VIIITHE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY
“What is the prime requisite of a critic?” was the question. “His sincerity,” said one; “his sympathy,” said a second; “his philosophy,” said a third, “because everything he says will be ruled by his principles, even his sincerity and sympathy.” The answer of the third speaker is pertinent to a symposium printed in theNew Republicon the function of criticism.
It is the common view of the seven writers that criticism is an art and the critics, artists, but no one, except Mr. Francis Hackett, tries to show what the label of artist means. Mr. Dickinson Miller, a professor in a theological seminary, very justly and quite fittingly insists on the social responsibility of the artist, as one who deals with life. Mr. Lovett goes to history and prepares the ground for a discussion of principles by grouping critics in several classes. Mr. Clive takes the humblest and most practical view of the critic, calling him an appraiser, a function which Mr. H. L. Mencken vehemently repudiates and places a chip on his shoulder while belligerently proclaiming himself impressionistic.He makes one deep remark which would seem to put him in the same school of esthetics with Mr. Hackett. Presumably with humorous intent, or perhaps seriously, Mr. Mencken locates the artistic impulse in “hormones and intestinal flora.” Hormones are secretions of the glands (we just looked it up!) and “intestinal flora” may mean ferments. Mr. Mencken is abreast of the times. Graft on a new gland and masticate yeast, these are the new specifics for all the ills that flesh is heir to.
The other contributors to this interesting symposium, though not, with the exception of Mr. Hackett, delving as deep as Mr. Mencken, would appear to be in philosophy individualists and subjectivists. The former editor of theAthenæum, Mr. J. Middleton Murry, accepts the dictum of Rémy de Gourmont: “Erect personal impressions into laws,” as the “true motto of a critic.” Mr. Murry is, however, too sensible to accord to individual impressions undue freedom and with some violence to his consistency asserts that personal laws stand or fall by their agreement with common experience and with human nature.
Mr. Morris Cohen puts himself into a fallacious dilemma from which he does not successfully extricate himself. According to Mr. Cohen, all critics are led by personal impressions or by the authority of others. He should know that between the blind feeling of impressionism and the blind faith of authority there is enlightened reason. Mr. Cohen doesnot take the path of reason, but endeavors to escape the horns of his own dilemma by recourse to pragmatism. He claims, what will be news to historians of philosophy, that Euclid was the first pragmatist, although in the next breath Mr. Cohen states that “mathematicians of the nineteenth century have shown that Euclid’s axioms are mere guesses to be justified by their consequences in the factual realm.” “Factual realm” seems to mean the indefinitely remote future of pragmatism where the gold of truth is separated from meaner elements. Some chosen spirits of the “factual realm” now assure us that the “self-evident principles” of Euclid are “guesses.” Mr. Cohen is equipped to write an inside history of philosophy with some entirely original features. The “factual realm” leads back to skepticism, and Mr. Cohen is still impaled by his dilemma.
Mr. Francis Hackett makes the most serious attempt to get at the philosophy of criticism and of art, and attacks at once the question of the beautiful. It is evidence of his thoroughness that he goes straightway to the great problem of esthetics, “Can an object be at once beautiful and evil?” Mr. Hackett answers promptly in the negative, but then proceeds to confuse the point by going to another and different question, “Can evil or an ugly object be represented in art?” The answer to this question is evident. The elopement of Helen, the patricide and incest of Œdipus, the galleries of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, and countless other happeningsin the world of art, show that the evil and the ugly have been and may be represented in art. “I can hardly conceive,” says Mr. Hackett, “an artist as subduing a cancerous object to an esthetic design.” But why not? Marriage with one’s mother is more repugnant than a cancer, and yet it was handled successfully by Sophocles, however repulsive some of his imitators have been in their details.
The very transfer to the realm of art robs the ugly object of its actuality and imminence. Surely the ugly and evil have been and may be represented in art, but such objects may not be represented as beautiful and good. That were as false and untrue to nature as a centipede cow in a picture. Perhaps a cancer could not appear in a picture or poem or story except by suggestion. A stark realism would disgust, but a true artist might subdue a cancerous object to artistic design as effectively as Homer subdued in his story the fleas of the dog, Argos, and the dung-heap where he lay.
Beauty in art would lose one of its charms, the splendor of contrast, did not admitted ugliness or evil occur in art. Bad art disgusts and so does badness in art, when badness is approved or when it is projected into art for purposes not artistic. Mr. Hackett’s real trouble is that he has not properly isolated the feeling of art awakened by beauty. He thinks that the esthetic sense is sexual and visceral. If the mouth waters at painted fruit, would Mr. Hackett call art salival? Human beings are composites,and external objects while producing their essential and proper effects may have concomitant effects accidentally brought into being. To admire the beauty of an apple is an esthetic feeling entirely distinct in cause and faculty and in operation from the feeling of sensible satisfaction, anticipated or actual, which comes to the taste-buds, and different again from any visceral qualms that may arise from associated ideas of unhappy experience with other apples.
Mr. Hackett has been led astray by not distinguishing the disinterested emotions of beauty from the selfish emotions of appetite. He calls beauty, “disinterested satisfaction,” and in that word “disinterested” he has a fact about beauty, a fact solving his problems, a fact which has been admitted by every one who has studied the subject, and a fact which is capable of experimental demonstration at any moment. Professor Phelps of Yale once called esthetic emotions a spinal thrill; Mr. Mencken would call them “hormones or intestinal flora”; and Mr. Hackett declares that “the true sources of esthetic satisfaction and dissatisfaction are deep in our emotional and visceral life.” The one essential quality of disinterestedness, found in esthetic satisfaction, shows the absurdity of all such statements. Bodily emotions are all the outcome of appetites, and appetites are never disinterested but always self-seeking by their very nature. They are actuated by good; they tend to an end, an end which they donot and cannot seek disinterestedly. Even the act of the highest disinterested love may be akin to the sense of beauty, but it is not as wholly disinterested because that unselfish love is still seeking good, and good as such does not come within the purview of beauty at all. It is impossible to be disinterested towards good or evil.
Mr. Hackett speaks of beauty being a “sensuous satisfaction.” Here again there is a confusion between beauty of art and other beauty. Art appeals to the senses because art presents its beauty in concrete embodiments. To that extent the satisfaction of beauty arises from sensible objects, but the feeling of beauty transcends mere sensation. “Art is long.” “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” The satisfaction of appetite is passing; the satisfaction of beauty abides. Mr. Hackett does well to seek the springs of beauty in personality. Personality is an abiding principle of intellectual beings. The enduring joy of beauty argues to an abiding principle which bears the dynamic charge of that joy. Beauty supposes a soul.
“Beauty is a light that may follow any reality whatever and give us the power to release our emotions happily in the presence of that reality.” So states Mr. Hackett, and he is right, if he gives the correct meaning to “emotions.” Light or luster has been recognized from all time as an objective element of beauty, which has been defined as the light of truth. Mr. Hackett paraphrases a definitionwhich has been incorrectly attributed to Plato. Kleutgen has defined beauty as the perfection of anything resplendently manifested.
Let us hope that Mr. Hackett will remove “visceral” from among the qualities of beauty and preclude critics from adding a fiftieth explanation of Aristotle’scatharsisto the forty-nine varieties already set forth. Wearers of Murphy buttons or those who have lost or may lose sections of the intestinal tract should be assured in an amended edition of Mr. Hackett’s esthetics that their sense of beauty has not been abbreviated or impaired. Sane philosophy is the prime requisite of true criticism.