VIII. BEAUTY AND THE CULTURE OF
THE SPIRIT
“It is important, at the present time, to bear in mind that the human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.
It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. Would you realize the difference? Animals exist, man lives.”
—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 295.
The life of appreciation.—Art appealing to the whole man—intellect, emotion, imagination. Hence difficulty in endeavoring to put the meaning of art into terms of the intellect. How we appreciate much that we never understand. The joy of life depending largely on appreciation. Compare how life is always in advance of the theory of life. The three aspects of the life of appreciation: beauty, love, faith. The sense in which wisdom also belongs to appreciation.
Contrasting significance of art and philosophy. The reason for the permanent value of every great work of art. The test of an artistic masterpiece its power to grow with our growth, revealing new deeps as we bring the key of enlarged experience to its interpretation.
The nature of beauty.—The fact that beauty belongs to the life of appreciation as explaining the difficulty in defining beauty. Possible to define the relations upon which beauty depends rather than beauty itself.
The relation of habit and custom in the appreciation of beauty. Evidence of a conventional element in changes of taste and standard in reference both to Nature and the arts.
The relation of the parts to the whole in Nature or art; and the relation of an organism or a thing made to the function it is to fulfil. Contrast deformity and beauty. The sublimity of a great machine.
The deeper relation of body to soul, of form to content, as a determining principle of beauty. Beauty depending less upon what is sensuously pleasing, than upon adequate and harmonious expression, the perfect marrying of body and soul.
Still deeper relation behind all appreciation of beauty. The rhythm or harmony that inevitably exists between man’s sensibilities and the Nature-world in relation to which these senses have been evolved. Since all forms utilized in the arts are drawn finally from Nature, this principle behind all appreciation of beauty in the arts as well as in Nature.
Unity of the life of appreciation. Hence all cultivation of the true response to beauty deepening and refining the life of love and of religion.
Nature and art.—The two worlds of beauty; each possessing its own superiority. Identity of form and content in the beauty of Nature; living and everchanging character of Nature. Hence the healing, resting and exalting power of Nature in ministering to the spirit of man. On the other hand, the soul in Nature dumb and brooding; carried to clear and conscious expression through human art. Art as Nature and life put through the spectrum of man’s mind and heart. Compare a Corot painting with a bit of Nature; a portrait by Titian or Rembrandt with a human face. Thus the ministration of art to the human spirit: in calming and exalting; in giving widened relation to Nature and life, developing power to see; in inspiring action.
Opportunities for the appreciation of beauty.—The wealth of natural beauty poured out abundantly on every hand. Tendency to ignore or fail to see the beauty of Nature just because it is so universal and accessible. Need to put oneself in the way of beauty; to leave room for the heaven of the unexpected.
If the beauty of art is less accessible, nevertheless far more than is utilized and enjoyed. Compare in poetry, painting, music. The current attitude toward museums of art and opportunities in music.
The conscious study of beauty.—Not enough to give oneself opportunities for enjoying beauty. Compare the people who live close to Nature without seeing her beauty; who wander aimlessly through art galleries and sit unappreciatively through an evening of great music because it is the fashion. Need of conscious study of beauty as a means toward appreciation.
The method of the conscious study of beauty in Nature and the arts. Need to isolate and analyze. The ways by which one may escape convention and react freshly on the appeal of beauty. The active questioning which the student should employ. The deepened conscious appreciation which results from such study. The greater value of a little of such direct and active study over much reading of art criticism and theory.
Some expression necessary to complete such study. Various forms that may be employed. The value of keeping a book of reflections in which to formulate and record one’s study and appreciation.
The value of art for the artist.—The ministry of beauty fulfilled in the supreme way for the creative artist. Clarifying and exalting influence of art upon the artist. Development in him of power to see and to achieve. Illustrations in great masters such as Michael Angelo and Dante. Thus for the artist supremely as for the student in lesser degree, art for life’s sake.
Art and daily life.—Need that each human being should be an artist: this possible in the supreme art of living. Thus need to identify beauty and use: to make one’s vocation, one’s environment, one’s relationships art in the highest sense. How then every part and aspect of life would be the adequate and harmonious expression and interpretation of some phase of man’s life and experience in true relation to the whole.
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Supreme Art is the region of Equals. There is no primacy among masterpieces.”
—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 40.
“The technical work of our time, which is done to an unprecedented perfection, has, by increasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the favourites of fortune a choice between more leisure and culture upon the one side, and additional luxury and good living, but with increased activity, upon the other; and, true to their character, they choose the latter, and prefer champagne to freedom.”
—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 141.
“The capacity of the sublime is one of the noblest aptitudes of man. Beauty is useful, but does not go beyond man. The sublime applies to the pure spirit. The sublime must be joined to the beautiful to complete the æsthetic education, and to enlarge man’s heart beyond the sensuous world.”
—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 141.
“Let us remember the prompter, very delicately and genially drawn by Goethe in a few touches, who is so much moved at certain places that he weeps hot tears; yet ‘it is, strictly speaking, not the so-called moving places that affect him so, but the beautiful places from which the pure genius of the poet, so to speak, looks out from bright, open eyes.’ In the case of persons of a predominantly tender, ardent disposition we not seldom meet this phenomenon. A beautiful poem, a sublime scene in nature—nay, the narration of a good deed, moves them to tears. And history tells us of the noble Saladin, who was a warlike hero, that the narration of great deeds and simple touching occurrences often moved him also to tears. It can hardly be assumed that a warlike hero is the possessor of weak nerves. What have these grayish-white threads to do at all with the eternal ideas of the Good and the Beautiful? The emotion of which we have just spoken is something better than mere nervous irritation; it is a higher kind of homesickness, which attacks us when the ideas of the Good and the Beautiful suddenly appear before us and remind us of our eternal home.”
—Ambros, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, pp. 42, 43.
“We leave a grand musical performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem with a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an awakened understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune moment who attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high musical enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life after a high poetical enjoyment, or to kindle our imagination and astonish our feelings directly after inspecting a fine statue or edifice. The reason of this is, that music, by its matter, even when most spiritual, presents a greater affinity with the senses than is permitted by aesthetic liberty; it is because even the most happy poetry, having for its medium the arbitrary and contingent play of the imagination, always shares in it more than the intimate necessity of the really beautiful allows; it is because the best sculpture touches on severe science by what is determinate in its conception. However, these particular affinities are lost in proportion as the works of these three kinds of art rise to a greater elevation, and it is a natural and necessary consequence of their perfection, that, without confounding their objective limits, the different arts come to resemble each other more and more, in the action which they exercise on the mind. At its highest degree of ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us with the calm power of an antique statue; in its most elevated perfection, the plastic art ought to become music and move us by the immediate action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most complete development, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light. In each art, the perfect style consists exactly in knowing how to remove specific limits, while sacrificing at the same time the particular advantages of the art, and to give it by a wise use of what belongs to it specially a more general character.”
—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, pp. 90, 91.
“When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mold, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has an eye to see it.”
—Plato, Republic, book III, section 402.
“The amphora which refuses to go to the fountain deserves the hisses of the water-pots.”
—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 319.
“The true artist has no pride; unhappily he realizes that art has no limitations, he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and while perhaps he is admired by others, he grieves that he has not yet reached the point where the better genius shall shine before him like a distant sun.”
—Beethoven, in Kerst, Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, p. 49.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Define the respective functions of art and philosophy in relation to the human spirit.
2. Compare in significance and relative value, beauty in Nature and in human art.
3. Can beauty exist without definite and limited form?
4. What does creative expression in art do for the artist?
5. Is it possible to define beauty satisfactorily?
6. Sum up all the elements and relations involved in the appreciation of beauty.
7. What end and aim is evident in the creation of all great art?
8. In what ways does the beauty of Nature and of art minister to the spirit of man?
9. What should be the relation of art to daily life?
10. How can life be made a fine art?
REFERENCES
Carpenter, Angels’ Wings. Dwight, Intellectual Influence of Music; Music as a Means of Culture. Eastman, Musical Education and Musical Art. Emerson, Art (in Essays, first series, pp. 325-343); Art (in Society and Solitude, pp. 39-59). Gurney, The Power of Sound. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life. Hand, Æsthetics of Musical Art. Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art. Holden, Audiences. Lanier, Music and Poetry. Mabie, Nature and Culture. Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art. Parry, The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life. Partridge, Art for America. Plato, Republic, books II. and III. Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty. Raymond, Essentials of Æsthetics. Schiller, Essays. Surette and Mason, The Appreciation of Music. Tolstoy, What is Art? Wagner, Art Life and Theories of.
SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS
“You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not rightly understand.”
—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 58.
Dealing, as this course does, with the material of four great arts, there is no limit to the work the student may do in connection with it. The most significant point is to recognize that a little first-hand study of works of art is worth more than a vast amount of reading of criticism and theory of art. The best preparation for the course is to select a few works of art in each of the four fields and study them carefully; analyzing rigorously the effect each produces on the student’s senses, emotions and intellect; seeking to discover the means by which that effect is produced; and endeavoring to define what part or aspect of man’s life and reaction on Nature finds expression and interpretation in each artistic creation studied. The student must formulate his own questioning and work with a mind consistently active, not passive.
This is merely demanding in the field of the arts the same direct inductive study of the material given, that is universally recognized to-day as the only sound method in every field of science. It is surprising how a little of such study will clarify the field of art. Works drop quickly into place, each is understood in relation to others and to the common background of human experience in both significance and beauty. This intellectual result is, however, not all; indeed, it is the less important consequence of the work. The great gain is in deepened appreciation. The student turns to fresh works of art with a multiplied power to respond to the appeal of each masterpiece. Thus is his life widened and deepened in relation to man and Nature, and blessed with the joy that beauty gives.
The reading of such books as are given in the following list should be subordinated to the work above outlined, and should be used to clarify and stimulate the student’s own thinking, following the direct study of the works of art themselves.
The material in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, giving as it does brief but complete works of art selected from widely different men and epochs should be used throughout the course to represent the art of poetry. Where a gallery of painting and sculpture is not accessible to the student, photographic reproductions (obtainable to-day at insignificant price) of the works mentioned in the outlines and lists of topics should be obtained and carefully studied. In music the student should utilize with loving care such opportunities as he can find or make available.