The radical is right, secondly, because he protests that so long as there is the least waste of life, the least wanton suppression or destruction of interests, the work of civilization is not done. He represents those interests which under any system are most heavily taxed, and presses for their relief.
Conservatism and radicalism, then, are the two half-truths into which the principle of progress is divided by the propensity of every human activity to override the mark, and by the confusion of mind that cannot fail to attend so venturesome and bewildering an undertaking as civilization.
I have said that it is possible to measure progress because of the persistence throughout the whole course of human history of certain identical interests and purposes. When such an interest or purpose is sufficiently broad in its scope, and gets itself permanently embodied, it is called aninstitution. Thusgovernmentembodies the need of the general regulation of interests within the social community.Educationis due to the individual's prolonged period of helplessness and dependence, and the need of assimilating him to the order of his time.Scienceis man's {148} knowledge of the ways of nature in detail, when this is recorded, organized, and preserved as a permanent utility answering to the permanent need of adaptation. Andreligionexpresses in outer form the human need of reckoning with the final day of judgment, of establishing right relations with the powers that underly and overrule the proximate sphere of life. There is no limited number of institutions, but these are notable examples. Government, education, science, and religion are fixed moral necessities. They arise out of those conditions of life which are general and constant. Hence each has a history coextensive with the history of society itself. And since the function of each remains identical throughout, the adequacy with which at any given time it fulfils that function may be taken as a measure of civilization. Government being the most prominent of institutions, and its improvement being the deepest concern of society, I shall select it for special consideration.[5]
I have already referred to the Platonic account of government, given in theRepublic. It furnishes the starting-point of all political philosophy. In the First and Second Books, Plato examines two contrary sceptical criticisms of government, with a most illuminating result. In the First Book the sceptic urges the view that government represents the interest of the strong; {149} primarily of the ruler himself, enabling him to aggrandize himself at the expense of the weak. But in the Second Book the sceptic is made to suggest that government represents rather the interest of the weak, since it affords him a protection which he is not strong enough to afford himself. Now the moral of this paradox lies in the fact that government represents the interest neither of the strong nor of the weak, but of the community as a whole. This moral is virtually pointed in the reply which Plato makes to the first of these two sceptical positions. The ruler gains his power and prestige not from the exploitation of the interests of his subjects, but from his protection of them. His activity touches all the interests of the community, and is tolerated only in so far as it conciliates them. In other words, his strength is drawn wholly from the constituency which he serves. The many individual interests, on the other hand, owe their security to that concentration and organization which centres in the ruler. They only participate in a power which the ruler may exercise and enjoy as a unit. But unless that power be engaged in their service it ceases to exist. It is not a personal power, but a permanent function, through which the many interests of society unite, and so share severally the security, glory, and resourcefulness of the whole body.
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Government in this sense is both a necessity and an opportunity. Suppose men to be in contact through propinquity or common descent. Divided among themselves they are prey to natural forces, wild beasts, or human enemies. But acting as a unit they are sufficiently strong to protect themselves. He who wields them as a unit to this end is for the time-being the ruler; and to submit to his leadership is simply to submit to the necessity of protection. Or, divided among themselves, they remain in a condition of poverty and fear; while united they can wage an aggressive campaign against nature, and against those who threaten them or possess what they lack. Again, he who settles their internal differences, accomplishes their organization, and makes it effective, is their ruler; and he owes his authority to the opportunity of conquest which his leadership affords.
The fact that government is thus of natural origin, the inevitable solution of an inevitable problem, has been obscured through confusing its general necessity with the accidental circumstances connected with the selection of rulers. The first ruler may have been appointed by God; or, as is more likely, he may have owed his choice to his own brutal self-assertion. But this has no more to do with the origin of the function of government, than the present methods of ambitious {151} politicians have to do with the constitutional office of a republican presidency. Government meets a moral need; and no man has ever ruled over men who has not met that need, however cruel and greedy he may have been in his private motives.
From the very beginning, then, government exists by virtue of the good that it does. But there have been enormous differences in the price that men have paid for that good; and this constitutes its variable and progressive factor. Tyranny is, in the long run, the most unstable form of government, because it grossly overestimates the amount that men will pay for the benefit of order. In theAntigoneof Sophocles, Creon thus justifies his rule:
Than lawlessness there is no greater ill. It ruins states, overturns homes, and joining with the spear-thrust breaks the ranks in rout. But in the steady lines what saves most lives is discipline. Therefore we must defend the public order.
But when his son Haemon protests against his tyranny, Creon states his understanding of the bargain:
CREONGovern this land for others than myself?
HAEMONNo city is the property of one alone.
CREONIs not the city reckoned his who rules?
HAEMONExcellent ruling—you alone, the land deserted![6]
{152} In other words, Creon does not understand that if he exacts everything he will possess nothing. There will come a point when the cost to the community exceeds the gain; and when that point is reached government must either make more liberal terms or forfeit its power.
The principle of rationality in government is parsimony. When its benefit involves a wasteful sacrifice of interests and may be purchased more thriftily, the pressure of interest inevitably in the long run brings about the change. The interests upon which the burden weighs most heavily constitute the unstable factor, and since, in order that equilibrium may be restored, these must be relieved, there is necessarily a gradual liberalization of governmental institutions. In the light of these general considerations I wish briefly to examine three historical types of government, and then to present a summary of present tendencies.
There is an interesting estimate of the benefits and cost of theancient military monarchyin the history of Israel, as recorded by the writer of the Book of Samuel. The elders have demanded that Samuel make them a king, to judge them, "like all the nations." But he first warns them of the price that they will have to pay:
And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and {153} appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots; and he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. . . . And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. . . . And he will take your men servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king that ye shall have chosen you.
But the men of Israel were willing to pay even this price, saying:
Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.[7]
The benefits of monarchy, in which Israel sought to emulate her neighbors, werejudgmentandmilitary prowess. Even where the evils of tyranny were most aggravated these benefits actually accrued and constituted a rational ground of authority. The king was, at least in a measure, worthy of his hire. But the cost was extravagant; the king exacted a disproportionate share of the plunder, and reduced his subjects to a condition of personal bondage. In the great monarchies, such as Assyria, Egypt, Persia, and the Roman {154} Empire in its later period, the benefits of his role were greatly attenuated before they reached to the depths and extremities of his kingdom, judgment being reduced to the caprice of an irresponsible officer, and military prowess to a faint reflection of national glory. Now the weakness of such a polity lay in its doubtful value to the governed, these failing to participate fairly in its achievements, and so lacking incentive to support it. There was no clear and convincing identification of individual interest and national purpose.
The strength of Greek and Roman oligarchies, on the other hand, lay in precisely thismorale, or solidarity of interest. Their small size and racial homogeneity brought the ruler into direct relations with a constituency which was clearly conscious of its purpose and held him closely to it. So even where the kingship lingered on as a form, this polity was virtually a compact self-governing community. The benefits of government, to which every other interest was harshly subordinated, were still judgment and military prowess. But these benefits were effectually guaranteed; and the sacrifices which they required became a code of honor, both to be praised and gloried in as parts of happiness. Those who think that the Spartans felt their discipline to be essentially a hardship should read the song of Tyrtaeus, {155} which they recited in their tents on the eve of battle:
With spirit let us fight for this land, and for our children die, being no longer chary of our lives. Fight, then, young men, standing fast one by another, nor be beginners of cowardly flight or fear. But rouse a great and valiant spirit in your breasts, and love not life when ye contend with men. And the elders, whose limbs are no longer active, the old desert not or forsake. For surely this were shameful, that fallen amid the foremost champions, in front of the youths, an older man should lie low, having his head now white and his beard hoary, breathing out a valiant spirit in the dust. . . . Yet all this befits the young while he enjoys the brilliant bloom of youth. To mortal men and women he is lovely to look upon, whilst he lives; and noble when he has fallen in the foremost ranks.[8]
But the cost is none the less heavy because it is not felt. In the first place, there was the cost untold to those whom the oligarchy held in subjection, a hundred thousand Messenians and twice as many Helots. Their unequal participation in the benefits of government, necessary though it may have been, lent instability to the whole polity. It was the menace of their resentment that forced upon their rulers a policy of perpetual vigilance and military discipline. And in the second place, there was the cost to the Spartan himself of attaining to a physical efficiency equal to that of ten Helots.
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In the rival polity of Athens, the first of these abuses is only in a measure corrected. The liberal extension of the privileges of citizenship is the achievement of a later age. But the democracy of Athens did demonstrate the internal wastefulness of a polity dominated by purely military aims. The classic representation of this protest against sacrificing individual taste and capacity, together with all growth and abundance in the arts of peace, to the harsh rigors and passive obedience of a soldier's life, is to be found in Thucydides. In the funeral oration attributed to Pericles there is this account of the superiority of Athenian institutions:
It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service. . . . And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of our living is refined; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. . . . And in the matter of education, whereas they [the Spartans] from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. . . . If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the {157} pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.[9]
The political disorders of later Athenian history illustrate the difficulty of reconciling individualism with order and stability. But at the same time they prove that the task is a necessary one, and that until it has been successfully performed, government can enjoy at best only a false security. For no interests can safely be neglected, least of all those which arise from the natural activities of men and lie in the direction of the normal growth of human capacities.
Now these ancient polities illustrate the inevitable pressure in the direction of liberal government. The original and always the fundamental values of government areorderandpower. But these must be obtained with the minimum of personal exploitation on the part of the ruler; the function of government must be clearly understood and vigilantly guarded by a body of citizens who identify their interests with it. And secondly, order and power must be made compatible with individual initiative, with playfulness and leisure, and with the free development of all worthy interests. This pressure has been steadily operative in the evolution of modern political institutions.
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But there has also been another force at work of equally far-reaching importance. This force is the modern idea of democracy, in whichjustice is modified by good-will. With the ancients justice meant "that every man should practise one thing only, that being the thing to which his nature was most perfectly adapted." [10] Equality upon the highest plane of human capacity was limited even in theory to a privileged class. But since the advent of Christianity it has never been possible for European society to acquiesce with good conscience in a limited distribution of the benefits of civilization. For the new enlightenment teaches that when men's potentialities are considered, rather than their present condition,there are no classes. As a consequence men demand representation not for what they are, but for what they may become if given their just opportunity. The body of citizens whose good is the final end of government virtually includes, then, all men without exception. It is no longer possible simply to dismiss large groups of human beings from consideration on grounds of what is held to be their unfitness. For they now demand that they be made fit. Burke expresses this enlightenment when he says, in speaking of the lower strata of society:
As the blindness of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made a pretence of keeping them in a state of blindness; for {159} the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such institutions.[11]
And so does every man now demand of the community as a whole that he shall be permitted to share equally in its benefits, and also, in order that his claims may be represented, that he shall have a voice in its councils. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that all men, therefore, must here and now be held to be equal; but only that they must be held to be capable of being as good as the best until they have demonstrated the contrary by forfeiting their opportunity. Nor do I mean that all men must therefore be given the ballot. We are discussing a question not of instrument, but of principle. I do mean that there is an idea that the best of life is for all; and that if there are many that are incapable of entering into it, then they must be helped to be capable. And I mean, furthermore, thatthis idea works irresistibly. It commands the support of the whole army of interests. It will never be abandoned because it makes for the increase of life on the whole; and hence no social order will from henceforth be stable that is not based upon it.
This idea that all men alike shall be the beneficiaries of government, when taken together {160} with the ancient ideas that government shall be directly responsible to its beneficiaries, and shall make as liberal an allowance as possible for their individual claims and opinions, constitutes the general principle upon which the progressive modern state is founded. Let me briefly recapitulate certain characteristics of the modern state[12] which indicate its recognition of this principle, and hence its advance on the whole over earlier types.
1. In the first place, the modern state is essentially a territorial rather than a racial or proprietary unit. In other words, it is clearly defined as a necessity and utility arising out of the circumstance of propinquity. If men are to cast in their lot together they must submit to organization, and obey laws promulgated in the interest of the community as a whole. To-day men understand that if they had no government it would be necessary to invent one; that the existing government, whatever divinity doth hedge it, is thus virtually the instrument of their needs.
2. Secondly, this moral function of government is emphasized through being largely freed from personal or dynastic connections and expressed as a constitutional office.
3. Thirdly, the requirements of justice and good-will are reconciled with order through the principle of representation. Without this {161} principle it would be impossible for societies large enough to afford men protection, to admit all men to a share in their positive benefits and to a voice in their councils. Representative government is a method of political procedure through which authority is made answerable in the long run to all interests within its jurisdiction. The more recent tendencies in democratic communities to modify the representative system indicate the direction in which the pressure of interests is still urging society forward. It is no longer a question merely of the extension of the suffrage, but of directness and publicity. The procedure of government being recognized as of vital importance to all citizens, it must be straightforward and businesslike, with its books constantly open to inspection. The present distrust in elected representatives is not a sign of reaction, but of the evolution of the democratic intelligence. Where the machinery of representation becomes wasteful and clumsy, it ceases to serve the community. But this may mean either direct legislation, that is, a direct participation in public affairs by the people at large, or the intrusting of these affairs to a few conspicuously responsible agents selected for their businesslike competence and owing their tenure of office to the consent of their constituency. These methods are entirely consistent with one another; and they owe their {162} adoption entirely to their better execution of the intent of democracy. Both presuppose that political authority is empowered by all the interests of the community to serve them, and that these interests shall in the end decide whether or not that service is adequately performed.
4. Fourthly, the modern state lays a constantly greater stress on questions of internal policy, thus emphasizing its basal function of conserving and fostering the interests directly committed to its charge. It is less occupied with war, and more occupied with education, sanitation, the conservation of national resources, and the regulation of commerce and industry.
5. Fifthly, the sequel to this is the growing recognition of the folly and wastefulness of war. War is becoming a last resort, a hard necessity, rather than an opportunity of national glory. The growth of the idea of international peace, and the improvement and extension of the method of arbitration, are evidence of a yielding to the weight of the collective interests of humanity. They prove the priority of the principle of construction over that of destruction, and the essentially thrifty and provident function of the state.
The present form of progressive political institutions will serve as an index of the times and a pledge of the future. It reflects better than any other element of civilization that growth of {163} liberality and solidifying of interests which is the deep current of progress. Human society is becoming one enterprise, provident of all existing interests and covetous of the best. Now I know that this is to many but a dreary spectacle. There are those who feel diminished by it, overwhelmed by numbers, and degraded to the low level of average capacity and average attainment. Therefore I wish in conclusion to deal further with this spirit of the age, to guard it against misunderstanding, and make its fine quality more apparent.
It is charged that modern democracy is contrary to enlightenment through subordinating the strong man to the multitude of weak men, or the wise man to the multitude of ignorant men. But the modern idea of justice is based fundamentally neither on the mere sentiment of pity nor on fear of the mob, but on love of truth, and respect for all organs that mediate it. Society cannot afford forcibly to repress the judgment of any individual or class, lest her deeds be deeds of darkness. The task of good living is a task of well-nigh overwhelming difficulty, because it requires that no interest shall be ignored, and yet that all interests shall be in unison. Interests left out of the account will inevitably assert themselves, and through their steady pressure or {164} violent impact destroy the organization which has excluded them. Hence the need of an order that shall provide for its own gradual correction; stable enough for security, and pliant enough to yield without shock to the claims of neglected or abused interests.
This need underlies the modern sentiment of tolerance, and the love of all the liberties that give a hearing to any sincere demand: freedom of speech and press, the wide distribution of the franchise, and of opportunity for power. Contrary to a theory that philosophers have done much to support, democracy is not a method of confounding intelligence with the clamor of many voices, but a method of correcting the single intelligence by the report of whatever other intelligence may be most advantageously related to the matter at issue. Human intelligence must operate from a centre, and must always overcome an initial bias due to familiarity and proximity. The consensus of opinion, or public opinion, is not essentially a composite opinion, but a corrected opinion in which such accidents of locality cancel one another. The following justification of democracy, formulated by Matthew Arnold, lays bare its insistent and wholly incontrovertible motive:
If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well for any {165} great class or description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them. They do not really understand its wants, they do not really provide for them. A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its own wants or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success.[13]
This conception of democracy has come latterly to be as fine a point of honor as any article in the code of chivalry or noblesse. The arrogance that claims a superiority of class, and the obsequiousness that loves a lord, all this Nietschean "pathos of distance," whether felt from the heights or the depths, is sharply repugnant to a new gentility, that embraces all that have had the joy of promiscuous social intercourse. From this aristocracy no one is excluded that does not exclude himself through servility or superciliousness. Its distinction is liberality, that is, the habit of disputing questions and judging persons on their merits, with due allowance for that never wholly negligible possibility that the other man is right. Among those who are united by this spirit, there is one joke that is an unfailing touchstone and bond of union—the institution oflèse-majesté. It is a matter for unquenchable laughter, {166} that superiority should require to be protected against inferiority by the enforced signs of respect, or by a hedge of reserve.
It is the ridiculousness of the haughty or the prostrate manner that is absolutely fatal to it. And its ridiculousness appears at the moment when you let in the light. Class elevation is pretence, not superiority; complacence, not wisdom; impudence, not power. But the contempt of the just man for the unjust is edged with knowledge. It arises out of a sense for things as they are: a recognition of the breadth and intricacy of life, compared with the pitifully small understanding of those who propose to regulate it on their own authority; of the vivid reality and worth of interests that do not exist for those whose claims are absolute, but who are only the hapless victims of a narrow and warping tradition.
Many think that the modern democracy is too easy-going; too much infected with charity. Now it is quite true that it means that no interest whatsoever shall be cut off through being forgotten or lightly estimated. The conscience of to-day expresses the persuasion that there is no stable happiness in any activity which entails cruelty, which has any other motive than to save. But this is no more than the full meaning of the Platonic dictum that "the injuring of another can be in no case just." [14] This sensitiveness to {167} life that is remote or obscure, this feeling for the whole wide manifold of interests, is not a weakness; it is enlightenment, a lively awareness of what is really relevant to the task of civilization. To imagine and think life collectively, with all its interests abreast, is only to measure up roundly and proportionately to the practical situation as it actually is. Upon a mind thus alive to the whole spectacle there at once flashes the awkwardness here, the waste there, as of an enterprise only begun. Let me allow another to interpret this latter-day conscience. I quote fromFirst and Last Things, written by Wells:
I see humanity scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting, unawakened. . . . I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion. I see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere parasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in primeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial perfection; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury . . . I see gamblers, fools, brutes, toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility, fills me with a passionate desire to end waste, to create order, to develop understanding. . . . All these people reflect and are part of the waste and discontent of my life, and this coordinating of the species in a common general end, and the effort of my personal salvation are the social and the individual aspect of essentially the same desire.[15]
But it must not be thought that this is a matter of mere creature comfort, of distributing staple {168} benefits for which men already have the appetite. For every step in the organization of life is attended with the growth of new interests, and especially of interests fostered or directly evoked by principles that have proved their moral virtue. Thus the forms of prudence and justice are supported by the immediate love of these things. And a growing rationality involves an increasing subtlety and delicacy in desires, the enrichment of life through the multiplication of such sources of satisfaction as are consistent with order and liberality. The true democracy is considerate not only of present interests, but also of the potentiality and promise of life.
Only when the imagination pictures life in these terms is it possible to avoid a sense of ignominy and irresponsibility. And, contrary to a common misconception, there is no other attitude that can reconcile one to the unavoidable participation in the common life of all men. Only when thus united with one's fellows in a spirited and ennobling enterprise can one endure their fellowship. Comrades in arms are not fastidious. If one confines one's self, on the other hand, to a cultivation of one's rarity, or to a company of choice spirits, not only do these values themselves grow stale and vanish away, but the remainder of mankind becomes a crowd, and civilization a tumult. The collective life of {169} mankind ceases to be jarring and repugnant only at the moment when one enters into it and becomes infused with its morale.
There will be some in whom this prospect arouses no eagerness. The wise men of any day are, of course, agreed among themselves that the times are bad—that they are likely to be still worse after they, the remnant, have departed. But this is an opinion which most men acquire when they attain to maturity, and happily the world has long since seen that they cannot help it, and learned on that account not to take it to heart. The part of Cassandra is always being played somewhere by a gentleman of middle age with a ripe experience of life. But in any serious judgment concerning progress this bias of maturity must be overcome by the use of the imagination, by a rational estimate of human affairs in their broad sweep, or, if necessary, by an infusion of youthfulness. We shall wait long if we wait
"Till old experience do attainTo something like prophetic strain."
There is a more serious cause of hopelessness, in the complexity of modern civilization. Its very teeming life, its wealth, its multiplicity of activities and passions, overwhelm the mind in its moments of fatigue like a devouring chaos. One longs for the day when the house of {170} civilization shall be completed, so that one may dwell in it in peace.
We are, it is true, in a time when there is still rough work to be done. But it is not blind work. Never has society been so clear as to its several special ends, never has so little effort been due to chance or compulsion. Nor is it ineffective work; for man now works with good tools and the help of many hands. And there is consolation in the fact that the foundations of civilization are laid wide and deep in charity and welfare. There remains the perpetual task of re-establishing a spiritual order which has been strained and wracked by the heaving of many forces. But when the sanctuaries and altars are restored it will prove to be a new order, richer, more liberal, and more complete than any since men began to live.
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There are certain human activities which not only are of special interest on their own account, but also hold a position of pre-eminence in civilization. Such are science, philosophy, the love of nature, politics, friendly intercourse, and fine art. The last of these activities enjoys a peculiar distinction because it is monumental. It not only calls into play all of the more refined capacities, but also records itself in permanent and worthy form. Hence the fine art of any period comes to be taken as an index of its remove from savagery.
In submitting fine art to moral criticism, I shall use it as the best representative of the whole class of activities which I have just described. If we have not been wholly astray in our analysis of the good, it should appear that these activities owe their pre-eminence not to their bare quality or tone, but to their humanity, that is, to their connection with a harmonious, just, and progressive state of society.
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It is hard for a moralist to approach such a subject without timidity, especially if he is concerned with his reputation for enlightenment. For there are many who think that it is a mark of intellectual emancipation to abandon moral standards altogether when dealing with the fine arts. Life itself, they remind us, is only the greatest of the fine arts; and if life can be called beautiful, the last word has been said. The man of taste and delicate sensibility is thus empowered to overrule the moralist, and replace with his ideal of grace and symmetry the harsh and clumsy scruples of conscience. Now it is doubtless true that when life is good, it is also beautiful; a life in which every activity is true, in which the medium of opportunity is formed to accord with the most noble purpose, may well exhibit a superlative grace and symmetry. But to be beautiful, life must be goodin its own way; and the principles which define that way are the principles of morality. Furthermore, in order that life shall be beautiful it must be made an object of perception or contemplation; while, in order to be good, it must be lived. And the principles which define the living of life are moral.
The confusion of goodness with beauty is, therefore, doubly stultifying. On the one hand, it substitutes for the moral conception of value conceptions that morally are indeterminate. For {173} grace and symmetry may be exhibited by life on any plane whatsoever, provided only that it acquires stability. Indeed, one who aims above all things to make his life beautiful, ought consistently to abandon the moral effort to bring life to its maximum of fulfilment, and cultivate perfection of form within the sphere of least resistance. It is proverbial that many lower forms of life are more beautiful than man, but it is not always seen that these are the stationary forms of life, wholly lacking in that principle of rational reconstruction which is the condition of moral goodness. On the other hand, the confusion of goodness with beauty tends to substitute appreciation for action, and thus to make of life a spectacle rather than an enterprise. Thus to replace ethical with aesthetic conceptions is to take the heart out of morality. Beauty is precisely as relevant to moral goodness as it is to truth; and if investigators were taught to devise the prettiest theory imaginable, the result would be no more fatal to knowledge than is aesthetic sentimentalism to life. To think conformably with reality is knowledge, and to act conformably with all interests is life. If beauty is to be added unto truth and goodness, it must come as the natural sequel to a single-minded fidelity to these motives.
But even if it be true that moral standards are absolutely independent of the standards proper {174} to art, it is not yet clear that the moralist is justified in regarding his standards as more fundamental than those of art. He may be politely but positively informed that he is not to trespass. Now I feel that, after what has preceded, I am fortified against the charge of impertinence. Art is subject to moral criticism, because morality is nothing more nor less than the law which determines the whole order of interests, within which art and every other good thing is possible. It will scarcely be denied that art is an expression of interest, that both its creation and its enjoyment are activities, moods, or phases of life; and it follows that before this specific interest can be safely or adequately satisfied, it is necessary to fulfil the general conditions that underlie the satisfaction of all interests. It is as absurd to speak of art for art's sake as it is to speak of drinking for drinking's sake, if you mean that this interest is entitled to entirely free play. Art, like all other interests, can flourish only in a sound and whole society, and the law of soundness and wholeness in life is morality.
The claim of art to exemption from moral criticism is commonly due to one or both of these two forms of misapprehension.
In the first place, it is assumed that morality, too, is a special interest; and that if the artist or connoisseur lets the moralist alone, it is no more {175} than fair that the moralist should let him alone.
But this assumption is false; as false as though the athlete were to chafe at the warnings of his medical adviser on the ground that general health was irrelevant to endurance or strength or agility. Now, doubtless, an athlete may for a time neglect his general health with no noticeable diminution of his skill; but that is only because he already possesses the health to abuse. It still remains true that the principles of health which the trainer represents are the principles upon which his skill is fundamentally based. Nature has made him healthy according to these principles, and he simply does not recognize his debt to them. Similarly, art may flourish in spite of the neglect of social and individual well-being, so that the pleadings of the moral advocate seem irrelevant; but this is possible only because the social order is already established, and the personality formed, according to the very principles which the moralist is announcing. Art may dissipate moral health, but it nevertheless lives only by virtue of such a source of supply. The basal condition of art is not the element of social evil or morbid temperament that may attract attention, but the measure of soundness that nevertheless remains.
The second misapprehension that lends plausibility to the excuses of art is the assumption that {176} the moralist is proposing tosubstitutehis canons for those of art. Now it is entirely true that moral insight in no way equips one for connoisseurship. There is a special aptitude and training that enables one to discriminate in such matters. But the moralist is judging arton moral grounds. Hence he does not say, "I see that your painting is ugly"; but he does say, "I see that your painting, which you esteem beautiful (and I take your word for it), isbad." In the same way the moralist does not say to the self-indulgent man, "I see that you are not having a good time" (the self-indulgent man is likely to know better); but he says, "I see that it is bad for you to be having this particular kind of good time." In other words, for the moralist larger issues are at stake, and he is considering these on the grounds proper to them. He is charged with defining and applying the principles which determine the good of interests on the whole; and while his conclusions can never replace those of the expert within a special field, they will always possess authority to overrule them.
Since we are to be occupied mainly with the bearing of art on morality, I wish so far as possible to avoid debatable questions concerning the origin and ultimate meaning of art. But we {177} cannot proceed without agreeing on a use of terms. I shall attempt, therefore, to give a straightforward and empirical account of that which comes to be called art in the history of civilization.[1]
We have already had occasion to observe that from the very beginning life adapts the environment to its uses; that is, gives to matter and to mechanical processes a new form in which these fulfil interest. Thus an area of land deforested and cultivated, or two stones so hewn and fitted as to afford a grinding surface, take on the imprint of the human need for food. Now such reorganizations of nature as the farm or the mill, however crude they may be, are works of art in the broadest sense. And in this same sense all the tools, furniture, and panoply of civilization, from the most primitive to the most highly evolved, whatever without exception owes its form to its fulfilment of an interest, may with entire propriety be called art.
In the great majority of cases the work of art after being made isused; that is, it becomes an instrument in the making of something else. Such art is called useful orindustrial art. But it sometimes happens that the work of art is valued, not as an instrument in the ordinary practical sense, but simply as an object to be experienced. In the Scriptural account of creation it is said that "God saw everything that he had {178} made, and, behold, it was good." When the products of activity are thus found good in the beholding of them they become works offine art.
It would be improper sharply to divorce these two motives, or to make one any more original than the other. The interest in the exercise of the sensibilities, or other powers of apprehension, is doubtless as primitive as any of the special interests of the organism; and it is improbable that man ever made anything without getting some satisfaction from looking at it or handling it or feeling it. Commonly the same object is both useful and beautiful; as was the case with the primitive religious dance, which at the same time indulged a taste for rhythm and served as a means of propitiating the gods.
But the motive of fine art becomes clearer when it is purer. Objects are then made with explicit reference to the interest taken in apprehending them. I do not mean that they cannot on that account be useful, for without doubt utility itself contributes to beauty; but only that they owe their form primarily to the aesthetic interest. The motive of fine art in its purity appears when special materials are selected on account of their plasticity and their appeal to the more highly developed senses. Fine arts that employ one medium are now separated and perfected through the cultivation of expert proficiency. {179} Thus there arise such arts as painting and music, one of which gives form to light and appeals to the eye, while the other gives form to sound and appeals to the ear. In this way society comes to acquire and accumulate objects which are designed, either wholly or in part, with reference to the special aesthetic interest. They are the creatures of this interest, and their place in life is determined by it. To understand their importance and to estimate their moral value it is therefore necessary to isolate this interest and examine it with some care.[2]
By the aesthetic interest I mean to refer to the interest that is taken in the work of fine art by the observer. There is undoubtedly a special interest in creation, but it is of relatively small importance. Even the artist is controlled largely by the interest in observing his own work; and art is a serious social concern only because of its appeal to the unlimited number of persons who may enjoy it without having any hand in the making. Now, in the passing allusion which I have made to the aesthetic interest, I have already used the term which is most convenient for purposes of general definition. The aesthetic interest isthe interest in apprehension. What I mean by this will become clear when I compare it with two other interests which may also be taken in the content of experience. There is, in the first {180} place, what is called the practical interest, that is, the interest in an object on account of what can be done with it by manipulation or combination with other objects. Secondly, there is the theoretical interest in the structure of reality, manifesting itself in the exploration of the object and its context. Now the interest in apprehension is not an interest in what can be done with the object, nor in its real structure, but inthe present conscious reaction to it. One may take all three of these interests in the same object. Thus if I pluck the flower and take it home to my wife, I give evidence of a practical interest in it; if I kneel down and examine it carefully, I suggest the botanist; while if I continue to gaze at it where it lies, it would appear that I enjoy simply looking at it. It is this interest simply in looking at things, in just the perceiving, feeling, thinking, or imagining them, that I mean to sum up as the interest in apprehension, or the aesthetic interest. When objects excite this interest, when, that is, any state or process of consciousness of which they are the content tends to be prolonged for its own sake, they are said to be beautiful. And objects which are deliberately and artificially invested with a peculiar capacity to excite this interest are works of fine art.
I shall not undertake to explain the interest in apprehension further than to describe certain {181} typical forms which it assumes. These forms will serve not only to illustrate its general meaning, but also to amplify that meaning in a manner that will prove important when we come to the discussion of moral questions. The forms which I shall mention are by no means exhaustive of the possible forms of the interest in apprehension, while the order that I shall follow is only roughly the order of increasing complexity.
There is, in the first place, an interest insensation. I do not, of course, mean to assert that any state of purely sensuous enjoyment is possible; but only that the senses have a certain bias of their own which will modify every state in which they are called into play. There is a delight of the eye and ear, a pleasantness to the touch, an agreeableness of taste and smell, wholly without reference to anything beyond. The arts which employ any of these senses must satisfy their bias, however much they may appeal to higher faculties; nothing which rankly offends them can by any possible means be made beautiful. Thus painting must be charming in color, and music in tone; and certain colors and tones are charming for no deeper reason than that which makes certain foods palatable.
The interest inperception[3] assumes special prominence in the great visual art of painting. For the process of perception is most elaborated {182} in connection with the sense of vision, this being peculiarly the human organ of watchfulness and orientation. The interest in perception is the interest in completing the sensation or rounding it into an object or situation with the aid of thought and imagination. In painting, as most commonly in life, the stimulus is visual—texture, perspective, or a quality of light.
Theemotionalform of apprehension plays the predominant part in representations of human action, in music, and in the appreciation of nature. It is in this latter connection that we can, I think, best understand it; and I propose for purposes of illustration to record an experience of my own.
I walked one night on the deck of a steamer plying between New York and Bermuda, and gave myself up wholly to the aspect of nature. The moon shone brightly half-way between the horizon and zenith, and opened a path of light from where I stood to the uttermost distance. With half-closed eyes I watched the hard lustre of the waves, or turned from this to the smooth roll of the foam turned up by the steamer's prow. And I remember that I seemed to dwell upon these things with an instant relish, like that with which my lungs devoured the fresh and plentiful air. But when I looked towards the moon along the path of light, there was something that stirred me more deeply. The prospect of an endless journey opened {183} out before me, like an invitation to live, or a fulness of opportunity. And I seemed to leap in response, rejoicing in my power. But I did not act; it was as though I already achieved and possessed. Presently I turned from the path of light to the blackness that beset it on every side. In this blackness there seemed to lurk every kind of unknown danger; I was moved with a sense of helplessness, and shrank from the thought of being deserted there. And yet though I was afraid, the fear never seemed topossessme, but always to be possessedbyme, as mine to prolong and exult in as I would.
Now I think that the interpretation of my dream is this. Deeply implanted in the organism are certain co-ordinated responses such as courage and fear, or such as love, hate, combativeness, pity, and emulation. They may owe their present form to habit, but they are all rooted in instinct, and so call the body into play as a unit.[4] Primarily they are plans of action, through which the organism promptly deals with practical emergencies. But it is possible for man to detach himself from overt motor relations with his environment; and in this case these responses return as it were into the body and reverberate there, taking on a purely emotional form which may be valued for itself. Thus courage and fear may lead to no act of bravery or caution, but {184} remain simplyexperiencesof courage and fear, promoted and treasured by the imagination. Nature will probably remain the object which evokes these responses most keenly, because nature is the hereditary environment towards which they were originally directed. But human action is scarcely less moving. Hence dramatic art, or the representation of social and moral confrontations, will both arouse and prolong the old passions, thus evoking a deeper and more massive response than the play of the senses.
I fully recognize that the value of dramatic art is by no means limited to its emotional appeal. I contend only that it does make such an appeal, and that it owes to that appeal, to its evoking of sympathy, love, or hate, to its stirring of incipient action, the peculiar intensity and reverberance of the enjoyment which it affords. The same holds true, I think, of poetry generally, where this deals with life. The case of music is more doubtful. It is generally agreed that the enjoyment of music has never been adequately accounted for, albeit it is probably more ancient than man. But that music does arouse the great emotions, and owe its popularity mainly to that fact, can scarcely be questioned. It is only necessary to add that over and above this appeal, as well as its appeal to the ear and to an intellectual apprehension of its technical forms, it seems to {185} be capable of developing emotions of its own; that is, experiences which do not coincide with the instinctive emotions, but which have a like massiveness and organic reverberation. It may be, as Walter Pater insists, that in this respect "all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." [5] But this does not contradict the fact that such artsareemotionally stimulating, will always stir men as men are capable of being stirred, and in society at large will make their main appeal to the fundamental and constant emotions, cultivating the enjoyment of love, fear, and the other elemental passions for the very poignancy and thrill of them.
For the intellectual type of apprehension I propose to employ the termdiscernment. I mean the apprehension of anideawhen conveyed by some sensuous medium; the finding or recovery of some unity of thought in a perceptual context. When discernment in this sense is directly agreeable without any ulterior motive, it is a special case of the aesthetic interest. From this interest the representative or pictorial element in art derives its value.
Let me illustrate my meaning by referring to what Taine says of Greek sculpture:
Here we have the living body, complete and without a veil, admired and glorified, standing on its pedestal without scandal and exposed to all eyes. {186} What is its purpose, and what idea, through sympathy, is the statue to convey to spectators? An idea which, to us, is almost without meaning because it belongs to another age and another epoch of the human mind. The head is without significance; unlike ours it is not a world of graduated conceptions, excited passions, and a medley of sentiments; the face is not sunken, sharp, and disturbed; it has not many characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is generally in repose. . . . The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not require violent and surprising effects to stimulate weary attention or to irritate an uneasy sensibility. A blooming and healthy body, capable of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony of lines happily commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could dwell on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned to his organs and to his condition and endowed with every perfection within these limits; they demanded nothing more and nothing less; anything besides would have struck them as extravagance, deformity, or disease. Such is the circle within which the simplicity of their culture kept them.[6]
In other words, Greek art expressed the rare quality of Greek life; its naturalism, its compactness, its clearness. And it did so instinctively both to the artist and the spectator. We are not to think that because, in order to understand ancient art, it may be necessary for us first to obtain a conception of life and then to match it in art, this is essential to its appreciation. On the contrary, the object of art is not beautiful {187} until it flashes the idea upon us, communicating an ideal unity that is not intellectually articulate at all. This must always be the effect upon contemporaries, in whom the idea is so assimilated as to be unconscious. But the idea is there none the less; and the full beauty cannot exist for any one who is incapable of discerning the idea, and rejoicing in the apprehension of it.
The incomparable excellence of Greek sculpture is due to a type of genius in which clearness of mind and delicacy of touch are united. Among the Greeks the term infinite was a term of disparagement; they thought roundly and cleanly, thus preferring ideas to vague surmises. This was their first gift. And, adding to it a sensitiveness to form, they were enabled toexpress themselves, without redundancy and exaggeration, bringing whatever medium they employed into accord with the idea. It is this felicity and luminousness that gives to the art of the Greeks a peculiar appeal to the intelligence. For the mind delights in definiteness and light.
But the Greek conception of life belongs to an age preceding the advent of what has proved to be the European religion. And Christianity has so reconstructed the experience of the average man through its sensitiveness to pain, and its emphasis on what is called "the inner life," that I want further to illustrate the meaning of {188} discernment in art, by referring to the representation of the spirit of the Renaissance in the painting of Leonardo da Vinci. I quote the following from Pater's description of "La Gioconda":
The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed. All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the human form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reveries of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, which has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.[7]
The power of Renaissance painting is not wholly a matter of color, texture, modelling, and composition; for though it contains these and many {189} sensuous and perceptual values besides, it conveys through them with surpassing truth and delicacy ideas as evasive as they are subtle and profound. There is an ecstasy of mind in the discernment of these ideas, and a blend of emotion that follows in their train, both of which are conditioned by insight; that is, by a process that is neither sensuous, perceptual, nor emotional merely, but, in an additional sense, intellectual.
The interest in apprehension may thus be exhibited and satisfied in divers ways, differing according to the special processes of consciousness which they call into play. And while it may be crude or cultivated, it is safe to say that in all of its modes it is present to some degree in every individual human life. The simple-minded person who hisses the villain of the melodrama, and he who takes pleasure in the inevitableness of the Greek tragedy, are exhibiting the same interest in the emotions evoked by the spectacle of life. There is only a difference of training and sophistication between the man who enjoys a cheap chromo for the color or the "likeness," and one who appreciates Velasquez's treatment of light or the characterization of Franz Hals.
In the enjoyment of the highest forms of art these various modes of apprehension will be united, each so contributing to the enhancement of the {190} rest that it is impossible sharply to divide them. Nor do I venture any opinion as to which of these modes, if any, is fundamental in the different arts or in fine art as a whole. It is sufficient for our purposes to know that art does exercise and develop human nature in all of these ways.
We are now in a position to define a programme of criticism. Art thrives because it fulfils a complex and multiform interest. It is supported by an interest which it supplies with its proper objects. Hence it falls within the circle of life where questions of prudence, justice, and good-will are paramount. But, because moral considerations must thus in the nature of the case take precedence over purely aesthetic considerations, this proves nothing whatsoever concerning the way in which this precedence should be established. It was Plato's belief that society should employ a rigorous censorship, and banish the offending poet:
We will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as he is in our State—the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city.[8]
But there is another way of protecting society from whatever may be the evil effects of art, and that is to educate the individual and the {191} community in their use of art. This would mean, in place of a regulation of the supply, a regulation of the demand. It would mean that the aesthetic interest itself, like every other interest within the moral economy, should be so controlled as to make it as conducive as possible to health and abundance of life. The exercise or cultivation of the interest in art would then, like the love of nature or of social intercourse, be unlimited so far as its objects were concerned, but limited through its relation to other interests within the individual or community purpose. But with this difference concerning the proper remedy, the present inquiry will coincide in its intent and presuppositions with that model of all moral criticisms, theRepublicof Plato. What are the possibilities for life of this aesthetic interest or love of art? How is it liable to abuse or excess? What is its bearing on other interests, and how far does it tend to make life gracious and happy, without destroying its balance or compromising its truth? These are the questions on which I hope that I may be able to throw some light by calling attention to the following characteristics possessed by the aesthetic interest:self-sufficiency, pervasiveness, vicariousness, stimulation of action, fixation of ideas,andliberality.[9]
{192}
It has long been pointed out that the aesthetic interest, unlike the bodily appetites, isself-sufficient, in that it is capable of being evenly sustained. It depends on no antecedent craving, and has no definite periodic limit of satiety. It engages the capacities that are, on the whole, the most docile and the least liable to progressive fatigue, while through its own internal variety it is guarded against monotony. Consequently the aesthetic interest is peculiarly capable of being continued and developed through a lifetime, providing a constant and increasing source of satisfaction.
Furthermore, the aesthetic interest is resourceful, easily supplying itself with the objects which it uses. It follows that it contributes to independence, being like the "speculative activity" of Aristotle,[10] in giving the individual a means of happiness in himself without the aid of his fellows or the favor of fortune. Since the aesthetic interest is in these ways self-sufficient, its continuous return of good being guaranteed, it is one of the safest of investments.
But every special interest is a source of danger in direct proportion to its isolation. Its very self-sufficiency may serve to promote a narrow concentration, a blindness to ulterior interests {193} and wider possibilities. This undue dwelling on the given material of life may, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, attach to any interest; but the aesthetic interest is peculiarly liable to it. This is due to the fact that, in so far as an object appeals to the aesthetic interest, it tends not to develop, but to retain some fixed aspect in which the apprehension of it is agreeable. The various practical interests ramify indefinitely through the dynamic relations of objects, and through the handling of objects common to a variety of interests. Once engaged in what is called "active life" one tends to be drawn into the main current of enterprise and made aware of the larger issues. And the theoretical interest also tends to lead beyond itself; for it prompts the mind to examine the whole nature of objects, and to explore their context without limit in the hope of completer truth. But the aesthetic interest readily acquires equilibrium, and feels no inducement to leave off an activity which, though its limits may be narrow, is free and continuous within them. Plato accused art of being essentially imitative, and so of confirming the vulgar respect for the surface aspect of things.[11] It is truer, I think, to say that the aesthetic interest is quiescent, tending to perpetuate experience in any form that is found pleasant, and without respect either to practical exigencies or to the order of truth. {194} Hence this interest on account of its very self-sufficiency offers a passive resistance to the formal principles of moral organization—to prudence, purpose, justice, and good-will.
The aesthetic interest is the good genius of the powers of apprehension, making them fruitful in their own kind. Now the powers of apprehension are engaged during all the waking hours, and if they can be taught to mediate a good of their own, that good willpervadethe whole of life. It is through the cultivation of the aesthetic interest that there is most hope of redeeming the waste places, of giving to intervals and accidental juxtapositions some graciousness and profit. With all the world to see and contemplate, and with the eye and mind wherewith to contemplate them, there is a limitless abundance of good things always and everywhere available. Let me quote Arthur Benson's account of this discovery:
The world was full of surprises; trees drooped their leaves over screening walls, houses had backs as well as fronts; music was heard from shuttered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. There were a thousand pretty secrets in the ways of people to each other. Then, too, there were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied wall. One had but to clap one's hands and cry out, and there was a fluttering {195} of innumerable wings; life was as full of bubbles, forming, rising into amber foam, as a glass of sparkling wine.[12]
To this delight which the casual environment affords a sensitive observer, art may add through a decorous furnishing of city and house. Or the instruments of other interests may be made to give pleasure of themselves, so that there may be no long periods of deferred reward. Thus to the hire of manual labor may be added the immediate compensation which comes from a love of the tools, or from the satisfaction taken in the aspect of work done; to physical exercise may be added the love of nature, to scholarship the love of scientific form, and to social intercourse the love of personal beauty or of conversation. In these ways, and in countless ways beside, the aesthetic interest may multiply the richness of life.
Society is, on the whole, protected against the danger of overemphasis on the aesthetic interest, through the habitual subordination of it in public opinion to standards of efficiency. Men commonly believe, and are justified in so believing, that a life delivered wholly to the aesthetic interest is frivolous; amusing itself with "bubbles" and "amber foam," while supported by a community in whose graver and more urgent concerns it takes no part. Probably no one has {196} done more than Pater to persuade men of the present generation that it is worth while to "catch at any exquisite passion, . . . or any stirring of the senses"; and yet he is not a prophet in our day. Is it possibly because in that same famous conclusion to theRenaissancehe said, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end," [13] and thus exposed himself to misunderstanding, if not to refutation, at the hands of any one of average moral enlightenment? The moral lesson is one that none have escaped, and that only a few are permitted to forget. This lesson has taught with unvarying reiteration that acts are to be judged by their consequences; that all purposes are constructive, and so far as wise fitted into the building of civilization; that experience itself, in Pater's sense, is possible only as a fruit of experience. A life in which the aesthetic interest unduly dominates, in which action is transmuted into pulses of sensation, and the means of efficiency into the ends of contemplation, is an idle life, protected from the consequences of its own impotency only by the constructive labor of others. He who from prolonged gazing at the spoon forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose with decay.
It has always been recognized that there is a peculiar massiveness or depth in aesthetic satisfaction, as though it somehow carried with it the satisfaction of all interests. And this is not due merely to the fact that other interests tend to fall away or remit their claims; it is due besides to the fact that other interests may in a sense actually be fulfilled in the aesthetic interest. In other words, this interest serves a vicarious function, transmuting other interests into its own form, and then affording them a fulfilment which they are incapable of attaining when exercised in their own right.
This occurs when other interests, such as love or personal ambition, are imagined or represented, and thus made objects of agreeable apprehension. There is in this a compensation for failure, without which life would be stripped of one of its main barriers against despair. Those whom circumstance has provided no opportunity for the fulfilment of interests so ingenerate as maternal love or heroic action, may, in a way, make themselves whole {198} through the contemplation of these things; for the contemplation of them engages the same instincts, arouses the same emotions, but without requiring the existence of their objects. The prolongation of arduous and uncertain effort is compensated through the imaginative anticipation of success, or through the apprehension of some symbol of perfect fruition. It is through this happy illumination of struggle with a vision of fulfilment, that mankind is reconciled to such tasks as civilization and spiritual wholeness; tasks in which great efforts produce small results, and of which the end is not seen.
Now it remains true, of course, that such vicarious fulfilment is not real fulfilment; and to suppose it to be, is one of the most serious errors for which the aesthetic interest is responsible. The man who, with clenched hands and quickened pulse, is watching some image of himself as it triumphs over obstacles and arrives at the summit of his ambition, may and doubtless doesfeellike Alexander, but he nevertheless has not conquered the world; and if he thinks he has, he will probably never conquer any of it. It must be remembered that the vicarious aesthetic fulfilment of interests is the easiest fulfilment of them; and that it may, therefore, become a form of self-indulgence and a source of false complacency. A sanguine imagination is one of the {199} chief causes of worldly failure; an exaggerated interest in representations of virtue is a common cause of irresponsibility and of hypocrisy. William James, in a passage that is frequently quoted, calls attention also to the danger of acquiring a chronic emotionality.
The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards insomeactive way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world—speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers—but let it not fail to take place.[14]
But not only is it possible through the exaggeration of the aesthetic interest to substitute apparent achievement for real achievement; it is possible to extract solace from the contemplation of failure itself. Is there any one who has not met the man who is actually made buoyant by his consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless, though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale, precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic, sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.