards into adjoining related fields),
-  preferring to term any such field of completed knowledge a
-  _discipline_. This seems convenient and I should like to regard it as
-  sound. It is not, however, compatible with the old doctrine of Mill
-  and Colvin and Ray Lankester, for it excludes from the field of
-  science exactly what they regarded as most typically science, and some
-  one might possibly ask whether in other departments, like Hellenic
-  sculpture or Sung pottery, a completed art ceases to be art.
-
-Footnote 28:
-
-  It has often been pointed out that the imaginative application of
-  science—artistic ideas like that of the steam locomotive, the
-  flying-machine heavier than air, the telegraph, the telephone, and
-  many others—were even at the moment of their being achieved,
-  elaborately shown to be “impossible” by men who had been too hastily
-  hoisted up to positions of “scientific” eminence.
-
-Footnote 29:
-
-  J. B. Baillie, _Studies in Human Nature_ (1921), p. 221. This point
-  has become familiar ever since F. A. Lange published his almost
-  epoch-marking work, _The History of Materialism_, which has made so
-  deep an impress on many modern thinkers from Nietzsche to Vaihinger;
-  it is indeed a book which can never be forgotten (I speak from
-  experience) by any one who read it in youth.
-
-Footnote 30:
-
-  G. Wallas, _The Great Society_, p. 107.
-
-Footnote 31:
-
-  Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, vol. I, chap. III, where will be found an
-  attractive account of Pythagoras’ career and position.
-
-Footnote 32:
-
-  Always, it may perhaps be noted in passing, it seems to have been
-  difficult for the sober and solemn Northerner, especially of England,
-  to enter into the Greek spirit, all the more since that spirit was
-  only the spirit of a sprinkling of people amid a hostile mass about as
-  unlike anything we conventionally call “Greek” as could well be
-  imagined, so that, as Élie Faure, the historian of art, has lately
-  remarked, Greek art is a biological “monstrosity.” (Yet, I would ask,
-  might we not say the same of France or of England?) That is why it is
-  usually so irritating to read books written about the Greeks by
-  barbarians; they slur over or ignore what they do not like and, one
-  suspects, they instinctively misinterpret what they think they do
-  like. Better even the most imperfect knowledge of a few original
-  texts, better even only a few days on the Acropolis, than the
-  second-hand opinions of other people. And if we must have a book about
-  the Greeks, there is always Athenæus, much nearer to them in time and
-  in spirit, with all his gossip, than any Northern barbarian, and an
-  everlasting delight.
-
-Footnote 33:
-
-  Along another line it should have been clear that the dialogues of the
-  philosophers were drama and not history. It would appear (Croiset,
-  _Littérature Grecque_, vol. III, pp. 448 _et seq._) that with
-  Epicharmus of Cos, who was settled in Megara at the beginning of the
-  fifth century, philosophic comedy flourished brilliantly at Syracuse,
-  and indeed fragments of his formal philosophic dialogue survive. Thus
-  it is suggested that Athenian comedy and sophistic prose dialogues may
-  be regarded as two branches drawn from the ancient prototype of such
-  Syracusan comedy, itself ultimately derived from Ionian philosophy. It
-  is worth noting, I might add, that when we first hear of the Platonic
-  dialogues they were being grouped in trilogies and tetralogies like
-  the Greek dramas; that indicates, at all events, what their earliest
-  editors thought about them. It is also interesting to note that the
-  writer of, at the present moment, the latest handbook to Plato,
-  Professor A. E. Taylor (_Plato_, 1922, pp. 32-33), regards the
-  “Socrates” of Plato as no historical figure, not even a mask of Plato
-  himself, but simply “the hero of the Platonic drama,” of which we have
-  to approach in much the same way as the work of “a great dramatist or
-  novelist.”
-
-Footnote 34:
-
-  He had often been bidden in dreams to make music, said the Platonic
-  Socrates in _Phædo_, and he had imagined that that was meant to
-  encourage him in the pursuit of philosophy, “which is the noblest and
-  best of music.”
-
-Footnote 35:
-
-  In discussing Socrates I have made some use of Professor Dupréel’s
-  remarkable book, _La Légende Socratique_ (1922). Dupréel himself, with
-  a little touch of irony, recommends a careful perusal of the beautiful
-  and monumental works erected by Zeller and Grote and Gomperz to the
-  honour of Socrates.
-
-Footnote 36:
-
-  Count Hermann Keyserling, _Philosophie als Kunst_ (1920), p. 2. He
-  associates this with the need for a philosophy to possess a subjective
-  personal character, without which it can have no value, indeed no
-  content at all.
-
-Footnote 37:
-
-  Croce, _Problemi d’ Estetica_, p. 15. I have to admit, for myself,
-  that, while admiring the calm breadth of Croce’s wide outlook, it is
-  sometimes my misfortune, in spite of myself, when I go to his works,
-  to play the part of a Balaam _à rebours_. I go forth to bless: and,
-  somehow, I curse.
-
-Footnote 38:
-
-  James Hinton, a pioneer in so many fields, clearly saw that thinking
-  is really an art fifty years ago. “Thinking is no mere mechanical
-  process,” he wrote (_Chapters on the Art of Thinking_, pp. 43 _et
-  seq._), “it is a great Art, the chief of all the Arts.... Those only
-  can be called thinkers who have a native gift, a special endowment for
-  the work, and have been trained, besides, by assiduous culture. And
-  though we continually assume that every one is capable of thinking, do
-  we not all feel that there is somehow a fallacy in this assumption? Do
-  we not feel that what people set up as their ‘reasons’ for
-  disbelieving or believing are often nothing of the sort?... The Art
-  faculty is Imagination, the power of seeing the unseen, the power also
-  of putting ourselves out of the centre, of reducing ourselves to our
-  true proportions, of truly using our own impressions. And is not this
-  in reality the chief element in the work of the thinker?... Science
-  _is_ poetry.”
-
-Footnote 39:
-
-  So far, indeed, as I am aware, I was responsible for the first English
-  account of his work (outside philosophical journals); it appeared in
-  the London _Nation and Athenæum_ a few years ago, and is partly
-  embodied in the present chapter.
-
-Footnote 40:
-
-  I have based this sketch on an attractive and illuminating account of
-  his own development written by Professor Vaihinger for Dr. Raymund
-  Schmidt’s highly valuable series, _Die Deutsche Philosophie der
-  Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen_ (1921), vol. II.
-
-Footnote 41:
-
-  “Most workers on the problem of atomic constitution,” remarks Sir
-  Ernest Rutherford (_Nature_, 5th August, 1922), “take as a working
-  hypothesis that the atoms of matter are purely electrical structures,
-  and that ultimately it is hoped to explain all the properties of atoms
-  as a result of certain combinations of the two fundamental units of
-  positive and negative electricity, the proton and electron.”
-
-Footnote 42:
-
-  Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. I.
-
-Footnote 43:
-
-  Otto Rank, _Der Künstler: Ansätze zu einer Sexual Psychologie_.
-
-Footnote 44:
-
-  The sexual strain in the symbolism of language is touched on in my
-  _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. V, and similar traits in
-  primitive legends have been emphasised—many would say
-  over-emphasised—by Freud and Jung.
-
-Footnote 45:
-
-  Einstein, in conversation with Moszkowski, expressed doubt as to the
-  reality of Leonardo’s previsions of modern science. But it scarcely
-  appeared that he had investigated the matter, while the definite
-  testimony of the experts in many fields who have done so cannot be put
-  aside.
-
-Footnote 46:
-
-  For the Italian reader of Leonardo the fat little volume of
-  _Frammenti_, edited by Dr. Solmi and published by Barbèra, is a
-  precious and inexhaustible pocket companion. For the English reader
-  Mr. MacCurdy’s larger but much less extensive volume of extracts from
-  the _Note-Books_, or the still further abridged _Thoughts_, must
-  suffice. Herbert Horne’s annotated version of Vasari’s _Life_ is
-  excellent for Leonardo’s personality and career.
-
-Footnote 47:
-
-  Morley Roberts, who might be regarded as a pupil in the school of
-  Leonardo and trained like him in the field of art, has in various
-  places of his suggestive book, _Warfare in the Human Body_, sprinkled
-  irony over the examples he has come across of ignorant specialists
-  claiming to be men of “science.”
-
-Footnote 48:
-
-  Needless to say, I do not mention this to belittle Galton. A careful
-  attention to words, which in its extreme form becomes pedantry, is by
-  no means necessarily associated with a careful attention to things.
-  Until recent times English writers, even the greatest, were always
-  negligent in spelling; it would be foolish to suppose they were
-  therefore negligent in thinking.
-
-Footnote 49:
-
-  Darwin even overestimated the æsthetic element in his theory of sexual
-  selection, and (I have had occasion elsewhere to point out)
-  unnecessarily prejudiced that theory by sometimes unwarily assuming a
-  conscious æsthetic element.
-
-Footnote 50:
-
-  It is probable that the reason why it is often difficult to trace the
-  imaginative artist in great men of supposedly abstract science is the
-  paucity of intimate information about them. Even their scientific
-  friends have rarely had the patience, or even perhaps the
-  intelligence, to observe them reverently and to record their
-  observations. We know almost nothing that is intimately personal about
-  Newton. As regards Einstein, we are fortunate in possessing the book
-  of Moszkowski, _Einstein_ (translated into English under the title of
-  _Einstein the Searcher_), which contains many instructive
-  conversations and observations by a highly intelligent and
-  appreciative admirer, who has set them down in a Boswellian spirit
-  that faintly recalls Eckermann’s book on Goethe (which, indeed,
-  Moszkowski had in mind), though falling far short of that supreme
-  achievement. The statements in the text are mainly gleaned from
-  Moszkowski.
-
-Footnote 51:
-
-  Spengler holds (_Der Untergang des Abendlandes_, vol. X, p. 329) that
-  the development of music throughout its various stages in our European
-  culture really has been closely related with the stages of the
-  development of mathematics.
-
-Footnote 52:
-
-  I would here refer to a searching investigation, “Goethe und die
-  mathematische Physik: Eine Erkenntnistheoretische Studie,” in Ernst
-  Cassirer’s _Idee und Gestalt_ (1921). It is here shown that in some
-  respects Goethe pointed the way along which mathematical physics, by
-  following its own paths, has since travelled, and that even when most
-  non-mathematical Goethe’s scientific attitude was justifiable.
-
-Footnote 53:
-
-  See the remarkable essay, “De la Cinéplastique,” in Élie Faure’s
-  _L’Arbre d’Éden_ (1922). It is, however, a future and regenerated
-  cinema for which Élie Faure looks, “to become the art of the crowd,
-  the powerful centre of communion in which new symphonic forms will be
-  born in the tumult of passions and utilized for fine and elevating
-  æsthetic ends.”
-
-Footnote 54:
-
-  O. Spengler, _Der Untergang des Abendlandes_, vol. I, p. 576.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER IV
-                           THE ART OF WRITING
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-FROM time to time we are solemnly warned that in the hands of modern
-writers language has fallen into a morbid state. It has become
-degenerate, if not, indeed, the victim of “senile ataxy” or “general
-paralysis.” Certainly it is well that our monitors should seek to arouse
-in us the wholesome spirit of self-criticism. Whether we write ill or
-well, we can never be too seriously concerned with what it is that we
-are attempting to do. We may always be grateful to those who stimulate
-us to a more wakeful activity in pursuing a task which can never be
-carried to perfection.
-
-Yet these monitors seldom fail at the same time to arouse a deep revolt
-in our minds. We are not only impressed by the critic’s own inability to
-write any better than those he criticises. We are moved to question the
-validity of nearly all the rules he lays down for our guidance. We are
-inclined to dispute altogether the soundness of the premises from which
-he starts. Of these three terms of our revolt, covering comprehensively
-the whole ground, the first may be put aside—since the ancient retort is
-always ineffective and it helps the patient not at all to bid the
-physician heal himself—and we may take the last first.
-
-Men are always apt to bow down before the superior might of their
-ancestors. It has been so always and everywhere. Even the author of the
-once well-known book of Genesis believed that “there were giants in the
-earth in those days,” the mighty men which were of old, the men of
-renown, and still to-day among ourselves no plaint is more common than
-that concerning the physical degeneracy of modern men as compared with
-our ancestors of a few centuries ago. Now and then, indeed, there comes
-along a man of science, like Professor Parsons, who has measured the
-bones from the remains of the ancestors we still see piled up in the
-crypt at Hythe, and finds that—however fine the occasional
-exceptions—the average height of those men and women was decidedly less
-than that of their present-day descendants. Fortunately for the vitality
-of tradition, we cherish a wholesome distrust of science. And so it is
-with our average literary stature. The academic critic regards himself
-as the special depository of the accepted tradition, and far be it from
-him to condescend to any mere scientific inquiry into the actual facts.
-He half awakens from slumber to murmur the expected denunciation of his
-own time, and therewith returns to slumber. He usually seems unaware
-that even three centuries ago, in the finest period of English prose,
-Swift, certainly himself a supreme master, was already lamenting “the
-corruption of our style.”
-
-If it is asserted that the average writer of to-day has not equalled the
-supreme writer of some earlier age,—there are but one or two in any
-age,—we can only ejaculate: Strange if he had! Yet that is all that the
-academic critic usually seems to mean. If he would take the trouble to
-compare the average prose writer of to-day with the average writer of
-even so great an age as the Elizabethan, he might easily convince
-himself that the former, whatever his imperfections, need not fear the
-comparison. Whether or not Progress in general may be described as “the
-exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance,” it is certainly so with
-the progress of style, and the imperfections of our average everyday
-writing are balanced by the quite other imperfections of our
-forefathers’ writing. What, for instance, need we envy in the literary
-methods of that great and miscellaneous band of writers whom Hakluyt
-brought together in those admirable volumes which are truly great and
-really fascinating only for reasons that have nothing to do with style?
-Raleigh himself here shows no distinction in his narrative of that
-discreditable episode,—as he clearly and rightly felt it to be,—the loss
-of the _Revenge_ by the wilful Grenville. Most of them are bald,
-savourless, monotonous, stating the obvious facts in the obvious way,
-but hopelessly failing to make clear, when rarely they attempt it,
-anything that is not obvious. They have none of the little unconscious
-tricks of manner which worry the critic to-day. But their whole manner
-is one commonplace trick from which they never escape. They are only
-relieved by its simplicity and by the novelty which comes through age.
-We have to remember that all mediocrity is impersonal and that when we
-encourage its manifestations on printed pages we merely make mediocrity
-more conspicuous. Nor can that be remedied by teaching the mediocre to
-cultivate tricks of fashion or of vanity. There is more personality in
-Claude Bernard’s “Leçons de Physiologie Expérimentales,” a great critic
-of life and letters has pointed out, Remy de Gourmont, than in Musset’s
-“Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle.” For personality is not something
-that can be sought; it is a radiance that is diffused spontaneously. It
-may even be most manifest when most avoided, and no writer—the remark
-has doubtless often been made before—can be more personal than Flaubert
-who had made almost a gospel of Impersonality. But the absence of
-research for personality, however meritorious, will not suffice to bring
-personality out of mediocrity.
-
-Moreover, the obvious fact seems often to be overlooked by the critic
-that a vastly larger proportion of the population now write, and see
-their writing printed. We live in what we call a democratic age in which
-all are compulsorily taught how to make pothooks and hangers on paper.
-So that every nincompoop—in the attenuated sense of the term—as soon as
-he puts a pen in ink feels that he has become, like M. Jourdain, a
-writer of prose. That feeling is justified only in a very limited sense,
-and if we wish to compare the condition of things to-day with that in an
-age when people wrote at the bidding of some urgent stimulus from
-without or from within, we have at the outset to delete certainly over
-ninety-five per cent of our modern so-called writers before we institute
-any comparison. The writers thus struck out, it may be added, cannot
-fail to include many persons of much note in the world. There are all
-sorts of people to-day who write from all sorts of motives other than a
-genuine aptitude for writing. To suppose that there can be any
-comparison at this point of the present with the past and to dodder over
-the decay of our language would seem a senile proceeding if we do not
-happen to know that it occurs in all ages, and that, even at the time
-when our prose speech was as near to perfection as it is ever likely to
-be, its critics were bemoaning its corruption, lamenting, for instance,
-the indolent new practice of increasing sibilation by changing
-“arriveth” into “arrives” and pronouncing “walked” as “walkd,” sometimes
-in their criticisms showing no more knowledge of the history and methods
-of growth of English than our academic critics show to-day.
-
-For we know what to-day they tell us; it is not hard to know, their
-exhortations, though few, are repeated in so psittaceous a manner. One
-thinks, for instance, of that solemn warning against the enormity of the
-split infinitive which has done so much to aggravate the Pharisaism of
-the bad writers who scrupulously avoid it. This superstition seems to
-have had its origin in a false analogy with Latin in which the
-infinitive is never split for the good reason that it is impossible to
-split. In the greater freedom of English it is possible and has been
-done for at least the last five hundred years by the greatest masters of
-English; only the good writer never uses this form helplessly and
-involuntarily, but with a definite object; and that is the only rule to
-observe. An absolute prohibition in this matter is the mark of those who
-are too ignorant, or else too unintelligent, to recognise a usage which
-is of the essence of English speech.[55]
-
-One may perhaps refer, again, to those who lay down that every sentence
-must end on a significant word, never on a preposition, and who
-reprobate what has been technically termed the post-habited prefix. They
-are the same worthy and would-be old-fashioned people who think that a
-piece of music must always end monotonously on a banging chord. Only
-here they have not, any more than in music, even the virtue—if such it
-be—of old fashion, for the final so-called preposition is in the genius
-of the English language and associated with the Scandinavian—in the
-wider ancient sense Danish—strain of English, one of the finest strains
-it owns, imparting much of the plastic force which renders it flexible,
-the element which helped to save it from the straitlaced tendency of
-Anglo-Saxon and the awkward formality of Latin and French influence. The
-foolish prejudice we are here concerned with seems to date from a period
-when the example of French, in which the final preposition is
-impossible, happened to be dominant. Its use in English is associated
-with the informal grace and simplicity, the variety of tender cadence,
-which our tongue admits.
-
-In such matters as the “split infinitive” and the “post-habited
-preposition,” there should never have been any doubt as to the complete
-validity and authority of the questioned usages. But there are other
-points at which some even good critics may be tempted to accept the
-condemnation of the literary grammarians. It is sufficient to mention
-one: the nominative use of the pronoun “me.” Yet, surely, any one who
-considers social practice as well as psychological necessity should not
-fail to see that we must recognise a double use of “me” in English. The
-French, who in such matters seem to have possessed a finer social and
-psychological tact, have realised that je cannot be the sole nominative
-of the first person and have supplemented it by _moi_ (_mi_ from
-_mihi_). The Frenchman, when asked who is there, does not reply “Je!”
-But the would-be English purist is supposed to be reduced to replying
-“I!” Royal Cleopatra asks the Messenger: “Is she as tall as me?” The
-would-be purist no doubt transmutes this as he reads into: “Is she as
-tall as I?” We need not envy him.
-
-Such an example indicates how independent the free and wholesome life of
-language is of grammatical rules. This is not to diminish the importance
-of the grammarian’s task, but simply to define it, as the formulator,
-and not the lawgiver, of usage. His rules are useful, not merely in
-order to know how best to keep them, but in order to know how best to
-break them. Without them freedom might become licence. Yet even licence,
-we have to recognise, is the necessary offscouring of speech in its
-supreme manifestations of vitality and force. English speech was never
-more syntactically licentious than in the sixteenth century, but it was
-never more alive, never more fitly the material for a great artist to
-mould. So it is that in the sixteenth century we find Shakespeare. In
-post-Dryden days (though Dryden was an excellent writer and engaged on
-an admirable task) a supreme artist in English speech became impossible,
-and if a Shakespeare had appeared all his strength would have been
-wasted in a vain struggle with the grammarians. French speech has run a
-similar and almost synchronous course with English. There was a
-magnificently natural force and wealth in sixteenth-century French: in
-Rabelais it had been even extravagantly exuberant; in Montaigne it is
-still flexible and various—_ondoyant et divers_—and still full of
-natural delight and freedom. But after Malherbe and his fellows French
-speech acquired orderliness, precision, and formality; they were
-excellent qualities, no doubt, but had to be paid for by some degree of
-thinness and primness, even some stiffening of the joints. Rousseau came
-and poured fresh blood from Switzerland into the language and a new
-ineffable grace that was all his own; so that if we now hesitate to say,
-with Landor, that he excels all the moderns for harmony, it is only
-because they have learnt what he taught; and the later Romantics, under
-the banner of Hugo, imparted colour and brilliance. Yet all the great
-artists who have wrestled with French speech for a century have never
-been able to restore the scent and the savour and the substance which
-Villon and Montaigne without visible effort could once find within its
-borders. In this as in other matters what we call Progress means the
-discovery of new desirable qualities, and therewith the loss of other
-qualities that were at least equally desirable.
-
-Then there is yet another warning which, especially in recent times, is
-issued at frequent intervals, and that is against the use of verbal
-counters, of worn or even worn-out phrases, of what we commonly fall
-back on modern French to call _clichés_. We mean thereby the use of old
-stereotyped phrases—Goethe called them “stamped” or _gestempelt_—to save
-the trouble of making a new living phrase to suit our meaning. The word
-_cliché_ is thus typographic, though, it so happens, it is derived from
-an old French word of phonetic meaning, _cliqueter_ or _cliquer_
-(related to the German _klatschen_), which we already have in English as
-to “click” or to “clack,” in a sense which well supplements its more
-modern technical sense for this literary end. Yet the warning against
-_clichés_ is vain. The good writer, by the very fact that he is alive
-and craves speech that is vivid, as _clichés_ never are, instinctively
-avoids their excessive use, while the nervous and bad writer, in his
-tremulous anxiety to avoid these tabooed _clichés_, falls into the most
-deplorable habits, like the late Mr. Robert Ross, who at one time was so
-anxious to avoid _clichés_ that he acquired the habit of using them in
-an inverted form and wrote a prose that made one feel like walking on
-sharp flints; for, though a macadamized road may not be so good to walk
-in as a flowered meadow, it is better than a macadamized road with each
-stone turned upside down and the sharp edge uppermost. As a matter of
-fact it is impossible to avoid the use of _clichés_ and counters in
-speech, and if it were possible the results would be in the highest
-degree tedious and painful. The word “_cliché_” itself, we have seen, is
-a _cliché_, a worn counter of a word, with its original meaning all
-effaced, and even its secondary meaning now only just visible. That, if
-those folk who condemn _clichés_ only had the intelligence to perceive
-it, is a significant fact. You cannot avoid using _clichés_, not even in
-the very act of condemning them. They include, if we only look keenly
-enough, nearly the whole of language, almost every separate word. If one
-could avoid them one would be unintelligible. Even those common phrases
-which it is peculiarly meet to call counters are not to be absolutely
-condemned. They have become so common to use because so fit to use, as
-Baudelaire understood when he spoke of “the immense depth of thought in
-vulgar locutions.”[56] There is only one rule to follow here,—and it is
-simply the rule in every part of art,—to know what one is doing, not to
-go sheeplike with the flock, ignorantly, unthinkingly, heedlessly, but
-to mould speech to expression the most truly one knows how. If, indeed,
-we are seeking clarity and the precise expression of thought, there is
-nothing we may not do if only we know how to do it—but that “if” might
-well be in capitals. One who has spent the best part of his life in
-trying to write things that had not been written before, and that were
-very difficult to write, may perhaps be allowed to confess the hardness
-of this task.
-
-To write is thus an arduous intellectual task, a process which calls for
-the highest tension of the muscles in the escalade of a heaven which the
-strongest and bravest and alertest can never hope to take by violence.
-He has to be true,—whether it is in the external world he is working or
-in his own internal world,—and as truth can only be seen through his own
-temperament, he is engaged in moulding the expression of a combination
-which has never been seen in the world before.
-
-It is sometimes said that the great writer seldom quotes, and that in
-the main is true, for he finds it difficult to mix an alien music of
-thought and speech with his own. Montaigne, it is also said, is an
-exception, but that is scarcely true. What Montaigne quoted he often
-translated and so moulded to the pattern of his own mind. The same may
-be said of Robert Burton. If it had not been so these writers (almost
-certainly Burton) could scarcely have attained to the rank of great
-authors. The significant fact to note, however, is not that the great
-writer rarely quotes, but that he knows how to quote. Schopenhauer was
-here a master. He possessed a marvellous flair for fine sayings in
-remote books, and these he would now and again let fall like jewels on
-his page, with so happy a skill that they seem to be created for the
-spot on which they fell. It is the little writer rather than the great
-writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is really
-never doing anything else.[57]
-
-It is not in writing only, in all art, in all science, the task before
-each is that defined by Bacon: _man added to Nature_. It is so also in
-painting, as a great artist of modern time, Cézanne, recognised even in
-those same words: “He who wishes to make art,” he once said to Vollard,
-“must follow Bacon, who defined the artist as ‘Homo additus Naturæ.’” So
-it is that the artist, if he has succeeded in being true to his
-function, is necessarily one who makes all things new.[58] That
-remarkable artist who wrote the Book of the Revelation has expressed
-this in his allegorical, perhaps unconscious, Oriental way, for he
-represents the artist as hearing the divine spirit from the throne
-within him uttering the command: “Behold, I make all things new. Write!”
-The command is similar whatever the art may be, though it is here the
-privilege of the writer to find his own art set forth as the inspired
-ensample of all art.
-
-Thus it is that to write is a strenuous intellectual task not to be
-achieved without the exercise of the best trained and most deliberate
-rational faculties. That is the outcome of the whole argument up to this
-point. There is so much bad writing in the world because writing has
-been dominated by ignorance and habit and prudery, and not least by the
-academic teachers and critics who have known nothing of what they claim
-to teach and were often themselves singular examples of how not to
-write. There has, on the other hand, been a little good writing here and
-there in the world, through the ages, because a few possessed not only
-courage and passion and patience, but knowledge and the concentrated
-intellectual attention, and the resolution to seek truth, and the
-conviction that, as they imagined, the genius they sought consisted in
-taking pains.
-
-Yet, if that were all, many people would become great writers who, as we
-well know, will never become writers; if that were all, writing could
-scarcely even be regarded as an art. For art, or one side of it,
-transcends conscious knowledge; a poet, as Landor remarked, “is not
-aware of all that he knows, and seems at last to know as little about it
-as a silkworm knows about the fineness of her thread.” Yet the same
-great writer has also said of good poetry, and with equal truth, that
-“the ignorant and inexpert lose half its pleasures.” We always move on
-two feet, as Élie Faure remarks in his “L’Arbre d’Éden,” the two poles
-of knowledge and of desire, the one a matter of deliberate acquirement
-and the other of profound instinct, and all our movements are a
-perpetual leap from one to the other, seeking a centre of gravity we
-never attain.[59] So the achievement of style in writing, as in all
-human intercourse, is something more than an infinite capacity for
-taking pains. It is also defined—and, sometimes I think, supremely well
-defined—as “grace seasoned with salt.” Beyond all that can be achieved
-by knowledge and effort, there must be the spontaneous grace that
-springs up like a fountain from the depth of a beautifully harmonious
-nature, and there must be also the quality which the Spaniards call
-“sal,” and so rightly admire in the speech of the women of the people of
-their own land, the salt quality which gives savour and point and
-antiseptic virtue.[60]
-
-The best literary prose speech is simply the idealisation in the heaven
-of art of the finest common speech of earth, simply, yet never reached
-for more than a moment in a nation’s long history. In Greece it was
-immortally and radiantly achieved by Plato; in England it was attained
-for a few years during the last years of the seventeenth and the first
-years of the eighteenth centuries, lingering on, indeed, here and there
-to the end of that century until crushed between the pedantry of Johnson
-and the poetic licence of the Romantics. But for the rest only the most
-happily endowed genius can even attain for a rare moment the perfection
-of the Pauline ideal of “grace seasoned with salt.”
-
-It is fortunate, no doubt, that an age of machinery is well content with
-machine-made writing. It would be in bad taste—too physiological, too
-sentimental, altogether too antiquated—to refer to the symbolical
-significance of the highly relevant fact that the heart, while
-undoubtedly a machine, is at the same time a sensitively pulsating organ
-with fleshy strings stretched from ventricle to valves, a harp on which
-the great artist may play until our hearts also throb in unison. Yet
-there are some to whom it still seems that, beyond mechanical skill, the
-cadences of the artist’s speech are the cadences of his heart, and the
-footfalls of his rhythm the footfalls of his spirit, in a great
-adventure across the universe.
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-THUS we do not always realise that learning to write is partly a matter
-of individual instinct. This is so even of that writing which, as
-children, we learnt in copybooks with engraved maxims at the head of the
-page. There are some, indeed, probably the majority, who quickly achieve
-the ability to present a passable imitation of the irreproachable model
-presented to them. There are some who cannot. I speak as one who knows,
-for I recall how my first schoolmaster, a sarcastic little Frenchman,
-irritated by my unchastenable hand, would sometimes demand if I wrote
-with the kitchen poker, or again assert that I kept a tame spider to run
-over the page, while a later teacher, who was an individualist and more
-tolerant, yet sometimes felt called upon to murmur, in a tone of dubious
-optimism: “You will have a hand of your own, my boy.” It is not lack of
-docility that is in question, but an imperative demand of the nervous
-system which the efforts of the will may indeed bend but cannot crush.
-
-Yet the writers who cheerfully lay down the laws of style seldom realise
-this complexity and mystery enwrapping even so simple a matter as
-handwriting. No one can say how much atavistic recurrence from remote
-ancestors, how much family nervous habit, how much wayward yet
-deep-rooted personal idiosyncrasy deflect the child’s patient efforts to
-imitate the copperplate model which is set before him. The son often
-writes like the father, even though he may seldom or never see his
-father’s handwriting; brothers may write singularly alike, though taught
-by different teachers and even in different continents. It has been
-noted of the ancient and distinguished family of the Tyrrells that their
-handwriting in the parish books of Stowmarket remained the same
-throughout many generations. I have noticed, in a relation of my own,
-peculiarities of handwriting identical with those of an ancestor two
-centuries ago whose writing he certainly never saw. The resemblance is
-often not that of exact formation, but of general air or underlying
-structure.[61] One is tempted to think that often, in this as in other
-matters, the possibilities are limited, and that when the child is
-formed in his mother’s womb Nature cast the same old dice and the same
-old combinations inevitably tend to recur. But that notion scarcely fits
-all the facts, and our growing knowledge of the infinite subtlety of
-heredity, of its presence even in the most seemingly elusive psychic
-characters, indicates that the dice may be loaded and fall in accord
-with harmonies we fail to perceive. The development of Mendelian
-analysis may in time help us to understand them.
-
-The part in style which belongs to atavism, to heredity, to unconscious
-instinct, is probably very large. It eludes us to an even greater extent
-than the corresponding part in handwriting because the man of letters
-may have none among his ancestors who sought expression in style, so
-that only one Milton speaks for a mute inglorious family, and how far he
-speaks truly remains a matter of doubt. We only divine the truth when we
-know the character and deeds of the family. There could be no more
-instructive revelation of family history in style than is furnished by
-Carlyle. There had never been any writer in the Carlyle family, and if
-there had, Carlyle at the time when his manner of writing was formed,
-would scarcely have sought to imitate them. Yet we could not conceive
-this stern, laborious, plebeian family of Lowland Scots—with its remote
-Teutonic affinities, its coarseness, its narrowness, its assertive
-inarticulative force—in any more fitting verbal translation than was
-given it by this its last son, the pathetic little figure with the face
-of a lost child, who wrote in a padded room and turned the rough
-muscular and reproductive activity of his fathers into more than half a
-century of eloquent chatter concerning Work and Silence, so writing his
-name in letters of gold on the dome of the British Museum.[62]
-
-When we consider the characteristics, not of the family, but of the
-race, it is easier to find examples of the force of ancestry, even
-remote ancestry, overcoming environment and dominating style.
-Shakespeare and Bacon were both Elizabethans who both lived from youth
-upwards in London, and even moved to some extent almost in the same
-circles. Yet all the influences of tradition and environment, which
-sometimes seem to us so strong, scarcely sufficed to spread even the
-faintest veneer of similarity over their style, and we could seldom
-mistake a sentence of one for a sentence of the other. We always know
-that Shakespeare—with his gay extravagance and redundancy, his essential
-idealism—came of a people that had been changed in character from the
-surrounding stock by a Celtic infolding of the receding British to
-Wales.[63] We never fail to realise that Bacon—with his instinctive
-gravity and temperance, the suppressed ardour of his aspiring
-intellectual passion, his temperamental naturalism—was rooted deep in
-that East Anglian soil which he had never so much as visited. In
-Shakespeare’s veins there dances the blood of the men who made the
-“Mabinogion”; we recognise Bacon as a man of the same countryside which
-produced the forefathers of Emerson. Or we may consider the mingled
-Breton and Gascon ancestry of Renan, in whose brain, in the very contour
-and melody of his style, the ancient bards of Brittany have joined hands
-with the tribe of Montaigne and Brantôme and the rest. Or, to take one
-more example, we can scarcely fail to recognise in the style of Sir
-Thomas Browne—as later, may be, in that of Hawthorne—the glamour of
-which the latent aptitude had been handed on by ancestors who dwelt on
-the borders of Wales.
-
-In these examples hereditary influence can be clearly distinguished from
-merely external and traditional influences. Not that we need imply a
-disparagement of tradition: it is the foundation of civilised progress.
-Speech itself is a tradition, a naturally developed convention, and in
-that indeed it has its universal applicability and use. It is the crude
-amorphous material of art, of music and poetry. But on its formal side,
-whatever its supreme significance as the instrument and medium of
-expression, speech is a natural convention, an accumulated tradition.
-
-Even tradition, however, is often simply the corporeal embodiment, as it
-were, of heredity. Behind many a great writer’s personality there stands
-tradition, and behind tradition the race. That is well illustrated in
-the style of Addison. This style—with a resilient fibre underneath its
-delicacy and yet a certain freedom as of conversational familiarity—has
-as its most easily marked structural signature a tendency to a usage it
-has already been necessary to mention: the tendency to allow the
-preposition to lag to the end of the sentence rather than to come tautly
-before the pronoun with which in Latin it is combined. In a century in
-which the Latin-French elements of English were to become developed, as
-in Gibbon and Johnson, to the utmost, the totally different physiognomy
-of Addison’s prose remained conspicuous,—though really far from
-novel,—and to the sciolists of a bygone age it seemed marked by
-carelessness, if not licence, at the best by personal idiosyncrasy. Yet,
-as a matter of fact, we know it was nothing of the kind. Addison, as his
-name indicates, was of the stock of the Scandinavian English, and the
-Cumberland district he belonged to is largely Scandinavian; the
-adjoining peninsula of Furness, which swarms with similar patronymics,
-is indeed one of the most purely Scandinavian spots in England. Now in
-the Scandinavian languages, as we know, and in the English dialects
-based upon them, the preposition comes usually at the end of the
-sentence, and Scandinavian structural elements form an integral part of
-English, even more than Latin-French, for it has been the part of the
-latter rather to enrich the vocabulary than to mould the structure of
-our tongue. So that, instead of introducing a personal idiosyncrasy or
-perpetrating a questionable licence, Addison was continuing his own
-ancestral traditions and at the same time asserting an organic
-prerogative of English speech. It may be added that Addison reveals his
-Scandinavian affinities not merely in the material structure, but in the
-spiritual quality, of his work. This delicate sympathetic observation,
-the vein of gentle melancholy, the quiet restrained humour, meet us
-again in modern Norwegian authors like Jonas Lie.
-
-When we put aside these ancestral and traditional influences, there is
-still much in the writer’s art which, even if personal, we can only term
-instinctive. This may be said of that music which at their finest
-moments belongs to all the great writers of prose. Every writer has his
-own music, though there are few in whom it becomes audible save at rare
-and precious intervals. The prose of the writer who can deliberately
-make his own personal cadences monotonously audible all the time grows
-wearisome; it affects us as a tedious mannerism. This is a kind of
-machine-made prose which indeed it requires a clever artisan to produce;
-but, as Landor said, “he must be a bad writer to whom there are no
-inequalities.” The great writers, though they are always themselves,
-attain the perfect music of their style under the stress of a stimulus
-adequate to arouse it. Their music is the audible translation of
-emotion, and only arises when the waves of emotion are stirred. It is
-not properly speaking a voluntary effect. We can but say that the winds
-of the spirit are breathed upon the surface of style, and they lift it
-into rhythmic movement. And for each writer these waves have their own
-special rate of vibration, their peculiar shape and interval. The rich
-deep slow tones of Bacon have nothing in common with the haunting,
-long-drawn melody, faint and tremulous, of Newman; the high metallic
-falsetto ring of De Quincey’s rhetoric is far away from the pensive
-low-toned music of Pater.
-
-Imitation, as psychologists have taught us to realise, is a part of
-instinct. When we begin to learn to write, it rarely happens that we are
-not imitators, and, for the most part, unconsciously. The verse of every
-young poet, however original he may afterwards grow, usually has plainly
-written across it the rhythmic signature of some great master whose work
-chances to be abroad in the world; once it was usually Tennyson, then
-Swinburne, now various later poets; the same thing happens with prose,
-but the rhythm of the signature is less easy to hear.
-
-As a writer slowly finds his own centre of gravity, the influence of the
-rhythm of other writers ceases to be perceptible except in so far as it
-coincides with his own natural movement and _tempo_. That is a familiar
-fact. We less easily realise, perhaps, that not only the tunes but the
-notes that they are formed of are, in every great writer, his own. In
-other words, he creates even his vocabulary. That is so not only in the
-more obvious sense that out of the mass of words that make up a language
-every writer uses only a limited number and even among these has his
-words of predilection.[64] It is in the meanings he gives to words, to
-names, that a writer creates his vocabulary. All language, we know, is
-imagery and metaphor; even the simplest names of the elementary things
-are metaphors based on resemblances that suggested themselves to the
-primitive men who made language. It is not otherwise with the aboriginal
-man of genius who uses language to express his new vision of the world.
-He sees things charged with energy, or brilliant with colour, or
-breathing out perfume, that the writers who came before him had
-overlooked, and to designate these things he must use names which convey
-the qualities he has perceived. Guided by his own new personal
-sensations and perceptions, he creates his metaphorical vocabulary. If
-we examine the style of Montaigne, so fresh and personal and inventive,
-we see that its originality lies largely in its vocabulary, which is
-not, like that of Rabelais, manufactured afresh, but has its novelty in
-its metaphorical values, such new values being tried and tempered at
-every step, to the measure of the highly individual person behind them,
-who thereby exerts his creative force. In later days Huysmans, who
-indeed saw the world at a more eccentric angle than Montaigne, yet with
-unflinching veracity and absolute devotion, set himself to the task of
-creating his own vocabulary, and at first the unfamiliarity of its
-beauty estranges us.
-
-To think of Huysmans is to be led towards an aspect of style not to be
-passed over. To say that the artist in words is expressing a new vision
-of the world and seeking the designations for things as he sees them, is
-a large part of the truth, and, I would say, perhaps the most important
-part of it. For most of us, I suppose (as I know it has been for me),
-our vision of Nature has been largely, though by no means entirely,
-constituted by pictures we have seen, by poems we have read, that left
-an abiding memory. That is to say that Nature comes to us through an
-atmosphere which is the emanation of supreme artists who once thrilled
-us. But we are here concerned with the process of the artist’s work and
-not with his æsthetic influence. The artist finds that words have a rich
-content of their own, they are alive and they flourish or decay. They
-send out connecting threads in every direction, they throb with meaning
-that ever changes and reverberates afar. The writer is not always, or
-often, merely preparing a _catalogue raisonné_ of things, he is an
-artist and his pigments are words. Often he merely takes his suggestions
-from the things of the world and makes his own pictures without any real
-resemblance to the scene it is supposed to depict. Dujardin tells us
-that he once took Huysmans to a Wagner concert; he scarcely listened to
-the music, but he was fascinated by the programme the attendant handed
-to him; he went home to write a brilliant page on “Tannhäuser.”
-Mallarmé, on the other hand, was soaked in music; to him music was the
-voice of the world, and it was the aim of poetry to express the world by
-itself becoming music; he stood on a height like a pioneer and looked
-towards the Promised Land, trying to catch intimations of a new
-sensibility and a future art, but a great master of language, like
-Huysmans, he never was. Huysmans has written superb pages about Gustave
-Moreau and Félicien Rops, thinking, no doubt, that he was revealing
-supreme artists (though we need not follow too closely the fashion of
-depreciating either of those artists), but he was really only attracted
-to their programmes and therein experiencing a stimulus that chanced to
-be peculiarly fitted for drawing out his own special art. Baudelaire
-would have written less gorgeously, but he would have produced a more
-final critical estimate.
-
-Yet even the greatest writers are affected by the intoxication of mere
-words in the artistry of language. Shakespeare is, constantly, and, not
-content with “making the green one red,” he must needs at the same time
-“the multitudinous seas incarnadine.” It is conspicuous in Keats (as
-Leigh Hunt, perhaps his first sensitively acute critic, clearly
-explained), and often, as in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” where he seemed to
-be concerned with beautiful things, he was really concerned with
-beautiful words. In that way he is sometimes rather misleading for the
-too youthful reader; “porphyry” seemed to me a marvellous substance when
-as a boy of twelve I read of it in Keats, and I imagine that Keats
-himself would have been surprised, had he lived long enough to walk to
-St. Thomas’s Hospital over the new London Bridge, when told that he was
-treading a granite that was porphyritic. I recall how Verlaine would
-sometimes repeat in varying tones some rather unfamiliar word, rolling
-it round and round in his mouth, sucking it like a sweetmeat, licking
-the sound into the shape that pleased him; some people may perhaps have
-found a little bizarre the single words (“Green,” for example) which he
-sometimes made the title of a song, but if they adopt the preliminary
-Verlainian process they may understand how he had fitted such words to
-music and meaning.
-
-The most obviously beautiful things in the world of Nature are birds and
-flowers and the stones we call precious. But the attitude of the poet in
-the presence of Nature is precisely that of Huysmans in the presence of
-art: it is the programme that interests him. Of birds the knowledge of
-poets generally is of the most generalised and elementary kind; they are
-the laughing-stock of the ornithologist; they are only a stage removed
-from the standpoint of the painter who was introducing a tree into his
-landscape and when asked what tree, replied, “Oh, just the ordinary
-tree.” Even Goethe mistook the finches by the roadside for larks. The
-poet, one may be sure, even to-day seldom carries in his pocket the
-little “Führer durch unsere Vogelwelt” of Bernhard Hoffmann, and has
-probably never so much as heard of it. Of flowers his knowledge seems to
-be limited by the quality of the flower’s name. I have long cherished an
-exquisite and quite common English wild-flower, but have never come
-across a poem about it, for its unattractive name is the stitchwort, and
-it is only lately that even in prose it has met (from Mr. Salt) with due
-appreciation. As regards precious stones the same may be said, and in
-the galleries of the Geological Museum it has hardly seemed to me that,
-among the few visitors, there were poets (unless I chanced to bring one
-myself) to brood over all that beauty. It is the word and its inner
-reverberation with which the poet is really concerned, even sometimes
-perhaps deliberately. When Milton misused the word “eglantine” one
-realises the unconscious appeal to him of the name and one cannot feel
-quite sure that it was altogether unconscious. Coleridge has been
-solemnly reproved for speaking of the “loud” bassoon. But it was to the
-timbre of the word, not of the instrument, that Coleridge was
-responding, and had he been informed that the bassoon is not loud, I
-doubt not he would have replied: “Well, if it is not loud it ought to
-be.” On the plane on which Coleridge moved “the loud bassoon” was
-absolutely right. We see that the artist in speech moves among words
-rather than among things. Originally, it is true, words are closely
-related to things, but in their far reverberation they have become
-enriched by many associations, saturated with many colours; they have
-acquired a life of their own, moving on another plane than that of
-things, and it is on that plane that the artist in words is, as an
-artist, concerned with them.
-
-It thus comes about that the artist in words, like the artist in
-pigments, is perpetually passing between two planes—the plane of new
-vision and the plane of new creation. He is sometimes remoulding the
-external world and sometimes the internal world; sometimes, by
-predilection, lingering more on one plane than on the other plane. The
-artist in words is not irresistibly drawn to the exact study of things
-or moved by the strong love of Nature. The poets who describe Nature
-most minutely and most faithfully are not usually the great poets. That
-is intelligible because the poet—even the poet in the wide sense who
-also uses prose—is primarily the instrument of human emotion and not of
-scientific observation. Yet that poet possesses immense resources of
-strength who in early life has stored within him the minute knowledge of
-some field of the actual external world.[65] One may doubt, indeed,
-whether there has been any supreme poet, from Homer on, who has not had
-this inner reservoir of sensitive impressions to draw from. The youthful
-Shakespeare who wrote the poems, with their minute descriptions, was not
-a great poet, as the youthful Marlowe was, but he was storing up the
-material which, when he had developed into a great poet, he could draw
-on at need with a careless and assured hand. Without such reservoirs,
-the novelists also would never attain to that touch of the poet which,
-beyond their story-telling power, can stir our hearts. “À la Recherche
-du Temps Perdu” is the name of a great modern book, but every novelist
-during part of his time has been a Ulysses on a perilous voyage of
-adventure for that far home. One thinks of George Eliot and her early
-intimacy with the life of country people, of Hardy who had acquired so
-acute a sensitivity to the sounds of Nature, of Conrad who had caught
-the flashes of penetrating vision which came to the sailor on deck; and
-in so far as they move away into scenes where they cannot draw from
-those ancient reservoirs, the adventures of these artists, however
-brilliant they may become, lose their power of intimate appeal. The most
-extravagant example of this to-day is the Spanish novelist Blasco
-Ibañez, who wrote of the Valencian _huerta_ that had saturated his youth
-in novels that were penetrating and poignant, and then turned to writing
-for the cosmopolitan crowd novels about anything, that were completely
-negligible.
-
-We grow familiar in time with the style of the great writers, and when
-we read them we translate them easily and unconsciously, as we translate
-a foreign language we are familiar with; we understand the vocabulary
-because we have learnt to know the special seal of the creative person
-who moulded the vocabulary. But at the outset the great writer may be
-almost as unintelligible to us as though he were writing in a language
-we had never learnt. In the now remote days when “Leaves of Grass” was a
-new book in the world, few who looked into it for the first time,
-however honestly, but were repelled and perhaps even violently repelled,
-and it is hard to realise now that once those who fell on Swinburne’s
-“Poems and Ballads” saw at first only picturesque hieroglyphics to which
-they had no key. But even to-day how many there are who find Proust
-unreadable and Joyce unintelligible. Until we find the door and the clue
-the new writer remains obscure. Therein lies the truth of Landor’s
-saying that the poet must himself create the beings who are to enjoy his
-Paradise.
-
-For most of those who deliberately seek to learn to write, words seem
-generally to be felt as of less importance than the art of arranging
-them. It is thus that the learner in writing tends to become the devoted
-student of grammar and syntax whom we came across at the outset. That is
-indeed a tendency which always increases. Civilisation develops with a
-conscious adhesion to formal order, and the writer—writing by fashion or
-by ambition and not by divine right of creative instinct—follows the
-course of civilisation. It is an unfortunate tendency, for those whom it
-affects conquer by their number. As we know, writing that is real is not
-learnt that way. Just as the solar system was not made in accordance
-with the astronomer’s laws, so writing is not made by the laws of
-grammar. Astronomer and grammarian alike can only come in at the end, to
-give a generalised description of what usually happens in the respective
-fields it pleases them to explore. When a new comet, cosmic or literary,
-enters their sky, it is their descriptions which have to be readjusted,
-and not the comet. There seems to be no more pronounced mark of the
-decadence of a people and its literature than a servile and rigid
-subserviency to rule. It can only make for ossification, for anchylosis,
-for petrification, all the milestones on the road of death. In every age
-of democratic plebeianism, where each man thinks he is as good a writer
-as the others, and takes his laws from the others, having no laws of his
-own nature, it is down this steep path that men, in a flock, inevitably
-run.
-
-We may find an illustration of the plebeian anchylosis of advancing
-civilisation in the minor matter of spelling. We cannot, it is true,
-overlook the fact that writing is read and that its appearance cannot be
-quite disregarded. Yet, ultimately, it appeals to the ear, and spelling
-can have little to do with style. The laws of spelling, properly
-speaking, are few or none, and in the great ages men have understood
-this and boldly acted accordingly. They exercised a fine personal
-discretion in the matter and permitted without question a wide range of
-variation. Shakespeare, as we know, even spelt his own name in several
-different ways, all equally correct. When that great old Elizabethan
-mariner, Sir Martin Frobisher, entered on one of his rare and hazardous
-adventures with the pen, he created spelling absolutely afresh, in the
-spirit of simple heroism with which he was always ready to sail out into
-strange seas. His epistolary adventures are, certainly, more interesting
-than admirable, but we have no reason to suppose that the distinguished
-persons to whom these letters were addressed viewed them with any
-disdain. More anæmic ages cannot endure creative vitality even in
-spelling, and so it comes about that in periods when everything
-beautiful and handmade gives place to manufactured articles made
-wholesale, uniform, and cheap, the same principles are applied to words,
-and spelling becomes a mechanic trade. We must have our spelling
-uniform, even if uniformly bad.[66] Just as the man who, having out of
-sheer ignorance eaten the wrong end of his asparagus, was thenceforth
-compelled to declare that he preferred that end, so it is with our race
-in the matter of spelling; our ancestors, by chance or by ignorance,
-tended to adopt certain forms of spelling and we, their children, are
-forced to declare that we prefer those forms. Thus we have not only lost
-all individuality in spelling, but we pride ourselves on our loss and
-magnify our anchylosis. In England it has become almost impossible to
-flex our stiffened mental joints sufficiently to press out a single
-letter, in America it is almost impossible to extend them enough to
-admit that letter. It is convenient, we say, to be rigid and formal in
-these things, and therewith we are content; it matters little to us that
-we have thereby killed the life of our words and only gained the
-conveniency of death. It would be likewise convenient, no doubt, if men
-and women could be turned into rigid geometrical diagrams,—as indeed our
-legislators sometimes seem to think that they already are,—but we should
-pay by yielding up all the infinite variations, the beautiful
-sinuosities, that had once made up life.
-
-There can be no doubt that in the much greater matter of style we have
-paid heavily for the attainment of our slavish adherence to mechanical
-rules, however convenient, however inevitable. The beautiful
-incorrection, as we are now compelled to regard it, that so often marked
-the great and even the small writers of the seventeenth century, has
-been lost, for all can now write what any find it easy to read, what
-none have any consuming desire to read. But when Sir Thomas Browne wrote
-his “Religio Medici” it was with an art made up of obedience to personal
-law and abandonment to free inspiration which still ravishes us. It is
-extraordinary how far indifference or incorrection of style may be
-carried and yet remain completely adequate even to complex and subtle
-ends. Pepys wrote his “Diary,” at the outset of a life full of strenuous
-work and not a little pleasure, with a rare devotion indeed, but with a
-concision and carelessness, a single eye on the fact itself, and an
-extraordinary absence of self-consciousness which rob it of all claim to
-possess what we conventionally term style. Yet in this vehicle he has
-perfectly conveyed not merely the most vividly realised and delightfully
-detailed picture of a past age ever achieved in any language, but he
-has, moreover, painted a psychological portrait of himself which for its
-serenely impartial justice, its subtle gradations, its bold
-juxtapositions of colours, has all the qualities of the finest
-Velasquez. There is no style here, we say, merely the diarist, writing
-with careless poignant vitality for his own eye, and yet no style that
-we could conceive would be better fitted, or so well fitted, for the
-miracle that has here been effected.
-
-The personal freedom of Browne led up to splendour, and that of Pepys to
-clarity. But while splendour is not the whole of writing, neither,
-although one returns to it again and again, is clarity. Here we come
-from another side on to a point we had already reached. Bergson, in
-reply to the question: “Comment doivent écrire les Philosophes?” lets
-fall some observations, which, as he himself remarks, concern other
-writers beside philosophers. A technical word, he remarks, even a word
-invented for the occasion or used in a special sense, is always in its
-place provided the instructed reader—though the difficulty, as he fails
-to point out, is to be sure of possessing this instructed reader—accepts
-it so easily as not even to notice it, and he proceeds to say that in
-philosophic prose, and in all prose, and indeed in all the arts, “the
-perfect expression is that which has come so naturally, or rather so
-necessarily, by virtue of so imperious a predestination, that we do not
-pause before it, but go straight on to what it seeks to express, as
-though it were blended with the idea; it became invisible by force of
-being transparent.”[67] That is well said. Bergson also is on the side
-of clarity. Yet I do not feel that that is all there is to say. Style is
-not a sheet of glass in which the only thing that matters is the absence
-of flaws. Bergson’s own style is not so diaphanous that one never pauses
-to admire its quality, nor, as a hostile critic (Edouard Dujardin) has
-shown, is it always so clear as to be transparent. The dancer in prose
-as well as in verse—philosopher or whatever he may be—must reveal all
-his limbs through the garment he wears; yet the garment must have its
-own proper beauty, and there is a failure of art, a failure of
-revelation, if it possesses no beauty. Style indeed is not really a mere
-invisible transparent medium, it is not really a garment, but, as
-Gourmont said, the very thought itself. It is the miraculous
-transubstantiation of a spiritual body, given to us in the only form in
-which we may receive and absorb that body, and unless its clarity is
-balanced by its beauty it is not adequate to sustain that most high
-function. No doubt, if we lean on one side more than the other, it is
-clarity rather than beauty which we should choose, for on the other side
-we may have, indeed, a Sir Thomas Browne, and there we are conscious not
-so much of a transubstantiation as of a garment, with thick embroidery,
-indeed, and glistening jewels, but we are not always sure that much is
-hidden beneath. A step further and we reach D’Annunzio, a splendid mask
-with nothing beneath, just as in the streets of Rome one may sometimes
-meet a Franciscan friar with a head superb as a Roman Emperor’s and yet,
-one divines, it means nothing. The Italian writer, it is significant to
-note, chose so ostentatiously magnificent a name as Gabriele D’Annunzio
-to conceal a real name which was nothing. The great angels of
-annunciation create the beauty of their own real names. Who now finds
-Shakespeare ridiculous? And how lovely a name is Keats!
-
-As a part of the harmony of art, which is necessarily made out of
-conflict, we have to view that perpetual seeming alternation between the
-two planes—the plane of vision and the plane of creation, the form
-within and the garment that clothes it—which may sometimes distract the
-artist himself. The prophet Jeremiah once said (and modern prophets have
-doubtless had occasion to recognise the truth of his remark) that he
-seemed to the people round him only as “one that hath a pleasant voice
-and can play well on an instrument.” But he failed to understand that it
-was only through this quality of voice and instrument that his
-lamentations had any vital force or even any being, and that if the poem
-goes the message goes. Indeed, that is true of all his fellow prophets
-of the Old Testament and the New who have fascinated mankind with the
-sound of those harps that they had once hung by the waters of Babylon.
-The whole Bible, we may be very sure, would have long ago been forgotten
-by all but a few intelligent archæologists, if men had not heard in it,
-again and again and again, “one that hath a pleasant voice and can play
-well on an instrument.” Socrates said that philosophy was simply music.
-But the same might be said of religion. The divine dance of satyrs and
-nymphs to the sound of pipes—it is the symbol of life which in one form
-or another has floated before human eyes from the days of the sculptors
-of Greek bas-reliefs to the men of our own day who catch the glimpse of
-new harmonies in the pages of “L’Esprit Nouveau.” We cannot but follow
-the piper that knows how to play, even to our own destruction. There may
-be much that is objectionable about Man. But he has that engaging trait.
-And the world will end when he has lost it.
-
-One asks one’s self how it was that the old way of writing, as a
-personal art, gave place to the new way of writing, as a mere impersonal
-pseudo-science, rigidly bound by formal and artificial rules. The
-answer, no doubt, is to be found in the existence of a great new current
-of thought which began mightily to stir in men’s minds towards the end
-of the seventeenth century. It will be remembered that it was at that
-time, both in England and France, that the new devitalised, though more
-flexible, prose appeared, with its precision and accuracy, its conscious
-orderliness, its deliberate method. But only a few years before, over
-France and England alike, a great intellectual wave had swept, imparting
-to the mathematical and geometrical sciences, to astronomy, physics, and
-allied studies, an impetus that they had never received before on so
-great a scale. Descartes in France and Newton in England stand out as
-the typical representatives of the movement. If that movement had to
-exert any influence on language—and we know how sensitively language
-reacts to thought—it could have been manifested in no other way than by
-the change which actually took place. And there was every opportunity
-for that influence to be exerted.[68] This sudden expansion of the
-mathematical and geometrical sciences was so great and novel that
-interest in it was not confined to a small band of men of science: it
-excited the man in the street, the woman in the drawing-room; it was
-indeed a woman, a bright and gay woman of the world, who translated
-Newton’s profound book into French. Thus it was that the new qualities
-of style were invented, not merely to express new qualities of thought,
-but because new scientific ideals were moving within the minds of men. A
-similar reaction of thought on language took place at the beginning of
-the nineteenth century, when an attempt was made to vitalise language
-once more, and to break the rigid and formal moulds the previous century
-had constructed. The attempt was immediately preceded by the awakening
-of a new group of sciences, but this time the sciences of life, the
-biological studies associated with Cuvier and Lamarck, with John Hunter
-and Erasmus Darwin. With the twentieth century we see the temporary
-exhaustion of the biological spirit with its historical form in science
-and its romantic form in art, and we have a neo-classic spirit which has
-involved a renaissance of the mathematical sciences and, even before
-that, was beginning to affect speech.
-
-To admire the old writers, because for them writing was an art to be
-exercised freely and not a vain attempt to follow after the ideals of
-the abstract sciences, thus by no means implies a contempt for that
-decorum and orderliness without which all written speech must be
-ineffective and obscure. The great writers in the great ages, standing
-above classicism and above romanticism, have always observed this
-decorum and orderliness. In their hands such observance was not a
-servile and rigid adherence to external rules, but a beautiful
-convention, an instinctive fine breeding, such as is naturally observed
-in human intercourse when it is not broken down by intimacy or by any
-great crisis of life or of death.
-
-The freedom of art by no means involves the easiness of art. It may
-rather, indeed, be said the difficulty increases with freedom, for to
-make things in accordance with patterns is ever the easiest task. The
-problem is equally arduous for those who, so far as their craft is
-conscious, seek an impersonal and for those who seek a personal ideal of
-style. Flaubert sought—in vain, it is true—to be the most objective of
-artists and to mould speech with heroic energy in shapes of abstract
-perfection. Nietzsche, one of the most personal artists in style, sought
-likewise, in his own words, to work at a page of prose as a sculptor
-works at a statue. Though the result is not perhaps fundamentally
-different, whichever ideal it is that, consciously or instinctively, is
-followed, the personal road of style is doubtless theoretically—though
-not necessarily in practice—the sounder, usually also that which moves
-most of us more profoundly. The great prose writers of the Second Empire
-in France made an unparalleled effort to carve or paint impersonal
-prose, but its final beauty and effectiveness seem scarcely equal to the
-splendid energy it embodies. Jules de Goncourt, his brother thought,
-literally died from the mental exhaustion of his unceasing struggle to
-attain an objective style adequate to express the subtle texture of the
-world as he saw it. But, while the Goncourts are great figures in
-literary history, they have pioneered no new road, nor are they of the
-writers whom men continuously love to read; for it is as a document that
-the “Journal” remains of enduring value.
-
-Yet the great writers of any school bear witness, each in his own way,
-that, deeper than these conventions and decorums of style, there is a
-law which no writer can escape from, a law which must needs be learnt,
-but can never be taught. That is the law of the logic of thought. All
-the conventional rules of the construction of speech may be put aside if
-a writer is thereby enabled to follow more closely and lucidly the form
-and process of his thought. It is the law of that logic that he must for
-ever follow and in attaining it alone find rest. He may say of it as
-devoutly as Dante: “In la sua voluntade è nostra pace.” All progress in
-literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and
-exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful
-because alive and are now false because dead. The simple and naked
-beauty of Swift’s style, sometimes so keen and poignant, rests
-absolutely on this truth to the logic of his thought. The twin qualities
-of flexibility and intimacy are of the essence of all progress in the
-art of language, and in their progressive achievement lies the
-attainment of great literature. If we compare Shakespeare with his
-predecessors and contemporaries, we can scarcely say that in imaginative
-force he is vastly superior to Marlowe, or in intellectual grip to
-Jonson, but he immeasurably surpasses them in flexibility and in
-intimacy. He was able with an incomparable art to weave a garment of
-speech so flexible in its strength, so intimate in its transparence,
-that it lent itself to every shade of emotion and the quickest turns of
-thought. When we compare the heavy and formal letters of Bacon, even to
-his closest friends, with the “Familiar Letters” of the vivacious
-Welshman Howell, we can scarcely believe the two men were
-contemporaries, so incomparably more expressive, so flexible and so
-intimate, is the style of Howell. All the writers who influence those
-who come after them have done so by the same method. They have thrown
-aside the awkward and outworn garments of speech, they have woven a
-simpler and more familiar speech, able to express subtleties or
-audacities that before seemed inexpressible. That was once done in
-English verse by Cowper and Wordsworth, in English prose by Addison and
-Lamb. That has been done in French to-day by Proust and in English by
-Joyce. When a great writer, like Carlyle or Browning, creates a speech
-of his own which is too clumsy to be flexible and too heavy to be
-intimate, he may arouse the admiration of his fellows, but he leaves no
-traces on the speech of the men who come after him. It is not easy to
-believe that such will be Joyce’s fate. His “Ulysses”—carrying to a much
-further point qualities that began to appear in his earlier work—has
-been hailed as epoch-making in English literature, though a
-distinguished critic holds that it is this rather by closing than by
-opening an epoch. It would still be preparing a new road, and as thus
-operative we may accept it without necessarily judging it to be at the
-same time a master-work, provided we understand what it is that has been
-here attempted. This huge Odyssey is an ordinary day’s history in the
-ordinary life of one ordinary man and the persons of his immediate
-environment. It is here sought to reproduce as Art the whole of the
-man’s physical and psychic activity during that period, omitting
-nothing, not even the actions which the most naturalistic of novelists
-had hitherto thought too trivial or too indelicate to mention. Not only
-the thoughts and impulses that result in action, but also the thoughts
-and emotions that drift aimlessly across the field of his consciousness,
-are here; and, in the presentation of this combined inner and outer
-life, Joyce has sometimes placed both on the same plane, achieving a new
-simplicity of style, though we may at first sometimes find it hard to
-divine what is outer and what inner. Moreover, he never hesitates, when
-he pleases, to change the tone of his style and even to adopt without
-notice, in a deliberately ironical and chameleon-like fashion, the
-manner of other writers. In these ways Joyce has here achieved that new
-intimacy of vision, that new flexibility of expression, which are of the
-essence of all great literature at its vitally moving point of advance.
-He has succeeded in realising and making manifest in art what others had
-passed over or failed to see. If in that difficult and dangerous task he
-has failed, as some of us may believe, to reach either complete clarity
-or complete beauty, he has at all events made it possible for those who
-come after to reach a new height which, without the help of the road he
-had constructed, they might have missed, or even failed to conceive, and
-that is enough for any writer’s fame.
-
-When we turn to Proust we are in the presence of a writer about whom, no
-doubt, there is no violent dispute. There may be much about his work
-that is disturbing to many, but he was not concerned, like Joyce, to
-affront so many prejudices, and in France it is not even necessary, for
-the road has already been prepared by heroic pioneers of old during a
-thousand years. But the writer who brings a new revelation is not
-necessarily called upon to invite the execration of the herd. That is a
-risk he must be called upon to face, it is not an inevitable fate. When
-the mob yell: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” the artist, in whatever
-medium, hears a voice from Heaven: “This is my beloved son.” Yet it is
-conceivable that the more perfectly a new revelation is achieved the
-less antagonism it arouses. Proust has undoubtedly been the master of a
-new intimacy of vision, a new flexibility of expression, even though the
-style through which the revelation has been made, perhaps necessarily on
-account of the complexity involved, has remained a little difficult and
-also, it must be said, a little negligent. But it has achieved a
-considerable degree of clarity and a high degree of beauty. So there is
-less difficulty in recognising a great masterpiece in “À la Recherche du
-Temps Perdu” than if it were more conspicuously the work of a daring
-pioneer. It is seen as the revelation of a new æsthetic sensibility
-embodied in a new and fitting style. Marcel Proust has experienced
-clearly what others have felt dimly or not at all. The significance of
-his work is thus altogether apart from the power of its dramatic
-incidents or its qualities as a novel. To the critic of defective
-intelligence, craving for scenes of sensation, it has sometimes seemed
-that “À l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleur” is the least important
-section of Proust’s work. Yet it is on that quiet and uneventful tract
-of his narrative that Proust has most surely set the stamp of his
-genius, a genius, I should like to add, which is peculiarly congenial to
-the English mind because it was in the English tradition, rather than in
-the French tradition, that Proust was moving.[69]
-
-No doubt it is possible for a writer to go far by the exercise of a
-finely attentive docility. By a dutiful study of what other people have
-said, by a refined cleverness in catching their tricks, and avoiding
-their subtleties, their profundities, their audacities, by, in short, a
-patient perseverance in writing out copperplate maxims in elegant
-copybooks, he can become at last, like Stevenson, the idol of the crowd.
-But the great writer can only learn out of himself. He learns to write
-as a child learns to walk. For the laws of the logic of thought are not
-other than those of physical movement. There is stumbling, awkwardness,
-hesitation, experiment—before at last the learner attains the perfect
-command of that divine rhythm and perilous poise in which he asserts his
-supreme human privilege. But the process of his learning rests
-ultimately on his own structure and function and not on others’ example.
-“Style must be founded upon models”; it is the rule set up by the pedant
-who knows nothing of what style means. For the style that is founded on
-a model is the negation of style.
-
-The ardour and heroism of great achievement in style never grow less as
-the ages pass, but rather tend to grow more. That is so, not merely
-because the hardest tasks are left for the last, but because of the ever
-increasing impediments placed in the path of style by the piling up of
-mechanical rules and rigid conventions. It is doubtful whether on the
-whole the forces of life really gain on the surrounding inertia of
-death. The greatest writers must spend the blood and sweat of their
-souls, amid the execration and disdain of their contemporaries, in
-breaking the old moulds of style and pouring their fresh life into new
-moulds. From Dante to Carducci, from Rabelais to Proust, from Chaucer to
-Whitman, the giants of letters have been engaged in this life-giving
-task, and behind them the forces of death swiftly gather again. Here
-there is always room for the hero. No man, indeed, can write anything
-that matters who is not a hero at heart, even though to the people who
-pass him in the street or know him in the house he may seem as gentle as
-any dove. If all progress lies in an ever greater flexibility and
-intimacy of speech, a finer adaptation to the heights and depths of the
-mobile human soul, the task can never be finally completed. Every writer
-is called afresh to reveal new strata of life. By digging in his own
-soul he becomes the discoverer of the soul of his family, of his nation,
-of the race, of the heart of humanity. For the great writer finds style
-as the mystic find God, in his own soul. It is the final utterance of a
-sigh, which none could utter before him, and which all can who follow.
-
-In the end, it will be seen we return at last to the point from which we
-start. We have completed the cycle of an art’s evolution,—and it might,
-indeed, be any other art as much as writing,—reaching in the final sweep
-of ever wider flights the fact from which we started, but seeing it
-anew, with a fresh universal significance. Writing is an arduous
-spiritual and intellectual task, only to be achieved by patient and
-deliberate labour and much daring. Yet therewith we are only at the
-beginning. Writing is also the expression of individual personality,
-which springs up spontaneously, or is slowly drawn up from within, out
-of a well of inner emotions which none may command. But even with these
-two opposite factors we have not attained the complete synthesis. For
-style in the full sense is more than the deliberate and designed
-creation, more even than the unconscious and involuntary creation, of
-the individual man who therein expresses himself. The self that he thus
-expresses is a bundle of inherited tendencies that came the man himself
-can never entirely know whence. It is by the instinctive stress of a
-highly sensitive, or slightly abnormal constitution, that he is impelled
-to instil these tendencies into the alien magic of words. The stylum
-wherewith he strives to write himself on the yet blank pages of the
-world may have the obstinate vigour of the metal rod or the wild and
-quavering waywardness of an insect’s wing, but behind it lie forces that
-extend into infinity. It moves us because it is itself moved by pulses
-which in varying measure we also have inherited, and because its primary
-source is in the heart of a cosmos from which we ourselves spring.
-
-Footnote 55:
-
-  It may be as well to point that it is the amateur literary grammarian
-  and not the expert who is at fault in these matters. The attitude of
-  the expert (as in C. T. Onions, _Advanced English Syntax_) is entirely
-  reasonable.
-
-Footnote 56:
-
-  It is interesting to note that another aristocratic master of speech
-  had also made just the same observation. Landor puts into the mouth of
-  Horne Tooke the words: “No expression can become a vulgarism which has
-  not a broad foundation. The language of the vulgar hath its source in
-  physics: in known, comprehended, and operative things.” At the same
-  time Landor was as stern a judge as Baudelaire of the random use of
-  _clichés_.
-
-Footnote 57:
-
-  Speaking as a writer who has been much quoted,—it ought to be a
-  satisfaction, but I have had my doubts,—I may say that I have observed
-  that those who quote belong mostly to two classes, one consisting of
-  good, or at all events indifferent, writers, and the other of bad
-  writers. Those of the first class quote with fair precision and due
-  acknowledgement, those of the second with no precision, and only the
-  vaguest intimation, or none at all, that they are quoting. This would
-  seem to indicate that the good writer is more honest than the bad
-  writer, but that conclusion may be unjust to the bad writer. The fact
-  is that, having little thought or knowledge of his own, he is not
-  fully conscious of what he is doing. He is like a greedy child who,
-  seeing food in front of him, snatches it at random, without being able
-  to recognise whether or not it is his own. There is, however, a third
-  class of those who cannot resist the temptation of deliberately
-  putting forth the painfully achieved thought or knowledge of others as
-  their own, sometimes, perhaps, seeking to gloss over the lapse with:
-  “As every one knows—”
-
-Footnote 58:
-
-  Croce, who is no doubt the most instructive literary critic of our
-  time, has, in his own way, insisted on this essential fact. As he
-  would put it, there are no objective standards of judgment; we cannot
-  approach a work of art with our laws and categories. We have to
-  comprehend the artist’s own values, and only then are we fit to
-  pronounce any judgment on his work. The task of the literary critic is
-  thus immensely more difficult than it is vulgarly supposed to be. The
-  same holds good, I would add, of criticism in the fields of art, not
-  excluding the art of love and the arts of living in general.
-
-Footnote 59:
-
-  “This search is the art of all great thinkers, of all great artists,
-  indeed of all those who, even without attaining expression, desire to
-  live deeply. If the dance brings us so near to God, it is, I believe,
-  because it symbolizes for us the movement of this gesture.” (Élie
-  Faure, _L’Arbre d’Éden_, p. 318.)
-
-Footnote 60:
-
-  This is that “divine malice” which Nietzsche, in _Ecce Homo_, speaking
-  of Heine (“one day Heine and I will be regarded as by far the greatest
-  artists of the German language,” he says rather egotistically, but
-  perhaps truly) considered essential to perfection. “I estimate the
-  value of men and of races,” he added, “by their need to identify their
-  God with a satyr,” a hard saying, no doubt, to the modern man, but it
-  has its meaning.
-
-Footnote 61:
-
-  Since this was written I have found that Laycock, whose subtle
-  observation pioneered so many later ideas, long ago noted (“Some
-  Organic Laws of Memory,” _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1875)
-  reversion to ancestral modes of handwriting.
-
-Footnote 62:
-
-  This was written fifteen years ago, and as Carlyle has of late been
-  unduly depreciated I would add that, while strictly to the present
-  point, it is not put forward as an estimate of Carlyle’s genius. That
-  I seem to have attempted twenty-five years earlier in a private letter
-  (to my friend the late Reverend Angus Mackay) I may here perhaps be
-  allowed to quote. It was in 1883, soon after the publication of
-  Carlyle’s _Reminiscences_: “This is not Carlylese, but it is finer.
-  The popular judgment is hopelessly wrong. We can never understand
-  Carlyle till we get rid of the ‘great prophet’ notion. Carlyle is not
-  (as we were once taught) a ‘great moral teacher,’ but, in the high
-  sense, a great _comedian_. His books are wonderful comedies. He is the
-  Scotch Aristophanes, as Rabelais is the French and Heine the German
-  Aristophanes—of course, with the intense northern imagination, more
-  clumsy, more imperfect, more profound than the Greek. But, at a long
-  distance, there is a close resemblance to Aristophanes with the same
-  mixture of audacity in method and conservatism in spirit. Carlyle’s
-  account of Lamb seems in the true sense Aristophanic. His humour is,
-  too, as broad as he dares (some curious resemblances there, too). In
-  his lyrical outbursts, again, he follows Aristophanes, and again at a
-  distance. Of course he cannot be compared as an artist. He has not,
-  like Rabelais, created a world to play with, but, like Aristophanes
-  generally, he sports with the things that are.” That youthful estimate
-  was alien to popular opinion then because Carlyle was idolised; it is
-  now, no doubt, equally alien for an opposite reason. It is only on
-  extremes that the indolent popular mind can rest.
-
-Footnote 63:
-
-  J. Beddoe, _The Races of Britain_, p. 254.
-
-Footnote 64:
-
-  I once studied, as an example, colour-words in various writers,
-  finding that every poet has his own colour formula. Variations in
-  length of sentence and peculiarities of usage in metre have often been
-  studied. Reference is made to some of these studies by A. Niceforo,
-  “Metodo Statistico e Documenti Litterari,” _Revista d’Italia_, August,
-  1917.
-
-Footnote 65:
-
-  “The Muses are the daughters of Memory,” Paul Morand tells us that
-  Proust would say; “there is no art without recollection,” and
-  certainly it is supremely true of Proust’s art. It is that element of
-  art which imparts at once both atmosphere and poignant intimacy,
-  external farness with internal nearness. The lyrics of Thomas Hardy
-  owe their intimacy of appeal to the dominance in them of recollection
-  (in _Late Lyrics and Earlier_ one might say it is never absent), and
-  that is why they can scarcely be fully appreciated save by those who
-  are no longer very young.
-
-Footnote 66:
-
-  The Oxford University Press publishes a little volume of _Rules for
-  Compositors and Readers_ in which this uniform is set forth. It is a
-  useful and interesting manual, but one wonders how many unnecessary
-  and even undesirable usages—including that morbid desire to cling to
-  the _ize_ termination (charming as an eccentricity but hideous as a
-  rule) when _ise_ would suffice—are hereby fostered. Even when we leave
-  out of consideration the great historical tradition of variety in this
-  matter, it is doubtful, when we consider them comprehensively, whether
-  the advantages of encouraging every one to spell like his fellows
-  overbalances the advantages of encouraging every one to spell unlike
-  his fellows. When I was a teacher in the Australian bush I derived far
-  less enjoyment from the more or less “correctly” spelt exercises of my
-  pupils than from the occasional notes I received from their parents
-  who, never having been taught to spell, were able to spell in the
-  grand manner. We are wilfully throwing away an endless source of
-  delight.
-
-Footnote 67:
-
-  _Le Monde Nouveau_, 15th December, 1922.
-
-Footnote 68:
-
-  Ferris Greenslet (in his study of _Joseph Glanvill_, p. 183),
-  referring to the Cartesian influence on English prose style, quotes
-  from Sprat’s _History of the Royal Society_ that the Society “exacted
-  from its members a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive
-  expressions, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the
-  mathematic plainness as they can.” The Society passed a resolution to
-  reject “all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style.”
-
-Footnote 69:
-
-  If it is asked why I take examples of a quality in art that is
-  universal from literary personalities that to many are questionable,
-  even morbid or perverse, rather than from some more normal and
-  unquestioned figure, Thomas Hardy, for example, I would reply that I
-  have always regarded it as more helpful and instructive to take
-  examples that are still questionable rather than to fall back on the
-  unquestionable that all will accept tamely without thought. Forty
-  years ago, when Hardy’s genius was scarcely at all recognised, it
-  seemed worth while to me to set forth the quality of his genius.
-  To-day, when that quality is unquestioned, and Hardy receives general
-  love and reverence, it would seem idle and unprofitable to do so.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER V
-                          THE ART OF RELIGION
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-RELIGION is a large word, of good import and of evil import, and with
-the general discussion of religion we are not in this place concerned.
-Its quintessential core—which is the art of finding our emotional
-relationship to the world conceived as a whole—is all that here matters,
-and it is best termed “Mysticism.” No doubt it needs some courage to use
-that word. It is the common label of abuse applied to every
-pseudo-spiritual thing that is held up for contempt. Yet it would be
-foolish to allow ourselves to be deflected from the right use of a word
-by the accident of its abuse. “Mysticism,” however often misused, will
-here be used, because it is the correct term for the relationship of the
-Self to the Not-Self, of the individual to a Whole, when, going beyond
-his own personal ends, he discovers his adjustment to larger ends, in
-harmony or devotion or love.
-
-It has become a commonplace among the unthinking, or those who think
-badly, to assume an opposition of hostility between mysticism and
-science.[70] If “science” is, as we have some reason to believe, an art,
-if “mysticism” also is an art, the opposition can scarcely be radical
-since they must both spring from the same root in natural human
-activity.
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-IF, indeed, by “science” we mean the organisation of an intellectual
-relationship to the world we live in adequate to give us some degree of
-power over that world, and if by “mysticism” we mean the joyful
-organisation of an emotional relationship to the world conceived as a
-whole,[71] the opposition which we usually assume to exist between them
-is of comparatively modern origin.
-
-Among savage peoples such an opposition can scarcely be said to have any
-existence. The very fact that science, in the strict sense, seems often
-to begin with the stars might itself have suggested that the basis of
-science is mystical contemplation. Not only is there usually no
-opposition between the “scientific” and the “mystical” attitude among
-peoples we may fairly call primitive, but the two attitudes may be
-combined in the same person. The “medicine-man” is not more an embryonic
-man of science than he is an embryonic mystic; he is both equally. He
-cultivates not only magic but holiness, he achieves the conquest of his
-own soul, he enters into harmony with the universe; and in doing this,
-and partly, indeed, through doing this, his knowledge is increased, his
-sensations and power of observation are rendered acute, and he is
-enabled so to gain organised knowledge of natural processes that he can
-to some extent foresee or even control those processes. He is the
-ancestor alike of the hermit following after sanctity and of the
-inventor crystallising discoveries into profitable patents. Such is the
-medicine-man wherever we may find him in his typical shape—which he
-cannot always adequately achieve—all over the world, around Torres
-Straits just as much as around Behring’s Straits. Yet we have failed to
-grasp the significance of this fact.
-
-It is the business of the _Shaman_, as on the mystical side we may
-conveniently term the medicine-man, to place himself under the
-conditions—and even in primitive life those conditions are varied and
-subtle—which bring his will into harmony with the essence of the world,
-so that he grows one with that essence, that its will becomes his will,
-and, reversely, that, in a sense, his will becomes its. Herewith, in
-this unity with the spirit of the world, the possibility of magic and
-the power to control the operation of Nature are introduced into human
-thought, with its core of reality and its endless trail of absurdity,
-persisting even into advanced civilisation.
-
-But this harmony with the essence of the universe, this control of
-Nature through oneness with Nature, is not only at the heart of
-religion; it is also at the heart of science. It is only by the
-possession of an acquired or inborn temperament attuned to the
-temperament of Nature that a Faraday or an Edison, that any scientific
-discoverer or inventor, can achieve his results. And the primitive
-medicine-man, who on the religious side has attained harmony of the self
-with the Not-Self, and by obeying learnt to command, cannot fail on the
-scientific side also, under the special conditions of his isolated life,
-to acquire an insight into natural methods, a practical power over human
-activities and over the treatment of disease, such as on the imaginative
-and emotional side he already possesses. If we are able to see this
-essential and double attitude of the _Shaman_—medicine-man—if we are
-able to eliminate all the extraneous absurdities and the extravagancies
-which conceal the real nature of his function in the primitive world,
-the problem of science and mysticism, and their relationship to each
-other, ceases to have difficulties for us.
-
-It is as well to point out, before passing on, that the investigators of
-primitive thought are not altogether in agreement with one another on
-this question of the relation of science to magic, and have complicated
-the question by drawing a distinction between magic (understood as man’s
-claim to control Nature) and religion (understood as man’s submission to
-Nature). The difficulties seem due to an attempt to introduce clear-cut
-definitions at a stage of thought where none such existed. That
-medicine-men and priests cultivated science, while wrapping it up in
-occult and magical forms, seems indicated by the earliest historical
-traditions of the Near East. Herbert Spencer long ago brought together
-much of the evidence on this point. McDougall to-day in his “Social
-Psychology” (Chapter XIII) accepts magic as the origin of science, and
-Frazer in the early edition of his “Golden Bough” regarded magic as “the
-savage equivalent of our natural science.” Marett[72] “profoundly
-doubts” this, and declares that if we can use the word “science” at all
-in such a context, magic is occult science and the very antithesis of
-natural science. While all that Marett states is admirably true on the
-basis of his own definitions, he scarcely seems to realise the virtue of
-the word “equivalent,” while at the same time, it may be, his definition
-of magic is too narrow. Silberer, from the psycho-analytic standpoint,
-accepting the development of exact science from one branch of magic,
-points out that science is, on the one hand, the recognition of
-concealed natural laws and, on the other, the dynamisation of psychic
-power,[73] and thus falls into two great classes, according as its
-operation is external or internal. This seems a true and subtle
-distinction which Marett has overlooked. In the latest edition of his
-work,[74] Frazer has not insisted on the relation or analogy of science
-to magic, but has been content to point out that Man has passed through
-the three stages of magic, religion, and science. “In magic Man depends
-on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him
-on every side. He believes in a certain established order of Nature on
-which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own
-ends.” Then he finds he has overestimated his own powers and he humbly
-takes the road of religion, leaving the universe to the more or less
-capricious will of a higher power. But he finds this view inadequate and
-he proceeds to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by
-postulating explicitly what in magic had only been implicitly assumed,
-“to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events which,
-if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with
-certainty, and to act accordingly.” So that science, in Frazer’s view,
-is not so much directly derived from magic as itself in its original
-shape one with magic, and Man has proceeded, not in a straight line, but
-in a spiral.
-
-The profound significance of this early personage is, however, surely
-clear. If science and mysticism are alike based on fundamental natural
-instincts, appearing spontaneously all over the world; if, moreover,
-they naturally tend to be embodied in the same individual, in such a way
-that each impulse would seem to be dependent on the other for its full
-development; then there can be no ground for accepting any disharmony
-between them. The course of human evolution involves a division of
-labour, a specialisation of science and of mysticism along special lines
-and in separate individuals.[75] But a fundamental antagonism of the
-two, it becomes evident, is not to be thought of; it is unthinkable,
-even absurd. If at some period in the course of civilisation we
-seriously find that our science and our religion are antagonistic, then
-there must be something wrong either with our science or with our
-religion. Perhaps not seldom there may be something wrong with both. For
-if the natural impulses which normally work best together are separated
-and specialised in different persons, we may expect to find a
-concomitant state of atrophy and hypertrophy, both alike morbid. The
-scientific person will become atrophied on the mystical side, the
-mystical person will become atrophied on the scientific side. Each will
-become morbidly hypertrophied on his own side. But the assumption that,
-because there is a lack of harmony between opposing pathological states,
-there must also be a similar lack of harmony in the normal state, is
-unreasonable. We must severely put out of count alike the hypertrophied
-scientific people with atrophied religious instincts, and the
-hypertrophied religious people with atrophied scientific instincts.
-Neither group can help us here; they only introduce confusion. We have
-to examine the matter critically, to go back to the beginning, to take
-so wide a survey of the phenomena that their seemingly conflicting
-elements fall into harmony.
-
-The fact, in the first place, that the person with an overdeveloped
-religious sense combined with an underdeveloped scientific sense
-necessarily conflicts with a person in whom the reverse state of affairs
-exists, cannot be doubted, nor is the reason of it obscure. It is
-difficult to conceive a Darwin and a St. Theresa entering with full and
-genuine sympathy into each other’s point of view. And that is so by no
-means because the two attitudes, stripped of all but their essentials,
-are irreconcilable. If we strip St. Theresa of her atrophied
-pseudo-science, which in her case was mostly theological “science,”
-there was nothing in her attitude which would not have seemed to
-harmonise and to exalt that absolute adoration and service to natural
-truth which inspired Darwin. If we strip Darwin of that atrophied sense
-of poetry and the arts which he deplored, and that anæmic secular
-conception of the universe as a whole which he seems to have accepted
-without deploring, there was nothing in his attitude which would not
-have served to fertilise and enrich the spiritual exaltation of Theresa
-and even to have removed far from her that temptation to _acedia_ or
-slothfulness which all the mystics who are mystics only have recognised
-as their besetting sin, minimised as it was, in Theresa, by her
-practical activities. Yet, being as they were persons of supreme genius
-developed on opposite sides of their common human nature, an impassable
-gulf lies between them. It lies equally between much more ordinary
-people who yet show the same common character of being undergrown on one
-side, overgrown on the other.
-
-This difficulty is not diminished when the person who is thus
-hypertrophied on one side and atrophied on the other suddenly wakes up
-to his one-sided state and hastily attempts to remedy it. The very fact
-that such a one-sided development has come about indicates that there
-has probably been a congenital basis for it, an innate disharmony which
-must require infinite patience and special personal experience to
-overcome. But the heroic and ostentatious manner in which these
-ill-balanced people hastily attempt the athletic feat of restoring their
-spiritual balance has frequently aroused the interest, and too often the
-amusement, of the spectator. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most
-quintessentially scientific persons the world has seen, a searcher who
-made the most stupendous effort to picture the universe intelligently on
-its purely intelligible side, seems to have realised in old age, when he
-was, indeed, approaching senility, that the vast hypertrophy of his
-faculties on that side had not been compensated by any development on
-the religious side. He forthwith set himself to the interpretation of
-the Book of Daniel and puzzled over the prophecies of the Book of
-Revelation, with the same scientifically serious air as though he were
-analysing the spectrum. In reality he had not reached the sphere of
-religion at all; he had merely exchanged good science for bad science.
-Such senile efforts to penetrate, ere yet life is quite over, the
-mystery of religion recall, and, indeed, have a real analogy to, that
-final effort of the emotionally starved to grasp at love which has been
-called “old maid’s insanity”; and just as in this aberration the woman
-who has all her life put love into the subconscious background of her
-mind is overcome by an eruption of the suppressed emotions and driven to
-create baseless legends of which she is herself the heroine, so the
-scientific man who has put religion into the subconscious and scarcely
-known that there is such a thing may become in the end the victim of an
-imaginary religion. In our own time we may have witnessed attempts of
-the scientific mind to become religious, which, without amounting to
-mental aberration, are yet highly instructive. It would be a
-double-edged compliment, in this connection, to compare Sir Oliver Lodge
-to Sir Isaac Newton. But after devoting himself for many years to purely
-physical research, Lodge also, as he has confessed, found that he had
-overlooked the religious side of life, and therefore set himself with
-characteristic energy to the task—the stages of which are described in a
-long series of books—of developing this atrophied side of his nature.
-Unlike Newton, who was worried about the future, Lodge became worried
-about the past. Just as Newton found what he was contented to regard as
-religious peace in speculating on the meaning of the Books of Daniel and
-Revelation, so Lodge found a similar satisfaction in speculations
-concerning the origin of the soul and in hunting out tags from the poets
-to support his speculations. So fascinating was this occupation that it
-seemed to him to constitute a great “message” to the world. “My message
-is that there is some great truth in the idea of preëxistence, not an
-obvious truth, nor one easy to formulate—a truth difficult to
-express—not to be identified with the guesses of reincarnation and
-transmigration, which may be fanciful. We may not have been individuals
-before, but we are chips or fragments of a great mass of mind, of
-spirit, and of life—drops, as it were, taken out of a germinal reservoir
-of life, and incubated until incarnate in a material body.”[76] The
-genuine mystic would smile if asked to accept as a divine message these
-phraseological gropings in the darkness, with their culmination in the
-gospel of “incubated drops.” They certainly represent an attempt to get
-at a real fact. But the mystic is not troubled by speculations about the
-origin of the individual, or theories of preëxistence, fantastic myths
-which belong to the earlier Plato’s stage of thought. It is abundantly
-evident that when the hypertrophied man of science seeks to cultivate
-his atrophied religious instincts it is with the utmost difficulty that
-he escapes from science. His conversion to religion merely means, for
-the most part, that he has exchanged sound science for pseudo-science.
-
-Similarly, when the man with hypertrophied religious instincts seeks to
-cultivate his atrophied scientific instincts, the results are scarcely
-satisfactory. Here, indeed, we are concerned with a phenomenon that is
-rarer than the reverse process. The reason may not be far to seek. The
-instinct of religion develops earlier in the history of a race than the
-instinct of science. The man who has found the massive satisfaction of
-his religious cravings is seldom at any stage conscious of scientific
-cravings; he is apt to feel that he already possesses the supreme
-knowledge. The religious doubters who vaguely feel that their faith is
-at variance with science are merely the creatures of creeds, the product
-of Churches; they are not the genuine mystics. The genuine mystics who
-have exercised their scientific instincts have generally found scope for
-such exercise within an enlarged theological scheme which they regarded
-as part of their religion. So it was that St. Augustine found scope for
-his full and vivid, if capricious, intellectual impulses; so also
-Aquinas, in whom there was doubtless less of the mystic and more of the
-scientist, found scope for the rational and orderly development of a
-keen intelligence which has made him an authority and even a pioneer for
-many who are absolutely indifferent to his theology.
-
-Again we see that to understand the real relations of science and
-mysticism, we must return to ages when, on neither side, had any
-accumulated mass of dead traditions effected an artificial divorce
-between two great natural instincts. It has already been pointed out
-that if we go outside civilisation the divorce is not found; the savage
-mystic is also the savage man of science, the priest and the doctor are
-one.[77] It is so also for the most part in barbarism, among the ancient
-Hebrews for instance, and not only among their priests, but even among
-their prophets. It appears that the most usual Hebrew word for what we
-term the “prophet” signified “one who bursts forth,” presumably into the
-utterance of spiritual verities, and the less usual words signify
-“seer.” That is to say, the prophet was primarily a man of religion,
-secondarily a man of science. And that predictive element in the
-prophet’s function, which to persons lacking in religious instinct seems
-the whole of his function, has no relationship at all to religion; it is
-a function of science. It is an insight into cause and effect, a
-conception of sequences based on extended observation and enabling the
-“prophet” to assert that certain lines of action will probably lead to
-the degeneration of a stock, or to the decay of a nation. It is a sort
-of applied history. “Prophecy” has no more to do with religion than have
-the forecasts of the Meteorological Bureau, which also are a kind of
-applied science in earlier stages associated with religion.
-
-If, keeping within the sphere of civilisation, we go back as far as we
-can, the conclusion we reach is not greatly different. The earliest of
-the great mystics in historical times is Lao-tze. He lived six hundred
-years earlier than Jesus, a hundred years earlier than Sakya-Muni, and
-he was more quintessentially a mystic than either. He was, moreover,
-incomparably nearer than either to the point of view of science. Even
-his occupation in life was, in relation to his age and land, of a
-scientific character; he was, if we may trust uncertain tradition,
-keeper of the archives. In the substance of his work this harmony of
-religion and science is throughout traceable, the very word “Tao,” which
-to Lao-tze is the symbol of all that to which religion may mystically
-unite us, is susceptible of being translated “Reason,” although that
-word remains inadequate to its full meaning. There are no theological or
-metaphysical speculations here concerning God (the very word only occurs
-once and may be a later interpolation), the soul, or immortality. The
-delicate and profound art of Lao-tze largely lies in the skill with
-which he expresses spiritual verities in the form of natural truths. His
-affirmations not only go to the core of religion, but they express the
-essential methods of science. This man has the mystic’s heart, but he
-has also the physicist’s touch and the biologist’s eye. He moves in a
-sphere in which religion and science are one.
-
-If we pass to more modern times and the little European corner of the
-world, around the Mediterranean shores, which is the cradle of our
-latter-day civilisation, again and again we find traces of this
-fundamental unity of mysticism and science. It may well be that we never
-again find it in quite so pure a form as in Lao-tze, quite so free from
-all admixture alike of bad religion and bad science. The exuberant
-unbalanced activity of our race, the restless acquisitiveness—already
-manifested in the sphere of ideas and traditions before it led to the
-production of millionaires—soon became an ever-growing impediment to
-such unity of spiritual impulses. Among the supple and yet ferocious
-Greeks, indeed, versatility and recklessness seem at a first glance
-always to have stood in the way of approach to the essential terms of
-this problem. It was only when the Greeks began to absorb Oriental
-influences, we are inclined to say, that they became genuine mystics,
-and as they approached mysticism they left science behind.
-
-Yet there was a vein of mysticism in the Greeks from the first, not
-alone due to seeds from the East flung to germinate fruitfully in Greek
-soil, though perhaps to that Ionian element of the Near East which was
-an essential part of the Greek spirit. All that Karl Joël of Basel has
-sought to work out concerning the evolution of the Greek philosophic
-spirit has a bearing on this point. We are wrong, he believes, to look
-on the early Greek philosophers of Nature as mainly physicists, treating
-the religious and poetic mystic elements in them as mere archaisms,
-concessions, or contradictions. Hellas needed, and possessed, an early
-Romantic spirit, if we understand the Romantic spirit, not merely
-through its reactionary offshoots, but as a deep mystico-lyrical
-expression; it was comparable in early Greece to the Romantic spirit of
-the great creative men of the early Renaissance or the early nineteenth
-century, and the Apollinian classic spirit was developed out of an
-ordered discipline and formulation of the Dionysian spirit more
-mystically near to Nature.[78] If we bear this in mind we are helped to
-understand much in the religious life of Greece which seems not to
-harmonise with what we conventionally call “classic.”
-
-In the dim figure of Pythagoras we perhaps see not only a great leader
-of physical science, but also a great initiator in spiritual mystery. It
-is, at any rate, fairly clear that he established religious brotherhoods
-of carefully selected candidates, women as well as men being eligible,
-and living on so lofty and aristocratic a level that the populace of
-Magna Grecia, who could not understand them, decided out of resentment
-to burn them alive, and the whole order was annihilated about B.C. 500.
-But exactly how far these early Pythagoreans, whose community has been
-compared to the mediæval orders of chivalry, were mystics, we may
-imagine as we list, in the light of the Pythagorean echoes we find here
-and there in Plato. On the whole we scarcely go to the Greeks for a
-clear exposition of what we now term “mysticism.” We see more of it in
-Lucretius than we can divine in his master Epicurus. And we see it still
-more clearly in the Stoics. We can, indeed, nowhere find a more pure and
-concise statement than in Marcus Aurelius of the mystical core of
-religion as the union in love and harmony and devotion of the self with
-the Not-Self.
-
-If Lucretius may be accounted the first of moderns in the identification
-of mysticism and science, he has been followed by many, even though, one
-sometimes thinks, with an ever-increasing difficulty, a drooping of the
-wings of mystical aspiration, a limping of the feet of scientific
-progress. Leonardo and Giordano Bruno and Spinoza and Goethe, each with
-a little imperfection on one side or the other, if not on both sides,
-have moved in a sphere in which the impulses of religion are felt to
-spring from the same centre as the impulses of science. Einstein, whose
-attitude in many ways is so interesting, closely associates the longing
-for pure knowledge with religious feeling, and he has remarked that “in
-every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence.”
-He is inclined to attach significance to the fact that so many great men
-of science—Newton, Descartes, Gauss, Helmholtz—have been in one way or
-another religious. If we cannot altogether include such men as
-Swedenborg and Faraday in the same group, it is because we cannot feel
-that in them the two impulses, however highly developed, really spring
-from the same centre or really make a true harmony. We suspect that
-these men and their like kept their mysticism in a science-proof
-compartment of their minds, and their science in a mysticism-proof
-compartment; we tremble for the explosive result, should the wall of
-partition ever be broken down.
-
-The difficulty, we see again, has been that, on each hand, there has
-been a growth of non-essential traditions around the pure and vital
-impulse, and the obvious disharmony of these two sets of accretions
-conceals the underlying harmony of the impulses themselves. The
-possibility of reaching the natural harmony is thus not necessarily by
-virtue of any rare degree of intellectual attainment, nor by any rare
-gift of inborn spiritual temperament,—though either of these may in some
-cases be operative,—but rather by the happy chance that the burden of
-tradition on each side has fallen and that the mystical impulse is free
-to play without a dead metaphysical theology, the scientific impulse
-without a dead metaphysical formalism. It is a happy chance that may
-befall the simple more easily than the wise and learned.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-THE foregoing considerations have perhaps cleared the way to a
-realisation that when we look broadly at the matter, when we clear away
-all the accumulated superstitions, the unreasoned prepossessions, on
-either side, and so reach firm ground, not only is there no opposition
-between science and mysticism, but in their essence, and at the outset,
-they are closely related. The seeming divorce between them is due to a
-false and unbalanced development on either side, if not on both sides.
-
-Yet all such considerations cannot suffice to make present to us this
-unity of apparent opposites. There is, indeed, it has often seemed to
-me, a certain futility in all discussion of the relative claims of
-science and religion. This is a matter which, in the last resort, lies
-beyond the sphere of argument. It depends not only on a man’s entire
-psychic equipment, brought with him at birth and never to be
-fundamentally changed, but it is the outcome of his own intimate
-experience during life. It cannot be profitably discussed because it is
-experiential.
-
-It seems to me, therefore, that, having gone so far, and stated what I
-consider to be the relations of mysticism and science as revealed in
-human history, I am bound to go further and to state my personal grounds
-for believing that the harmonious satisfaction alike of the religious
-impulse and the scientific impulse may be attained to-day by an
-ordinarily balanced person in whom both impulses crave for satisfaction.
-There is, indeed, a serious difficulty. To set forth a personal
-religious experience for the first time requires considerable
-resolution, and not least to one who is inclined to suspect that the
-experiences usually so set forth can be of no profound or significant
-nature; that if the underlying motives of a man’s life can be brought to
-the surface and put into words their vital motive power is gone. Even
-the fact that more than forty years have passed since the experience
-took place scarcely suffices to make the confession of it easy. But I
-recall to mind that the first original book I ever planned (and in fact
-began to write) was a book, impersonal though suggested by personal
-experience, on the foundations of religion.[79] I put it aside, saying
-to myself I would complete it in old age, because it seemed to me that
-the problem of religion will always be fresh, while there were other
-problems more pressingly in need of speedy investigation. Now, it may
-be, I begin to feel the time has come to carry that early project a
-stage further.
-
-Like many of the generation to which I belonged, I was brought up far
-from the Sunday-school atmosphere of conventional religiosity. I
-received little religious instruction outside the home, but there I was
-made to feel, from my earliest years, that religion is a very vital and
-personal matter with which the world and the fashion of it had nothing
-to do. To that teaching, while still scarcely more than a child, I
-responded in a wholehearted way. Necessarily the exercise of this early
-impulse followed the paths prescribed for it by my environment. I
-accepted the creed set before me; I privately studied the New Testament
-for my own satisfaction; I honestly endeavoured, strictly in private, to
-mould my actions and impulses on what seemed to be Christian lines.
-There was no obtrusive outward evidence of this; outside the home,
-moreover, I moved in a world which might be indifferent but was not
-actively hostile to my inner aspirations, and, if the need for any
-external affirmation had become inevitable, I should, I am certain, have
-invoked other than religious grounds for my protest. Religion, as I
-instinctively felt then and as I consciously believe now, is a private
-matter, as love is. This was my mental state at the age of twelve.
-
-Then came the period of emotional and intellectual expansion, when the
-scientific and critical instincts began to germinate. These were
-completely spontaneous and not stimulated by any influences of the
-environment. To inquire, to question, to investigate the qualities of
-the things around us and to search out their causes, is as native an
-impulse as the religious impulse would be found to be if only we would
-refrain from exciting it artificially. In the first place, this
-scientific impulse was not greatly concerned with the traditional body
-of beliefs which were then inextricably entwined in my mind with the
-exercise of the religious instinct. In so far, indeed, as it touched
-them it took up their defence. Thus I read Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” and
-the facile sentiment of this book, the attitude of artistic
-reconstruction, aroused a criticism which led me to overlook any
-underlying sounder qualities. Yet all the time the inquiring and
-critical impulse was a slowly permeating and invading influence, and its
-application to religion was from time to time stimulated by books,
-although such application was in no slightest degree favoured by the
-social environment. When, too, at the age of fifteen, I came to read
-Swinburne’s “Songs before Sunrise,”—although the book made no very
-personal appeal to me,—I realised that it was possible to present in an
-attractively modern emotional light religious beliefs which were
-incompatible with Christianity, and even actively hostile to its creed.
-The process of disintegration took place in slow stages that were not
-perceived until the process was complete. Then at last I realised that I
-no longer possessed any religious faith. All the Christian dogmas I had
-been brought up to accept unquestioned had slipped away, and they had
-dragged with them what I had experienced of religion, for I could not
-then so far analyse all that is roughly lumped together as “religion” as
-to disentangle the essential from the accidental. Such analysis, to be
-effectively convincing, demanded personal experiences I was not
-possessed of.
-
-I was now seventeen years of age. The loss of religious faith had
-produced no change in conduct, save that religious observances, which
-had never been ostentatiously performed, were dropped, so far as they
-might be without hurting the feelings of others. The revolution was so
-gradual and so natural that even inwardly the shock was not great, while
-various activities, the growth of mental aptitudes, sufficiently served
-to occupy the mind. It was only during periods of depression that the
-absence of faith as a satisfaction of the religious impulse became at
-all acutely felt. Possibly it might have been felt less acutely if I
-could have realised that there was even a real benefit in the cutting
-down and clearing away of traditional and non-vital beliefs. Not only
-was it a wholesome and strenuous effort to obey at all costs the call of
-what was felt as “truth,” and therefore having in it a spirit of
-religion even though directed against religion, but it was evidently
-favourable to the training of intelligence. The man who has never
-wrestled with his early faith, the faith that he was brought up with and
-that yet is not truly his own,—for no faith is our own that we have not
-arduously won,—has missed not only a moral but an intellectual
-discipline. The absence of that discipline may mark a man for life and
-render all his work in the world ineffective. He has missed a training
-in criticism, in analysis, in open-mindedness, in the resolutely
-impersonal treatment of personal problems, which no other training can
-compensate. He is, for the most part, condemned to live in a mental
-jungle where his arm will soon be too feeble to clear away the growths
-that enclose him and his eyes too weak to find the light.
-
-While, however, I had adopted, without knowing it, the best course to
-steel the power of thinking and to render possible a patient, humble,
-self-forgetful attitude towards Nature, there were times when I became
-painfully, almost despairingly, conscious of the unsatisfied cravings of
-the religious impulse. These moods were emphasised even by the books I
-read which argued that religion, in the only sense in which I understood
-religion, was unnecessary, and that science, whether or not formulated
-into a creed, furnished all that we need to ask in this direction. I
-well remember the painful feelings with which I read at this time D. F.
-Strauss’s “The Old Faith and the New.” It is a scientific creed set down
-in old age, with much comfortable complacency, by a man who found
-considerable satisfaction in the evening of life in the enjoyment of
-Haydn’s quartets and Munich brown beer. They are both excellent things,
-as I am now willing to grant, but they are a sorry source of inspiration
-when one is seventeen and consumed by a thirst for impossibly remote
-ideals. Moreover, the philosophic horizon of this man was as limited and
-as prosaic as the æsthetic atmosphere in which he lived. I had to
-acknowledge to myself that the scientific principles of the universe as
-Strauss laid them down presented, so far as I knew, the utmost scope in
-which the human spirit could move. But what a poor scope! I knew nothing
-of the way that Nietzsche, about that time, had demolished Strauss. But
-I had the feeling that the universe was represented as a sort of factory
-filled by an inextricable web of wheels and looms and flying shuttles,
-in a deafening din. That, it seemed, was the world as the most competent
-scientific authorities declared it to be made. It was a world I was
-prepared to accept, and yet a world in which, I felt, I could only
-wander restlessly, an ignorant and homeless child. Sometimes, no doubt,
-there were other visions of the universe a little less disheartening,
-such as that presented by Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles.” But the
-dominant feeling always was that while the scientific outlook, by which
-I mainly meant the outlook of Darwin and Huxley, commended itself to me
-as presenting a sound view of the world, on the emotional side I was a
-stranger to that world, if, indeed, I would not, with Omar, “shatter it
-to bits.”
-
-At the same time, it must be noted, there was no fault to find with the
-general trend of my life and activities. I was fully occupied, with
-daily duties as well as with the actively interested contemplation of an
-ever-enlarging intellectual horizon. This was very notably the case at
-the age of nineteen, three years after all vestiges of religious faith
-had disappeared from the psychic surface.
-
-I was still interested in religious and philosophic questions, and it so
-chanced that at this time I read the “Life in Nature” of James Hinton,
-who had already attracted my attention as a genuine man of science with
-yet an original and personal grasp of religion. I had read the book six
-months before and it had not greatly impressed me. Now, I no longer know
-why, I read it again, and the effect was very different. Evidently by
-this time my mind had reached a stage of saturated solution which needed
-but the shock of the right contact to recrystallise in forms that were a
-revelation to me. Here evidently the right contact was applied. Hinton
-in this book showed himself a scientific biologist who carried the
-mechanistic explanation of life even further than was then usual.[80]
-But he was a man of highly passionate type of intellect, and what might
-otherwise be formal and abstract was for him soaked in emotion. Thus,
-while he saw the world as an orderly mechanism, he was not content, like
-Strauss, to stop there and see in it nothing else. As he viewed it, the
-mechanism was not the mechanism of a factory, it was vital, with all the
-glow and warmth and beauty of life; it was, therefore, something which
-not only the intellect might accept, but the heart might cling to. The
-bearing of this conception on my state of mind is obvious. It acted with
-the swiftness of an electric contact; the dull aching tension was
-removed; the two opposing psychic tendencies were fused in delicious
-harmony, and my whole attitude towards the universe was changed. It was
-no longer an attitude of hostility and dread, but of confidence and
-love. My self was one with the Not-Self, my will one with the universal
-will. I seemed to walk in light; my feet scarcely touched the ground; I
-had entered a new world.
-
-The effect of that swift revolution was permanent. At first there was a
-moment or two of wavering, and then the primary exaltation subsided into
-an attitude of calm serenity towards all those questions that had once
-seemed so torturing. In regard to all these matters I had become
-permanently satisfied and at rest, yet absolutely unfettered and free. I
-was not troubled about the origin of the “soul” or about its destiny; I
-was entirely prepared to accept any analysis of the “soul” which might
-commend itself as reasonable. Neither was I troubled about the existence
-of any superior being or beings, and I was ready to see that all the
-words and forms by which men try to picture spiritual realities are mere
-metaphors and images of an inward experience. There was not a single
-clause in my religious creed because I held no creed. I had found that
-dogmas were—not, as I had once imagined, true, not, as I had afterwards
-supposed, false,—but the mere empty shadows of intimate personal
-experience. I had become indifferent to shadows, for I held the
-substance. I had sacrificed what I held dearest at the call of what
-seemed to be Truth, and now I was repaid a thousand-fold. Henceforth I
-could face life with confidence and joy, for my heart was at one with
-the world and whatever might prove to be in harmony with the world could
-not be out of harmony with me.[81]
-
-Thus, it might seem to many, nothing whatever had happened; I had not
-gained one single definite belief that could be expressed in a
-scientific formula or hardened into a religious creed. That, indeed, is
-the essence of such a process. A “conversion” is not, as is often
-assumed, a turning towards a belief. More strictly, it is a turning
-round, a revolution; it has no primary reference to any external object.
-As the greater mystics have often understood, “the Kingdom of Heaven is
-within.” To put the matter a little more precisely, the change is
-fundamentally a readjustment of psychic elements to each other, enabling
-the whole machine to work harmoniously. There is no necessary
-introduction of new ideas; there is much more likely to be a casting out
-of dead ideas which have clogged the vital process. The psychic
-organism—which in conventional religion is called the “soul”—had not
-been in harmony with itself; now it is revolving truly on its own axis,
-and in doing so it simultaneously finds its true orbit in the cosmic
-system. In becoming one with itself, it becomes one with the
-universe.[82]
-
-The process, it will be seen, is thus really rather analogous to that
-which on the physical plane takes place in a person whose jaw or arm is
-dislocated, whether by some inordinate effort or some sudden shock with
-the external world. The miserable man with a dislocated jaw is out of
-harmony with himself and with the universe. All his efforts cannot
-reduce the dislocation, nor can his friends help him; he may even come
-to think there is no cure. But a surgeon comes along, and with a slight
-pressure of his two thumbs, applied at the right spot, downwards and
-backwards, the jaw springs into place, the man is restored to
-harmony—and the universe is transformed. If he is ignorant enough, he
-will be ready to fall on his knees before his deliverer as a divine
-being. We are concerned with what is called a “spiritual” process,—for
-it is an accepted and necessary convention to distinguish between the
-“spiritual” and the “physical,”—but this crude and imperfect analogy may
-help some minds to understand what is meant.
-
-Thus may be explained what may seem to some the curious fact that I
-never for a moment thought of accepting as a gospel the book which had
-brought me a stimulus of such inestimable value. The person in whom
-“conversion” takes place is too often told that the process is connected
-in some magical manner with a supernatural influence of some kind, a
-book, a creed, a church, or what not. I had read this book before and it
-had left me unmoved; I knew that the book was merely the surgeon’s
-touch, that the change had its source in me and not in the book. I never
-looked into the book again; I cannot tell where or how my copy of it
-disappeared; for all that I know, having accomplished its mission, it
-was drawn up again to Heaven in a sheet. As regards James Hinton, I was
-interested in him before the date of the episode here narrated; I am
-interested in him still.[83]
-
-It may further be noted that this process of “conversion” cannot be
-regarded as the outcome of despair or as a protective regression towards
-childhood. The unfortunate individual, we sometimes imagine, who is
-bereft of religious faith sinks deeper and deeper into despondency,
-until finally he unconsciously seeks the relief of his woes by plunging
-into an abyss of emotions, thereby committing intellectual suicide. On
-the contrary, the period in which this event occurred was not a period
-of dejection either mental or physical. I was fully occupied; I lived a
-healthy, open-air life, in a fine climate, amid beautiful scenery; I was
-revelling in new studies and the growing consciousness of new powers.
-Instead of being the ultimate stage in a process of descent, or a return
-to childhood, such psychic revolution may much more fittingly be
-regarded as the climax of an ascensional movement. It is the final
-casting off of childish things, the initiation into complete manhood.
-
-There is nothing ascetic in such a process. One is sometimes tempted to
-think that to approve mysticism is to preach asceticism. Certainly many
-mystics have been ascetic. But that has been the accident of their
-philosophy, and not the essence of their religion. Asceticism has,
-indeed, nothing to do with normal religion. It is, at the best, the
-outcome of a set of philosophical dogmas concerning the relationship of
-the body to the soul and the existence of a transcendental spiritual
-world. That is philosophy, of a sort, not religion. Plotinus, who has
-been so immensely influential in our Western world because he was the
-main channel by which Greek spiritual tendencies reached us, to become
-later embodied in Christianity, is usually regarded as a typical mystic,
-though he was primarily a philosopher, and he was inclined to be
-ascetic. Therein we may not consider him typically Greek, but the early
-philosophical doctrine of Plato concerning the transcendental world of
-“Ideas” easily lent itself to developments favourable to an ascetic
-life. Plotinus, indeed, was not disposed to any extreme ascetic
-position. The purification of the soul meant for him “to detach it from
-the body, and to elevate it to a spiritual world.” But he would not have
-sympathised with the harsh dualism of flesh and spirit which often
-flourished among Christian ascetics. He lived celibate, but he was
-willing to regard sex desire as beautiful, though a delusion.[84] When
-we put aside the philosophic doctrines with which it may be associated,
-it is seen that asceticism is merely an adjuvant discipline to what we
-must regard as pathological forms of mysticism.
-
-People who come in contact with the phenomenon of “conversion” are
-obsessed by the notion that it must have something to do with morality.
-They seem to fancy that it is something that happens to a person leading
-a bad life whereby he suddenly leads a good life. That is a delusion.
-Whatever virtue morality may possess, it is outside the mystic’s sphere.
-No doubt a person who has been initiated into this mystery is likely to
-be moral because he is henceforth in harmony with himself, and such a
-man is usually, by a natural impulse, in harmony also with others. Like
-Leonardo, who through the glow of his adoration of Nature was as truly a
-mystic as St. Francis, even by contact with him “every broken heart is
-made serene.” But a religious man is not necessarily a moral man. That
-is to say that we must by no means expect to find that the religious
-man, even when he is in harmony with his fellows, is necessarily in
-harmony with the moral laws of his age. We fall into sad confusion if we
-take for granted that a mystic is what we conventionally term a “moral”
-man. Jesus, as we know, was almost as immoral from the standpoint of the
-society in which he moved as he would be in our society. That, no doubt,
-is an extreme example, yet the same holds good, in a minor degree, of
-many other mystics, even in very recent times. The satyrs and the fauns
-were minor divinities in antiquity, and in later times we have been apt
-to misunderstand their holy functions and abuse their sacred names.
-
-Not only is there no necessary moral change in such a process, still
-less is there any necessary intellectual change. Religion need not
-involve intellectual suicide. On the intellectual side there may be no
-obvious change whatever. No new creed or dogma had been adopted.[85] It
-might rather be said that, on the contrary, some prepossessions,
-hitherto unconscious, had been realised and cast out. The operations of
-reason, so far from being fettered, can be effected with greater freedom
-and on a larger scale. Under favourable conditions the religious
-process, indeed, throughout directly contributes to strengthen the
-scientific attitude. The mere fact that one has been impelled by the
-sincerity of one’s religious faith to question, to analyse, and finally
-to destroy one’s religious creed, is itself an incomparable training for
-the intelligence. In this task reason is submitted to the hardest tests;
-it has every temptation to allow itself to be lulled into sleepy repose
-or cajoled into specious reconciliations. If it is true to itself here
-it is steeled for every other task in the world, for no other task can
-ever demand so complete a self-sacrifice at the call of Truth. Indeed,
-the final restoration of the religious impulse on a higher plane may
-itself be said to reënforce the scientific impulse, for it removes that
-sense of psychic disharmony which is a subconscious fetter on the
-rational activity. The new inward harmony, proceeding from a psychic
-centre that is at one alike with itself and with the Not-Self, imparts
-confidence to every operation of the intellect. All the metaphysical
-images of faith in the unseen—too familiar in the mystical experiences
-of men of all religions to need specification—are now on the side of
-science. For he who is thus held in his path can pursue that path with
-serenity and trust, however daring its course may sometimes seem.
-
-It appears to me, therefore, on the basis of personal experience, that
-the process thus outlined is a natural process. The harmony of the
-religious impulse and of the scientific impulse is not merely a
-conclusion to be deduced from the history of the past. It is a living
-fact to-day. However obscured it may sometimes be, the process lies in
-human nature and is still open to all to experience.
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-IF the development of the religious instinct and the development of the
-scientific instinct are alike natural, and if the possibility of the
-harmony of the two instincts is a verifiable fact of experience, how is
-it, one may ask, that there has ever been any dispute on the matter? Why
-has not this natural experience been the experience of all?
-
-Various considerations may help to make clear to us how it has happened
-that a process which might reasonably be supposed to be intimate and
-sacred should have become so obscured and so deformed that it has been
-fiercely bandied about by opposing factions. At the outset, as we have
-seen, among comparatively primitive peoples, it really is a simple and
-natural process carried out harmoniously with no sense of conflict. A
-man, it would seem, was not then overburdened by the still unwritten
-traditions of the race. He was comparatively free to exercise his own
-impulses unfettered by the chains forged out of the dead impulses of
-those who had gone before him.
-
-It is the same still among uncultivated persons of our own race in
-civilisation. I well remember how once, during a long ride through the
-Australian bush with a settler, a quiet, uncommunicative man with whom I
-had long been acquainted, he suddenly told me how at times he would
-ascend to the top of a hill and become lost to himself and to everything
-as he stood in contemplation of the scene around him. Those moments of
-ecstasy, of self-forgetful union with the divine beauty of Nature, were
-entirely compatible with the rational outlook of a simple, hard-working
-man who never went to church, for there was no church of any kind to go
-to, but at such moments had in his own humble way, like Moses, met God
-in a mountain. There can be no doubt that such an experience is not
-uncommon among simple folk unencumbered by tradition, even when of
-civilised race.
-
-The burden of traditions, of conventions, of castes has too often proved
-fatal alike to the manifestation of the religious impulse and the
-scientific impulse. It is unnecessary to point out how easily this
-happens in the case of the religious impulse. It is only too familiar a
-fact how, when the impulse of religion first germinates in the young
-soul, the ghouls of the Churches rush out of their caverns, seize on the
-unhappy victim of the divine effluence and proceed to assure him that
-his rapture is, not a natural manifestation, as free as the sunlight and
-as gracious as the unfolding of a rose, but the manifest sign that he
-has been branded by a supernatural force and fettered for ever to a dead
-theological creed. Too often he is thus caught by the bait of his own
-rapture; the hook is firmly fixed in his jaw and he is drawn whither his
-blind guides will; his wings droop and fall away; so far as the finer
-issues of life are concerned, he is done for and damned.[86]
-
-But the process is not so very different on the scientific side, though
-here it is more subtly concealed. The youth in whom the natural impulse
-of science arises is sternly told that the spontaneous movement of his
-intelligence towards Nature and truth is nothing, for the one thing
-needful is that he shall be put to discipline, and trained in the
-scientific traditions of the ages. The desirability of such training for
-the effective questioning of Nature is so clear that both teacher and
-pupil are apt to overlook the fact that it involves much that is not
-science at all: all sorts of dead traditions, unrealised fragments of
-ancient metaphysical systems, prepossessions and limitations, conscious
-or unconscious, the obedience to arbitrary authorities. It is never made
-clear to him that science also is an art. So that the actual outcome may
-be that the finally accomplished man of science has as little of the
-scientific impulse as the fully fledged religious man need have of the
-religious impulse; he becomes the victim of another kind of
-ecclesiastical sectarianism.
-
-There is one special piece of ancient metaphysics which until recently
-scientific and religious sects have alike combined to support: the
-fiction of “matter,” which we passingly came upon when considering the
-art of thinking. It is a fiction that has much to answer for in
-distorting the scientific spirit and in creating an artificial
-opposition between science and religion. All sorts of antique
-metaphysical peculiarities, inherited from the decadence of Greek
-philosophy, were attributed to “matter” and they were mostly of a bad
-character; all the good qualities were attributed to “spirit”; “matter”
-played the Devil’s part to this more divine “spirit.” Thus it was that
-“materialistic” came to be a term signifying all that is most heavy,
-opaque, depressing, soul-destroying, and diabolical in the universe. The
-party of traditionalised religion fostered this fiction and the party of
-traditionalised science frequently adopted it, cheerily proposing to
-find infinite potentialities in this despised metaphysical substance. So
-that “matter” which was on one side trodden underfoot was on the other
-side brandished overhead as a glorious banner.
-
-Yet “matter,” as psychologically minded philosophers at last began to
-point out, is merely a substance we have ourselves invented to account
-for our sensations. We see, we touch, we hear, we smell, and by a
-brilliant synthetic effort of imagination we put together all those
-sensations and picture to ourselves “matter” as being the source of
-them. Science itself is now purging “matter” of its complicated
-metaphysical properties. That “matter,” the nature of which Dr. Johnson,
-as Boswell tells us, thought he had settled by “striking his foot with
-mighty force against a large stone,” is coming to be regarded as merely
-an electrical emanation. We now accept even that transmutation of the
-elements of which the alchemists dreamed. It is true that we still think
-of “matter” as having weight. But so cautious a physicist as Sir Joseph
-Thomson long ago pointed out that weight is only an “apparently”
-invariable property of matter. So that “matter” becomes almost as
-“ethereal” as “spirit,” and, indeed, scarcely distinguishable from
-“spirit.” The spontaneous affirmation of the mystic that he lives in the
-spiritual world here and now will then be, in other words, merely the
-same affirmation which the man of science has more laboriously reached.
-The man, therefore, who is terrified by “materialism” has reached the
-final outpost of absurdity. He is a simple-minded person who places his
-own hand before his eyes and cries out in horror: The Universe has
-disappeared!
-
-We have not only to realise how our own prepossessions and the
-metaphysical figments of our own creation have obscured the simple
-realities of religion and science alike; we have also to see that our
-timid dread lest religion should kill our science, or science kill our
-religion, is equally fatal here. He who would gain his life must be
-willing to lose it, and it is by being honest to one’s self and to the
-facts by applying courageously the measuring rod of Truth, that in the
-end salvation is found. Here, it is true, there are those who smilingly
-assure us that by adopting such a method we shall merely put ourselves
-in the wrong and endure much unnecessary suffering. There is no such
-thing as “Truth,” they declare, regarded as an objective impersonal
-reality; we do not “discover” truth, we invent it. Therefore your
-business is to invent a truth which shall harmoniously satisfy the needs
-of your nature and aid your efficiency in practical life. That we are
-justified in being dishonest towards truth has even been argued from the
-doctrine of relativity by some who failed to realise that that doctrine
-is here hardly relative. Certainly the philosophers of recent times,
-from Nietzsche to Croce, have loved to analyse the idea of “truth” and
-to show that it by no means signifies what we used to suppose it
-signified. But to show that truth is fluid, or even the creation of the
-individual mind, is by no means to show that we can at will play fast
-and loose with it to suit our own momentary convenience. If we do we
-merely find ourselves, at the end, in a pool where we must tramp round
-and round in intellectual slush out of which there is no issue. One may
-well doubt whether any Pragmatist has ever really invented his truth
-that way. Practically, just as the best result is attained by the man
-who acts as though free-will were a reality and who exerts it, so in
-this matter, also, practically, in the end the best result is attained
-by assuming that truth is an objective reality which we must patiently
-seek, and in accordance with which we must discipline our own wayward
-impulses. There is no transcendent objective truth, each one of us is an
-artist creating his own truth from the phenomena presented to him, but
-if in that creation he allows any alien emotional or practical
-considerations to influence him he is a bad artist and his work is
-wrought for destruction. From the pragmatic point of view, it may thus
-be said that if the use of the measuring-rod of truth as an objective
-standard produces the best practical results, that use is pragmatically
-justified. But if so, we are exactly in the same position as we were
-before the pragmatist arrived; we can get on as well without him, if not
-better, for we run the risk that he may confuse the issues for us. It is
-really on the theoretic rather than the practical side that he is
-helpful.
-
-It is not only the Pragmatist whose well-meant efforts to find an easy
-reconciliation of belief and practice, and indirectly the concord of
-religion and science, come to grief because he has not realised that the
-walls of the spiritual world can only be scaled with much expenditure of
-treasure, not without blood and sweat, that we cannot glide luxuriously
-to Heaven in his motor-car. We are also met by the old-fashioned
-Intuitionist.[87] It is no accident that the Intuitionist so often walks
-hand in hand with the Pragmatist; they are engaged in the same tasks.
-There is, we have seen, the impulse of science which must work through
-intelligence; there is, also, the impulse of religion in the
-satisfaction of which intelligence can only take a very humble place at
-the antechamber of the sanctuary. To admit, therefore, that reason
-cannot extend into the religious sphere is absolutely sound so long as
-we realise that reason has a coordinate right to lay down the rules in
-its own sphere of intelligence. But in men of a certain mental type the
-two tendencies are alike so deeply implanted that they cannot escape
-them: they are not only impelled to go beyond intelligence, but they are
-also impelled to carry intelligence with them outside its sphere. The
-sphere of intelligence is limited, they say, and rightly; the soul has
-other impulses besides that of intelligence and life needs more than
-knowledge for its complete satisfaction. But in the hands of these
-people the faculty of “intuition,” which is to supplant that of
-intelligence, itself results in a product which by them is called
-“knowledge,” and so spuriously bears the hall-mark which belongs to the
-product of intelligence.
-
-But the result is disastrous. Not only is an illegitimate confusion
-introduced, but, by attributing to the impulse of religion a character
-which it is neither entitled to nor in need of, we merely discredit it
-in the eyes of intelligence. The philosopher of intuition, even in
-denying intelligence, is apt to remain so predominantly intelligent
-that, even in entering what is for him the sphere of religion, he still
-moves in an atmosphere of rarefied intelligence. He is farther from the
-Kingdom of Heaven than the simple man who is quite incapable of
-understanding the philosopher’s theory, but yet may be able to follow
-his own religious impulse without foisting into it an intellectual
-content. For even the simple man may be one with the great mystics who
-all declare that the unspeakable quality they have acquired, as Eckhart
-puts it, “hath no image.” It is not in the sphere of intellection, it
-brings no knowledge; it is the outcome of the natural instinct of the
-individual soul.
-
-No doubt there really are people in whom the instincts of religion and
-of science alike are developed in so rudimentary a degree, if developed
-at all, that they never become conscious. The religious instinct is not
-an essential instinct. Even the instinct of sex, which is much more
-fundamental than either of these, is not absolutely essential. A very
-little bundle of instincts and impulses is indispensable to a man on his
-way down the path of life to a peaceful and humble grave. A man’s
-equipment of tendencies, on the lowest plane, needs to be more complex
-and diverse than an oyster’s, yet not so very much more. The equipment
-of the higher animals, moreover, is needed less for the good of the
-individual than for the good of the race. We cannot, therefore, be
-surprised if the persons in whom the superfluous instincts are
-rudimentary fail to understand them, confusing them and overlaying them
-with each other and with much that is outside both. The wonder would be
-if it were otherwise.
-
-When all deduction has been made of the mental and emotional confusions
-which have obscured men’s vision, we cannot fail to conclude, it seems
-to me, that Science and Mysticism are nearer to each other than some
-would have us believe. At the beginning of human cultures, far from
-being opposed, they may even be said to be identical. From time to time,
-in later ages, brilliant examples have appeared of men who have
-possessed both instincts in a high degree and have even fused the two
-together, while among the humble in spirit and the lowly in intellect it
-is probable that in all ages innumerable men have by instinct harmonised
-their religion with their intelligence. But as the accumulated
-experiences of civilisation have been preserved and handed on from
-generation to generation, this free and vital play of the instincts has
-been largely paralysed. On each side fossilised traditions have
-accumulated so thickly, the garments of dead metaphysics have been
-wrapped so closely around every manifestation alike of the religious
-instinct and the scientific instinct—for even what we call “common
-sense” is really a hardened mass of dead metaphysics—that not many
-persons can succeed in revealing one of these instincts in its naked
-beauty, and very few can succeed in so revealing both instincts. Hence a
-perpetual antagonism. It may be, however, we are beginning to realise
-that there are no metaphysical formulas to suit all men, but that every
-man must be the artist of his own philosophy. As we realise that, it
-becomes easier than it was before to liberate ourselves from a dead
-metaphysics, and so to give free play alike to the religious instinct
-and the scientific instinct. A man must not swallow more beliefs than he
-can digest; no man can absorb all the traditions of the past; what he
-fills himself with will only be a poison to work to his own
-auto-intoxication.
-
-Along all these lines we see more clearly than before the real harmony
-between Mysticism and Science. We see, also, that all arguments are
-meaningless until we gain personal experience. One must win one’s own
-place in the spiritual world painfully and alone. There is no other way
-of salvation. The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a
-wilderness.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-
-IT may seem that we have been harping overmuch on a single string of
-what is really a very rich instrument, when the whole exalted art of
-religion is brought down to the argument of its relationship to science.
-The core of religion is mysticism, it is admitted. And yet where are all
-the great mystics? Why nothing of the Neo-Platonists in whom the whole
-movement of modern mysticism began, of their glorious pupils in the
-Moslem world, of Ramon Lull and Francis of Assisi and François Xavier
-and John of the Cross and George Fox and the “De Imitatione Christi” and
-“Towards Democracy”? There is no end to that list of glorious names, and
-they are all passed by.
-
-To write of the mystics, whether Pagan or Christian or Islamic, is a
-most delightful task. It has been done, and often very well done. The
-mystics are not only themselves an incarnation of beauty, but they
-reflect beauty on all who with understanding approach them.
-
-Moreover, in the phenomena of religious mysticism we have a key—if we
-only knew it—to many of the most precious human things which on the
-surface may seem to have nothing in them of religion. For this is an art
-which instinctively reveals to us the secrets of other arts. It presents
-to us in the most naked and essential way the inward experience which
-has inspired men to find modes of expression which are transmutations of
-the art of religion and yet have on the surface nothing to indicate that
-this is so. It has often been seen in poetry and in music and in
-painting. One might say that it is scarcely possible to understand
-completely the poetry of Shelley or the music of César Franck or the
-pictures of Van Gogh unless there is somewhere within an intimation of
-the secret of mysticism. This is so not because of any imperfection in
-the achieved work of such men in poetry and in music and in
-painting,—for work that fails to contain its own justification is always
-bad work,—but because we shall not be in possession of the clue to
-explain the existence of that work. We may even go beyond the sphere of
-the recognised arts altogether, and say that the whole love of Nature
-and landscape, which in modern times has been so greatly developed,
-largely through Rousseau, the chief creator of our modern spiritual
-world, is not intelligible if we are altogether ignorant of what
-religion means.
-
-But we are not so much concerned here with the rich and variegated
-garments the impulse of religion puts on, or with its possible
-transmutations, as with the simple and naked shape of those impulses
-when bared of all garments. It was peculiarly important to present the
-impulse of mysticism naked because, of all the fundamental human
-impulses, that is the one most often so richly wrapped round with
-gorgeous and fantastic garments that, alike to the eye of the ordinary
-man and the acute philosopher, there has seemed to be no living thing
-inside at all. It was necessary to strip off all these garments, to
-appeal to simple personal direct experience for the actual core of fact,
-and to show that that core, so far from being soluble by analysis into
-what science counts as nothing, is itself, like every other natural
-organic function, a fact of science.
-
-It is enough here, where we are concerned only with the primary stuff of
-art, the bare simple technique of the human dance, to have brought into
-as clear a light as may be the altogether natural mechanism which lies
-behind all the most magnificent fantasies of the mystic impulse, and
-would still subsist and operate even though they were all cast into the
-flames. That is why it has seemed necessary to dwell all the time on the
-deep-lying harmony of the mystic’s attitude with the scientific man’s
-attitude. It is a harmony which rests on the faith that they are
-eternally separate, however close, however intimately coöperative. When
-the mystic professes that, as such, he has knowledge of the same order
-as the man of science, or when the scientist claims that, as such, he
-has emotion which is like that of the man of religion, each of them
-deceives himself. He has introduced a confusion where no confusion need
-be; perhaps, indeed, he has even committed that sin against the Holy
-Ghost of his own spiritual integrity for which there is no forgiveness.
-The function of intellectual thought—which is that of the art of
-science—may, certainly, be invaluable for religion; it makes possible
-the purgation of all that pseudo-science, all that philosophy, good or
-bad, which has poisoned and encrusted the simple spontaneous impulse of
-mysticism in the open air of Nature and in the face of the sun. The man
-of science may be a mystic, but cannot be a true mystic unless he is so
-relentless a man of science that he can tolerate no alien science in his
-mysticism. The mystic may be a man of science, but he will not be a good
-man of science unless he understands that science must be kept for ever
-bright and pure from all admixture of mystical emotion; the fountain of
-his emotion must never rust the keenness of his analytic scalpel. It is
-useless to pretend that any such rustiness can ever convert the scalpel
-into a mystical implement, though it can be an admirable aid in cutting
-towards the mystical core of things, and perhaps if there were more
-relentless scientific men there would be more men of pure mystic vision.
-Science by itself, good or bad, can never be religion, any more than
-religion by itself can ever be science, or even philosophy.
-
-It is by looking back into the past that we see the facts in an
-essential simplicity less easy to reach in more sophisticated ages. We
-need not again go so far back as the medicine-men of Africa and Siberia.
-Mysticism in pagan antiquity, however less intimate to us and less
-seductive than that of later times, is perhaps better fitted to reveal
-to us its true nature. The Greeks believed in the spiritual value of
-“conversion” as devoutly as our Christian sects and they went beyond
-most such sects in their elaborately systematic methods for obtaining
-it, no doubt for the most part as superficially as has been common among
-Christians. It is supposed that almost the whole population of Athens
-must have experienced the Eleusinian initiation. These methods, as we
-know, were embodied in the Mysteries associated with Dionysus and
-Demeter and Orpheus and the rest, the most famous and typical being
-those of Attic Eleusis.[88] We too often see those ancient Greek
-Mysteries through a concealing mist, partly because it was rightly felt
-that matters of spiritual experience were not things to talk about, so
-that precise information is lacking, partly because the early
-Christians, having their own very similar Mysteries to uphold, were
-careful to speak evil of Pagan Mysteries, and partly because the Pagan
-Mysteries no doubt really tended to degenerate with the general decay of
-classic culture. But in their large simple essential outlines they seem
-to be fairly clear. For just as there was nothing “orgiastic” in our
-sense in the Greek “orgies,” which were simply ritual acts, so there was
-nothing, in our sense, “mysterious” in the Mysteries. We are not to
-suppose, as is sometimes supposed, that their essence was a secret
-doctrine, or even that the exhibition of a secret rite was the sole
-object, although it came in as part of the method. A mystery meant a
-spiritual process of initiation, which was, indeed, necessarily a secret
-to those who had not yet experienced it, but had nothing in itself
-“mysterious” beyond what inheres to-day to the process in any Christian
-“revival,” which is the nearest analogue to the Greek Mystery. It is
-only “mysterious” in the sense that it cannot be expressed, any more
-than the sexual embrace can be expressed, in words, but can only be
-known by experience. A preliminary process of purification, the
-influence of suggestion, a certain religious faith, a solemn and
-dramatic ritual carried out under the most impressive circumstances,
-having a real analogy to the Catholic’s Mass, which also is a function,
-at once dramatic and sacred, which culminates in a spiritual communion
-with the Divine—all this may contribute to the end which was, as it
-always must be in religion, simply a change of inner attitude, a sudden
-exalting realisation of a new relationship to eternal things. The
-philosophers understood this; Aristotle was careful to point out, in an
-extant fragment, that what was gained in the Mysteries was not
-instruction but impressions and emotions, and Plato had not hesitated to
-regard the illumination which came to the initiate in philosophy as of
-the nature of that acquired in the Mysteries. So it was natural that
-when Christianity took the place of Paganism the same process went on
-with only a change in external circumstances. Baptism in the early
-Church—before it sank to the mere magical sort of rite it later
-became—was of the nature of initiation into a Mystery, preceded by
-careful preparation, and the baptised initiate was sometimes crowned
-with a garland as the initiated were at Eleusis.
-
-When we go out of Athens along the beautiful road that leads to the
-wretched village of Eleusis and linger among the vast and complicated
-ruins of the chief shrine of mysticism in our Western world, rich in
-associations that seem to stretch back to the Neolithic Age and suggest
-a time when the mystery of the blossoming of the soul was one with the
-mystery of the upspringing of the corn, it may be that our thoughts by
-no unnatural transition pass from the myth of Demeter and Kore to the
-remembrance of what we may have heard or know of the manifestations of
-the spirit among barbarian northerners of other faiths or of no faith in
-far Britain and America and even of their meetings of so-called
-“revival.” For it is always the same thing that Man is doing, however
-various and fantastic the disguises he adopts. And sometimes the
-revelation of the new life, springing up from within, comes amid the
-crowd in the feverish atmosphere of artificial shrines, maybe soon to
-shrivel up, and sometimes the blossoming forth takes place, perhaps more
-favourably, in the open air and under the light of the sun and amid the
-flowers, as it were to a happy faun among the hills. But when all
-disguises have been stripped away, it is always and everywhere the same
-simple process, a spiritual function which is almost a physiological
-function, an art which Nature makes. That is all.
-
-Footnote 70:
-
-  It is scarcely necessary to remark that if we choose to give to
-  “mysticism” a definition incompatible with “science,” the opposition
-  cannot be removed. This is, for example, done by Croce, who yet
-  recognises as highly important a process of “conversion” which is
-  nothing else but mysticism as here understood. (See, e.g., Piccoli,
-  _Benedetto Croce_, p. 184.) Only he has left himself no name to apply
-  to it.
-
-Footnote 71:
-
-  “The endeavour of the human mind to enjoy the blessedness of actual
-  communion with the highest,” which is Pringle Pattison’s widely
-  accepted definition of mysticism, I prefer not to use because it is
-  ambiguous. The “endeavour,” while it indicates that we are concerned
-  with an art, also suggests its strained pathological forms, while
-  “actual communion” lends itself to ontological interpretations.
-
-Footnote 72:
-
-  _The Threshold of Religion_ (1914), p. 48.
-
-Footnote 73:
-
-  _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_ (1911), p. 272.
-
-Footnote 74:
-
-  _Golden Bough_, “Balder the Beautiful,” vol. II, pp. 304-05.
-
-Footnote 75:
-
-  Farnell even asserts (in his _Greek Hero Cults_) that “it is
-  impossible to quote a single example of any one of the higher
-  world-religions working in harmony with the development of physical
-  science.” He finds a “special and unique” exception in the cult of
-  Asclepios at Cos and Epidauros and Pergamon, where, after the fourth
-  century B.C., were physicians, practising a rational medical science,
-  who were also official priests of the Asclepios temples.
-
-Footnote 76:
-
-  Sir Oliver Lodge, _Reason and Belief_, p. 19.
-
-Footnote 77:
-
-  It is scarcely necessary to point out that a differentiation of
-  function has to be made sooner or later, and sometimes it is made
-  soon. This was so among the Todas of India. “Certain Todas,” says Dr.
-  Rivers (_The Todas_, 1906, p. 249), “have the power of divination,
-  others are sorcerers, and others again have the power of curing
-  diseases by means of spells and rites, while all three functions are
-  quite separate from those of the priest or sharman. The Todas have
-  advanced some way towards civilisation of function in this respect,
-  and have as separate members of the community their prophets, their
-  magicians, and their medicine-men in addition to their priests.”
-
-Footnote 78:
-
-  Joël, _Ursprung der Naturphilosophie aus dem Geiste der Romantik_
-  (1903); _Nietzsche und die Romantik_ (1905). But I am here quoting
-  from Professor Joël’s account of his own philosophical development in
-  _Die Deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart_, vol. I (1921).
-
-Footnote 79:
-
-  In connection with this scheme, it may be interesting to note, I
-  prepared, in 1879, a _questionnaire_ on “conversion,” on the lines of
-  the investigations which some years later began to be so fruitfully
-  carried out by the psychologists of religion in America.
-
-Footnote 80:
-
-  It must be remembered that for science the mechanistic assumption
-  always remains; it is, as Vaihinger would say, a necessary fiction. To
-  abandon it is to abandon science. Driesch, the most prominent vitalist
-  of our time, has realised this, and in his account of his own mental
-  development (_Die Deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart_, vol. I, 1921)
-  he shows how, beginning as a pupil of Haeckel and working at zoölogy
-  for many years, after adopting the theory of vitalism he abandoned all
-  zoölogical work and became a professor of philosophy. When the
-  religious spectator, or the æsthetic spectator (as is well illustrated
-  in the French review _L’Esprit Nouveau_), sees the “machinery” as
-  something else than machinery he is legitimately going outside the
-  sphere of science, but he is not thereby destroying the basic
-  assumption of science.
-
-Footnote 81:
-
-  Long ago Edith Simcox (in a passage of her _Natural Law_ which chanced
-  to strike my attention very soon after the episode above narrated)
-  well described “conversion” as a “spiritual revolution,” not based on
-  any single rational consideration, but due to the “cumulative evidence
-  of cognate impressions” resulting, at a particular moment, not in a
-  change of belief, but in a total rearrangement and recolouring of
-  beliefs and impressions, with the supreme result that the order of the
-  universe is apprehended no longer as hostile, but as friendly. This is
-  the fundamental fact of “conversion,” which is the gate of mysticism.
-
-Footnote 82:
-
-  How we are to analyse the conception of “universe”—apart from its
-  personal emotional tone, which is what mainly concerns us—is, of
-  course, a matter that must be left altogether open and free. Sir James
-  Frazer at the end of his _Golden Bough_ (“Balder the Beautiful,” vol.
-  II, p. 306) finds that the “universe” is an “ever-shifting
-  phantasmagoria of thought,” or, he adds, suddenly shifting to a less
-  idealistic and more realistic standpoint, “shadows on the screen.”
-  That is a literary artist’s metaphysical way of describing the matter
-  and could not occur to any one who was not familiar with the magic
-  lantern which has now developed into the cinema, beloved of
-  philosophers for its symbolic significance. Mr. Bertrand Russell, a
-  more abstract artist, who would reject any such “imaginative
-  admixture” as he would find in Frazer’s view, once severely refused to
-  recognise any such thing as a “universe,” but has since less austerely
-  admitted that there is, after all, a “set of appearances,” which may
-  fairly be labelled “reality,” so long as we do not assume “a
-  mysterious Thing-in-Itself behind the appearances.” (_Nation_, 6th
-  January, 1923.) But there are always some people who think that an
-  “appearance” must be an appearance of _Something_, and that when a
-  “shadow” is cast on the screen of our sensory apparatus it must be
-  cast by _Something_. So every one defines the “universe” in his own
-  way, and no two people—not even the same person long—can define it in
-  the same way. We have to recognise that even the humblest of us is
-  entitled to his own “universe.”
-
-Footnote 83:
-
-  The simple and essential outlines of “conversion” have been obscured
-  because chiefly studied in the Churches among people whose
-  prepossessions and superstitions have rendered it a highly complex
-  process, and mixed up with questions of right and wrong living which,
-  important as they are, properly form no part of religion. The man who
-  waits to lead a decent life until he has “saved his soul” is not
-  likely to possess a soul that is worth saving. How much ignorance
-  prevails in regard to “conversion,” even among the leaders of
-  religious opinion, and what violent contrasts of opinion—in which
-  sometimes both the opposing parties are mistaken—was well illustrated
-  by a discussion on the subject at the Church Congress at Sheffield in
-  1922. A distinguished Churchman well defined “conversion” as a
-  unification of character, involving the whole man,—will, intellect,
-  and emotion,—by which a “new self” was achieved; but he also thought
-  that this great revolutionary process consisted usually in giving up
-  some “definite bad habit,” very much doubted whether sudden conversion
-  was a normal phenomenon at all, and made no attempt to distinguish
-  between that kind of “conversion” which is merely the result of
-  suggestion and auto-suggestion, after a kind of hysterical attack
-  produced by feverish emotional appeals, and that which is spontaneous
-  and of lifelong effect. Another speaker went to the opposite extreme
-  by asserting that “conversion” is an absolutely necessary process, and
-  an Archbishop finally swept away “conversion” altogether by declaring
-  that the whole of the religious life (and the whole of the irreligious
-  life?) is a process of conversion. (_The Times_, 12th October, 1922.)
-  It may be a satisfaction to some to realise that this is a matter on
-  which it is vain to go to the Churches for light.
-
-Footnote 84:
-
-  Dean Inge (_Philosophy of Plotinus_, vol. II, p. 165) has some remarks
-  on Plotinus in relation to asceticism.
-
-Footnote 85:
-
-  Jules de Gaultier (_La Philosophie officielle et la Philosophie_, p.
-  150) refers to those Buddhist monks the symbol of whose faith was
-  contained in one syllable: _Om_. But those monks, he adds, belonged to
-  “the only philosophic race that ever existed” and by the aid of their
-  pure faith, placed on a foundation which no argumentation can upset,
-  all the religious philosophies of the Judeo-Helleno-Christian
-  tradition are but as fairy-tales told to children.
-
-Footnote 86:
-
-  We must always remember that “Church” and “religion,” though often
-  confused, are far from being interchangeable terms. “Religion” is a
-  natural impulse, “Church” is a social institution. The confusion is
-  unfortunate. Thus Freud (_Group Psychology_, p. 51) speaks of the
-  probability of religion disappearing and Socialism taking its place.
-  He means not “religion,” but a “Church.” We cannot speak of a natural
-  impulse disappearing, an institution easily may.
-
-Footnote 87:
-
-  It must be remembered that “intuition” is a word with all sorts of
-  philosophical meanings, in addition to its psychological meanings
-  (which were studied some years ago by Dearborn in the _Psychological
-  Review_). For the ancient philosophic writers, from the Neo-Platonists
-  on, it was usually a sort of special organ for coming in contact with
-  supernatural realities; for Bergson it is at once a method superior to
-  the intellect for obtaining knowledge and a method of æsthetic
-  contemplation; for Croce it is solely æsthetic, and art is at once
-  “intuition” and “expression” (by which he means the formation of
-  internal images). For Croce, when the mind “intuits” by “expressing,”
-  the result is art. There is no “religion” for Croce except philosophy.
-
-Footnote 88:
-
-  The modern literature of the Mysteries, especially of Eleusis, is very
-  extensive and elaborate in many languages. I will only mention here a
-  small and not very recent book, Cheetham’s Hulsean Lectures on _The
-  Mysteries Pagan and Christian_ (1897) as for ordinary readers
-  sufficiently indicating the general significance of the Mysteries.
-  There is, yet briefer, a more modern discussion of the matter in the
-  Chapter on “Religion” by Dr. W. R. Inge in R. W. Livingstone’s useful
-  collection of essays, _The Legacy of Greece_ (1921).
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER VI
-                           THE ART OF MORALS
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-NO man has ever counted the books that have been written about morals.
-No subject seems so fascinating to the human mind. It may well be,
-indeed, that nothing imports us so much as to know how to live. Yet it
-can scarcely be that on any subject are the books that have been written
-more unprofitable, one might even say unnecessary.
-
-For when we look at the matter objectively it is, after all, fairly
-simple. If we turn our attention to any collective community, at any
-time and place, in its moral aspect, we may regard it as an army on the
-march along a road of life more or less encompassed by danger. That,
-indeed, is scarcely a metaphor; that is what life, viewed in its moral
-aspect, may really be considered. When thus considered, we see that it
-consists of an extremely small advance guard in front, formed of persons
-with a limited freedom of moral action and able to act as patrols in
-various directions, of a larger body in the rear, in ancient military
-language called the blackguard and not without its uses, and in the main
-of a great compact majority with which we must always be chiefly
-concerned since they really are the army; they are the community. What
-we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command—whether
-or not issued by leaders the army believes it has itself chosen—of which
-the significance is hidden, and beyond this the duty of keeping in step
-with the others, or of trying to keep in step, or of pretending to do
-so.[89] It is an automatic, almost unconscious process and only becomes
-acutely conscious when the individual is hopelessly out of step; then he
-may be relegated to the rear blackguard. But that happens seldom. So
-there is little need to be concerned about it. Even if it happened very
-often, nothing overwhelming would have taken place; it would merely be
-that what we called the blackguard had now become the main army, though
-with a different discipline. We are, indeed, simply concerned with a
-discipline or routine which in this field is properly described as
-_custom_, and the word _morals_ essentially means _custom_. That is what
-morals must always be for the mass, and, indeed, to some extent for all,
-a discipline, and, as we have already seen, a discipline cannot properly
-be regarded as a science or an art. The innumerable books on morals,
-since they have usually confused and befogged this simple and central
-fact, cannot fail to be rather unprofitable. That, it would seem, is
-what the writers thought—at all events about those the others had
-written—or else they would not have considered it necessary for
-themselves to add to the number. It was not only an unprofitable task,
-it was also—except in so far as an objectively scientific attitude has
-been assumed—aimless. For, although the morals of a community at one
-time and place is never the same as that of another or even the same
-community at another time and place, it is a complex web of conditions
-that produces the difference, and it must have been evident that to
-attempt to affect it was idle.[90] There is no occasion for any one who
-is told that he has written a “moral” book to be unduly elated, or when
-he is told that his book is “immoral” to be unduly cast down. The
-significance of these adjectives is strictly limited. Neither the one
-book nor the other can have more than the faintest effect on the march
-of the great compact majority of the social army.
-
-Yet, while all this is so, there is still some interest in the question
-of morals. For, after all, there is the small body of individuals ahead,
-alertly eager to find the road, with a sensitive flair for all the
-possibilities the future may hold. When the compact majority, blind and
-automatic and unconscious, follows after, to tramp along the road these
-pioneers have discovered, it may seem but a dull road. But before they
-reached it that road was interesting, even passionately interesting.
-
-The reason is that, for those who, in any age, are thus situated, life
-is not merely a discipline. It is, or it may become, really an art.
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-THAT living is or may be an art, and the moralist the critic of that
-art, is a very ancient belief. It was especially widespread among the
-Greeks. To the Greeks, indeed, this belief was so ingrained and
-instinctive that it became an implicitly assumed attitude rather than a
-definitely expressed faith. It was natural to them to speak of a
-virtuous person as we should speak of a beautiful person. The “good” was
-the “beautiful”; the sphere of ethics for the Greeks was not
-distinguished from the sphere of æsthetics. In Sophocles, above all
-poets, we gather the idea of a natural agreement between duty and
-inclination which is at once both beauty and moral order. But it is the
-beautiful that seems to be most fundamental in τὸ καλὸν, which was the
-noble, the honourable, but fundamentally the beautiful. “Beauty is the
-first of all things,” said Isocrates, the famous orator; “nothing that
-is devoid of beauty is prized.... The admiration for virtue comes to
-this, that of all manifestation of life, virtue is the most beautiful.”
-The supremely beautiful was, for the finer sort of Greeks, instinctively
-if not always consciously, the supremely divine, and the Argive Hera, it
-has been said, “has more divinity in her countenance than any Madonna of
-them all.” That is how it came to pass that we have no word in our
-speech to apply to the Greek conception; æsthetics for us is apart from
-all the serious business of life, and the attempt to introduce it there
-seems merely comic. But the Greeks spoke of life itself as a craft or a
-fine art. Protagoras, who appears to-day as a pioneer of modern science,
-was yet mainly concerned to regard living as an art, or as the sum of
-many crafts, and the Platonic Socrates, his opponent, still always
-assumed that the moralist’s position is that of a critic of a craft. So
-influential a moralist as Aristotle remarks in a matter-of-fact way, in
-his “Poetics,” that if we wish to ascertain whether an act is, or is
-not, morally right we must consider not merely the intrinsic quality of
-the act, but the person who does it, the person to whom it is done, the
-time, the means, the motive. Such an attitude towards life puts out of
-court any appeal to rigid moral laws; it meant that an act must befit
-its particular relationships at a particular moment, and that its moral
-value could, therefore, only be judged by the standard of the
-spectator’s instinctive feeling for proportion and harmony. That is the
-attitude we adopt towards a work of art.
-
-It may well appear strange to those who cherish the modern idea of
-“æstheticism” that the most complete statement of the Greek attitude has
-come down to us in the writings of a philosopher, an Alexandrian Greek
-who lived and taught in Rome in the third century of our Christian Era,
-when the Greek world had vanished, a religious mystic, moreover, whose
-life and teaching were penetrated by an austere ascetic severity which
-some would count mediæval rather than Greek.[91] It is in Plotinus, a
-thinker whose inspiring influence still lives to-day, that we probably
-find the Greek attitude, in its loftiest aspect, best mirrored, and it
-was probably through channels that came from Plotinus—though their
-source was usually unrecognised—that the Greek moral spirit has chiefly
-reached modern times. Many great thinkers and moralists of the
-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it has been claimed, were
-ultimately indebted to Plotinus, who represented the only genuinely
-creative effort of the Greek spirit in the third century.[92]
-
-Plotinus seems to have had little interest in art, as commonly
-understood, and he was an impatient, rapid, and disorderly writer, not
-even troubling to spell correctly. All his art was in the spiritual
-sphere. It is impossible to separate æsthetics, as he understood it,
-from ethics and religion. In the beautiful discourse on Beauty, which
-forms one of the chapters of his first “Ennead,” it is mainly with
-spiritual beauty that he is concerned. But he insists that it _is_
-beauty, beauty of the same quality as that of the physical world, which
-inheres in goodness, “nor may those tell of the splendour of Virtue who
-have never known the face of Justice and of Wisdom beautiful beyond the
-beauty of Evening and of Dawn.” It is a beauty, he further
-states,—though here he seems to be passing out of the purely æsthetic
-sphere,—that arouses emotions of love. “This is the spirit that Beauty
-must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love,
-and a trembling that is also delight. For the unseen all this may be
-felt as for the seen, and this souls feel for it, every soul in some
-degree, but those the more deeply who are the more truly apt to this
-higher love—just as all take delight in the beauty of the body, but all
-are not strung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are
-known as Lovers.” Goodness and Truth were on the same plane for Plotinus
-as Beauty. It may even be said that Beauty was the most fundamental of
-all, to be identified ultimately as the Absolute, as Reality itself. So
-it was natural that in the sphere of morals he should speak
-indifferently either of “extirpating evil and implanting goodness” or of
-“introducing order and beauty to replace goodness”—in either case “we
-talk of real things.” “Virtue is a natural concordance among the
-phenomena of the soul, vice a discord.” But Plotinus definitely rejects
-the notion that beauty is only symmetry, and so he avoids the narrow
-conception of some more modern æsthetic moralists, notably Hutcheson.
-How, then, he asks, could the sun be beautiful, or gold, or light, or
-night, or the stars? “Beauty is something more than symmetry, and
-symmetry owes its beauty to a remoter principle”—its affinity, in the
-opinion of Plotinus, with the “Ideal Form,” immediately recognised and
-confirmed by the soul.
-
-It may seem to some that Plotinus reduces to absurdity the conception of
-morality as æsthetics, and it may well be that the Greeks of the great
-period were wiser when they left the nature of morals less explicit. Yet
-Plotinus had in him the root of the matter. He had risen to the
-conception that the moral life of the soul is a dance; “Consider the
-performers in a choral dance: they sing together, though each one has
-his own particular part, and sometimes one voice is heard while the
-others are silent; and each brings to the chorus something of his own;
-it is not enough that all lift their voices together; each must sing,
-choicely, his own part in the music set for him. So it is with the
-Soul.”[93] The Hellenic extension of the æsthetic emotion, as Benn
-pointed out, involved no weakening of the moral fibre. That is so, we
-see, and even emphatically so, when it becomes definitely explicit as in
-Plotinus, and revolutionarily hostile to all those ideals of the moral
-life which most people have been accustomed to consider modern.
-
-As usually among the Greeks, it is only implicitly, also, that we detect
-this attitude among the Romans, the pupils of the Greeks. For the most
-part, the Romans, whose impulses of art were very limited, whose
-practical mind craved precision and definition, proved rebellious to the
-idea that living is an art; yet it may well be that they still retained
-that idea at the core of their morality. It is interesting to note that
-St. Augustine, who stood on the threshold between the old Roman and new
-Christian worlds was able to write: “The art of living well and rightly
-is the definition that the ancients give of ‘virtue.’” For the Latins
-believed that _ars_ was derived from the Greek word for virtue,
-ἀρετή.[94] Yet there really remained a difference between the Greek and
-the Roman views of morals. The Greek view, it is universally admitted,
-was æsthetic, in the most definite sense; the Roman was not, and when
-Cicero wishes to translate a Greek reference to a “beautiful” action it
-becomes an “honourable” action. The Greek was concerned with what he
-himself felt about his actions; the Roman was concerned with what they
-would look like to other people, and the credit, or discredit, that
-would be reflected back on himself.
-
-The Hebrews never even dreamed of such an art. Their attitude is
-sufficiently embodied in the story of Moses and that visit to Sinai
-which resulted in the production of the table of Ten Commandments which
-we may still see inscribed in old churches. For even our modern feeling
-about morals is largely Jewish, in some measure Roman, and scarcely
-Greek at all. We still accept, in theory at all events, the Mosaic
-conception of morality as a code of rigid and inflexible rules,
-arbitrarily ordained, and to be blindly obeyed.
-
-The conception of morality as an art, which Christendom once disdained,
-seems now again to be finding favour in men’s eyes. The path has been
-made smooth for it by great thinkers of various complexion, who,
-differing in many fundamental points, all alike assert the relativity of
-truth and the inaptitude of rigid maxims to serve as guiding forces in
-life. They also assert, for a large part, implicitly or explicitly, the
-authority of art.
-
-The nineteenth century was usually inspired by the maxims of Kant, and
-lifted its hat reverently when it heard Kant declaiming his famous
-sayings concerning the supremacy of an inflexible moral law. Kant had,
-indeed, felt the stream of influence which flowed from Shaftesbury, and
-he sought to mix up æsthetics with his system. But he had nothing of the
-genuine artist’s spirit. The art of morals was to him a set of maxims,
-cold, rigid, precise. A sympathetic biographer has said of him that the
-maxims were the man. They are sometimes fine maxims. But as guides, as
-motives to practical action in the world? The maxims of the
-valetudinarian professor at Königsberg scarcely seem that to us to-day.
-Still less can we harmonise maxims with art. Nor do we any longer
-suppose that we are impertinent in referring to the philosopher’s
-personality. In the investigation of the solar spectrum personality may
-count for little; in the investigation of moral laws it counts for much.
-For personality is the very stuff of morals. The moral maxims of an
-elderly professor in a provincial university town have their interest.
-But so have those of a Casanova. And the moral maxims of a Goethe may
-possibly have more interest than either. There is the rigid categorical
-imperative of Kant; and there is also that other dictum, less rigid but
-more reminiscent of Greece, which some well-inspired person has put into
-the mouth of Walt Whitman: “Whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect
-person, that is finally right.”
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-FUNDAMENTALLY considered, there are two roads by which we may travel
-towards the moral ends of life: the road of Tradition, which is
-ultimately that of Instinct, pursued by the many, and the road of what
-seems to be Reason—sought out by the few. And in the end these two roads
-are but the same road, for reason also is an instinct. It is true that
-the ingenuity of analytic investigators like Henry Sidgwick has
-succeeded in enumerating various “methods of ethics.” But, roughly
-speaking, there can only be these two main roads of life, and only one
-has proved supremely important. It has been by following the path of
-tradition moulded by instinct that man reached the threshold of
-civilisation: whatever may have been the benefits he derived from the
-guidance of reason he never consciously allowed reason to control his
-moral life. Tables of commandments have ever been “given by God”; they
-represented, that is to say, obscure impulses of the organism striving
-to respond to practical needs. No one dreamed of commending them by
-declaring that they were reasonable.
-
-It is clear how Instinct and Tradition, thus working together, act
-vitally and beneficently in moulding the moral life of primitive
-peoples. The “divine command” was always a command conditioned by the
-special circumstance under which the tribe lived. That is so even when
-the moral law is to our civilised eyes “unnatural.” The infanticide of
-Polynesian islanders, where the means of subsistence and the
-possibilities of expansion were limited, was obviously a necessary
-measure, beneficent and humane in its effects. The killing of the aged
-among the migrant Eskimos was equally a necessary and kindly measure,
-recognised as such by the victims themselves, when it was essential that
-every member of the community should be able to help himself. Primitive
-rules of moral action, greatly as they differ among themselves, are all
-more or less advantageous and helpful on the road of primitive life. It
-is true that they allow very little, if any, scope for divergent
-individual moral action, but that, too, was advantageous.
-
-But that, also, is the rock on which an instinctive traditional morality
-must strike as civilisation is approached. The tribe has no longer the
-same unity. Social differentiation has tended to make the family a unit,
-and psychic differentiation to make even the separate individuals units.
-The community of interests of the whole tribe has been broken up, and
-therewith traditional morality has lost alike its value and its power.
-
-The development of abstract intelligence, which coincides with
-civilisation, works in the same direction. Reason is, indeed, on one
-side an integrating force, for it shows that the assumption of
-traditional morality—the identity of the individual’s interests with the
-interests of the community—is soundly based. But it is also a
-disintegrating force. For if it reveals a general unity in the ends of
-living, it devises infinitely various and perplexingly distracting
-excuses for living. Before the active invasion of reason living had been
-an art, or at all events a discipline, highly conventionalised and even
-ritualistic, but the motive forces of living lay in life itself and had
-all the binding sanction of instincts; the penalty of every failure in
-living, it was felt, would be swiftly and automatically experienced. To
-apply reason here was to introduce a powerful solvent into morals.
-Objectively it made morality clearer but subjectively it destroyed the
-existing motives for morality; it deprived man, to use the fashionable
-phraseology of the present day, of a vital illusion.
-
-Thus we have morality in the fundamental sense, the actual practices of
-the main army of the population, while in front a variegated procession
-of prancing philosophers gaily flaunt their moral theories before the
-world. Kant, whose personal moral problems were concerned with eating
-sweetmeats,[95] and other philosophers of varyingly inferior calibre,
-were regarded as the lawgivers of morality, though they carried little
-enough weight with the world at large.
-
-Thus it comes about that abstract moral speculations, culminating in
-rigid maxims, are necessarily sterile and vain. They move in the sphere
-of reason, and that is the sphere of comprehension, but not of vital
-action. In this way there arises a moral dualism in civilised man.
-Objectively he has become like the gods and able to distinguish the ends
-of life; he has eaten of the fruit of the tree and has knowledge of good
-and evil. Subjectively he is still not far removed from the savage,
-oftenest stirred to action by a confused web of emotional motives, among
-which the interwoven strands of civilised reason are as likely to
-produce discord or paralysis as to furnish efficient guides, a state of
-mind first, and perhaps best, set forth in its extreme form by
-Shakespeare in Hamlet. On the one hand he cannot return to the primitive
-state in which all the motives for living flowed harmoniously in the
-same channel; he cannot divest himself of his illuminating reason; he
-cannot recede from his hardly acquired personal individuality. On the
-other hand he can never expect, he can never even reasonably hope, that
-reason will ever hold in leash the emotions. It is clear that along
-neither path separately can the civilised man pursue his way in
-harmonious balance with himself. We begin to realise that what we need
-is not a code of beautifully cut-and-dried maxims—whether emanating from
-sacred mountains or from philosophers’ studies—but a happy combination
-of two different ways of living. We need, that is, a traditional and
-instinctive way of living, based on real motor instincts, which will
-blend with reason and the manifold needs of personality, instead of
-being destroyed by their solvent actions, as rigid rules inevitably are.
-Our only valid rule is a creative impulse that is one with the
-illuminative power of intelligence.
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-AT the beginning of the eighteenth century, the seed-time of our modern
-ideas, as it has so often seemed to be, the English people, having in
-art at length brought their language to a fine degree of clarity and
-precision, and having just passed through a highly stimulating period of
-dominant Puritanism in life, became much interested in philosophy,
-psychology, and ethics. Their interest was, indeed, often superficial
-and amateurish, though they were soon to produce some of the most
-notable figures in the whole history of thought. The third Earl of
-Shaftesbury, one of the earliest of the group, himself illustrated this
-unsystematic method of thinking. He was an amateur, an aristocratic
-amateur, careless of consistency, and not by any means concerned to
-erect a philosophic system. Not that he was a worse thinker on that
-account. The world’s greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for
-high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for
-that a professorial chair offers no special opportunities. Shaftesbury
-was, moreover, a man of fragile physical constitution, as Kant was; but,
-unlike Kant, he was not a childish hypochondriac in seclusion, but a man
-in the world, heroically seeking to live a complete and harmonious life.
-By temperament he was a Stoic, and he wrote a characteristic book of
-“Exercises,” as he proposed to call what his modern editor calls the
-“Philosophical Regimen,” in which he consciously seeks to discipline
-himself in fine thinking and right living, plainly acknowledging that he
-is the disciple of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. But Shaftesbury was
-also a man of genius, and as such it was his good fortune to throw
-afresh into the stream of thought a fruitful conception, in part
-absorbed, indeed, from Greece, and long implicit in men’s minds, but
-never before made clearly recognisable as a moral theory and an ethical
-temper, susceptible of being labelled by the philosophic historian, as
-it since has been under the name, passable no doubt as any other, of
-“Æsthetic Intuitionism.”
-
-Greek morality, it has been well said, is not a conflict of light and
-darkness, of good and evil, the clear choice between the broad road that
-leads to destruction and the narrow path of salvation: it is “an
-artistic balance of light and shade.” Gizycki, remarking that
-Shaftesbury has more affinity to the Greeks than perhaps any other
-modern moralist, says that “the key lay not only in his head, but in his
-heart, for like can only be recognised by like.”[96] We have to remember
-at the same time that Shaftesbury was really something of a classical
-scholar, even from childhood. Born in 1671, the grandson of the foremost
-English statesman of his time, the first Earl, Anthony Cooper, he had
-the advantage of the wise oversight of his grandfather, who placed with
-him as a companion in childhood a lady who knew both Greek and Latin so
-well that she could converse fluently in both languages. So it was that
-by the age of eleven he was familiar with the two classic tongues and
-literatures. That doubtless was also a key to his intimate feeling for
-the classic spirit, though it would not have sufficed without a native
-affinity. He became the pupil of Locke, and at fifteen he went to Italy,
-to spend a considerable time there. He knew France also, and the French
-tongue, so well that he was often taken for a native. He lived for some
-time in Holland, and there formed a friendship with Bayle, which began
-before the latter was aware of his friend’s rank and lasted till Bayle’s
-death. In Holland he may have been slightly influenced by Grotius.[97]
-Shaftesbury was not of robust constitution; he suffered from asthma, and
-his health was further affected by his zeal in public affairs as well as
-his enthusiasm in study, for his morality was not that of a recluse, but
-of a man who played an active part in life, not only in social
-benevolence, like his descendant the enlightened philanthropic Earl of
-the nineteenth century, but in the establishment of civil freedom and
-toleration. Locke wrote of his pupil (who was not, however, in agreement
-with his tutor’s philosophic standpoint,[98] though he always treated
-him with consideration) that “the sword was too sharp for the scabbard.”
-
-“He seems,” wrote of Shaftesbury his unfriendly contemporary Mandeville,
-“to require and expect goodness in his species as we do a sweet taste in
-grapes and China oranges, of which, if any of them are sour, we boldly
-pronounce that they are not come to that perfection their nature is
-capable of.” In a certain sense this was correct. Shaftesbury, it has
-been said, was the father of that new ethics which recognises that
-Nature is not a mere impulse of self-preservation, as Hobbes thought,
-but also a racial impulse, having regard to others; there are social
-inclinations in the individual, he realised, that go beyond individual
-ends. (Referring to the famous dictum of Hobbes, _Homo homini lupus_, he
-observes: “To say in disparagement of Man ‘that he is to Man a wolf’
-appears somewhat absurd when one considers that wolves are to wolves
-very kind and loving creatures.”) Therewith “goodness” was seen,
-virtually for the first time in the modern period, to be as “natural” as
-the sweetness of ripe fruit.
-
-There was another reason, a fundamental physiological and psychological
-reason, why “goodness” of actions and the “sweetness” of fruits are
-equally natural, a reason that would, no doubt, have been found strange
-both by Mandeville and Shaftesbury. Morality, Shaftesbury describes as
-“the taste of beauty and the relish of what is decent,” and the “sense
-of beauty” is ultimately the same as the “moral sense.” “My first
-endeavour,” wrote Shaftesbury, “must be to distinguish the true taste of
-fruits, refine my palate, and establish a just relish in the kind.” He
-thought, evidently, that he was merely using a metaphor. But he was
-speaking essentially in the direct, straightforward way of natural and
-primitive Man. At the foundation, “sweetness” and “goodness” are the
-same thing. That can still be detected in the very structure of
-language, not only of primitive languages, but those of the most
-civilised peoples. That morality is, in the strict sense, a matter of
-taste, of æsthetics, of what the Greeks called αἴσθησις, is conclusively
-shown by the fact that in the most widely separated tongues—possibly
-wherever the matter has been carefully investigated—moral goodness is,
-at the outset, expressed in terms of _taste_. What is _good_ is what is
-_sweet_, and sometimes, also, _salt_.[99] Primitive peoples have highly
-developed the sensory side of their mental life, and their vocabularies
-bear witness to the intimate connection of sensations of taste and touch
-with emotional tone. There is, indeed, no occasion to go beyond our own
-European traditions to see that the expression of moral qualities is
-based on fundamental sensory qualities of taste. In Latin _suavis_ is
-_sweet_, but even in Latin it became a moral quality, and its English
-derivatives have been entirely deflected from physical to moral
-qualities, while _bitter_ is at once a physical quality and a poignantly
-moral quality. In Sanskrit and Persian and Arabic _salt_ is not only a
-physical taste but the name for lustre and grace and beauty.[100] It
-seems well in passing to point out that the deeper we penetrate the more
-fundamentally we find the æsthetic conception of morals grounded in
-Nature. But not every one cares to penetrate any deeper and there is no
-need to insist.
-
-Shaftesbury held that human actions should have a beauty of symmetry and
-proportion and harmony, which appeal to us, not because they accord with
-any rule or maxim (although they may conceivably be susceptible of
-measurement), but because they satisfy our instinctive feelings, evoking
-an approval which is strictly an æsthetic judgment of moral action. This
-instinctive judgment was not, as Shaftesbury understood it, a guide to
-action. He held, rightly enough, that the impulse to action is
-fundamental and primary, that fine action is the outcome of finely
-tempered natures. It is a feeling for the just time and measure of human
-passion, and maxims are useless to him whose nature is ill-balanced.
-“Virtue is no other than the love of order and beauty in society.”
-Æsthetic appreciation of the act, and even an ecstatic pleasure in it,
-are part of our æsthetic delight in Nature generally, which includes
-Man. Nature, it is clear, plays a large part in this conception of the
-moral life. To lack balance on any plane of moral conduct is to be
-unnatural; “Nature is not mocked,” said Shaftesbury. She is a miracle,
-for miracles are not things that are performed, but things that are
-perceived, and to fail here is to fail in perception of the divinity of
-Nature, to do violence to her, and to court moral destruction. A return
-to Nature is not a return to ignorance or savagery, but to the first
-instinctive feeling for the beauty of well-proportioned affections. “The
-most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth,” he
-asserts, and he recurs again and again to “the beauty of honesty.”
-“_Dulce et decorum est_ was his sole reason,” he says of the classical
-pagan, adding: “And this is still a good reason.” In learning how to
-act, he thought, we are “learning to become artists.” It seems natural
-to him to refer to the magistrate as an artist; “the magistrate, if he
-be an artist,” he incidentally says. We must not make morality depend on
-authority. The true artist, in any art, will never act below his
-character. “Let who will make it for you as you fancy,” the artist
-declares; “I know it to be wrong. Whatever I have made hitherto has been
-true work. And neither for your sake or anybody’s else shall I put my
-hand to any other.” “This is virtue!” exclaims Shaftesbury. “This
-disposition transferred to the whole of life perfects a character. For
-there is a workmanship and a truth in actions.”
-
-Shaftesbury, it may be repeated, was an amateur, not only in philosophy,
-but even in the arts. He regarded literature as one of the schoolmasters
-for fine living, yet he has not been generally regarded as a fine artist
-in writing, though, directly or indirectly, he helped to inspire not
-only Pope, but Thomson and Cowper and Wordsworth. He was inevitably
-interested in painting, but his tastes were merely those of the ordinary
-connoisseur of his time. This gives a certain superficiality to his
-general æsthetic vision, though it was far from true, as the theologians
-supposed, that he was lacking in seriousness. His chief immediate
-followers, like Hutcheson, came out of Calvinistic Puritanism. He was
-himself an austere Stoic who adapted himself to the tone of the
-well-bred world he lived in. But if an amateur, he was an amateur of
-genius. He threw a vast and fruitful conception—caught from the
-“Poetics” of Aristotle, “the Great Master of Arts,” and developed with
-fine insight—into our modern world. Most of the great European thinkers
-of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were in some measure
-inspired, influenced, or anticipated by Shaftesbury. Even Kant, though
-he was unsympathetic and niggardly of appreciation, helped to develop
-the conception Shaftesbury first formulated. To-day we see it on every
-hand. It is slowly and subtly moulding the whole of our modern morality.
-
-“The greatest Greek of modern times”—so he appears to those who study
-his work to-day. It is through Shaftesbury, and Shaftesbury alone that
-Greek morals, in their finest essence, have been a vivifying influence
-in our modern world. Georg von Gizycki, who has perhaps most clearly
-apprehended Shaftesbury’s place in morals, indicates that place with
-precision and justice when he states that “he furnished the _elements_
-of a moral philosophy which fits into the frame of a truly scientific
-conception of the world.”[101] That was a service to the modern world so
-great and so daring that it could scarcely meet with approval from his
-fellow countrymen. The more keenly philosophical Scotch, indeed,
-recognised him, first of all Hume, and he was accepted and embodied as a
-kind of founder by the so-called Scottish School, though so toned down
-and adulterated and adapted to popular tastes and needs, that in the end
-he was thereby discredited. But the English never even adulterated him;
-they clung to the antiquated and eschatological Paley, bringing forth
-edition after edition of his works whereon to discipline their youthful
-minds. That led naturally on to the English Utilitarians in morality,
-who would disdain to look at anything that could be called Greek. Sir
-Leslie Stephen, who was the vigorous and capable interpreter to the
-general public of Utilitarianism, could see nothing good whatever in
-Shaftesbury; he viewed him with contemptuous pity and could only murmur:
-“Poor Shaftesbury!”
-
-Meanwhile Shaftesbury’s fame had from the first been pursuing a very
-different course in France and Germany, for it is the people outside a
-man’s own country who anticipate the verdict of posterity. Leibnitz,
-whose vast genius was on some sides akin (Shaftesbury has, indeed, been
-termed “the Leibnitz of morals”), admired the English thinker, and the
-universal Voltaire recognised him. Montesquieu placed him on a
-four-square summit with Plato and Montaigne and Malebranche. The
-enthusiastic Diderot, seeing in Shaftesbury the exponent of the
-naturalistic ethics of his own temperament, translated a large part of
-his chief book in 1745. Herder, who inspired so many of the chief
-thinkers of the nineteenth century and even of to-day, was himself
-largely inspired by Shaftesbury, whom he once called “the virtuoso of
-humanity,” regarding his writings as, even in form, well-nigh worthy of
-Greek antiquity, and long proposed to make a comparative study of the
-ethical conceptions of Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Shaftesbury, but
-unfortunately never carried out that happy idea. Rousseau, not only by
-contact of ideas, but the spontaneous effort of his own nature towards
-autonomous harmony, was in touch with Shaftesbury, and so helped to
-bring his ideals into the general stream of modern life. Shaftesbury,
-directly or indirectly, inspired the early influential French Socialists
-and Communists. On the other hand he has equally inspired the moralists
-of individualism. Even the Spanish-American Rodó, one of the most
-delicately aristocratic of modern moralists in recent time, puts forth
-conceptions, which, consciously or unconsciously, are precisely those of
-Shaftesbury. Rodó believes that all moral evil is a dissonance in the
-æsthetic of conduct and that the moral task in character is that of the
-sculptor in marble: “Virtue is a kind of art, a divine art.” Even Croce,
-who began by making a deep division between art and life, holds that
-there can be no great critic of art who is not also a great critic of
-life, for æsthetic criticism is really itself a criticism of life, and
-his whole philosophy may be regarded as representing a stage of
-transition between the old traditional view of the world and that
-conception towards which in the modern world our gaze is turned.[102]
-
-As Shaftesbury had stated the matter, however, it was left on the whole
-vague and large. He made no very clear distinction between the creative
-artistic impulse in life and critical æsthetic appreciation. In the
-sphere of morals we must often be content to wait until our activity is
-completed to appreciate its beauty or its ugliness.[103] On the
-background of general æsthetic judgment we have to concentrate on the
-forces of creative artistic activity, whose work it is painfully to
-mould the clay of moral action, and forge its iron, long before the
-æsthetic criterion can be applied to the final product. The artist’s
-work in life is full of struggle and toil; it is only the spectator of
-morals who can assume the calm æsthetic attitude. Shaftesbury, indeed,
-evidently recognised this, but it was not enough to say, as he said,
-that we may prepare ourselves for moral action by study in literature.
-One may be willing to regard living as an art, and yet be of opinion
-that it is as unsatisfactory to learn the art of living in literature as
-to learn, let us say, the art of music in architecture.
-
-Yet we must not allow these considerations to lead us away from the
-great fact that Shaftesbury clearly realised—what modern psychology
-emphasises—that desires can only be countered by desires, that reason
-cannot affect appetite. “That which is of original and pure nature,” he
-declared, “nothing besides contrary habit and custom (a second nature)
-is able to displace. There is no speculative opinion, persuasion, or
-belief, which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or destroy
-it.” Where he went beyond some modern psychologists is in his Hellenic
-perception that in this sphere of instinct we are amid the play of art
-to which æsthetic criteria alone can be applied.
-
-It was necessary to concentrate and apply these large general ideas. To
-some extent this was done by Shaftesbury’s immediate successors and
-followers, such as Hutcheson and Arbuckle, who taught that man is,
-ethically, an artist whose work is his own life. They concentrated
-attention on the really creative aspects of the artist in life, æsthetic
-appreciation of the finished product being regarded as secondary. For
-all art is, primarily, not a contemplation, but a doing, a creative
-action, and morality is so preëminently.
-
-Shaftesbury, with his followers Arbuckle and Hutcheson, may be regarded
-as the founders of æsthetics; it was Hutcheson, though he happened to be
-the least genuinely æsthetic in temperament of the three, who wrote the
-first modern treatise on æsthetics. Together, also, they may be said to
-have been the revivalists of Hellenism, that is to say, of the Hellenic
-spirit, or rather of the classic spirit, for it often came through Roman
-channels. Shaftesbury was, as Eucken has well said, the Greek spirit
-among English thinkers. He represented an inevitable reaction against
-Puritanism, a reaction which is still going on—indeed, here and there
-only just beginning. As Puritanism had achieved so notable a victory in
-England, it was natural that in England the first great champion of
-Hellenism should appear. It is to Oliver Cromwell and Praise-God
-Barebones that we owe Shaftesbury.
-
-After Shaftesbury it is Arbuckle who first deserves attention, though he
-wrote so little that he never attained the prominence he deserved.[104]
-He was a Dublin physician of Scottish ancestry, the friend of Swift, by
-whom he was highly esteemed, and he was a cripple from boyhood. He was a
-man of genuine artistic temperament, though the art he was attracted to
-was not, as with Shaftesbury, the sculptor’s or the painter’s, but the
-poet’s. It was not so much intuition on which he insisted, but
-imagination as formative of a character; moral approval seemed to him
-thoroughly æsthetic, part of an imaginative act which framed the ideal
-of a beautiful personality, externalising itself in action. When Robert
-Bridges, the poet of our own time, suggests (in his “Necessity of
-Poetry”) that “morals is that part of Poetry which deals with conduct,”
-he is speaking in the spirit of Arbuckle. An earlier and greater poet
-was still nearer to Arbuckle. “A man to be greatly good,” said Shelley
-in his “Defence of Poetry,” “must imagine intensely and
-comprehensively.... The great instrument of moral good is the
-imagination.” If, indeed, with Adam Smith and Schopenhauer, we choose to
-base morals on sympathy we really are thereby making the poet’s
-imagination the great moral instrument. Morals was for Arbuckle a
-disinterested æsthetic harmony, and he had caught much of the genuine
-Greek spirit.
-
-Hutcheson was in this respect less successful. Though he had occupied
-himself with æsthetics he had little true æsthetic feeling; and though
-he accomplished much for the revival of Greek studies his own sympathies
-were really with the Roman Stoics, with Cicero, with Marcus Aurelius,
-and in this way he was led towards Christianity, to which Shaftesbury
-was really alien. He democratised if not vulgarised, and diluted if not
-debased, Shaftesbury’s loftier conception. In his too widely sympathetic
-and receptive mind the Shaftesburian ideal was not only Romanised, not
-only Christianised; it was plunged into a miscellaneously eclectic mass
-that often became inconsistent and incoherent. In the long run, in spite
-of his great immediate success, he injured in these ways the cause he
-advocated. He overemphasised the passively æsthetic side of morals; he
-dwelt on the term “moral sense,” by Shaftesbury only occasionally used,
-as it had long previously been by Aristotle (and then only in the sense
-of “natural temper” by analogy with the physical senses), and this term
-was long a stumbling-block in the eyes of innocent philosophic critics,
-too easily befooled by words, who failed to see that, as Libby has
-pointed out, the underlying idea simply is, as held by Shaftesbury, that
-æsthetic notions of proportion and symmetry depend upon the native
-structure of the mind and only so constitute a “moral sense.”[105] What
-Hutcheson, as distinct from Shaftesbury, meant by a “moral sense”—really
-a conative instinct—is sufficiently indicated by the fact that he was
-inclined to consider the conjugal and parental affections as a “sense”
-because natural. He desired to shut out reason, and cognitive elements,
-and that again brought him to the conception of morality as instinctive.
-Hutcheson’s conception of “sense” was defective as being too liable to
-be regarded as passive rather than as conative, though conation was
-implied. The fact that the “moral sense” was really instinct, and had
-nothing whatever to do with “innate ideas,” as many have ignorantly
-supposed, was clearly seen by Hutcheson’s opponents. The chief objection
-brought forward by the Reverend John Balguy in 1728, in the first part
-of his “Foundation of Moral Goodness,” was precisely that Hutcheson
-based morality on instinct and so had allowed “some degree of morality
-to animals.”[106] It was Hutcheson’s fine and impressive personality,
-his high character, his eloquence, his influential position, which
-enabled him to keep alive the conception of morals he preached, and even
-to give it an effective force, throughout the European world, it might
-not otherwise easily have exerted. Philosophy was to Hutcheson the art
-of living—as it was to the old Greek philosophers—rather than a question
-of metaphysics, and he was careless of consistency in thinking, an
-open-minded eclectic who insisted that life itself is the great matter.
-That, no doubt, was the reason why he had so immense an influence. It
-was mainly through Hutcheson that the more aristocratic spirit of
-Shaftesbury was poured into the circulatory channels of the world’s
-life. Hume and Adam Smith and Reid were either the pupils of Hutcheson
-or directly influenced by him. He was a great personality rather than a
-great thinker, and it was as such that he exerted so much force in
-philosophy.[107]
-
-With Schiller, whose attitude was not, however, based directly on
-Shaftesbury, the æsthetic conception of morals, which in its definitely
-conscious form had up till then been especially English, may be said to
-have entered the main stream of culture. Schiller regarded the identity
-of Duty and Inclination as the ideal goal of human development, and
-looked on the Genius of Beauty as the chief guide of life. Wilhelm von
-Humboldt, one of the greatest spirits of that age, was moved by the same
-ideas, throughout his life, much as in many respects he changed, and
-even shortly before his death wrote in deprecation of the notion that
-conformity to duty is the final aim of morality. Goethe, who was the
-intimate friend of both Schiller and Humboldt, largely shared the same
-attitude, and through him it has had a subtle and boundless influence.
-Kant, who, it has been said, mistook Duty for a Prussian drill-sergeant,
-still ruled the academic moral world. But a new vivifying and moulding
-force had entered the larger moral world, and to-day we may detect its
-presence on every side.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-
-It has often been brought against the conception of morality as an art
-that it lacks seriousness. It seems to many people to involve an easy,
-self-indulgent, dilettante way of looking at life. Certainly it is not
-the way of the Old Testament. Except in imaginative literature—it was,
-indeed, an enormous and fateful exception—the Hebrews were no “æsthetic
-intuitionists.” They hated art, for the rest, and in face of the
-problems of living they were not in the habit of considering the lilies
-how they grow. It was not the beauty of holiness, but the stern rod of a
-jealous Jehovah, which they craved for their encouragement along the
-path of Duty. And it is the Hebrew mode of feeling which has been, more
-or less violently and imperfectly, grafted into our Christianity.[108]
-
-It is a complete mistake, however, to suppose that those for whom life
-is an art have entered on an easy path, with nothing but enjoyment and
-self-indulgence before them. The reverse is nearer to the truth. It is
-probably the hedonist who had better choose rules if he only cares to
-make life pleasant.[109] For the artist life is always a discipline, and
-no discipline can be without pain. That is so even of dancing, which of
-all the arts is most associated in the popular mind with pleasure. To
-learn to dance is the most austere of disciplines, and even for those
-who have attained to the summit of its art often remains a discipline
-not to be exercised without heroism. The dancer seems a thing of joy,
-but we are told that this famous dancer’s slippers are filled with blood
-when the dance is over, and that one falls down pulseless and deathlike
-on leaving the stage, and the other must spend the day in darkness and
-silence. “It is no small advantage,” said Nietzsche, “to have a hundred
-Damoclean swords suspended above one’s head; that is how one learns to
-dance, that is how one attains ‘freedom of movement.’”[110]
-
-For as pain is entwined in an essential element in the perfect
-achievement of that which seems naturally the most pleasurable of the
-arts, so it is with the whole art of living, of which dancing is the
-supreme symbol. There is no separating Pain and Pleasure without making
-the first meaningless for all vital ends and the second turn to ashes.
-To exalt pleasure is to exalt pain; and we cannot understand the meaning
-of pain unless we understand the place of pleasure in the art of life.
-In England, James Hinton sought to make that clear, equally against
-those who failed to see that pain is as necessary morally as it
-undoubtedly is biologically, and against those who would puritanically
-refuse to accept the morality of pleasure.[111] It is no doubt important
-to resist pain, but it is also important that it should be there to
-resist. Even when we look at the matter no longer subjectively but
-objectively, we must accept pain in any sound æsthetic or metaphysical
-picture of the world.[112]
-
-We must not be surprised, therefore, that this way of looking at life as
-an art has spontaneously commended itself to men of the gravest and
-deepest character, in all other respects widely unlike. Shaftesbury was
-temperamentally a Stoic whose fragile constitution involved a perpetual
-endeavour to mould life to the form of his ideal. And if we go back to
-Marcus Aurelius we find an austere and heroic man whose whole life, as
-we trace it in his “Meditations,” was a splendid struggle, a man
-who—even, it seems, unconsciously—had adopted the æsthetic criterion of
-moral goodness and the artistic conception of moral action. Dancing and
-wrestling express to his eyes the activity of the man who is striving to
-live, and the goodness of moral actions instinctively appears to him as
-the beauty of natural objects; it is to Marcus Aurelius that we owe that
-immortal utterance of æsthetic intuitionism: “As though the emerald
-should say: ‘Whatever happens I must be emerald.’” There could be no man
-more unlike the Roman Emperor, or in any more remote field of action,
-than the French saint and philanthropist Vincent de Paul. At once a
-genuine Christian mystic and a very wise and marvellously effective man
-of action, Vincent de Paul adopts precisely the same simile of the moral
-attitude that had long before been put forth by Plotinus and in the next
-century was again to be taken up by Shaftesbury: “My daughters,” he
-wrote to the Sisters of Charity, “we are each like a block of stone
-which is to be transferred into a statue. What must the sculptor do to
-carry out his design? First of all he must take the hammer and chip off
-all that he does not need. For this purpose he strikes the stone so
-violently that if you were watching him you would say he intended to
-break it to pieces. Then, when he has got rid of the rougher parts, he
-takes a smaller hammer, and afterwards a chisel, to begin the face with
-all the features. When that has taken form, he uses other and finer
-tools to bring it to that perfection he has intended for his statue.” If
-we desire to find a spiritual artist as unlike as possible to Vincent de
-Paul we may take Nietzsche. Alien as any man could ever be to a cheap or
-superficial vision of the moral life, and far too intellectually keen to
-confuse moral problems with purely æsthetic problems, Nietzsche, when
-faced by the problem of living, sets himself—almost as instinctively as
-Marcus Aurelius or Vincent de Paul—at the standpoint of art. “Alles
-Leben ist Streit um Geschmack und Schmecken.” It is a crucial passage in
-“Zarathustra”: “All life is a dispute about taste and tasting! Taste:
-that is weight and at the same time scales and weigher; and woe to all
-living things that would live without dispute about weight and scales
-and weigher!” For this gospel of taste is no easy gospel. A man must
-make himself a work of art, Nietzsche again and again declares, moulded
-into beauty by suffering, for such art is the highest morality, the
-morality of the Creator.
-
-There is a certain indefiniteness about the conception of morality as an
-artistic impulse, to be judged by an æsthetic criterion, which is
-profoundly repugnant to at least two classes of minds fully entitled to
-make their antipathy felt. In the first place, it makes no appeal to the
-abstract reasoner, indifferent to the manifoldly concrete problems of
-living. For the man whose brain is hypertrophied and his practical life
-shrivelled to an insignificant routine—the man of whom Kant is the
-supreme type—it is always a temptation to rationalise morality. Such a
-pure intellectualist, overlooking the fact that human beings are not
-mathematical figures, may even desire to transform ethics into a species
-of geometry. That we may see in Spinoza, a nobler and more inspiring
-figure, no doubt, but of the same temperament as Kant. The impulses and
-desires of ordinary men and women are manifold, inconstant, often
-conflicting, and sometimes overwhelming. “Morality is a fact of
-sensibility,” remarks Jules de Gaultier; “it has no need to have
-recourse to reason for its affirmations.” But to men of the
-intellectualist type this consideration is almost negligible; all the
-passions and affections of humanity seem to them meek as sheep which
-they may shepherd, and pen within the flimsiest hurdles. William Blake,
-who could cut down to that central core of the world where all things
-are fused together, knew better when he said that the only golden rule
-of life is “the great and golden rule of art.” James Hinton was for ever
-expatiating on the close resemblance between the methods of art, as
-shown especially in painting, and the methods of moral action. Thoreau,
-who also belonged to this tribe, declared, in the same spirit as Blake,
-that there is no golden rule in morals, for rules are only current
-silver; “it is golden not to have any rule at all.”
-
-There is another quite different type of person who shares this
-antipathy to the indefiniteness of æsthetic morality: the ambitious
-moral reformer. The man of this class is usually by no means devoid of
-strong passions; but for the most part he possesses no great
-intellectual calibre and so is unable to estimate the force and
-complexity of human impulses. The moral reformer, eager to introduce the
-millennium here and now by the aid of the newest mechanical devices, is
-righteously indignant with anything so vague as an æsthetic morality. He
-must have definite rules and regulations, clear-cut laws and by-laws,
-with an arbitrary list of penalties attached, to be duly inflicted in
-this world or the next. The popular conception of Moses, descending from
-the sacred mount with a brand-new table of commandments, which he
-declares have been delivered to him by God, though he is ready to smash
-them to pieces on the slightest provocation, furnishes a delightful
-image of the typical moral reformer of every age. It is, however, only
-in savage and barbarous stages of society, or among the uncultivated
-classes of civilisation, that the men of this type can find their
-faithful followers.
-
-Yet there is more to be said. That very indefiniteness of the criterion
-of moral action, falsely supposed to be a disadvantage, is really the
-prime condition for effective moral action. The academic philosophers of
-ethics, had they possessed virility enough to enter the field of real
-life, would have realised—as we cannot expect the moral reformers
-blinded by the smoke of their own fanaticism to realise—that the slavery
-to rigid formulas which they preached was the death of all high moral
-responsibility. Life must always be a great adventure, with risks on
-every hand; a clear-sighted eye, a many-sided sympathy, a fine daring,
-an endless patience, are for ever necessary to all good living. With
-such qualities alone may the artist in life reach success; without them
-even the most devoted slave to formulas can only meet disaster. No
-reasonable moral being may draw breath in the world without an open-eyed
-freedom of choice, and if the moral world is to be governed by laws,
-better to people it with automatic machines than with living men and
-women.
-
-In our human world the precision of mechanism is for ever impossible.
-The indefiniteness of morality is a part of its necessary imperfection.
-There is not only room in morality for the high aspiration, the
-courageous decision, the tonic thrill of the muscles of the soul, but we
-have to admit also sacrifice and pain. The lesser good, our own or that
-of others, is merged in a larger good, and that cannot be without some
-rending of the heart. So all moral action, however in the end it may be
-justified by its harmony and balance, is in the making cruel and in a
-sense even immoral. Therein lies the final justification of the æsthetic
-conception of morality. It opens a wider perspective and reveals loftier
-standpoints; it shows how the seeming loss is part of an ultimate gain,
-so restoring that harmony and beauty which the unintelligent partisans
-of a hard and barren duty so often destroy for ever. “Art,” as Paulhan
-declares, “is often more moral than morality itself.” Or, as Jules de
-Gaultier holds, “Art is in a certain sense the only morality which life
-admits.” In so far as we can infuse it with the spirit and method of
-art, we have transformed morality into something beyond morality; it has
-become the complete embodiment of the Dance of Life.
-
-Footnote 89:
-
-  What we call crime is, at the beginning, usually an effort to get, or
-  to pretend to get, into step, but, being a violent or miscalculated
-  effort, it is liable to fail, and the criminal falls to the rear of
-  the social army. “I believe that most murders are really committed by
-  Mrs. Grundy,” a woman writes to me, and, with the due qualification,
-  the saying is worthy of meditation. That is why justice is impotent to
-  prevent or even to punish murder, for Mrs. Grundy is within all of us,
-  being a part of the social discipline, and cannot be hanged.
-
-Footnote 90:
-
-  Herbert Spencer, writing to a correspondent, once well expressed the
-  harmlessness—if we choose so to regard it—of moral teaching: “After
-  nearly two thousand years’ preaching of the religion of amity, the
-  religion of enmity remains predominant, and Europe is peopled by two
-  hundred million pagans, masquerading as Christians, who revile those
-  who wish them to act on the principles they profess.”
-
-Footnote 91:
-
-  But later asceticism was strictly the outcome of a Greek tendency, to
-  be traced in Plato, developed through Antisthenes, through Zeno,
-  through Epictetus, who all desired to liberate the soul from the bonds
-  of matter. The Neo-Platonists carried this tendency further, for in
-  their time, the prevailing anarchy and confusion rendered the world
-  and society less than ever a fitting haven for the soul. It was not
-  Christianity that made the world ascetic (and there were elements of
-  hedonism in the teaching of Jesus), but the world that made
-  Christianity ascetic, and it was easy for a Christian to become a
-  Neo-Platonist, for they were both being moulded by the same forces.
-
-Footnote 92:
-
-  Maurice Croiset devotes a few luminous critical pages to Plotinus in
-  the Croisets’ _Histoire de la Littérature Grecque_, vol. V, pp.
-  820-31. As an extended account of Plotinus, from a more
-  enthusiastically sympathetic standpoint, there are Dr. Inge’s
-  well-known Gifford Lectures, _The Philosophy of Plotinus_ (1918); I
-  may also mention a careful scholastic study, _L’Esthétique de Plotin_
-  (1913), by Cochez, of Louvain, who regards Plotinus as the climax of
-  the objective æsthetics of antiquity and the beginning of the road to
-  modern subjective æsthetics.
-
-Footnote 93:
-
-  _Ennead_, bk. III, chap. VI. I have mostly followed the translation of
-  Stephen McKenna.
-
-Footnote 94:
-
-  St. Augustine, _De Civitate Dei_, bk. IV, chap. XXI.
-
-Footnote 95:
-
-  Kant was habitually cold and calm. But he was very fond of dried
-  fruits and used to have them specially imported for him by his friend
-  Motherby. “At one time he was eagerly expecting a vessel with French
-  fruits which he had ordered, and he had already invited some friends
-  to a dinner at which they were to be served. The vessel was, however,
-  delayed a number of days by a storm. When it arrived, Kant was
-  informed that the provisions had become short on account of the delay,
-  and that the crew had eaten his fruit. Kant was so angry that he
-  declared they ought rather to have starved than to have touched it.
-  Surprised at this irritation, Motherby said, ‘Professor, you cannot be
-  in earnest.’ Kant answered, ‘I am really in earnest,’ and went away.
-  Afterwards he was sorry.” (Quoted by Stuckenberg, _The Life of Kant_,
-  p. 138.) But still it was quite in accordance with Kantian morality
-  that the sailors should have starved.
-
-Footnote 96:
-
-  Georg von Gizycki, _Die Ethik David Hume’s_, p. 11.
-
-Footnote 97:
-
-  F. C. Sharp, _Mind_ (1912), p. 388.
-
-Footnote 98:
-
-  Shaftesbury held that Locke swept away too much and failed to allow
-  for inborn instincts (or “senses,” as he sometimes called them)
-  developing naturally. We now see that he was right.
-
-Footnote 99:
-
-  There is no need to refer to the value of salt, and therefore the
-  appreciation of the flavour of salt, to primitive people. Still
-  to-day, in Spain, _sal_ (salt) is popularly used for a more or less
-  intellectual and moral quality which is highly admired.
-
-Footnote 100:
-
-  Dr. C. S. Myers has touched on this point in _Reports of the Cambridge
-  Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. II, part II, chap.
-  IV; also “The Taste-Names of Primitive Peoples,” _British Journal of
-  Psychology_, June, 1904.
-
-Footnote 101:
-
-  Dr. Georg von Gizycki, _Die Philosophie Shaftesbury’s_ (1876); and the
-  same author’s _Die Ethik David Hume’s_ (1878).
-
-Footnote 102:
-
-  It should be added that Croce is himself moving in this direction, and
-  in, for instance, _Il Carattere di Totalità della Espressione
-  Artistica_ (1917), he recognises the universality of art.
-
-Footnote 103:
-
-  Stanley Hall remarks in criticising Kant’s moral æsthetics: “The
-  beauty of virtue is only seen in contemplating it and the act of doing
-  it has no beauty to the doer at the moment.” (G. Stanley Hall, “Why
-  Kant is Passing,” _American Journal of Psychology_, July, 1912.)
-
-Footnote 104:
-
-  See article on Arbuckle by W. R. Scott in _Mind_, April, 1899.
-
-Footnote 105:
-
-  See a helpful paper by M. F. Libby, “Influence of the Idea of Æsthetic
-  Proportion on the Ethics of Shaftesbury,” _American Journal of
-  Psychology_, May-October, 1901.
-
-Footnote 106:
-
-  We find fallacious criticism of the “moral sense” down to almost
-  recent times, in, for instance, McDougall’s _Social Psychology_, even
-  though McDougall, by his insistence on the instinctive basis of
-  morality, was himself carrying on the tradition of Shaftesbury and
-  Hutcheson. But McDougall also dragged in “some prescribed code of
-  conduct,” though he neglected to mention who is to “prescribe” it.
-
-Footnote 107:
-
-  See W. R. Scott, _Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position
-  in the History of Philosophy_. (1900.)
-
-Footnote 108:
-
-  It is noteworthy, however, that the æsthetic view of morals has had
-  advocates, not only among the more latitudinarian Protestants, but in
-  Catholicism. A few years ago the Reverend Dr. Kolbe published a book
-  on _The Art of Life_, designed to show that just as the sculptor works
-  with hammer and chisel to shape a block of marble into a form of
-  beauty, so Man, by the power of grace, the illumination of faith, and
-  the instrument of prayer, works to transform his soul. But this simile
-  of the sculptor, which has appealed so strongly alike to Christian and
-  anti-Christian moralists, proceeds, whether or not they knew it, from
-  Plotinus, who, in his famous chapter on Beauty, bids us note the
-  sculptor. “He cuts away here, he smooths there, he makes this line
-  lighter, this other purer, until a living face has grown upon his
-  work. So do you also cut away all that is excessive, straighten all
-  that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, make all one
-  glow of beauty, and never cease chiselling your statue until the
-  godlike splendour shines on you from it, and the perfect goodness
-  stands, surely, in the stainless shrine.”
-
-Footnote 109:
-
-  “They who pitched the goal of their aspiration so high knew that the
-  paths leading up to it were rough and steep and long,” remarks A. W.
-  Benn (_The Greek Philosophers_, 1914, p. 57); “they said ‘the
-  beautiful is hard’—hard to judge, hard to win, hard to keep.”
-
-Footnote 110:
-
-  _Der Wille zur Macht_, p. 358.
-
-Footnote 111:
-
-  Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton_, 1918.
-
-Footnote 112:
-
-  This has been well seen by Jules de Gaultier: “The joys and the
-  sorrows which fill life are, the one and the other,” he says (_La
-  Dépendance de la Morale et l’Indépendance des Mœurs_, p. 340),
-  “elements of spectacular interest, and without the mixture of both
-  that interest would be abolished. To make of the representative worth
-  of phenomena their justification in view of a spectacular end alone,
-  avoids the objection by which the moral thesis is faced, the fact of
-  pain. Pain becomes, on the contrary, the correlative of pleasure, an
-  indispensable means for its realization. Such a thesis is in agreement
-  with the nature of things, instead of being wounded by their
-  existence.”
-
-
-
-
-                              CHAPTER VII
-                               CONCLUSION
-
-
-                                   I
-
-
-LIFE, we have seen, may be regarded as an art. But we cannot help
-seeking to measure, quantitatively if not qualitatively, our mode of
-life. We do so, for the most part, instinctively rather than
-scientifically. It gratifies us to imagine that, as a race, we have
-reached a point on the road of progress beyond that vouchsafed to our
-benighted predecessors, and that, as individuals or as nations, it is
-given to us, fortunately,—or, rather, through our superior merits,—to
-enjoy a finer degree of civilisation than the individuals and the
-nations around us. This feeling has been common to most or all branches
-of the human race. In the classic world of antiquity they called
-outsiders, indiscriminately, “barbarians”—a denomination which took on
-an increasingly depreciative sense; and even the lowest savages
-sometimes call their own tribe by a word which means “men,” thereby
-implying that all other peoples are not worthy of the name.
-
-But in recent centuries there has been an attempt to be more precise, to
-give definite values to the feeling within us. All sorts of dogmatic
-standards have been set up by which to measure the degree of a people’s
-civilisation. The development of demography and social statistics in
-civilised countries during the past century should, it has seemed,
-render such comparison easy. Yet the more carefully we look into the
-nature of these standards the more dubious they become. On the one hand,
-civilisation is so complex that no one test furnishes an adequate
-standard. On the other hand, the methods of statistics are so variable
-and uncertain, so apt to be influenced by circumstance, that it is never
-possible to be sure that one is operating with figures of equal weight.
-
-Recently this has been well and elaborately shown by Professor Niceforo,
-the Italian sociologist and statistician.[113] It is to be remembered
-that Niceforo has himself been a daring pioneer in the measurement of
-life. He has applied the statistical method not only to the natural and
-social sciences, but even to art, especially literature. When,
-therefore, he discusses the whole question of the validity of the
-measurement of civilisation, his conclusions deserve respect. They are
-the more worthy of consideration since his originality in the
-statistical field is balanced by his learning, and it is not easy to
-recall any scientific attempts in this field which he has failed to
-mention somewhere in his book, if only in a footnote.
-
-The difficulties begin at the outset, and might well serve to bar even
-the entrance to discussion. We want to measure the height to which we
-have been able to build our “civilisation” towards the skies; we want to
-measure the progress we have made in our great dance of life towards the
-unknown future goal, and we have no idea what either “civilisation” or
-“progress” means.[114] This difficulty is so crucial, for it involves
-the very essence of the matter, that it is better to place it aside and
-simply go ahead, without deciding, for the present, precisely what the
-ultimate significance of the measurements we can make may prove to be.
-Quite sufficient other difficulties await us.
-
-There is, first of all, the bewildering number of social phenomena we
-can now attempt to measure. Two centuries ago there were no comparable
-sets of figures whereby to measure one community against another
-community, though at the end of the eighteenth century Boisguillebert
-was already speaking of the possibility of constructing a “barometer of
-prosperity.” Even the most elementary measurable fact of all, the
-numbering of peoples, was carried out so casually and imperfectly and
-indirectly, if at all, that its growth and extent could hardly be
-compared with profit in any two nations. As the life of a community
-increases in stability and orderliness and organisation, registration
-incidentally grows elaborate, and thereby the possibility of the
-by-product of statistics. This aspect of social life began to become
-pronounced during the nineteenth century, and it was in the middle of
-that century that Quetelet appeared, by no means as the first to use
-social statistics, but the first great pioneer in the manipulation of
-such figures in a scientific manner, with a large and philosophical
-outlook on their real significance.[115] Since then the possible number
-of such means of numerical comparison has much increased. The difficulty
-now is to know which are the most truly indicative of real superiority.
-
-But before we consider that, again even at the outset, there is another
-difficulty. Our apparently comparable figures are often not really
-comparable. Each country or province or town puts forth its own sets of
-statistics and each set may be quite comparable within itself. But when
-we begin critically to compare one set with another set, all sorts of
-fallacies appear. We have to allow, not only for varying accuracy and
-completeness, but for difference of method in collecting and registering
-the facts, and for all sorts of qualifying circumstances which may exist
-at one place or time, and not at other places or times with which we are
-seeking comparison.
-
-The word “civilisation” is of recent formation. It came from France, but
-even in France in a Dictionary of 1727 it cannot be found, though the
-verb _civiliser_ existed as far back as 1694, meaning to polish manners,
-to render sociable, to become urbane, one might say, as a result of
-becoming urban, of living as a citizen in cities. We have to recognise,
-of course, that the idea of civilisation is relative; that any community
-and any age has its own civilisation, and its own ideals of
-civilisation. But, that assumed, we may provisionally assert—and we
-shall be in general accordance with Niceforo—that, in its most
-comprehensive sense, the art of civilisation includes the three groups
-of _material_ facts, _intellectual_ facts, and _moral_ (with
-_political_) facts, so covering all the essential facts in our life.
-
-Material facts, which we are apt to consider the most easily measurable,
-include quantity and distribution of population, production of wealth,
-the consumption of food and luxuries, the standard of life. Intellectual
-facts include both the diffusion and degree of instruction and creative
-activity in genius. Moral facts include the prevalence of honesty,
-justice, pity, and self-sacrifice, the position of women and the care of
-children. They are the most important of all for the quality of a
-civilisation. Voltaire pointed out that “pity and justice are the
-foundations of society,” and, long previously, Pericles in Thucydides
-described the degradation of the Peloponnesians among whom every one
-thinks only of his own advantage, and every one believes that his own
-negligence of other things will pass unperceived. Plato in his
-“Republic” made justice the foundation of harmony in the outer life and
-the inner life, while in modern times various philosophers, like
-Shadworth Hodgson, have emphasised that doctrine of Plato’s. The whole
-art of government comes under this head and the whole treatment of human
-personality.
-
-The comparative prevalence of criminality has long been the test most
-complacently adopted by those who seek to measure civilisation on its
-moral and most fundamental aspect. Crime is merely a name for the most
-obvious, extreme, and directly dangerous forms of what we call
-immorality—that is to say, departure from the norm in manners and
-customs. Therefore the highest civilisation is that with the least
-crime. But is it so? The more carefully we look into the matter, the
-more difficult it becomes to apply this test. We find that even at the
-outset. Every civilised community has its own way of dealing with
-criminal statistics and the discrepancies thus introduced are so great
-that this fact alone makes comparisons almost impossible. It is scarcely
-necessary to point out that varying skill and thoroughness in the
-detection of crime, and varying severity in the attitude towards it,
-necessarily count for much. Of not less significance is the legislative
-activity of the community; the greater the number of laws, the greater
-the number of offences against them. If, for instance, Prohibition is
-introduced into a country, the amount of delinquency in that country is
-enormously increased, but it would be rash to assert that the country
-has thereby been sensibly lowered in the scale of civilisation. To avoid
-this difficulty, it has been proposed to take into consideration only
-what are called “natural crimes”; that is, those everywhere regarded as
-punishable. But, even then, there is a still more disconcerting
-consideration. For, after all, the criminality of a country is a
-by-product of its energy in business and in the whole conduct of
-affairs. It is a poisonous excretion, but excretion is the measure of
-vital metabolism. There are, moreover, the so-called evolutive social
-crimes, which spring from motives not lower but higher than those ruling
-the society in which they arise.[116] Therefore, we cannot be sure that
-we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some
-aspects possesses the highest civilisation.
-
-Let us turn to the intellectual aspect of civilisation. Here we have at
-least two highly important and quite fairly measurable facts to
-consider: the production of creative genius and the degree and diffusion
-of general instruction. If we consider the matter abstractly, it is
-highly probable that we shall declare that no civilisation can be worth
-while unless it is rich in creative genius and unless the population
-generally exhibits a sufficiently cultured level of education out of
-which such genius may arise freely and into which the seeds it produces
-may fruitfully fall. Yet, what do we find? Alike, whether we go back to
-the earliest civilisations we have definite information about or turn to
-the latest stages of civilisation we know to-day, we fail to see any
-correspondence between these two essential conditions of civilisation.
-Among peoples in a low state of culture, among savages generally, such
-instruction and education as exists really is generally diffused; every
-member of the community is initiated into the tribal traditions; yet, no
-observers of such peoples seem to note the emergence of individuals of
-strikingly productive genius. That, so far as we know, began to appear,
-and, indeed, in marvellous variety and excellence, in Greece, and the
-civilisation of Greece (as later the more powerful but coarser
-civilisation of Rome) was built up on a broad basis of slavery, which
-nowadays—except, of course, when disguised as industry—we no longer
-regard as compatible with high civilisation.
-
-Ancient Greece, indeed, may suggest to us to ask whether the genius of a
-country be not directly opposed to the temper of the population of that
-country, and its “leaders” really be its outcasts. (Some believe that
-many, if not all, countries of to-day might serve to suggest the same
-question.) If we want to imagine the real spirit of Greece, we may have
-to think of a figure with a touch of Ulysses, indeed, but with more of
-Thersites.[117] The Greeks who interest us to-day were exceptional
-people, usually imprisoned, exiled, or slain by the more truly
-representative Greeks of their time. When Plato and the others set forth
-so persistently an ideal of wise moderation they were really putting
-up—and in vain—a supplication for mercy to a people who, as they had
-good ground for realising, knew nothing of wisdom, and scoffed at
-moderation, and were mainly inspired by ferocity and intrigue.
-
-To turn to a more recent example, consider the splendid efflorescence of
-genius in Russia during the central years of the last century, still a
-vivifying influence on the literature and music of the world; yet the
-population of Russia had only just been delivered, nominally at least,
-from serfdom, and still remained at the intellectual and economic level
-of serfs. To-day, education has become diffused in the Western world.
-Yet no one would dream of asserting that genius is more prevalent.
-Consider the United States, for instance, during the past half-century.
-It would surely be hard to find any country, except Germany, where
-education is more highly esteemed or better understood, and where
-instruction is more widely diffused. Yet, so far as the production of
-high original genius is concerned, an old Italian city, like Florence,
-with a few thousand inhabitants, had far more to show than all the
-United States put together. So that we are at a loss how to apply the
-intellectual test to the measurement of civilisation. It would almost
-seem that the two essential elements of this test are mutually
-incompatible.
-
-Let us fall back on the simple solid fundamental test furnished by the
-material aspect of civilisation. Here we are among elementary facts and
-the first that began to be measured. Yet our difficulties, instead of
-diminishing, rather increase. It is here, too, that we chiefly meet with
-what Niceforo has called “the paradoxical symptoms of superiority in
-progress,” though I should prefer to call them ambivalent; that is to
-say, that, while from one point of view they indicate superiority, from
-another, even though some may call it a lower point of view, they appear
-to indicate inferiority. This is well illustrated by the test of growth
-of population, or the height of the birth-rate, better by the birth-rate
-considered in relation to the death-rate, for they cannot be
-intelligibly considered apart. The law of Nature is reproduction, and if
-an intellectual rabbit were able to study human civilisation he would
-undoubtedly regard rapidity of multiplication, in which he has himself
-attained so high a degree of proficiency, as evidence of progress in
-civilisation. In fact, as we know, there are even human beings who take
-the same view, whence we have what has been termed “Rabbitism” in men.
-Yet, if anything is clear in this obscure field, it is that the whole
-tendency of evolution is towards a diminishing birth-rate.[118] The most
-civilised countries everywhere, and the most civilised people in them,
-are those with the lowest birth-rate. Therefore, we have here to measure
-the height of civilisation by a test which, if carried to an extreme,
-would mean the disappearance of civilisation. Another such ambivalent
-test is the consumption of luxuries of which alcohol and tobacco are the
-types. There is held to be no surer test of civilisation than the
-increase per head of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcohol
-and tobacco are recognisably poisons, so that their consumption has only
-to be carried far enough to destroy civilisation altogether. Again, take
-the prevalence of suicide. That, without doubt, is a test of height in
-civilisation; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and
-intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it
-snaps. We should be justified in regarding as very questionable a high
-civilisation which failed to show a high suicide-rate. Yet suicide is
-the sign of failure, misery, and despair. How can we regard the
-prevalence of failure, misery, and despair as the mark of high
-civilisation?
-
-Thus, whichever of the three groups of facts we attempt to measure, it
-appears on examination almost hopelessly complex. We have to try to make
-our methods correspondingly complex. Niceforo had invoked co-variation,
-or simultaneous and sympathetic changes in various factors of
-civilisation; he explains the index number, and he appeals to
-mathematics for aid out of the difficulties. He also attempts to
-combine, with the help of diagrams, a single picture out of these
-awkward and contradictory tests. The example he gives is that of France
-during the fifty years preceding the war. It is an interesting example
-because there is reason to consider France as, in some respects, the
-most highly civilised of countries. What are the chief significant
-measurable marks of this superiority? Niceforo selects about a dozen,
-and, avoiding the difficult attempt to compare France with other
-countries, he confines himself to the more easily practicable task of
-ascertaining whether, or in what respects, the general art of
-civilisation in France, the movement of the collective life, has been
-upward or downward. When the different categories are translated,
-according to recognised methods, into index numbers, taking the original
-figures from the official “Résumé” of French statistics, it is found
-that each line of movement follows throughout the same direction, though
-often in zigzag fashion, and never turns back on itself. In this way it
-appears that the consumption of coal has been more than doubled, the
-consumption of luxuries (sugar, coffee, alcohol) nearly doubled, the
-consumption of food per head (as tested by cheese and potatoes) also
-increasing. Suicide has increased fifty per cent; wealth has increased
-slightly and irregularly; the upward movement of population has been
-extremely slight and partly due to immigration; the death-rate has
-fallen, though not so much as the birth-rate; the number of persons
-convicted of offence by the courts has fallen; the proportion of
-illiterate persons has diminished; divorces have greatly increased, and
-also the number of syndicalist workers, but these two movements are of
-comparative recent growth.
-
-This example well shows what it is possible to do by the most easily
-available and generally accepted tests by which to measure the progress
-of a community in the art of civilisation. Every one of the tests
-applied to France reveals an upward tendency of civilisation, though
-some of them, such as the fall in the death-rate, are not strongly
-pronounced and much smaller than may be found in many other countries.
-Yet, at the same time, while we have to admit that each of these lines
-of movement indicates an upward tendency of civilisation, it by no means
-follows that we can view them all with complete satisfaction. It may
-even be said that some of them have only to be carried further in order
-to indicate dissolution and decay. The consumption of luxuries, for
-instance, as already noted, is the consumption of poisons. The increase
-of wealth means little unless we take into account its distribution. The
-increase of syndicalism, while it is a sign of increased independence,
-intelligence, and social aspiration among the workers, is also a sign
-that the social system is becoming regarded as unsound. So that, while
-all these tests may be said to indicate a rising civilisation, they yet
-do not invalidate the wise conclusion of Niceforo that a civilisation is
-never an exclusive mass of benefits, but a mass of values, positive and
-negative, and it may even be said that most often the conquest of a
-benefit in one domain of a civilisation brings into another domain of
-that civilisation inevitable evils. Long ago, Montesquieu had spoken of
-the evils of civilisation and left the question of the value of
-civilisation open, while Rousseau, more passionately, had decided
-against civilisation.
-
-We see the whole question from another point, yet not incongruously,
-when we turn to Professor William McDougall’s Lowell Lectures, “Is
-America Safe for Democracy?” since republished under the more general
-title “National Welfare and National Decay,” for the author recognises
-that the questions he deals with go to the root of all high
-civilisation. As he truly observes, civilisation grows constantly more
-complex and also less subject to the automatically balancing influence
-of national selection, more dependent for its stability on our
-constantly regulative and foreseeing control. Yet, while the
-intellectual task placed upon us is ever growing heavier, our brains are
-not growing correspondingly heavier to bear it. There is, as Remy de
-Gourmont often pointed out, no good reason to suppose that we are in any
-way innately superior to our savage ancestors, who had at least as good
-physical constitutions and at least as large brains. The result is that
-the small minority among us which alone can attempt to cope with our
-complexly developing civilisation comes to the top by means of what
-Arsène Dumont called social capillarity, and McDougall the social
-ladder. The small upper stratum is of high quality, the large lower
-stratum of poor quality, and with a tendency to feeble-mindedness. It is
-to this large lower stratum that, with our democratic tendencies, we
-assign the political and other guidance of the community, and it is this
-lower stratum which has the higher birth-rate, since with all high
-civilisation the normal birth-rate is low.[119] McDougall is not
-concerned with the precise measurement of civilisation, and may not be
-familiar with the attempts that have been made in that direction. It is
-his object to point out the necessity in high civilisation for a
-deliberate and purposive art of eugenics, if we would prevent the
-eventual shipwreck of civilisation. But we see how his conclusions
-emphasise those difficulties in the measurement of civilisation which
-Niceforo has so clearly set forth.
-
-McDougall is repeating what many, especially among eugenists, have
-previously said. While not disputing the element of truth in the facts
-and arguments brought forward from this side, it may be pointed out that
-they are often overstated. This has been well argued by Carr-Saunders in
-his valuable and almost monumental work, “The Population Problem,” and
-his opinion is the more worthy of attention as he is himself a worker in
-the cause of eugenics. He points out that the social ladder is, after
-all, hard to climb, and that it only removes a few individuals from the
-lower social stratum, while among those who thus climb, even though they
-do not sink back, regression to the mean is ever in operation so that
-they do not greatly enrich in the end the class they have climbed up to.
-Moreover, as Carr-Saunders pertinently asks, are we so sure that the
-qualities that mark successful climbers—self-assertion, acquisition,
-emulation—are highly desirable? “It may even be,” he adds, “that we
-might view a diminution in the average strength of some of the qualities
-which mark the successful at least with equanimity.” Taken altogether,
-it would seem that the differences between social classes may mainly be
-explained by environmental influences. There is, however, ground to
-recognise a slight intellectual superiority in the upper social class,
-apart from environment, and so great is the significance for
-civilisation of quality that even when the difference seems slight it
-must not be regarded as negligible.[120]
-
-More than half a century ago, indeed, George Sand pointed out that we
-must distinguish between the civilisation of _quantity_ and the
-civilisation of _quality_. As the great Morgagni had said much earlier,
-it is not enough to count, we must evaluate; “observations are not to be
-numbered, they are to be weighed.” It is not the biggest things that are
-the most civilised things. The largest structures of Hindu or Egyptian
-art are outweighed by the temples on the Acropolis of Athens, and
-similarly, as Bryce, who had studied the matter so thoroughly, was wont
-to insist, it is the smallest democracies which to-day stand highest in
-the scale. We have seen that there is much in civilisation which we may
-profitably measure, yet, when we seek to scale the last heights of
-civilisation, the ladder of our “metrology” comes to grief. “The methods
-of the mind are too weak,” as Comte said, “and the Universe is too
-complex.” Life, even the life of the civilised community, is an art, and
-the too much is as fatal as the too little. We may say of civilisation,
-as Renan said of truth, that it lies in a _nuance_. Gumplowicz believed
-that civilisation is the beginning of disease; Arsène Dumont thought
-that it inevitably held within itself a toxic principle, a principle by
-which it is itself in time poisoned. The more rapidly a civilisation
-progresses, the sooner it dies for another to arise in its place. That
-may not seem to every one a cheerful prospect. Yet, if our civilisation
-has failed to enable us to look further than our own egoistic ends, what
-has our civilisation been worth?
-
-
-                                   II
-
-
-THE attempt to apply measurement to civilisation is, therefore, a
-failure. That is, indeed, only another way of saying that civilisation,
-the whole manifold web of life, is an art. We may dissect out a vast
-number of separate threads and measure them. It is quite worth while to
-do so. But the results of such anatomical investigation admit of the
-most diverse interpretation, and, at the best, can furnish no adequate
-criterion of the worth of a complex living civilisation.
-
-Yet, although there is no precise measurement of the total value of any
-large form of life, we can still make an estimate of its value. We can
-approach it, that is to say, as a work of art. We can even reach a
-certain approximation to agreement in the formation of such estimates.
-
-When Protagoras said that “Man is the measure of all things,” he uttered
-a dictum which has been variously interpreted, but from the standpoint
-we have now reached, from which Man is seen to be preëminently an
-artist, it is a monition to us that we cannot to the measurement of life
-apply our instruments of precision, and cut life down to their graduated
-marks. They have, indeed, their immensely valuable uses, but it is
-strictly as instruments and not as ends of living or criteria of the
-worth of life. It is in the failure to grasp this that the human tragedy
-has often consisted, and for over two thousand years the dictum of
-Protagoras has been held up for the pacification of that tragedy, for
-the most part, in vain. Protagoras was one of those “Sophists” who have
-been presented to our contempt in absurd traditional shapes ever since
-Plato caricatured them—though it may well be that some, as, it has been
-suggested, Gorgias, may have given colour to the caricature—and it is
-only to-day that it is possible to declare that we must place the names
-of Protagoras, of Prodicus, of Hippias, even of Gorgias, beside those of
-Herodotus, Pindar, and Pericles.[121]
-
-It is in the sphere of morals that the conflict has often been most
-poignant. I have already tried to indicate how revolutionary is the
-change which the thoughts of many have had to undergo. This struggle of
-a living and flexible and growing morality against a morality that is
-rigid and inflexible and dead has at some periods of human history been
-almost dramatically presented. It was so in the seventeenth century
-around the new moral discoveries of the Jesuits; and the Jesuits were
-rewarded by becoming almost until to-day a by-word for all that is
-morally poisonous and crooked and false—for all that is “Jesuitical.”
-There was once a great quarrel between the Jesuits and the Jansenists—a
-quarrel which is scarcely dead yet, for all Christendom took sides in
-it—and the Jansenists had the supreme good fortune to entrap on their
-side a great man of genius whose onslaught on the Jesuits, “Les
-Provinciales,” is even still supposed by many people to have settled the
-question. They are allowed so to suppose because no one now reads “Les
-Provinciales.” But Remy de Gourmont, who was not only a student of
-unread books but a powerfully live thinker, read “Les Provinciales,” and
-found, as he set forth in “Le Chemin de Velours,” that it was the
-Jesuits who were more nearly in the right, more truly on the road of
-advance, than Pascal. As Gourmont showed by citation, there were Jesuit
-doctrines put forth by Pascal with rhetorical irony as though the mere
-statement sufficed to condemn them, which need only to be liberated from
-their irony, and we might nowadays add to them. Thus spake Zarathustra.
-Pascal was a geometrician who (though he, indeed, once wrote in his
-“Pensées”: “There is no general rule”) desired to deal with the
-variable, obscure, and unstable complexities of human action as though
-they were problems in mathematics. But the Jesuits, while it is true
-that they still accepted the existence of absolute rules, realised that
-rules must be made adjustable to the varying needs of life. They thus
-became the pioneers of many conceptions which are accepted in modern
-practice.[122] Their doctrine of invincible ignorance was a discovery of
-that kind, forecasting some of the opinions now held regarding
-responsibility. But in that age, as Gourmont pointed out, “to proclaim
-that there might be a sin or an offence without guilty parties was an
-act of intellectual audacity, as well as scientific probity.” Nowadays
-the Jesuits (together, it is interesting to note, with their baroque
-architecture) are coming into credit, and casuistry again seems
-reputable. To establish that there can be no single inflexible moral
-code for all individuals has been, and indeed remains, a difficult and
-delicate task, yet the more profoundly one considers it, the more
-clearly it becomes visible that what once seemed a dead and rigid code
-of morality must more and more become a living act of casuistry. The
-Jesuits, because they had a glimmer of this truth, represented, as
-Gourmont concluded, the honest and most acceptable part of Christianity,
-responding to the necessities of life, and were rendering a service to
-civilisation which we should never forget.
-
-There are some who may not very cordially go to the Jesuits as an
-example of the effort to liberate men from the burden of a subservience
-to rigid little rules, towards the unification of life as an active
-process, however influential they may be admitted to be among the
-pioneers of that movement. Yet we may turn in what direction we will, we
-shall perpetually find the same movement under other disguises. There
-is, for instance, Mr. Bertrand Russell, who is, for many, the most
-interesting and stimulating thinker to be found in England to-day. He
-might scarcely desire to be associated with the Jesuits. Yet he also
-seeks to unify life and even in an essentially religious spirit. His way
-of putting this, in his “Principles of Social Reconstruction,” is to
-state that man’s impulses may be divided into those that are creative
-and those that are possessive, that is to say, concerned with
-acquisition. The impulses of the second class are a source of inner and
-outer disharmony and they involve conflict; “it is preoccupation with
-possessions more than anything else that prevents men from living freely
-and nobly”; it is the creative impulse in which real life consists, and
-“the typical creative impulse is that of the artist.” Now this
-conception (which was that Plato assigned to the “guardians” in his
-communistic State) may be a little too narrowly religious for those
-whose position in life renders a certain “preoccupation with
-possessions” inevitable; it is useless to expect us all to become, at
-present, fakirs and Franciscans, “counting nothing one’s own, save only
-one’s harp.” But in regarding the creative impulses as the essential
-part of life, and as typically manifested in the form of art, Bertrand
-Russell is clearly in the great line of movement with which we have been
-throughout concerned. We must only at the same time—as we shall see
-later—remember that the distinction between the “creative” and the
-“possessive” impulses, although convenient, is superficial. In creation
-we have not really put aside the possessive instinct, we may even have
-intensified it. For it has been reasonably argued that it is precisely
-the deep urgency of the impulse to possess which stirs the creative
-artist. He creates because that is the best way, or the only way, of
-gratifying his passionate desire to possess. Two men desire to possess a
-woman, and one seizes her, the other writes a “Vita Nuova” about her;
-they have both gratified the instinct of possession, and the second, it
-may be, most satisfyingly and most lastingly. So that—apart from the
-impossibility, and even the undesirability, of dispensing with the
-possessive instinct—it may be well to recognise that the real question
-is one of values in possession. We must needs lay up treasure; but the
-fine artist in living, so far as may be, lays up his treasure in Heaven.
-
-In recent time some alert thinkers have been moved to attempt to measure
-the art of civilisation by less impossibly exact methods than of old, by
-the standard of art, and even of fine art. In a remarkable book on “The
-Revelations of Civilisation”—published about three years before the
-outbreak of that Great War which some have supposed to date a
-revolutionary point in civilisation—Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, who has
-expert knowledge of the Egyptian civilisation which was second to none
-in its importance for mankind, has set forth a statement of the cycles
-to which all civilisations are subject. Civilisation, he points out, is
-essentially an intermittent phenomenon. We have to compare the various
-periods of civilisation and observe what they have in common in order to
-find the general type. “It should be examined like any other action of
-Nature; its recurrences should be studied, and all the principles which
-underlie its variations should be defined.” Sculpture, he believes, may
-be taken as a criterion, not because it is the most important, but
-because it is the most convenient and easily available, test. We may say
-with the old Etruscans that every race has its Great Year—it sprouts,
-flourishes, decays, and dies. The simile, Petrie adds, is the more
-precise because there are always irregular fluctuations of the seasonal
-weather. There have been eight periods of civilisation, he reckons, in
-calculable human history. We are now near the end of the eighth, which
-reached its climax about the year 1800; since then there have been
-merely archaistic revivals, the value of which may be variously
-interpreted. He scarcely thinks we can expect another period of
-civilisation to arise for several centuries at least. The average length
-of a period of civilisation is 1330 years. Ours Petrie dates from about
-A.D. 450. It has always needed a fresh race to produce a new period of
-civilisation. In Europe, between A.D. 300 and 600, some fifteen new
-races broke in from north and east for slow mixture. “If,” he concluded,
-“the source of every civilisation has lain in race mixture, it may be
-that eugenics will, in some future civilisation, carefully segregate
-fine races, and prohibit continual mixture, until they have a distinct
-type, which will start a new civilisation when transplanted. The future
-progress of Man may depend as much on isolation to establish a type as
-on fusion of types when established.”
-
-At the time when Flinders Petrie was publishing his suggestive book, Dr.
-Oswald Spengler, apparently in complete ignorance of it, was engaged in
-a far more elaborate work, not actually published till after the War, in
-which an analogous conception of the growth and decay of civilisations
-was put forward in a more philosophic way, perhaps more debatable on
-account of the complex detail in which the conception was worked
-out.[123] Petrie had considered the matter in a summary empiric manner
-with close reference to the actual forces viewed broadly. Spengler’s
-manner is narrower, more subjective, and more metaphysical. He
-distinguishes—though he also recognises eight periods—between “culture”
-and “civilisation.” It is the first that is really vital and profitable;
-a “civilisation” is the decaying later stage of a “culture,” its
-inevitable fate. Herein it reaches its climax. “Civilisations are the
-most externalised and artistic conditions of which the higher embodiment
-of Man is capable. They are a spiritual senility, an end which with
-inner necessity is reached again and again.”[124] The transition from
-“culture” to “civilisation” in ancient times took place, Spengler holds,
-in the fourth century, and in the modern West in the nineteenth. But,
-like Petrie, though more implicitly, he recognises the prominent place
-of the art activities in the whole process, and he explicitly emphasises
-the interesting way in which those activities which are generally
-regarded as of the nature of art are interwoven with others not so
-generally regarded.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-
-HOWEVER we look at it, we see that Man, whether he works individually or
-collectively, may conveniently be regarded, in the comprehensive sense,
-as an artist, a bad artist, maybe, for the most part, but still an
-artist. His civilisation—if that is the term we choose to apply to the
-total sum of his group activities—is always an art, or a complex of
-arts. It is an art that is to be measured, or left immeasurable. That
-question, we have seen, we may best leave open. Another question that
-might be put is easy to deal with more summarily: What is Art?
-
-We may deal with it summarily because it is an ultimate question and
-there can be no final answer to ultimate questions. As soon as we begin
-to ask such questions, as soon as we begin to look at any phenomenon as
-an end in itself, we are on the perilous slope of metaphysics, where no
-agreement can, or should be, possible. The question of measurement was
-plausible, and needed careful consideration. What is Art? is a question
-which, if we are wise, we shall deal with as Pilate dealt with that like
-question: What is Truth?
-
-How futile the question is, we may realise when we examine the book
-which Tolstoy in old age wrote to answer it. Here is a man who was
-himself, in his own field, one of the world’s supreme artists. He could
-not fail to say one or two true things, as when he points out that “all
-human existence is full of art, from cradle songs and dances to the
-offices of religion and public ceremonial—it is all equally art. Art, in
-the large sense, impregnates our whole life.” But on the main point all
-that Tolstoy can do is to bring together a large miscellaneous
-collection of definitions—without seeing that as individual opinions
-they all have their rightness—and then to add one of his own, not much
-worse, nor much better, than any of the others. Thereto he appends some
-of his own opinions on artists, whence it appears that Hugo, Dickens,
-George Eliot, Dostoievsky, Maupassant, Millet, Bastien-Lepage, and Jules
-Breton—and not always they—are the artists whom he considers great; it
-is not a list to treat with contempt, but he goes on to pour contempt on
-those who venerate Sophocles and Aristophanes and Dante and Shakespeare
-and Milton and Michelangelo and Bach and Beethoven and Manet. “My own
-artistic works,” he adds, “I rank among bad art, excepting a few short
-stories.” It seems a reduction of the whole question, What is Art? to
-absurdity, if one may be permitted to say so at a time when Tolstoy
-would appear to be the pioneer of some of our most approved modern
-critics.
-
-Thus we see the reason why all the people who come forward to define
-art—each with his own little measuring-rod quite different from
-everybody else’s—inevitably make themselves ridiculous. It is true they
-are all of them right. That is just why they are ridiculous: each has
-mistaken the one drop of water he has measured for the whole ocean. Art
-cannot be defined because it is infinite. It is no accident that poetry,
-which has so often seemed the typical art, means a _making_. The artist
-is a maker. Art is merely a name we are pleased to give to what can only
-be the whole stream of action which—in order to impart to it selection
-and an unconscious or even conscious aim—is poured through the nervous
-circuit of a human animal or some other animal having a more or less
-similar nervous organisation. For a cat is an artist as well as a man,
-and some would say more than a man, while a bee is not only an obvious
-artist, but perhaps even the typical natural and unconscious artist.
-There is no defining art; there is only the attempt to distinguish
-between good art and bad art.
-
-Thus it is that I find no escape from the Aristotelian position of
-Shakespeare that
-
-               “Nature is made better by no mean
-               But Nature makes that mean....
-                               This is an art
-               Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
-               The art itself is Nature.”
-
-And that this conception is Aristotelian, even the essential Greek
-conception, is no testimony to Shakespeare’s scholarship. It is merely
-the proof that here we are in the presence of one of these great
-ultimate facts of the world which cannot but be sensitively perceived by
-the finest spirits, however far apart in time and space. Aristotle,
-altogether in the same spirit as Shakespeare, insisted that the works of
-man’s making, a State, for example, are natural, though Art partly
-completes what Nature is herself sometimes unable to bring to
-perfection, and even then that man is only exercising methods which,
-after all, are those of Nature. Nature needs Man’s art in order to
-achieve many natural things, and Man, in fulfilling that need, is only
-following the guidance of Nature in seeming to make things which are all
-the time growing by themselves.[125] Art is thus scarcely more than the
-natural midwife of Nature.
-
-There is, however, one distinguishing mark of Art which at this stage,
-as we conclude our survey, must be clearly indicated. It has been
-subsumed, as the acute reader will not have failed to note, throughout.
-But it has, for the most part, been deliberately left implicit. It has
-constantly been assumed, that is to say, that Art is the sum of all the
-active energies of Mankind. We must in this matter of necessity follow
-Aristotle, who in his “Politics” spoke, as a matter of course, of all
-those who practice “medicine, gymnastics, and the arts in general” as
-“artists.” Art is the moulding force of every culture that Man during
-his long course has at any time or place produced. It is the reality of
-what we imperfectly term “morality.” It is all human creation.
-
-Yet creation, in the active visible constructive sense, is not the whole
-of Man. It is not even the whole of what Man has been accustomed to call
-God. When, by what is now termed a process of Narcissism, Man created
-God in his own image, as we may instructively observe in the first
-chapter of the Hebrew Book of Genesis, he assigned to him six parts of
-active creational work, one part of passive contemplation of that work.
-That one seventh part—and an immensely important part—has not come under
-our consideration. In other words, we have been looking at Man the
-artist, not at Man the æsthetician.
-
-There was more than one reason why these two aspects of human faculty
-were held clearly apart throughout our discussion. Not only is it even
-less possible to agree about æsthetics, where the variety of individual
-judgment is rightly larger, than about art (ancient and familiar is the
-saying, _De gustibus_—), but to confuse art and æsthetics leads us into
-lamentable confusion. We may note this in the pioneers of the modern
-revival of what Sidgwick called “æsthetic Intuitionism” in the
-eighteenth century, and especially in Hutcheson, though Hutcheson’s work
-is independent of consistency, which he can scarcely even be said to
-have sought. They never sufficiently emphasised the distinction between
-art and æsthetics, between, that is to say, what we may possibly, if we
-like, call the dynamic and the static aspects of human action. Herein is
-the whole difference between work, for art is essentially work, and the
-spectacular contemplation of work, which æsthetics essentially is. The
-two things are ultimately one, but alike in the special arts and in that
-art of life commonly spoken of as morals, where we are not usually
-concerned with ultimates, the two must be clearly held apart. From the
-point of view of art we are concerned with the internal impulse to guide
-the activities in the lines of good work. It is only when we look at the
-work of art from the outside, whether in the more specialised arts or in
-the art of life, that we are concerned with æsthetic contemplation, that
-activity of vision which creates beauty, however we may please to define
-beauty, and even though we see it so widely as to be able to say with
-Remy de Gourmont: “Wherever life is, there is beauty,”[126] provided,
-one may add, that there is the æsthetic contemplation in which it must
-be mirrored.
-
-It is in relation with art, not with æsthetics, it may be noted in
-passing, that we are concerned with morals. That was once a question of
-seemingly such immense import that men were willing to spiritually slay
-each other over it. But it is not a question at all from the standpoint
-which has here from the outset been taken. Morals, for us to-day, is a
-species of which art is the genus. It is an art, and like all arts it
-necessarily has its own laws. We are concerned with the art of morals:
-we cannot speak of art _and_ morals. To take “art” and “morals” and
-“religion,” and stir them up, however vigorously, into an indigestible
-plum-pudding, as Ruskin used to do, is no longer possible.[127] This is
-a question which—like so many other furiously debated questions—only
-came into existence because the disputants on both sides were ignorant
-of the matter they were disputing about. It is no longer to be taken
-seriously, though it has its interest because the dispute has so often
-recurred, not only in recent days, but equally among the Greeks of
-Plato’s days. The Greeks had a kind of æsthetic morality. It was
-instinctive with them, and that is why it is so significant for us. But
-they seldom seem to have succeeded in thinking æsthetic problems clearly
-out. The attitude of their philosophers towards many of the special
-arts, even the arts in which they were themselves supreme, to us seem
-unreasonable. While they magnified the art, they often belittled the
-artist, and felt an aristocratic horror for anything that assimilated a
-man to a craftsman; for craftsman meant for them vulgarian. Plato
-himself was all for goody-goody literature and in our days would be an
-enthusiastic patron of Sunday-school stories. He would forbid any
-novelist to represent a good man as ever miserable or a wicked man as
-ever happy. The whole tendency of the discussion in the third book of
-the “Republic” is towards the conclusion that literature must be
-occupied exclusively with the representation of the virtuous man,
-provided, of course, that he was not a slave or a craftsman, for to such
-no virtue worthy of imitation should ever be attributed. Towards the end
-of his long life, Plato remained of the same opinion; in the second book
-of “The Laws” it is with the maxims of virtue that he will have the poet
-solely concerned. The reason for this ultra-puritanical attitude, which
-was by no means in practice that of the Greeks themselves, seems not
-hard to divine. The very fact that their morality was temperamentally
-æsthetic instinctively impelled them, when they were thinking
-philosophically, to moralise art generally; they had not yet reached the
-standpoint which would enable them to see that art might be consonant
-with morality without being artificially pressed into a narrow moral
-mould. Aristotle was conspicuously among those, if not the first, who
-took a broader and saner view. In opposition to the common Greek view
-that the object of art is to teach morals, Aristotle clearly expressed
-the totally different view that poetry in the wide sense—the special art
-which he and the Greeks generally were alone much concerned to
-discuss—is an emotional delight, having pleasure as its direct end, and
-only indirectly a moral end by virtue of its cathartic effects. Therein
-he reached an æsthetic standpoint, yet it was so novel that he could not
-securely retain it and was constantly falling back towards the old moral
-conception of art.[128]
-
-We may call it a step in advance. Yet it was not a complete statement of
-the matter. Indeed, it established the unreal conflict between two
-opposing conceptions, each unsound because incomplete, which loose
-thinkers have carried on ever since. To assert that poetry exists for
-morals is merely to assert that one art exists for the sake of another
-art, which at the best is rather a futile statement, while, so far as it
-is really accepted, it cannot fail to crush the art thus subordinated.
-If we have the insight to see that an art has its own part of life, we
-shall also see that it has its own intrinsic morality, which cannot be
-the morality of morals or of any other art than itself. We may here
-profitably bear in mind that antinomy between morals and morality on
-which Jules de Gaultier has often insisted. The Puritan’s strait-jacket
-shows the vigour of his external morals; it also bears witness to the
-lack of internal morality which necessitates that control. Again, on the
-other hand, it is argued that art gives pleasure. Very true. Even the
-art of morals gives pleasure. But to assert that therein lies its sole
-end and aim is an altogether feeble and inadequate conclusion, unless we
-go further and proceed to inquire what “pleasure” means. If we fail to
-take that further step, it remains a conclusion which may be said to
-merge into the conclusion that art is aimless; that, rather, its aim is
-to be aimless, and so to lift us out of the struggle and turmoil of
-life. That was the elaborately developed argument of Schopenhauer:
-art—whether in music, in philosophy, in painting, in poetry—is useless;
-“to be useless is the mark of genius, its patent of nobility. All other
-works of men are there for the preservation or alleviation of our
-existence; but this alone not; it alone is there for its own sake; and
-is in this sense to be regarded as the flower, or the pure essence, of
-existence. That is why in its enjoyment our heart rises, for we are
-thereby lifted above the heavy earthen atmosphere of necessity.”[129]
-Life is a struggle of the will; but in art the will has become
-objective, fit for pure contemplation, and genius consists in an eminent
-aptitude for contemplation. The ordinary man, said Schopenhauer, plods
-through the dark world with his lantern turned on the things he wants;
-the man of genius sees the world by the light of the sun. In modern
-times Bergson adopted that view of Schopenhauer’s, with a terminology of
-his own, and all he said under this head may be regarded as a charming
-fantasia on the Schopenhauerian theme: “Genius is the most complete
-objectivity.” Most of us, it seems to Bergson, never see reality at all;
-we only see the labels we have fixed on things to mark for us their
-usefulness.[130] A veil is interposed between us and the reality of
-things. The artist, the man of genius, raises this veil and reveals
-Nature to us. He is naturally endowed with a detachment from life, and
-so possesses as it were a virginal freshness in seeing, hearing, or
-thinking. That is “intuition,” an instinct that has become
-disinterested. “Art has no other object but to remove the practically
-useful symbols, the conventional and socially accepted generalities, so
-as to bring us face to face with reality itself.”[131] Art would thus be
-fulfilling its function the more completely the further it removed us
-from ordinary life, or, more strictly, from any personal interest in
-life. That was also Remy de Gourmont’s opinion, though I do not know how
-far he directly derived it from Schopenhauer. “If we give to art a moral
-aim,” he wrote, “it ceases to exist, for it ceases to be useless. Art is
-incompatible with a moral or religious aim. It is unintelligible to the
-crowd because the crowd is not disinterested and knows only the
-principle of utility.” But the difficulty of making definite affirmation
-in this field, the perpetual need to allow for _nuances_ which often on
-the surface involve contradictions, is seen when we find that so great
-an artist as Einstein—for so we may here fairly call him—and one so
-little of a formal æsthetician, agrees with Schopenhauer. “I agree with
-Schopenhauer,” he said to Moszkowski, “that one of the most powerful
-motives that attract people to science and art is the longing to escape
-from everyday life, with its painful coarseness and unconsoling
-barrenness, and to break the fetters of their own ever-changing desires.
-Man seeks to form a simplified synoptical view of the world conformable
-to his own nature, to overcome the world by replacing it with his
-picture. The painter, the poet, the philosopher, the scientist, each
-does this in his own way. He transfers the centre of his emotional life
-to this picture, to find a surer haven of peace than the sphere of his
-turbulent personal experience offers.” That is a sound statement of the
-facts, yet it is absurd to call such an achievement “useless.”
-
-Perhaps, however, what philosophers have really meant when they have
-said that art (it is the so-called fine arts only that they have in
-mind) is useless, is that _an art must not be consciously pursued for
-any primary useful end outside itself_. That is true. It is even true of
-morals, that is to say the art of living. To live in the conscious
-primary pursuit of a “useful” end—such as one of the fine arts—outside
-living itself is to live badly; to declare, like André Gide, that
-“outside the doctrine of ‘Art for Art’ I know not where to find any
-reason for living,” may well be the legitimate expression of a personal
-feeling, but, unless understood in the sense here taken, it is not a
-philosophical statement which can be brought under the species of
-eternity, being, indeed, one of those confusions of substances which
-are, metaphysically, damnable. So, again, in the art of science: the
-most useful applications of science have sprung from discoveries that
-were completely useless for purposes outside pure science, so far as the
-aim of the discoverer went, or even so far as he ever knew. If he had
-been bent on “useful” ends, he would probably have made no discovery at
-all. But the bare statement that “art is useless” is so vague as to be
-really meaningless, if not inaccurate and misleading.
-
-Therefore, Nietzsche was perhaps making a profound statement when he
-declared that art is the great stimulus to life; it produces joy as an
-aid to life; it possesses a usefulness, that is to say, which transcends
-its direct aim. The artist is one who sees life as beauty, and art is
-thus fulfilling its function the more completely, the more deeply it
-enables us to penetrate into life. It seems, however, that Nietzsche
-insufficiently guarded his statement. Art for art’s sake, said
-Nietzsche, is “a dangerous principle,” like truth for truth’s sake and
-goodness for goodness’ sake. Art, knowledge, and morality are simply
-means, he declared, and valuable for their “life-promoting tendency.”
-(There is here a pioneering suggestion of the American doctrine of
-Pragmatism, according to which how a thing “works” is the test of its
-validity, but Nietzsche can by no means be counted a Pragmatist.) To
-look thus at the matter was certainly, with Schopenhauer and with
-Gourmont, to put aside the superficial moral function of art, and to
-recognise in it a larger sociological function. It was on the
-sociological function of art that Guyau, who was so penetrating and
-sympathetic a thinker, insisted in his book, posthumously published in
-1889, “L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique.” He argued that art, while
-remaining independent, is at the foundation one with morals and with
-religion. He believed in a profound unity of all these terms: life,
-morality, society, religion, art. “Art, in a word, is life.” So that, as
-he pointed out, there is no conflict between the theory of art for art,
-properly interpreted, and the theory that assigns to art a moral and
-social function. It is clear that Guyau was on the right road, although
-his statement was confusingly awkward in form. He deformed his
-statement, moreover, through his perpetual tendency to insist on the
-spontaneously socialising organisation of human groups—a tendency which
-has endeared him to all who adopt an anarchist conception of
-society—and, forgetting that he had placed morals only at the depth of
-art and not on the surface, he commits himself to the supremely false
-dictum: “Art is, above everything, a phenomenon of sociability,” and the
-like statements, far too closely resembling the doctrinary
-pronouncements of Tolstoy. For sociability is an indirect end of art: it
-cannot be its direct aim. We are here not far from the ambiguous
-doctrine that art is “expression,” for “expression” may be too easily
-confused with “communication.”[132]
-
-All these eminent philosophers—though they meant something which so far
-as it went was true—have failed to produce a satisfying statement
-because they have none of them understood how to ask the question which
-they were trying to answer. They failed to understand that morals is
-just as much an art as any other vital psychic function of man; they
-failed to see that, though art must be free from the dominance of
-morals, it by no means followed that it has no morality of its own, if
-morality involves the organised integrity which all vital phenomena must
-possess; they failed to realise that, since the arts are simply the sum
-of the active functions which spring out of the single human organism,
-we are not called upon to worry over any imaginary conflicts between
-functions which are necessarily harmonious because they are all one at
-the root. We cannot too often repeat the pregnant maxim of Bacon that
-the right question is the half of knowledge. Here we might almost say
-that it is the whole of knowledge. It seems, therefore, unnecessary to
-pursue the subject further. He who cannot himself pursue it further had
-best leave it alone.
-
-But when we enter the æsthetic sphere we are no longer artists. That,
-indeed, is inevitable if we regard the arts as the sum of all the active
-functions of the organism. Rickert, with his methodical vision of the
-world,—for he insists that we must have some sort of system,—has
-presented what he regards as a reasonable scheme in a tabular form at
-the end of the first volume of his “System.”[133] He divides Reality
-into two great divisions: the monistic and asocial Contemplative and the
-pluralistic and social Active. To the first belong the spheres of Logic,
-Æsthetics, and Mysticism, with their values, truth, beauty, impersonal
-holiness; to the second, Ethics, Erotics, the Philosophy of Religion,
-with their values, morality, happiness, personal holiness. This view of
-the matter is the more significant as Rickert stands aside from the
-tradition represented by Nietzsche and returns to the Kantian current,
-enriched, indeed, and perhaps not quite consistently, by Goethe. It
-seems probable that all Rickert’s active attitudes towards reality may
-fairly be called Art, and all the contemplative attitudes, Æsthetics.
-
-There is in fact nothing novel in the distinction which underlies this
-classification, and it has been recognised ever since the days of
-Baumgarten, the commonly accepted founder of modern æsthetics, not to go
-further back.[134] Art is the active practical exercise of a single
-discipline: æsthetics is the philosophic appreciation of any or all the
-arts. Art is concerned with the more or less unconscious creation of
-beauty: æsthetics is concerned with its discovery and contemplation.
-Æsthetics is the metaphysical side of all productive living.
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-
-THIS complete unlikeness on the surface between art and æsthetics—for
-ultimately and fundamentally they are at one—has to be emphasised, for
-the failure to distinguish them has led to confusion and verbosity. The
-practice of morals, we must ever remember, is not a matter of æsthetics;
-it is a matter of art. It has not, nor has any other art, an immediate
-and obvious relationship to the creation of beauty.[135] What the artist
-in life, as in any other art, is directly concerned to express is not
-primarily beauty; it is much more likely to seem to him to be truth (it
-is interesting to note that Einstein, so much an artist in thought,
-insists that he is simply concerned with truth), and what he produces
-may seem at first to all the world, and even possibly to himself, to be
-ugly. It is so in the sphere of morals. For morals is still concerned
-with the possessive instinct, not with the creation of beauty, with the
-needs and the satisfaction of the needs, with the industrial and
-economic activities, with the military activities to which they fatally
-tend. But the æsthetic attitude, as Gaultier expresses it, is the
-radiant smile on the human face which in its primitive phases was
-anatomically built up to subserve crude vital needs; as he elsewhere
-more abstractly expresses it, “Beauty is an attitude of sensibility.” It
-is the task of æsthetics, often a slow and painful task, to see
-art—including the art of Nature, some would insist—as beauty. That, it
-has to be added, is no mean task. It is, on the contrary, essential. It
-is essential to sweep away in art all that is ultimately found to be
-fundamentally ugly, whether by being, at the one end, distastefully
-pretty, or, at the other, hopelessly crude. For ugliness produces nausea
-of the stomach and sets the teeth on edge. It does so literally, not
-metaphorically. Ugliness, since it interferes with digestion, since it
-disturbs the nervous system, impairs the forces of life. For when we are
-talking æsthetics (as the word itself indicates) we are ultimately
-talking physiologically. Even our metaphysics—if it is to have any
-meaning for us—must have a physical side. Unless we hold that fact in
-mind, we shall talk astray and are likely to say little that is to the
-point.
-
-Art has to be seen as beauty and it is the function of æsthetics so to
-see it. How slowly and painfully the function works every one must know
-by observing the æsthetic judgments of other people, if not by recalling
-his own experiences. I know in my own experience how hardly and
-subconsciously this process works. In the matter of pictures, for
-instance, I have found throughout life, from Rubens in adolescence to
-Cézanne in recent years, that a revelation of the beauty of a painter’s
-work which, on the surface, is alien or repulsive to one’s sensibility,
-came only after years of contemplation, and then most often by a sudden
-revelation, in a flash, by a direct intuition of the beauty of some
-particular picture which henceforth became the clue to all the painter’s
-work. It is a process comparable to that which is in religion termed
-“conversion,” and, indeed, of like nature.[136] So also it is in
-literature. And in life? We are accustomed to suppose that a moral
-action is much easier to judge than a picture of Cézanne. We do not
-dream of bringing the same patient and attentive, as it were æsthetic,
-spirit to life as we bring to painting. Perhaps we are right,
-considering what poor bungling artists most of us are in living. For
-“art is easy, life is difficult,” as Liszt used to say. The reason, of
-course, is that the art of living differs from the external arts in that
-we cannot exclude the introduction of alien elements into its texture.
-Our art of living, when we achieve it, is of so high and fine a quality
-precisely because it so largely lies in harmoniously weaving into the
-texture elements that we have not ourselves chosen, or that, having
-chosen, we cannot throw aside. Yet it is the attitude of the spectators
-that helps to perpetuate that bungling.
-
-It is Plotinus whom we may fairly regard as the founder of Æsthetics in
-the philosophic sense, and it was as formulated by Plotinus, though this
-we sometimes fail to recognise, that the Greek attitude in these
-matters, however sometimes modified, has come down to us.[137] We may be
-forgiven for not always recognising it, because it is rather strange
-that it should be so. It is strange, that is to say, that the æsthetic
-attitude, which we regard as so emphatically Greek, should have been
-left for formulation until the Greek world had passed away, that it
-should not have been Plato, but an Alexandrian, living in Rome seven
-centuries after him, who set forth what seems to us a distinctively
-Platonic view of life.[138] The Greeks, indeed, seem to have recognised,
-apart from the lower merely “ethical” virtues of habit and custom, the
-higher “intellectual” virtues which were deliberately planned, and so of
-the nature of art. But Plotinus definitely recognised the æsthetic
-contemplation of Beauty, together with the One and the Good, as three
-aspects of the Absolute.[139] He thus at once placed æsthetics on the
-highest possible pedestal, beside religion and morals; he placed it
-above art, or as comprehending art, for he insisted that Contemplation
-is an active quality, so that all human creative energy may be regarded
-as the by-play of contemplation. That was to carry rather far the
-function of æsthetic contemplation. But it served to stamp for ever, on
-the minds of all sensitive to that stamp who came after, the definite
-realisation of the sublimest, the most nearly divine, of human
-aptitudes. Every great spirit has furnished the measure of his greatness
-by the more or less completeness in which at the ultimate outpost of his
-vision over the world he has attained to that active contemplation of
-life as a spectacle which Shakespeare finally embodied in the figure of
-Prospero.
-
-It may be interesting to note in passing that, psychologically
-considered, all æsthetic enjoyment among the ordinary population,
-neither artists in the narrow sense nor philosophers, still necessarily
-partakes to some degree of genuine æsthetic contemplation, and that such
-contemplation seems to fall roughly into two classes, to one or other of
-which every one who experiences æsthetic enjoyment belongs. These have,
-I believe, been defined by Müller-Freienfels as that of the “Zuschauer,”
-who feels that he is looking on, and that of the “Mitspieler,” who feels
-that he is joining in; on the one side, we may say, he who knows he is
-looking on, the _spectator_, and on the other he who imaginatively joins
-in, the _participator_. The people of the first group are those, it may
-be, in whom the sensory nervous apparatus is highly developed and they
-are able to adopt the most typical and complete æsthetic attitude; the
-people of the other group would seem to be most developed on the motor
-nervous side and they are those who themselves desire to be artists.
-Groos, who has developed the æsthetic side of “miterleben,” is of this
-temperament, and he had at first supposed that every one was like him in
-this respect.[140] Plotinus, who held that contemplation embraced
-activity, must surely have been of this temperament. Coleridge was
-emphatically of the other temperament, _spectator haud particeps_, as he
-himself said. But, at all events in northern countries, that is probably
-not the more common temperament. The æsthetic attitude of the crowds who
-go to watch football matches is probably much more that of the
-imaginative participator than of the pure spectator.
-
-There is no occasion here to trace the history of æsthetic
-contemplation. Yet it may be worth while to note that it was clearly
-present to the mind of the fine thinker and great moralist who brought
-the old Greek idea back into the modern world. In the “Philosophical
-Regimen” (as it has been named) brought to light a few years ago, in
-which Shaftesbury set down his self-communings, we find him writing in
-one place: “In the morning am I to see anew? Am I to be present yet
-longer and content? I am not weary, nor ever can be, of such a
-spectacle, such a theatre, such a presence, nor at acting whatever part
-such a master assigns me. Be it ever so long, I stay and am willing to
-see on whilst my sight continues sound; whilst I can be a spectator,
-such as I ought to be; whilst I can see reverently, justly, with
-understanding and applause. And when I see no more, I retire, not
-disdainfully, but in reverence to the spectacle and master, giving
-thanks.... Away, man! rise, wipe thy mouth, throw up thy napkin and have
-done. A bellyful (they say) is as good as a feast.”
-
-That may seem but a simple and homely way of stating the matter, though
-a few years later, in 1727, a yet greater spirit than Shaftesbury,
-Swift, combining the conception of life as æsthetic contemplation with
-that of life as art, wrote in a letter, “Life is a tragedy, wherein we
-sit as spectators awhile, and then act our own part in it.” If we desire
-a more systematically philosophical statement we may turn to the
-distinguished thinker of to-day who in many volumes has most powerfully
-presented the same essential conception, with all its implications, of
-life as a spectacle. “Tirez le rideau; la farce est jouée.” That
-Shakespearian utterance, which used to be attributed to Rabelais on his
-death-bed, and Swift’s comment on life, and Shaftesbury’s intimate
-meditation, would seem to be—on the philosophic and apart from the moral
-side of life—entirely in the spirit that Jules de Gaultier has so
-elaborately developed. The world is a spectacle, and all the men and
-women the actors on its stage. Enjoy the spectacle while you will,
-whether comedy or tragedy, enter into the spirit of its manifold
-richness and beauty, yet take it not too seriously, even when you leave
-it and the curtains are drawn that conceal it for ever from your eyes,
-grown weary at last.
-
-Such a conception, indeed, was already to be seen in a deliberately
-philosophical form in Schopenhauer (who, no doubt, influenced Gaultier)
-and, later, Nietzsche, especially the early Nietzsche, although he never
-entirely abandoned it; his break with Wagner, however, whom he had
-regarded as the typical artist, led him to become suddenly rather
-critical of art and artists, as we see in “Human-all-too-Human,” which
-immediately followed “Wagner in Bayreuth,” and he became inclined to
-look on the artist, in the narrow sense, as only “a splendid relic of
-the past,” not, indeed, altogether losing his earlier conception, but
-disposed to believe that “the scientific man is the finest development
-of the artistic man.” In his essay on Wagner he had presented art as the
-essentially metaphysical activity of Man, here following Schopenhauer.
-“Every genius,” well said Schopenhauer, “is a great child; he gazes out
-at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with
-purely objective interest.” That is to say that the highest attitude
-attainable by man towards life is that of æsthetic contemplation. But it
-took on a different character in Nietzsche. In 1878 Nietzsche wrote of
-his early essay on Wagner: “At that time I believed that the world was
-created from the æsthetic standpoint, as a play, and that as a moral
-phenomenon it was a deception: on that account I came to the conclusion
-that the world was only to be justified as an æsthetic phenomenon.”[141]
-At the end of his active career Nietzsche was once more reproducing this
-proposition in many ways. Jules de Gaultier has much interested himself
-in Nietzsche, but he had already reached, no doubt through Schopenhauer,
-a rather similar conception before he came in contact with Nietzsche’s
-work, and in the present day he is certainly the thinker who has most
-systematically and philosophically elaborated the conception.[142]
-
-Gaultier is most generally known by that perhaps not quite happily
-chosen term of “Bovarism,” embodied in the title of his earliest book
-and abstracted from Flaubert’s heroine, which stands for one of his most
-characteristic conceptions, and, indeed, in a large sense, for the
-central idea of his philosophy. In its primary psychological sense
-Bovarism is the tendency—the unconscious tendency of Emma Bovary and,
-more or less, all of us—to conceive of ourselves as other than we are.
-Our picture of the world, for good or for evil, is an idealised picture,
-a fiction, a waking dream, an _als ob_, as Vaihinger would say. But when
-we idealise the world we begin by first idealising ourselves. We imagine
-ourselves other than we are, and in so imagining, as Gaultier clearly
-realises, we tend to mould ourselves, so that reality becomes a
-prolongation of fiction. As Meister Eckhart long since finely said: “A
-man is what he loves.” A similar thought was in Plato’s mind. In modern
-times a variation of this same idea has been worked out, not as by
-Gaultier from the philosophic side, but from the medical and more
-especially the psycho-analytic side, by Dr. Alfred Adler of Vienna.[143]
-Adler has suggestively shown how often a man’s or a woman’s character is
-constituted by a process of fiction,—that is by making an ideal of what
-it is, or what it ought to be,—and then so far as possible moulding it
-into the shape of that fiction, a process which is often interwoven with
-morbid elements, especially with an original basis of organic defect,
-the reaction being an effort, sometimes successful, to overcome that
-defect, and even to transform it into a conspicuous quality, as when
-Demosthenes, who was a stutterer, made himself a great orator. Even
-thinkers may not wholly escape this tendency, and I think it would be
-easily possible to show that, for instance, Nietzsche was moved by what
-Adler calls the “masculine protest”; one remembers how shrinkingly
-delicate Nietzsche was towards women and how emphatically he declared
-they should never be approached without a whip. Adler owed nothing to
-Gaultier, of whom he seems to be ignorant; he found his first
-inspiration in Vaihinger’s doctrine of the “as if”; Gaultier, however,
-owes nothing to Vaihinger, and, indeed, began to publish earlier, though
-not before Vaihinger’s book was written. Gaultier’s philosophic descent
-is mainly from Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
-
-There is another deeper and wider sense, a more abstract esoteric sense,
-in which Jules de Gaultier understands Bovarism. It is not only the
-human being and human groups who are psychologically Bovaristic, the
-Universe itself, the Eternal Being (to adopt an accepted fiction),
-metaphysically partakes of Bovarism. The Universe, it seems to Gaultier,
-necessarily conceives itself as other than it is. Single, it conceives
-itself multiple, as subject and object. Thus is furnished the
-fundamental convention which we must grant to the Dramatist who presents
-the cosmic tragi-comedy.[144]
-
-It may seem to some that the vision of the world which Man pursues on
-his course across the Universe becomes ever more impalpable and
-visionary. And so perhaps it may be. But even if that were an
-undesirable result, it would still be useless to fight against God. We
-are, after all, merely moulding the conceptions which a little later
-will become commonplaced and truisms. For really—while we must hold
-physics and metaphysics apart, for they cannot be blended—a metaphysics
-which is out of harmony with physics is negligible; it is nothing in the
-world. And it is our physical world that is becoming more impalpable and
-visionary. It is “matter,” the very structure of the “atom,” that is
-melting into a dream, and if it may seem that on the spiritual side life
-tends to be moulding itself to the conception of Calderon as a dream, it
-is because the physical atom is pursuing that course. Unless we hold in
-mind the analysis of the world towards which the physicist is bringing
-us, we shall not understand the synthesis of the world towards which the
-philosopher is bringing us. Gaultier’s philosophy may not be based upon
-physics, but it seems to be in harmony with physics.
-
-This is the metaphysical scaffolding—we may if we like choose to
-dispense with it—by aid of which Jules de Gaultier erects his
-spectacular conception of the world. He is by no means concerned to deny
-the necessity of morality. On the contrary, morality is the necessary
-restraint on the necessary biological instinct of possession, on the
-desire, that is, by the acquisition of certain objects, to satisfy
-passions which are most often only the exaggeration of natural needs,
-but which—through the power of imagination such exaggeration inaugurates
-in the world—lead to the development of civilisation. Limited and
-definite so long as confined to their biological ends, needs are
-indefinitely elastic, exhibiting, indeed, an almost hysterical character
-which becomes insatiable. They mark a hypertrophy of the possessive
-instinct which experience shows to be a menace to social life. Thus the
-Great War of recent times may be regarded as the final tragic result of
-the excessive development through half a century of an economic fever,
-the activity of needs beyond their due biological ends producing
-suddenly the inevitable result.[145] So that the possessive instinct,
-while it is the cause of the formation of an economic civilised society,
-when pushed too far becomes the cause of the ruin of that society. Man,
-who begins by acquiring just enough force to compel Nature to supply his
-bare needs, himself becomes, according to the tragic Greek saying, the
-greatest force of Nature. Yet the fact that a civilisation may persist
-for centuries shows that men in societies have found methods of
-combating the exaggerated development of the possessive instinct, of
-retaining it within bounds which have enabled societies to enjoy a
-fairly long life. These methods become embodied in religions and
-moralities and laws. They react in concert to restrain the greediness
-engendered by the possessive instinct. They make virtues of Temperance
-and Sobriety and Abnegation. They invent Great Images which arouse human
-hopes and human fears. They prescribe imperatives, with sanctions, in
-part imposed by the Great Images and in part by the actual executive
-force of social law. So societies are enabled to immunise themselves
-against the ravaging auto-intoxication of an excessive instinct of
-possession, and the services rendered by religions and moralities cannot
-be too highly estimated. They are the spontaneous physiological
-processes which counteract disease before medical science comes into
-play.
-
-But are they of any use in those periods of advanced civilisation which
-they have themselves contributed to form? When Man has replaced flint
-knives and clubs and slings by the elaborate weapons we know, can he be
-content with methods of social preservation which date from the time of
-flint knives and clubs and slings? The efficacy of those restraints
-depends on a sensibility which could only exist when men scarcely
-distinguished imaginations from perceptions. Thence arose the credulity
-on which religions and moralities flourished. But now the Images have
-grown pale in human sensibility, just as they have in words, which are
-but effaced images. We need a deeper reality to take the place of these
-early beliefs which the growth of intelligence necessarily shows to be
-illusory. We must seek in the human ego an instinct in which is
-manifested a truly autonomous play of the power of imagination, an
-instinct which by virtue of its own proper development may restrain the
-excesses of the possessive instinct and dissipate the perils which
-threaten civilisation. The æsthetic instinct alone answers to that
-double demand.
-
-At this point we may pause to refer to the interesting analogy between
-this argument of Jules de Gaultier and another recently proposed
-solution of the problems of civilisation presented by Bertrand Russell,
-to which there has already been occasion to refer. The two views were
-clearly suggested by the same events, though apparently in complete
-independence, and it is interesting to observe the considerable degree
-of harmony which unites two such distinguished thinkers in different
-lands, and with unlike philosophic standpoints as regards ultimate
-realities.[146] Man’s impulses, as we know, Bertrand Russell holds to be
-of two kinds: those that are possessive and those that are creative; the
-typical possessive impulse being that of property and the typical
-creative impulse that of the artist. It is in following the creative
-impulse, he believes, that man’s path of salvation lies, for the
-possessive impulses necessarily lead to conflict while the creative
-impulses are essentially harmonious. Bertrand Russell seeks the
-unification of life. But consistency of action should, he holds, spring
-from consistency of impulse rather than from the control of impulse by
-will. Like Gaultier, he believes in what has been called, perhaps not
-happily, “the law of irony”; that is to say, that the mark we hit is
-never the mark we aimed at, so that, in all supreme success in life, as
-Goethe said of Wilhelm Meister, we are like Saul, the son of Kish, who
-went forth to seek his father’s asses and found a kingdom. “Those who
-best promote life,” Russell prefers to put it, “do not have life for
-their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation,
-a bringing into our human existence of something eternal.” And, again
-like Gaultier, he invokes Spinoza and what in his phraseology he called
-“the intellectual love of God.” “Take no thought, saying, What shall we
-eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
-Whosoever has known a strong creative impulse has known the value of
-this precept in its exact and literal sense; it is preoccupation with
-possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living
-freely and nobly.”[147]
-
-This view of the matter seems substantially the same, it may be in an
-unduly simplified form, as the conception which Jules de Gaultier has
-worked out more subtly and complexly, seeking to weave in a large number
-of the essential factors, realising that the harmony of life must yet be
-based on an underlying conflict.[148] The main difference would seem to
-be that Bertrand Russell’s creative impulse seems to be fairly identical
-with the productive impulse of art in the large sense in which I have
-throughout understood it, while Jules de Gaultier is essentially
-concerned with the philosophic or religious side of the art impulse;
-that is to say, the attitude of æsthetic contemplation which in
-appearance forms the absolute antithesis to the possessive instinct. It
-is probable, however, that there is no real discrepancy here, for as we
-may regard æsthetic contemplation as the passive aspect of art, so art
-may be regarded as the active aspect of æsthetic contemplation, and
-Bertrand Russell, we may certainly believe, would include the one under
-art as Jules de Gaultier would include the other under æsthetics.
-
-The æsthetic instinct, as Jules de Gaultier understands it, answers the
-double demand of our needs to-day, not, like religions and moralities,
-by evoking images as menaces or as promises, only effective if they can
-be realised in the world of sensation, and so merely constituting
-another attempt to gratify the possessive instinct, by enslaving the
-power of imagination to that alien master. Through the æsthetic instinct
-Man is enabled to procure joy, not from the things themselves and the
-sensations due to the possession of things, but from the very images of
-things. Beyond the sense of utility bound up with the possession of
-objects, he acquires the privilege, bound up with the sole contemplation
-of them, of enjoying the beauty of things. By the æsthetic instinct the
-power of imagination realises its own proper tendency and attains its
-own proper end.
-
-Such a process cannot fail to have its reaction on the social
-environment. It must counteract the exaggeration of the possessive
-instinct. To that impulse, when it transgresses the legitimate bounds of
-biological needs and threatens to grow like a destructive cancer, the
-æsthetic instinct proposes another end, a more human end, that of
-æsthetic joy. Therewith the exuberance of insatiable and ruinous
-cupidity is caught in the forms of art, the beauty of the universe is
-manifested to all eyes, and the happiness which had been sought in the
-paradoxical enterprise of glutting that insatiable desire finds its
-perpetual satisfaction in the absolute and complete realisation of
-beauty.
-
-As Jules de Gaultier understands it, we see that the æsthetic instinct
-is linked on to the possessive instinct. Bertrand Russell would
-sometimes seem to leave the possessive instinct in the void without
-making any provision for its satisfaction. In Gaultier’s view, we may
-probably say it is taken in charge by the æsthetic instinct as soon as
-it has fulfilled its legitimate biological ends, and its excessive
-developments, what might otherwise be destructive, are sublimated. The
-æsthetic instinct, Gaultier insists, like the other instincts, even the
-possessive instinct, has imperative claims; it is an appetite of the
-_ego_, developed at the same hearth of intimate activity, drawing its
-strength from the same superabundance from which they draw strength.
-Therefore, in the measure in which it absorbs force they must lose
-force, and civilisation gains.
-
-The development of the æsthetic sense is, indeed, indispensable if
-civilisation—which we may, perhaps, from the present point of view,
-regard with Gaultier as the embroidery worked by imagination on the
-stuff of our elementary needs—is to pass safely through its critical
-period and attain any degree of persistence. The appearance of the
-æsthetic sense is then an event of the first order in the rank of
-natural miracles, strictly comparable to the evolution in the organic
-sphere of the optic nerves, which made it possible to know things
-clearly apart from the sensations of actual contact. There is no mere
-simile here, Gaultier believes: the faculty of drawing joy from the
-images of things, apart from the possession of them, is based on
-physiological conditions which growing knowledge of the nervous system
-may some day make clearer.[149]
-
-It is this specific quality, the power of enjoying things without being
-reduced to the need of possessing them, which differentiates the
-æsthetic instinct from other instincts and confers on it the character
-of morality. Based, like the other instincts on egoism, it, yet, unlike
-the other instincts, leads to no destructive struggles. Its powers of
-giving satisfaction are not dissipated by the number of those who secure
-that satisfaction. Æsthetic contemplation engenders neither hatred nor
-envy. Unlike the things that appeal to the possessive instinct, it
-brings men together and increases sympathy. Unlike those moralities
-which are compelled to institute prohibitions, the æsthetic sense, even
-in the egoistic pursuit of its own ends, becomes blended with morality,
-and so serves in the task of maintaining society.
-
-Thus it is that, by aiming at a different end, the æsthetic sense yet
-attains the end aimed at by morality. That is the aspect of the matter
-which Gaultier would emphasise. There is implied in it the judgment that
-when the æsthetic sense deviates from its proper ends to burden itself
-with moral intentions—when, that is, it ceases to be itself—it ceases to
-realise morality. “Art for art’s sake!” the artists of old cried. We
-laugh at that cry now. Gaultier, indeed, considers that the idea of pure
-art has in every age been a red rag in the eyes of the human bull. Yet,
-if we had possessed the necessary intelligence, we might have seen that
-it held a great moral truth. “The poet, retired in his Tower of Ivory,
-isolated, according to his desire, from the world of man, resembles,
-whether he so wishes or not, another solitary figure, the watcher
-enclosed for months at a time in a lighthouse at the head of a cliff.
-Far from the towns peopled by human crowds, far from the earth, of which
-he scarcely distinguishes the outlines through the mist, this man in his
-wild solitude, forced to live only with himself, almost forgets the
-common language of men, but he knows admirably well how to formulate
-through the darkness another language infinitely useful to men and
-visible afar to seamen in distress.”[150] The artist for art’s sake—and
-the same is constantly found true of the scientist for science’s
-sake[151]—in turning aside from the common utilitarian aims of men is
-really engaged in a task none other can perform, of immense utility to
-men. The Cistercians of old hid their cloisters in forests and
-wildernesses afar from society, mixing not with men nor performing for
-them so-called useful tasks; yet they spent their days and nights in
-chant and prayer, working for the salvation of the world, and they stand
-as the symbol of all higher types of artists, not the less so because
-they, too, illustrate that faith transcending sight, without which no
-art is possible.
-
-The artist, as Gaultier would probably put it, has to effect a necessary
-Bovarism. If he seeks to mix himself up with the passions of the crowd,
-if his work shows the desire to prove anything, he thereby neglects the
-creation of beauty. Necessarily so, for he excites a state of
-combativity, he sets up moral, political, and social values, all having
-relation to biological needs and the possessive instinct, the most
-violent of ferments. He is entering on the struggle over Truth—though
-his opinion is here worth no more than any other man’s—which, on account
-of the presumption of its universality, is brandished about in the most
-ferociously opposed camps.
-
-The mother who seeks to soothe her crying child preaches him no sermon.
-She holds up some bright object and it fixes his attention. So it is the
-artist acts: he makes us see. He brings the world before us, not on the
-plane of covetousness and fears and commandments, but on the plane of
-representation; the world becomes a spectacle. Instead of imitating
-those philosophers who with analyses and syntheses worry over the goal
-of life, and the justification of the world, and the meaning of the
-strange and painful phenomenon called Existence, the artist takes up
-some fragment of that existence, transfigures it, shows it: There! And
-therewith the spectator is filled with enthusiastic joy, and the
-transcendent Adventure of Existence is justified. Every great artist, a
-Dante or a Shakespeare, a Dostoievsky or a Proust, thus furnishes the
-metaphysical justification of existence by the beauty of the vision he
-presents of the cruelty and the horror of existence. All the pain and
-the madness, even the ugliness and the commonplace of the world, he
-converts into shining jewels. By revealing the spectacular character of
-reality he restores the serenity of its innocence.[152] We see the face
-of the world as of a lovely woman smiling through her tears.
-
-How are we to expect this morality—if so we may still term it—to
-prevail? Jules de Gaultier, as we have seen, realising that the old
-moralities have melted away, seems to think that the morality of art, by
-virtue of its life, will take the place of that which is dead. But he is
-not specially concerned to discuss in detail the mechanism of this
-replacement, though he looks to the social action of artists in
-initiation and stimulation. That was the view of Guyau, and it fitted in
-with his sociological conception of art as being one with life; great
-poets, great artists, Guyau believed, will become the leaders of the
-crowd, the priests of a social religion without dogmas.[153] But
-Gaultier’s conception goes beyond this. He cannot feel that the direct
-action of poets and artists is sufficient. They only reveal the more
-conspicuous aspects of the æsthetic sense. Gaultier considers that the
-æsthetic sense, in humbler forms, is mixed up with the most primitive
-manifestations of human life, wherein it plays a part of unsuspected
-importance.[154] The more thorough investigation of these primitive
-forms, he believes, will make it possible for the lawmaker to aid the
-mechanism of this transformation of morality.
-
-Having therewith brought us to the threshold of the æsthetic revolution,
-Jules de Gaultier departs. It remains necessary to point out that it is
-only the threshold. However intimately the elements of the æsthetic
-sense may be blended with primitive human existence, we know too well
-that, as the conditions of human existence are modified, art seems to
-contract and degenerate, so we can hardly expect the æsthetic sense to
-develop in the reverse direction. At present, in the existing state of
-civilisation, with the decay of the controlling power of the old
-morality, the æsthetic sense often seems to be also decreasing, rather
-than increasing, in the masses of the population.[155] One need not be
-troubled to find examples. They occur on every hand and whenever we take
-up a newspaper. One notes, for instance, in England, that the most
-widespread spectacularly attractive things outside cities may be said to
-be the private parks and the churches. (Cities lie outside the present
-argument, for their inhabitants are carefully watched whenever they
-approach anything that appeals to the possessive instinct.) Formerly the
-parks and churches were freely open all day long for those who desired
-to enjoy the spectacle of their beauty and not to possess it. The owners
-of parks and the guardians of churches have found it increasingly
-necessary to close them because of the alarmingly destructive or
-predatory impulses of a section of the public. So the many have to
-suffer for the sins of what may only be the few. It is common to speak
-of this as a recent tendency of our so-called civilisation. But the
-excesses of the possessive instinct cannot have been entirely latent
-even in remote times, though they seem to have been less in evidence.
-The Platonic Timæus attributed to the spectacle of the sun and the moon
-and the stars the existence of philosophy. He failed to note that the
-sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago—as even
-their infinitely more numerous analogues on the earth beneath are likely
-to disappear—had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human
-hands. But the warps and strains of civilised life, with its excessive
-industrialism and militarism, seem to disturb the wholesome balance of
-even the humblest elements of the possessive and æsthetic instincts.
-This means, in the first and most important place, that the liberty of
-the whole community in its finest manifestations is abridged by a
-handful of imbeciles. There are infinite freedoms which it would be a
-joy for them to take, and a help to their work, and a benefit to the
-world, but they cannot be allowed to take them because there are some
-who can only take them and perish, damning others with themselves.
-Besides this supreme injury to life, there are perpetual minor injuries
-that the same incapable section of people are responsible for in every
-direction, while the actual cost of them in money, to the community they
-exert so pernicious an influence on, is so great and so increasing that
-it constitutes a social and individual burden which from time to time
-leads to outbursts of anxious expostulation never steady enough to be
-embodied in any well-sustained and coherent policy.
-
-It is not, indeed, to be desired that the eugenic action of society
-should be directly aimed at any narrowly æsthetic or moral end. That has
-never been the ideal of any of those whose conceptions of social life
-deserve to be taken seriously, least of all Galton, who is commonly
-regarded as the founder of the modern scientific art of eugenics.
-“Society would be very dull,” he remarked, “if every man resembled
-Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede.” He even asserted that “we must leave
-morality as far as possible out of the discussion,” since moral goodness
-and badness are shifting phases of a civilisation; what is held morally
-good in one age is held bad in another. That would hold true of any
-æsthetic revolution. But we cannot afford to do without the sane and
-wholesome persons who are so well balanced that they can adjust
-themselves to the conditions of every civilisation as it arises and
-carry it on to its finest issues. We should not, indeed, seek to breed
-them directly, and we need not, since under natural conditions Nature
-will see to their breeding. But it is all the more incumbent upon us to
-eliminate those ill-balanced and poisonous stocks produced by the
-unnatural conditions which society in the past had established.[156]
-That we have to do alike in the interests of the offspring of these
-diseased stocks and in the interests of society. No power in Heaven or
-Earth can ever confer upon us the right to create the unfit in order to
-hang them like millstones around the necks of the fit. The genius of
-Galton enabled him to see this clearly afresh and to indicate the
-reasonable path of human progress. It was a truth that had long been
-forgotten by the strenuous humanitarians who ruled the nineteenth
-century, so anxious to perpetuate and multiply all the worst spawn of
-their humanity. Yet it was an ancient truth, carried into practice,
-however unconsciously and instinctively, by Man throughout his upward
-course, probably even from Palæolithic times, and when it ceased Man’s
-upward course also ceased. As Carr-Saunders has shown, in a learned and
-comprehensive work which is of primary importance for the understanding
-of the history of Man, almost every people on the face of the earth has
-adopted one or more practices—notably infanticide, abortion, or severe
-restriction of sexual intercourse—adapted to maintain due selection of
-the best stocks and to limit the excess of fertility. They largely
-ceased to work because Man had acquired the humanity which was repelled
-by such methods and lost the intelligence to see that they must be
-replaced by better methods. For the process of human evolution is
-nothing more than a process of sifting, and where that sifting ceases
-evolution ceases, becomes, indeed, devolution.[157]
-
-When we survey the history of Man we are constantly reminded of the
-profound truth which often lay beneath the parables of Jesus, and they
-might well form the motto for any treatise on eugenics. Jesus was
-constantly seeking to suggest the necessity of that process of sifting
-in which all human evolution consists; he was ever quick to point out
-how few could be, as it was then phrased, “saved,” how extremely narrow
-is the path to the Kingdom of Heaven, or, as many might now call it, the
-Kingdom of Man. He proclaimed symbolically a doctrine of heredity which
-is only to-day beginning to be directly formulated: “Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.”
-There was no compunction at all in his promulgation of this radical yet
-necessary doctrine for the destruction of unfit stocks. Even the best
-stocks Jesus was in favour of destroying ruthlessly as soon as they had
-ceased to be the best: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt
-have lost his savour, ... it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be
-cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Jesus has been
-reproached by Nietzsche for founding a religion for slaves and
-plebeians, and so in the result it may have become. But we see that, in
-the words of the Teacher as they have been handed down, the religion of
-Jesus was the most aristocratic of religions. Its doctrine embodied not
-even the permission to live for those human stocks which fall short of
-its aristocratic ideal. It need not surprise us to find that Jesus had
-already said two thousand years ago what Galton, in a more modern
-and—some would add—more humane way, was saying yesterday. If there had
-not been a core of vital truth beneath the surface of the first
-Christian’s teaching, it could hardly have survived so long. We are told
-that it is now dead, but should it ever be revived we may well believe
-that this is the aspect by which it will be commended. It is a
-significant fact that at the two spiritual sources of our world, Jesus
-and Plato, we find the assertion of the principle of eugenics, in one
-implicitly, in the other explicitly.
-
-Jules de Gaultier was not concerned to put forward an aristocratic
-conception of his æsthetic doctrine, and, as we have seen, he remained
-on the threshold of eugenics. He was content to suggest, though with no
-positive assurance, a more democratic conception. He had, indeed, one
-may divine, a predilection for that middle class which has furnished so
-vast a number of the supreme figures in art and thought; by producing a
-class of people dispensed from tasks of utility, he had pointed out, “a
-society creates for itself an organ fitted for the higher life and bears
-witness that it has passed beyond the merely biological stage to reach
-the human stage.” But the middle class is not indispensable, and if it
-is doomed Gaultier saw ways of replacing it.[158] Especially we may seek
-to ensure that, in every social group, the individual task of
-utilitarian work shall be so limited that the worker is enabled to gain
-a leisure sufficiently ample to devote, if he has the aptitude, to works
-of intellect or art. He would agree with Otto Braun, the inspired youth
-who was slain in the Great War, that if we desire the enablement of the
-people “the eight-hours day becomes nothing less than the most
-imperative demand of culture.” It is in this direction, it may well be,
-that social evolution is moving, however its complete realisation may,
-by temporary causes, from time to time be impeded. The insistent demand
-for increased wages and diminished hours of work has not been inspired
-by the desire to raise the level of culture in the social environment,
-or to inaugurate any æsthetic revolution, yet, by “the law of irony”
-which so often controls the realisation of things, that is the result
-which may be achieved. The new leisure conferred on the worker may be
-transformed into spiritual activity, and the liberated utilitarian
-energy into æsthetic energy. The road would thus be opened for a new
-human adventure, of anxious interest, which the future alone can reveal.
-
-We cannot be sure that this transformation will take place. We cannot be
-sure, indeed, that it is possible for it to take place unless the
-general quality of the population in whom so fine a process must be
-effected is raised by a more rigid eugenic process than there is yet any
-real determination among us to exert. Men still bow down before the
-fetish of mere quantity in population, and that worship may be their
-undoing. Giant social organisms, like the giant animal species of early
-times, may be destined to disappear suddenly when they have attained
-their extreme expansion.
-
-Even if that should be so, even if there should be a solution of
-continuity in the course of civilisation, even then, as again Jules de
-Gaultier also held, we need not despair, for life is a fountain of
-everlasting exhilaration. No creature on the earth has so tortured
-himself as Man, and none has raised a more exultant Alleluia. It would
-still be possible to erect places of refuge, cloisters wherein life
-would yet be full of joy for men and women determined by their vocation
-to care only for beauty and knowledge, and so to hand on to a future
-race the living torch of civilisation. When we read Palladius, when we
-read Rabelais, we realise how vast a field lies open for human activity
-between the Thebaid on one side and Thelema on the other. Out of such
-ashes a new world might well arise. Sunset is the promise of dawn.
-
-
-THE END
-
-Footnote 113:
-
-  Alfred Niceforo, _Les Indices Numériques de la Civilisation et du
-  Progrès_. Paris, 1921.
-
-Footnote 114:
-
-  Professor Bury, in his admirable history of the idea of progress (J.
-  B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress_, 1920), never defines the meaning of
-  “progress.” As regards the meaning of “civilisation” see essay on
-  “Civilisation,” Havelock Ellis, _The Philosophy of Conflict_ (1919),
-  pp. 14-22.
-
-Footnote 115:
-
-  Quetelet, _Physique Sociale_. (1869.)
-
-Footnote 116:
-
-  See e.g., Maurice Parmelee’s _Criminology_, the sanest and most
-  comprehensive manual on the subject we have in English.
-
-Footnote 117:
-
-  Élie Faure, with his usual incisive insight, has set out the real
-  characters of the “Greek Spirit” (“Reflexions sur le Génie Grec,”
-  _Monde Nouveau_, December, 1922).
-
-Footnote 118:
-
-  This tendency, on which Herbert Spencer long ago insisted, is in its
-  larger aspects quite clear. E. C. Pell (_The Law of Births and
-  Deaths_, 1921) has argued that it holds good of civilised man to-day,
-  and that our decreasing birth rate with civilisation is quite
-  independent of any effort on Man’s part to attain that evolutionary
-  end.
-
-Footnote 119:
-
-  Professor McDougall refers to the high birth-rate of the lower stratum
-  as more “normal.” If that were so, civilisation would certainly be
-  doomed. All high evolution _normally_ involves a low birth-rate.
-  Strange how difficult it is even for those most concerned with these
-  questions to see the facts simply and clearly!
-
-Footnote 120:
-
-  A. M. Carr-Saunders, _The Population Problem: A Study in Human
-  Evolution_ (1922), pp. 457, 472.
-
-Footnote 121:
-
-  Dupréel, _La Légende Socratique_ (1922), p. 428. Dupréel considers (p.
-  431) that the Protagorean spirit was marked by the idea of explaining
-  the things of thought, and life in general, by the meeting,
-  opposition, and harmony of individual activities, leading up to the
-  sociological notion of _convention_, and behind it, of relativity.
-  Nietzsche was a pioneer in restoring the Sophists to their rightful
-  place in Greek thought. The Greek culture of the Sophists grew out of
-  all the Greek instincts, he says (_The Will to Power_, section 428):
-  “And it has ultimately shown itself to be right. Our modern attitude
-  of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and
-  Protagorean. To say that it is Protagorean is even sufficient, because
-  Protagoras was himself a synthesis of Heraclitus and Democritus.” The
-  Sophists, by realizing that many supposed objective ideas were really
-  subjective, have often been viewed with suspicion as content with a
-  mere egotistically individualistic conception of life. The same has
-  happened to Nietzsche. It was probably an error as regards the
-  greatest Sophists, and is certainly an error, though even still
-  commonly committed, as regards Nietzsche; see the convincing
-  discussion of Nietzsche’s moral aim in Salter, _Nietzsche the
-  Thinker_, chap. XXIV.
-
-Footnote 122:
-
-  I may here, perhaps, remark that in the General Preface to my _Studies
-  in the Psychology of Sex_ I suggested that we now have to lay the
-  foundation of a new casuistry, no longer theological and Christian,
-  but naturalistic and scientific.
-
-Footnote 123:
-
-  Oswald Spengler, _Der Untergang des Abendlandes_, vol. I (1918); vol.
-  II (1922).
-
-Footnote 124:
-
-  In an interesting pamphlet, _Pessimismus?_ Spengler has since pointed
-  out that he does not regard his argument as pessimistic. The end of a
-  civilisation is its fulfilment, and there is still much to be achieved
-  (though not, he thinks, along the line of art) before our own
-  civilisation is fulfilled. With Spengler’s conception of that
-  fulfilment we may, however, fail to sympathise.
-
-Footnote 125:
-
-  See, for instance, W. L. Newman, _The Politics of Aristotle_, vol. 1,
-  p. 201, and S. H. Butcher, _Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine
-  Art_, p. 119.
-
-Footnote 126:
-
-  Beauty is a dangerous conception to deal with, and the remembrance of
-  this great saying may, perhaps, help to save us from the degrading
-  notion that beauty merely inheres in objects, or has anything to do
-  with the prim and smooth conventions which make prettiness. Even in
-  the fine art of painting it is more reasonable to regard prettiness as
-  the negation of beauty. It is possible to find beauty in Degas and
-  Cézanne, but not in Bouguereau or Cabanel. The path of beauty is not
-  soft and smooth, but full of harshness and asperity. It is a rose that
-  grows only on a bush covered with thorns. As of goodness and of truth,
-  men talk too lightly of Beauty. Only to the bravest and skilfullest is
-  it given to break through the briers of her palace and kiss at last
-  her enchanted lips.
-
-Footnote 127:
-
-  Ruskin was what Spinoza has been called, a God-intoxicated man; he had
-  a gift of divine rhapsody, which reached at times to inspiration. But
-  it is not enough to be God-intoxicated, for into him whose mind is
-  disorderly and ignorant and ill-disciplined the Gods pour their wine
-  in vain. Spinoza’s mind was not of that kind, Ruskin’s too often was,
-  so that Ruskin can never be, like Spinoza, a permanent force in the
-  world of thought. His interest is outside that field, mainly perhaps
-  psychological in the precise notation of a particular kind of æsthetic
-  sensibility. The admiration of Ruskin cherished by Proust, himself a
-  supreme master in this field, is significant.
-
-Footnote 128:
-
-  Butcher, _Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, chap. V, “Art
-  and Morals.” Aristotle could have accepted the almost Freudian view of
-  Croce that art is the deliverer, the process through which we overcome
-  the stress of inner experiences by objectifying them (_Æsthetics as
-  Science of Expression_, p. 35). But Plato could not accept Croce,
-  still less Freud.
-
-Footnote 129:
-
-  Schopenhauer, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_ (1859), vol. II, p.
-  442. For a careful and detailed study of Schopenhauer’s conception of
-  art, see A. Fauconnet, _L’Esthétique de Schopenhauer_ (1913).
-
-Footnote 130:
-
-  I find that I have here negligently ascribed to Bergson a metaphor
-  which belongs to Croce, who at this point says the same thing as
-  Bergson, though he gives it a different name. In _Æsthetics as Science
-  of Expression_ (English translation, p. 66) we read: “The world of
-  which as a rule we have intuition [Bergson could not have used that
-  word here] is a small thing.... ‘Here is a man, here is a horse, this
-  is heavy, this is hard, this pleases me,’ etc. It is a medley of light
-  and colour, which could not pictorially attain to any more sincere
-  expression than a haphazard splash of colour, from among which would
-  with difficulty stand out a few special distinctive traits. This and
-  nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the
-  basis of our ordinary action. It is the index of a book. The labels
-  tied to things take the place of things themselves.”
-
-Footnote 131:
-
-  H. Bergson, _Le Rire_. For a clear, concise, and sympathetic
-  exposition of Bergson’s standpoint, though without special reference
-  to art, see Karin Stephen, _The Misuse of Mind_.
-
-Footnote 132:
-
-  This may seem to cast a critical reflection on Croce. Let me,
-  therefore, hasten to add that it is merely the personal impression
-  that Croce, for all his virtuous aspirations after the concrete, tends
-  to fall into verbal abstraction. He so often reminds one of that old
-  lady who used to find (for she died during the Great War) such
-  spiritual consolation in “that blessed word Mesopotamia.” This refers,
-  however, to the earlier more than to the later Croce.
-
-Footnote 133:
-
-  H. Rickert, _System der Philosophie_, vol. I (1921).
-
-Footnote 134:
-
-  Before Baumgarten this distinction seems to have been recognised,
-  though too vaguely and inconsistently, by Hutcheson, who is so often
-  regarded as the real founder of modern æsthetics. W. R. Scott
-  (_Francis Hutcheson_, p. 216) points out these two principles in
-  Hutcheson’s work, “the Internal Senses, as derived from Reflection,
-  representing the attitude of the ‘Spectator’ or observer in a picture
-  gallery while, on the other hand, as deduced from εὐέργεια find a
-  parallel in the artist’s own consciousness of success in his work,
-  thus the former might be called static and the latter dynamic
-  consciousness, or, in the special case of Morality, the first applies
-  primarily to approval of the acts of others, the second to each
-  individual’s approval of his own conduct.”
-
-Footnote 135:
-
-  This would probably be recognised even by those moralists who, like
-  Hutcheson, in their anxiety to make clear an important relationship,
-  have spoken ambiguously. “Probably Hutcheson’s real thought,” remarks
-  F. C. Sharp (_Mind_, 1921, p. 42), “is that the moral emotion, while
-  possessing many important affinities with the æsthetic, is in the last
-  resort different in content.”
-
-Footnote 136:
-
-  Schopenhauer long ago pointed out that a picture should be looked at
-  as a royal personage is approached, in silence, until the moment it
-  pleases to speak to you, for, if you speak first (and how many critics
-  one knows who “speak first”!), you expose yourself to hear nothing but
-  the sound of your own voice. In other words, it is a spontaneous and
-  “mystical” experience.
-
-Footnote 137:
-
-  It is through Plotinus, also, that we realise how æsthetics is on the
-  same plane, if not one, with mysticism. For by his insistence on
-  Contemplation, which is æsthetics, we learn to understand what is
-  meant when it is said, as it often is, that mysticism is
-  Contemplation. (On this point, and on the early evolutions of
-  Christian Mysticism, see Dom Cuthbert Butler, _Western Mysticism_
-  (1922).)
-
-Footnote 138:
-
-  Really, however, Plotinus was here a Neo-Aristotelian rather than a
-  Neo-Platonist, for Aristotle (_Ethics_, book X, chap. 6) had put the
-  claim of the Contemplative life higher even than Plato and almost
-  forestalled Plotinus. But as Aristotle was himself here a Platonist
-  that does not much matter.
-
-Footnote 139:
-
-  See Inge, _Philosophy of Plotinus_, p. 179. In a fine passage (quoted
-  by Bridges in his _Spirit of Man_) Plotinus represents contemplation
-  as the great function of Nature herself, content, in a sort of
-  self-consciousness, to do nothing more than perfect that fair and
-  bright vision. This “metaphysical Narcissism,” as Palante might call
-  it, accords with the conception of various later thinkers, like
-  Schopenhauer, and like Gaultier, who however, seldom refers to
-  Plotinus.
-
-Footnote 140:
-
-  R. Schmidt, _Deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart in
-  Selbstdarstellungen_ (1921), vol. II.
-
-Footnote 141:
-
-  E. Förster-Nietzsche, _Das Leben Nietzsches_, vol. II, p. 99.
-
-Footnote 142:
-
-  W. M. Salter in his _Nietzsche the Thinker_—probably the best and most
-  exact study of Nietzsche’s thought we possess—summarises Nietzsche’s
-  “æsthetic metaphysics,” as he terms it (pp. 46-48), in words which
-  apply almost exactly to Gaultier.
-
-Footnote 143:
-
-  See especially his book _Über den Nervösen Charakter_ (1912). It has
-  been translated into English.
-
-Footnote 144:
-
-  Jules de Gaultier, _Le Bovarysme_, and various other of his works.
-  Georges Palante has lucidly and concisely expounded the idea of
-  Bovarism in a small volume, _La Philosophie du Bovarysme_ (_Mercure de
-  France_).
-
-Footnote 145:
-
-  Gaultier has luminously discussed the relations of War, Civilisation,
-  and Art in the _Monde Nouveau_, August, 1920, and February, 1921.
-
-Footnote 146:
-
-  These are problems concerning which innocent people might imagine that
-  the wise refrained from speculating, but, as a matter of fact, the
-  various groups of philosophic devotees may be divided into those
-  termed “Idealists” and those termed “Realists,” each assured of the
-  superiority of his own way of viewing thought. Roughly speaking, for
-  the idealist thought means the creation of the world, for the realist
-  its discovery. But here (as in many differences between Tweedledum and
-  Tweedledee for which men have slain one another these thousands of
-  years) there seem to be superiorities on both sides. Each looks at
-  thought in a different aspect. But the idealist could hardly create
-  the world with nothing there to make it from, nor the realist discover
-  it save through creating it afresh. We cannot, so to put it, express
-  in a single formula of three dimensions what only exists as a unity in
-  four dimensions.
-
-Footnote 147:
-
-  Bertrand Russell, _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ (1916), p.
-  235.
-
-Footnote 148:
-
-  I may here be allowed to refer to another discussion of this point,
-  Havelock Ellis, _The Philosophy of Conflict, and Other Essays_, pp.
-  57-68.
-
-Footnote 149:
-
-  I may remark that Plato had long before attributed the same
-  observation to the Pythagorean Timæus in the sublime and amusing
-  dialogue that goes under that name: “Sight in my opinion is the source
-  of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and
-  the sun, and the heavens, none of the words which we have spoken about
-  the universe would ever have been uttered. But now the sight of day
-  and night, and the months and the revolution of the years, have
-  created Number, and have given us a conception of Time, and the powers
-  of inquiring about the Nature of the Universe, and from this source we
-  have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will
-  be given by the gods to mortal man.”
-
-Footnote 150:
-
-  Jules de Gaultier, “La Guerre et les Destinées de l’Art,” _Monde
-  Nouveau_, August, 1920.
-
-Footnote 151:
-
-  Thus Einstein, like every true man of science, holds that cultural
-  developments are not to be measured in terms of utilitarian technical
-  advances, much as he has himself been concerned with such advances,
-  but that, like the devotee of “Art for Art’s sake,” the man of science
-  must proclaim the maxim, “Science for Science’s sake.”
-
-Footnote 152:
-
-  In the foregoing paragraphs I have, in my own way, reproduced the
-  thought, occasionally the words, of Jules de Gaultier, more especially
-  in “La Moralité Esthétique” (_Mercure de France_, 15th December,
-  1921), probably the finest short statement of this distinguished
-  thinker’s reflections on the matter in question.
-
-Footnote 153:
-
-  Guyau, _L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique_, p. 163.
-
-Footnote 154:
-
-  This diffused æsthetic sense is correlated with a diffused artistic
-  instinct, based on craftsmanship, which the Greeks were afraid to
-  recognise because they looked down with contempt on the handicrafts as
-  vulgar. William Morris was a pioneer in asserting this association. As
-  a distinguished English writer, Mr. Charles Marriott, the novelist and
-  critic, clearly puts the modern doctrine: “The first step is to
-  absorb, or re-absorb, the ‘Artist’ into the craftsman.... Once agree
-  that the same æsthetic considerations which apply to painting a
-  picture apply, though in a different degree, to painting a door, and
-  you have emancipated labour without any prejudice to the highest
-  meaning of art.... A good surface of paint on a door is as truly an
-  emotional or æsthetic consideration as ‘significant form,’ indeed it
-  _is_ ‘significant form.’” (_Nation and Athenæum_, 1st July, 1922.)
-  Professor Santayana has spoken in the same sense: “In a thoroughly
-  humanised society everything—clothes, speech, manners, government—is a
-  work of art.” (_The Dial_, June, 1922, p. 563.) It is, indeed, the
-  general tendency to-day and is traceable in Croce’s later writings.
-
-Footnote 155:
-
-  Thus it has often been pointed out that the Papuans are artists in
-  design of the first rank, with a finer taste in some matters than the
-  most highly civilised races of Europe. Professor R. Semon, who has
-  some remarks to this effect (_Correspondenzblatt_ of the German
-  Anthropological Society, March, 1902), adds that their unfailing
-  artistic sense is spread throughout the whole population and shown in
-  every object of daily use.
-
-Footnote 156:
-
-  The presence of a small minority of abnormal or perverse persons—there
-  will be such, we may be sure, in every possible society—affords no
-  excuse for restricting the liberty of the many to the standard of the
-  few. The general prevalence of an æsthetic morality in classic times
-  failed to prevent occasional outbursts of morbid sexual impulse in the
-  presence of objects of art, even in temples. We find records of
-  Pygmalionism and allied perversities in Lucian, Athenæus, Pliny,
-  Valerius Maximus. Yet supposing that the Greeks had listened to the
-  proposals of some strayed Puritan visitor, from Britain or New
-  England, to abolish nude statues, or suppose that Plato, who wished to
-  do away with imaginative literature as liable to demoralise, had
-  possessed the influence he desired, how infinite the loss to all
-  mankind! In modern Europe we not only propose such legal abolition; we
-  actually, however in vain, carry it out. We seek to reduce all human
-  existence to absurdity. It is, at the best, unnecessary, for we may be
-  sure that, in spite of our efforts, a certain amount of absurdity will
-  always remain.
-
-Footnote 157:
-
-  A. M. Carr-Saunders, _The Population Problem: A Study in Human
-  Evolution_ (Oxford Press, 1922).
-
-Footnote 158:
-
-  J. de Gaultier, “Art et Civilisation,” _Monde Nouveau_, February,
-  1921.
-
-
-
-
-                                 INDEX
-
- Abortion, once practised, 354.
-
- Absolute, the, a fiction, 101.
-
- Abyssian Church, dancing in worship of, 45.
-
- Acting, music, and poetry, proceed in one stream, 36.
-
- Adam, Villiers de l’Isle, his story _Le Secret de l’ancienne Musique_,
-    25.
-
- Addison, Joseph, his style, 161-63, 184.
-
- Adler, Dr. Alfred, of Vienna, 336, 337.
-
- Adolescence, idealisation in, 107, 108.
-
- Æschylus, developed technique of dancing, 56.
-
-
- Æsthetic contemplation, 314, 315, 325, 326;
-   recognised by the Greeks, 330, 331;
-   two kinds of, that of spectator and that of participator, 331, 332;
-   the Shaftesbury attitude toward, 332, 333;
-   the Swift attitude toward, 333;
-   involves life as a spectacle, 333, 334;
-   and the systems of Gaultier and Russell, 343;
-   engenders neither hatred nor envy, 346.
-
-
- Æsthetic instinct, to replace moralities, religions, and laws, 340,
-    341, 343-45;
-   differentiated from other instincts, 346;
-   has the character of morality, 346.
-
- Æsthetic intuitionism, 260, 276, 279, 314.
-
- Æsthetic sense, development of, indispensable for civilisation, 345;
-   realises morality when unburdened with moral intentions, 346;
-   mixed with primitive manifestations of life, 350;
-   correlated with diffused artistic instinct, 350 _n._;
-   seems to be decreasing, 350-52.
-
- Æsthetics, and ethics, among the Greeks, 247;
-   with us, 348;
-   in the Greek sense, 263;
-   the founders of, 271, 329;
-   and art, the unlikeness of, 325-28;
-   on same plane with mysticism, 330 _n._
-
- Africa, love-dance in, 46, 49, 50.
-
- Akhenaten, 28.
-
- Alaro, in Mallorca, dancing in church at, 44, 45.
-
- Alberti, Leo, vast-ranging ideas of, 5.
-
- Alcohol, consumption of, as test of civilisation, 295, 296.
-
- Anatomy, studied by Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Anaximander, 89.
-
- Ancestry, the force of, in handwriting, 157, 158;
-   in style, 158-61, 190.
-
- Anna, Empress, 59.
-
- Antisthenes, 249 _n._
-
- “Appearance,” 219 _n._
-
- Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 202.
-
- Arabs, dancing among, 38.
-
- Arbuckle, one of the founders of æsthetics, 271;
-   insisted on imagination as formative of character, 272.
-
- Architecture. _See_ Building.
-
- Aristophanes, 311.
-
- Aristotle, 89;
-   on tragedy, 56;
-   on the Mysteries, 242;
-   on the moral quality of an act, 248;
-   his use of the term “moral sense,” 273;
-   on Art and Nature in the making of the State, 313;
-   his use of the term “artists,” 313;
-   his view of poetry, 318;
-   and the contemplative life, 330 _n._
-
- Art, life as, more difficult to realise than to act, 1, 2;
-   universe conceived as work of, by the primitive philosopher, 1;
-   life as, views of finest thinkers of China and Greece on, 2-6,
-      247-52;
-   whole conception of, has been narrowed and debased, 6, 7;
-   in its proper sense, 7, 8;
-   as the desire for beautification, 8;
-   of living, has been decadent during the last two thousand years, 8
-      _n._;
-   Napoleon in the sphere of, 10;
-   of living, the Lifuan, 13-18;
-   of living, the Chinese, 27;
-   Chinese civilisation shows that human life is, 30;
-   of living, T’ung’s story the embodiment of the Chinese symbol of, 33;
-   life identical with, 33-35;
-   of dancing, 36, 51-67, _see_ Dancing;
-   of life, a dance, 66, 67;
-   science and, no distinction between, in classic times, 68;
-   science and, distinction between, in modern times, 68-70;
-   science is of the nature of, 71;
-   represented by Pythagoras as source of science, 74;
-   Greek, 76 _n._;
-   of thinking, 68-140, _see_ Thinking;
-   the solution of the conflicts of philosophy in, 82, 83;
-   philosophy and, close relationship of, 83-85;
-   impulse of, transformed sexual instinct, 108-12;
-   and mathematics, 138-40;
-   of writing, 141-190, _see_ Writing;
-   Man added to Nature, is the task in, 153;
-   the freedom and the easiness of, do not necessarily go together, 182;
-   of religion, 191-243, _see_ Religion;
-   of morals, 244-84, _see_ Morals;
-   the critic of, a critic of life, 269;
-   civilisation is an, 301, 310;
-   consideration of the question of the definition of, 310-12;
-   Nature and, 312, 313;
-   the sum of the active energies of mankind, 313;
-   and æsthetics, the unlikeness of, 314, 315, 325-28;
-   a genus, of which morals is a species, 316;
-   each, has its own morality, 318;
-   to assert that it gives pleasure a feeble conclusion, 319;
-   on the uselessness of, according to Schopenhauer and others, 319-21;
-   meaninglessness of the statement that it is useless, 322;
-   sociological function of, 323, 324;
-   philosophers have failed to see that it has a morality of its own,
-      324, 325;
-   for art’s sake, 346, 347.
-
- Artist, partakes of divine nature of creator of the world, 2;
-   Napoleon as an, 10-12;
-   the true scientist as, 72, 73, 112;
-   the philosopher as, 72, 73, 85;
-   explanation of, 108-12;
-   Bacon’s definition of, Man added to Nature, 153;
-   makes all things new, 153;
-   in words, passes between the plane of new vision and the plane of new
-      creation, 170, 178;
-   life always a discipline for, 277;
-   lays up his treasure in Heaven, 307;
-   Man as, 310;
-   is a maker, 312;
-   Aristotle’s use of the term, 313;
-   reveals Nature, 320;
-   has to effect a necessary Bovarism, 348, 349.
-
- Artistic creation, the process of its birth, 108, 109.
-
- Arts, sometimes classic and sometimes decadent, 8 _n._;
-   and sciences, 68-70;
-   Master of, 69.
-
- “Arty” people, 6, 7.
-
- “As if,” germs of doctrine of, in Kant, 87;
-   world of, and Plato’s “Ideas,” 88;
-   source of the phrase, 88, 89;
-   seen in play, 89;
-   the doctrine of, not immune from criticism, 102;
-   fortifying influence of the doctrine, 102, 103.
-   _See_ Fiction, Vaihinger.
-
- Asceticism, has nothing to do with normal religion, 222, 223;
-   among the Greeks, traced, 249 _n._;
-   and Christianity, 249 _n._
-
- Asclepios, the cult of, 197 _n._
-
- Atavism, in handwriting, 157, 158;
-   in style, 158-61, 190.
-
- Athenæus, 55, 353 _n._;
-   his book about the Greeks, 76 _n._
-
- Atom, a fiction or an hypothesis, 97, 338;
-   the structure of, 97 _n._
-
- Attraction, force of, a fiction, 98.
-
- Aurelius, Marcus, regarded art of life as like the dancer’s art, 66;
-   his statement of the mystical core of religion, 207;
-   adopted æsthetic criterion of moral action, 279.
-
- Australians, religious dances among, 40.
-
- Auto-erotic activities, 110, 111.
-
- Axioms, akin to fiction, 94, 95.
-
-
- Babies, 105.
-
- Bach, Sebastian, 62, 311.
-
- Bacon, Francis, his definition of the artist, Man added to Nature, 153;
-   his style compared with that of Shakespeare, 160;
-   the music of his style, 163;
-   heavy and formal letters of, 184;
-   his axiom, the right question is half the knowledge, 325.
-
- Bacon, Roger, on the sciences, 68.
-
- Balguy, Rev. John, 274.
-
- Ballad, a dance as well as song, 62.
-
- Ballet, the, chief form of Romantic dancing, 53;
-   the germ of, to be found in ancient Rome, 56;
-   origin of the modern, 56;
-   the Italian and the French, 56-58;
-   decline of, 58;
-   the Russian, 58-60;
-   the Swedish, 60.
-
- Bantu, the question of the, 38, 45.
-
- Baptism, 242.
-
- “Barbarians,” the classic use of the term, 285.
-
- Barebones, Praise-God, 272.
-
- Baretti, G. M., 50.
-
- Bastien-Lepage, Jules, 311.
-
- Baudelaire, Charles, on vulgar locutions, 151.
-
- Baumgarten, A. G., the commonly accepted founder of æsthetics, 326.
-
- Bayaderes, 52.
-
- Bayle, G. L., 261.
-
- “Beautiful,” the, among Greeks and Romans, 247, 252.
-
- Beauty, developed by dancing, 47;
-   as an element of literary style, 176-78;
-   and the good, among the Greeks, 247;
-   Plotinus’s doctrine of, 250, 251;
-   of virtue, 270 _n._;
-   æsthetic contemplation creates, 315, 327, 328;
-   and prettiness, 315 _n._;
-   revelation of, sometimes comes as by a process of “conversion,” 328,
-      329.
-
- Bee, the, an artist, 312.
-
- Beethoven, 311;
-   his Seventh Symphony, 62, 63.
-
- Beggary in China, 31.
-
- Benn, A. W., his _The Greek Philosophers_, 6, 252, 277 _n._
-
- Bentham, Jeremy, adopted a fiction for his system, 99.
-
- Berenson, Bernhard, critic of art, 114;
-   his attitude toward Leonardo da Vinci, 114, 117.
-
- Bergson, Henri Louis, pyrotechnical allusions frequent in, 23;
-   regards philosophy as an art, 83, 84;
-   on clarity in style, 176, 177;
-   his idea of intuition, 232 _n._;
-   on reality, 320.
-
- Berkeley, George, 95.
-
- Bernard, Claude, personality in his _Leçons de Physiologie
-    Expérimentales_, 144.
-
-
- Bible, the, the source of its long life, 179.
-   _See_ Old Testament, Revelation.
-
- Birds, dancing of, 36 _n._, 45;
-   the attitude of the poet toward, 168.
-
- Birth-rate, as test of civilisation, 294, 296, 299 _n._
-
- “Bitter,” a moral quality, 264.
-
- Blackguard, the, 244, 245.
-
- Blake, William, on the Dance of Life, 66;
-   on the golden rule of life, 281.
-
- Blasco Ibañez, 171.
-
- Blood, Harvey’s conception of circulation of, nearly anticipated by
-    Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Boisguillebert, Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de, his “barometer of
-    prosperity,” 287.
-
- Botany, studied by Leonardo da Vinci, 119.
-
- Botticelli, Sandro, 56.
-
- Bouguereau, G. A., 315 _n._
-
- Bovarism, explanation of, 335;
-   applied to the Universe, 337;
-   a necessary, effected by the artist, 348, 349.
-
- Brantôme, Pierre de B., his style, 161.
-
- Braun, Otto, 357.
-
- Breton, Jules, 311.
-
- Bridges, Robert, 272.
-
- Browne, Sir Thomas, his style, 161, 175, 176, 178.
-
- Browning, Robert, 113;
-   too clumsy to influence others, 184.
-
- Brunetière, Ferdinand, a narrow-minded pedagogue, 125.
-
- Bruno, Giordano, 207.
-
- Bruno, Leonardo, 207.
-
- Bryce, James, on democracies, 300.
-
- Bücher, Karl, on work and dance, 61, 62.
-
- Buckle, H. T., 99.
-
- Buddhist monks, 224 _n._
-
-
- Building, and dancing, the two primary arts, 36;
-   birds’ nests, the chief early form of, 36 _n._
-
- Bunyan, John, 79.
-
- Burton, Robert, as regards his quotations, 152.
-
- Bury, J. B., 287 _n._
-
-
- Cabanel, 315 _n._
-
- Cadiz, the dancing-school of Spain, 54.
-
- Camargo, innovations of, in the ballet, 57.
-
- Carlyle, Thomas, revelation of family history in his style, 158, 159;
-   compared to Aristophanes, 159 _n._;
-   too clumsy to ninfluence others, 184.
-
- Carpenter, the, sacred position of, in some countries, 2.
-
- Carr-Saunders, A. M., on the social ladder and the successful climbers,
-    299, 300;
-   on selecting the best stock of humanity, 354.
-
- Cassirer, Ernest, on Goethe, 137 _n._
-
- Castanets, 54.
-
- Casuistry, 304 _n._, 305.
-
- Categories, are fictions, 94.
-
- Cathedrals, dancing in, 44, 45.
-
- Ceremony, Chinese, 22, 29;
-   and music, Chinese life regulated by, 24-26.
-
- Cézanne, artist, 153, 315 _n._
-
- Chanties, of sailors, 61, 62.
-
- Cheetham, Samuel, on the Pagan Mysteries, 241 _n._
-
- Chemistry, analogy of, to life, 33-35.
-
- Chess, the Chinese game of, 23.
-
- _Chiaroscuro_, method of, devised by Leonardo da Vinci, 117.
-
- Chidley, Australian philosopher, 79-82.
-
- China, finest thinkers of, perceived significance in life of conception
-    of art, 3;
-   art animates the whole of life in, 27, 28;
-   beggary in, 31.
-
- Chinese, the, the accounts of, 18-21;
-   their poetry, 21, 22, 29, 32;
-   their etiquette of politeness, 22;
-   the quality of play in their character, 22-24;
-   their life regulated by music and ceremony, 24-26, 29;
-   their civilisation shows that life is art, 27, 28, 30;
-   the æsthetic supremacy of, 28-30;
-   endurance of their civilisation, 28, 30;
-   their philosophic calm, 29 _n._;
-   decline in civilisation of, in last thousand years, 30;
-   their pottery, 32, 33;
-   embodiment of their symbol of the art of living, 33.
-
- Chinese life, the art of balancing æsthetic temperament and guarding
-    against its excesses, 29.
-
- _Choir_, the word, 42.
-
- Christian Church, supposed to have been originally a theatre, 42.
-
- Christian ritual, the earliest known, a sacred dance, 42.
-
- Christian worship, dancing in, 42-45;
-   central function of, a sacred drama, 43.
-
- Christianity, Lifuan art of living undermined by arrival of, 18;
-   dancing in, 40-45;
-   the ideas of, as dogmas, hypotheses, and fictions, 99;
-   and the Pagan Mysteries, 242;
-   and asceticism, 249 _n._;
-   the Hebrew mode of feeling grafted into, 276.
-
- Chrysostom, on dancing at the Eucharist, 43.
-
- Church, and religion, not the same, 228 _n._
-
- Church Congress, at Sheffield in 1922, ideas of conversion expressed
-    at, 220 _n._
-
- Churches, 351.
-
- Cicero, 73, 252.
-
- Cinema, educational value of, 138.
-
- Cistercian monks, 43.
-
- Cistercians, the, 347.
-
- Civilisation, develops with conscious adhesion to formal order, 172;
-   standards for measurement of, 285;
-   Niceforo’s measurement of, 286;
-   on meaning of, 287;
-   the word, 288;
-   the art of, includes three kinds of facts, 289;
-   criminality as a measure of, 290, 291;
-   creative genius and general instruction in connection with, 291-93;
-   birth-rate as test of, 294;
-   consumption of luxuries as test of, 294, 295;
-   suicide rate as test of, 295;
-   tests of, applied to France by Niceforo, 295-97;
-   not an exclusive mass of benefits, but a mass of values, 297;
-   becoming more complex, 298;
-   small minority at the top of, 298;
-   guidance of, assigned to lower stratum, 298, 299;
-   art of eugenics necessary to save, 299, 300;
-   of quantity and of quality, 300;
-   not to be precisely measured, 301;
-   the more rapidly it progresses, the sooner it dies, 301;
-   an art, 301, 310;
-   an estimate of its value possible, 302;
-   meaning of Protagoras’s dictum with relation to, 302;
-   measured by standard of fine art (sculpture), 307, 308;
-   eight periods of, 307, 308;
-   a fresh race needed to produce new period of, 308;
-   and culture, 309;
-   æsthetic sense indispensable for, 345;
-   possible break-up of, 358.
-
- Clarity, as an element of style, 176-78.
-
- _Clichés_, 149-51.
-
- Cloisters, for artists, 358.
-
- Cochez, of Louvain, on Plotinus, 249 _n._
-
- Coleridge, S. T., his “loud bassoon,” 169;
-   of the spectator type of the contemplative temperament, 332.
-
- Colour-words, 164 _n._
-
- Colvin, Sir Sidney, on science and art, 70.
-
- Commandments, tables of, 253, 255.
-
- Communists, French, inspired by Shaftesbury, 269.
-
- Community, the, 244.
-
- Comte, J. A., 301.
-
- Confucian morality, the, 29.
-
- Confucianism, outward manifestation of Taoism, 26.
-
- Confucius, consults Lao-tze, 25, 26.
-
- Conrad, Joseph, his knowledge of the sea, 171.
-
- Contemplation. _See_ Æsthetic contemplation.
-
- Convention, and Nature, Hippias makes distinction between, 5.
-
- Conventions. _See_ Traditions.
-
- Conversion, a _questionnaire_ on, 210 _n._;
-   the process of, 218;
-   the fundamental fact of, 218, 218 _n._;
-   essential outlines of, have been obscured, 220 _n._;
-   Churchmen’s ideas of, 220 _n._;
-   not the outcome of despair or a retrogression, 221, 222;
-   nothing ascetic about it, 222;
-   among the Greeks, 240;
-   revelation of beauty sometimes comes by a process of, 328, 329.
-
- Cooper, Anthony, 261.
-
- Cornish, G. Warre, his article on “Greek Drama and the Dance,” 56.
-
- Cosmos. _See_ Universe.
-
- Courtship, dancing a process of, 46.
-
- Cowper, William, 184;
-   influence of Shaftesbury on, 266.
-
- Craftsman, the, partakes of divine nature of creator of the world, 2.
-
- Creation, not the whole of Man, 314.
-
- Creative impulses. _See_ Impulses.
-
- Crime, an effort to get into step, 245 _n._;
-   defined, 290;
-   natural, 290;
-   evolutive social, 291.
-
- Criminality, as a measure of civilisation, 290, 291.
-
- Critics, of language, 141-51;
-   difficulty of their task, 153 _n._
-
- Croce, Benedetto, his idea of art, 84;
-   tends to move in verbal circles, 84;
-   on judging a work of art, 153 _n._;
-   on mysticism and science, 191 _n._;
-   tends to fall into verbal abstraction, 324 _n._;
-   his idea of intuition, 232 _n._, 320 _n._;
-   on the critic of art as a critic of life, 269;
-   on art the deliverer, 318 _n._;
-   union of æsthetic sense with artistic instinct, 350 _n._
-
- Croiset, Maurice, on Plotinus, 249 _n._
-
- Cromwell, Oliver, 272.
-
- Cruz, Friar Gaspar de, on the Chinese, 31.
-
- Culture, and civilisation, 309.
-
- Curiosity, the sexual instinct a reaction, to the stimulus of, 104,
-    112.
-
- Custom, 245.
-
- Cuvier, Georges, 181.
-
- Cymbal, the, 53.
-
-
-
- Dance, love, among insects, birds, and mammals, 45, 46;
-   among savages, 46;
-   has gained influence in the human world, 48;
-   various forms of, 48, 49;
-   the complete, 49, 50;
-   the seductiveness of, 50;
-   prejudice against, 50, 51;
-   choral, Plotinus compares the moral life of the soul to, 251, 252.
-
- Dance of Life, the, 66, 67.
-
-
- Dancing, and building, the two primary acts, 36;
-   possibly accounts for origin of birds’ nests, 36 _n._;
-   supreme manifestation of physical life and supreme symbol of
-      spiritual life, 36;
-   the significance of, 37;
-   the primitive expression of religion and of love, 37, 38, 45;
-   entwined with human tradition of war, labour, pleasure, and
-      education, 37;
-   the expression of the whole man, 38, 39;
-   rules the life of primitive men, 39 _n._;
-   religious importance of, among primitive men, 39, 40;
-   connected with all religions, 40;
-   ecstatic and pantomimic, 41, 42;
-   survivals of, in religion, 42;
-   in Christian worship, 42-45;
-   in cathedrals, 44, 45;
-   among birds and insects, 45;
-   among mammals, 45, 46;
-   a process of courtship and novitiate for love, 46, 47;
-   double function of, 47;
-   different forms of, 48-51;
-   becomes an art, 51;
-   professional, 52;
-   Classic and Romantic, 52-60;
-   the ballet, 53, 56-60;
-   solo, 53;
-   Egyptian and Gaditanian, 53, 54;
-   Greek, 55, 56, 60;
-   as morals, 60, 61, 63;
-   all human work a kind of, 61, 62;
-   and music, 61-63;
-   social significance of, 60, 61, 63, 64;
-   and war, allied, 63, 64;
-   importance of, in education, 64, 65;
-   Puritan attack on, 65;
-   is life itself, 65;
-   always felt to possess symbolic significance, 66;
-   the learning of, a severe discipline, 277.
-
- Dancing-school, the function of, process of courtship, 47.
-
- D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 178.
-
- _Danse du ventre_, the, 49 _n._
-
- Dante, 311, 349;
-   dancing in his “Paradiso,” 43;
-   intellectual life of, largely guided by delight in beauty of rhythmic
-      relation between law and instance, 73.
-
- Darwin, Charles, 88;
-   poet and artist, 128, 129;
-   and St. Theresa, 198.
-
- Darwin, Erasmus, 181.
-
- David, Alexandra, his book, _Le Philosophe Meh-ti et l’Idée de
-    Solidarité_, 26 _n._
-
- Decadence, of art of living, 8 _n._;
-   rigid subservience to rule a mark of, 173.
-
- Degas, 315 _n._
-
- Democracies, the smallest, are highest, 300.
-
- Demography, 285.
-
- Demosthenes, 336.
-
- De Quincey, Thomas, the music of his style, 164.
-
- Descartes, René, on arts and sciences, 69;
-   represents in France new impetus to sciences, 180;
-   religious, though man of science, 208.
-
- Design, the arts of, 36.
-
- Devadasis, the, sacred dancing girls, 51, 52.
-
- Diaghilev, 59.
-
- Dickens, Charles, 311.
-
- Dickinson, G. Lowes, his account of the Chinese, 20, 21;
-   his account of Chinese poetry, 21, 22.
-
- Diderot, Denis, wide-ranging interests of, 5;
-   translated Shaftesbury, 268.
-
- “Dieta Salutis,” the, 43.
-
- Discipline, definition of a, 71 _n._
-
- “Divine command,” the, 255.
-
- “Divine malice,” of Nietzsche, 155 _n._
-
- Diving-bell, constructed by Leonardo da Vinci, 119.
-
- Divorces, as test of civilisation, 296.
-
- Doctor, and priest, originally one, 197 _n._, 203.
-
- Dogma, hypothesis, and fiction, 98, 99.
-
- Dogmas, shadows of personal experience, 217.
-
- Dostoievsky, F. M., 311, 349;
-   his masterpiece, “_The Brothers Karamazov_,” 135, 136.
-
- Drama, Greek, origin of, 55, 56;
-   the real Socrates possibly to be seen in, 78.
-
- Driesch, Hans, on his own mental development, 216 _n._
-
- Drum, the influence of the, 63.
-
- Dryden, John, 148.
-
- Dujardin, Edouard, his story of Huysmans, 166;
-   on Bergson’s style, 177.
-
- Dumont, Arsène, on civilisation, 298, 301.
-
- Duncan, Isadora, 60.
-
- Duprat, G. L., on morality, 34.
-
- Dupréel, Professor, on Hippias, 6 _n._;
-   his _La Légende Socratique_, 82 _n._;
-   on the Protagorean spirit, 302 _n._
-
- Duty, 275, 276.
-
-
- Easter, dancing of priests at, 44.
-
- Eckhart, Meister, 234, 336.
-
- Education, importance of dancing in, 64, 65;
-   Einstein’s views on, 137;
-   and genius, as tests of civilisation, 291-93.
-
- Egypt, ancient, dancing in, 42;
-   Classical dancing originated in, 52;
-   the most influential dancing-school of all time, 53;
-   musical instruments associated with dancing, originated or developed
-      in, 53;
-   modern, dancing in, 54 _n._;
-   importance of its civilisation, 307.
-
- Eight-hours day, the, 357.
-
- Einstein, Albert, 2, 69 _n._, 72;
-   substitutes new axioms for old, 95;
-   casts doubts on Leonardo da Vinci’s previsions of modern science, 120
-      _n._;
-   seems to have won a place beside Newton, 133;
-   an imaginative artist, 134;
-   his fondness for music, 134, 135;
-   his other artistic likings and dislikings, 135, 136;
-   an artist also in his work, 136;
-   his views on science, 137;
-   his views on education, 137, 138;
-   on the motives that attract people to science and art, 138, 321;
-   feels harmony of religion and science, 207;
-   concerned with truth, 327;
-   and “science for science’s sake,” 347 _n._
-
- Eleusinian Mysteries, the, 240-43.
-
- Eliot, George, her knowledge of the life of country people, 171;
-   Tolstoy’s opinion of, 311.
-
- Ellis, Havelock, childhood of, 210, 211;
-   his period of emotional and intellectual expansion, 211;
-   loses faith, 212;
-   influence of Hinton’s “_Life in Nature_” on, 215-18.
-
- Els Cosiers, dancing company, 45.
-
- Emerson, R. W., his style and that of Bacon, 161.
-
- Emmanuel, his book on Greek dancing, 55.
-
- Empathy, 66.
-
- Engineering, professional, Leonardo da Vinci called the founder of,
-    118, 119.
-
- English laws, 98.
-
- English prose style, Cartesian influence on, 180 _n._
-
- English speech, licentiousness of, in the sixteenth century, 148;
-   the best literary prose, 155, 156.
-
- Enjoyment, without possession, 343-46.
-
- Epictetus, 249 _n._
-
- Epicurus, 207.
-
- Erosian, river, importance of, realised by Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Eskimos, 255.
-
- Este, Isabella d’, 123.
-
- Ethics, and æsthetics, among the Greeks, 247.
-
-
- Etruscans, the, 56, 308.
-
- Eucharist, dancing at the, 43.
-
- Eucken, Rudolf, on Shaftesbury, 271.
-
- Eugenics, art of, necessary for preservation of civilisation, 299;
-   Galton the founder of the modern scientific art of, 353;
-   assertion of principle of, by Jesus, 355, 356;
-   question of raising quality of population by process of, 358.
-
- Eusebius, on the worship of the Therapeuts, 42.
-
- Evans, Sir Arthur, 112.
-
- Evolution, theory of, 88, 104;
-   a process of sifting, 355;
-   and devolution, 355;
-   social, 357, 358.
-
- Existence, totality of, Hippias’s supreme ideal, 6.
-
- Existing, and thinking, on two different planes, 101.
-
- “Expression,” 324.
-
-
- Facts, in the art of civilisation, material, intellectual, and moral
-    (with political), 289.
-
- Fandango, the, 50.
-
- Faraday, Michael, characteristics of, trust in facts and imagination,
-    130-32;
-   his science and his mysticism, 208.
-
- Farnell, L. R., on religion and science, 197 _n._
-
- Farrer, Reginald, on the philosophic calm of the Chinese, 29 _n._
-
- Faure, Elie, his conception of Napoleon, 10;
-   on Greek art, 76 _n._;
-   has faith in educational value of cinema, 137;
-   on knowledge and desire, 154;
-   on the Greek spirit, 292 _n._
-
- Ferrero, Guglielmo, on the art impulse and the sexual instinct, 109.
-
-
- Fiction, germs of doctrine of, in Kant, 87;
-   first expression of doctrine of, found in Schiller, 89;
-   doctrine of, in F. A. Lange’s _History of Materialism_, 93;
-   Vaihinger’s doctrine of, 94-103;
-   hypothesis, and dogma, 98, 99;
-   of Bovarism, 335, 336;
-   character constituted by process of, 336.
-
- Fictions, the variety of, 94-100;
-   the value of, 96, 97;
-   summatory, 98;
-   scientific and æsthetic, 102;
-   may always be changed, 103;
-   good and bad, 103.
-
- Fiji, dancing at, 49.
-
- Fijians, the, 13 _n._
-
- Fine arts, the, 70;
-   civilisation measured by standard of, 307;
-   not to be pursued for useful end outside themselves, 322.
-
- Fireworks, 22, 23.
-
- Flaubert, Gustave, is personal, 144;
-   sought to be most objective of artists, 182.
-
- Flowers, the attitude of the poet toward, 168, 169.
-
- Flying-machines, 72 _n._;
-   designed by Leonardo da Vinci, 119.
-
- Foch, Ferdinand, quoted, 103.
-
- Fokine, 59.
-
- Folk-dances, 62.
-
- Force, a fiction, 96.
-
- Fossils, significance of, discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Fox, George, 237.
-
- France, tests of civilization applied to, by Niceforo, 295-97.
-
- Francis of Assisi, 237.
-
- Franck, César, mysticism in music of, 237.
-
- Frazer, J. G., on magic and science, 195, 196.
-
- Freedom, a fiction, 100.
-
- French ballet, the, 57, 58.
-
- French speech, its course, 148, 149.
-
- Freud, Sigmund, 111, 318 _n._;
-   regards dreaming as fiction, 103;
-   on the probability of the disappearance of religion, 228 _n._
-
- Frobisher, Sir Martin, his spelling, 173, 174.
-
-
- Galen, 120.
-
- Galton, Francis, a man of science and an artist, 126-28;
-   founder of the modern scientific art of eugenics, 353;
-   and Jesus’s assertion of the principle of eugenics, 356.
-
- Games, the liking of the Chinese for, 23.
-
- Gaultier, Jules de, 330 _n._;
-   on Buddhist monks, 224 _n._;
-   on pain and pleasure in life, 278 _n._;
-   on morality and reason, 281;
-   on morality and art, 284;
-   on the antinomy between morals and morality, 319;
-   on beauty, 327;
-   on life as a spectacle, 333;
-   the Bovarism of, 335-37;
-   his philosophic descent, 337;
-   applies Bovarism to the Universe, 337;
-   his philosophy seems to be in harmony with physics, 338;
-   the place of morality, religion, and law in his system, 338-40;
-   place of the æsthetic instinct in his system, 341, 343-45;
-   system of, compared with Russell’s, 342, 343;
-   importance of development of æsthetic sense to, 345;
-   and the idea of pure art, 346, 347;
-   considers æsthetic sense mixed in manifestations of life, 349, 350;
-   had predilection for middle class, 356, 357;
-   sees no cause for despair in break-up of civilisation, 358.
-
- Gauss, C. F., religious, though man of science, 208.
-
-
- Genesis, Book of, the fashioning of the cosmos in, 1, 314.
-
- Genius, the birth of, 109;
-   and education, as tests, of civilisation, 291-93;
-   of country, and temper of the population, 292, 293.
-
- Geology, founded by Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Geometry, Protagoras’s studies in, 3;
-   a science or art, 68.
-
- Gibbon, Edward, 162.
-
- Gide, André, 322.
-
- Gizycki, Georg von, on Shaftesbury, 260, 267.
-
- God, a fiction, 100, 337.
-
- Goethe, J. W., 342;
-   representative of ideal of totality of existence, 6;
-   called architecture “frozen music,” 135;
-   his power of intuition, 137;
-   his studies in mathematical physics, 137 _n._;
-   use of word “stamped” of certain phrases, 149;
-   mistook birds, 168;
-   felt harmony of religion and science, 207;
-   and Schiller and Humboldt, 275.
-
- Gomperz, Theodor, his _Greek Thinkers_, 4, 5, 6 _n._; 75, 78.
-
- Goncourt, Jules de, his style, 182, 183.
-
- Goncourts, the, 183.
-
- Good, the, and beauty, among the Greeks, 247.
-
- Goodness, and sweetness, in Shaftesbury’s philosophy, 262;
-   and sweetness, originally the same, 263;
-   moral, originally expressed in terms of taste, 263.
-
- Gorgias, 302.
-
- Gourmont, Remy de, 65;
-   his remark about pleasure, 24;
-   on personality, 144;
-   on style, 177;
-   on civilisation, 298;
-   on the Jesuits, 304, 305;
-   on beauty, 315;
-   on art and morality, 321;
-   on sociological function of art, 323.
-
- Government, as art, 3.
-
- Grace, an element of style in writing, 155, 156.
-
- Grammar, Protagoras the initiator of modern, 4;
-   a science or art, 68;
-   writing not made by the laws of, 172, 173.
-
- Grammarian, the, the formulator, not the lawgiver, of usage, 148.
-
- Great Wall of China, the, 28.
-
- Great War, the, 339.
-
- Greece, ancient, genius built upon basis of slavery in, 292;
-   the spirit of, 292.
-
- Greek art, 76 _n._
-
- Greek dancing, 55, 56, 60.
-
- Greek drama, 55, 56, 78.
-
- Greek morality, an artistic balance of light and shade, 260.
-
- Greek speech, the best literary prose, 155.
-
- Greek spirit, the, 76 _n._
-
- Greeks, attitude of thinkers of, on life as art, 3, 247-53;
-   the pottery of, 32;
-   importance of dancing and music in organisation of some states of,
-      64;
-   books on, written by barbarians, 76 _n._;
-   mysticism of, 205-07, 240-43;
-   spheres of ethics and æsthetics not distinguished among, 247;
-   had a kind of æsthetic morality, 316-18;
-   recognised destruction of ethical and intellectual virtues, 330;
-   a small minority of abnormal persons among, 353 _n._
-
- Greenslet, Ferris, on the Cartesian influence on English prose style,
-    180 _n._
-
- Groos, Karl, his “the play of inner imitation,” 66;
-   has developed æsthetic side of _miterleben_, 332.
-
- Grosse, on the social significance of dancing, 63, 64.
-
- Grote, George, his chapter on Socrates, 76.
-
- Grotius, Hugo, 261.
-
- Guitar, the, an Egyptian instrument, 53.
-
- Gumplowicz, Ludwig, on civilisation, 301.
-
- Gunpowder, use made of, by Chinese, 22, 23.
-
- Guyau, insisted on sociological function of art, 323, 324;
-   believes that poets and artists will be priests of social religion
-      without dogmas, 349, 350.
-
- Gypsies, possible origin of the name “Egyptians” as applied to them, 54
-    _n._
-
-
- Hadfield, Emma, her account of the life of the natives of the Loyalty
-    Islands, 13-18.
-
- Hakluyt, Richard, 143;
-   his picture of Chinese life, 19.
-
- Hall, Stanley, on importance of dancing, 64, 65;
-   on the beauty of virtue, 270 _n._
-
- Handel, G. F., 62.
-
-
- Handwriting, partly a matter of individual instinct, 156, 157;
-   the complexity and mystery enwrapping, 157;
-   resemblances in, among members of the same family, 157, 158;
-   atavism in, 157, 158.
-
- Hang-Chau, 20.
-
- Hardy, Thomas, his lyrics, 170 _n._;
-   his sensitivity to the sounds of Nature, 171;
-   his genius unquestioned, 187 _n._
-
- Hawaii, dancing in, 51.
-
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his style, 161.
-
- Hebrews, their conception of the fashioning of the universe, 1;
-   ancient, their priests and their prophets, 203;
-   never conceived of the art of morals, 253;
-   were no æsthetic intuitionists, 276.
-
- Hegel, G. W. F., 90;
-   poetic quality of his philosophy, 84;
-   his attempt to transform subjective processes into objective
-      world-processes, 101.
-
- Heine, Heinrich, 155 _n._
-
- Hellenism, the revivalists of, 271.
-
- Helmholtz, H. L. F., science and art in, 72.
-
- Hemelverdeghem, Salome on Cathedral at, 49 _n._
-
- Heraclitus, 74.
-
- Herder, J. G. von, his _Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit_, 88;
-   inspired by Shaftesbury, 268.
-
- Heredity, in handwriting, 157, 158;
-   in style, 158-61, 190;
-   tradition the corporeal embodiment of, 161.
-
- Hincks, Marcella Azra, on the art of dancing in Japan, 42 _n._
-
- Hindu dance, 41.
-
- Hinton, James, on thinking as an art, 86 _n._;
-   on the arts, 111;
-   the universe according to, 215, 216;
-   Ellis’s copy of his book, 220;
-   on pleasure and pain in the art of life, 278;
-   on methods of arts and moral action, 281, 282.
-
- Hippias, 302;
-   significance of his ideas, in conception of life as an art, 4-6;
-   his ideal, 4, 6;
-   the Great Logician, 6 _n._
-
- Hobbes, Thomas, on space, 95;
-   his dictum _Homo homini lupus_, 262.
-
- Hodgson, Shadworth, 289.
-
- Hoffman, Bernhard, his _Guide to the Bird-World_, 168.
-
- Horace, the popularity of, in modern times, 92.
-
- Hovelaque, Émile, on the Chinese, 27, 28.
-
- Howell, James, his “Familiar Letters,” 184.
-
- Hugo, Victor, 149, 311.
-
- Hula dance, the, 51.
-
- Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 275.
-
- Hume, David, took up fictional point of view, 96;
-   recognised Shaftesbury, 267;
-   influenced by Hutcheson, 275.
-
- Hunt, Leigh, sensitively acute critic of Keats, 167.
-
- Hunter, John, 181.
-
- Hutcheson, Francis, æsthetic moralist, 251;
-   came out of Calvinistic Puritanism, 266;
-   one of the founders of æsthetics, 271, 326 _n._;
-   wrote the first modern treatise on æsthetics, 271;
-   represented reaction against Puritanism, 271;
-   Shaftesbury’s ideas as developed by, 273;
-   his use of the term “moral sense,” 273, 274;
-   his impressive personality, 274;
-   philosophy was art of living to, 274, 275;
-   inconsistent, 314;
-   on distinction between art and æsthetics, 326 _n._;
-   his idea of the æsthetic and the moral emotion, 327 _n._
-
- Huysmans, J. K., his vocabulary, 165;
-   at Wagner concert, 166;
-   fascinated by concert programmes, 166, 167.
-
- “Hymn of Jesus,” the, 42.
-
- Hypothesis, dogma, and fiction, 98, 99.
-
-
- _I_ and _me_, 147.
-
- Idealisation, in adolescence, 107, 108.
-
- Idealism, 83.
-
- Idealists, 70, 341 _n._
-
- Ideals, are fictions, 100.
-
- Imagination, a constitutive part of thinking, 102;
-   man lives by, 102;
-   guarded by judgment and principles, 130-32;
-   part performed by, in morals, 272;
-   and the æsthetic instinct, 344.
-
- Imbeciles, 352-55.
-
- Imitation, in the productions of young writers, 164.
-
- _Immoral_, significance of the word, 246.
-
- Immortality, a fiction, 100.
-
-
- Impulses, creative and possessive, 306, 307, 341-43.
-
- Inclination, 275.
-
- India, dancing in, 51, 52;
-   the Todas of, 203 _n._
-
- Indians, American, religious dances among, 40, 42.
-
- Infanticide, 255, 354.
-
- Infinite, the, a fiction, 95.
-
- Infinitive, the split, 145-47.
-
- Inge, Dean, on Plotinus, 223 _n._, 249 _n._;
-   on Pagan Mysteries, 241 _n._
-
- Innate ideas, 274.
-
- Insects, dancing among, 45.
-
- Instinct, the part it plays in style, 163;
-   imitation a part of, 164;
-   and tradition, mould morals, 254-59;
-   the possessive, 338-40, 344, 345, 351, _see_ Possessive instinct;
-   the æsthetic, 341, 343-46, 350, _see_ Æsthetic instinct.
-
- Instincts, 234, 235.
-
- Intelligence, the sphere of, 233, 234.
-
- Intuition, the starting point of science, 137;
-   meaning of, 232 _n._;
-   of the man of genius, 320.
-
- Intuitionism, æsthetic, 260, 276, 279, 314.
-
- Intuitionists, the, 232-34.
-
- Invention, necessary in science, 137.
-
- Invincible ignorance, doctrine of, 304.
-
- Irony, Socratic, 78, 83.
-
- Irrationalism, of Vaihinger, 90.
-
- Isocrates, on beauty and virtue, 247.
-
- Italy, Romantic dancing originated in, 53, 56;
-   the ballet in, 56-58.
-
-
- Jansenists, the, 303.
-
- Japan, dancing in, 42, 49.
-
- Java, dancing in, 49.
-
- Jehovah, in the Book of Genesis, 1.
-
- Jeremiah, the prophet, his voice and instrument, 178, 179.
-
- Jeres, cathedral of, dancing in, 44.
-
- Jesuits, the, 303-05.
-
- Jesus, and Napoleon, 10, 11;
-   and the Platonic Socrates, 82, 83;
-   asserts principle of eugenics, 353, 356;
-   and Plato, 356.
-
- Joël, Karl, on the Xenophontic Socrates, 78;
-   on the evolution of the Greek philosophic spirit, 206.
-
- John of the Cross, 237.
-
- Johnson, Samuel, the pedantry of, 156;
-   Latin-French element in, 162;
-   his idea of “matter,” 230.
-
- Johnston, Sir H. H., on the dancing of the Pygmies, 51.
-
- Jones, Dr. Bence, biographer of Faraday, 130.
-
- Jonson, Ben, 184.
-
- Joyce, James, 172, 184;
-   his _Ulysses_, 185, 186.
-
-
- Kant, Immanuel, 89;
-   germs of the doctrine of the “as if” in, 87;
-   his idea of the art of morals, 253, 254;
-   influenced by Shaftesbury, 253, 254, 266;
-   anecdote about, 257 _n._, 276;
-   rationalises morality, 281.
-
- Keats, John, concerned with beautiful words in “The Eve of St. Agnes,”
-    167.
-
- Kepler, Johann, his imagination and his accuracy in calculation, 132,
-    133.
-
- Keyserling, Count Hermann, his _Philosophie als Kunst_, 83 _n._
-
- “Knowing,” analysis of, 70, 71.
-
- Kolbe, Rev. Dr., illustrates æsthetic view of morals, 276 _n._
-
-
- Lamb, Charles, 184.
-
- Landor, W. S., 149;
-   on vulgarisms in language, 151 _n._;
-   on the poet and poetry, 154, 172;
-   on style, 163.
-
- Lange, F. A., his _The History of Materialism_, 73 _n._, 83;
-   sets forth conception of philosophy as poetic art, 83;
-   the Neo-Kantism of, 87;
-   his influence on Vaihinger, 92, 93.
-
- Language, critics of present-day, 141-51;
-   of our forefathers and of to-day, 143;
-   things we are told to avoid in, 145-51;
-   is imagery and metaphor, 165;
-   reaction of thought on, 179-81;
-   progress in, due to flexibility and intimacy, 183.
-
- Languages, the Yo-heave-ho theory of, 61.
-
- Lankester, Sir E. Ray, 70.
-
- Lao-tze, and Confucius, 25, 26;
-   the earliest of the great mystics, 204;
-   harmony of religion and science in his work, 204, 205.
-
- Law, a restraint placed upon the possessive instinct, 339, 340;
-   to be replaced by æsthetic instinct, 340, 341.
-
- Laycock, on handwriting, 158 _n._
-
- Leibnitz, Baron S. W. von, 6 _n._;
-   on space, 95;
-   on music, 135;
-   admired Shaftesbury, 268.
-
- “L’Esprit Nouveau,” 179.
-
- Libby, M. F., on Shaftesbury, 273.
-
- Lie, Jonas, 163.
-
- Life, more difficult to realise it as an art than to act it so, 1, 2;
-   as art, view of highest thinkers of China and Greece on, 2-6, 247-52;
-   ideal of totality of, 6;
-   art of, has been decadent during last two thousand years, 8 _n._;
-   of the Loyalty Islanders, 13-18;
-   the Lifuan art of, 13-18;
-   the Chinese art of, 27, 28;
-   Chinese civilization proves that it is art, 30;
-   embodiment of the Chinese symbol of the art of, 33;
-   identical with art, 33-35;
-   the art of, a dance, 66, 67;
-   mechanistic explanation of, 216;
-   viewed in its moral aspect, 244;
-   the moralist the critic of the art of, 247;
-   as art, attitude of Romans toward, 252;
-   as art, attitude of Hebrews toward, 253;
-   the art of, both pain and pleasure in, 277, 278;
-   as art, a conception approved by men of high character, 278, 279;
-   not to be precisely measured by statistics, 302;
-   as a spectacle, 333, 334.
-
- Lifu. _See_ Loyalty Islands.
-
-
- Lifuans, the, the art of living of, 13-18.
-
- Limoges, 44.
-
- Linnæan system, the, a fiction, 99.
-
- Liszt, Franz, 329.
-
- Livingstone, David, 38.
-
- Locke, John, and Shaftesbury, 261, 262.
-
- Locomotive, the, 72 _n._
-
- Lodge, Sir Oliver, his attempt to study religion, 201.
-
- Logic, a science or art, 68;
-   and fiction, 94;
-   of thought, inescapable, 183.
-
- Loret, on dancing, 54 _n._
-
- Love, dancing the primitive expression of, 37, 45;
-   curiosity one of the main elements of, 112.
-
- Love-dance, 45-51.
-   _See_ Dance, Dancing.
-
-
- Loyalty Islands, the, customs of the natives of, 13-18.
-
- Lucian, 353 _n._;
-   on dancing, 40, 45.
-
- Lucretius, 207.
-
- Lull, Ramon, 237.
-
- Lulli, J. B., brought women into the ballet, 57.
-
- Luxuries, consumption of, as test of civilisation, 294-97.
-
-
- Machinery of life, 216.
-
- Madagascar, dancing in, 49.
-
- Magic, relation of, to science and religion, 193-96.
-
- Magna Carta, 98.
-
- Malherbe, François de, 148.
-
- Mallarmé, Stéphane, music the voice of the world to, 166.
-
- Mallorca, dancing in church in, 44, 45.
-
- Mammals, dancing among, 45, 46.
-
- Man, has found it more difficult to conceive life as an art than to act
-    it so, 1;
-   his conception less that of an artist, as time went on, 2;
-   in Protagoras’s philosophy, 3, 4, 302;
-   ceremony and music, his external and internal life, 25;
-   added to Nature, 153;
-   has passed through stages of magic, religion, and science, 196;
-   an artist of his own life, 271;
-   is an artist, 310;
-   as artist and as æsthetician, 314;
-   becomes the greatest force in Nature, 339;
-   practices adopted by, to maintain selection of best stock, 354.
-
- Mandeville, Sir John, on Shaftesbury, 262.
-
- Manet, 311.
-
- Marco Polo, his picture of Chinese life, 19, 20;
-   noticed absence of beggars in China, 31;
-   on public baths in China, 32.
-
- Marett, on magic and science, 195.
-
- Marlowe, Christopher, 170, 184.
-
- Marquesans, the, 13 _n._
-
- Marriott, Charles, on the union of æsthetic sense with artistic
-    instinct, 350 _n._
-
- Martial, 54.
-
- Mass, dancing in ritual of, 43-45;
-   analogy of Pagan Mysteries to, 242.
-
- Master of Arts, 69.
-
- Materialism, 97, 230.
-
- Materialistic, the term, 229.
-
- Mathematical Renaissance, the, 69.
-
- Mathematics, false ideas in, 94, 95;
- and art, 138-40.
-
- Matter, a fiction, 97, 229, 338;
-   and spirit, 229, 230.
-
- Maupassant, Guy de, 311.
-
- McDougall, William, accepts magic as origin of science, 195;
-   his criticism of the “moral sense,” 274 _n._;
-   his study of civilisation, 298;
-   on birth-rate, 298 _n._
-
- _Me_ and _I_, 147.
-
- Mead, G. R., his article _The Sacred Dance of Jesus_, 44.
-
- Measurement, Protagoras’s saying concerning, 3, 302.
-
- Mechanics, beginning of science of, 74;
-   theories of, studied by Leonardo da Vinci, 120.
-
- Medici, Catherine de’, brought Italian ballet to Paris, 57.
-
- Medicine, and religion, 197 _n._, 203.
-
- Medicine-man, the, 192-95.
-
- Meh-ti, Chinese philosopher, 26, 27.
-
- Men, of to-day and of former days, their comparative height, 142.
-
- “Men of science,” 125, 126.
-   _See_ Scientist.
-
- Meteorological Bureau, the, 203.
-
- Metre, poetic, arising out of work, 62.
-
- Michelangelo, 311.
-
- Milan, the ballet in, 58.
-
- Mill, J. S., on science and art, 70;
-   criticism of Bentham, 99.
-
- Millet, J. F., 311.
-
- Milton, John, his misuse of the word “eglantine,” 169;
-   Tolstoy’s opinion of, 311.
-
- Mirandola, Pico della, 6 _n._
-
- Mittag-Lefler, Gustav, on mathematics, 139.
-
- Möbius, Paul Julius, German psychologist, 109.
-
- Moissac, Salome capital in, 49 _n._
-
- Montaigne, M. E. de, his style flexible and various, 148;
-   his quotations moulded to the pattern of his own mind, 152;
-   his style and that of Renan, 161;
-   the originality of his style found in vocabulary, 165.
-
- Montesquieu, Baron de, his admiration for Shaftesbury, 268;
-   on the evils of civilisation, 297.
-
- _Moral_, significance of the term, 246.
-
- Moral maxims, 254, 258.
-
- Moral reformer, the, 282.
-
- “Moral sense,” the term as used by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, 273, 274;
-   in McDougall’s _Social Psychology_, 274 _n._
-
- Moral teaching, 246 _n._
-
- Moral World-Order, the, a fiction, 100.
-
- Morand, Paul, 170 _n._
-
- Moreau, Gustave, 167.
-
- Morgagni, G. B., 300.
-
- Morris, William, 350 _n._
-
- Moses, 253, 282.
-
- Moszkowski, Alexander, his book on Einstein, 134 _n._
-
- Moralist, the critic of the art of life, 247.
-
- Morality, Greek, an artistic balance of light and shade, 260;
-   a matter of taste, 263;
-   the æsthetic quality of, evidenced by language, 263, 264;
-   Shaftesbury’s views on, 264-66;
-   the influence of Shaftesbury on our modern, 266, 267;
-   imagination in, 272;
-   instinctive, according to Hutcheson, 274;
-   conception of, as an art, does not lack seriousness, 276;
-   the æsthetic view of, advocated by Catholics, 276 _n._;
-   the æsthetic view of, repugnant to two classes of minds, 280-82;
-   indefiniteness of criterion of, an advantage, 282, 283;
-   justification of æsthetic conception of, 283, 284;
-   flexible and inflexible, illustrated by Jesuits and Pascal, 303-05;
-   art the reality of, 314;
-   æsthetic, of the Greeks, 316-18;
-   the antinomy between morals and, 319;
-   a restraint placed upon the possessive instinct, 338-40;
-   to be replaced by æsthetic instinct, 340, 341;
-   æsthetic instinct has the character of, 346.
-
-
- Morals, dancing as, 61, 63, 66;
-   books on, 244;
-   defined, 245;
-   means _custom_, 245;
-   Plotinus’s conception of, 250-52;
-   as art, views of the Greeks and the Romans on, differ, 252;
-   Hebrews never conceived of the art of, 253;
-   as art, modern conception of, 253;
-   the modern feeling about, is Jewish and Roman, 253;
-   Kant’s idea of the art of, 253, 254;
-   formed by instinct, tradition and reason, 254-59;
-   Greek, have come to modern world through Shaftesbury, 267;
-   the æsthetic attitude possible for spectator of, 270;
-   art and æsthetics to be kept apart in, 314, 315, 325-28;
-   a species of the genus art, 316;
-   the antinomy between morality and, 319;
-   philosophers have failed to see that it is an art, 324.
-
- _Morisco_, the, 49 _n._
-
- Mozart, Wolfgang, his interest in dancing, 62.
-
- Müller-Freienfels, Richard, two kinds of æsthetic contemplation defined
-    by, 331.
-
- Multatuli, quoted on the source of curiosity, 112.
-
- Music, and ceremony, 24-26;
-   and acting, and poetry, 36;
-   and singing, and dancing, their relation, 62;
-   a science or art, 68;
-   discovery of Pythagoras in, 74;
-   philosophy the noblest and best, 81 _n._;
-   the most abstract, the most nearly mathematical of the arts, 135;
-   of style, 163, 164;
-   of philosophy and religion, 179.
-
- Musical forms, evolved from similar dances, 62.
-
- Musical instruments, 53, 54.
-
- Musset, Alfred de, his _Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle_, 144.
-
- Mysteries, the Eleusinian, 240-43.
-
- Mystic, the genuine, 202;
-   Lao-tze, the earliest great, 204.
-
- Mystics, the great, 236, 237.
-
-
- Mysticism, the right use and the abuse of the word, 191;
-   and science, supposed difference between, 191-203;
-   what is meant by, 192;
-   and science, the harmony of, as revealed in human history, 203-08;
-   of the Greeks, 205-07, 240-43;
-   and science, the harmony of, as supported by personal experience of
-      Havelock Ellis, 209-18;
-   and science, how they came to be considered out of harmony, 226-35;
-   and science, harmony of, summary of considerations confirming, 235,
-      236;
-   the key to much that is precious in art and Nature in, 237, 238;
-   is not science, 238-40;
-   æsthetics on same plane as, 330 _n._
-   _See_ Religion.
-
-
- Napoleon, described as unmitigated scoundrel by H. G. Wells, 8-10;
-   described as lyric artist by Élie Faure, 10.
-
- Nature, and convention, Hippias made distinction between, 5;
-   comes through an atmosphere which is the emanation of supreme
-      artists, 166;
-   the attitude of the poet in the face of, 168, 169;
-   the object of Leonardo da Vinci’s searchings, 114, 117, 125;
-   Man added to, 153;
-   communion with, 227;
-   in Shaftesbury’s system, 265;
-   and art, 312, 313.
-
- Neo-Platonists, the, 237;
-   asceticism in, 249 _n._
-
- Nests, birds’, and dancing, 36 _n._
-
- Newell, W. W., 41 _n._
-
- Newman, Cardinal J. H., the music of his style, 164.
-
- Newton, Sir Isaac, his wonderful imagination, 72;
-   his force of attraction a summatory fiction, 98;
-   represents in England new impetus to sciences, 180;
-   his attempt to study religion, 199-201;
-   religious, though a man of science, 208.
-
- Niceforo, Alfred, his measurement of civilisation, 286, 293, 297;
-   tests of civilisation applied to France by, 295-97.
-
- Nietzsche, Friedrich, 111;
-   conceived the art of life as a dance, 66, 67;
-   poetic quality of his philosophy, 84;
-   Vaihinger’s opinion of, 94;
-   on Leonardo da Vinci, 115;
-   the “divine malice” of, 155 _n._;
-   laboured at his prose, 182;
-   demolished D. F. Strauss’s ideas, 215;
-   on learning to dance, 277;
-   his gospel of taste, 280;
-   on the Sophists, 302 _n._;
-   on art as the great stimulus of life, 322, 323;
-   on the world as a spectacle, 334, 335;
-   moved by the “masculine protest,” 336;
-   Jesus reproached by, 355.
-
- Novelists, their reservoirs of knowledge, 171.
-
- Noverre, and the ballet, 57.
-
-
- Ockham, William of, 96.
-
-
- Old Testament, the, and the conception of morality as an art, 276.
-   _See_ Bible, Genesis.
-
- Omahas, the, 46.
-
- Onions, C. T., 146 _n._
-
- Optimism, and pessimism, 90-92.
-
- Origen, on the dancing of the stars, 43.
-
- Orpheus, fable of, 61.
-
- Osler, Sir William, 72.
-
-
- Pacific, the, creation as conceived in, 2;
-   dancing in, 49.
-   _See_ Lifuans.
-
- Pain, and pleasure, united, 278.
-
- Painting, Chinese, 29, 32;
-   and sculpture, and the arts of design, 36;
-   of Leonardo da Vinci, 113, 114, 117, 118.
-
- Palante, Georges, 337 _n._
-
- Paley, William, 267.
-
- Palladius, 358.
-
- Pantomime, and pantomimic dancing, 41, 42, 49, 56.
-
- Papuans, the, are artistic, 351 _n._
-
- Parachute, constructed by Leonardo da Vinci, 119.
-
- Paris, dancing in choir in, 44;
-   the ballet at, 57.
-
- Parker, Professor E. H., his book _China: Past and Present_, 23 _n._;
-   his view of Chinese vermin and dirt, 31, 32.
-
- Parks, 351.
-
- Parmelee, Maurice, his _Criminology_, 291 _n._
-
- Parsons, Professor, 142.
-
- Pascal, Blaise, and the Jesuits, 303, 304.
-
- Pater, W. H., the music of his style, 164.
-
- Pattison, Pringle, his definition of mysticism, 192 _n._
-
- Paul, Vincent de, his moral attitude, 279, 280.
-
- Paulhan, on morality, 284.
-
- Pell, E. C., on decreasing birth-rate, 294 _n._
-
- Pepys, Samuel, the accomplishment of his “Diary,” 176.
-
- Perera, Galeotto, his picture of Chinese life, 19;
-   noticed absence of beggars in China, 31.
-
- Pericles, 289.
-
- Personality, 144.
-
- Pessimism, and optimism, 90-92.
-
- Petrie, Dr. W. M. Flinders, his attempt to measure civilisation by
-    standard of sculpture, 307, 308.
-
- Peyron, traveller, 50.
-
- Phenomenalism, Protagoras the father of, 3.
-
- Philosopher, the primitive, usually concluded that the universe was a
-    work of art, 1;
-   a creative artist, 72, 73, 85;
-   curiosity the stimulus of, 104, 105.
-
- Philosophy, of the Chinese, 32;
-   solution of the conflicts of, in art, 82, 83;
-   and art, close relationship of, 83-85;
-   and poetry, 83, 85;
-   is music, 179.
-
- Physics, and fiction, 95.
-
- Pictures, revelation of beauty in, 328, 329;
-   should be looked at in silence, 329 _n._
-
- Pindar, calls Hellas “the land of lovely dancing,” 55.
-
- Planck, Max, physicist, 136.
-
- Plato, Protagoras calumniated by, 3;
-   made fun of Hippias, 4;
-   his description of a good education, 64;
-   a creative artist, 73;
-   his picture of Socrates, 75, 78;
-   the biographies of, 76, 77;
-   his irony, 78, 83;
-   a marvellous artist, 82;
-   a supreme artist in philosophy, 83;
-   a supreme dramatist, 83;
-   his “Ideas” and the “As-If world,” 88;
-   the myths, as fictions, hypotheses, and dogmas, 99;
-   represents the acme of literary prose speech, 155;
-   and Plotinus, 222;
-   on the Mysteries, 242;
-   asceticism, traced in, 249 _n._;
-   on justice, 289;
-   his ideal of wise moderation addressed to an immoderate people, 292;
-   Sophists caricatured by, 302;
-   his “guardians,” 306;
-   the ultrapuritanical attitude of, 317, 318 _n._;
-   and Bovarism, 336;
-   on the value of sight, 345 _n._;
-   wished to do away with imaginative literature, 353 _n._;
-   and Jesus, 356.
-
- Pleasure, a human creation, 24;
-   and pain, united, 278.
-
- Pliny, 353 _n._
-
- Plotinus, 222;
-   Greek moral spirit reflected in, 249;
-   his doctrine of Beauty, 250, 251;
-   his idea that the moral life of the soul is a dance, 251, 252;
-   his simile of the sculptor, 276 _n._;
-   founder of æsthetics in the philosophic sense, 329;
-   recognised three aspects of the Absolute, 330;
-   insisted on contemplation, 330 _n._, 331;
-   of the participating contemplative temperament, 332.
-
- Poet, the type of all thinkers, 102;
-   Landor on, 154;
-   his attitude in the presence of Nature, 168, 169;
-   the great, does not describe Nature minutely, but uses his knowledge
-      of, 170, 171.
-
- Poetry, Chinese, 21, 22, 29, 32;
-   and music, and acting, 36;
-   and dancing, 56;
-   and philosophy, 83, 85;
-   and science, no sharp boundary between, 102, 128, 129;
-   Landor on, 154;
-   a _making_, 312;
-   Aristotle’s view of, 318;
-   does not exist for morals, 318.
-
- Polka, origin of the, 60.
-
- Polynesia, dancing in, 49.
-
- Polynesian islanders, 255.
-
- Pontiff, the Bridge-Builder, 2.
-
- Pope, Alexander, influence of Shaftesbury on, 266.
-
- Porphyry, 167.
-
- Possessive impulses, 306, 307, 341-43.
-
-
- Possessive instinct, restraints placed upon, 338-40;
-   in Gaultier and Russell, 344;
-   excesses of, 351.
-
- Pottery, of the Chinese, 32, 33;
-   of the Greeks and the Minoan predecessors of the Greeks, 32.
-
- Pound, Miss, on the origin of the ballad, 62 _n._
-
- Pragmatism, 323.
-
- Pragmatists, the, 93, 231, 232.
-
- Precious stones, attitude of the poet toward, 169.
-
- Preposition, the post-habited, 146, 147, 162.
-
- Prettiness, and beauty, 315 _n._
-
- Priest, cultivated science in form of magic, 195;
-   and doctor, originally one, 197 _n._, 203.
-
- Prodicus, 302;
-   the Great Moralist, 6 _n._
-
- Progress, 143, 149;
-   on meaning of, 287.
-
- Prophecy, 204.
-
- _Prophet_, meaning of the word, 203, 204.
-
- Propriety, 24-26.
-
- Protagoras, significance of his ideas, in conception of life as an art,
-    3, 4;
-   his interest for us to-day, 3;
-   his dictum “Man is the measure of all things,” 3, 302;
-   concerned to regard living as an art, 248.
-
- Proust, Marcel, 172, 184;
-   his art, 170 _n._, 186, 187;
-   his _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_, 171, 187;
-   admiration of, for Ruskin, 316 _n._
-
- Puberty, questions arising at time of, 105-07.
-
- Puritanism, reaction against, represented by Hutcheson, 271.
-
- Pygmalionism, 353 _n._
-
- Pygmies, the dancing of the, 51.
-
- Pythagoras, represents the beginning of science, 73, 74;
-   fundamentally an artist, 74, 75;
-   founded religious brotherhoods, 206, 207.
-
-
- Quatelet, on social questions, 288.
-
- Quoting, by writers, 152.
-
-
- Rabbitism, 294.
-
- Rabelais, François, 148, 165, 358.
-
- Race mixture, 308.
-
- Raleigh, Sir Walter, his literary style, 143.
-
- Ramedjenis, the, street dancers, 52.
-
- Rank, Dr. Otto, his essay on the artist, 111.
-
- Realism, 83.
-
- Realists, 70, 341 _n._
-
- Reality, a flux of happening, 101.
-
- Reason, helps to mould morals, 255-59.
-
- Reid, Thomas, influenced by Hutcheson, 275.
-
- Relativism, Protagoras the father of, 3.
-
-
- Religion, as the desire for the salvation of the soul, 8;
-   origin of dance in, 38;
-   connection of dance with, among primitive men, 39;
-   in music, 179;
-   and science, supposed difference between, 191-203;
-   its quintessential core, 191;
-   control of Nature through oneness with Nature, at the heart of, 194;
-   relation of, to science and magic, 194-96;
-   the man of, studying science, 202;
-   and science, the harmony of, as revealed in human history, 203-08;
-   and science, the harmony of, as supported by personal experience of
-      Havelock Ellis, 209-18;
-   asceticism has nothing to do with normal, 222;
-   and science, how they came to be considered out of harmony, 226-35;
-   the burden of the traditions of, 227;
-   and church, not the same, 228 _n._;
-   the instinct of, 234;
-   and science, harmony of, summary of considerations confirming, 235,
-      236;
-   is not science, 238-40;
-   an act, 243;
-   a restraint placed upon the possessive instinct, 339, 340;
-   to be replaced by æsthetic instinct, 340, 341.
-   _See_ Mysticism.
-
- Religions, in every case originally saltatory, 40.
-
- Religious dances, ecstatic and pantomimic, 41;
-   survivals of, 42;
-   in Christianity, 42-45.
-
- Renan, J. E., his style, 161;
-   his _Life of Jesus_, 212;
-   on truth, 301.
-
- “Resident in Peking, A,” author of _China as it Really Is_, 21, 22.
-
-
- Revelation, Book of, 153.
-
- Revival, the, 241, 243.
-
- Rhythm, marks all the physical and spiritual manifestations of life,
-    37;
-   in work, 61.
-
- Rickert, H., his twofold division of Reality, 325, 326.
-
- Ridgeway, William, his theory of origin of tragedy, 56.
-
- Roberts, Morley, ironical over certain “men of science,” 126 _n._
-
- Robinson, Dr. Louis, on apes and dancing, 46;
-   on the influence of the drum, 63.
-
- Rodó, his conceptions those of Shaftesbury, 269.
-
- Roman law, 98.
-
- Romans, the ancient, dancing and war allied among, 63, 64;
-   did not believe that living is an art, 252.
-
- Romantic spirit, the, 206.
-
- Romantics, the, 149, 156.
-
- Rome, ancient, dancing in, 49;
-   genius built upon basis of slavery in, 292.
-
- Rops, Félicien, 167.
-
- Ross, Robert, 150.
-
- Rouen Cathedral, Salome on portal of, 49 _n._
-
- Rousseau, J. J., Napoleon before grave of, 11;
-   felt his lapses, 79;
-   grace of, 149;
-   love of Nature developed through, 238;
-   and Shaftesbury, 268, 269;
-   decided against civilisation, 298.
-
- Roussillon, 44.
-
- Rule, rigid subserviency to, mark of decadence, 173;
-   much lost by rigid adherence to, in style, 175.
-
- _Rules for Compositors and Readers_, on spelling, Oxford University
-    Press, 174 _n._
-
- Ruskin, John, 316;
-   a God-intoxicated man, 316 _n._
-
- Russell, Bertrand, on the Chinese, 23;
-   on mathematics, 139, 140;
-   on the creative and the possessive impulses, 305-07, 341, 342;
-   system of, compared with Gaultier’s, 342, 343.
-
- Russia, the genius of, compared with the temper of the population, 293.
-
- Russian ballet, the, 58-60.
-
- Rutherford, Sir Ernest, on the atomic constitution, 97 _n._
-
-
- St. Augustine, 79, 202;
-   on the art of living well, 252.
-
- St. Basil, on the dancing of the angels, 43.
-
- St. Bonaventura, said to have been author of “Diet a Salutis,” 43.
-
- St. Denis, Ruth, 60.
-
- St. Theresa, and Darwin, 198, 199.
-
- Salome, the dance of, 49.
-
- _Salt_, intellectual and moral suggestion of the word, 263, 263 _n._,
-    264.
-
- Salt, Mr., 169.
-
- Salter, W. M., his _Nietzsche the Thinker_, 335 _n._
-
- Samoa, sacred position of carpenter in, 2.
-
- Sand, George, on civilisation, 300.
-
- Santayana, Professor George, on union of æsthetic sense with artistic
-    instinct, 350 _n._
-
- Schelling, F. W. J. von, 90;
-   on philosophy and poetry, 83.
-
- Schiller, Friedrich von, influence on Vaihinger, 89;
-   and the æsthetic conception of morals, 275.
-
- Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 90.
-
- Schmidt, Dr. Raymund, 93 _n._
-
- Schopenhauer, Arthur, 330 _n._;
-   his influence on Vaihinger, 90;
-   as regards his quotations, 152;
-   morals based on sympathy, according to, 272;
-   on the uselessness of art, 319;
-   on the man of genius, 320;
-   on sociological function of art, 323;
-   on the proper way of looking at pictures, 329 _n._;
-   on the world as a spectacle, 334.
-
- Science, spirit of modern, in Protagoras, 4;
-   as the search for the reason of things, 8;
-   and poetry, no sharp boundary between, 102, 128, 129;
-   impulse to, and the sexual instinct, 112;
-   intuition and invention needed by, 137;
-   and mysticism, supposed difference between, 191-203;
-   what is meant by, 192;
-   and art, no distinction between, in classic times, 68;
-   and art, distinction between, in modern times, 68-70;
-   definitions of, 70, 71;
-   is of the nature of art, 71;
-   the imaginative application of, 72;
-   Pythagoras represents the beginning of, 74;
-   control of Nature through oneness with Nature, at the heart of, 194;
-   relation of, to magic and religion, 194-96;
-   and pseudo-science, 199-202;
-   and mysticism, the harmony of, as revealed in human history, 203-08;
-   and mysticism, the harmony of, as supported by personal experience of
-      Havelock Ellis, 209-18;
-   and mysticism, how they came to be considered out of harmony, 226-35;
-   traditions of, 228;
-   the instinct of, 234;
-   and mysticism, harmony of, summary of considerations confirming, 235,
-      236;
-   is not religion, 238-40;
-   not pursued for useful ends, 322;
-   for science’s sake, 347.
-
- Sciences, and arts, 68-70;
-   biological and social, fiction in, 99;
-   mathematical impetus given to, toward end of seventeenth century,
-      180;
-   biological, awakening of, 181;
-   mathematical, renaissance of, 181.
-
-
- Scientist, the true, an artist, 72, 73, 112, 126;
-   curiosity the stimulus of, 104, 105;
-   the false, 125, 126;
-   who turns to religion, 199-201.
-
- Scott, W. R., on art and æsthetics, 326 _n._
-
- Scottish School, the, 267.
-
- Sculpture, painting, and the arts of design, 36;
-   civilisation measured by standard of, 308.
-
- Seises, the, the dance of, 44 _n._
-
- Selous, Edmund, 36 _n._
-
- Semon, Professor, R., 351 _n._
-
- “Sense,” Hutcheson’s conception of, 274.
-
- Seville, cathedral of, dancing in, 44.
-
- Sex, instinct of, a reaction to the stimulus of curiosity, 104;
-   early questions concerning, 105-07;
-   source of art impulse, 108-12;
-   and the scientific interest, 112;
-   not absolutely essential, 234.
-
- Sexual imagery, strain of, in thought, 113.
-
- “Shadow,” 219 _n._
-
- Shaftesbury, Earl of, influence on Kant, 254;
-   illustrated unsystematic method of thinking, 259;
-   his book, 260;
-   his theory of Æsthetic Intuitionism, 260;
-   his affinity to the Greeks, 260;
-   his early life, 261;
-   his idea of goodness, 262;
-   his principles expounded, 264-66;
-   his influence on later writers and thinkers, 266;
-   his influence on our modern morality, 266, 267;
-   the greatest Greek of modern times, 267, 271;
-   his service to the modern world, 267;
-   measure of his recognition in Scotland and England, 267;
-   recognition of, abroad, 268, 269;
-   made no clear distinction between creative artistic impulse and
-      critical æsthetic appreciation, 270;
-   realised that reason cannot affect appetite, 270;
-   one of the founders of æsthetics, 271;
-   his use of the term “moral sense,” 273, 274;
-   temperamentally a Stoic, 279;
-   of the æsthetic contemplative temperament, 332, 333.
-
- Shakespeare, William, 148;
-   his style compared with that of Bacon, 160;
-   affected by the intoxication of words, 167;
-   stored up material to be used freely later, 170, 171;
-   the spelling of his name by himself, 173;
-   surpasses contemporaries in flexibility and intimacy, 184;
-   Tolstoy’s opinion of, 311;
-   on Nature and art, 312, 313;
-   his figure of Prospero, 331.
-
- Shamans, the, religious dances among, 40, 41;
-   their wills brought into harmony with the essence of the world, 193;
-   double attitude of, 194.
-
- Sharp, F. C., on Hutcheson, 327 _n._
-
- Shelley, P. B., mysticism in poetry of, 237;
-   on imagination and morality, 238.
-
- Sidgwick, Henry, 255, 314.
-
- Singer, Dr. Charles, his definition of science, 70, 71.
-
- Singing, relation to music and dancing, 62.
-
- Silberer, Herbert, on magic and science, 195.
-
- Simcox, Edith, her description of conversion, 218 _n._
-
- Skene, on dances among African tribes, 38.
-
- Slezakova, Anna, the polka extemporised by, 60.
-
- Smith, Adam, his “economic man,” 99;
-   morals based on sympathy, according to, 272;
-   influenced by Hutcheson, 275.
-
- Smith, Arthur H., his book _Chinese Characteristics_, 23 _n._
-
- Social capillarity, 298.
-
- Social ladder, 298, 299.
-
- Social statistics, 286-88.
-
- Socialists, French, inspired by Shaftesbury, 269.
-
- Socrates, the Platonic, 75, 78;
-   Grote’s chapter on, 76;
-   the real and the legendary, 76, 79, 82;
-   three elements in our composite portrait of, 77-79;
-   the Platonic, and the Gospel Jesus, 82, 83;
-   on philosophy and music, 179;
-   his view of the moralist, 248.
-
- Solidarity, socialistic, among the Chinese, 26, 27.
-
- Solmi, Vincian scholar, 114.
-
- Sophists, the, 4, 302, 302 _n._
-
- Sophocles, danced in his own dramas, 56;
-   beauty and moral order in, 247;
-   Tolstoy’s opinion of, 311.
-
- Soul, a fiction, 100;
-   in harmony with itself, 219;
-   the moral life of, as a dance, 251, 252.
-
- South Sea Islands, dancing in, 49.
-
- Space, absolute, a fiction, 95.
-
- Spain, dancing in, 44, 50, 54.
-
- Speech, the best literary prose, 155;
-   in Greece, 155;
-   in England, 155, 156;
-   the artist’s, 156;
-   a tradition, 161.
-
- Spelling, and thinking, 127 _n._;
-   has little to do with style, 173;
-   now uniform and uniformly bad, 174, 175.
-
- Spencer, Herbert, on science and art, 68;
-   on use of science in form of magic, 195;
-   the universe according to, 215;
-   on the harmlessness of moral teaching, 246 _n._;
-   on diminishing birth-rate, 294 _n._
-
- Spengler, Dr. Oswald, on the development of music, 135 _n._;
-   argues on the identity of physics, mathematics, religion, and great
-      art, 138;
-   his theory of culture and civilisation, 309, 310.
-
- Spinoza, Baruch, 89;
-   has moved in sphere where impulses of religion and science spring
-      from same source, 207;
-   transforms ethics into geometry, 281;
-   has been called a God-intoxicated man, 316 _n._;
-   his “intellectual love of God,” 342.
-
- Spirit, and matter, 229, 230.
-
- Statistics, uncertainty of, 286;
-   for measurement of civilisation, 286-88;
-   applied to France to test civilisation, 295-97.
-
- Steele, Dr. John, on the Chinese ceremonial, 29 _n._
-
- Stephen, Sir Leslie, on poetry and philosophy, 85;
-   could see no good in Shaftesbury, 268.
-
- Stevenson, R. L., 188.
-
- Stocks, eradication of unfit, by Man, 354;
-   recommended by Jesus, 355, 356.
-
- Stoics, the, 207.
-
- Strauss, D. F., his _The Old Faith and the New_, 214.
-
-
- Style, literary, of to-day and of our fore-fathers’ time, 143;
-   the achievement of, 155;
-   grace seasoned with salt, 155;
-   atavism in, in members of the same family, 158, 190;
-   atavism in, in the race, 160, 190;
-   much that is instinctive in, 163;
-   the music of, 163, 164;
-   vocabulary in, 164, 165;
-   the effect of mere words on, 165-67;
-   familiarity with author’s, necessary to understanding, 171, 172;
-   spelling has little to do with, 173;
-   much lost by slavish adherence to rules in, 175;
-   must have clarity and beauty, 176-78;
-   English prose, Cartesian influence on, 180 _n._;
-   personal and impersonal, 182, 183;
-   progress in, lies in casting aside accretions and exuberances, 183;
-   founded on a model, the negation of style, 188;
-   the task of breaking the old moulds of, 188, 189;
-   summary of elements of, 190.
-   _See_ Writing.
-
- Suicide, rate of, as test of civilisation, 295, 296.
-
- Swahili, dancing among, 38.
-
- Swedenborg, Emanuel, his science and his mysticism, 208.
-
- Swedish ballet, the, 60.
-
- _Sweet_ (_suavis_), referring to moral qualities, 264.
-
- Sweetness, and goodness, in Shaftesbury’s philosophy, 262;
-   originally the same, 263.
-
- Swift, Jonathan, laments “the corruption of our style,” 142;
-   beauty of his style, rests on truth to logic of his thought, 183;
-   utterance of, combining two conceptions of life, 333.
-
- Swimming-belt, constructed by Leonardo da Vinci, 119.
-
- Swinburne, C. A., on writing poetry to a tune, 62;
-   his _Poems and Ballads_, 172;
-   his _Songs before Sunrise_, 212.
-
- Sylvester, J. J., on mathematics, 139.
-
- Symphony, the development of a dance suite, 62.
-
- Syndicalism, as test of civilisation, 296, 297.
-
-
- Taglioni, Maria, 58.
-
- Tahiti, dancing at, 50.
-
- Tambourine, the, 53.
-
- _Tao_, the word, 204.
-
- Taste, the gospel of, 280.
-
- Telegraph, the, 72 _n._
-
- Telephone, the, 72 _n._
-
- Tell-el-Amarna, 28.
-
- Theology, 227.
-
- Therapeuts, the worship of, 42.
-
- Thing-in-Itself, the, a fiction, 101.
-
- Things, are fictions, 98.
-
-
- Thinking, of the nature of art, 85, 86;
-   and existing, on two different planes, 101;
-   the special art and object of, 101;
-   is a comparison, 102;
-   is a regulated error, 103;
-   abstract, the process of its birth, 108, 109.
-
- Thompson, Silvanus, on Faraday, 132.
-
- Thomson, James, influence of Shaftesbury on, 266.
-
- Thomson, Sir Joseph, on matter and weight, 230.
-
- Thoreau, H. D., on morals, 282.
-
- Thought, logic of, inescapable, 183.
-
- Tobacco, consumption of, as test of civilisation, 295.
-
- Todas, the, of India, 203 _n._
-
- Toledo, cathedral of, dancing in, 44.
-
- Tolstoy, Count Leo, his opinions on art, 311.
-
- Tonga, sacred position of carpenter in, 2.
-
- Tooke, Horne, 151 _n._
-
- Townsend, Rev. Joseph, on the fandango, 50.
-
- Tradition, the corporeal embodiment of heredity, 161;
-   and instinct, mould morals, 254-59.
-
-
- Traditions, religious, 227;
-   scientific, 228.
-
- Triangles, 53.
-
- Truth, the measuring-rod of, 230-32.
-
- Tunisia, Southern, dancing in, 49.
-
- T’ung, the story of, 33.
-
- Turkish dervishes, dances of, 41.
-
- Tuscans, the, 56.
-   _See_ Etruscans.
-
- Tyndall, John, on Faraday, 130-32.
-
- Tyrrells, the, the handwriting of, 157.
-
-
- Ugliness, 328.
-
- Ulysses, representative of ideal of totality of existence, 6.
-
- United States, the genius of, compared with the temper of the
-    population, 293.
-
-
- Universe, conceived as work of art by primitive philosopher, 1;
-   according to D. F. Strauss, 214;
-   according to Spencer, 215;
-   according to Hinton, 216;
-   according to Sir James Frazer, 219 _n._;
-   according to Bertrand Russell, 219 _n._;
-   conception of, a personal matter, 219 _n._;
-   the so-called materialistic, 229, 230;
-   Bovarism of, 337.
-
- Utilitarians, the, 267, 268.
-
- Uvea, 15.
-   _See_ Loyalty Islands.
-
-
-
- Vaihinger, Hans, his _Philosophie des Als Ob_, 86;
-   English influence upon, 86, 87;
-   allied to English spirit, 87, 88;
-   his origin, 88;
-   his training, and vocation, 88-93;
-   influence of Schiller on, 89;
-   philosophers who influenced, 89, 90;
-   his pessimisms, irrationalism, and voluntarism, 90;
-   his view of military power of Germany, 90, 91;
-   his devouring appetite for knowledge, 92;
-   reads F. A. Lange’s _History of Materialism_, 92, 93;
-   writes his book at about twenty-five years of age, 93;
-   his book published, 94;
-   the problem he set out to prove, 94;
-   his doctrine of fiction, 94-102;
-   his doctrine not immune from criticism, 102;
-   the fortifying influence of his philosophy, 102, 103;
-   influenced Adler, 337.
-
- Valencia, cathedral of, dancing in, 44.
-
- Valerius, Maximus, 353 _n._
-
- Van Gogh, mysticism in pictures of, 237.
-
- Varnhagen, Rahel, 66.
-
- Verbal counters, 149, 150.
-
- Verlaine, Paul, the significance of words to, 168.
-
- Vesalius, 120.
-
- Vasari, Giorgio, his account of Leonardo da Vinci, 115, 123.
-
- Vestris, Gaetan, and the ballet, 57.
-
- Vinci, Leonardo da, man of science, 113, 125;
-   as a painter, 113, 114, 117, 118;
-   his one aim, the knowledge and mastery of Nature, 114, 117, 125;
-   an Overman, 115;
-   science and art joined in, 115-17;
-   as the founder of professional engineering, 118, 119;
-   the extent of his studies and inventions, 119, 120;
-   a supreme master of language, 121;
-   his appearance, 121;
-   his parentage, 121;
-   his youthful accomplishments, 122;
-   his sexual temperament, 122, 123;
-   the man, woman, and child in, 123, 124;
-   a figure for awe rather than love, 124.
-
- Vinci, Ser Piero da, father of Leonardo da Vinci, 121.
-
- Virtue, and beauty, among the Greeks, 247;
-   the art of living well, 252;
-   in Shaftesbury’s system, 265, 266;
-   beauty of, 270 _n._
-
- Virtues, ethical and intellectual, 330.
-
- Visconti, Galeazzo, spectacular pageants at marriage of, 57.
-
- Vocabulary, each writer creates his own, 164, 165.
-
- Voltaire, F. M. A. de, recognised Shaftesbury, 268;
-   on the foundations of society, 289.
-
-
- Wagner, Richard, on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, 62, 63.
-
- Wallas, Professor Graham, on Plato and Dante, 73.
-
- War, and dancing, allied, 63, 64.
-
- Wealth, as test of civilisation, 296, 297.
-
- Weight, its nature, 230.
-
- Weismann, and the study of heredity, 127.
-
- Wells, H. G., his description of Napoleon, 8-10, 12.
-
- Whitman, Walt, his _Leaves of Grass_, 172;
-   words attributed to him on what is right, 254.
-
- Woman, the question, what she is like, 106.
-
- Words, have a rich content of their own, 166;
-   the intoxication of, 167-69;
-   their arrangement chiefly studied by young writer, 172.
-
- Wordsworth, William, 184;
-   influence of Shaftesbury on, 266.
-
- Work, a kind of dance, 61, 62.
-
- World, becoming impalpable and visionary, 337, 338.
-   _See_ Universe.
-
- Writers, the great, have observed decorum instinctively, 181, 182;
-   the great, learn out of themselves, 188, 189;
-   the great, are heroes at heart, 189.
-
-
- Writing, personality in, 144, 190;
-   a common accomplishment to-day, 144, 145;
-   an arduous intellectual task, 151, 153, 190;
-   good and bad, 154;
-   the achievement of style in, 155;
-   machine-made, 156;
-   not made by the laws of grammar, 172, 173;
-   how the old method gave place to the new, 179-81;
-   summary of elements of, 190.
-   _See_ Handwriting, Style.
-
- Wundt, Wilhelm, on the dance, 38, 39 _n._
-
-
- Xavier, Francis, 123, 237.
-
- Xenophon, his portrait of Socrates, 77.
-
-
- Zeno, 249 _n._
-
-
-
-
- ● Transcriber’s Notes:
-    ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
-      Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=).
-    ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
-      referenced.
-
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