The Moral Economy Part 11

We will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as he is in our State--the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city.[8]

But there is another way of protecting society from whatever may be the evil effects of art, and that is to educate the individual and the {191} community in their use of art. This would mean, in place of a regulation of the supply, a regulation of the demand. It would mean that the aesthetic interest itself, like every other interest within the moral economy, should be so controlled as to make it as conducive as possible to health and abundance of life. The exercise or cultivation of the interest in art would then, like the love of nature or of social intercourse, be unlimited so far as its objects were concerned, but limited through its relation to other interests within the individual or community purpose. But with this difference concerning the proper remedy, the present inquiry will coincide in its intent and presuppositions with that model of all moral criticisms, the _Republic_ of Plato. What are the possibilities for life of this aesthetic interest or love of art? How is it liable to abuse or excess? What is its bearing on other interests, and how far does it tend to make life gracious and happy, without destroying its balance or compromising its truth? These are the questions on which I hope that I may be able to throw some light by calling attention to the following characteristics possessed by the aesthetic interest: _self-sufficiency, pervasiveness, vicariousness, stimulation of action, fixation of ideas,_ and _liberality_.[9]

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III

It has long been pointed out that the aesthetic interest, unlike the bodily appet.i.tes, is _self-sufficient_, in that it is capable of being evenly sustained. It depends on no antecedent craving, and has no definite periodic limit of satiety. It engages the capacities that are, on the whole, the most docile and the least liable to progressive fatigue, while through its own internal variety it is guarded against monotony. Consequently the aesthetic interest is peculiarly capable of being continued and developed through a lifetime, providing a constant and increasing source of satisfaction.

Furthermore, the aesthetic interest is resourceful, easily supplying itself with the objects which it uses. It follows that it contributes to independence, being like the "speculative activity" of Aristotle,[10] in giving the individual a means of happiness in himself without the aid of his fellows or the favor of fortune. Since the aesthetic interest is in these ways self-sufficient, its continuous return of good being guaranteed, it is one of the safest of investments.

But every special interest is a source of danger in direct proportion to its isolation. Its very self-sufficiency may serve to promote a narrow concentration, a blindness to ulterior interests {193} and wider possibilities. This undue dwelling on the given material of life may, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, attach to any interest; but the aesthetic interest is peculiarly liable to it. This is due to the fact that, in so far as an object appeals to the aesthetic interest, it tends not to develop, but to retain some fixed aspect in which the apprehension of it is agreeable. The various practical interests ramify indefinitely through the dynamic relations of objects, and through the handling of objects common to a variety of interests. Once engaged in what is called "active life" one tends to be drawn into the main current of enterprise and made aware of the larger issues. And the theoretical interest also tends to lead beyond itself; for it prompts the mind to examine the whole nature of objects, and to explore their context without limit in the hope of completer truth. But the aesthetic interest readily acquires equilibrium, and feels no inducement to leave off an activity which, though its limits may be narrow, is free and continuous within them. Plato accused art of being essentially imitative, and so of confirming the vulgar respect for the surface aspect of things.[11] It is truer, I think, to say that the aesthetic interest is quiescent, tending to perpetuate experience in any form that is found pleasant, and without respect either to practical exigencies or to the order of truth. {194} Hence this interest on account of its very self-sufficiency offers a pa.s.sive resistance to the formal principles of moral organization--to prudence, purpose, justice, and good-will.

IV

The aesthetic interest is the good genius of the powers of apprehension, making them fruitful in their own kind. Now the powers of apprehension are engaged during all the waking hours, and if they can be taught to mediate a good of their own, that good will _pervade_ the whole of life. It is through the cultivation of the aesthetic interest that there is most hope of redeeming the waste places, of giving to intervals and accidental juxtapositions some graciousness and profit. With all the world to see and contemplate, and with the eye and mind wherewith to contemplate them, there is a limitless abundance of good things always and everywhere available. Let me quote Arthur Benson's account of this discovery:

The world was full of surprises; trees drooped their leaves over screening walls, houses had backs as well as fronts; music was heard from shuttered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. There were a thousand pretty secrets in the ways of people to each other. Then, too, there were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied wall. One had but to clap one's hands and cry out, and there was a fluttering {195} of innumerable wings; life was as full of bubbles, forming, rising into amber foam, as a gla.s.s of sparkling wine.[12]

To this delight which the casual environment affords a sensitive observer, art may add through a decorous furnishing of city and house.

Or the instruments of other interests may be made to give pleasure of themselves, so that there may be no long periods of deferred reward.

Thus to the hire of manual labor may be added the immediate compensation which comes from a love of the tools, or from the satisfaction taken in the aspect of work done; to physical exercise may be added the love of nature, to scholarship the love of scientific form, and to social intercourse the love of personal beauty or of conversation. In these ways, and in countless ways beside, the aesthetic interest may multiply the richness of life.

Society is, on the whole, protected against the danger of overemphasis on the aesthetic interest, through the habitual subordination of it in public opinion to standards of efficiency. Men commonly believe, and are justified in so believing, that a life delivered wholly to the aesthetic interest is frivolous; amusing itself with "bubbles" and "amber foam," while supported by a community in whose graver and more urgent concerns it takes no part. Probably no one has {196} done more than Pater to persuade men of the present generation that it is worth while to "catch at any exquisite pa.s.sion, . . . or any stirring of the senses"; and yet he is not a prophet in our day. Is it possibly because in that same famous conclusion to the _Renaissance_ he said, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end," [13]

and thus exposed himself to misunderstanding, if not to refutation, at the hands of any one of average moral enlightenment? The moral lesson is one that none have escaped, and that only a few are permitted to forget. This lesson has taught with unvarying reiteration that acts are to be judged by their consequences; that all purposes are constructive, and so far as wise fitted into the building of civilization; that experience itself, in Pater's sense, is possible only as a fruit of experience. A life in which the aesthetic interest unduly dominates, in which action is trans.m.u.ted into pulses of sensation, and the means of efficiency into the ends of contemplation, is an idle life, protected from the consequences of its own impotency only by the constructive labor of others. He who from prolonged gazing at the spoon forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be subst.i.tuted for vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose with decay.

V

It has always been recognized that there is a peculiar ma.s.siveness or depth in aesthetic satisfaction, as though it somehow carried with it the satisfaction of all interests. And this is not due merely to the fact that other interests tend to fall away or remit their claims; it is due besides to the fact that other interests may in a sense actually be fulfilled in the aesthetic interest. In other words, this interest serves a vicarious function, trans.m.u.ting other interests into its own form, and then affording them a fulfilment which they are incapable of attaining when exercised in their own right.

This occurs when other interests, such as love or personal ambition, are imagined or represented, and thus made objects of agreeable apprehension. There is in this a compensation for failure, without which life would be stripped of one of its main barriers against despair. Those whom circ.u.mstance has provided no opportunity for the fulfilment of interests so ingenerate as maternal love or heroic action, may, in a way, make themselves whole {198} through the contemplation of these things; for the contemplation of them engages the same instincts, arouses the same emotions, but without requiring the existence of their objects. The prolongation of arduous and uncertain effort is compensated through the imaginative antic.i.p.ation of success, or through the apprehension of some symbol of perfect fruition. It is through this happy illumination of struggle with a vision of fulfilment, that mankind is reconciled to such tasks as civilization and spiritual wholeness; tasks in which great efforts produce small results, and of which the end is not seen.

Now it remains true, of course, that such vicarious fulfilment is not real fulfilment; and to suppose it to be, is one of the most serious errors for which the aesthetic interest is responsible. The man who, with clenched hands and quickened pulse, is watching some image of himself as it triumphs over obstacles and arrives at the summit of his ambition, may and doubtless does _feel_ like Alexander, but he nevertheless has not conquered the world; and if he thinks he has, he will probably never conquer any of it. It must be remembered that the vicarious aesthetic fulfilment of interests is the easiest fulfilment of them; and that it may, therefore, become a form of self-indulgence and a source of false complacency. A sanguine imagination is one of the {199} chief causes of worldly failure; an exaggerated interest in representations of virtue is a common cause of irresponsibility and of hypocrisy. William James, in a pa.s.sage that is frequently quoted, calls attention also to the danger of acquiring a chronic emotionality.

The weeping of a Russian lady over the fict.i.tious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale.

Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pa.s.s without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards in _some_ active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world--speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers--but let it not fail to take place.[14]

But not only is it possible through the exaggeration of the aesthetic interest to subst.i.tute apparent achievement for real achievement; it is possible to extract solace from the contemplation of failure itself.

Is there any one who has not met the man who is actually made buoyant by his consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless, though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale, precisely the same att.i.tude is the commonest thing in the world, and is fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic, sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.

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VI

That a beautiful object commonly _stimulates_ a motor response is beyond question. Even when it does not appeal to any definite emotion it is _generally_ stimulating, through its affording to the natural powers at some point an unusual harmony with their environment. And when there is a definite emotional appeal, there is a tendency to act.

For, as we have seen, originally the fundamental emotions were all co-ordinated reactions to the environment, enlisting the whole organism to cope with some practical emergency. That the emotions should become _mere_ emotions is due to the modification of instinct by habit.

Whatever, then, arouses the emotions does in some degree stir to action. So that one of the most important moral uses of art is its alliance with other interests in order to intensify their appeal, in order to make them more instantly moving. Art is a means of enlivening dormant impulses; as music is a means of rekindling the love of country or the love of G.o.d, so that men may be brought to take up arms with enthusiasm or endure reverses without complaint.

But this motor excitement which art stimulates may be morally indeterminate; that is, it may be capable of being discharged in any way that accident or bias may select. In other words, {202} art may communicate power without controlling its use, thus merely increasing the disorder and instability of life. Or it may serve to exaggerate the appeal of the present interest, until it becomes ungovernable and obscures ulterior interests. This tendency to promote dissoluteness is the most serious charge which Plato brings against the arts. After referring to the unseemly hilarity to which men are incited by the comic stage, he adds:

And the same may be said of l.u.s.t and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure which are held to be inseparable from every action--in all of them poetry feeds and waters the pa.s.sions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule instead of ruling them as they ought to be ruled, with a view to the happiness and virtue of mankind.[15]

In an earlier pa.s.sage Plato discusses types of music in relation to action, the Lydian which is sorrowful, and the Ionian which is indolent; showing that selection must be made if men are not to be at the mercy of random influences. It is not necessary, as Plato would have it, to banish Lydian and Ionian harmonies from society; but within one's personal economy, within the republic of one's own soul, one must prefer with Plato those stirrings of the emotions which support and re-enforce one's moral purpose:

Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, which will sound the word or note {203} which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stem resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade G.o.d by prayer, or man by instruction and advice. . . . These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.[16]

VII

Where art is not employed directly to incite action, it may still be indirectly conducive to action through _fixing_ ideas and inclining the sentiments towards them. This is probably its most important moral function. The ideas which are of the greatest significance for conduct are ideas which receive no adequate embodiment in the objects of nature. Every broad purpose and developed ideal requires the exercise of the constructive imagination. But the immediate images of the imagination are fluctuating and transient, and need to be supported through being embodied in some enduring medium. Thus monuments serve as emblems of nationality; or, as in the thirteenth century, all the arts may unite to represent and suggest the objects of religious {204} faith. Poetry and song have always served as means of incarnating the more delicate shadings of a racial ideal; and every man would be a poet if he could, and trace the outline of that hope which stirs him and which is not the hope of any other man.

But it must be made clear that art does more than make ideas definite and permanent. It inclines the sentiments towards them. The great power of art lies in its function of making ideas alluring. Now whatever is loved or admired is, in the long run, sought out, imitated, and served. Understanding this, the ancient Athenians sought to educate the pa.s.sions, and employed music to that end. This is Aristotle's justification of such a course:

Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and n.o.ble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance and of virtues and vices in general, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.[17]

The simple and incontestable truth of these statements is a standing condemnation of the {205} usual environment of youth. Virtue consists, as much as it ever did, "in rejoicing and loving and hating aright"; but the guidance of these sentiments to their proper objects is left almost wholly to chance. It is by making the good also beautiful, by illuminating the modes of virtue with jewels, and endearing them to the imagination, that the moral reason may be re-enforced from early days by high spirits. It should be a task of education, using this means either in the home or the school or the city at large, to inculcate a right habit of admiration.

If art is to serve a moral end in fixing and embellishing ideas, it must be _true_. What I mean by this most important qualification I must now endeavor to make plain. Art, in so far as it is a means of representation, deals either with physical nature, as in landscape and figure painting, or with types and incidents of human life, as in dramatic painting and in the greater part of poetry. In either case it may, like thought, either reflect or distort the structure of reality.

Now the real structure of human life is moral; consisting only in a variety of instances of the one law that _the wages of sin is death_.

To represent life otherwise is to falsify it, precisely as to represent bodies without solidity and gravity is to falsify physical nature. But in representing physical nature art does not, as science does, {206} formulate merely its geometrical or dynamical skeleton; to do so would be contrary to the intent of art to represent things in their perceptual concreteness. Similarly art does not represent abstract virtues. Nevertheless, if it is not to depart from the truth art must, at the same time that it conveys the color and vividness of life, also conform to its proper laws, and demonstrate the consequences of action as they are. And the same standard of clearness and fidelity, which requires that great art shall reveal nature as it is, not to the superficial or imitative observer but to the thoughtful and penetrating mind, requires also that it shall throw into relief the profounder and more universal forces of life.

Great art, therefore, is of necessity enlightening. But it is possible that untruth should parade in the dress and under the auspices of art, and so work to the confusion of the moral consciousness. If art were only realistic in the full sense, an unequivocal representation of the laws of life, it would invariably justify and support the moral will; it would be idealistic. It is the art of desultory and irresponsible fancy that is a source of danger. There is a species of romantic art that is guarded by its very excess of fantasy; it being impossible to mistake it for a representation of life. But where romantic art is not thus clear in its motive, it becomes what is called "sensational" {207} art, in which the wages of sin are not paid; in which imprudence, infidelity, and a mean ambition are made to yield success, freedom, and glorious achievement. The realities are violated, with the consequence that resolve is weakened and the intelligence bewildered.

Since art may be true or untrue, it may also be universal or particular, profound or superficial, in its apprehension of reality.

This difference has operated to define a scale of importance in art, so far as the interest of society is concerned. There is at least a measure of truth in Taine's graduated scale by which he estimates the greatness of art according as it represents the fashion of the day, the type of the generation, the type of the age, the type of the race, or man himself in his immutable nature.[18] That art will be the most effective instrument of moral enlightenment which reflects the experience of mankind in the basal and constant virtues, giving quality and distinction to truths which might otherwise suffer from their very homeliness and familiarity.

There is a kindred consideration to which Tolstoy, undiscerning as he is in most of his criticism of art, has very justly called attention.

In the broad sense, art is liable to untruth from reflecting exclusively the bias of a certain temperament. The following description {208} of a cla.s.s of contemporary dramas is not wholly inapt:

They either represent an architect, who for some reason has not fulfilled his former high resolves and in consequence of this climbs on the roof of a house built by him and from there flies down headlong; or some incomprehensible old woman, who raises rats and for some unknown reason takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns it; or some blind people, who, sitting at the sea-sh.o.r.e, for some reason all the time repeat one and the same thing; or a bell which flies into a lake and there keeps ringing.[19]

That a tendency to cultivate acquaintance with the curious and rare, and communicate it to a narrow group of initiated persons, is characteristic of modern times, and that on the whole it is a symptom of decadence, Tolstoy has, I believe, proved. At any rate, the effect of such a tendency in art can not fail to be morally injurious, since life is not represented proportionately. Art has much to do with the vogue and prestige of ideas. Thus, for example, though the problem-play may be faithful to life where it deals with life, if the stage be given over wholly to this form of drama, there will almost inevitably result a false conception of the degree to which the incidents selected are representative of social conditions on the whole.

There is one further source of moral error in connection with this function of art. Because art can not only fix ideas but also make them {209} alluring, it may invest them with a fict.i.tious value. I refer to what is only a different aspect of that sentimentalism or chronic emotionalism to which I have already called attention. Not only is it possible that men should be brought through the aesthetic interest to replace action with emotion; they may also persuade themselves that the higher principles of life owe their validity to some quality that is discerned immediately in the apprehension of them. But purpose, justice, and good-will are essentially principles of organization; their virtue is their provident working. To regard them only as images with a value inhering in their bare essence, is to forfeit their benefits. Verbalism, formalism, mysticism, are given a certain false charm and semblance of self-sufficiency by the cultivation and exercise of the aesthetic interest. Hence morality and religion must here resist its enticements, and never cease to remind themselves that theirs is the task of acknowledging all interests according to their real inwardness, and of banishing cruelty and blindness in their behalf.