NINTH MEETING
Ruth was unable to come.
Not a single paper this week! When all but Florence and Marian had arrived without papers, I began to be disappointed; but when they came in, I said:
“I am going to give up the club.”
You should have seen Marian’s serious face. “Why?” she exclaimed.
“Because you haven’t brought me any paper.”
They all were too busy. But Florence had given Henry a good little talk on the meeting he had missed.
I asked them whether they had enjoyed these meetings on art as much as the first meetings. They all said yes, quite as much. I spoke again of the relation of our idea to art. It seemed to them all that art was the expression of the religious ideal. Virginia said: “It relates us with others and gives us sympathy.” Henry said it was the action of religious feeling.
“Just as,” he added, “it is said one knows a man by his actions.”
“You know what I mean,” said I; “it might be well expressed in a single phrase that would stay in your minds. Art is the symbol of completeness. It must be in itself a tiny world, a miniature universe. Do you remember the delight you used to get when you were little, from a tiny doll’s house, from a little thing that seemed real, that seemed a small, perfect world in itself? This joy you get from every work of art, the joy of a complete world.”
“As in the novel,” said Marian, “which is not like real life, with its incompleteness and distraction, but has within itself all the people and all the things necessary to itself.”
I spoke again of the way in which I meant to discuss questions of conduct according to the rules of art. I said: “Life can be made beautiful and complete in the same way, and by learning these large laws we may avoid the pettiness of moral discussion. You, being a self, are the symbol of the whole Self.
“Now,” I continued, “we will speak of poetry, of painting, of all the arts, and you will see that the laws of all are the same laws. What is the difference between prose and poetry?”
They mentioned various differences, such as subject-matter, form, manner of treatment.
“The chief difference between prose and poetry,” I said, “is that poetry is written in poetry.”
That seemed an evident difference.
“Metre, rhyme, musical measure of the words are qualities of poetry alone.”
“But all poetry doesn’t rhyme,” said Virginia.
“No,” I answered, “but all poetry has metre. Tell me another difference. In what way does poetry affect you differently from prose?”
“I know what you mean,” said Florence. “You mean because it has metaphor and simile.”
“That, too, but something else.”
Marian answered, with some hesitation: “Poetry is emotional. It stirs your feelings more than prose.”
“That is what I meant,” I said; “it resembles music because it stirs you as much by the sound as by the sense. And just because it is more unreal and distant, it seems more real and close and complete in its grip. A thing must be far off to give us the sense of completeness and beauty. Music is to me the art of arts, because it expresses everything and defines nothing; because it is like life itself, rather than a description of life.” Henry assented enthusiastically. I went on: “You spoke of metaphor and simile. We find it not only in all poetry, but in all prose. And what is it but the relationing of things to one another, the likeness and the bond between things unlike? And so keen is it, so natural, so close to us, that we use it every day, we are poets every moment in this respect, for we hardly ever speak without using metaphor. We say a sharp look, a piercing look, and so use metaphor. Do you see?”
Marian said: “When we say in school, for instance, that our teacher looked daggers, we are using metaphor.”
“Yes,” I answered, “and even slang is often good metaphor.”
Alfred asked: “If you call a person a lemon, is that metaphorical?”
“Surely,” I said; “but I think it would hardly do in poetry, because it is too unsympathetic.”
“How about 23 skidoo?” asked Virginia. “Is that simile or metaphor?”
“That,” said I, “is less metaphor than nonsense.”
I said that in the modern play, which could not use the figurative language of poetry, the metaphor and simile were replaced by the symbol. I could not go into this, however, as none of them, except Florence, had read any modern plays. So I spoke of the fairy story, and how it often stood for something which was not itself. “Yes, like Brandt,” said Florence. I did not dwell on this point, but went on to the subject of taking sides in poetry. I said that good poetry could not possibly take sides; that all didactic and party poetry was poor.
“I don’t see that,” answered Henry.
“No,” said Florence, “he wouldn’t let me convince him of it the other day.”
Henry went on: “Take Whittier’s war-time poems; they were written with a purpose and taking sides.”
I said: “I don’t consider Whittier a great poet. But that’s not the point. His war-time poems are some of them good, perhaps, but the best are not partisan. A man may sing of freedom, and still not be partisan, as a man may sing of his native land, and need not therefore say mean things of his neighbor.”
“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that every work of art should have a purpose.”
“Surely,” I answered. “I never said it should not have a purpose. I said it should not take sides. Every work of art has the purpose of being beautiful, complete and true. So I suppose you might say that art is against ugliness. But ugliness is only a discord, a false vision which art overcomes with its beauty.”
“I understand,” said Henry. “You mean one might be for something without being against anything.”
“Yes,” I said, “one can be for completeness, for unity, for beauty, which includes all things. An artist pictures life; in telling a story he may see that some things lead to ruin and some to happiness, but he will not say he is for some and against others. He will stand far above them and see them all as they are, he will love them all, he will create a complete and individual world.”
Virginia said: “I suppose you don’t consider Burns a great poet.”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, “except in his didactic poems.”
“Well,” she said, “‘Scots wha’ ha’ wi’ Wallace bled’ is partisan.”
“No,” I answered, “it is martial, but it gives the foe his due. ‘Break proud Edward’s power.’ That, it seems to me, is a tribute to Edward.”
At first they dissented, but finally agreed with me that most martial poems—all great ones—give the enemy his due. Marian spoke, in this relation, of Homer.
We considered high-falutin style and books that are all climax, without rhythm and reservations of strength, unlike life, which is all heartbeats and pulsations. Florence told of a book which had “six climaxes on every page.” I spoke of the conventional phrases which mar style, because we feel them to be imitated.
“They are not original,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered; “and originality simply means truth in the writer.”
“We feel,” said Virginia, “that he didn’t take the trouble to think for himself.” Then she spoke of having been made, in school, to compare the like thoughts of different authors, and asked whether their being alike made them less original.
“No,” I answered, “for two might see life in the same way, each for himself.”
I went on to speak of music. “To me,” I said, “it seems the most perfect of arts, because it is in itself harmony, the very word we associate with this idea of completeness. I don’t know much of the laws of musical composition, but I know they are the laws of rhythm and harmony, the laws of all motion. Of course, it is figurative to speak of the music of the stars, and yet in a sense their motion is music, because it follows the laws of music. Music is the least definite of all arts, yet the most real and near. It arouses our emotions as nothing else can do.”
Most of them felt as I, that music was most gripping in its effects. Marian, however, did not, since she is not at all musical. I spoke of words and intellectual ideas in relation to music. Virginia said it made her feel glad to hear music, that she had to beat time. The others all enjoy music most when it has a literary annotation, either in opera, or in concerts with verbal explanations. At least they want to know the name of every melody. In this I said I agreed with them, because knowing the name immediately put me into the mood the composer wished, and saved me those first five minutes of uncertainty which every strange music awakens.
Henry said: “When I learn a new piece on the piano my teacher and I always talk it over. I have a piece called ‘Spring in the Wood.’ We say, ‘Now we are in the border of the wood, now we hear the water rippling far off, now there are the ferns at the edge.’”
We spoke of painting.
I explained to them the point of interest, the point around which all other lines, colors and interests must centre, to which all are made subordinate. Virginia said: “But it need not be in the centre of the picture.”
“No,” I answered, “it had better not, since that would be monotonous and stiff. But wherever it is, it makes itself a centre, and makes the picture a complete whole.”
Virginia told of the plan of completing the central figure in a sketch, and leaving the rest unfinished—as a substitute, as I showed her, for the effectiveness of color. All eyes should be directed to the central figure.
I went into technical details of lines, angles and motion, with help from Virginia, to show how color might express mood and action, as well as did the figures, and so would make the whole harmonious. Virginia spoke of “curly clouds” in a picture of a burial, made at the art school, where the lines of the clouds were too gay, and spoiled the solemn effect of vertical lines.
From balance of line we went on to balance of light and shade and color. First I explained to them—what most of them knew—the complementary colors, and the cycle of color; that a picture containing blue and orange, or green and red, has within itself all the color there is. Think of the hideousness of a blue and yellow or red and blue picture! “It would have to be toned down with the third color,” said Virginia.
I spoke of the literary intrusion into painting, of the necessity of a complete idea in the picture itself; the difference between illustration and art. A picture may have an illustrative name, but if it be complete, beautiful and satisfying without any name, it is not illustration.
What is excellent craftsmanship might be bad art.
Virginia and Marian spoke of some pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, which they had been told to admire, and could not; some of them pictures by Meissonnier, in which satins, silks and velvets were done to perfection. Henry spoke, too, of certain pictures of German monasteries which were painted for the purpose of picturing the life, with precise detail, and were not beautiful. I told them of the difference between art and craft. Art is a complete expression of life by one man. Craft is part of a big completeness, the work of one man which has a purpose in relation to the work of others; as a craftsman may make the cornice in a palace which an artist designed. The craftsman does a part, the artist plans the whole.
Marian said: “Sometimes some one says to me, ‘that picture is perfectly beautiful,’ and I can’t see it so. Then again I may think a picture beautiful, and another person will not. Why is that?”
“Because,” I said, “your taste, your standard, is different.”
“Is it just taste?” she asked.
“Taste with a reason,” I said, “even if you don’t know the reason.”
“I think,” said Virginia, “that when an artist expresses himself well, every one must realize it.”
“Not at all,” I said. “One has to be trained to understand pictures, as one has to be trained to see.” I told them of Turner, whose pictures look beautiful to some, and to others are mere blotches of color.
“A picture is not what it represents,” I said. “One must learn to see it. A proof of this is that babies, quite able to recognize objects, do not recognize pictures. And so some people are babies all their lives in relation to art.
“Now,” I asked, “do any of you think photographs artistic?”
I believe Henry was going to say he did, but was overwhelmed by the others. Alfred said: “In a photograph all the unimportant things are there with the important.”
Marian said that there, as in life, there was intrusion of inharmonious details.
The out-of-focus and blurred photograph sometimes is artistic, because of the lost details and the effect of distance; but, just therefore, it is untrue to fact.
Virginia said photographic art was bad art. She said: “My teacher gave a good example. If a fire-engine were tearing along the street, you would be so interested in that you would see nothing else. There might be crowds of people, but you would not notice them. But if a camera were to be snapped, they would all be in it and obscure the engine. You see only what is important, but the camera sees everything.”
“That is a good illustration,” I said. “And so you see we are story-tellers in vision as well as in narrative. We see things complete and dramatic, whether they are so or not, just as we must tell a complete story. Do you realize how all the arts are related, how they all have the same laws? And these, I believe, are the laws of life.
“Did you ever think of it, that the artist sees only with his eyes, whereas you see with your eyes, fingers, ears, with all your senses? You see a table square, high, hard, smooth, but an artist sees it only in perspective, from a certain point of view. To get completeness you must limit yourself, because you cannot see the universe. The drop of water is most complete and perfect when it is a limited, spherical drop, not when it is scattered abroad in mist.
“The artist,” I said, “is one who sees things beautiful, even when to others they do not seem so; and to see things beautiful is to see truth.”
None of the children disputed this much-disputed fact—for to youth it is obvious—so I myself had to answer the objections. I said: “One might say that in life many things are ugly, and these things are true, therefore to see these things as beautiful is not to see them truly. But we believe that the whole universe, altogether, could we know it, would be harmonious and beautiful; therefore to see things as beautiful is to see them in relation to that truth, and as symbols of that truth.”
Marian said: “We must believe that the whole universe is harmonious; anything else is unthinkable. We feel it in ourselves.”
“You mean, because we have the laws of harmony in our own nature?”
“Yes. The whole must be harmonious.”
We spoke of instances in which ugly things could be seen as beautiful. The empty lot across the street, with its boards, rubbish and shanties, is ugly; but at times, under certain conditions, and by shutting out a part with my hand, I see it as a beautiful wild landscape.
Marian said: “Near us are some poor, ugly houses, that I hate to see; but sometimes I see little children at the windows, who are so sweet and graceful they make the houses look beautiful.”
“There are a great many pictures,” said Virginia, “but I think there is not much art. Do you?”
“No,” I said. “To be a painter does not make one an artist. Do you remember hearing people make the criticism that a picture was pretty, but not beautiful? Prettiness in art is a sad fault, one that perhaps you, too, have found. But do you know just what it is?”
Virginia said she had often seen pictures that were just pretty, without character.
I said: “When a painter makes pictures to please the taste of people whose taste he does not respect, when a would-be artist works to catch applause or money from the crowd by satisfying their bad taste, and does not even believe in the love of truth and beauty which sleeps in them all, then the thing he paints is usually pretty. He will paint a little child with a kitten in her lap, because that is a pretty subject, but it will be the most affected child and the posiest kitten!”
“It is superficial,” they said.
“Yes, for he does not know the true character of those for whom he works, nor care to know his subject. The smirking advertisements one sees are a good example of prettiness. But many artists, working for money alone, fall into this cheap, easy habit of pleasing the worst taste.”
“Wouldn’t you call ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ a pretty book?” asked Henry.
“No, indeed,” I answered; “it is far too genuine and lifelike to be merely pretty.”
Henry insisted it was written for money, and was merely sweet and pleasing. The others disagreed with him so strenuously, I had hardly a chance to say, as before, that one might write for money the thing needful to be said. Virginia asked whether I did not think Jessie Wilcox Smith’s drawings merely pretty? I said I thought them so now and then, but that sometimes her deep love and understanding of childhood made them shine with loveliness.
Marian said: “Some people are merely pretty and uninteresting.”
“Often,” I answered, “they want just that. They look for superficial admiration, and show only their superficial prettiness.”
“But, of course, that isn’t art,” said Marian.
“Sometimes it is,” answered Florence.
I spoke of sculpture as the Greek drama of visual art, a metaphor that appealed to those of them—Florence, Marian, Henry—who knew enough of Greek drama, with its masks and buskins, and its far-offness, to understand. The distance, the unlifelikeness of the material, is its charm. The colored German marbles lose artistic beauty in gaining lifelike color.
“In that case,” said Alfred, “I should think the process of coloring and the newness of the material would interest one so much as to draw one’s attention away from the statue.”
“I don’t think it is only that,” I answered; “for surely wax works, which are quite common, with all their lifelike color and softness, do not give us the thrill of reality and beauty that we get from a marble statue.”
“I think,” said Henry, “it is just the coldness and hardness of marble, changed by the artist into shapes of life and warmth, that make it beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “exactly. The sculptor expresses his idea in every curve of the human form, and makes human shapes say universal things. They express by attitude and line power, beauty, tenderness. In the ‘Mercury,’ the lines of that headlong figure, to half-shut eyes, represent the curve and angle of flight itself.”
Virginia now spoke of Michael Angelo, and his misdrawing of figures, which are none the less beautiful and powerful. I said he was so great a genius that his genius, as often happens, overshadowed his shortcomings as a craftsman.
Here we came, I know not how, on the subject of drama. I said that to me it could never seem a perfect form of art—that is, the acted drama—because the actors usually obtruded their personality, and so broke in on the unity of expression—the creation of one mind—necessary to art. But the children, better at the art of looking on than I, and not so quick to note the significance of personality, said they forgot entirely the actors themselves, and felt as though the thing were a piece of life. Virginia and Florence said they felt as if they were the author, as if by being spectators they took part, and Virginia said she always did hate the villains!
Of architecture we observed that it appealed directly to the emotions, like music; that it made us feel, we knew not why, glad or sad, or calm or overawed. Virginia spoke of the Palais de Justice in Brussels, which made her feel very tiny; and this naturally brought us to speak of the feeling of reverence and awe.
“Whenever we feel small,” I said, “and see another thing as vast, that vastness is in our minds, it is our own immense other self which overawes us.”
They said they did not know what the feeling was. Virginia said: “When I have it, if I try to think of what it is, it is already gone. But the next time I see the same thing, perhaps some beautiful picture, that feeling is there again.”
Virginia and Florence said they never had any reverence for particular people, because they were older, for instance. But, I said, at least they must have reverence for people, as such, for the self in all people. They granted that.
We spoke of the completeness of that architecture which showed outwardly its inner use, and the spirit of its land and people; of distinctly American problems, the skyscraper, the selfishness of New York builders, who did not consider the beauty of the whole city, and so wrought ugliness. The children gave examples, and did not agree with me altogether, Henry saying that a railroad station built like a Roman temple made you feel like travelling more than did the gloomy Grand Central. When he asked me how about the banks built like Greek temples, I said that might be more appropriate, since some of us did worship money!
He spoke of the library at Washington as fitting exactly to its use; its big, comfortable rooms made one feel like studying and reading all the day.
“I wonder if anything could make me feel like that!” said Virginia.
When the others had left, I took a walk with Alfred. He said: “I didn’t exactly understand what you meant by my being big when I feel little.”
“I meant,” I said, “that when you feel awe before the immensity of the universe, under the stars, or by the sea, the thought of immensity is in yourself, and it is really yourself who become immense. You realize your whole self. And before that realization your daily life and thoughts and your own small self seem very tiny. It is one part of yourself, the small part, standing in awe and wonder before that other immense self.”
He understood that.
I went on: “I only mentioned it to-day, and did not expect you to understand. I often do this, either to give a suggestion for the next week, or else to see what really interests you.”
“I think it is a good idea,” he said.
TENTH MEETING
Virginia could not come. We did have six present, however, as we had a visitor, Leo, a boy of sixteen.
Ruth brought with her a box of candy, given her by a sympathetic aunt, who has an opinion, I surmise, of our club. They all assured me that candy would not disturb their thoughts. Marian said: “There’s nothing I can’t do, and eat candy at the same time.” I do, myself, think it was an improvement. We had a lively and interesting meeting, and much sweetness.
Marian wrote a paper on our meeting of two weeks past, following the notes I had made for Florence to use in her talk with Henry. It lacked Marian’s usual originality, as it was built directly on my thought. She even used one phrase of mine, word for word, namely: “Life proves all things by creative action.”
“Why did you use it?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, “I didn’t understand what it meant, and I wanted to ask you.”
“I am glad,” I said, “for it is a thing of which I meant to speak to-day. All action is creation and self-expression; everything is changing and in action all the time, because it is striving to come into better relation with all other things. All art and all life is self-expression and action at every moment. We must create if we would be complete. That is why I love the active and creative life.”
“Yes,” said Marian, “I understand. You had told us so before. But I didn’t know it was what you meant by that sentence.”
Now I read Marian’s paper for this week:
“On December 6th the Seekers held a meeting, in which we continued our discussion on Art. We first considered the subject of Art in Poetry. Poetry differs from prose in two essential respects, namely, it is farther off, and it expresses the emotions, and does so in a musical form. Our standard for Art applies in poetry, as well as in other things. In connection with poetry we took up the subject of controversy in art, and especially in poetry. We decided that a controversial poem, or novel, is not good art because it is one-sided and incomplete. If a man writes on one side of a question he cannot be really in that sympathetic frame of mind that is necessary for the production of a good piece of art. We next took up art in music, and decided that music is the most complete or artistic of all arts, because it is farthest off, and expresses most completely our ideal. We also considered sculpture, and noted the fact that the sculpture is the expression in human form of the sculptor’s ideas. We also considered painting, and after we had again applied our standard, Miss Sampter told us that every picture has a central object or figure, the figure of most importance; that all the lines of the picture are direct toward it; and that in every good painting there must be contrast, and all the primary colors must be in it. It is complete in every way. All the colors, light and shade, and the idea of the painter well worked out, complete it. We considered, besides, the subject of architecture, and said that a building should in some measure express the purpose for which it was to be used.”
Ruth said she understood all this, and could gather something of our last meeting. She did not quite see what was meant by a thing in art being “far off.” Henry told her it meant that though removed from reason, and not clearly defined or lifelike, it appealed to our sympathies and emotions, and we understood it all the better. Then I read Henry’s paper:
“In poetry and music, as in all the other arts, it is completeness, complete harmony, which makes a thing beautiful. Of all the arts the most beautiful is music. Harmony is everything in music, and is the principal in musical composition. A piece of music always closes with the first note of the scale, thus completing the chord. If it were otherwise we would say there was something lacking. The phrase itself shows us that what we want is completeness, though few people stop to think of its full meaning when they use it.
“We have said that the farther away we are from something, the more beautiful it seems. This is true of music, which, besides being the most beautiful of arts, is the farthest away, for we cannot say anything definite with it, but must leave so much to the sympathy of the listeners. I like to think of this as a symbol of the beautiful completeness we hope to realize some far-distant day, and that then there will be something still more beautiful, that we shall know in times still farther off.”
I thought this an excellent paper, and I told Henry so. I said I was glad he had written more of musical composition than I had been able to tell him.
We spoke of some of our past meetings. Florence said: “I couldn’t make Henry see the difference between wit and humor.”
“I see it now,” he answered. “We discussed it in school.”
“So did we,” said Marian. “Isn’t it queer?”
They had been taking up drama, too, and so their club and school work harmonized.
I said: “You have heard people speak of the art of life. To me it seems that to make an art of life, to live it as if it were our creation, our work of art, is the best way, the most complete and beautiful way. You remember, I spoke to you of the three ways of looking at life, of writing books, for instance: The scientific way, the philosophic way, the artistic way. One can live life in these three ways, too; but to me the artistic way seems best.”
“Don’t you think,” asked Marian, “that if we lived as an art, we should be too apt to excuse ourselves?”
“How do you mean, Marian?”
“Because,” she went on, “we should admit the shadows in life as well as the light.”
“The shadows,” I answered, “are not the wrong, the bad. How can you think so? Are shadows in a picture the mistakes in it? Shadows make the rhythm and the contrast; and in life would be repose and sleep. That necessary pulsation of activity and rest alone can make life whole and perfect.”
“I see,” said Marian, “that is true.”
“As for blaming ourselves for things past, I think it is silly to do so.”
“What,” they asked, “is the scientific way of life?”
“It is,” I answered, “living according to small definite truths, knowing certain separate things to be good or bad for us, and living according to that knowledge, without any general aim of life. It is to bathe regularly, to tell the truth carefully, to be honest, to look out for your neighbor, always because each one of these things is expedient in itself. The philosophic way is to see the final, complete good, and to want that once, to lose yourself and the beauty of your own life in the desperate effort to make the whole world perfect now. Suppose, for instance, that on Christmas a starving family came to the door of a middle-class man for food. If he were a scientist in his life he would send the poor family at once to the public food kitchen, with a ticket of recommendation, because he did not believe in indiscriminate charity and pauperism. If he were a philosopher he would be horrified at the idea of any man lacking a dinner, and without further thought would give his whole dinner to the poor, and go without, and let his children go without. That is just what Bronson Alcott did—the typical philosopher in life—who neglected his own family for the good of the universe.”
“I have often known of people,” said Henry, “who went out to do charity and neglected their families.”
“Yes,” I said, “but that is sometimes for still worse reasons. Now what would the artist in life do? He would be full of the delight of Christmas feeling; and he would either share his dinner with the other man—according to circumstances—or ask him in to his table, if the poor children were not too dirty. He would look out for himself and for the other man, and do it gracefully, beautifully. He knows that first of all he must make his own life sane and beautiful, but he wants to include as many other lives as he can in that life of his, and to make all his relations with men beautiful.”
“What you call the philosophic way,” said Ruth, “is what I had always called the artistic way.”
“That is,” I said, “because you have all of you had a ridiculous, false idea of what the artist is. The scientific life is the life according to particular truths, without an aim. The philosophic life is the life dreaming of supreme good, and neglecting the particular, individual beauty of life.”
“But doesn’t the philosophic way help toward that good?” asked Henry.
“Yes,” I said, “though often it tries only impracticable schemes. The artistic way combines and transcends the two. For the artist must have knowledge of facts, must know science, and must love supreme good, as well. Facts according to the supreme good, life made beautiful to be like completeness, that is the artistic life. It includes both the scientific and the philosophic.”
“It is as it were the middle way?” asked Ruth.
“Yes,” I said, “because beauty includes all extremes.”
Henry remarked: “It may be the best way, but I wouldn’t guarantee to live according to it.”
I smiled. “You mean,” I said, “that you didn’t like the idea of asking the poor man in to dinner?” He assented. “But you misunderstood me. That was only a picture, a story, not a law. If we make large laws for life—such laws as those of art—we shall avoid petty moralizing, which I, for one, detest. We shall see that every circumstance alters the case.
“It’s just this petty moralizing that is unnecessary, when one has big laws and standards which he can use in life, each for himself.”
We did come very near having a discussion on truth-telling, but I stopped it at once. I was glad to discover, however, that Ruth is not a stickler for literal truth under all circumstances.
“I don’t like little laws laid down,” I said, “because they are never true and necessary in all cases. They make me feel rebellious.”
“Yes,” said Marian, “they make one feel contrary, and want to do just the opposite.”
I spoke of the undeniable fact that all great action, all history sprang from imaginative thought, that a deed had to be imagined before it could be done, that all history was inspired by the bards and prophets. I spoke of even such scientific theories as evolution springing from imaginative thought. They all seemed to have realized this before, and none dissented. I read to them O’Shawnessy’s Ode, “We are the Music-makers.”
Florence said: “We spoke of the thinker’s influence lately, at home. But I always thought of those great men, not as poets, but as philosophers.”
“Yes,” I answered, “they often were. But they were poets, too. The greatest artist—as I showed you—is a scientist and philosopher as well. Goethe to me seems the best example of such a complete man. His life was so many-sided, and yet so artistic, so definite in its aim; it might stand as an example of the artistic life.”
Now, what the children seemed to know of Goethe was that he had a great many love affairs, and did not behave well in any of them. Marian and Henry had a clearer idea, and knew this was not the whole or the chief part of his life, nor quite so faulty as represented. Henry said: “He could appreciate the good points in a woman without always falling in love with her.”
When Ruth said she didn’t know anything of Goethe but his lover’s weakness, Marian turned on her with: “Now, isn’t it a shame to know that of him, and nothing else!”
I told them again that as every work of art was a symbol of completeness, so every self, being a self, symbolized the complete self of understanding and unity; every man was a symbol of completeness, of the Divine Self.
Before we went on to enumerate for ourselves the laws of art, now that we all agreed they would be one with the laws of life, I wished to read aloud some slips from a Ruskin calendar, which Ruth had brought me two weeks before. The most fruitful of conversation were the following:
“All are to be men of genius in their degree—rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure.”
This, they said, was exactly our idea of genius in all.
“Good work is never done for hatred, any more than for hire—but for love only.”
Surely, then, not for controversy, we said.
“Neither a great fact, nor a great man, nor a great poem, nor a great picture, nor any other great thing, can be fathomed to the bottom in a moment of time.”
“Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.”
This, I reminded them, was what we had said when we spoke of the good and bad, that we must use all things for good.
“The ennobling difference between one man and another—between one animal and another—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another.”
“Doesn’t it seem,” said Florence, “as if Ruskin had written those papers especially for us?”
“That last one,” I said, “expresses exactly our idea; here ‘feeling’ means the same as ‘sympathy,’ or ‘feeling with.’ So you find, all through the old books, the striving for this same truth, always vaguely expressed, never fully understood, as an ideal, as a religion of life.”
Ruth asked: “Don’t you think all great religions have always believed in that final unity?”
“Not quite in this way,” I answered. “They have vaguely striven for it and implied it, but never realized it as the one meaning in life, the moving force of the universe.”
I gave each of them a pencil and a piece of paper, and said we would find out and write down what were the chief laws of all arts, and then follow that written paper throughout our meetings. I said: “It looks like a party, with the candy and the paper and pencils.”
“Yes,” said Florence; “and now we are going to play a guessing game!”
The first law upon which we decided, after some conversation, was:
1. Art is the symbol of completeness, in a definite shape.
On this last part, “in a definite shape,” I especially insisted, showing them how the definite, the particular, the finite—the drop as opposed to the mist—symbolized completeness. I said for them Goethe’s poem, “Ueber allen Gipfeln,” to show them how so short, clearcut and simple a thing gave us the sense of immensity.
Henry said he had thought at one time that if one only knew the truth, it was not necessary to be a good orator; one had simply to state the truth. But now he believed the form an essential part of the thought.
Marian said something of the artistic life as meaning one must have a single aim. I answered her it might be so, but the single aim would be immense and inclusive. Now we went on to the second law, which we formulated thus:
2. Art is self-expression and self-fulfilment.
Self-expression means action, creation. “Thinking, writing, the work of the artist is action,” I said. They understood. I quoted: “There is only one gift worth giving, and that is one’s self.” “To give one’s self,” I said, “that is action, that is life, creation and fulfilment.”
“How so fulfilment?” asked Marian.
“Because it is always fulfilment to do the thing we love to do. Now what comes next?”
Henry said: “To leave out the distracting; to leave out detail.”
“Not necessarily detail,” I answered; “certain definite details are essential.”
They said to leave out the irrelevant, the inharmonious, the unnecessary. I said:
3. To leave out the unimportant.
“Can you see,” I asked, “how that will apply to life?”
4. Must have variety and many-sidedness.
That is, contrast, rhythm, the all-roundness which makes the whole.
We had just begun to speak of the next law when I was called from the room.
As I returned, Henry said to me: “Well, then, let us write down: ‘must not be for or against.’”
So they had formulated it while I was away. I answered: “Rather let us use the word ‘partisan,’ which means part, not whole.”
5. Must not be partisan, and must be sympathetic.
Now, I said, art,
6. Must give the impression of truth.
I did not linger on this point, and was glad the children accepted it without question, for I wanted more time to explain it.
I went on to the last law, which was the only one I had some trouble in making clear. I asked why was the photograph inartistic? They said because of inharmonious details. I asked, why is the statue more beautiful than wax works? Henry spoke again of the “distance” of material, which just thereby appealed to the sympathies. I wanted to speak of the artist’s aloofness, how he was creator of his work, within it, and yet around it and above it. They did not understand. They said, if he were above it, he would be unsympathetic. They did not understand the creator’s attitude toward himself, the created; the dramatic attitude in life, in which we are both actor and spectator. Marian said she thought she understood it. “Haven’t you ever laughed at yourself?” she asked the others.
“I have sworn at myself,” said Leo.
I meant to pass by the subject, and leave out the last law, rather than arouse a self-consciousness, which was the opposite of what I hoped to awaken. But unintentionally the conversation led to a better understanding.
I spoke again of reverence, as I had done to Alfred, of the small self awed in supreme moments, before the immensity of its whole self.
“Do you mean,” asked Leo, “that it makes us feel how small we are?”
I tried to make it clear. I spoke of the feeling of nothingness that overcomes us, when we stand under the stars at night, and realize them as worlds and suns, and our planet as a dot of light in immensity.
They had all felt so, except Henry.
He said: “It does not make me feel small. I feel that I am a part of it all, and one with the universe.”
“Yours is the true feeling,” I answered, “for you are, indeed, a part of it, and the realization of it is within yourself. A kitten in your place would not feel it.”
“I know,” said Marian, “that many people do not feel it. For I have sometimes walked with some one out in the night, or by the sea, and could not speak. And suddenly they said some trivial thing, which showed they did not feel as I did.”
Alfred said he felt overawed by the sea, because it was so strong and big.
“You mean,” I asked, “that it makes you feel helpless before its might?”
“Yes.”
“It has been said,” Henry went on, “that one cannot be an astronomer and not worship, I believe it is true.”
“And now,” I said, “we are coming to the seventh law after all. For by aloofness I mean that the artist, during his act of creation, feels his own immense self, feels the whole universe, and sees himself and all other things as a part in relation to it.”
“I have felt that way sometimes,” said Florence, “just for a moment.”
“It is a momentary realization,” I answered.
“Don’t you think,” asked Ruth, “that it is a superior feeling, though; a cold, perfect feeling?”
“No,” I answered; “though it lifts us above petty concern for ourselves, it does not lift us out of sympathy and action.”
Henry said: “When I go to Riverside and see all the lights, and think of the millions of people, I feel them all.”
It reminded me of the day Marian had said she felt so when she thought of all the windows and rooms in all the apartment houses.
“Suppose,” I asked, “that you had failed in a very important examination, Henry, would you feel bad?”
“Yes,” he said, “if it were a very,veryimportant one.”
“Then, if you went to Riverside Drive and forgot yourself in that immense feeling, when you returned home you would not only be over your sore, bitter disappointment, but you would be full of energy to begin work again.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I would.”
“So, you see, it is a creative, sympathetic, living aloofness, not cold and far off.”
We put down for the seventh law:
7. Aloofness.
Knowing what we meant thereby.
Ruth said she had noticed that the artistic life was a selfish ideal.
“Yes,” I said, “selfish in the best sense.”
“It is self-development, you mean,” said Alfred.
“Yes,” I answered, “and that selfishness includes the whole world.”
“Why use the word ‘selfishness,’ then,” asked Marian, “that has been used in another sense?”
We spent the rest of the time telling Leo our idea of God and progress. Henry, Ruth, Florence and Marian did it; Florence told him of complete human sympathy, Marian of progress toward it as the good, Henry explained the poem, “Abou ben Adhem,” and Ruth—when Leo objected that knowing men was not knowing God—quoted a passage from the Bible to show it was.
“I always think of God as a supreme power,” said Leo.
I told him something of our idea. What I cared for was to hear the others talk. All, except Henry, seemed satisfied with a merely human conception of self—that is, Florence set the key, and all but Henry kept the tune. He spoke of the “something outside.”
I remarked that, as I had foreseen, we no longer used the word God.
“I use it to myself,” said Ruth.
Henry said: “I use it when I speak to other people; but not here, because we know what we mean, without saying it.”
Marian said: “We have made a vocabulary of our own. Ought we to?”
“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps we can impose it on others?”
“I don’t think that would be fair or right,” she answered.
“Why not? That is just what every great thinker has done. He has imposed a new vocabulary upon the world. Unless our words are good and great and true, they will not last.”