A Christian's conflicts and conquests, p. 459.
By the devil we are to understand that apostate spirit which fell from God, and is always designing to hale down others from God also. The Old Dragon (mentioned in the Revelation) with his tail drew down the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
(Ib. p. 463.)
When we say, the devil is continually busy with us, I mean not only some apostate spirit as one particular being, but that spirit of apostacy which is lodged in all men's natures; and this may seem particularly to be aimed at in this place, if we observe the context: as the scripture speaks of Christ not only as a particular person, but as a divine principle in holy souls. Indeed the devil is not only the name of one particular thing, but a nature.
Man communicates by articulation of sounds, and paramountly by
the memory in the ear; nature by the impression of bounds and
surfaces on the eye, and through the eye it gives significance
and appropriation, and thus the conditions of memory, or the
capability of being remembered, to sounds, smells, &c. Now Art,
used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and
music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and
man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of
infusing the thoughts and passions of man into every thing which
is the object of his contemplation; colour, form, motion and
sound are the elements which it combines, and it stamps them into
unity in the mould of a moral idea.
The primary art is writing; primary, if we regard the
purpose abstracted from the different modes of realizing it,
those steps of progression of which the instances are still
visible in the lower degrees of civilization. First, there is
mere gesticulation; then rosaries or wampun; then
picture-language; then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic
letters. These all consist of a translation of man into nature,
of a substitution of the visible for the audible.
The so called music of savage tribes as little deserves the name
of art for the understanding as the ear warrants it for music.
Its lowest state is a mere expression of passion by sounds which
the passion itself necessitates; the highest amounts to no
more than a voluntary reproduction of these sounds in the absence
of the occasioning causes, so as to give the pleasure of
contrast, for example, by the various outcries of battle in
the song of security and triumph. Poetry also is purely human;
for all its materials are from the mind, and all its products are
for the mind. But it is the apotheosis of the former state, in
which by excitement of the associative power passion itself
imitates order, and the order resulting produces a pleasurable
passion, and thus it elevates the mind by making its feelings the
object of its reflexion. So likewise, whilst it recalls the
sights and sounds that had accompanied the occasions of the
original passions, poetry impregnates them with an interest not
their own by means of the passions, and yet tempers the passion
by the calming power which all distinct images exert on the human
soul. In this way poetry is the preparation for art, inasmuch as
it avails itself of the forms of nature to recall, to express,
and to modify the thoughts and feelings of the mind. Still,
however, poetry can only act through the intervention of
articulate speech, which is so peculiarly human, that in all
languages it constitutes the ordinary phrase by which man and
nature are contradistinguished. It is the original force of the
word 'brute,' and even 'mute,' and 'dumb' do not convey the
absence of sound, but the absence of articulated sounds.
As soon as the human mind is intelligibly addressed by an outward
image exclusively of articulate speech, so soon does art
commence. But please to observe that I have laid particular
stress on the words 'human mind,' meaning to exclude
thereby all results common to man and all other sentient
creatures, and consequently confining myself to the effect
produced by the congruity of the animal impression with the
reflective powers of the mind; so that not the thing presented,
but that which is re-presented by the thing shall be the source
of the pleasure. In this sense nature itself is to a religious
observer the art of God; and for the same cause art itself might
be defined as of a middle quality between a thought and a thing,
or as I said before, the union and reconciliation of that which
is nature with that which is exclusively human. It is the figured
language of thought, and is distinguished from nature by the
unity of all the parts in one thought or idea. Hence nature
itself would give us the impression of a work of art if we could
see the thought which is present at once in the whole and in
every part; and a work of art will be just in proportion as it
adequately conveys the thought, and rich in proportion to the
variety of parts which it holds in unity.
If, therefore, the term 'mute' be taken as opposed not to sound
but to articulate speech, the old definition of painting will in
fact be the true and best definition of the Fine Arts in general,
that is, muta poesis, mute poesy, and so of course poesy.
And, as all languages perfect themselves by a gradual process of
desynonymizing words originally equivalent, I have cherished the
wish to use the word 'poesy' as the generic or common term, and
to distinguish that species of poesy which is not muta
poesis by its usual name 'poetry;' while of all the other
species which collectively form the Fine Arts, there would remain
this as the common definition, that they all, like poetry,
are to express intellectual purposes, thoughts, conceptions, and
sentiments which have their origin in the human mind, not,
however, as poetry does, by means of articulate speech, but as
nature or the divine art does, by form, colour, magnitude,
proportion, or by sound, that is, silently or musically.
Well! it may be said but who has ever thought otherwise? We
all know that art is the imitatress of nature. And, doubtless,
the truths which I hope to convey would be barren truisms, if all
men meant the same by the words 'imitate' and 'nature.' But it
would be flattering mankind at large, to presume that such is the
fact. First, to imitate. The impression on the wax is not an
imitation, but a copy, of the seal; the seal itself is an
imitation. But, further, in order to form a philosophic
conception, we must seek for the kind, as the heat in ice,
invisible light, &c. whilst, for practical purposes, we must have
reference to the degree. It is sufficient that philosophically we
understand that in all imitation two elements must coexist, and
not only coexist, but must be perceived as coexisting. These two
constituent elements are likeness and unlikeness, or sameness and
difference, and in all genuine creations of art there must be a
union of these disparates. The artist may take his point of view
where he pleases, provided that the desired effect be perceptibly
produced, that there be likeness in the difference,
difference in the likeness, and a reconcilement of both in one.
If there be likeness to nature without any check of difference,
the result is disgusting, and the more complete the delusion, the
more loathsome the effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as
wax-work figures of men and women, so disagreeable? Because, not
finding the motion and the life which we expected, we are shocked
as by a falsehood, every circumstance of detail, which before
induced us to be interested, making the distance from truth more
palpable. You set out with a supposed reality and are
disappointed and disgusted with the deception; whilst, in respect
to a work of genuine imitation, you begin with an acknowledged
total difference, and then every touch of nature gives you the
pleasure of an approximation to truth. The fundamental principle
of all this is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood and the love
of truth inherent in the human breast. The Greek tragic dance
rested on these principles, and I can deeply sympathize in
imagination with the Greeks in this favourite part of their
theatrical exhibitions, when I call to mind the pleasure I felt
in beholding the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii most
exquisitely danced in Italy to the music of Cimarosa.
Secondly, as to nature. We must imitate nature! yes, but what in
nature, all and every thing? No, the beautiful in nature.
And what then is the beautiful? What is beauty? It is, in the
abstract, the unity of the manifold, the coalescence of the
diverse; in the concrete, it is the union of the shapely
(formosum) with the vital. In the dead organic it depends
on regularity of form, the first and lowest species of which is
the triangle with all its modifications, as in crystals,
architecture, &c.; in the living organic it is not mere
regularity of form, which would produce a sense of formality;
neither is it subservient to any thing beside itself. It may be
present in a disagreeable object, in which the proportion of the
parts constitutes a whole; it does not arise from association, as
the agreeable does, but sometimes lies in the rupture of
association; it is not different to different individuals and
nations, as has been said, nor is it connected with the ideas of
the good, or the fit, or the useful. The sense of beauty is
intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure
without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to, interest.
If the artist copies the mere nature, the natura naturata,
what idle rivalry? If he proceeds only from a given form, which
is supposed to answer to the notion of beauty, what an emptiness,
what an unreality there always is in his productions, as in
Cipriani's pictures! Believe me, you must master the essence, the
natura naturans, which presupposes a bond between nature
in the higher sense and the soul of man.
The wisdom in nature is distinguished from that in man by the
co-instantaneity of the plan and the execution; the thought and
the product are one, or are given at once; but there is no reflex
act, and hence there is no moral responsibility. In man there is
reflexion, freedom, and choice; he is, therefore, the head of the
visible creation. In the objects of nature are presented, as in a
mirror, all the possible elements, steps, and processes of
intellect antecedent to consciousness, and therefore to the full
development of the intelligential act; and man's mind is the very
focus of all the rays of intellect which are scattered throughout
the images of nature. Now so to place these images, totalized,
and fitted to the limits of the human mind, as to elicit from,
and to superinduce upon, the forms themselves the moral
reflexions to which they approximate, to make the external
internal, the internal external, to make nature thought, and
thought nature, this is the mystery of genius in the Fine
Arts. Dare I add that the genius must act on the feeling, that
body is but a striving to become mind, that it is mind in
its essence!
In every work of art there is a reconcilement of the external
with the internal; the conscious is so impressed on the
unconscious as to appear in it; as compare mere letters inscribed
on a tomb with figures themselves constituting the tomb. He who
combines the two is the man of genius; and for that reason he
must partake of both. Hence there is in genius itself an
unconscious activity; nay, that is the genius in the man of
genius. And this is the true exposition of the rule that the
artist must first eloign himself from nature in order to return
to her with full effect. Why this? Because if he were to begin by
mere painful copying, he would produce masks only, not forms
breathing life. He must out of his own mind create forms
according to the severe laws of the intellect, in order to
generate in himself that co-ordination of freedom and law, that
involution of obedience in the prescript, and of the prescript in
the impulse to obey, which assimilates him to nature, and enables
him to understand her. He merely absents himself for a season
from her, that his own spirit, which has the same ground with
nature, may learn her unspoken language in its main radicals,
before he approaches to her endless compositions of them. Yes,
not to acquire cold notions lifeless technical rules
but living and life-producing ideas, which shall contain their
own evidence, the certainty that they are essentially one with
the germinal causes in nature his consciousness being the
focus and mirror of both, for this does the artist for a
time abandon the external real in order to return to it with a
complete sympathy with its internal and actual. For of all we
see, hear, feel and touch the substance is and must be in
ourselves; and therefore there is no alternative in reason
between the dreary (and thank heaven! almost impossible) belief
that every thing around us is but a phantom, or that the life
which is in us is in them likewise; and that to know is to
resemble, when we speak of objects out of ourselves, even as
within ourselves to learn is, according to Plato, only to
recollect; the only effective answer to which, that I have
been fortunate to meet with, is that which Pope has consecrated
for future use in the line
And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin!
I have, I believe, formerly observed with regard to the
character of the governments of the East, that their tendency was
despotic, that is, towards unity; whilst that of the Greek
governments, on the other hand, leaned to the manifold and the
popular, the unity in them being purely ideal, namely of all as
an identification of the whole. In the northern or Gothic nations
the aim and purpose of the government were the preservation of
the rights and interests of the individual in conjunction with
those of the whole. The individual interest was sacred. In the
character and tendency of the Greek and Gothic languages there is
precisely the same relative difference. In Greek the sentences
are long, and the structure architectural, so that each part or
clause is insignificant when compared with the whole. The result
is every thing, the steps and processes nothing. But in the
Gothic and, generally, in what we call the modern, languages, the
structure is short, simple, and complete in each part, and the
connexion of the parts with the sum total of the discourse is
maintained by the sequency of the logic, or the community of
feelings excited between the writer and his readers. As an
instance equally delightful and complete, of what may be called
the Gothic structure as contra-distinguished from that of the
Greeks, let me cite a part of our famous Chaucer's character of a
parish priest as he should be. Can it ever be quoted too
often?
A good man thér was of religiöun
That was a pouré Parsone of a toun,
But riche he was of holy thought and werk;
He was alsó a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristés gospel trewély wolde preche;
His párishens 1 devoutly wolde he teche;
Benigne he was, and wonder 2 diligent,
And in adversite ful patient,
And swiche 3 he was ypreved 4 often sithes 5;
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he yeven 6 out of doute
Unto his pouré párishens aboute
Of hís offríng, and eke of his substánce;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance:
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne 7 left nought for no rain ne 8 thonder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to visíte
The ferrest 9 in his parish moche and lite 10
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf:
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf, 11
That first he wrought, and afterward he taught,
Out of the gospel he the wordés caught,
And this figúre he added yet thereto,
That if gold rusté, what should iren do.
He setté not his benefice to hire,
And lette 12 his shepe accombred 13 in the mire,
And ran untó Londón untó Seint Poules,
To seken him a chantérie for soules,
Or with a brotherhede to be withold,
But dwelt at home, and kepté wel his fold,
So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie:
He was a shepherd and no mercenarie;
And though he holy were and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous, 14
Ne of his speché dangerous ne digne, 15
But in his teching discrete and benigne,
To drawen folk to heven with fairénesse,
By good ensample was his besinesse;
But it were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of high or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben 16 sharply for the nones:
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is;
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
He maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristés love and his apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve. 17
| Footnote 1: Parisioners (return) | Footnote 2: Wondrous (return) |
| Footnote 3: Such (return) | Footnote 4: Proved (return) |
| Footnote 5: Times (return) | Footnote 6: Give or Have given (return) |
| Footnote 7: Not (return) | Footnote 8: Nor (return) |
| Footnote 9: Farthest (return) | Footnote 10: Great and small (return) |
| Footnote 11: Gave (return) | Footnote 12: Left (return) |
| Footnote 13: Encumbered (return) | Footnote 14: Despiteous (return) |
| Footnote 15: Proud (return) | Footnote 16: Reprove (return) |
| Footnote 17: Prologue to Canterbury Tales (return) |