In the horizontal division of a building into stories—as, for example, in the Palazzo Farnese near Rome—it is easier for the prominent parts to be equal, because they are better united by the evident contiguity of their masses, by their inclosure in a simple geometrical shape, and enframement between base and overhanging cornice. Yet here also we observe the tendency to make the middle larger or otherwise dominant, exemplified even in the building cited, where the central part is distinguished by the ornamental shield, upon which the attention is focused. When there are four horizontal divisions, our tendency is to divide them into groups of two; but unless this grouping is clearly marked by a molding or other such device, our purpose is defeated because each of the two can itself be divided into two parts, whence we get the four parts again, among which there is not sufficient unity. When, however, there are more than four stories, they cease to function as individuals and become members of a series, the rhythm of which creates the necessary unity. Even in this case, however, the tendency toward grouping into three with the middle dominant persists; for, as a rule, the stories are divided by moldings into three parts, of which the central part is the largest. Four equal stories are difficult because they at once resist an arrangement into threes and yet fall short of being the series which they suggest. When a series of stories is divided into three parts, a superior aesthetic effect is gained if the height of each story diminishes in some regular ratio from the bottom to the top, thus expressing the gradual overcoming of the downward force by the upward,—the rhythm becomes dynamical as well as kinematical.
All good architectural styles illustrate the principle of impartiality, which demands the careful elaboration of parts. Yet, as we have indicated, there are two possibilities: some styles are founded on the idea of the subordination of the parts to the whole, and so permit of a less elaborate execution of details, while others are based on the idea of coordination among the parts within the whole, and so require that each part be vividly clear, distinct from the others, and possessed of a pronounced individual beauty. These two types are exemplified in each of the three aspects of a building—the visual, the dynamic, and the voluminal. For the Greek and Roman architecture and for that of the Renaissance, the former was the ideal; while the latter is clearly characteristic of the more modern forms; between these stand the Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic, in which a union of the two types, in what has well been called an organic type, was attempted, and perhaps achieved in the last. The former has the feeling of the mechanical, rational view of life, which is the classical; the latter has the feeling of the mystical and organic view, which is modern.[Footnote: See P. Frankl,Die Entwieklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst, 1914.]
That an interest is innocent and pleasure giving is no longer considered sufficient to justify its existence; it must also, in order to be sanctioned in our jealous and economical world, prove itself a beneficent influence upon the total man and the group. For the time being at least, the day oflaissez-faireis done; men can no longer appeal to their personal needs, their inner necessities, or even their consciences, in defense of their activities. Public opinion, and sometimes reason, are the only arbiters of right. It may well happen that, in a new age, men will be more generous and less exacting, once again recognizing inherent rights in spontaneous activities; but that age is not ours. Not even art can claim privilege; in vain will the artist boast of his genius or the art-lover of his delights, if he can exhibit no pervasive good. It is not enough, therefore, that we should have described the peculiar, inward value of art; we must further establish that it has a function in the general life.
Three classes of people, the puritans, the philistines, and the proletarians, question the value of art in this sense. These classes are, of course, not new to our civilization, but are rather perennial types of human nature, appearing under one or another name and guise in every age. To the puritan, art is immoral; to the philistine, it is useless; to the proletarian, it is a cruel waste.
One illustration of the complexity of human culture is the fact that art has now been regarded as the symbol and ally of goodness, and now as its enemy. This paradox can, I think, be partly explained by making a distinction between the ethical and the moral point of view regarding conduct. From the one point of view, the good belongs to all free, creative acts that look toward the growth and happiness of individuals; from the other point of view, it consists in conformity to law, convention, and custom. It is evident that these two attitudes must sometimes come into open or secret conflict. For law and convention represent either an effort to fix and stabilize modes of conduct that have proved themselves to be good under certain conditions; or else, as is more often true than is admitted, an attempt to generalize the good of some special class or type of men and impose it as a norm for all; and obviously these efforts will, from time to time, be opposed either to the freedom of individuals, or to their growth, under changing conditions.
Now in the sense defined, the spirit of art is fundamentally ethical and, at the same time, fundamentally non-moral. It is fundamentally ethical, for art is itself a freely creative and happy activity, and tends to propagate itself in spontaneity in other fields; it is an inspiration in every struggle for liberty and the remolding of the world. The artist and art lover, who value the expression of individuality in art, cannot fail to appreciate it outside of art. On the other hand, the spirit of art is fundamentally non-moral, for the sthetic attitude is one of sympathy—an attempt at once to express life and to feel at one with it; it demands of us that we take the point of view of the life expressed and, for the moment at any rate, refrain from a merely external judgment. Through art we are compelled to sympathize with the aspiration towards growth, towards happiness, even when it leads to rebellion against our own standards and towards what we call sin. The sympathy, realism, and imagination of art are antagonistic to conformist morality. By making us intimately acquainted with individuals, art leads to skepticism of all general rules.
The puritan, therefore, who is an exponent of the extremest and narrowest conformist morality, is more nearly right in his interpretation of the relation between art and morality than more liberal people who, because of their love of art, seek to ignore or palliate the facts. Hence, in order to defend art, one must reckon seriously with the puritan.
The puritan is fearful, above all, of works of art that represent moral evil. The method of artistic representation, which aims at awakening sympathy for the life portrayed, is bound, he thinks, to demoralize both the artist and the spectator. But art is something more than sympathy, and there are other aspects of the aesthetic experience which tend to render that sympathy innocuous, even from the standpoint of the puritan. In the first place, the sympathy is usually with an imagined life that has no direct relation to the will and gives the spectator no opportunity to enter into and share it—he participates through the imagination, not through the senses. Moreover, neither the mind nor the will is atabula rasa; no mature person comes to a work of art without certain habits and preferences already predetermined, which no mere imagination can destroy, but only, if at all, some concrete opportunity and temptation. Hence men can lead a manifold life, partly in the imagination and partly in action, without any corruption of heart or paralysis of will. In real conduct, to lead a double life is demoralizing because there choices are exclusive and each of the two lives tends to interfere with and spoil the other; but imagination does not conflict with reality, for they have no point of contact and do not belong to the same world.
In the second place, a work of art is an appeal to mind as well as to sympathetic feeling. It is no mere stirring of emotion and passion, but a means to insight into them. The attitude of reflection which it engenders is unfavorable to impetuous action. Providing no immediate stimulus to action, it allows time for a better second thought to intervene. Even when it offers suggestions for unwonted acts, it furnishes the spirit and the knowledge requisite for determining whether they will fit into the scheme of life of the spectator. It is characteristic of the puritanic critics of art, in their eagerness to find motives for condemnation, to overlook this element of reflection.
It is forgotten, finally, that by providing an imaginative experience of passion and adventure, art often becomes rather a substitute for than an incentive to them. The perfection of form, the deep repose and circle-like completeness of the work of art, tend to prevent one from seeking a corresponding real experience, which would have none of these qualities, but perhaps only misery and wear and tear instead. Thus the work of art may propagate itself in a search for new aesthetic experiences rather than in analogous conduct.
To the artist who is living the evil life which he expresses, there can be even less danger in expression, than to the spectator. For the expression is not the cause of his life, but only its efflorescence. The roots of evil lie deep below in the subsoil of instinct. Without expression, life would be much the same, only secret instead of articulate. The puritan shows a shocking naivete in thinking that he can reform life by destroying its utterance. Moreover, to express life implies a certain mastery over it, a power of detachment and reflection, which are fundamentally ethical and may lead to a new way of living.
Every form of life has an inalienable right to expression. In order to be judged fairly, it must be allowed to plead for itself, and art is its best spokesman. And that we should know life sympathetically is of practical importance; for otherwise we shall not know how to change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. Only by knowing other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own way; knowledge alone gives certitude. Without knowledge we run the risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent sympathy might well preserve and find a place for in the world.
To all these considerations the puritan will doubtless oppose a truth impossible to deny. Experience, he will say, is one, not many; imagination and action are not separated by an impassable wall; things merely imagined or dreamed, even when they do not directly issue in action, may nevertheless influence conduct through a slow and subtle transforming effect upon the sentiments and valuations which make up its background. Character can be maintained only by a vigilant and steady control over impulses which are always threatening rebellion; purity of mind only through the rigid exclusion of the sensual, luxurious, and ignoble; imaginative sympathy with evil, even when sublimated in art, must necessarily undermine the one and becloud the other. "If thine eye offend thee, cut it out and cast it from thee."
The truth which the puritan announces does not, I think, warrant the inference which he draws from it or alter the situation as I have described it. For morality, to be genuine, must be a choice; the good must know its alternative or it is not good. Only those who already have a penchant for sin will be corrupted by imaginative sympathy with passion; a character that cannot resist such an influence is already undermined. Life itself is the great temptation; how can one who cannot look with equanimity upon statues and pictures fail to be seduced by live men and women? If men can resist the suggestions that emanate from life they can surely withstand those that come from art. And mere purity of mind is not equal in value to that insight into the whole of life which a freely creative art provides. We wish to penetrate sympathetically all of our existence; nothing human shall remain foreign to us; we would enter into it all; there is no region of the grotesque, the infernal, or the sinful from which we would be shut out. In comparison with the sublimity of this demand for the complete appreciation of life, the warnings of a rigorous moralism seem timorous, and the sanctuary of purity in which it would have us take refuge, a prison.
Whatever conflict there may be between the spirit of art and conformist morality, there is none with a genuine and rational ethics. For the latter would formulate ways of living suited to the diversity of individuals and sympathetic with their every impulse and fancy. It would impose external constraint only where necessary for the existence and perpetuation of social life, leaving to personal tact, good will, and temperance the finer adjustments of strain. But apart from aesthetic culture, there can be no rational morality, for that alone engenders the imaginative sympathy with individual diversity upon which the latter rests. Without imaginative sympathy morality will always be coarse, ruthless, and expressive of the needs and sentiments of some special type which sets out to reform or govern the world. Under such a regimen, which is actual in every community devoid of imagination, virtue must always remain suspect and vice tolerable; the one a hypocrisy, the other a secret and venial indulgence, and nature will take its revenge upon the law in violent or perverse compensations. Hence, instead of being a hindrance, art ought to be a help to a rational morality: its realism should foster sincerity, its imagination, sympathy and justice. The moralist inspired by art would seek to impose upon men only that kind of form and order which is characteristic of art—one which respects the peculiarities of the material with which it works, and issues in a system in which all elements freely participate. [Footnote: Compare Schiller,On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Fourth Letter: "The civilized man makes nature his friend, and honors her freedom, while he merely fetters her caprice."]
The philistine's objection to art is that it is useless. And if we only knew what was really useful, this would be a damning indictment. But, not being much given to abstract reflection, the philistine is usually at a loss to inform us. However, by talking with him, we can eventually divine what he thinks the useful to be. Useful is what contributes to the procurement of those things which he and his congeners value—material wealth, power, and sensual enjoyment. Art is useless because it will not prepare a banquet, build a bridge, or help to run a business corporation. The artist is a contemptible fellow because he cares more for his art than for the things of the world; for whatever the worldling values he thinks every one else should value.
To the artist, criticism of this kind seems to betray the most shameless arrogance, and he meets contempt with contempt. Who is he that would be the judge between worldly goods and beauty? Surely the philistine is no competent judge; for he only can judge fairly between two values who appreciates both, and, by his own confession, the philistine does not appreciate art. Hence the claim of the philistine seems not to merit consideration. Through his lack of sympathy for art, he puts himself beyond the possibility of fruitful debate. In this he is unlike the puritan, who is often all too sensitive to beauty for his own good—hence his alarms.
If the objection of the philistine were the same as the proletarian's, that art is a luxury, a waste of the energies of the community, which might better be employed in feeding the hungry and saving sinners, it would be more worthy of a hearing; and so he often represents it. But in this he is hardly sincere; and the appropriate answer is atu quoque, the fitting reply to every piece of insincere criticism. Does the philistine feed the poor and save the sinners? Who is commonly more careless of the workers' needs and more cruel to the fallen in his self-righteous probity? For the philistine is often a puritan. And who is more luxurious than he? Who consumes more in his own person of the energies of the toilers? It costs little to maintain an artist, but it taxes thousands to support the philistine and his wife. Of course, in return, the worldling performs a service to the community in the organization of industries, but many of these do not sustain the needs of the masses and are devoted to the manufacture of luxuries for the well-to-do.
The insincerity of the philistine's attitude is disclosed by his changed attitude towards the artist who acquires fame and wealth through his art. For now that the artist shows himself capable of getting the things the philistine values, the latter accords him esteem. Or let an interest in art become fashionable, and once again the philistine is won over.
The traditional hostility between the philistine and the artist is offensive to reason, which would discover points of contact and reconciliation between all attitudes. One apparent place of meeting might seem to be just the worldling's love of luxury itself. Luxury is a development of pleasure of sense beyond the necessary, paralleling the freedom and refinement of sensation in art. There is, moreover, a certain imaginative quality in reputation and glory, so well-prized by the worldling, which, as we shall see, is akin to the ideality of art. And yet both the imagination and the luxury of the worldling are usually lacking in one element essential to real kinship with the spirit of art—disinterestedness. The worldling's dreams of glory are projections of ambition, his luxuries subtle stimulations of appetite or instruments of display, her self-adornment a fine self-exhibition or coquetry. The love of insight, the free emotion, the enjoyment of sensuous harmonies for their own sake, are lacking or subordinate. Glory and luxury are too often mere masks of ambition and appetite, and at best counterfeits of beauty. Nevertheless, the luxurious developments of ambition and appetite are ever on the verge of tending toward the aesthetic. For when ambition has no longer to struggle against the world and is satisfied, the imagination that served it may become free; and when appetite is cloyed, the instrumentalities of sensuous pleasure can find a new meaning as beautiful. Then the worldling becomes the patron of the artist and the two are reconciled. And all along this result was preparing. For instinct seldom completely dominates imagination and sensation; there is always some aesthetic freedom in the self-adornment and display of the wealthy. The absence of anxiety may release aesthetic interests that would have died in the struggle for existence; prosperity is often the herald of beauty.
The proletarian's criticism of art is of unimpeachable sincerity, for when he talks of art as a luxury he speaks from the heart and in answer to bitter experience of want. There is a genuine element of moral indignation in his feeling that there must be something wrong with a public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect. This feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his own yearly wage laboriously earned. What supreme worth does art possess that it should be valued so disproportionately?
Yet, sincere as this complaint is, it is largely misdirected; for art is not the extravagance which it may superficially seem to be. Most of the best art has been produced by poor men who never dreamed of the prices that would be paid for their work when they were old or after they were dead. And these prices represent no consumption of the labor and capital of the community, but only a transference of wealth from one man to another. Even when the artist is paid large sums for his picture or opera or play, these sums do not represent their real cost, but only what they can command in a market controlled by rich consumers. The real cost of genuine art is very small—only enough to maintain the artist in freedom for his work; for he would still produce without the incentive of large rewards. The seeming extravagance of art cannot, therefore, be blamed upon art itself, but upon the price system of modern capitalist economy. And this, of course, is clearly perceived by the "intellectual proletarians," who are willing to accord to the artist a place of honor as fellow-worker and "comrade," and direct their attacks, not upon him, but upon capitalism.
There is, however, a deeper root to the proletarian's grievance against the artist—the feeling that the moral principle of mutuality is violated in their relationship. The workman plows for him, cooks for him, builds for him, spins for him, but what does he do in return? He paints pictures, makes statues, writes novels or poems or plays or sonatas which the workman has neither the leisure nor the education to enjoy. The money paid by the artist to the artisan represents nothing which the former rightfully owns or can give, but only a claim to the labor of other men, enforced by the system of wage-economy. Of course, not only art but all speculation, all pure science and disinterested historical knowledge, is subject to this criticism. And such criticism is no longer purely academic, for to-day there exist large masses of men in every community determined to bring about a "world dictatorship of the proletariat" based on just this principle of mutuality in the relations of men. Is this principle itself rational, and would art survive in a regime which embodied it? These, I repeat, are no longer speculative, but intensely practical problems.
Those who fear for art in a society where the process of democratization should go to its extreme limit of development point to the moving picture, the cheap magazine story and novel, the vaudeville and "musical" comedy, as a hint of what to expect. These, they will say, are the popular forms of art, to the production of which the artist would have to devote his time and skill in return for subsistence. Under the present system the people get what they want, but in a proletarian state nobody would be allowed to get anything else.
Of course, as to what would happen in a workers' republic, were it ever constituted, we can only speculate; but where we cannot know, there hope has an equal chance with fear. We have the single example of the Russian experiment from which to make inferences, the general validity of which is seriously limited by the peculiarities of the Russian nature and situation. But there, at any rate, we do know that efforts have been made to advance general education, to bring the classic literature within reach of the masses, and to encourage opera and drama. In Russia, at all events, the leaders of the revolutionary movement have sought rather to destroy what they believe to be a monopoly of culture than culture itself; and in England also they have a similar aim.
There can be little doubt, I think, that our capitalist economy does promote a monopoly of culture. Through their control of the market, the wealthy are able to bid up the prices of works of art until they are beyond the reach of the less prosperous. As a result, the best paintings and sculptures, with the exception of those that find their way into museums, are accumulated in inaccessible private collections, and opera and music are made needlessly expensive. One very evil consequence is the substitution of a purely pecuniary standard of valuation for aesthetic standards. I know a painter who made the experiment of reducing the price of his pictures to twenty-five dollars, in the hope that many people who really loved art but were unable to pay large prices would buy them, and that thus, by selling many of his pictures at a low price, he would be able to make as much money as if he sold only a few at the prevailing high rates. The experiment failed completely, for people thought that paintings at such a low price must be inferior, and even those who could afford to buy them, would not. The painter now tried the reverse experiment and raised the prices of all his works, with much better success, for people reasoned—the higher the price, the better the picture. But worst of all, through the purely commercial motives governing those who undertake to supply the people with works of art, the public taste is corrupted; little or no attempt is made to educate the masses, but merely to give them anything that will entertain them after a day of fatiguing labor,—anything that will sell. The demoralizing effect of commercialism upon artists themselves is too well known to require more than a reminder; hasty work for the sake of money supplants careful work for the sake of beauty; whole arts, like that of oriental rug weaving, are thereby threatened with extinction; and, instead of producing spontaneous art that would express themselves, people allow themselves to be merely entertained by things supplied to them, nasty and cheap—folk art disappears.
If, on the other hand, the commercial motive were eliminated, who can say what might not result, in each community, from the experimentation of men who could not make money but only honor and a living from the profession of providing people with interesting ways of spending their leisure. The increased efficiency of machine tool work will inevitably make possible a great reduction in hours of labor, when the workers themselves control industry for their own benefit rather than for that of a class bent on still further increasing its own wealth and power. It is entirely possible that the leisure of men will then absorb as much of their devoted energies as work does now, and that they will be educated for the one as well as for the other. It is not impossible to hope that, the machine tool supplanting the slave, the commonwealth of workers will develop as free and liberal a life as existed among the citizens of ancient Greece. Then perhaps each group will have its painters, actors, and musicians just as surely as it now has its judges, aldermen, and police.
It is impossible to judge what art might do for people in a reorganized society by what it does for them now. Art has its roots in interests that are well nigh universal. Everybody loves to dance, to sing, to tell a story; everybody loves either to paint or be painted, to sculpture or be sculptured. Again, everybody is at least potentially sensitive to rhythm, harmony, and balance, and to the beauties of lines, colors, and tones. It is not native incapacity, but rather a failure in aesthetic education due to the one-sided emphasis on work rather than play, industry rather than leisure, success rather than happiness, that is responsible for much of the seeming lack of artistic appreciation among the masses. Under a different social system the people may come to recognize the artist as a fellow-worker, elaborating his products in exchange for other desirable things, and may accord him welcome rather than envy.
However, it will doubtless always remain true that the subtler and more intellectual types of art can never become popular. Like higher mathematics, they will continue to be completely intelligible only to the few. Yet I can conceive of no social system likely to grow out of modern tendencies that would suppress them. The artist in the new state would have his leisure, as other men would, in which he could devote himself to the refinements of his art. It is doubtful whether he would have less time for that then than he has now. How many artists under our present system waste a large part of their lives doing hack work of various kinds to make a living; only the fortunate few are masters of themselves. Moreover, under any social system, men would be permitted to spend their surplus income as they chose, and the art lovers of the future are as likely to spend it for art then as now. Not being so rich, they could not reward the artist so munificently as some are rewarded now; but even now most working artists are poor, and the impulse to art is independent of large rewards. Heretical and unpopular artists, who could find no public backing, would come to be supported by their own special clients, as they are to-day. In a complex rational society, the principle of mutuality would be transitive rather than strictly symmetrical—a woman would cook for a machine designer although she got no machine in return, provided the designer made one, say, for the shoemaker, who could thus supply her with shoes. Just so, there is no moral objection to the artist's receiving goods and services from people to whose life he contributes nothing personally, so long as these people are compensated by those whose life he does enrich. In other words, part of the reward which the art lover would receive for the work he performed would be paid, not to himself, but to the artist—art would be voluntarily supported by those who appreciated it. No complex social life could be maintained under the principle of strict mutuality, and certainly no system that undertook to preserve the variety and spontaneity of human interests. Only a complete dead-level regimentation of human life in accordance with the average desires of the masses, which is unlikely, would destroy the more intellectual and subtle types of art, and, by the same token, speculation and disinterested higher learning. The higher culture has survived many revolutions; it will survive the next, when it comes.
The distinctive purpose of art, so we have argued throughout this study, is culture, the enrichment of the spirit. But lovers of art have always claimed for it more active and broader influences. To my thinking, most of such claims, especially in our age, like similar claims for religion, are greatly exaggerated. Passion, convention, economic fact in the largest sense, practical intelligence, these are the dominant forces swaying men, not beauty, not religion. Indeed, one who would compare the influence of art upon life at the present time with its influence upon primitive societies might infer the early extinction of that influence altogether. For among primitive men the influence of art is all-pervading. With them art is inseparable from utility and communal activities, upon which it has an immediate modifying or strengthening effect. The movement of civilization, with the exception of the Greek, mediaval, and renaissance city states, has involved a breaking away from this original unity until, among ourselves, art is developed and enjoyed in isolation from the rest of life. Art is valued for its own sake, for its contribution to culture, not for any further influence upon life, and this freedom has come to be part of its very meaning. Instead of being interested only in pictures and statues representing ourselves, our rulers, our gods, or our neighborhood, we enjoy imitations of people who have had no effect upon our lives whatever and scenes which we have never visited, and we repair to museums to see them; instead of employing music to beautify our daily life, we leave that life for the concert hall, where we shut ourselves away for a few hours of "absolute" musical experience. Prose literature and the drama, when inspired by contemporary social problems, offer exceptions to this isolation, for through their ability to express ideas they can exert a more pervasive influence. Although social problems are solved in obedience to forces and demands beyond the control of artists, literary expression is effective in persuading and drawing into a movement men whose status would tend to make them hostile or indifferent, as in Russia, where numerous men and women of the aristocratic and wealthy classes became revolutionaries by reason of literature. And yet the literary arts also have acquired a large measure of isolation and independence. A play representing Viennese life is appreciated in New York, a novel of contemporary manners in England is enjoyed in America. Literature does not depend for its interest upon its ability to interpret and influence the life that the reader himself lives; he values it more because it extends than because it reflects that life. People decry art for art's sake, but in vain.
The development of the relation of religion to life has been parallel to the development of art. Originally, religion penetrated every activity; now, by contrast, it has been removed from one after another of the major human pursuits. Agriculture, formerly undertaken under the guidance of religion; science, once the prerogative of the priesthood; art, at one time inseparable from worship; politics, once governed by the church and pretending a divine sanction; war, until yesterday waged with the fancied cooperation of the gods—even these are now under complete secular control. To be sure, there is some music, sculpture, painting, and poetry still in the service of religion, but its relative proportion is small; kings and congresses still appeal for divine aid in times of crisis, but that is perfunctory; men still pray for rain during drought, but without faith. No one would pretend that our commerce and manufacturing have any direct relation to religion. People still invoke divine authority for moral prescriptions, but the sanctions actually operating are social instincts and fear of public opinion and the law. Religion retains a direct and potent influence only in the institution of marriage, the experience of death, philosophy, and the social life and charities conducted by the churches. Yet even in these spheres the influence is declining, and, so far as it persists, is becoming indirect. Civil and contractual marriage are slowly supplanting religious marriage; there are thousands living in our large cities who do not feel the need of the church to establish and cement their social life; most philosophers disclaim any religious motive or authority for their investigations or beliefs. Only over death does religion still hold undisputed sway.
However, despite the separation of religion and art from life, they may continue to exert influence upon it. But, barring some new integration of the sundered elements of our culture, which we may deeply desire but cannot predict, this influence must be indirect and subtle, and must occur independent of any institutional control. In the case of both it consists in imparting to life a new meaning and perfection, thus making possible a more complete affirmation of life and a freer and more genial attitude and conduct.
For unless the spirit of art or of religion is infused into life, we never find it quite satisfactory. To be sure, men sometimes think they find perfection in certain things—in practical or moral endeavor, in love or in pleasure; but unless art or religion is mixed into them, they always prove to be, in the end, disappointing. No practical purpose is ever quite successful; there is always some part of the plan left unaccomplished; and the success itself is only momentary, for time eventually engulfs it and forgets it. Practical life does not produce any permanent and complete work; its task is done only to be done over again; every house has to be repaired or torn down, every road rebuilt; every invention is displaced by a new one. This is true even on the higher planes of practical life, in political and social reconstruction. Certain evils may be removed, certain abuses remedied, but new ones always arise to take their places; and even when the entire system is remodeled and men think that the day of freedom and justice has dawned at last, they find, after a generation, a new tyranny and a new injustice. The movement of life makes it impossible for any plan to long endure. Hence the disillusion, the feeling of futility that so often poisons the triumphs of practical men. And without the spirit of art or of religion even love does not satisfy. For imagination creates the perfection of its object and, aside from institutional bonds fast loosening, a faith in the continued growth with one another and with a child, which is essentially religious, creates the permanence and meaning of its bond. Love's raptures, in so far as they are instinctive, are, of course, independent of any view of life; but apart from imagination and faith in one another, love does not keep its quality or renew itself in memory, nor can it survive death which always impends to destroy. Men often seek escape from the feeling of imperfection in frivolity, but ennui is the inevitable consequence, and reflection with its doubts cannot be stilled.
By contrast, in the religious experience and in beauty men feel that they find perfection; hence the attitude of self-surrender and joyousness characterizing both. The abandon of the spectator who decrees that for the moment his life shall be that of the work of art, is matched in the mystical experience by the emotion expressed in Dante's line, "In his will is our peace." And in both the self-surrender is based on a felt harmony between the individual and the object—the beautiful thing appeals to the senses, its form is adapted to the structure of the mind, its content is such as to win interest and sympathy; the divine is believed to realize and quiet all of our desires. But while in beauty we feel ourselves at home with the single object, in religion we feel at rest in the universe.
When religion and art are separated from the other parts of life, as they are fast becoming now, the peculiar quality of the experiences which they offer can be rendered universal only by freely infusing it everywhere, through faith, in the case of the one, through imaginative re-creation, in the case of the other. The religious experience is a seeming revelation of a perfect meaning in life as a whole; this meaning must now be imparted to the details of life. By a free act of faith the scattered and imperfect fragments must be built into a purposive unity. The poisonous feeling of futility, will then be lost; each task, no matter how petty or ineffectual, will become momentous as contributing something toward the realization of a good beyond our little existence; and we, however lowly, will find ourselves sublime as instruments of destiny. There is nothing vain to him who believes. And if the believer cannot build a meaning into history and social life as he knows them empirically, he may extend them by faith in a future life, through which his purposes will be given the promise of eternity and the tie between parents and children, friends and lovers and co-workers, an invincible seriousness and worth. Being at peace with the universe, he may be reconciled to the accidents of his life as expressions of its Will.
The method of reconciliation through religion can well be understood by its effect on the attitude towards evil. To one who has faith in the world as perfect, evil becomes an illusion that would disappear to an adequate vision of the Divine. The supposedly evil thing becomes really a good thing—a necessary means to the fulfillment of the divine plan, either in the earthly progress of humanity or in the future life; or if the more mystical types of religion provide the starting point, where individuality itself is felt to be an illusion, a factor in the self-realization of the Absolute. The evil thing remains, of course, what it was, but the interpretation, and therefore the attitude towards it, is transformed. Pain, sorrow, and misfortune become agents for the quickening of the spirit, death a door opening to unending vistas.
The attitude of faith is not embodied in dogmatic and speculative religious doctrines alone; for it finds expression in other beliefs—in progress, in the possibility of a sunny social order, in the perpetuity of human culture, in the peculiar mission of one's race or country. Such beliefs are expressions primarily of faith, not of knowledge; like religion, they are interpretations of life based on aspiration, not on evidence; and through them men secure the same sort of re-enforcement of motive, courage, and consolation that they derive from the doctrines called religious. But the sphere of faith is wider even than this; the almost instinctive belief that each man has in his own longevity and success, the trust in the permanence of friendship and love, the confidence in the unique value of one's work or genius—these are also convictions founded more on desire than on knowledge, and may function in the same way as religion in a man's life.
The re-affirmation of life which art may inspire is independent of any belief or faith about the world. It occurs rather through the application to the objects and incidents of life of a spirit and attitude borrowed from artistic creation and appreciation. It is a generalization of the aesthetic point of view to cover life as well as art; an attempt to bring beauty from art into the whole of life. Although to-day works of art themselves are severed from direct contact with the rest of life, something of the intention and method of the artist may linger and be carried over into it. Art, the image of life, may now serve as a model, after which the latter, in its turn, will be patterned.
The spirit of art has two forms, one constructive, the other contemplative, and both may be infused into life. When the former is put there, each act and task is performed as if it were a work of art. This involves "throwing the whole self" into it, not only thought and patience, but enthusiasm and loving finish, even as the artist puts them into his work, so that it becomes a happy self-expression. Nothing shall interfere with or mar it, or spoil its value when recalled. The imperfection and transiency of the result are then forgotten in the inspiration of endeavor; and the work or act, no matter how insignificant, becomes perfect as an experience and as a memory. The generations may judge it as they will, but as an expression of the energies of my own soul, it is divine. Of course, from the industry of our time, where most work is mechanical and meaningless to him who performs it, the spirit of art has largely fled. Yet there still remain tasks which we all have to execute, if not in business, then at home, which, by arousing our interest and invention, may become materials for the spirit of art. We have at least our homes, our pleasures, our relations with one another, our private adventures, where we can still be free and genial and masterly. And for our work, art will continue to be an ideal, sorrowfully appealing.
The scope of the spirit of art may be extended beyond the single task or act to embrace the whole of one's life. Impulse offers a plastic material to which form may be given. The principles of harmony, balance, evolution, proper subordination, and perfection of detail, indispensable to beauty in art, are conditions of happiness in life. The form of a work of art and the form of a happy life are the same, as Plato insisted. [Footnote: See, for example,The Gorgias, 503, 504.] In order to yield satisfaction, the different parts of life must exemplify identity of motive, continuity and orderliness in the fulfillment of purpose, lucidity of relation, yet diversity for stimulation and totality. There must be a selective scheme to absorb what is congenial and reject the unfit. This sense for form in life may lead to the same results as morality, but the point of departure and the sanction are different. Morality is largely based on conformity, on submission to the general will, and is rendered effective by fear of public disapproval and supernatural taboos; while the aesthetic direction of life has its roots in the love of form and meaning, and its sanction in personal happiness. Moreover, to the reflective person, looking before and after, life has the same sort of reality as a story, and is bound to be judged in some measure like a story. The past and the future live only in the imagination, and when we survey them there they may please us with their interest, liveliness, and meaning, much as a work of art would, or displease us with their vanity and chaos. In this way personality may acquire an imaginative value fundamentally aesthetic. This is different from moral value, which has reference to the relation of a life to social ideals; it is more comprehensive than the religious judgment, which is interested only in saving the soul; because it includes every element of life,—sense, imagination, and achievement, welcoming all, so long as they contribute something to a significant, moving whole.
The feeling for perfection of form and imaginative meaning in life is no invention of philosophers and aesthetes, but part of the normal reaction to conduct. Everybody feels that certain acts, or even certain wishes, are to be rejected by himself, not because they are intrinsically bad or wrong, but because they are inconsistent with his particular nature, and, on the other hand, that there are certain interests that should be cultivated, not because they are universally right or good, but because they are needed to give his life complete meaning. And again, all except the meanest and most repressed souls desire somewhat to shine, if not in the world at large, at least among their friends, and act with a view to appearance and to some total survey of their lives that would consider not merely its goodness or usefulness, but its imaginative emotional appeal. This appeal is the strongest on the death of a great man; this lives longest in the memory. The love of the romantic and adventurous is partly instinctive, but largely imaginative, for it has in view not merely the rapturous pleasures of the hazardous moment, but the remembered delights of recall and expression to others. The love of glory is also imaginative, a feeling for the dramatic extending even beyond the grave. The ambitious man seeks to make a story out of his life for posterity to read and remember, just as the artist makes one out of fictitious material. More might develop out of this love of form and drama in life. We have it to a certain degree of cultivation in picturesque and refined manners, dress, and ceremonial, but even there it is hampered through conventionality and want of invention; further evolved and extended into the deeper strata of life, it would lead to a more interesting and productive existence. Surely, if God is an artist as well as a judge, he will welcome into heaven not only those who have lived well, but also those who have lived beautifully.
There is no necessity, finally, why the constructive spirit of art should be confined to the personal life and should not, in some measure at least, penetrate the community and even the state. By appealing to imaginative feeling, the activities of various individuals and groups, when coordinated and given a purposeful unity, produce an aesthetic effect. The organization of a business or a university may easily come to have such a value for one who has helped to create it, especially if the place where the communal spirit operates is beautiful,—the office, the campus, the shop. Seldom, to be sure, do we find this value in our busy and haphazard America, but in many quarters the intention to create it is awake. As for the state, it is, of course, too little dominated by disinterested intelligence to be beautiful; yet Plato's ideal of statecraft as a fine art still rules the innermost dream of men.
The contemplative spirit of art is perhaps more important than the constructive in its application to life. Not that any sharp line can be drawn between them, for contemplation must always attend or follow creation, to judge and enjoy; yet towards that part of life which we cannot control, our attitude must be rather that of the spectator than the creator. We cannot interfere with the greater part of life; we can, however, observe it and, in the imagination, transform it, where we can then envisage it as we should a work of art. As we watch it, life itself may become beautiful, and instead of giving ourselves to it half-heartedly and with reserve, we shall accept it with something of the abandon of passionate love,—"In thee my soul hath her content so absolute." To this end it is necessary to detach life from our more selfish interests and ambitions, from the habits of thought, annoying and preoccupying, that relate to self alone. To the worldly and self- centered, life is interesting only so far as it refers to pride or ambition or passion; otherwise it is indifferent, as none of their concern. But to the religious and to the aesthetically minded, there is no part of life that may not be of interest; to the former, because they impute something of transcendent perfection to it all; to the latter, because they have set themselves the inexhaustible task of its free, imaginative appreciation.
To this end, it is also necessary, after learning to view life objectively and impersonally, to attend to it leisurely and responsively, as we should to a work of art, allowing full scope to the disinterested feelings of curiosity, pity, sympathy, and wonder to create emotional participation.
Then the world may become for us the most magnificent spectacle of all. To imaginative feeling, every landscape is a potential painting, every life-story a romance, history a drama, every man or woman a statue or portrait. Beauty is everywhere, where we who are perhaps not artists but only art lovers can find it; we cannot embody it in enduring form or throw over it the glamour of sensuous loveliness, but we can perceive it with that free appreciation that is the essence of art. And for this, of course, the artists have prepared us; it is they who, by first exhibiting life as beautiful in art, have shown us that it may be beautiful as mirrored in the observing mind. One region after another has been conquered by them. The poets and the painters created the beauty of the mountains, of windmills and canals, of frozen wastes and monotonous prairies, of peasants and factories and railway stations and slums. Themselves the first to feel the value of these things, through some personal attachment or communion with them, they have made it universal through expression. Their works have become types through which we apperceive and appreciate the world: we see French landscapes as Lorrain and Corot saw them, peasants after the fashion of Millet, the stage after Degas. In vain men have prophesied limits to the victorious advance of art. Just at the time when, in the middle of the last century, some men feared that science and industry had banished beauty from the world, the impressionists and realists disclosed it in factory and steamboat and mine. In this way modern art, which might seem through its isolation to have taken beauty away from the world to itself, has given it back again.
The spirit of art, no less than of religion, can help us to triumph over the evils of life. There are three ways of treating evil successfully: the practical way, to overcome it and destroy it; the religious way, by faith to deny its existence; the aesthetic way, to rebuild it in the imagination. The first is the way of all strong men; but its scope is limited; for some of the evils of life are insuperable; against these our only recourse is faith or the spirit of art. The method of art consists in taking towards life itself the same attitude that the artist takes towards his materials when he makes a comedy or a tragedy out of them; life itself becomes the object of laughter or of tragic pity and fear and admiration. As we observed in our chapter on "The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics," laughter is an essentially aesthetic attitude, for it implies the ability disinterestedly to face a situation, although one which opposes our standards and expectations, and to take pleasure in it. All sorts of personal feelings may be mixed with laughter, bitterness and scorn and anger; but the fact that we laugh shows that they are not dominant; in laughter we assert our freedom from the yoke of circumstance and make it yield us pleasure even when it thwarts us. Laughter celebrates a twofold victory, first over ourselves, in that we do not allow our disappointments to spoil our serenity, and second over the world, in that, even when it threatens to render us unhappy, we prevent it. Fate may rob us of everything, but not of freedom of spirit and laughter; oftentimes we must either laugh or cry, but tears bring only relief, laughter brings merriment as well.
Even with the devil laughter may effect reconciliation. Practical men will try to destroy him, but so far they have not succeeded; men of faith will prophesy his eventual ruin, but meanwhile we have to live in his company; and how can we live there at peace with ourselves unless with laughter at his antics and our own vain efforts to restrain them? Surely the age-long struggle against him justifies us in making this compromise for our happiness. We who in our lifetime cannot defeat him can at least make him yield us this meed of laughter for our pains. People who think that laughter at evil is a blasphemy against the good set too high a valuation upon their conventions. No one can laugh without possessing a standard, but to laugh is to recognize that life is of more worth than any ideal and happiness better than any morality.
And if by laughter we cannot triumph over evil, we may perhaps achieve this end by appreciating it as an element in tragedy or pathos. For once we take a contemplative attitude towards life, foregoing praise and blame, there is no spectacle equal to it for tragic pity and fear and admiration. There is a heroism in life equal to any in art, in which we may live imaginatively, and in so living forgive the evil that is its necessary condition. Or, when life is pathetic rather than tragic, suffering and fading and weak rather than strong and steady and resisting, we may win insight from the pitiable reality into the possible and ideal; the shadow of evil will suggest to us the light of the good, and for this vision we shall bless life even when it disappoints our hopes. The very precariousness of values, which is an inevitable accompaniment of them, will serve to intensify their worth for us; we shall be made the more passionately to love life, with the joys that it offers us, because we so desperately realize its transiency. Our knowledge of the inescapableness of death and failure will quiet our laments, leaving us at least serene and resigned where our struggles and protests would be unavailing. It is by thus generalizing the point of view of art so that we adopt it towards our own life that we secure the catharsis of tragedy. Instead of letting sorrow overwhelm us, we may win self-possession through the struggle against it; instead of feeling that there is nothing left when the loved one dies, we may keep in memory a cherished image, more poignant and beautiful because the reality is gone, and loving this we shall love life also that has provided it.
Finally, in subtle ways, the influence of art, while remaining indirect, may affect practical action in a more concrete fashion. For silently, unobtrusively, when constantly attended to, a work of art will transform the background of values out of which action springs. The beliefs and sentiments expressed will be accepted not for the moment only, aesthetically and playfully, but for always and practically; they will become a part of our nature. The effect is not merely to enlarge the scope of our sympathies by making us responsive, as all art does, to every human aspiration, but rather to strengthen into resolves those aspirations that meet in us an answering need. This influence is especially potent during the early years of life, before the framework of valuations has become fixed. What young man nursed on Shelley's poetry has not become a lover of freedom and an active force against all oppression? But even in maturer years art may work in this way. One cannot live constantly with the "Hermes" of Praxiteles without something of its serenity entering into one's soul to purge passion of violence, or with Goethe's poetry without its wisdom making one wise to live. The effect is not to cause any particular act, but so to mold the mind that every act performed is different because of this influence.
I would compare this influence to that of friends. Friends may, of course, influence conduct directly and immediately through advice and persuasion, but that is not the most important effect of their lives. More important is the gradual diffusion of their attitudes and the enlightenment following their example. Through living their experiences with them, we come to adopt their valuations as our own; by observing how they solve their problems, we get suggestions as to how to solve ours. Art provides us with a companionship of the imagination, a new friendship. The sympathetic touch with the life there expressed enlarges our understanding of the problems and conditions of all life, and so leads to a freer and wiser direction of our own. On the one hand new and adventurous methods of living are suggested, and on the other hand the eternal limits of action are enforced.
Once more I would compare the influence of art with that of religion. The effect of religion upon conduct is partly due to the institutions with which it is connected and the supernatural sanctions which it attaches to the performance of duty; but partly also, and more enduringly, to the stories of the gods. Now these stories, even when believed, have an existence in the imagination precisely comparable to that of works of art, and their influence upon sentiment is of exactly the same order. They are most effective when beautiful, as the legends of Christ and Buddha are beautiful; and they function by the sympathetic transference of attitude from the story to the believer. Even when no longer accepted as true their influence may persist, for the values they embody lose none of their compulsion. And, although as an interpretation of life based upon faith religion is doubtless eternal, its specific forms are probably all fictitious; hence each particular religion is destined to pass from the sphere of faith to that of art. The Greek religion has long since gone there, and there also a large part of our own will some day go—what is lost for faith is retained for beauty.
General Works
English.
SANTAYANA, G. The Sense of Beauty, 1897; Reason in Art, 1906.MUENSTERBERG, H. The Principles of Art Education, 1905; TheEternal Values, Part 3, 1909.LEE and THOMPSON. Beauty and Ugliness, 1911.CARRITT, E. I. The Theory of Beauty, 1914.KNIGHT, WM. The Philosophy of the Beautiful, Part 1, 1891;Part 2, 1893.PUFFER, ETHEL. The Psychology of Beauty, 1905.BROWN, BALDWIN. The Fine Arts, 1892.ROWLAND, E. The Significance of Art, 1913.MARSHALL, R. Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics, 1894; AestheticPrinciples, 1895.SULLY, J., and ROBERTSON, G. C. Aesthetics.BOSANQUET, B. History of Aesthetics, 1904; Three Lectures onAesthetics, 1914.GORDON, KATE. Aesthetics, 1909.
German.
LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, 1903-1905.VOLKELT, J. System der Aesthetik, 1905-1914.DESSOIR, M. Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 1906.COHN, J. Allgemeine Aesthetik, 1901.MEUMANN, E. Aesthetik der Gegenwart, 1912; System derAesthetik, 1914.UTITZ, E. Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. 1,1914.MUELLER-FRIENFELS, R. Psychologic der Kunst, 1912.WITASEK, S. Grundzuege der Allgemeinen Aesthetik, 1904.GROOS, K. Der Aesthetische Genuss, 1902.LANGE, K. Das Wesen der Kunst, 1901.FIEDLER, C. Der Ursprung der Kuenstlerischen Thaetigkeit, 1901.KANT, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790; English translation byJ. H. Bernard, 1892.
French.
TAINE, H. The Philosophy of Art, English translation, 1867.SULLY-PRUDHOMME, R. F. A. L'Expression dans les beaux arts, 1883.GUYAU, J. M. Les problemes de l'estetique contemporaine, 1884;L'Art au point de vue sociologique, 1889.BRAY, L. Du Beau, 1902.SEAILLES, G. Essai sur le genie en l'art, 1897.SOURIAU, P. La suggestion en l'art, 1909.LALO, CH. Les Sentiments esthetiques, 1910; Introductionl'estetique, 1913.DUSSAUZE, H. Les Regies estetiques et les lois du sentiment, 1911.FONTAINE, A. Essai sur le principe et les lois de la critique d'art,1909.
Italian.
CROCE, B. Estetica, 1902; English translation, 1909; Frenchtranslation, 1904; German translation, 1905; Breviario diestetica, 1913.PILO, M. Estetica.PORENA, M. Che cos' e il bello? 1905.
FECHNER, G. T. Vorschule der Aesthetik, 1876.KUELPE, O. Der gegenwaertige Stand der experimentellen Aesthetik,in Bericht ueber den 2ten Kongress fuer experimentellePsychologie, 1907.STRATTON, G. M. Psychology and Culture, 1903.VALENTINE, C. W. Experimental Psychology of Beauty.MYERS, C. S. Introduction to Experimental Psychology, 1911.WUNDT, WM. Physiological Psychology.LALO, CH. L'Estetique experimentale contemporaine, 1908.
Works on the Origins of Art
HIRN, Y. The Origins of Art, 1900.GROSSE, E. The Beginnings of Art, English translation, 1897.WALLASCHEK, R. Primitive Music, 1903.BUECHER, K. Arbeit und Rhythmus, 1899.GUMMEBE, F. B. The Beginnings of Poetry, 1901.GROOS, K. The Play of Man, 1901.FRAZER, J. G. The Golden Bough, 1907-1915.WUNDT, WM. Volkerpsychologie, 1911; Elements of Folk Psychology,1916.SPEARING, H. G. The Childhood of Art, 1913.
Additional References for Special Subjects
Chapter Six.—The Tragic.
ARISTOTLE. Poetics.CORNEILLE, P. Discours de la tragedie, 1660.LESSING, G. E. Hamburgische Dramaturgic, 1767.SCHOPENHAUER. The World as Will and Idea; English translation,Vol. 1, Bk. 3; Vol. 3, Ch. 27.HEGEL, G. W. F, Vorlesungen ueber die Aesthetik, 3ter Abschnitt,3tes Kapitel.HEBBEL, F. Ein Wort ueber das Drama, 1843.LIPPS, T. Der Streit ueber die Tragoedie, 1891.VOLKELT, J. Aesthetik des Tragischen, 1906; System der Aesthetik,Bd. 2, 1910.BRADLEY, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.BUTCHER, S. H. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 1898.NIETZSCHE, FR. Die Geburt der Tragoedie, 1870.
Chapter Six.—The Comic.
LIPPS, T. Komik und Humor, 1898.BERGSON, H. Laughter, English translation, 1913.FREUD, S. Wit, and Its Relation to the Unconscious, Englishtranslation, 1916.MARTIN, L. J. Experimental Prospecting in the Fields of theComic,American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 16, 1905.SCHOPENHAUER, A. The World as Will and Idea, English translation,Vol. 2, Ch. 8.VOLKELT, J. System der Aesthetik, Bd. 2, 1900.SULLY, J. Essay on Laughter, 1902.SPENCER, H. Physiology of Laughter, inEssays, Scientific,Political and Speculative. SIDIS, B. Psychology of Laughter, 1913.MEREDITH, GEORGE. An Essay on Comedy, 1897.
Chapter Seven.—The Standard of Taste.
TAINE, H. The Ideal in Art, 1867.LEMAITRE, J. Les Contemporains.FRANCE, A. La Vie litteraire.BRUNETIERE, FERD. Questions de critique, 1889.BABBITT, IRVING. The New Laocoon, 1910.GATES, L. E. Impressionism and Appreciation, inThe AtlanticMonthly, July, 1900.BALFOUR, A. J. Criticism and Beauty, 1910.PATER, WALTER. The Renaissance, 1873.SYMONDS, J. A. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive, 1890.CAINE, T. HALL. Cobwebs of Criticism, 1883.HENNEQUIN, E. La Critique scientifique, 1888.SPINGARN, J. E. Creative Criticism, 1917.
Chapter Eight.—Music.
RIEMANN, H. Elemente der musikalischen Aesthetik, 1900.HANSLICK, E. Vom Musikalisch-Schoenen, 11th ed., 1910.GEHRING, A. The Basis of Musical Pleasure, 1910.COMBARIEU, J. Music: Its Laws and Evolution, 1910.GURNEY, E. The Power of Sound, 1880.BUSONI, F. Sketch of a New Athetic of Music, 1911.LALO, C. Esquisse d'une estetique musicale scientifique, 1908.AMBROS, W. A. Die Grenzen der Musik und Poesie, 1872.WAGNER, R. Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft; Oper und Drama.STUMPF, C. Tonpsychologie, 1883, 1890, and articles inZeitschriftfuer Psychologie.HELMHOLTZ. Sensations of tone, 1895.MEYER, MAX. Contributions to a Psychological Theory of Music,University of Missouri Studies, 1901,1. No. 1;The Psychology of Music, inAmerican Journal ofPsychology, 1903: 14.BINGHAM, W. VAN DYKE. Studies in Melody, 1910.LIPPS. Zur Theorie der Melodie, inZeitschrift fuerPsychologie, 1902:27.REVESZ, GEZA. Tonpsychologie, 1913.SPENCER, H. The Origin and Function of Music.BOLTON. Rhythm, inAmerican Journal of Psychology, Vol. 6.MEUMANN, E. Untersuchungen zur Psy. u. Aest. d. Rhythmus,inPhilosophische Studien, X.STETSON, R. H. A Motor Theory of Rhythm and Discrete Succession,inPsychological Review, Vol. 12.
Chapter Nine.—Poetry.
ARISTOTLE. Poetics.SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP. Defense of Poesy, 1581.WORDSWORTH, WM. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800.SHELLEY, P. B. A Defense of Poetry, 1821.BRADLEY, A. C. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909.SCOTT, F. N. The Most Fundamental Differentia of Poetry andProse,Modern Language Association Publications, V. 19, pp. 250-269,MILL, J. S. Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties, inDissertationsand Discussions, Vol. 1.SANTAYANA, G. Elements of Poetry, inPoetry and Religion, 1900.LANIER, S. Science of English Verse, 1880.EASTMAN, MAX. The Enjoyment of Poetry.SOURIAU, P. La Reverie esthetique, 1906.LIDDELL, MARK H. An Introduction to the Study of Poetry, 1902.WERNER, R. M. Lyrik und Lyriker, 1890.LOWELL, AMY. Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 1917.GUMMERE, F. B. A Handbook of Poetics, 1895.ROETTEKEN. Poetik, 1911.BURKE, EDMUND. A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of theSublime and Beautiful, Part 4, 1756.MACKAIL, J. W. Lectures on Poetry, 1911.POE, E. A. The Philosophy of Composition; The Poetic Principle.OMOND, T. S. A Study of Meter, 1903.VERRIER, P. Metrique anglaise, 1909.DILTHEY, W. Das Erlebnis und Die Dichtung, 1907.STETSON, R. H. Rhythm and Rhyme, inHarvard Psychological Studies,Vol. 1.
Chapter Ten.—Prose Literature.
SCHOPENHAUER, A. The Art of Literature.GOETHE AND SCHILLER. Correspondence, passim.GREEN, T. H. The Value and Influence of Works of Fiction, 1862.LEWES, G. H. Principles of Success in Literature, 1892.ARNOLD, M. Essays in Criticism, 1869.ZOLA, E. The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, translated byB. M. Sherman, 1893.BESANT, W., and JAMES, H. The Art of Fiction, 1885.PATER, W. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, 1889.STEVENSON, R. L. On Style in Literature, inContemporaryReview, 47:548.BOURGET, P. Etudes et Portraits, 1911.FLAUBERT, G. Correspondance, published 1887.ELSTER, E. Prinzipien der Literaturwissenschaft, 1897, 1911.FREITAG, G. Technique of the Drama, English translation, 1895.MATTHEWS, J. B. A Study of the Drama, 1910.JONES, H. A. The Foundations of a National Drama, 1913.WOODBRIDGE, E. The Drama: Its Laws and Its Technique, 1898.DE MAUPASSANT, GUY. Le Roman, in Pierre et Jean.
For additional references on Poetry and Prose, consultAn Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, by C. M. Gayley and F. N. Scott, 1899.
Chapter Eleven.—Painting.
MEIER-GRAEFE, J. Modern Art, English translation, 1908.ROSS, DENMON. A Theory of Pure Design, 1907; On Drawing andPainting, 1912.BERENSON, B. Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance.POORE, H. R. Pictorial Composition, 1903.VAN DYKE, J. C. Art for Art's Sake, 1895.UTITZ, E. Grundzuege der Aesthetischen Farbenlehre, 1908.WAETZOLDT, WM. Die Kunst des Portraets, 1908.WEIGHT, WM. H. Modern Painting, 1915.LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, Bd. 1, 5ter Abschnitt, Bd. 2, 7tes Kapitel.GOETHE. Farbenlehre.SOURIATJ, P. L'Estetique du mouvement, 1889.STRATTON, G. M. Eye Movement, and the Aesthetics of VisualForm, in Philosophische Studien, XX.COHN, J. Experimented Untersuchungen ueber die Gefuehls-betonungder Farben, in Philosophische Studien, 10: 522.BAKER and CHOWN. Experiments on Color, in the University ofToronto Studies.LEE and THOMPSON. Beauty and Ugliness, in Contemporary Review, 1897.CHEVREUL, M. E. The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors, 1855.
Chapter Twelve.—Sculpture.
HILDEBRAND, A. The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture,English translation, 1907.RODIN, A. Art, English translation, 1912.HERDER, J. G. Plastik, 1778.LIPPS, T. Aesthetik, Bd. 2, 5tes u. etes Kapitel.LESSING. Laocoon, 1766.CORNELIUS, H. Elementargesetze der bildenden Kunst, 1908.
Chapter Thirteen.—Architecture.
LIPPS, T. Raumaesthetik, 1897; Aesthetik, Bd. 1, 1903.SCOTT, G. The Architecture of Humanism, 1914.ROBINSON, J. B. Architectural Composition, 1908.VAN PELT, J. V. Essentials of Composition, 1913.GUADET, J. Elements et theorie de l'architecture, 1909.VIOLLET-LE-DUC, E. E. Entretiens sur l'architecture, 1863-72.RUSKIN, J. Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1857.FRANKL, P. Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst, 1914.WORRINGER, W. Formprobleme der Gothik, 1912.WOELFFUN, H. Renaissance und Barock, 1888.
Chapter Fourteen.—Art and Morality.
PLATO. Republic, Ion, Phaedrus, Symposium, Gorgias.TOLSTOY, L. What is Art? English translation, 1899.SCHILLER, F. Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1793-1795.MORRIS, WM. Hopes and Fears for Art, 1882.WILDE, O., MORRIS, WM., and OWEN, W. C. The Soul of Man,The Socialist Ideal—Art, and The Coming Solidarity.RUSKIN, J. Lectures on Art, 1900.SYMONDS, J. A. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive, 1890.PAULHAN, FR. Le Mensonge de l'Art, 1907.WHISTLER, J. McN. Ten o'Clock, 1888.GUYAU, J. M. L'Art au point de vue sociologique, 1889.CASSAGNE, A. La theorie de l'art pour l'art en France, 1906.
Chapter Fifteen.—Art and Religion.
LANG, A. Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1913.DELLA SETA, A. Religion and Art, 1914.HARRISON, J. Ancient Art and Ritual, 1913.MURRAY, G. Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912.REINACH, S. Orpheus, 1909.SANTAYANA, G. Poetry and Religion, 1900.FRAZER, J. G. The Golden Bough.HEGEL, G. W. F. Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art,translated by Bosanquet, 1886.MUENSTERBERG, H. Philosophie der Werte, 1908.WUNDT, WM. Volkerpsychologie, 1911.SANTAYANA, G. Three Philosophical Poets, 1910.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Principles Of Aesthetics, by Dewitt H. Parker