[2]Cope’s theory, in “Darwinism To-day,” Kellog, p. 287.
[2]
Cope’s theory, in “Darwinism To-day,” Kellog, p. 287.
SEVENTH MEETING
Ruth brought with her a “Christian Science” prayer. I said I would read it aloud at the meeting on Christian Science. One line in the prayer was, “purified from the flesh.” Ruth guessed, before I said anything, that I objected to this line. She believes the body is “something to be overcome.” All the others and myself disagreed with her.
I said: “I, who believe in endless progress, believe the means themselves to be good and wonderful. Unless this moment were good, nothing it led to could be wholly good.”
Ruth said: “The body is something unreal, unessential, which we do not keep.”
I answered: “We keep nothing but what we always possessed, the power of growth.” Ruth says we get certain new truths, and then keep them. She tries to think that my idea and Christian Science agree in every way, except that we use different language. But she has doubts and qualms. Then we spoke of “New Thought.” I said I thought most of what is called so was unanswerably true, only there seemed to be an enmity between “New Thought” and good English. Marian agreed with me. She said she could have no respect for a man who used poor English. I would not say that, for I had received too much information from men who did not know how to give it. But, I said, I had often missed information rather than rewrite a book for myself mentally, before I could read it. Marian’s father had read aloud to her, from a “New Thought” book, this sentence: “The seen is unreal, and the unseen is real.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “Do you?”
“No,” I answered; “I believe everything is real, the seen and the unseen. There is nothing but reality.”
I also said my chief objection to all these cults was that they insisted too often on physical health as the aim of life. Virginia said: “But just think, if we had not to be concerned about our bodies any more, if we were perfectly well, how much we could do!”
“Yes,” I answered, “that is true; but still it is not an end, but only a means.”
This was all before the meeting. Alfred had come very early, as usual, and told me he “thought” he believed as I did concerning immortality.
I opened the meeting by reading Marian’s paper:
“On Sunday, November 15th, the Seekers held a regular meeting. Our discussion was on Immortality. Most of us agreed that our self, our real or inner self, is immortal. In the first place, if this self in us and in every one should die there would be nothing left, because that is the real, the life-giving power. Moreover, if we were not immortal, what would be the use of life? Some people argue that we leave part of ourselves and the impressions of our characters to other generations, and so on. However, science has (almost) proved that the race is not immortal, and at least, it is harder to believe that it is, than to believe in the immortality of the real self. Personally, I feel that my real self is immortal, and that I will go on being. We do not attempt to picture any future state. This discussion is the only one in which we did not all agree.”
Next I read Henry’s paper:
“To-day we continued our talk on Immortality. Immortality is entirely a matter of faith, but the different ideas concerning it have influenced the fates of nations.
“The mind realizes so much that it does not accomplish, that it seems as though there must be a continuance of spiritual action after what we call death. If the spirit did not continue to exist, what would be the purpose of our life? Some say our purpose is to pave the walk of life for our descendants. Indeed, we do want those who come after us to find life pleasant and worth while living, but that alone would not be a sufficient purpose, for why need there be descendants? Why was there anybody in the beginning? And besides this, we have more reason to believe in the mortality of the race than for any of our beliefs in regard to the soul. Science teaches us that certain of the planets, which were once habitable, are now no longer so. This may some day happen to our planet, and then the race for which we have worked will cease to be. Although we do live for the race, we live more for the spirit. We have already said that we are part of one great union. If this is true there must be immortality, for when part of the spirit ceased to be, there would no longer be a great, perfect union.”
I said to Henry: “Your papers never begin as if they were going to be right, but they end especially well. You always keep the best for the last.”
Now we went on to our subject of beauty. What, I asked, was the one truly beautiful perfect thing, the thought of which gives us more delight than any other?
They said—bit by bit—that it was complete understanding, unity, sympathy.
I said I believed every beautiful thing was one which symbolized this completeness, something that in itself seemed complete and perfect and fulfilled. It took some time to explain this. Florence, of course, already understood it. Virginia and Marian caught at it as a new and elusive and valuable idea. All except Henry saw what I meant. Marian had said, even before I expressed this idea, that beauty was symmetry.
Henry said: “I don’t see what you mean, or why you need question it. A beautiful thing is one that gives us a thrill of delight.”
“Yes,” I answered, “certainly. That is like saying a thing is red because it has a red color. What I want to know is why things delight us with their beauty, so that we may make a standard from these, whereby to judge all things.”
I stopped them when they began to speak of special works of art, because, I insisted, we would first speak of beauty in all things in the world.
Virginia said: “When I am in a field among animals, playing with them all, that to me seems beautiful. I do feel sympathy with them, but it isn’t completeness.”
“No,” I answered, “and it isn’t beautiful, though it is delightful in another way. Beauty is something apart from us, which we see and hear, and which wakes in us a sense of completeness, of harmony within itself, as iftherewere the whole world, nothing lacking, nor yet too much. A landscape, for instance.”
“It is sometimes not beautiful at all,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered, “surely not. A landscape, no matter how beautiful and wonderful, would be spoiled by a big sign on the nearest tree, advertising ‘Babbitt’s Soap.’”
“Or a sign ‘To Let,’” said Henry.
“Yes,” I answered, “though that might not be as bad, yet that, too, would be inharmonious, and suggest all sorts of irrelevant things.”
“But,” said Henry, “a burnt wood is harmonious, I suppose, and yet it would be ugly.”
“Not always,” said I, “not if it were blended into the landscape, and mellowed.”
“No,” Henry answered, “perhaps not, if the colors were beautiful.”
“But if it were ugly,” I said, “it would be inharmonious. A newly burnt forest suggests death and desolation in the midst of life and summer—an incongruity. It suggests destruction where the thought is most unwelcome and horrible.”
“Then,” said Marian, “it is not the thing itself, but the feeling which it gives us, that is beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “it gives us the thrill of that complete joy. We seem to see something which is what cannot be; complete harmony. The sight of the sea makes Virginia feel so. And you, the out-of-doors.”
Virginia said: “I have sometimes thought beauty is light, because the sun is most beautiful—and, at night, the moon.”
“But,” said I, “if there were no shadows and no darkness, sun and moon would not be beautiful.”
“Then contrast?” she asked.
I said: “There must be contrast in all beautiful things, because without contrast we could not have completeness.”
“Yes,” she said, “in pictures it is so.”
“A small thing,” I went on, “might symbolize completeness, as well as a large one. A dog, in his way, a beautiful Scotch collie, for instance, might be as beautiful as a man.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ruth.
We criticized, and found lacking, according to our standard, the beauty of prize bulldogs; the teeth were too suggestive of strife and biting, the spots unsymmetrical, and so on. They spoke of many instances of beauty in things, especially the beauty of little children, and fitted them to this new standard.
Marian said: “A drop of water is so symmetrical and harmonious, so beautiful in the sunshine; and yet, on a dark day, on the sidewalk, it is not beautiful.”
I explained even that. I showed her how a drop on the sidewalk was not a drop, but a daub, how it suggested all sorts of ugly and incongruous things. “But,” I said, “if we take the trouble to look at a drop hanging from anything, say from a leaf, we shall always find it beautiful.”
She agreed to that. Then she said: “Don’t you think we sometimes do think of our own life as a beautiful thing?”
“Yes,” I answered. “There are moments when our own life suddenly seems complete, when we feel an artist’s delight in it, and for a while we, and the whole world with us, seem to have reached what we longed for.”
Florence asked: “Don’t you think it is usually when we are having a very good, jolly time?”
Marian answered quickly: “No, not at all.”
I understood what Marian meant, and did not attempt, naturally, to explain it to the others.
Now we all agreed, every one of us, that completeness and harmony were beauty. But the children had started time and again to bring up instances in art which to them seemed not to fit, and which they thoroughly misunderstood.
“You see,” I said, “that the beautiful thing is the same as that which seems to us most true and good.”
Marian said again that one idea seemed to cover everything, and that we came to conclusions quickly.
“Now I will tell you,” I said, “what I mean by art and the artist. In speaking of art here to-day I mean not only painting—as one of you thought—but everything which expresses beauty; poetry, the novel and drama, sculpture, music, acting. You see the difference between science and art?”
“Science gives us knowledge,” said Marian.
“Yes,” I answered, “or, rather, science gives us facts, truths, but never at all the complete truth. It gives us parts as parts, never the whole. Philosophy, on the other hand, does what we are doing here. It reaches out for the complete whole, for understanding, for unity, but it knows well that it can never attain the end. It reaches out for the complete good, and is satisfied with nothing less than that unattainable whole. But art does another thing; it tells us a lie—the most wonderful lie in the world—truer than any truth. It says: Look, here is completeness, harmony, wholeness, in this one small shape. And we know it cannot be so, but still we feel it to be there. That lie gives us, as no truth can, the thing we long for, and know to be most true.
“Now, what do you mean by the word genius? What is genius?” I asked.
“Usually,” said Virginia, “a genius is a crank. There is a girl in my art class who is the frousiest, queerest crank in the world, and every one calls her a genius.”
“Geniuses are often queer,” said Henry.
Ruth said, too, that many geniuses were anything but great and good in their private lives.
“Well,” I answered, “I am surprised by your definition of a genius. But perhaps you will be more surprised, and sorry you said so much, when I tell you that I consider every one of you a genius.”
“Oh, my,” said Virginia, “how nice! I wish I were.”
I said: “What we usually call genius is but a larger power of understanding, a sense ofunity, of the relations of things. And we all have that, in some degree. So we all have genius. It is not a matter of quality but of quantity. We are all the same stuff, only some more and some less.”
Henry said I might use the word in that sense, but he didn’t think it was the true meaning. He said: “What definition is in the dictionary?” We had no dictionary at hand, so I tried to prove my definition true without a dictionary, and I succeeded.
I said: “There is no gulf between the genius and the stupid looker-on. Don’t you see why there could not be?”
“I see,” said Marian; “it is because the looker-on would have to have some genius, or else——” She could not finish.
“Just so, Marian,” I went on; “or else he could not appreciate the artist’s work. It is the genius in the onlooker that appreciates the genius in the artist. And in so far as you can appreciate the genius of Shakespeare, in so far you have the same sort of genius.”
“Then,” said she, “art makes us recognize ourselves.”
“Yes,” I answered, “our bigger selves.”
“So one might speak,” she said, “of a person developing his genius for music, or his genius for painting, and so on?”
“Yes,” I answered; “and you see how easily and well one can use the word in that sense.”
Ruth asked: “If the great genius is really one who understands better than the rest of us, and has a more harmonious vision, how is it that so many geniuses are incomplete and very imperfect in their personal lives?”
“I think it is,” I said, “for the same reason that I gave you for disease in highly developed beings.”
“I see,” said Marian; “it is one part developed at the expense of another.”
They wanted to know why so many artists were peculiar, erratic, “Bohemian”—Marian used that word. Virginia spoke again of the happy-go-lucky people down at the art league.
I said I thought one reason for this manner among artists was that, as they were always looking for the new, the beautiful—which is ever new—they had no patience with so-called respectable people, who clung to old things because they were old, and so these artists often purposely went to the other extreme.
I said: “You must see that there is the tendency in all of us to make of life a work of art, to live a complete, beautiful life.”
“I know some people,” said Virginia, “whose lives do not seem to me in the least artistic.”
“That may be,” I answered, “but the tendency is there to make of life a complete expression.”
“That isn’t all I mean,” said Marian. “I want to know what is meant by the artistic temperament.”
“It is in great part,” I said, “a fiction and a false generalization. Many experts have not the artistic temperament, and many not-artists have it. As for artists going astray more often than others, if that be true—which I doubt—there’s a good reason for it. Artists are always very sensitive—naturally—and so, unless they are very strong-willed, too, they will be more easily swayed by outside events and their impressions.”
“I don’t believe every one has genius,” Virginia said. “I know some people who are perfectly stupid, and don’t understand anything.”
“That is scarcely possible,” I answered, “if they are human beings.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Henry, “that you know any utterly selfish person?”
“Yes,” she answered; “or, at least, people who are not interested in anything worth while outside themselves; people who can walk through an art gallery and not look at the pictures; who love nothing beautiful.”
“I may be one of those,” said Ruth, “for I do not care for pictures.”
“One’s genius might not be developed in that particular direction,” I said; “none of us are developed in all directions. But grant, at least, Virginia, that your most stupid people have undeveloped genius which might be awakened.”
“All right,” she said.
“Because if you don’t,” I answered, “I shall think your understanding of those people is very limited. Genius does not necessarily show itself in relation to art, to the sense of beauty. Genius is in the understanding a man must have to be a man. How could he have any relations with his fellows, any intercourse without some understanding?
“But there is one essential difference between the genius of the looker-on and the genius of the artist; it is that the artist creates, that he must have talent. No matter how much genius a man may have, if he does not or cannot express his genius, he is not an artist.”
“Do you think,” asked Marian, “that an artist knows himself to be a great genius?”
“I think,” I answered her, “that no man ever does a great thing unless he first believes he can do it.
“You remember, I once said that to understand life well one must be creative, one must do things, because life is forever creating. And so the genius who is an artist, who has talent, who creates, by that very creation understands better than other men. He who can draw a thing sees it better than he who cannot.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “the fact that he can draw it proves that he sees it better.”
“And in learning to draw it,” I went on, “he came to see it better.”
“The great artist,” said Henry, “is one who expresses his idea perfectly.”
“Then,” Virginia said, “I wonder if I will ever get to be a great artist. For the thing I draw is never the thing that was in my mind.”
“Now,” said I, “you see the distinction between genius and talent. Genius is the power of understanding. Talent is the power of expression. A man may have very little to say, and yet say it wonderfully well. And another man may have much to say, and marvellous understanding of life, but not nearly so great power of expression. That is what Florence meant the other day, when she spoke of ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ and of ‘Faust.’ But the man who expresses even the smallest thing well understands, at least, that thing. The power of expression itself implies understanding and a sense of unity and harmony. For no matter how well a man may be able to draw lines and objects, unless he understands composition—which is the knowledge of harmony and completeness—he cannot paint a good picture. And no matter how well a man may write English, however perfect his style may be, unless he understands something of life, of symmetry and structure, he cannot write a good book.”
Henry said: “Poe expressed himself very well. Was he a genius?”
“Now, stop,” I answered. “Don’t ask, ‘Was he a genius?’ Of course, he was that. We all have genius. The question is, how much?”
“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that in some way Poe was as great as Shakespeare.”
“Yes,” I said, “in some ways; and that is a very good example. Poe’s power of expression may have been as great in some ways as Shakespeare’s. But just think how immeasurably greater was Shakespeare’s genius, his understanding, and grasp of life!”
“Poe, for instance,” said Henry, “was a great mathematician, and used his deductions in his stories.”
The others told Henry this had nothing to do with his genius. They had a long talk on the relative genius—that is, understanding of life—of Poe and Hawthorne, and brought up many instances.
Marian said: “Was Milton a great genius?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I suppose he was,” she said, “but I don’t think he had a great understanding of human life.”
“Have you read ‘Paradise Lost’?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Then you must have noticed his wonderful sympathy with, and understanding of, the devil himself. He saw the tremendous contrasts of life, and understood them.”
“I must read that,” said Virginia, “if he wrote with understanding sympathy of the devil. Don’t you think,” she asked, “that those who write books for children generally understand life very well, and have true genius?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “What do you think? How about those artists who write for children in the Sunday comic papers?”
Now I spoke of the artist in us all, who sees things ever as distinct wholes, who picks out, as he goes through life, complete visions of beauty to reproduce in his mind. These visions have to be distant, separate from himself. For life is so distracting and full of contradictory passions, so vast, and, as we know it in our limited lives, so incomplete, that we must get rid of it, we must separate ourselves, with our universal and unfinished relations, from the perfect and whole beauty which we wish to see in the artistic vision.
“You must have noticed,” I said, “and you have often heard, that far-off things are most beautiful. It is because our life, interwoven with endless distracting circumstances, does not seem to touch those far-off things.”
“Autumn leaves,” said Marian, “far off look so beautiful, and near by are full of imperfections.”
Virginia said: “And perfection of detail in a picture, as if the things were very near and real, does not make it better. It does not seem good. You know Millet’s ‘Sower,’ at the Metropolitan Museum: when you go close, it is all streaks.”
“This dimness of detail is for two reasons, in most great pictures,” I said. “First, the artist often paints a picture with the intention of having it looked upon from a distance. Second, in the perfect whole, detail is merged. All must blend and harmonize.”
“I never thought of that,” said Virginia. “The too precise details in a picture attract a person’s attention, and want to be looked at for their own sake, and so break in on the harmony and wholeness of the picture.”
“Yes, just so,” I answered. I spoke again of the sublime lie of art—the untruth which is most true. I said: “I once had an English teacher who used to tell us that in art one was not to give the truth, but the impression of truth. Truths often break in and destroy the impression of that whole truth.
“Now,” I asked, “what is the one, the only object, of art in the world?”
We decided, all of us, that it was complete understanding and sympathy. Art is a symbol of that completeness for which our whole life longs. One of them—I think it was Henry—said its aim was progress. I said it was rather the picturing and prophecy of the end and aim of progress itself.
They had probably heard, I said, of “art for art’s sake,” the cant of those who believed mere form and expression to be the whole of art, and left out of account the thing expressed. Virginia misunderstood me to say: “Art for its own sake,” quite a different thing. So, thinking I would agree with her, she quoted, with disapproval, an article by Kenyon Cox, saying: “He who worked for gold sold himself, and he who worked for fame was utterly lost.” I said I quite agreed with him; that unless one worked first of all for the sake of expression, and the joy of it, he was no artist.
“And, meanwhile, his wife and children might be starving,” she answered.
“It is praiseworthy,” I said, “to support one’s wife and children, but it has nothing to do with art.”
I said a man might well use his expression to earn himself bread; that it was necessary and natural, and had often even spurred a man on to work, but that it could not be his first aim if he were an artist. We spoke of Shakespeare, and of Goldsmith, and of their writing under the stress of poverty. I pointed out how, nevertheless, these men wrote of the things they loved and understood, and how the joy of work must have been their first aim.
I spoke of play, and of art being like play; of the old saying: “Work first, then play.”
Henry said that was meant for little children.
I told them how scientists tried to explain play by calling it a preparation for work. Virginia liked that idea. I said that I thought work a preparation for play, that play, interplay, the joy of creation, was life itself. The children easily understood play in this sense of the beloved work. Virginia said her work was all play. I reminded her that she might have to work hard, but she would do it gladly for the sake of that play. Marian said her school-work was almost always play. Ruth said: “I think play and work are the same thing, and that we human beings have made the distinction of words.”
Art cannot rightly have any object but whole representation, but expression of the understanding of life. I said that whenever art tried to be moral—which was rather the business of philosophy—it lost thereby; that whenever one took sides for a thing, one took sides against something else, and had lost the completeness and symmetry of art.
Henry said he thought art ought to teach a lesson.
I answered: “Art ought to show us the whole of life, which is beautiful.”
Virginia spoke of Dickens’ novels, and said she thought those were best in which he wrote with an object, and against an abuse.
I answered her that they were best and also worst. They were best because he described in them the life which he knew and loved. But the parts of these very good novels which were directed against any people or institutions were always bad, inartistic, incongruous. As an example I quoted the dreary dissertations on Chancery in “Bleak House,” and those who had read it immediately agreed with me.
Henry and Virginia questioned me several times concerning ugly pictures which were considered “good art.” I told them that a subject not usually thought beautiful, an old, old woman, for instance, might be made beautiful by the artist’s insight. I did not go into details, however, to-day. A great many ugly pictures, such as the work of Teniers, Steen, and others, seem to me very bad art. But now I spoke to them of Wiertz, the Belgian, who seems to me no artist at all, and concerning whom they had both questioned me. I took as an example of bad partisan art his picture of Napoleon in hell, with crowds of poor people making faces at him, and pelting him with brimstone. Such a subject in itself is impossible to art. What could be more unintelligent, petty, scattered and ugly!
Ruth said she did not see why an artist need understand human nature especially well unless he was one who treated of human nature; that a musician, for instance, need not do so. I began my answer, but gave way to a burst of enthusiasm from Henry.
How, said he, could a musician not understand human nature, he who knew how to rouse us to the depths with his notes, who could move us to tears? Surely he knew what he was doing, and the heart which he stirred.
Ruth said she did not see why Shakespeare showed greater understanding or completeness in his work than Emerson, for instance. Henry thought the same. I tried to show them that Emerson in his essays was not an artist—or, at least, not nearly so much of an artist as a philosopher—that he strove to reach the good, the complete harmony of the universe, but that he did not give us the vision of a present, finished, concrete beauty. They both maintained that he did. Henry spoke of the essays on “Friendship” and “Manners.”
“Have you read the essay on ‘Manners’?” he asked.
“Yes, several times,” I said.
“And doesn’t it give you a picture?” he asked. Ruth added: “And the one on friendship. I seem to see that friend.”
I owned I did not feel so. I said it gave me an inspiration, an ideal of conduct, not a picture. “Mind you,” I said, “when I call Emerson more philosopher than artist, I am not saying philosophy is less than art.”
“No, I understand that,” said Ruth, “but I, for one, when I read Shakespeare, get not any especial feeling of the completeness or whole understanding of what I read. Emerson uplifts me much more, and gives me power to do things.”
“That may be,” I said. “You may rate either as high or as low as you please, but their genius is different.”
I pointed out, too, how in Emerson’s poetry, with its rare, beautiful couplets, and its many lapses, the genius and philosopher far outshone the man of artistic talent. We had not time to go into detail, or to quote largely, and I did not wish to speak much of literary criticism and methods at this meeting, for I had planned to do so at the next, so I think Henry and Ruth went home unconvinced of the artistic superiority of Shakespeare over Emerson. One might almost as profitably argue who was a greater man, Beethoven or Napoleon!
Marian asked me whether George Eliot was an artist or a philosopher. I told her I thought she was both, but that I believed she would have been more of an artist had she been less a philosopher.
I asked Alfred why he had kept so silent. Did he agree with us?
“Yes,” he said, “I do. It is very interesting. But I don’t talk unless I disagree.”
EIGHTH MEETING
Henry came several days ago to tell me he would be unable to attend this meeting, as he was going to Washington. “I will think of the subject we were going to discuss,” he said.
I opened the meeting with Marian’s paper:
“At a meeting of the Seekers, held on November 22d, we discussed the relation which our previous discussions had to Art. We set up a standard for judging Art, and agreed that a good piece of Art is one that makes us feel that unity and completeness for which we are striving. Two things are necessary, a good thought and good workmanship. We also said that details in Art, particularly in painting, are bad because they distract us, and we don’t see the picture as a whole. I was very glad to have a standard by which to judge Art.”
I said to her that I hardly thought she could already have that standard.
“No,” she said, “but I am going to get it.”
Then I read Virginia’s paper:
“Art as it is connected with our previous discussions:
“When an artist dies he leaves behind him all the beautiful ideas he has put on his canvas, or in his books. To be a true artist one must possess an idea of the beautiful, and also be sympathetic with all his fellow beings. Not only humans, but flowers and beasts also. A person who possesses these qualities is a genius. But to be an artist one must also have talent. Either he must have a talent for writing, music or painting, or he cannot express the genius within himself.
“This sympathy, this love, is something we cannot explain. And so we call it the soul, because it is a puzzle, and we do not know what it is. Everybody possesses some of it, even the most heartless. It may be the love of a plant or dumb animal, but still it is love for a fellow creature. So all of us possess genius, though few of us are artists.”
Next I read Alfred’s paper:
“On Sunday, the 22d, we discussed the subject of art. We said that for a thing to be high art it must be pleasing to the eye or ear, and complete in itself; that is, the artist or composer must so construct his work that it will fully express some idea. In painting a picture an artist may choose to convey some gruesome idea, and do so perfectly, but that will not be high art, because it will be displeasing to the eye.
“It may also be applied to books; if the author tells something so well that it gives the reader a perfect picture of the thought, the writing may be considered a good one.”
I said I could tell by Alfred’s paper that he had not grasped just what was the object of art. The children repeated that it symbolized the unity for which we longed. I asked, did they see why we took up this subject of art at all, what it had to do with religion? Marian had said, before the others came, that it was the expression of our religion. Virginia now used almost the same words, and Alfred, speaking after her, said it in such a way as to make me believe he understood.
I replied, this was true; art was the service of religion, the expression of that sense of oneness with the world which can speak only in creations, because life is an endless creation. Beauty, I said, seemed to me the perfect symbol of truth, of completeness and symmetry. I quoted the lines from Keats:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“The subject of beauty always puzzles me,” said Ruth, “because beautiful things so often are not good. Take the ocean, for instance. It is so beautiful; it gives us above all things the sense of immensity and harmony. And yet, think how cruel it is! Think of the shipwrecks and the suffering!”
“It is not the ocean’s fault,” said Virginia. “That is because we are adventurous and go out in ships.”
“Yes,” I answered, “and we are willing to take the chance and pay the price. But surely you do not think of the ocean as cruel, as either good or bad. Beauty is not in anything, but is in the vision of him who beholds it. It is a momentary vision of the completeness of life.”
“Beauty is always a thing of moments. Don’t you think so?” asked Marian. “It depends upon you. At one time you may see a thing as beautiful, and at another time not.”
“Surely,” I said.
“Why is it,” she asked, “that some people cannot appreciate beauty in one special form, either in music, or painting, or poetry?”
I said: “Our senses are channels through which we get the feeling of beauty. But no matter whence the feeling comes, it is that same joy. One man finds it in a picture, and another in a symphony, and another in the woods. Do you know those two lines by William Blake:
‘Who knows but every bird that cleaves the airIs an immense world of delight closed by our senses five.’
‘Who knows but every bird that cleaves the airIs an immense world of delight closed by our senses five.’
‘Who knows but every bird that cleaves the airIs an immense world of delight closed by our senses five.’
‘Who knows but every bird that cleaves the air
Is an immense world of delight closed by our senses five.’
“There may be other senses than ours which bring the same message. Helen Keller hears and sees it with her fingers in her world of darkness.
“Throughout the centuries,” I went on, “in all beginnings and primitive times, art was the expression of religion. The first rude drawings were religious symbols; drama and the dance and music were religious; and all the oldest literature in the world, the Vedas, the Bible, and the old Scandinavian myths were religious books: the Greek drama, and—can you think of others?”
They brought forth many instances; Marian mentioned the English miracle plays, and Virginia spoke of American Indian drawings, saying, however, that they were more often used for communication. I showed her how the first rude figures of animals, the totems, for instance, were also used as religious symbols.
I spoke, too, of the way in which art related us with great minds in ages past. “Ruskin mentions that,” said Ruth and Marian.
“But it is a one-sided relation,” I said, “for we cannot speak to them.”
“I wish we could,” answered Marian. “I so often wish I could ask them questions.”
We said again how hard it was, when asked, to explain to outsiders the purpose of our club. Ruth said: “When I try to tell people, they answer: ‘Oh, yes, I suppose you just talk nonsense, and have a good time.’”
Marian said people wondered that she was willing to stay in-doors on Sunday afternoons.
Virginia said: “I don’t tell any one of it.”
I suggested to them that if one got a perfect standard of beauty in art, it might be all one would need as a moral standard to make one’s life beautiful in the same way.
Now we spoke of the novel. I said I had noticed that last week when I told them of completeness in novels and plays, they seemed not to know just what I meant. Florence said she knew. “It means,” she said, “that every word and every person and every incident must count. It must not be like life, where distracting and unimportant things are always happening.”
“Just so,” I answered. She had learned all that from brother Arthur.
I went over it more explicitly, citing instances, and then told them that we were all of us story-tellers, in the sense that we tried to make every story complete.
“In telling anything that has happened,” I said, “we naturally leave out anything that has no effect on the story.”
“And,” added Florence, “we unconsciously make up little details that help to fill out the story.”
“Now,” said Marian, “I think I must forgive some one I know, who is always exaggerating.”
“I know some one who does it all the time,” said Florence.
“I don’t think that makes it right, though,” Ruth protested.
“No,” I answered, “not right, but not wrong, either. When we realize the artist’s tendency in us all to turn everything into a story, first, we will not judge people harshly for doing it, and, second, we will be careful when we are trying to tell the truth, not to allow ourselves to be cheated by the artist in us.”
“I think,” said Virginia, “people often miss-tell an event, and get it all twisted, because they really forget what was said.”
“Of course,” answered Ruth, “one is not to blame for forgetting.”
I said: “I think that most of us, unconsciously, are story-tellers in both senses. Many of us are constantly telling ourselves stories about ourselves.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ruth, Marian and Florence. They gave me a hint of those wonderful romancings. Marian is always beautiful in her stories, “as in a real novel,” she said. Florence said she was always as homely “as a mud fence,” but I could see by her expression that none the less she was always triumphant. Virginia in her stories was accomplished and a great artist.
I forgot to be one of them for a moment. I said: “Until very lately I, too, used to tell myself stories about myself.”
“I still do it,” said Ruth.
On the subject of unimportant details and characters, we had a long talk. We spoke of Dickens’ many characters and interwoven stories, and Virginia maintained that many had nothing to do with the plot, that they were soon forgotten, and there seemed to be no special reason for them. Marian saw, however, that at times six or seven plots might be woven into a single story. Instead of fitting the standard to Dickens, they fitted Dickens to the standard, and found, indeed, that “The Tale of Two Cities,” which had least characters and distracting stories, was most interesting, and well constructed. Virginia spoke of “Lorna Doone,” and we all agreed with her that the long descriptions of how things were done—fishing, for instance—which the author gave because he was interested in the country, and which had nothing whatever to do with characters and story, made it monotonous and almost spoiled an otherwise delightful book.
Virginia said: “He even tells what pattern of suit he wore when he went fishing.”
They found the same fault with Scott. Indeed, none of them likes Scott. The criticisms were amusing. His blonde heroines were always weak, his dark ones strong, but none of them interesting. Ivanhoe was a flabby nobody.
We spoke of Shakespeare, of the part his clowns played in the story.
Marian said: “I see in what sense his plays are complete, and I feel in him wonderful understanding of men and great sympathy. But he doesn’t uplift me.”
“Do you want to be uplifted into the lofty nothing?” I asked. “Is not humanity good enough for you?”
We spoke, too, of “Little Women,” a much beloved book. We noticed how Louisa Alcott had changed the story to make it a story.
I pointed out to them what it was that made melodrama; namely, the intrusion of events coming from without, not springing from the reaction of characters upon one another, or the intrinsic situation—such as robbers, marvellous rescues, or fortunes left by distant relatives. We had a long talk on this subject, and the children told many stories. But I doubt whether all finally quite understood the distinction, which is often hard to make. Is the coming and going of the ships in “The Merchant of Venice” melodramatic? I told them I should not call it so, since it was bound up with the whole story, almost like the persons. I said that the melodramatic was more like life than the purely dramatic, because in life, with its thousand relations, outside events made changes constantly. But the story was more true if it contained within itself its own complete world, like a miniature universe. Each work of art must represent the whole. “And this is why,” I said, “in a really well-built play or novel, a trained person usually can foretell the outcome. Suppose that we knew everything in the universe, and all the relations of all things to each other, we should be able to foretell every event.”
“Perhaps that is why novels grow tiresome,” said Ruth, “for we get to know just how they will end.”
I spoke of the author leaving out his one-sided moral verdict of his own story. After representing life, the artist should not judge; first, because his judgment is usually partial and incomplete, and breaks the unity; second, because he thereby shows lack of understanding and respect for his reader, who might be trusted to draw his own conclusions. Hawthorne’s stories are often spoiled by his moral comment at the end. At this point I spoke of missing Henry. I am certain he would not have agreed as readily as the others.
I said moral discussions were in place in books on moral subjects, not in artistic works. I mentioned especially the worth, ability and good influence of the writers of so-called “muckraking” articles in the magazines. Virginia waxed enthusiastic. She asked why should Dickens not write of abuses in his novels, when by so doing he actually brought about social reforms? I said that for the social reformer they were right, but not for the artist. I warned her not to confuse the two.
Here Marian spoke of Milton, and of his giving up his artistic work for years to serve his country in politics.
One could not wish he had done otherwise. A man’s life comes before art, before any other expression. I said many of the “muckrakers” were men who might have been artists, but who felt called to work in this more direct way for the beauty of life, because they could not tolerate its ugliness. But they were not artists; they were something different.
“That may be so,” answered Virginia, “but just the same I admire those brave, muckraking men more than artists.”
“They are often more admirable,” I said, “but that does not make them artists. If you admire a soldier more than a poet, that does not make him a poet.”
They spoke of the reformers working for the present, the artist for all time.
“But,” said Virginia, “the result of the reformer’s work will last for all time, too.”
I spoke again of “for” and “against” in books, of how we felt that writer to be the greatest who understood and loved the villains as well as the heroes, and saw the strength and weakness of both alike. They all agreed to this, and quoted plenteous incidents; among others, the outcast in “Bob, Son of Battle,” which they had all read and loved. “How I cried over him!” said Marian; and Ruth and Virginia had cried, too. Here Alfred came in with his enthusiasm.
“Didn’t you cry over it?” asked Marian.
“No,” he answered, “but I almost did.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said. “I forgot you are a boy.”
“He wouldn’t dare admit it, even if he did,” I said.
Virginia said she usually loved the bad characters more than the good ones.
We saw how the false simplicity of villains and heroes—as represented in the poor novel—of all good and all bad, and their appropriate punishment and reward, was untrue to life and human nature. Surely, they said, all men had in them both good and bad. Scott, they insisted, made this mistake.
I spoke of the psychological and the dramatic methods in novels. I said to Marian:
“George Eliot, of whom you spoke the other day, is an example of the psychological method.” I explained the two methods to them, the one going into minute details of motive and thought, the other suggesting to us the motive and thought through the action itself.
Marian does not like George Eliot. She greatly prefers Dickens and Thackeray.
I said I liked George Eliot, but still I preferred the dramatic method for several reasons. I thought that the passions, moods and changes of the soul were too complicated ever to be put down by any author so as to give the impression of truth.
Ruth agreed with me, and said: “Perhaps that is why I like plays better.”
To put down how a man would act under any particular circumstances is much more convincing than to tell how he would feel; for life always expresses itself in creative action. I said: “A reader likes to be trusted and understood by the author. He would rather imagine the minute details of feeling as part of the whole swing of action, to fill out the picture for himself, to be recognized by the author as a fellow genius.”
Ruth said novels tired her, because most novelists had only three or four characters which they used over and over again. I answered her that this was because they wrote out of their own lives, and their characters were usually but different sides of themselves. I said many great painters used only few models. Virginia said she had remarked that many painters always painted faces that resembled themselves.
At this point, just as I was beginning to speak of wit and humor, Virginia’s brother came into the room—in this case, for many reasons, an unavoidable interruption. I had so far always kept these two hours closed against all visitors. Although he sat down in the adjoining room, and was warned to listen and not to talk, his presence made them at once self-conscious and superficial. I asked them whether they knew any distinction between wit and humor.
Virginia answered: “I always think of a witty person as one who has good thoughts and expresses them cleverly, and of a humorous person as a boor and booby, like that one in the next room.”
After the laugh had passed, I said: “Virginia, I can think of only one expression that will fit you just now, and that is slang. I think you are talking——”
“Through my hat?”
“Yes, exactly. This to me seems the difference between wit and humor: The witty man is he who says or writes clever, funny things, just to show how clever and keen he is. Conceits are witty, because wit is essentially conceited. It may be very interesting and entertaining, but it always makes you think of the author rather than of his characters. It is always superficial, the trick of words, and it doesn’t keep well through the ages. A pun, for instance, is always witty.”
“Ough!” said Virginia, “not always!”
“Bernard Shaw,” I said, “is a good example of wit. Humor is the understanding of the petty foibles, humors and lovable weaknesses of men. Remember that the word humor really means mood or state of the blood, that it is a word very like the word ‘human.’ Humor is always human. It is the large, genial way of looking at life of him who sees how little men are, and how great they are at the same time. It is a sense of absurd contradictions, of the unity of utterly unlike things, almost a parody of completeness. All humor, all wit, everything funny is an incongruous bringing together of things that do not seem to belong together.”
“I suppose,” Marian said, “that is why we laugh when we see some one fall in the street?”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “for their heads and the sidewalk don’t belong together.”
“Now, seriously,” asked Marian, “what makes me want to laugh when I see any one fall, especially a grown person? And I must laugh, especially if it is a fat person, no matter how hard I may try to be polite.”
“That’s because you expect a grown person and a fat person to be dignified, and to fall is very undignified. Imagine his high hat flying one way, his gold-headed cane another, and his heels in the air. But if a little boy falls you don’t laugh, because little boys are meant to fall.”
“When my mother falls,” Ruth said, “I can’t keep from laughing, though I hate to see her fall.”
“But everything funny grows stale very soon,” said Marian.
“That is,” I answered, “because when we get used to a combination it no longer seems incongruous.”
“Well,” asked Marian, “when you laugh at people because they are boors and funny, why is that?”
“That is,” I said, “because you feel yourself to be so vastly superior.”
“Is it?” she asked. “I suppose so.”
“And next time you want to laugh at any one,” I said mock-seriously, “just think of it first, that you are considering how superior you are.”
She seemed greatly impressed and quite cast down by this remark.
I said: “Perhaps a good distinction to make between wit and humor is that wit laughs at people and humor laughs with them.”
“Isn’t satire wit?” asked Marian.
I thought a moment. “Yes, surely,” I answered.
As I spoke again of the relation of beauty to our subject, Ruth said:
“What has all this about wit and humor to do with our subject?”
“Not much,” I said, “except that it shows how the spirit of fun has a part in harmony; and that it shows humor to be understanding and a human thing. But it is interesting for itself, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she answered, “it is very interesting.”