The Moral Economy Part 10

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CHAPTER V

THE MORAL CRITICISM OF FINE ART

There are certain human activities which not only are of special interest on their own account, but also hold a position of pre-eminence in civilization. Such are science, philosophy, the love of nature, politics, friendly intercourse, and fine art. The last of these activities enjoys a peculiar distinction because it is monumental. It not only calls into play all of the more refined capacities, but also records itself in permanent and worthy form. Hence the fine art of any period comes to be taken as an index of its remove from savagery.

In submitting fine art to moral criticism, I shall use it as the best representative of the whole cla.s.s of activities which I have just described. If we have not been wholly astray in our a.n.a.lysis of the good, it should appear that these activities owe their pre-eminence not to their bare quality or tone, but to their humanity, that is, to their connection with a harmonious, just, and progressive state of society.

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It is hard for a moralist to approach such a subject without timidity, especially if he is concerned with his reputation for enlightenment.

For there are many who think that it is a mark of intellectual emanc.i.p.ation to abandon moral standards altogether when dealing with the fine arts. Life itself, they remind us, is only the greatest of the fine arts; and if life can be called beautiful, the last word has been said. The man of taste and delicate sensibility is thus empowered to overrule the moralist, and replace with his ideal of grace and symmetry the harsh and clumsy scruples of conscience. Now it is doubtless true that when life is good, it is also beautiful; a life in which every activity is true, in which the medium of opportunity is formed to accord with the most n.o.ble purpose, may well exhibit a superlative grace and symmetry. But to be beautiful, life must be good _in its own way_; and the principles which define that way are the principles of morality. Furthermore, in order that life shall be beautiful it must be made an object of perception or contemplation; while, in order to be good, it must be lived. And the principles which define the living of life are moral.

The confusion of goodness with beauty is, therefore, doubly stultifying. On the one hand, it subst.i.tutes for the moral conception of value conceptions that morally are indeterminate. For {173} grace and symmetry may be exhibited by life on any plane whatsoever, provided only that it acquires stability. Indeed, one who aims above all things to make his life beautiful, ought consistently to abandon the moral effort to bring life to its maximum of fulfilment, and cultivate perfection of form within the sphere of least resistance. It is proverbial that many lower forms of life are more beautiful than man, but it is not always seen that these are the stationary forms of life, wholly lacking in that principle of rational reconstruction which is the condition of moral goodness. On the other hand, the confusion of goodness with beauty tends to subst.i.tute appreciation for action, and thus to make of life a spectacle rather than an enterprise. Thus to replace ethical with aesthetic conceptions is to take the heart out of morality. Beauty is precisely as relevant to moral goodness as it is to truth; and if investigators were taught to devise the prettiest theory imaginable, the result would be no more fatal to knowledge than is aesthetic sentimentalism to life. To think conformably with reality is knowledge, and to act conformably with all interests is life. If beauty is to be added unto truth and goodness, it must come as the natural sequel to a single-minded fidelity to these motives.

But even if it be true that moral standards are absolutely independent of the standards proper {174} to art, it is not yet clear that the moralist is justified in regarding his standards as more fundamental than those of art. He may be politely but positively informed that he is not to trespa.s.s. Now I feel that, after what has preceded, I am fortified against the charge of impertinence. Art is subject to moral criticism, because morality is nothing more nor less than the law which determines the whole order of interests, within which art and every other good thing is possible. It will scarcely be denied that art is an expression of interest, that both its creation and its enjoyment are activities, moods, or phases of life; and it follows that before this specific interest can be safely or adequately satisfied, it is necessary to fulfil the general conditions that underlie the satisfaction of all interests. It is as absurd to speak of art for art's sake as it is to speak of drinking for drinking's sake, if you mean that this interest is ent.i.tled to entirely free play. Art, like all other interests, can flourish only in a sound and whole society, and the law of soundness and wholeness in life is morality.

The claim of art to exemption from moral criticism is commonly due to one or both of these two forms of misapprehension.

In the first place, it is a.s.sumed that morality, too, is a special interest; and that if the artist or connoisseur lets the moralist alone, it is no more {175} than fair that the moralist should let him alone.

But this a.s.sumption is false; as false as though the athlete were to chafe at the warnings of his medical adviser on the ground that general health was irrelevant to endurance or strength or agility. Now, doubtless, an athlete may for a time neglect his general health with no noticeable diminution of his skill; but that is only because he already possesses the health to abuse. It still remains true that the principles of health which the trainer represents are the principles upon which his skill is fundamentally based. Nature has made him healthy according to these principles, and he simply does not recognize his debt to them. Similarly, art may flourish in spite of the neglect of social and individual well-being, so that the pleadings of the moral advocate seem irrelevant; but this is possible only because the social order is already established, and the personality formed, according to the very principles which the moralist is announcing. Art may dissipate moral health, but it nevertheless lives only by virtue of such a source of supply. The basal condition of art is not the element of social evil or morbid temperament that may attract attention, but the measure of soundness that nevertheless remains.

The second misapprehension that lends plausibility to the excuses of art is the a.s.sumption that {176} the moralist is proposing to _subst.i.tute_ his canons for those of art. Now it is entirely true that moral insight in no way equips one for connoisseurship. There is a special apt.i.tude and training that enables one to discriminate in such matters. But the moralist is judging art _on moral grounds_. Hence he does not say, "I see that your painting is ugly"; but he does say, "I see that your painting, which you esteem beautiful (and I take your word for it), is _bad_." In the same way the moralist does not say to the self-indulgent man, "I see that you are not having a good time"

(the self-indulgent man is likely to know better); but he says, "I see that it is bad for you to be having this particular kind of good time."

In other words, for the moralist larger issues are at stake, and he is considering these on the grounds proper to them. He is charged with defining and applying the principles which determine the good of interests on the whole; and while his conclusions can never replace those of the expert within a special field, they will always possess authority to overrule them.

II

Since we are to be occupied mainly with the bearing of art on morality, I wish so far as possible to avoid debatable questions concerning the origin and ultimate meaning of art. But we {177} cannot proceed without agreeing on a use of terms. I shall attempt, therefore, to give a straightforward and empirical account of that which comes to be called art in the history of civilization.[1]

We have already had occasion to observe that from the very beginning life adapts the environment to its uses; that is, gives to matter and to mechanical processes a new form in which these fulfil interest.

Thus an area of land deforested and cultivated, or two stones so hewn and fitted as to afford a grinding surface, take on the imprint of the human need for food. Now such reorganizations of nature as the farm or the mill, however crude they may be, are works of art in the broadest sense. And in this same sense all the tools, furniture, and panoply of civilization, from the most primitive to the most highly evolved, whatever without exception owes its form to its fulfilment of an interest, may with entire propriety be called art.

In the great majority of cases the work of art after being made is _used_; that is, it becomes an instrument in the making of something else. Such art is called useful or _industrial art_. But it sometimes happens that the work of art is valued, not as an instrument in the ordinary practical sense, but simply as an object to be experienced.

In the Scriptural account of creation it is said that "G.o.d saw everything that he had {178} made, and, behold, it was good." When the products of activity are thus found good in the beholding of them they become works of _fine art_.

It would be improper sharply to divorce these two motives, or to make one any more original than the other. The interest in the exercise of the sensibilities, or other powers of apprehension, is doubtless as primitive as any of the special interests of the organism; and it is improbable that man ever made anything without getting some satisfaction from looking at it or handling it or feeling it. Commonly the same object is both useful and beautiful; as was the case with the primitive religious dance, which at the same time indulged a taste for rhythm and served as a means of propitiating the G.o.ds.

But the motive of fine art becomes clearer when it is purer. Objects are then made with explicit reference to the interest taken in apprehending them. I do not mean that they cannot on that account be useful, for without doubt utility itself contributes to beauty; but only that they owe their form primarily to the aesthetic interest. The motive of fine art in its purity appears when special materials are selected on account of their plasticity and their appeal to the more highly developed senses. Fine arts that employ one medium are now separated and perfected through the cultivation of expert proficiency.

{179} Thus there arise such arts as painting and music, one of which gives form to light and appeals to the eye, while the other gives form to sound and appeals to the ear. In this way society comes to acquire and acc.u.mulate objects which are designed, either wholly or in part, with reference to the special aesthetic interest. They are the creatures of this interest, and their place in life is determined by it. To understand their importance and to estimate their moral value it is therefore necessary to isolate this interest and examine it with some care.[2]

By the aesthetic interest I mean to refer to the interest that is taken in the work of fine art by the observer. There is undoubtedly a special interest in creation, but it is of relatively small importance.

Even the artist is controlled largely by the interest in observing his own work; and art is a serious social concern only because of its appeal to the unlimited number of persons who may enjoy it without having any hand in the making. Now, in the pa.s.sing allusion which I have made to the aesthetic interest, I have already used the term which is most convenient for purposes of general definition. The aesthetic interest is _the interest in apprehension_. What I mean by this will become clear when I compare it with two other interests which may also be taken in the content of experience. There is, in the first {180} place, what is called the practical interest, that is, the interest in an object on account of what can be done with it by manipulation or combination with other objects. Secondly, there is the theoretical interest in the structure of reality, manifesting itself in the exploration of the object and its context. Now the interest in apprehension is not an interest in what can be done with the object, nor in its real structure, but in _the present conscious reaction to it_. One may take all three of these interests in the same object.

Thus if I pluck the flower and take it home to my wife, I give evidence of a practical interest in it; if I kneel down and examine it carefully, I suggest the botanist; while if I continue to gaze at it where it lies, it would appear that I enjoy simply looking at it. It is this interest simply in looking at things, in just the perceiving, feeling, thinking, or imagining them, that I mean to sum up as the interest in apprehension, or the aesthetic interest. When objects excite this interest, when, that is, any state or process of consciousness of which they are the content tends to be prolonged for its own sake, they are said to be beautiful. And objects which are deliberately and artificially invested with a peculiar capacity to excite this interest are works of fine art.

I shall not undertake to explain the interest in apprehension further than to describe certain {181} typical forms which it a.s.sumes. These forms will serve not only to ill.u.s.trate its general meaning, but also to amplify that meaning in a manner that will prove important when we come to the discussion of moral questions. The forms which I shall mention are by no means exhaustive of the possible forms of the interest in apprehension, while the order that I shall follow is only roughly the order of increasing complexity.

There is, in the first place, an interest in _sensation_. I do not, of course, mean to a.s.sert that any state of purely sensuous enjoyment is possible; but only that the senses have a certain bias of their own which will modify every state in which they are called into play.

There is a delight of the eye and ear, a pleasantness to the touch, an agreeableness of taste and smell, wholly without reference to anything beyond. The arts which employ any of these senses must satisfy their bias, however much they may appeal to higher faculties; nothing which rankly offends them can by any possible means be made beautiful. Thus painting must be charming in color, and music in tone; and certain colors and tones are charming for no deeper reason than that which makes certain foods palatable.

The interest in _perception_[3] a.s.sumes special prominence in the great visual art of painting. For the process of perception is most elaborated {182} in connection with the sense of vision, this being peculiarly the human organ of watchfulness and orientation. The interest in perception is the interest in completing the sensation or rounding it into an object or situation with the aid of thought and imagination. In painting, as most commonly in life, the stimulus is visual--texture, perspective, or a quality of light.

The _emotional_ form of apprehension plays the predominant part in representations of human action, in music, and in the appreciation of nature. It is in this latter connection that we can, I think, best understand it; and I propose for purposes of ill.u.s.tration to record an experience of my own.

I walked one night on the deck of a steamer plying between New York and Bermuda, and gave myself up wholly to the aspect of nature. The moon shone brightly half-way between the horizon and zenith, and opened a path of light from where I stood to the uttermost distance. With half-closed eyes I watched the hard l.u.s.tre of the waves, or turned from this to the smooth roll of the foam turned up by the steamer's prow.

And I remember that I seemed to dwell upon these things with an instant relish, like that with which my lungs devoured the fresh and plentiful air. But when I looked towards the moon along the path of light, there was something that stirred me more deeply. The prospect of an endless journey opened {183} out before me, like an invitation to live, or a fulness of opportunity. And I seemed to leap in response, rejoicing in my power. But I did not act; it was as though I already achieved and possessed. Presently I turned from the path of light to the blackness that beset it on every side. In this blackness there seemed to lurk every kind of unknown danger; I was moved with a sense of helplessness, and shrank from the thought of being deserted there. And yet though I was afraid, the fear never seemed to _possess_ me, but always to be possessed _by_ me, as mine to prolong and exult in as I would.

Now I think that the interpretation of my dream is this. Deeply implanted in the organism are certain co-ordinated responses such as courage and fear, or such as love, hate, combativeness, pity, and emulation. They may owe their present form to habit, but they are all rooted in instinct, and so call the body into play as a unit.[4]

Primarily they are plans of action, through which the organism promptly deals with practical emergencies. But it is possible for man to detach himself from overt motor relations with his environment; and in this case these responses return as it were into the body and reverberate there, taking on a purely emotional form which may be valued for itself. Thus courage and fear may lead to no act of bravery or caution, but {184} remain simply _experiences_ of courage and fear, promoted and treasured by the imagination. Nature will probably remain the object which evokes these responses most keenly, because nature is the hereditary environment towards which they were originally directed.

But human action is scarcely less moving. Hence dramatic art, or the representation of social and moral confrontations, will both arouse and prolong the old pa.s.sions, thus evoking a deeper and more ma.s.sive response than the play of the senses.

I fully recognize that the value of dramatic art is by no means limited to its emotional appeal. I contend only that it does make such an appeal, and that it owes to that appeal, to its evoking of sympathy, love, or hate, to its stirring of incipient action, the peculiar intensity and reverberance of the enjoyment which it affords. The same holds true, I think, of poetry generally, where this deals with life.

The case of music is more doubtful. It is generally agreed that the enjoyment of music has never been adequately accounted for, albeit it is probably more ancient than man. But that music does arouse the great emotions, and owe its popularity mainly to that fact, can scarcely be questioned. It is only necessary to add that over and above this appeal, as well as its appeal to the ear and to an intellectual apprehension of its technical forms, it seems to {185} be capable of developing emotions of its own; that is, experiences which do not coincide with the instinctive emotions, but which have a like ma.s.siveness and organic reverberation. It may be, as Walter Pater insists, that in this respect "all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." [5] But this does not contradict the fact that such arts _are_ emotionally stimulating, will always stir men as men are capable of being stirred, and in society at large will make their main appeal to the fundamental and constant emotions, cultivating the enjoyment of love, fear, and the other elemental pa.s.sions for the very poignancy and thrill of them.

For the intellectual type of apprehension I propose to employ the term _discernment_. I mean the apprehension of an _idea_ when conveyed by some sensuous medium; the finding or recovery of some unity of thought in a perceptual context. When discernment in this sense is directly agreeable without any ulterior motive, it is a special case of the aesthetic interest. From this interest the representative or pictorial element in art derives its value.

Let me ill.u.s.trate my meaning by referring to what Taine says of Greek sculpture:

Here we have the living body, complete and without a veil, admired and glorified, standing on its pedestal without scandal and exposed to all eyes. {186} What is its purpose, and what idea, through sympathy, is the statue to convey to spectators? An idea which, to us, is almost without meaning because it belongs to another age and another epoch of the human mind. The head is without significance; unlike ours it is not a world of graduated conceptions, excited pa.s.sions, and a medley of sentiments; the face is not sunken, sharp, and disturbed; it has not many characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is generally in repose. . . . The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not require violent and surprising effects to stimulate weary attention or to irritate an uneasy sensibility. A blooming and healthy body, capable of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and n.o.ble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony of lines happily commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could dwell on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned to his organs and to his condition and endowed with every perfection within these limits; they demanded nothing more and nothing less; anything besides would have struck them as extravagance, deformity, or disease. Such is the circle within which the simplicity of their culture kept them.[6]

In other words, Greek art expressed the rare quality of Greek life; its naturalism, its compactness, its clearness. And it did so instinctively both to the artist and the spectator. We are not to think that because, in order to understand ancient art, it may be necessary for us first to obtain a conception of life and then to match it in art, this is essential to its appreciation. On the contrary, the object of art is not beautiful {187} until it flashes the idea upon us, communicating an ideal unity that is not intellectually articulate at all. This must always be the effect upon contemporaries, in whom the idea is so a.s.similated as to be unconscious. But the idea is there none the less; and the full beauty cannot exist for any one who is incapable of discerning the idea, and rejoicing in the apprehension of it.

The incomparable excellence of Greek sculpture is due to a type of genius in which clearness of mind and delicacy of touch are united.

Among the Greeks the term infinite was a term of disparagement; they thought roundly and cleanly, thus preferring ideas to vague surmises.

This was their first gift. And, adding to it a sensitiveness to form, they were enabled to _express themselves_, without redundancy and exaggeration, bringing whatever medium they employed into accord with the idea. It is this felicity and luminousness that gives to the art of the Greeks a peculiar appeal to the intelligence. For the mind delights in definiteness and light.

But the Greek conception of life belongs to an age preceding the advent of what has proved to be the European religion. And Christianity has so reconstructed the experience of the average man through its sensitiveness to pain, and its emphasis on what is called "the inner life," that I want further to ill.u.s.trate the meaning of {188} discernment in art, by referring to the representation of the spirit of the Renaissance in the painting of Leonardo da Vinci. I quote the following from Pater's description of "La Gioconda":

The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite pa.s.sions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek G.o.ddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has pa.s.sed. All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the human form, the animalism of Greece, the l.u.s.t of Rome, the reveries of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, which has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.[7]

The power of Renaissance painting is not wholly a matter of color, texture, modelling, and composition; for though it contains these and many {189} sensuous and perceptual values besides, it conveys through them with surpa.s.sing truth and delicacy ideas as evasive as they are subtle and profound. There is an ecstasy of mind in the discernment of these ideas, and a blend of emotion that follows in their train, both of which are conditioned by insight; that is, by a process that is neither sensuous, perceptual, nor emotional merely, but, in an additional sense, intellectual.

The interest in apprehension may thus be exhibited and satisfied in divers ways, differing according to the special processes of consciousness which they call into play. And while it may be crude or cultivated, it is safe to say that in all of its modes it is present to some degree in every individual human life. The simple-minded person who hisses the villain of the melodrama, and he who takes pleasure in the inevitableness of the Greek tragedy, are exhibiting the same interest in the emotions evoked by the spectacle of life. There is only a difference of training and sophistication between the man who enjoys a cheap chromo for the color or the "likeness," and one who appreciates Velasquez's treatment of light or the characterization of Franz Hals.

In the enjoyment of the highest forms of art these various modes of apprehension will be united, each so contributing to the enhancement of the {190} rest that it is impossible sharply to divide them. Nor do I venture any opinion as to which of these modes, if any, is fundamental in the different arts or in fine art as a whole. It is sufficient for our purposes to know that art does exercise and develop human nature in all of these ways.

We are now in a position to define a programme of criticism. Art thrives because it fulfils a complex and multiform interest. It is supported by an interest which it supplies with its proper objects.

Hence it falls within the circle of life where questions of prudence, justice, and good-will are paramount. But, because moral considerations must thus in the nature of the case take precedence over purely aesthetic considerations, this proves nothing whatsoever concerning the way in which this precedence should be established. It was Plato's belief that society should employ a rigorous censorship, and banish the offending poet: