{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_52980/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_52980","id":"gutenberg_52980","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52980","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Category: Art","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART\n\nBY\n\nH. TAINE\n\nPROFESSOR OF \u00c6STHETICS AND OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN THE\n\u00c9COLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS.\n\nTRANSLATED BY\n\nJOHN DURAND\n\n_Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised by the Translator_\n\nNEW YORK\n\nHOLT & WILLIAMS\n\n1873\n\n\n\n\nPUBLISHERS' NOTE.\n\n\nThe now famous name of Taine was first introduced to the American\npublic by the issue, in 1865, of a small imported edition of this\nwork. That edition has long been out of print here and in Europe. That\nthe book is now re-issued may be subject of special satisfaction to\nthose who already possess the Author's \"_Ideal in Art_\" \"_Art in the\nNetherlands_\" and \"_Art in Greece_\" as this work (now published in a\nstyle uniform with others named) is properly the forerunner of them\nall; containing, as it does, the principles laid down in the Author's\nfirst course of lectures, and constantly referred to in the later\ncourses which now form the books before alluded to.\n\nIn preparing this edition for the press, the translator, by bringing\nto bear the experience gained in the later works, has made it a great\nimprovement on the previous edition.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.\n\n\nThe translation herewith presented to the reader consists of a course\nof Lectures delivered during the winter of 1864, before the Students of\nArt of the _\u00c9cole des Beaux Arts_ at Paris, by H. Taine, _Professeur\nd'Esth\u00e9tique et d' Histoire de l'Art_ in that institution.\n\nThese lectures, as a system of \u00c6sthetics, consist of an application of\nthe experimental method to art, in the same manner as it is applied\nto the sciences. Whatever utility the system possesses is due to this\nprinciple. The author undertakes to explain art by social influences\nand other causes; humanity at different times and places, climate,\nand other conditions, furnish the facts on which the theory rests. The\nartistic development of any age or people is made intelligible through\na series of historical inductions terminating in a few inferential\nlaws, constituting what the title of the book declares it to be--_the\nphilosophy of art._\n\nSuch a system seems to possess many advantages. Among others, it\ntends to emancipate the student of art, as well as the amateur, from\nmetaphysical and visionary theories growing out of false theories and\ntraditional misconceptions; he is not misled by an exclusive adherence\nto particular schools, masters, or epochs. It also tends to render\ncriticism less capricious, and therefore less injurious; dictating no\nconventional standard of judgment, it promotes a spirit of charity\ntowards all works. As there is no attempt to do more than explain art\naccording to natural laws, the reader must judge whether, like all\nsystems assuming to bring order out of confusion, this one fulfils its\nmission.\n\nReaders familiar with M. Taine's able and original work on English\nliterature _(Histoire de la Litt\u00e9rature Anglaise)_ will recognize\nin the following pages the same theory applied to art as is therein\napplied to literature.\n\nJ. D.\n\nLONDON, _November 9,_ 1865.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.\n\n\nSince the publication of the first edition of the \"_Philosophy of Art_\"\nseven years ago, in London, its author has become deservedly popular,\nand especially in this country. His writings are sought for, read and\ntranslated both in England and on the continent of Europe, and it would\nbe but refining gold to say aught in his praise. Like every man of\ngenius he has, as time moves on, improved in his order of thought and\nin his wonderfully artistic style. His latest work, \"_On Intelligence_\"\nranks him as high among thinkers, as his former works among men of\nletters.\n\nThe present edition is a careful revision of the former one, and\namounts, indeed, to a new translation. Were either to be compared\nwith the original, no change of sense could probably be detected. The\npresent edition, however, being much more literal, the translator\nconsiders it an improvement, and hopes that it will be found more\nworthy of its gifted author, the publishers, his indulgent critics, and\nthe public generally.\n\nJ. D.\n\nSOUTH ORANGE, N. J. _January,_ 1873.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nPART I.\n\nON THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART.\n\n\u00a7 I.\n\nObject of this Study--The Method employed--The search for Aggregates on\nwhich the Work of Art depends.\n\nFirst Aggregate, the Entire Production of the Artist--Second Aggregate,\nthe School to which he belongs; examples, Shakespeare, Rubens. Third\nAggregate, Contemporary Society; examples, Greece, Spain, in the\nSixteenth Century.\n\nConditions determining appearance and character of Works of Art;\nexamples, Greek Tragedy, Gothic Architecture, Dutch Painting, French\nTragedy--Comparison of Climate and Natural Productions with a Moral\nTemperature, and its effect--Application of this method to Italian Art.\n\nObjects and method of \u00c6sthetics--Opposition of the Historic and\nDogmatic Methods--Laws--Sympathy for all Schools--The Analogy between\n\u00c6sthetics and Botany, and between the Natural and the Moral Sciences 19\n\n\u00a7 II.\n\nWhat is the Object of Art--The Research Experimental and not\nIdeal--Comparisons and Eliminations of Works of Art sufficient.\n\nDivision of the Arts into two groups--On the one hand, Painting,\nSculpture and Poesy; and, on the other, Architecture and Music.\nFirst group--Imitation apparently the end of Art--Reasons for this\nderived from ordinary experience, and from the lives of great men;\nMichael Angelo, Corneille--Reasons derived from the History of Art and\nLiterature; Pompeii and Ravenna--Classic Style under Louis XIV., and\nAcademic Style under Louis XV 39\n\n\u00a7 III.\n\nExact Imitation not the end of Art--Illustrations derived from\nCasting, Photography, and Stenography--Comparison between Denner\nand Van Dyck--Certain Arts purposely Inexact--Comparison between\nAntique Statues and Draped Figures in the Churches of Naples and\nSpain--Comparison between Prose and Verse--The Two Iphigenias of Goethe\n\n\u00a7 IV.\n\nRelationships of Parts the true object of Imitation--Illustrations\nderived from Drawing and Literature . . 58\n\n\u00a7 V.\n\nA Work of Art not confined to Imitating Relationships of\nParts--Modification of the Principle in the greatest Schools; Michael\nAngelo, Rubens--The Medici Tomb--The 'Kermesse.'\n\nDefinition of Essential Character: Examples of the Lion and the\nNetherlands.\n\nImportance of Essential Character; Nature imperfectly expressing it,\nArt supplies her place--Flanders in the time of Rubens, and Italy in\nthe time of Raphael.\n\nArtistic Imagination--Spontaneous Impressions, and their power of\nTransformation.\n\nRetrospect; successive steps of the Method, and Definition of a Work of\nArt 62\n\n\u00a7 VI.\n\nTwo Parts in this Definition--How Music and Architecture enter into\nit--Opposition of the first and second group of Arts--The first copies\nOrganic and Moral Dependencies; the second combines Mathematical\nDependencies.\n\nMathematical Relationships perceived by the sense of sight--Different\nclasses of these Relationships--Principle of Architecture.\n\nMathematical Relationships perceived by the sense of Hearing--Different\nclasses of these Relationships--Principle of Music--The second\nPrinciple of Music, Analogy of the Sound and the Cry--Music, on this\nside, enters into the first group of Arts.\n\nThe definition given is applicable to all the Arts 83\n\n\u00a7 VII.\n\nThe Value of Art in Human Life--Selfish Acts for the preservation\nof the Individual--Social Acts tending to preserve the\nSpecies--Disinterested Acts having for object the contemplation of\nCauses and Essentials--Two ways for attaining this end; Science and\nArt--Advantages of Art 89\n\nPART II.\n\nPRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART.\n\n\u00a7 I.\n\nGeneral Law for the Production of the Work of Art--First Formula--Two\nsorts of Proof, one of Experience, and the other of Reasoning 95\n\n\u00a7 II.\n\nGeneral Exposition of the Action of Social Mediums--The Development\nof the Plant compared with the Development of Human Activity--Natural\nSelection 97\n\n\u00a7 III.\n\nThe Action of a Moral Temperature--The Influence of Melancholy and\nCheerful States of Mind--The Artist is saddened by his personal share\nof misfortune--By the melancholy ideas of his contemporaries--By his\naptitude for defining the salient character of objects, which here is\nsadness--He finds suggestions and enlightenment only in melancholy\nsubjects--The Public comprehends only melancholy subjects.\n\nAn inverse case, state of prosperity and general joy--Intermediate\ncases 105\n\n\u00a7 IV.\n\nReal and Historical cases--Four Epochs, and four leading Arts 117\n\n\u00a7 V.\n\nGreek Civilization and Antique Sculpture--Comparison of Greek manners\nwith those of contemporaries--The City--The Citizen--Taste for War--The\nAthlete-Spartan Education--The Gymnasium in other parts of Greece.\n\nConformity of Customs with Ideas--Nudity--Olympic Games--The Gods\nperfect Human Figures.\n\nBirth of Sculpture; Statues of Athletes and of Gods--Why Statuary\nsufficed for the Artist's Conceptions--Immense Number of Statues 119\n\n\u00a7 VI.\n\nThe Civilization of the Middle Ages, and Gothic Architecture.\n\nDecline of Antique Society--Invasions of Barbarians--Feudal\nExcesses--Universal Misery.\n\nDistaste for Life--Exalted Sensibility--The Passion of Love--Power of\nthe Christian Religion..\n\nBirth of Gothic Architecture--The Cathedral--Universality of Gothic\nArchitecture 138\n\n\u00a7 VII.\n\nFrench Civilization in the Seventeenth Century, and Classic Tragedy.\n\nThe Courtier--Ruling Taste--Tragedy--The Aristocratic Sentiments of\nSociety--Importation of French Tragedy into other European Countries 154\n\n\u00a7 VIII.\n\nContemporary Civilization and Music--The French Revolution--Effect of\nCivil Equality, Machinery, and the Comforts of Existence--Decay of\nTraditional Authority.\n\nThe Representative Man--Development of Music--Its Origin in Germany and\nItaly; and its Dependence on Modern Sentiments.\n\nUniversality of Music 168\n\n\u00a7 IX.\n\nThe Law of the Production of Works of Art--The Four Terms of the\nSeries--Practical Application of the Law to a Study of all the Arts and\nof every Literature. 180\n\n\u00a7 X.\n\nApplication of the Law to the Present--The Social Medium renewing\nitself constantly, Art renews itself--Hopes for the Future 186\n\n\n\n\nON THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART.\n\n\nGENTLEMEN:\n\nIn commencing this course of lectures I wish to ask you two things\nof which I stand in great need: in the first place, your attention;\nafterwards, and especially, your kind indulgence. The warmth of\nyour reception persuades me that you will favor me with both. Let\nme sincerely and earnestly thank you beforehand. The subject with\nwhich I intend to entertain you this year is the history of art, and,\nprincipally, the history of painting in Italy. Before entering on the\nsubject itself, I desire to indicate to you its spirit and method.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\nThe principal point of this method consists in recognizing that a\nwork of art is not isolated, and, consequently, that it is necessary\nto study the conditions out of which it proceeds and by which it is\nexplained.\n\nThe first step is not difficult. At first, and evidently, a work of\nart--a picture, a tragedy, a statue--belongs to a certain whole, that\nis to say, to the entire work of the artist producing it. This is\nelementary. It is well known that the different works of an artist\nbear a family likeness, like the children of one parent; that is to\nsay, they bear a certain resemblance to each other. We know that every\nartist has his own style, a style recognized in all his productions.\nIf he is a painter, he has his own coloring, rich or impoverished;\nhis favorite types, noble or ignoble; his attitudes, his mode of\ncomposition, even his processes of execution; his favorite pigments,\ntints, models, and manner of working. If he is a writer, he has his\nown characters, calm or passionate; his own plots, simple or complex;\nhis own d\u00e9nouements, comic or tragic, his peculiarities of style, his\npet periods, and even his special vocabulary. This is so true, that a\nconnoisseur, if you place before him a work not signed by any prominent\nmaster, is able to recognize, to almost a certainty, to what artist\nthis work belongs, and, if sufficiently experienced and delicate in his\nperceptions, the period of the artist's life, and the particular stage\nof his development.\n\nThis is the first whole to which we must refer a work of art. And here\nis the second. The artist himself, considered in connection with his\nproductions, is not isolated; he also belongs to a whole, one greater\nthan himself, comprising the school or family of artists of the time\nand country to which he belongs. For example, around Shakespeare,\nwho, at the first glance, seems to be a marvellous celestial gift\ncoming like an aerolite from heaven, we find several dramatists of a\nhigh order--Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Beaumont\nand Fletcher--all of whom wrote in the same style and in the same\nspirit as he did. There are the same characters in their dramas as\nin Shakespeare's, the same violent and terrible characters, the same\nmurderous and unforeseen occurrences, the same sudden and frenzied\npassions, the same irregular, capricious, turgid, magnificent style,\nthe same exquisite poetic feeling for rural life and landscape, and\nthe same delicate, tender, affectionate ideals of woman.\n\nIn a similar way Rubens is to be judged. Rubens apparently stands\nalone, without either predecessor or successor. On going to Belgium,\nhowever, and visiting the churches of Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, or\nAntwerp, you find a group of painters with genius resembling his.\nFirst, there is Crayer, in his day considered a rival; Seghers, Van\nOost, Everdingen, Van Thulden, Quellin, Hondthorst, and others, with\nwhom you are familiar, Jordaens, Van Dyck--all conceiving painting in\nthe same spirit, and with many distinctive features, all preserving a\nfamily likeness. Like Rubens, these artists delighted in painting ruddy\nand healthy flesh, the rich and quivering palpitation of life, the\nfresh and sensuous pulp which is diffused so richly over the surface of\nthe living being, the real, and often brutal types, the transport and\nabandonment of unfettered action, the splendid lustrous and embroidered\ndraperies, the varying hues of silk and purple, and the display of\nshifting and waving folds. At the present day they seem to be obscured\nby the glory of their great contemporary; but it is not the less true\nthat to comprehend him it is necessary to study him amidst this cluster\nof brilliants of which he is the brightest gem--this family of artists,\nof which he is the most illustrious representative.\n\nThis being the second step, there now remains the third. This family\nof artists is itself comprehended in another whole more vast, which\nis the world surrounding it, and whose taste is similar. The social\nand intellectual condition is the same for the public as for artists;\nthey are not isolated men; it is their voice alone that we hear at\nthis moment, through the space of centuries, but, beneath this living\nvoice which comes vibrating to us, we distinguish a murmur, and, as it\nwere, a vast, low sound, the great infinite and varied voice of the\npeople, chanting in unison with them. They have been great through this\nharmony, and it is very necessary that it should ever be so. Phidias\nand Ictinus, the constructors of the Parthenon and of the Olympian\nJupiter, were, like other Athenians, pagans and free citizens, brought\nup in the _pal\u00e6stra,_ exercising and wrestling naked, and accustomed\nto deliberate and vote in the public assemblies; possessing the same\nhabits, the same interests, the same ideas, the same faith; men of\nthe same race, the same education, the same language; so that in all\nthe important acts of their life they are found in harmony with their\nspectators.\n\nThis harmony becomes still more apparent if we consider an age nearer\nour own. For example, take the great Spanish epoch of the sixteenth\nand a part of the seventeenth centuries, in which lived the great\npainters, Velasquez, Murillo, Zurbaran, Francisco de Herrera, Alonzo\nCano, and Morales; and the great poets, Lope de Vega, Calderon,\nCervantes, Tirso de Molina, Don Luis de Leon, Guilhem de Castro,\nand so many others. You know that at this time Spain was entirely\nmonarchical and Catholic; that she had over-come the Turks at Lepanto;\nthat she planted her foot in Africa and maintained herself there; that\nshe combated the Protestants in Germany, pursued them in France and\nattacked them in England; that she subdued and converted the idolaters\nof the new world, and chased away Jews and Moors from her own soil;\nthat she purged her own faith with autodaf\u00e9s and persecutions: that\nshe lavished fleets and armies, and the gold and silver of her American\npossessions, along with her most precious children, the vital blood of\nher own heart, upon multiplied and boundless crusades, so obstinately\nand so fanatically, that at the end of a century and a half she fell\nprostrate at the feet of Europe, but with such enthusiasm, such a\nburst of glory, such national fervor, that her subjects, enamored of\nthe monarchy in which their power was concentrated, and with the cause\nto which they devoted their lives, felt no other desire than that of\nelevating religion and royalty by their obedience, and of forming\naround the Church and the Throne a choir of faithful, militant, and\nadoring supporters. In this monarchy of crusaders and inquisitors,\npreserving the chivalric sentiments and sombre passions, the ferocity,\nintolerance, and mysticism of the middle ages, the greatest artists\nare the very men who possessed in the highest degree the faculties,\nsentiments, and passions of the public that surrounded them. The most\ncelebrated poets--Lope de Vega and Calderon--were military adventurers,\nvolunteers in the Armada, duellists and lovers, as exalted and as\nmystic in love as the poets and Don Quixotes of feudal times; they were\npassionate Catholics and so ardent that, at the end of their lives,\none became a familiar of the Inquisition, others became priests, and\nthe most illustrious among them--the great Lope de Vega--fainted on\nsaying Mass, at the thought of the sacrifice and martyrdom of Jesus.\nEverywhere may be found similar examples of the alliance, the intimate\nharmony existing between an artist and his contemporaries; and we may\nrest assured that if we desire to comprehend the taste or the genius\nof an artist, the reasons leading him to choose a particular style of\npainting or drama, to prefer this or that character or coloring, and to\nrepresent particular sentiments, we must seek for them in the social\nand intellectual conditions of the community in the midst of which he\nlived.\n\nWe have therefore to lay down this rule: that, in order to comprehend\na work of art, an artist or a group of artists, we must clearly\ncomprehend the general social and intellectual condition of the times\nto which they belong. Herein is to be found the final explanation;\nherein resides the primitive cause determining all that follows it.\nThis truth, gentlemen, is confirmed by experience. In short, if we pass\nin review the principal epochs of the history of art, we find that\nthe arts appear and disappear along with certain accompanying social\nand intellectual conditions. For example, the Greek tragedy--that\nof \u00c6schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides--appears at the time when the\nGreeks were victorious over the Persians; at the heroic era of small\nrepublican cities, at the moment of the great struggle by which\nthey acquired their independence and established their ascendency\nin the civilized world; and we see it disappearing along with this\nindependence and this vigor when a degeneracy of character and the\nMacedonian conquest delivered Greece over to strangers. It is the\nsame with Gothic architecture, developing along with the definitive\nestablishment of feudalism in the semi-renaissance of the eleventh\ncentury at the period when society, delivered from brigands and\nNormans, began to consolidate, and disappearing at the period when\nthe military system of petty independent barons, with the manners and\ncustoms growing out of it vanished near the end of the fifteenth\ncentury, on the advent of modern monarchies. It is the same with\nDutch painting, which flourished at the glorious period when,\nthrough firmness and courage, Holland succeeded in freeing herself\nfrom Spanish rule, combated England with equal power, and became\nthe richest, freest, most industrious, and most prosperous state in\nEurope: and we see it declining at the commencement of the eighteenth\ncentury, when Holland, fallen into a secondary rank, leaves the first\nto England, reducing itself to a well-ordered, safely administered,\nquiet, commercial banking-house, in which man, an honest _bourgeois,_\ncould live at ease, exempt from every great ambition and every grand\nemotion. It is the same, finally, with French tragedy appearing at\nthe period when a noble and well-regulated monarchy, under Louis\nXIV., established the empire of decorum, the life of the court, \"the\npomp and circumstance\" of society, and the elegant domestic phases\nof aristocracy; disappearing when the social rule of nobles and the\nmanners of the antechamber were abolished by the Revolution.\n\nI would like to make you more sensible by a comparison of this effect\nof the social and intellectual state on the Fine Arts. Suppose you\nare leaving the land of the south for that of the north; you perceive\non entering a certain zone a particular mode of cultivation and a\nparticular species of plant: first come the aloe and the orange; a\nlittle later, the vine and the olive; after these, the oak and the\nchestnut; a little further on, oats and the pine, and finally, mosses\nand lichens. Each zone has its own mode of cultivation and peculiar\nvegetation; both begin at the commencement, and both finish at the\nend of the zone; both are attached to it. The zone is the condition\nof their existence; by its presence or its absence is determined\nwhat shall appear and what shall disappear. Now, what is this zone\nbut a certain temperature; in other words, a certain degree of heat\nand moisture; in short, a certain number of governing circumstances\nanalogous in its germ to that which we called a moment ago the social\nand intellectual state?\n\nJust as there is a physical temperature, which by its variations\ndetermines the appearance of this or that species of plant, so is\nthere a moral temperature, which by its variations determines the\nappearance of this or that species of art. And as we study the physical\ntemperature in order to comprehend the advent of this or that species\nof plants, whether maize or oats, the orange or the pine, so is it\nnecessary to study the moral temperature in order to comprehend the\nadvent of various phases of art, whether pagan sculpture or realistic\npainting, mystic architecture or classic literature, voluptuous music\nor ideal poetry. The productions of the human mind, like those of\nanimated nature, can only be explained by their _milieu._\n\nHence the study I intend to offer you this season, of the history of\npainting in Italy. I shall attempt to lay before your eyes the mystic\n_milieu,_ in which appeared Giotto and Beato Angelico, and to this end\nI shall read passages from the poets and legendary writers, containing\nthe ideas entertained by the men of those days concerning happiness,\nmisery, love, faith, paradise, hell, and all the great interests of\nhumanity. We shall find documentary evidence in the poetry of Dante,\nof Guido Cavalcanti, of the Franciscans, in the Golden Legend, in the\nImitation of Jesus Christ, in the Fioretti of St. Francis, in the\nworks of historians like Dino Campagni, and in that vast collection\nof chroniclers by Muratori, which so naively portray the jealousies\nand disturbances of the small Italian republics. After this I shall\nattempt to place before you in the same manner the pagan _milieu_\nwhich a century and a half later produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michael\nAngelo, Raphael and Titian, and to this end I shall read, either from\nthe memoirs of contemporaries--Benvenuto Cellini for instance--or from\nthe diverse chronicles kept daily in Rome and in the principal Italian\ncities, or from the despatches of ambassadors, or, finally, from the\ndescriptions of f\u00eates, masquerades, and civic receptions, which are\nremarkable fragments, displaying the brutality, sensuality, and vigor\nof society, as well as the lively poetic sentiment, the love of the\npicturesque, the great literary sentiment, the decorative instincts,\nand the passion for external splendor which at that time are seen as\nwell among the people and the ignorant crowd as among the great and the\nlettered.\n\nSuppose now, gentlemen, we should succeed in this undertaking, and\nthat we should be able to mark clearly and precisely the various\nintellectual conditions which have led to the birth of Italian\npainting--its development, its bloom, its varieties and decline.\nSuppose the same undertaking successful with other countries, and other\nages, and with the different branches of art, architecture, sculpture,\npainting, poetry, and music. Suppose, that through the effect of all\nthese discoveries, we succeed in defining the nature, and in marking\nthe conditions of existence of each art, we shall then have a complete\nexplanation of the Fine Arts, and of all in general; that is to say, a\nphilosophy of the Fine Arts--what is called an _\u00e6sthetic_ system. This\nis what we aim at, gentlemen, and nothing else. Ours is modern, and\ndiffers from the ancient, inasmuch as it is historic, and not dogmatic;\nthat is to say, it imposes no precepts, but ascertains and verifies\nlaws. Ancient \u00c6sthetics gave, at first, a definition of beauty, and\ndeclared, for instance, that the beautiful is the expression of the\nmoral ideal, or rather is the expression of the invisible, or, rather\nstill, is the expression of the human passions; then starting hence,\nas from an article of a code, they absolved, condemned, admonished,\nand directed. It is my good fortune not to have such a formidable\ntask to meet. I do not wish to guide you--it would embarrass me too\nmuch. Besides, I say with all humility, that, as to precepts, we have\nas yet found but two: the first is to be born a genius, an affair of\nyour parents, and not mine; and the second, which implies much labor\nin order to master art, which likewise does not depend on me, but\non yourselves. My sole duty is to offer you facts, and show you how\nthese facts are produced. The modern method, which I strive to pursue,\nand which is beginning to be introduced in all the moral sciences,\nconsists in considering human productions, and particularly works of\nart, as facts and productions of which it is essential to mark the\ncharacteristics and seek the causes, and nothing more. Thus understood,\nscience neither pardons nor proscribes; it verifies and explains. It\ndoes not say to you, despise Dutch art because it is vulgar, and prize\nonly Italian art; nor does it say to you despise Gothic art because\nit is morbid, and prize only Greek art. It leaves every one free to\nfollow their own predilections, to prefer that which is germane to\none's temperament, and to study with the greatest care that which\nbest corresponds to the development of one's own mind. Science has\nsympathies for all the forms of art, and for all schools, even for\nthose the most opposed to each other. It accepts them as so many\nmanifestations of the human mind, judging that the more numerous they\nare, and the more antithetical, the more they show the human mind in\nits innumerable and novel phases. It is analogous to botany, which\nstudies the orange, the laurel, the pine, and the birch, with equal\ninterest; it is itself a species of botany, applied not to plants, but\nto the works of man. By virtue of this it keeps pace with the general\nmovement of the day, which now affiliates the moral sciences with\nthe natural sciences, and which, giving to the first the principles,\nprecautions, and directions of the second, gives to them the same\nstability, and assures them the same progress.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nI wish to apply at once this method to the first and principal\nquestion by which a course of \u00e6sthetics is opened out, and which\nis a definition of art. What is art, and in what does its nature\nconsist? Instead of establishing a formula, I wish to familiarize you\nwith facts, for facts exist here as elsewhere--positive facts open to\nobservation; I mean _works_ of _art_ arranged by families in galleries\nand libraries, like plants in an herbarium, and animals in a museum.\nAnalysis may be applied to the one as to the others; a work of art\nmay be investigated generally, as we investigate a plant or an animal\ngenerally. There is no more need of discarding experience in the first\ncase than in the second; the entire process consists in discovering,\nby numerous comparisons and progressive eliminations, traits common\nto all works of art, and, at the same time, the distinctive traits by\nwhich works of art are separated from other productions of the human\nintellect.\n\nTo this end we will, among the five great arts of poetry, sculpture,\npainting, architecture, and music, set aside the last two, of which\nthe explanation is more difficult, and to which we will return\nafterwards; we shall at present consider only the three first. All, as\nyou are aware, possess a common character, that of being more or less\n_imitative_ arts.\n\nAt the first glance, it seems that this is their principal character,\nand their object is imitation as exact as possible. For it is plain\nthat a statue is meant to imitate accurately a really living man; that\na picture is intended to portray real persons in real attitudes, the\ninterior of a house and a landscape, such as nature presents. It is no\nless evident that a drama, a romance, attempts to represent faithfully\ncharacters, actions, and actual speech, and to give as precise and as\naccurate a picture of them as is possible. When, accordingly, the image\nis inadequate or inexact, we say to the sculptor, \"This breast or this\nlimb is not well executed;\" and to the painter, \"The figures of your\nbackground are too large--the coloring of your trees is faulty;\" and we\nsay to the author, \"Never did man feel or think as you have imagined\nhim.\"\n\nBut there are other proofs, still stronger, and first, every-day\nexperience. When we behold what takes place in the life of an artist,\nwe perceive that it is generally divided into two sections. During\nthe first, in the youth and maturity of his talent, he sees things as\nthey are, and studies them minutely and earnestly; he fixes his eyes\non them; he labors and worries to express them, and he expresses them\nwith more than scrupulous fidelity. Arriving at a certain moment of\nlife, he thinks he understands them thoroughly and discovers no more\nnovelty in them; he casts aside the living model, and with certain\nprescribed rules which he has picked up in the course of his experience\nhe forms a drama or a romance, a picture or a statue. The first epoch\nis that of natural feeling; the second that of mannerism and decline.\nIf we penetrate the lives of the greatest men, we rarely fail to\ndiscover both. In the life of Michael Angelo, the first period lasted\na long time, a little less than sixty years; all the works belonging\nto it disclose the sentiment of force and heroic grandeur. The artist\nis imbued with it; he has no other thought. His numerous dissections,\nhis countless drawings, the unremitted analysis of his own heart, his\nstudy of the tragic passions and of their physical expression, are\nfor him but the means of manifesting outwardly the militant energy\nwith which he is carried away. This idea descends upon you from every\ncorner of the great vault of the Sistine chapel. Enter the Pauline\nchapel alongside of it, and contemplate the works of his old age--the\nConversion of St. Paul, the Crucifixion of St. Peter; consider even\nthe Last Judgment, which he painted in his seventy-seventh year.\nConnoisseurs, and those who are not, recognize at once that the two\nfrescoes are executed according to prescribed rules; that the artist\npossessed a certain number of forms, which he used conventionally;\nthat he multiplied extraordinary attitudes, and ingeniously contrived\nforeshortenings; that the lively invention, naturalness, the great\ntransport of the heart, the perfect truth peculiar to his first works,\nhave, at least in part, disappeared from the abuse of technique and\nthe force of routine; and that if he is still superior to others, he is\ngreatly inferior to himself.\n\nThe same comment may be made on another life--that of our French\nMichael Angelo, Corneille. In the first years of his life, Corneille\nwas likewise struck by the feeling of force, and of moral heroism.\nHe found it around him in the vigorous passions bequeathed by the\nreligious wars to the new monarchy; in the daring acts of duellists;\nin the proud feeling of honor which still carried away the devotees\nof feudalism; in the bloody tragedies which the plots of princes and\nthe executions of Richelieu furnished as spectacles for the court; and\nhe created personages like _Chim\u00e8ne_ and the _Cid._ like _Polyeucte_\nand _Pauline,_ like _Corn\u00e9lie, Sertorius, \u00c9milie,_ and _les Horaces._\nAfterwards he produced _Pertharite, Attila,_ and other feeble works, in\nwhich the situations merge into the horrible, and generous emotions\nlose themselves in extravagance. In this period the living models he\nonce contemplated no longer had a social setting; at least he no longer\nsought them, he failed to renew his inspiration. He was governed by\nprescribed rules due to the memory of processes which he had formerly\nfound in the heat of enthusiasm, literary theories, dissertations and\ndistinctions on theatrical catastrophes and dramatic licenses. He\ncopied and exaggerated himself; learning, calculation and routine shut\nout from him the direct and personal contemplation of powerful emotions\nand of noble actions; he no longer created, but manufactured.\n\nIt is not alone the history of this or that great man which proves to\nus the necessity of imitating the living model, and of keeping the eye\nfixed on nature, but rather the history of every great school of art.\nEvery school (I believe without exception) degenerates and falls,\nsimply through its neglect of exact imitation, and its abandonment\nof the living model. You see it in painting, in the fabricators of\nmuscles and exaggerated attitudes who succeeded Michael Angelo; in\nthe sciolists of theatrical decorations and in the brawny rotundities\nwhich have followed the great Venetians; and in the boudoir and alcove\npainters which closed the French school of art of the eighteenth\ncentury. The same thing occurs in literature, with the versifiers and\nrhetoricians of the Latin decadence; with the sensual and declamatory\nplaywrights closing the bright period of the English drama, and\nwith the manufacturers of sonnets, puns, witticisms, and bombast of\nthe Italian decline. Among these I will cite two striking examples.\nThe first is the decline of sculpture and painting in antiquity,\nof which you obtain a vivid impression by visiting Pompeii, and\nafterwards Ravenna. At Pompeii the painting and sculpture belong to\nthe first century of the present era; at Ravenna the mosaics are of\nthe sixth century, about the times of the Emperor Justinian. In this\ninterval of five centuries art becomes irremediably corrupt, and its\ndegeneracy is wholly due to the neglect of the living model. In the\nfirst century the pagan manners and tastes of the _palestra_ still\nexisted. Men wore their vestments loose and cast them off easily,\nfrequented the baths, exercised in a state of nudity, witnessed\nthe combats of the circus, ever contemplating sympathetically and\nintelligently the active movements of the living body. Their sculptors\nand painters, surrounded by nude and half-nude forms, were capable of\nreproducing them. Accordingly, you will see on the walls of Pompeii,\nin the little oratories and in the inner courts, beautiful dancing\nfemales, spirited, supple young heroes, with manly chests, agile\nfeet, every posture and form of the body rendered with an ease and\naccuracy to which the most elaborate study of the present day cannot\nattain. During the following five hundred years everything gradually\nchanges. Pagan manners, the use of the _palestra,_ and the love of\nthe nude, disappear. The body is no longer exposed, but concealed\nunder complicated drapery, and under a display of lace, purple, and\noriental magnificence. People no longer esteem the wrestler and the\nyouthful gymnast,[1] but the eunuch, the scribe, the monk, and the woman.\nAsceticism gains ground, and with it a love for listless reverie,\nhollow disputation, scribbling and wrangling. The worn-out babblers\nof the Lower Empire replace the valiant Greek athletes and the hardy\ncombatants of Rome. By degrees the knowledge and study of the living\nmodel are interdicted. People have discarded it. Their eyes rest only\non the works of ancient masters, and they copy these. Soon copies\nare only made of copies, and again copies of these, so that each\ngeneration recedes a step from the original type. The artist ceases to\nhave his own idea and his own feeling, and becomes a copying machine.\nThe Fathers declare that he must invent nothing, but must adhere to\nlineaments prescribed by tradition and sanctioned by authority. This\nseparation of the artist from the living model brings art to the\ncondition in which you see it at Ravenna. At the end of five centuries,\nartists can only represent man in two ways--seated and standing; other\nattitudes are too difficult, and are beyond their capacity. Hands and\nfeet appear rigid as if fractured, the folds of drapery are wooden,\nfigures seem to be mannikins, and heads are invaded by the eyes. Art is\nlike an invalid sinking under a mortal consumption; it is languishing,\nand about to expire.\n\nIn a different branch of art amongst ourselves, and in a neighboring\ncentury, we find again a similar decline, and brought about by\nsimilar causes. In the age of Louis XIV., literature attained to a\nperfect style, to a purity, to a precision, to a sobriety of which\nwe have no example; dramatic art, especially, created a language and\na style of versification deemed by all Europe a masterpiece of the\nhuman intellect. This is due to the fact of writers finding their\nmodels around them and constantly observing them. The language of\nLouis XIV. was perfect, displaying a dignity, eloquence, and gravity\ntruly royal. We know by the letters, despatches, and memoirs of the\ncourt personages of that time, that an aristocratic tone, sustained\nelegance, propriety of terms, dignified manners, and the art of correct\nspeaking, were as common to courtiers as to monarch; so that the writer\nfrequenting their society, had but to draw on his memory and experience\nin order to obtain the very best materials of his art.\n\n[Footnote 1: \u1f14\u03c6\u03b7\u03b2\u03bf\u03c2.]\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nIs this true in every particular, and must we conclude that absolutely\nexact imitation is the end of art?\n\nIf this were so, gentlemen, absolutely exact imitation would produce\nthe finest works. But, in fact, it is not so. In sculpture, for\ninstance, casting is the process by which a faithful and minute\nimpression of a model is obtained, and certainly a good cast is not\nequal to a good statue. Again, and in another domain, photography\nis the art which completely reproduces with lines and tints on a\nflat surface, without possible mistake, the forms and modelling of\nthe object imitated. Photography is undoubtedly a useful auxiliary\nto painting, and is sometimes tastefully employed by cultivated and\nintelligent men; but after all, no one thinks of comparing it with\npainting. And finally, as a last illustration, if it were true that\nexact imitation is the supreme aim of art, let me ask what would be the\nbest tragedy? the best comedy? the best drama? A stenographic report\nof a criminal trial, every word of which is faithfully recorded. It\nis clear, however, that if we sometimes encounter in it flashes of\nnature and occasional outbursts of sentiment, these are but veins of\npure metal in a mass of worthless dross; it may furnish a writer with\nmaterials for his art, but it does not constitute a work of art.\n\nSome may possibly say, that photography, casting, and stenography are\nmechanical processes, and that we ought to leave mechanism out of the\nquestion, and accordingly limit our comparisons to man's work. Let us,\ntherefore, select works by artists conspicuous for minute fidelity.\nThere is a canvas in the Louvre by Denner. This artist worked\nmicroscopically, taking four years to finish a portrait. Nothing in his\nheads is overlooked--the finest lines and wrinkles, the faintly mottled\nsurface of the cheeks, the black specks scattered over the nose, the\nbluish flush of imperceptible veins meandering under the skin, nor the\nreflection of objects in the vicinity on the eye. We are struck with\nastonishment. This head is a perfect illusion; it seems to project\nout of the frame. Such success and such patience are unparalleled.\nSubstantially, however, a broad sketch by Van Dyck is a hundredfold\nmore powerful. Beside, neither in painting nor in any other art are\nprizes awarded to deceptions.\n\nA second and stronger proof, that exact imitation is not the end of\nart, is to be found in this fact, that certain arts are purposely\ninexact. There is sculpture, for instance. A statue is generally\nof one color, either of bronze or of marble; and again, the eyes\nare without eyeballs. It is just this uniformity of tint, and this\nmodification of moral expression, which completes its beauty. Examine\ncorresponding works, in which imitation is pushed to extremity. The\nchurches of Naples and Spain contain draped statues, colored; saints in\nactual monastic garb, with yellow earthy skins, suitable to ascetics,\nand bleeding hands and wounded sides characteristic of the martyred.\nAlongside of these appear madonnas, in royal robes, in festive dresses,\nand in bright silks, crowned with diadems, wearing precious necklaces,\nbrilliant ribbons, and magnificent laces, and with rosy complexions,\nglittering eyes, and eyeballs formed of carbuncles. By this excess\nof literal imitation, the artist gives no pleasure, but repugnance,\noften disgust, and sometimes horror.\n\nIt is the same in literature. The best half of dramatic poetry, every\nclassic Greek and French drama, and the greater part of Spanish and\nEnglish dramas, far from literally copying ordinary conversation,\nintentionally modify human speech. Each of these dramatic poets makes\nhis characters speak in verse, casting their dialogue in rhythm, and\noften in rhyme. Is this modification prejudicial to the work? Far from\nit. One of the great works of the age, the \"Iphigenia\" of Goethe, which\nwas at first written in prose and afterwards re-written in verse,\naffords abundant evidence of this. It is beautiful in prose, but in\nverse what a difference! The modification of ordinary language, in the\nintroduction of rhythm and metre, evidently gives to this work its\nincomparable accent, that calm sublimity, that broad, sustained tragic\ntone, which elevates the spirit above the low level of common life, and\nbrings before the eye the heroes of ancient days--that lost race of\nprimitive souls--and, among them, the august virgin, interpreter of the\ngods, custodian of the laws, and the benefactress of mankind, in whom\nis concentrated whatever is noble and good in human nature, in order to\nglorify our species and renew the inspiration of our hearts.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nIt is essential, then, to closely imitate something in an object;\nbut not everything. We have now to discover what imitation should\nbe applied to. Anticipating an answer to this, I reply, \"To the\nrelationships and mutual dependence of parts.\" Excuse this abstract\ndefinition--I will make my meaning clearer to you.\n\nImagine yourselves before a living model, man or woman, with a pencil,\nand a piece of paper twice the dimensions of your hand, on which to\ncopy it. Certainly, you cannot be expected to reproduce the magnitude\nof the limbs, for your paper is too small; nor can you be expected to\nreproduce their color, for you have only black and white to work with.\nWhat you have to do is to reproduce their _relationships,_ and first\nthe proportions, that is to say, the relationships of magnitude. If\nthe head is of a certain length, the body must be so many times longer\nthan the head, the arm of a length equally dependent on that, and\nthe leg the same; and so on with the other members. Again, you are\nrequired to reproduce forms, or the relationships of position: this or\nthat curve, oval, angle, or sinuosity in the model must be repeated\nin the copy by a line of the same nature. In short, your object is to\nreproduce the aggregate of relationships, by which the parts are linked\ntogether, and nothing else; it is not the simple corporeal appearance\nthat you have to give, but the _logic_ of the whole body.\n\nSuppose, in like manner, you are contemplating some actual character,\nsome scene in real life, high or low, and you are asked to furnish\na description of it. To do this you have your eyes, your ears, your\nmemory, and, perhaps, a pencil, to dot down five or six notes--no\ngreat means, but ample for your purpose. What is expected of you is,\nnot to record every word and motion, all the actions of the personage,\nor of the fifteen or twenty persons that are figured before you,\nbut, as before, to note proportions, connections, and relationships;\nyou are expected, in the first place, to keep exactly the proportion\nof the actions of the personage, in other words, to give prominence\nto ambitious acts, if he is ambitious, to avaricious acts, if he is\navaricious, and to violent acts, if he is violent; after this, to\nobserve the reciprocal connection of these same acts; that is to\nsay, to provoke one reply by another, to originate a resolution, a\nsentiment, an idea by an idea, a sentiment, a preceding resolution,\nand moreover by the actual condition of the personage; in addition to\nthat, still by the general character bestowed on him. In short, in\nthe literary effort, as in the pictorial effort, it is important to\ntranscribe, not the visible outlines of persons and events, but the\naggregate of their relationships and interdependencies, that is to say,\ntheir logic.\n\nAs a general rule, therefore, whatever interests us in a real\npersonage, and which we entreat the artist to extract and render, is\nhis outward or inward logic; in other terms, his structure, composition\nand action.\n\nWe have here, as you perceive, corrected the first definition given;\nit is not cancelled, but purified. We have discovered a more elevated\ncharacter for art, which thus becomes intellectual, and not mechanical.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nDoes this suffice us? Do we find works of art simply confined to a\nreproduction of the relationships of parts? By no means, for the\ngreatest schools are justly those in which actual relationships are\nmost modified. Consider, for example, the Italian school in its\ngreatest artist, Michael Angelo, and, in order to give precision to\nour ideas, let us recall his principal work, the four marble statues\nsurmounting the tomb of the Medicis at Florence. Those of you who\nhave not seen the originals, are at least familiar with copies of\nthem. In the figures of these men, and especially in the reclining\nfemales, sleeping or waking, the proportions of the parts are certainly\nnot the same as in real personages. Similar figures exist nowhere,\neven in Italy. You will see there young, handsome, well-dressed men,\npeasants with bright eyes and a fierce expression, academy models\nwith firm muscles and a proud bearing; but neither in a village nor at\nfestivities, nor in the studios of Italy or elsewhere, at the present\ntime or in the sixteenth century, does any real man or woman resemble\nthe indignant heroes and the colossal despairing virgins which this\ngreat artist has placed before us in this funereal chapel. Michael\nAngelo found these types in his own genius and in his own heart. In\norder to create them it was necessary to have the soul of a recluse,\nof a meditative man, of a lover of justice; the soul of an impassioned\nand generous nature bewildered in the midst of enervated and corrupt\nbeings, amidst treachery and oppression, before the inevitable\ntriumph of tyranny and injustice, under the ruins of liberty and of\nnationality, himself threatened with death, feeling that if he lived\nit was only by favor, and perhaps only by a short respite, incapable\nof sycophancy and of submission, taking refuge entirely in that\nart by which, in the silence of servitude, his great heart and his\ngreat despair still spoke. He wrote on the pedestal of his sleeping\nstatue--\"Sleep is sweet, and yet more sweet is it to be of stone, while\nshame and misery last. Fortunate am I not to see--not to feel. Forbear\nto arouse me! Ah! speak low!\"\n\nThis is the sentiment which revealed to him such forms. To express\nit, he has changed the ordinary proportions; he has lengthened the\ntrunk and the limbs, twisted the torso upon the hips, hollowed out the\nsockets of the eyes, furrowed the forehead with wrinkles similar to\nthe lion's frowning brow, raised mountains of muscles on the shoulder,\nridged the spine with tendons, and so fastened the vertebras that it\nresembles the links of an iron chain strained to their utmost tension\nand about to break.\n\nLet us consider, in like manner, the Flemish school; and in this\nschool the great Fleming, Rubens, and one of the most striking of\nhis works, the \"Kermesse.\" In this work, no more than in those of\nMichael Angelo, will you find an imitation of ordinary proportions.\nVisit Flanders, and observe the types of mankind about you, even\nat feastings and revellings, such as the f\u00eates of Gayant, Antwerp,\nand other places. You will see comfortable-looking people eating\nmuch and drinking more; serenely smoking, cool, phlegmatic bodies;\ndull-looking, and with massive, irregular features, strongly resembling\nthe figures of Teniers. As to the splendid brutes of the \"Kermesse,\"\nyou meet nothing like them! Rubens certainly found them elsewhere.\nAfter the horrible religious wars, this rich country of Flanders,\nso long devastated, finally attained peace and civil security. The\nsoil is so good, and the people so prudent, comfort and prosperity\nreturned almost at once. Everybody enjoyed this new prosperity and\nabundance; the contrast between the past and the present led to the\nindulgence of rude and carnal instincts let loose like horses and\ncattle after long privation in fresh, green fields, abounding in the\nrichest pasture. Rubens himself was sensible of them; and the poetry\nof gross, sumptuous living, of satisfied and redundant flesh, of\nbrutal, inordinate merry-making, found a ready outlet in the shameless\nsensualities and voluptuous ruddiness, in the whiteness and freshness\nof the nudities of which he was so prodigal. In order to express all\nthis in the \"Kermesse\" he has expanded the trunk, enlarged the thighs,\ntwisted the loins, deepened the redness of the cheeks, dishevelled\nthe hair, kindled in the eyes a flame of savage, unbridled desire,\nunloosed the demons of disorder in the shape of shattered glasses,\noverturned tables, holdings and kissings, a perfect orgie, and the\nmost extraordinary culmination of human bestiality ever portrayed upon\ncanvas.\n\nThese two examples show you that the artist, in modifying the\nrelationships of parts, modifies them understandingly, purposely, in\nsuch a way as to make apparent the _essential character_ of the object,\nand consequently its leading idea according to his conception of it.\nThis phrase, gentlemen, requires attention; this _essential character_\nis what philosophers call the _essence_ of things; and because of this\nthey say that it is the aim of art to manifest the _essence_ of things.\nWe will not retain this term essence, which is technical, but simply\nstate that it is the aim of art to manifest a predominant character,\nsome salient principal quality, some important point of view, some\nessential condition of being in the object.\n\nWe here approach the true definition of art, and accordingly need to\nbe perfectly clear. We must insist on and precisely define essential\ncharacter. I would premise at once that it is _a quality from which\nall others, or at least most other qualities, are derived according to\ndefinite affinities._ Grant me again this abstract definition: a few\nillustrations will make it plain to you.\n\nThe essential character of a lion, giving him his rank in the\nclassifications of natural history, is that of a great flesh-eater;\nnearly all his traits, whether physical or moral, as I am about to\nprove to you, are derived from this trait as their fountain-head.\nFirst, there are physical traits: his teeth move like shears; he has\na jaw constructed to tear and to crush; and necessarily, for, being\ncarnivorous, he has to nourish himself with, and prey upon, living\ngame; in order to manoeuvre this formidable instrument he requires\nenormous muscles, and for their insertion, temporal sockets of\nproportionate size. Add to the feet other instruments, the terrible\ncontractile claws, the quick step on the extremity of the toes, a\nterrible elasticity of the thighs acting like a powerful spring, and\neyes that see best at night, because night is the best hunting-time. A\nnaturalist, pointing to a lion's skeleton, once said to me, \"There is a\njaw mounted on four paws.\"\n\nThe moral points of the lion are likewise in harmony. At first,\nthere is the sanguinary instinct--the craving for fresh flesh, and a\nrepugnance for every other food; next, the strength and the nervous\nexcitement through which the lion concentrates an enormous amount of\nforce at the instant of attack and defence; and on the other hand, his\nsomniferous habits, the grave, sombre inertia of moments of repose,\nand the long yawnings after the excitement of the chase. All these\ntraits are derived from his carnivorous character, and on this account\nwe call it his essential character.\n\nLet us now consider a more difficult case, that of an entire country,\nwith its innumerable details of structure, aspect, and cultivation;\nits plants, animals, inhabitants, and towns; as, for example, the Low\nCountries. The essential character of this region is its _alluvial_\nformation; that, is to say, a formation due to vast quantifies of\nearth brought down by streams and deposited about their mouths. From\nthis single term spring an infinity of peculiarities, summing up the\nentire nature of the country, not only its physical outlines, what it\nis in itself, but again the intellectual, moral, and physical qualities\nof its inhabitants, and of their works. At first, in the inanimate\nworld, come its moist and fertile plains, the necessary consequence\nof numerous broad rivers and vast deposits of productive soil. These\nplains are always green, because broad, tranquil, and sluggish streams,\nand the innumerable canals so easily constructed in soft, flat ground,\nmaintain perennial verdure. You can readily imagine, and on purely\nrational principles, the aspect of such a country--a dull, rainy sky,\nconstantly streaked with showers, and even on fine days veiled as if\nby gauze with light vapory clouds rising from the wet surface, forming\na transparent dome, an airy tissue of delicate, snowy fleeces, over\nthe broad verdant expanse stretching out of sight and rounded to the\ndistant horizon. In the animated kingdom these numerous luxuriant\npastures attract countless herds of cattle, who recline tranquilly on\nthe grass, or ruminate over their cud, and dot the flat green sward\nwith innumerable spots of white, yellow, and black. Hence the rich\nstores of milk and meat, which, added to the grains and vegetables\nraised on this prolific soil, furnish its inhabitants with cheap and\nabundant supplies of food. It might well be said that in this country\nwater makes grass, grass makes cattle, cattle make cheese, butter,\nand meat; and all these, with beer, make the inhabitant. Indeed, out\nof this fat living, and out of this physical organization saturated\nwith moisture, spring the phlegmatic temperament, the regular habits,\nthe tranquil mind and nerves, the capacity to take life easily\nand prudently, unbroken contentment and love of well-being, and,\nconsequently, the reign of cleanliness and the perfection of comfort.\nThese consequences extend so far as even to affect the aspect of towns.\nIn an alluvial country there is no stone; building material consists\nof terra-cotta bricks, and tiles. Rains being frequent and heavy,\nroofs are very sloping, and as dampness lasts a long time, their fronts\nare painted and varnished. A Flemish town, therefore, is a net-work\nof brown or red edifices always neat, occasionally glittering and\nwith pointed gables; here and there rises an old church constructed\nof shingle or of rubble; streets in the best of order run between two\nscrupulously clean lines of sidewalk. In Holland the sidewalks are laid\nin brick, frequently intermingled with coarse porcelain: domestics may\nbe seen at an early hour in the morning on their knees cleaning them\noff with cloths. Cast your eyes through the dazzling window-panes;\nenter a club-room decked with green branches, with its floor powdered\nwith sand constantly renewed; visit the taverns, brightly painted,\nwhere rows of casks display their brown rotund sides, and where the\nrich yellow beer foams up out of glasses covered with quaint devices.\nIn all these details of common life, in all these signs of inward\ncontentment and enduring prosperity, you detect the effects of the\ngreat underlying characteristic which is stamped upon the climate and\nthe soil, upon the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom, upon man\nand his works, upon society and the individual.\n\nThrough these innumerable effects, you judge of the importance of this\nessential character. It is this which art must bring forward into\nproper light, and if this task devolves upon art, it is because nature\nfails to accomplish it. In nature, this essential character is simply\ndominant; it is the aim of art to render it predominant. It moulds\nreal objects, but it does not mould them completely: its action is\nrestricted, impeded by the intervention of other causes; its impression\non objects bearing its stamp is not sufficiently strong to be clearly\nvisible. Man is sensible of this deficiency, and to remove it he has\ninvented art.\n\nLet us again take up Rubens' \"Kermesse.\" These blooming merry wives,\nthese roystering drunkards, these busts and visages of burly unbridled\nbrutes, probably found counterparts in the carousals of the day.\nOver-nourished and exuberant nature aimed at producing such gross forms\nand such coarse manners, but she only half accomplished her task; other\ncauses intervened to stay this excess of a carnal jovial energy. There\nis, at first, poverty. In the best of times, and in the best countries,\nmany people have not enough to eat, and fasting, at least partial\nabstinence, misery, and bad air, all the accompaniments of indigence,\ndiminish the development and boisterousness of native brutality. A\nsuffering man is not so strong, and more sober. Religion, law, police\nregulations, and habits due to steady labor, operate in the same\ndirection; education does its part. Out of a hundred subjects who,\nunder favorable conditions, might have furnished Rubens with models,\nonly five or six, perhaps, could be of any service to him. Suppose now\nthat these five or six figures in the actual festivities which he might\nhave seen were lost in a crowd of people more or less indifferent and\ncommon; consider again, that at the moment they came under his eye\nthey exhibited neither the attitude, the expression, the gestures,\nthe abandonment, the costume, or the disorder requisite to make this\nteeming excitement apparent. Through all these draw-backs nature called\nart to its aid; she could not clearly distinguish the character; it was\nnecessary that the artist should supplement her.\n\nThus is it with every superior work of art. While Raphael was painting\nhis \"Galatea,\" he wrote that, beautiful women being scarce, he was\nfollowing a conception of his own. This means that, looking at human\nnature from a certain point of view, its repose, its felicity, its\ngracious and dignified sweetness, he found no living model to express\nit satisfactorily. The peasant or laboring girl who posed for him,\nhad hands deformed by work, feet spoiled by their covering, and eyes\ndisordered by shame, or demoralized by her calling. His \"Fornarina\" has\ndrooping shoulders, a meagre arm above the elbow, a hard and contracted\nexpression.[1] If he painted her in the Farnesini Palace, he completely\ntransformed her, developing a character in his painted figure of which\nthe real figure only contributed parts and suggestions.\n\nThus the province of a work of art is to render the essential\ncharacter, or, at least, some capital quality, the predominance of\nwhich must be made as perceptible as possible. In order to accomplish\nthis the artist must suppress whatever conceals it, select whatever\nmanifests it, correct every detail by which it is enfeebled, and recast\nthose in which it is neutralized.\n\nLet us no longer consider works but artists, that is to say, the way in\nwhich artists feel, invent, and produce: you will find it consistent\nwith the foregoing conception of the work of art. There is one gift\nindispensable to all artists; no study, no degree of patience, supplies\nits place; if it is wanting in them they are nothing but copyists and\nmechanics. In confronting objects the artist must experience _original\nsensation_; the character of an object strikes him, and the effect\nof this sensation is a strong, peculiar impression. In other words,\nwhen a man is born with talent his perceptions--or at least a certain\nclass of perceptions--are delicate and quick; he naturally seizes and\ndistinguishes, with a sure and watchful tact, relationships and shades;\nat one time the plaintive or heroic sense in a sequence of sounds, at\nanother the listlessness or stateliness of an attitude, and again the\nrichness or sobriety of two complimentary or contiguous colors. Through\nthis faculty he penetrates to the very heart of things, and seems to be\nmore clear-sighted than other men. This sensation, moreover, so keen\nand so personal, is not inactive--by a counter-stroke the whole nervous\nand thinking machinery is affected by it. Man involuntarily expresses\nhis emotions; the body makes signs, its attitude becomes mimetic;\nhe is obliged to figure externally his conception of an object;\nthe voice seeks imitative inflections, the tongue finds pictorial\nterms, unforeseen forms, a figurative, inventive, exaggerated style.\nUnder the force of the original impulse the active brain recasts\nand transforms the object, now to illumine and ennoble it, now to\ndistort and grotesquely pervert it; in the free sketch, as in the\nviolent caricature, you readily detect, with poetic temperaments, the\nascendency of involuntary impressions. Familiarize yourselves with the\ngreat artists and great authors of your century; study the sketches,\ndesigns, diaries, and correspondence of the old masters, and you will\nagain everywhere find the same inward process. We may adorn it with\nbeautiful names; we may call it genius or inspiration, which is right\nand proper; but if you wish to define it precisely you must always\nverify therein the vivid spontaneous sensation which groups together\nthe train of accessory ideas, master, fashion, metamorphose and employ\nthem in order to become manifest.\n\nWe have now arrived at a definition of a work of art. Let us, for a\nmoment, cast our eyes backward, and review the road we have passed\nover. We have, by degrees, arrived at a conception of art more and more\nelevated, and consequently more and more exact. At first we thought\nthat the object of art was to _imitate sensible appearances._ Then\nseparating material from intellectual imitation, we found that what\nit desired to reproduce in sensible appearances is the _relationships\nof parts. _ Finally, remarking that relationships are, and ought to\nbe, modified in order to obtain the highest results of art, we proved\nthat if we study the relationships of parts it is _to make predominant\nan essential character._ No one of these definitions destroys its\nantecedent, but each corrects and defines it. We are consequently\nable now to combine them, and by subordinating the inferior to the\nsuperior, thus to sum up the result of our labor:--\"The end of a work\nof art is to manifest some essential or salient character, consequently\nsome important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable\nfrom real objects. Art accomplishes this end by employing a group of\nconnected parts, the relationships of which it systematically modifies.\nIn the three imitative arts of sculpture, painting, and poetry, these\ngroups correspond to real objects.\"\n\n\n[Footnote 1: See the two portraits of the \"Fornarina,\" in the Sciarra\nand the Borghese palaces.]\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\nThat established, gentlemen, we see, on examining the different\nparts of this definition, that the first is essential and the second\naccessory. An aggregate of connected parts is necessary in all art\nwhich the artist may modify so as to portray character; but in every\nart it is not necessary that this aggregate should correspond with\nreal objects; it is sufficient that it exists. If we therefore meet\nwith aggregates of connected parts which are not imitations of real\nobjects, there will be arts which will not have imitation for their\npoint of view. This is the case, and it is thus that architecture and\nmusic are born. In short, besides connections, proportions, moral and\norganic dependencies, which the three imitative arts copy, there are\nmathematical relationships which the two others, imitating nothing,\ncombine.\n\nLet us, at first, consider the mathematical relationships perceived by\nthe sense of sight. Magnitudes sensible to the eye may form amongst\neach other aggregates of parts connected by mathematical laws. For\ninstance, a piece of wood or stone may have geometrical form, that of\na cube, a cone, a cylinder, or a sphere, which establishes regular\nrelationships of distance between the different points of its outline.\nFurthermore, its dimensions may be quantities mutually related in\nsimple proportions which the eye can seize readily; height, may be\ntwo, three, or four times greater than thickness or breadth: this\nconstitutes a second series of mathematical relationships. Finally,\nmany of these pieces of wood or stone may be placed symmetrically\non the top or by the side of each other, according to distances and\nangles mathematically combined. Architecture is established on this\naggregate of connected parts. An architect conceiving some dominant\ncharacter, either serenity, simplicity, strength, or elegance, as\nformerly in Greece or Rome, or the strange, the varied, the infinite,\nthe fantastic, as in Gothic times, may select and combine connections,\nproportions, dimensions, forms, and positions--in short, the\nrelationships of materials, that is to say, certain visible magnitudes\nin such a way as to display the character aimed at.\n\nBy the side of magnitudes perceived by sight there are magnitudes\nperceived by the hearing,--I mean the velocities of sonorous\nvibrations; and these vibrations being magnitudes may also form\naggregates of parts connected by mathematical laws. In the first place,\nas you are aware, a musical sound is composed of continuous vibrations\nof equal velocity, and this equality already places between them\na mathematical relationship; in the second place, two sounds being\ngiven, the second may be composed of vibrations, two, three, or four\ntimes the rapidity of the first; accordingly, there is between these\ntwo sounds a mathematical relationship, which is figured by placing\nthem at an equal distance from each other on the musical stave. If,\nconsequently, instead of taking two, we take a number of sounds, and\nplace them at equal distances,--we form a scale, which scale is the\ngamut, all the sounds being thus bound together according to their\nrelative position on the gamut. You can now establish these connections\neither between successive or simultaneous sounds, the first order of\nsounds constituting melody, and the second harmony. This is music: it\nhas two essential parts, based, like architecture, on mathematical\nrelationships, which the artist is free to combine and modify.\n\nMusic, however, possesses a second property, and this new element gives\nit a peculiar quality and no ordinary scope. Besides its mathematical\nqualities, sound is analogous to the cry, and by this title it directly\nexpresses with unrivalled precision, delicacy and force, suffering,\njoy, rage, indignation--all the agitations and emotions of an animated\nsensitive being, even to the most secret and most subtle gradations.\nFrom this point of view it is similar to poetic declamation, furnishing\na specific type of music, called the music of expression, like that of\nGluck and the Germans, in opposition to the music of melody, that of\nRossini and the Italians. Let the composer's point of view be what it\nmay, the two styles of music are nevertheless related to each other,\nsounds always forming aggregates of parts linked together at once by\ntheir mathematical relationship and by the correspondence which they\nhave with the passions and the various internal states of the moral\nbeing. The musician, therefore, who conceives a certain salient,\nimportant feature of things, let it be sadness or joy, tender love or\npassionate rage, any idea or sentiment whatever, may freely select and\ncombine in such a way in these mathematical and moral relationships as\nto manifest the character which he has conceived.\n\nAll the arts are thus included in the definition above presented. In\narchitecture and music, as in sculpture, painting, and poetry, it is\nthe object of a work of art to manifest some essential character, and\nto employ as means of expression an aggregate of connected parts, the\nrelationship of which the artist combines and modifies.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\nNow that we know the nature of art, we can comprehend its importance.\nPreviously we were only sensible of its effect; it was a matter of\ninstinct, and not of reason: we were conscious of respecting and\nesteeming art, but were not qualified to account for our respect and\nesteem. Our admiration for art can now be justified, and we can mark\nits place in the order of life.\n\nMan, in many respects, is an animal endeavoring to protect himself\nagainst nature and against other men. He is obliged to provide himself\nwith food, clothing, and shelter, and to defend himself against\nclimate, want, and disease. To do this he tills the ground, navigates\nthe sea, and devotes himself to different industrial and commercial\npursuits. Furthermore, he must perpetuate his species, and secure\nhimself against the violence of his fellow-men; to this end, he forms\nfamilies and states, and establishes magistracies, functionaries,\nconstitutions, laws, and armies. After so many inventions and such\nlabor, he is not yet emancipated from his original condition; he is\nstill an animal, better fed and better protected than other animals;\nhe still thinks only of himself, and of his kindred. At this moment\na superior life dawns on him--that of contemplation, by which he\nis led to interest himself in the creative and permanent causes on\nwhich his own being and that of his fellows depend, in the leading\nand essential characters which rule each aggregate, and impress their\nmarks on the minutest details. Two ways are open to him for this\npurpose. The first is Science, by which, analyzing these causes and\nthese fundamental laws, he expresses them in abstract terms and precise\nformula; the second is Art, by which he manifests these causes and\nthese fundamental laws no longer through arid definitions, inaccessible\nto the multitude, and only intelligible to a favored few, but in a\nsensible way, appealing not alone to reason, but also to the heart and\nsenses of the humblest individual. Art has this peculiarity, that it is\nat once _noble_ and _popular,_ manifesting whatever is most exalted,\nand manifesting it to all.\n\n\n\n\nPART II.\n\nON THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nHaving investigated the nature of the work of art, there now remains\na study of the law of its production. This law, in general terms, may\nbe thus expressed:--_A work of art is determined by an aggregate which\nis the general state of the mind and surrounding circumstances._ I\nhave stated this principle in the foregoing section, and have now to\nestablish it.\n\nThis law rests on two kinds of proof: the one that of experience, and\nthe other that of reason. The former consists of an enumeration of the\nmany instances in which the law verifies itself. Some of these I have\nalready presented to you, and others will soon follow. One may assert,\nmoreover, that no case is known to which the law is not applicable; it\nis strictly so to those hitherto examined, and not merely in a general\nway, but in detail; not only to the growth and extinction of great\nschools, but again to all the variations and oscillations to which\nart is subject. The second order of proof consists in showing this\ndependence to be not only rigorous in point of fact, but, again, that\nit is so through necessity. We will accordingly analyze what we have\ncalled the general state of the mind and surrounding circumstances;\nwe shall seek, according to the ordinary standard of human nature the\neffects which a like state must produce on the public, on artists, and\nconsequently on works of art. Hence we draw a forced connection and a\ndefinite concordance, and we establish a necessary harmony which we had\nobserved as simply fortuitous. The second proof _demonstrates_ what the\nfirst had averred.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nIn order to make this harmony apparent let us resume a comparison\nalready of service to us, that between a plant and a work of art, and\nnote the circumstances in which a plant, or a species of plant, say\nthe orange, may be developed and propagated in a certain soil. Let\nus suppose all kinds of grain and seed borne by the wind and sown at\nrandom; on what conditions can those of the Lorange germinate, become\ntrees, blossom, yield fruit, spread, and cover the ground with a\nnumerous family?\n\nMany favorable circumstances are essential to this end. And at first\nthe soil must be neither too light nor too meagre: otherwise, the roots\nlacking depth and grasp, the tree would fall at the first gale of wind.\nNext, the soil must not be too dry; otherwise the tree will wither\nwhere it stands deprived of the moisture of springs and streams.\nMoreover, the climate must be warm; or the tree, which is delicate,\nwill freeze, or at least droop, and never put forth sprouts; the summer\nmust be long, in order that the fruit, which is slow in ripening, may\nfully mature; and the winter mild, so that January frosts may not blast\nor shrivel the oranges that remain green on its branches. Finally,\nthe soil must not be too favorable for other plants, lest the tree,\nleft to itself, might be stifled by the competition and infringement\nof a more vigorous vegetation. When all these conditions concur, the\nlittle orange will grow, become mature, and produce others again to\nreproduce themselves. Storms will undoubtedly occur, stones fall, and\nbrowsing goats will destroy certain plants; but on the whole, in spite\nof accidents which kill individuals, the species will be propagated,\ncover the ground, and in a few years display a nourishing grove of\norange trees. All this is to be seen in the admirably sheltered gorges\nof Southern Italy, in the environs of Sorrento and Amain, on the\nshores of the gulfs, and in the small, watered valleys, freshened by\nstreams descending from the mountains, and caressed by the beneficent\nbreezes of the sea. This concourse of circumstances was necessary in\norder to produce those beautiful round tops, those lustrous domes of a\nbright deep green, those innumerable golden apples, and that exquisite\nfragrant vegetation which, in mid-winter, makes this coast the richest\nand loveliest of gardens.\n\nLet us now reflect on the manner in which things moved in this example.\nWe have just observed the effect of circumstances and of physical\ntemperature. Strictly speaking, these have not produced the orange;\nthe seeds were given, and these alone contained the vital force. The\ncircumstances described, however, were necessary in order that the\nplant might flourish and be propagated; had these failed, the plant\nlikewise would have failed.\n\nAccordingly, let the temperature be different, and the species of plant\nwill be different. Suppose conditions entirely opposite to those just\nmentioned; take the summit of a mountain swept by violent winds, with a\nthin scanty soil, a cold climate, a short summer, and snow during the\nwinter; not only will the orange not thrive here, but the greater part\nof other trees will perish. Of all the seeds scattered haphazard by the\nwind only one will survive, and you will see but one species to endure\nand be propagated, the only one adapted to these severe conditions; the\nfir and the pine will cover the lonely crags, the abrupt precipices,\nand long, rocky ridges, with their stiff colonnades of tall trunks and\nvast mantles of sombre green, and there, as in the Vosges, in Scotland\nand in Norway, you may travel league after league, under silent arches,\non a carpet of crisp leaves, among gnarled roots obstinately clinging\nto the rocks, the domain of the patient energetic plant which alone\nsubsists under the incessant attacks of gales, and the hoar-frosts of\nlong winters.\n\nWe may accordingly regard temperature and physical circumstances\nas _making a choice_ amongst various species of trees, all owing a\ncertain species to subsist and propagate, to the exclusion, more or\nless complete, of all others. Physical temperature acts by elimination\nand suppression, in other words, by _natural selection._ Such is the\ngreat law by which we now explain the origin and structure of diverse\nexisting organisms--a law as applicable to moral as to physical\nconditions, to history as well as to botany and zoology, to genius and\nto character, as well as to plant and to animal.\n\nIn short, there is a _moral_ temperature, consisting of the general\nstate of minds and manners, which acts in the same way as the other.\nProperly speaking, this temperature does not produce artists; talent\nand genius are gifts like seeds; what I mean to say is, that the same\ncountry at different epochs probably contains about the same number\nof men of talent, and of men of mediocrity. We know, in fact, through\nstatistics, that in two successive generations nearly the same number\nof men are found of the requisite stature for the conscription and the\nsame number of men too small for soldiers. In all probability, it is\nwith minds as with bodies. Nature is a sower of men, and putting her\nhand constantly in the same sack, distributes nearly the same quantity,\nthe same quality, the same proportion of seed. But in these handfuls\nof seed which she scatters as she strides over time and space, not all\ngerminate. A certain moral temperature is necessary to develop certain\ntalents; if this is wanting, these prove abortive. Consequently, as\nthe temperature changes, so will the species of talent change; if it\nbecomes reversed, talent will become reversed, and, in general, we may\nconceive moral temperature as _making a selection_ among different\nspecies of talent, allowing only this or that species to develope, to\nthe exclusion more or less complete of others. It is through some such\nmechanism that you see developed in schools at certain times and in\ncertain countries the sentiment of the ideal, that of the real, that\nof drawing and that of color. There is a prevailing tendency which\nconstitutes the spirit of the age. Talent seeking to force an outlet\nin another direction, finds it closed; and the force of the public\nmind and surrounding habits repress and lead it astray, by imposing on\nit a fixed growth.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe foregoing comparison may serve you as a general indication; let us\nnow enter into details, and study the action of the moral temperature\non works of art.\n\nFor the sake of greater clearness we will take a very simple case,\nthat of a certain mental condition, in which melancholy predominates.\nThis supposition is not arbitrary, for such a condition has frequently\noccurred in the life of humanity: five or six centuries of decadence,\ndepopulation, foreign invasion, famine, pests, and aggravated misery,\nare amply sufficient to produce it. Asia experienced such a state of\nthings in the sixth century before Christ, and Europe in the period of\nthe first ten centuries of our own era. In times like these men lose\nboth courage and hope, and regard life as a burden.\n\nLet as contemplate the effect of such a mental condition, together with\nthe circumstances which engender it, on the artists of an epoch like\nthis. We admit that nearly the same number of melancholy and joyous\ntemperaments, as well as a mixture of both, are met in this as at other\ntimes; how and in what sense does the prevailing situation effect their\ntransformation?\n\nIt must be borne in mind that the misfortunes that afflict the public\nalso afflict the artist; he is one of the flock, and he suffers as\nthe rest suffer. For example, if invasions of barbarians occur, and\npests, famines, and calamities of all sorts prolonged for centuries and\nspread over the entire country; not only one, but countless miracles,\nwould be necessary to save him harmless in the general inundation. On\nthe contrary, it is probable, and even certain, that he will have his\nshare of public misfortune; that he will be ruined, beaten, wounded,\nand led into captivity like others; that his wife, children, relatives\nand friends will share the common fate, and that he will suffer and be\nsubject to fears on their account, as well as on his own. During this\nlong-continued flood of personal misery he will, if he is gay, become\nless gay, and, if melancholy, still more melancholy. This is the first\neffect of his social medium.\n\nOn the other hand, if the artist is raised among melancholy companions,\nthe ideas he receives in infancy, with those acquired afterwards,\nare melancholy. The dominant religion, accommodating itself to the\nlugubrious order of things, teaches him that the earth is a place\nof exile, the world a prison-house, life an evil, and that all that\nconcerns him is to deserve to get out of it. Philosophy, forming its\nmorality according to the lamentable spectacle of man's degeneracy,\nproves to him that it would have been better for him not to have\nbeen born Ordinary conversation teems with only mournful events,\nthe invasion of a province, the destruction of some monument, the\noppression of the weak, and civil wars among the strong. Daily\nobservation reveals to him only images of discouragement and grief,\nbeggars, and cases of starvation, a bridge left to decay, abandoned,\ncrumbling houses, fields going to waste, and the black walls of\ndwellings ravaged by fire. All these impressions sink deep in his mind\nfrom the first year of his life to the last, incessantly aggravating\nwhatever melancholy sentiment arises out of his own misfortunes.\n\nThey aggravate him so much the more proportionately to the intensity\nof his artistic feeling. What makes him an artist is the practice of\nimitating the essential character of things, the salient points of\nobjects; other men only see portions, while he sees the whole and the\nspirit of them. And as in this case the salient characteristic is\nmelancholy, he accordingly perceives nothing else. Moreover, through\nthis excess of imagination and this instinct of exaggeration peculiar\nto artists, he amplifies and expands it to the utmost; he becomes\nimpregnated with it, and charges his work with it, so that he commonly\nsees and paints things in much darker colors than would be employed by\nhis contemporaries.\n\nIt must be added also that he finds them of great assistance to\nhim in his work. You know that a man who paints or writes remains\nnot alone face to face with his canvas or his writing-desk. On the\ncontrary, he goes out and talks to people and looks about him; he\nlistens to the hints of his friends or rivals, and seeks suggestions\nin books and from surrounding works of art. An idea resembles a\nseed: if the seed requires, in order to germinate, develope and\nbloom, the nourishment which water, air, sun and soil afford it, the\nidea, in order to complete and shape itself into form, requires to be\nsupplemented and aided by other minds. Accordingly, in these epochs\nof melancholy, what sort of suggestions are other minds capable of\nfurnishing? Only melancholy ones, for only on this side do men labor.\nAs their experience provides them only with painful sensations and\nsentiments, they can only note the shades of difference, and record\ndiscoveries made on the path of suffering: the heart is the only field\nof observation, and if this is filled with sorrow, sorrow is all\nthat men contemplate. They are, therefore, conscious only of grief,\ndejection, chagrin and despair. If the artist demands instruction of\nthem this is all the return they can make. To seek in them any idea\nor any information on the different kinds or different expressions of\njoy would be labor lost; they can only furnish what they possess. For\nthis reason let him attempt to portray happiness, cheerfulness, or\ngayety, and he stands alone, deprived of all support, left to his own\nresources, and which in an isolated man amounts to nothing. His labor\nwill likewise be stamped with mediocrity. On the other hand, when he\nwould paint melancholy sentiments his century would come to his aid.\nHe finds materials prepared for him by preceding schools; he finds a\nready-made art, consisting of known processes and a beaten track. A\nchurch ceremony, a piece of furniture, a conversation, suggests to him\na form, a color, a phrase, or a character still unknown to him; his\nwork, to which millions of unknown co-laborers have contributed, is\nall the more beautiful, because, in addition to his own labor and his\nown genius, it embodies the labor and genius of surrounding society,\nand of generations that have gone before it.\n\nThere is still another reason, and the strongest of all, which draws\nhim to melancholy subjects; it is that his work, once exposed to the\npublic eye, finds appreciation only as it expresses melancholy ideas.\nMen, indeed, can only comprehend sentiments analogous to those they\nhave themselves experienced. Other sentiments, no matter how powerfully\nexpressed, do not affect them; the look with their eyes, but the heart\nis dormant and directly their eyes are averted. Imagine a man losing\nhis fortune, country, children, health and liberty, one manacled in\na dungeon for twenty years, like Pellico or Andryane, whose spirit\nby degrees is changed and broken, and who becomes melancholy and a\nmystic, and whose discouragement is incurable; such a man entertains\na horror of cheerful music, and has no disposition to read Rabelais;\nif you place him before the merry brutes of Rubens, he will turn aside\nand place himself before the canvases of Rembrandt; he will enjoy only\nthe music of Chopin and the poetry of Lamartine or Heine. The same\nthing happens to the public and to individuals; their taste depends\non their situation; their sadness gives them a taste for melancholy\nworks; cheerful productions are accordingly repudiated, and the artist\nis censured or neglected. Now an artist composes mostly in order to\nobtain appreciation and applause; this is his ruling passion. Hence,\ntherefore, betides other causes, his ruling passion, added to the\npressure of public opinion, leads him, pushes him, and constantly\nbrings him back to the expression of melancholy, and barring the ways\nto him which would lead him to the portrayal of gayety and happiness.\n\nThrough this series of obstacles every passage would be closed for\nworks of art manifesting joy. If an artist overcomes one obstacle,\nhe is arrested by others. If he meets with joyous natures he will\nbe saddened _by_ their personal misfortunes. Education and current\nconversation fill their minds with gloomy ideas. The artists' faculties\nby which they detach and amplify the leading traits of objects, will\nfind for their exercise none but melancholy ones. The experience and\nlabor of others provide them with suggestions and are co-operative only\nin melancholy subjects. Finally, the earnest and decisive will of the\npublic allows them to produce only melancholy subjects. Consequently,\nthe class of artists and their works suitable for the expression of\ngayety and joyousness disappear, or end by becoming reduced to almost\nnothing.\n\nConsider, now, the opposite case, that of a general condition of\ncheerfulness. That occurs in renaissance epochs, when order, wealth,\npopulation, comfort, prosperity, and useful and beautiful discoveries\nare constantly increasing. By reversing its terms the analysis we have\njust made is applicable word for word; the same process of reasoning\nproves that the works of art of such a period will all, more or less,\nexpress a joyous character.\n\nConsider, now, an intermediary case, that is to say, a commingling of\nthis or that phase of joy or sadness, which is the ordinary condition\nof things. By a proper modification of terras, the analysis is equally\npertinent; the same reasoning demonstrates that works of art express\ncorresponding combinations, and a corresponding species of joy and\nmelancholy.\n\nLet us conclude, therefore, that in every simple or complex state, the\nsocial medium, that is to say, the general state of mind and manners,\ndetermines the species of works of art in suffering only those which\nare in harmony with it, and in suppressing other species, through a\nseries of obstacles interposed, and a series of attacks renewed, at\nevery step of their development.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nLet us now leave supposed cases, simplified to give clearness to\nthe exposition, and take up real ones. You will see in glancing at\nthe most important of a historical series, a verification of the\nlaw. I will select four which are the four great cycles of European\ncivilization--Greek and Roman antiquity, the feudal and Christian\nmiddle ages, the well-regulated aristocratic monarchies of the\nseventeenth century, and the industrial democracies of the present day,\ndirected by the sciences. Each of these periods has its own art, or\nsome department of art peculiar to it, either sculpture, architecture,\nthe drama or music, or some determined phase of each of these\ngreat arts; in every case a distinct, singularly rich and complete\nvegetation, which, in its leading features, reflects the principal\ntraits of the art and the nation. Let us, accordingly, consider turn\nthe different soils, and we shall that all produce different flowers.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nAbout three thousand years ago there appeared on the shores and islands\nof the \u00c6gean Sea a remarkably handsome, intelligent race, viewing life\nin quite a new way. It did not allow itself to be absorbed by a great\nreligious conception like the Hindoos and Egyptians, nor by a great\nsocial organization like the Assyrians and Persians, nor by great\nindustrial and commercial usages after the fashion of the Phoenicians\nand Carthagenians. Instead of a theocracy and a hierarchy of caste, and\ninstead of a monarchy and a hierarchy of functionaries and of great\ntrading and commercial establishments, the men of that race had an\ninvention of their own called the city, which city, in sending forth\nbranches, gave birth to others of the same description. One of these,\nMiletus, produced three hundred towns, and colonized the entire coast\nof the Black Sea. Others did the same, the Mediterranean Sea being\nencircled with a garland of flourishing cities, extending from Cyrene\nto Marseilles, along the gulfs and promontories of Spain, Italy,\nGreece, Asia Minor and Africa.\n\nWhat was the life of this city?[1] A citizen performed but little\nmanual labor; he was generally supported by his subjects and\ntributaries, and always served by slaves. The poorest man in the place\nhad one to keep house for him. Athens counted four for each citizen;\nand lesser cities, like \u00c6gina and Corinth, possessed from four to five\nhundred thousand. Servants, of course, abounded. The citizen, however,\nneeded but little help. Like all the finely-built races of the south,\nhe was abstemious, a meal consisting of three or four olives, a bit of\ngarlic, and the head of a fish.[2] His wardrobe consisted of sandals,\na small shirt, and a large mantle, like that of a shepherd. His house\nwas a narrow, frail, ill-constructed tenement, into which robbers\ncould penetrate by piercing the walls,[3] and which he only used for\nsleeping; a bed and two or three beautiful vases were the principal\narticles of furniture. The citizen had few wants, and he passed the day\nin the open air.\n\nHow did he dispose of his leisure? Serving neither king nor priest,\nhe was, as far as he was concerned, free and sovereign in the city.\nHe elected his own pontiffs and magistrates, and he himself, in\nturn, could be elected to sacerdotal and other offices; whether\nblacksmith or currier, he judged the most important political cases\nin the tribunals, and decided the gravest of affairs of state in the\nassemblies; his occupation consisted, substantially, of public business\nand war. To be a politician and a soldier was a part of his duty; other\npursuits were of little importance to him; the attention of a free man,\nin his opinion, ought to be applied to these two employments. And he\nwas right, for, at that time, human life was not protected as it is in\nours; human societies had not acquired the stability which they now\nhave. Most of these cities, built and scattered along the Mediterranean\nshores, were surrounded by barbarians eager to prey upon them; the\ncitizen was obliged to be under arms, like the European of the present\nday in Japan and in New Zealand; if not, Gauls, Libyans, Samitites\nand Bithynians would soon have pitched their camps amid the ruins\nof battered walls and devastated temples. Besides all this, these\ncities were inimical to each other. The rights of war were atrocious;\na vanquished city was often devoted to destruction; a wealthy noted\nman might any day see his dwelling in ashes, his property pillaged,\nhis wife and daughters sold to recruit places of prostitution; he\nhimself, and his sons, enslaved, would be buried in mines, or compelled\nby the lash to turn a mill. With such perils before him it is natural\nfor a man to be interested in affairs of state, and be qualified for\nbattle: he has to become a politician under penalty of death. Ambition,\nhowever, and love of glory are equal stimulants. Every city aspired to\nreduce or humble every other city, to acquire vassals, to conquer or to\nmake profitable the persons of others.[4] The citizen passed his life\nin the public thoroughfares, discussing the best means for preserving\nand aggrandizing his city, canvassing its alliances, treaties, laws and\nconstitution; now listening to orators, and again acting as one himself\nup to the very moment of going aboard his vessel in order to wage war\nin Thrace or in Egypt, against other Greeks, against the barbarians, or\nagainst the Great King.\n\nTo reach this point, they had systematized a peculiar discipline. As\nthere were no industrial facilities in those days, the machinery of\nwar was unknown. War was a combat between man and man; consequently,\nthe essential thing to insure victory was not to transform soldiers\ninto marshalled automatons, as in our day, but to render each soldier\nthe most resistant, the strongest, and the most agile body possible;\nin short, a highly-tempered gladiator, capable of the utmost physical\nendurance.\n\nTo this end, Sparta which, about the eighth century, gave the example\nand the impulse to all Greece, had a very complicated and no less\nefficacious military system. She herself was a camp without walls,\nsituated, like our camps in Kabyle, amidst enemies and a conquered\npeople, wholly military, and devoted to attack and self-defence. In\norder to have a perfect military, it was necessary to have a splendid\nrace; it was managed as in stock-breeding. All deformed children were\ndeprived of life. The law, moreover, prescribed the age for marriage\nand selected the most suitable time and circumstances for proper\nbreeding. An old man happening to have a young wife was obliged to give\nher over to a young man in order to have a good healthy offspring. A\nmiddle-aged man having a friend whose beauty and character he admired,\nmight give him the use of his wife.[5] After having constituted the\nrace, they shaped the individual. Young men were enrolled, drilled,\nand accustomed to live in common like a troop of children. They were\ndivided into two rival bands, who inspected each other, and fought\ntogether with their feet and their fists. They slept in the open\nair, bathed in the cool waters of the Eurotas, went marauding, ate\nsparingly, fast and badly, rested on beds of rushes, drank nothing but\nwater, and endured every inclemency of climate. Young girls exercised\nin the same manner, and the matured were restricted to almost the same\nroutine. The rigor of this antique discipline was undoubtedly less, or\nwas mitigated, in other cities; nevertheless, with these mitigations,\nthe same road conducted to the same end. Young people passed the\ngreater part of the day in the gymnasia, wrestling, jumping, boxing,\nracing, pitching quoits; fortifying and rendering supple their naked\nmuscles. It was their aim to produce strong, robust bodies, the most\nbeautiful and the nimblest possible, and no system of education ever\nsucceeded better in obtaining them.[6]\n\nThese peculiar customs of the Greeks gave birth to peculiar ideas.\nIn their eyes the ideal man was not the man of thought, or a man of\ndelicate sensibility, but the naked man, the man of a fine stock and\ngrowth, well-proportioned, active and accomplished in all physical\nexercises. This mode of thinking was manifested by a variety of traits.\nIn the first place, whilst the Carians and the Lydians around them, and\ntheir barbarian neighbors generally, were ashamed to appear naked, they\nstripped without embarrassment in order to wrestle and run races.[7]\nThe young girls of Sparta were in the habit of exercising almost\nnaked. You will perceive that gymnastic exercises had suppressed, or\nat least transformed, modesty. In the second place, the great national\nfestivals of the Greeks, the Olympian, Pythian, and Nemean games,\nconsisted of a display and triumph of the naked figure. The youth of\nthe first families resorted to these from all parts of Greece, and\nfrom the remotest Grecian colonies. They, prepared themselves for them\na long time beforehand by special training and the severest labor,\nand there, under the eyes and applause of the whole nation, stripped\nof their clothing, they wrestled, boxed, pitched quoits, and raced\non foot or in the chariot. Victories of this class, which we of the\npresent day leave to a Hercules in a circus, they regarded as of the\nfirst importance. The victorious athlete in the foot-race gave his\nname to the Olympiad; his praises were chanted by the greatest poets;\nPindar, the most illustrious lyric poet of antiquity, sang only of\nchariot races. On returning to his native city the victorious athlete\nwas received in triumph, and his strength and agility became the pride\nof the place. One of these, Milo of Crotona, who was invincible at\nwrestling, was chosen general, and led his fellow-citizens to battle,\nclad in a lion's skin and armed with a club like Hercules, to whom he\nwas compared. It is related that a certain Diagoras saw his two sons\ncrowned on the same day, and was carried around by them in triumph\nbefore the assembled multitude. Deeming a like happiness too great for\none mortal, the people cried out to him. \"Die, Diagoras, for thou\ncanst not now become a god!\" Diagoras, suffocated with emotion, did\nindeed expire in the arms of his children. In his eyes, as in the eyes\nof all Greece, to see his sons possessing the most vigorous fists and\nthe nimblest legs was the height of terrestrial bliss. Whether this\nbe truth or legend, such a judgment proves the excessive degree of\nadmiration entertained by the Greeks for the perfection of the human\nform.\n\nOn this account they were not afraid to expose it before the gods on\nsolemn occasions. They had a formal system of attitudes and actions,\ncalled _orchestrique,_ which regulated and taught them beautiful\npostures of the sacred dances. After the battle of Salamis the tragic\npoet Sophocles, then fifteen years old, and celebrated for his beauty,\nstripped himself of his clothing in order to dance and chant the p\u00e6an\nbefore the trophy. One hundred years later, Alexander, on passing\nthrough Asia Minor to contend with Darius, cast aside his garments,\nalong with his companions, for the purpose of honoring the tomb of\nAchilles with races. But the Greeks went still further; they considered\nthe perfection of the human form as attesting divinity. In a town in\nSicily a young man of extraordinary beauty was worshipped, and after\ndeath, altars were erected in his honor.[8] In Homer, which is the\nGrecian Bible, you will find everywhere that the gods had a human body\nwhich the flesh-lance could pierce, flowing red blood, instincts,\npassions and pleasures similar in every respect to our own, and to such\nan extent that heroes become the lovers of goddesses, and gods beget\nchildren of mortal mothers. Between Olympus and the earth there is no\nabyss; they descend from, and we ascend to, it; if they surpass us,\nit is because they are exempt from death, because their wounds heal\nquicker, and they are stronger, handsomer and happier than we. In other\nrespects, they eat, drink and quarrel as we do, all enjoying the same\nsenses, and employing the same corporeal functions. Greece has so well\nworked out its model of the beautiful human animal that it has made its\nidol of it, and glorifies it on earth, by making a divinity of it in\nheaven.\n\nOut of this conception statuary is born, and we can mark every\nmoment of its growth. On the one hand, an athlete, once crowned, was\nentitled to a statue; crowned a third time, he was awarded an iconical\nstatue--that is to say, an effigy bearing his portrait. On the other\nhand, the gods being only human forms, more serene and more perfect\nthan others, it was natural to represent them by statues. For that\npurpose there is no need of a forced dogma. The marble or bronze effigy\nis not an allegory, but an exact image; it does not give to the god\nmuscles, bones, and a heavy covering which it has not; it represents\nthe reclothing of flesh which covers it, and the living form which is\nits substance. It suffices, in order to be a truthful portrait, that it\nshould be the most beautiful, and reproduce the immortal calm by which\nthe god is exalted above mortals.\n\nThe statue is now blocked out--is the sculptor qualified to produce\nit? Dwell a moment on his preparation. Men in those days studied the\nbody naked and in action, in the baths, in the gymnasia, in the sacred\ndances and at the public games; they observed and preferred such forms\nand such attitudes as denoted vigor, health, and activity; they\nlabored with all their might to impress on it these forms and to shape\nit to these attitudes. For three or four hundred years they were thus\ncorrecting, purifying, developing their idea of physical beauty. It is\nnot surprising that they finally discovered the ideal type of the human\nform. We of the present day that are familiar with it owe our knowledge\nof it to them. When Nicholas of Pisa and other early sculptors at\nthe end of the Gothic period abandoned the meagre, bony, and ugly\nforms of hieratic tradition, it was because they took an example from\nGreek bas-reliefs, preserved or exhumed; and if to-day, forgetting\nour distorted and defective bodies, as plebeians or thinkers, we wish\nto find again some type of the perfect form, it is in these statues,\nmonuments of a noble, unoccupied, gymnastic life, that we must seek our\ninstruction.\n\nNot only the form of it is perfect, but again, which is unique, it\nsuffices for the thought of the artist. The Greeks, having assigned\nto the body a dignity of its own, were not tempted, like the moderns,\nto subordinate it to the head. A chest breathing healthily, a trunk\nsolidly resting on the thighs, a nervous supple leg impelling the\nbody forward with ease; they did not occupy themselves solely with\nthe breadth of a thoughtful forehead, with the frown of an irritated\nbrow, or the turn of a sarcastic lip. They could limit themselves to\nthe conditions of perfect statuary, which leaves the eye without an\niris, and the head without expression; which prefers quiet personages,\nor those occupied by insignificant action; which commonly employs\nonly a uniform tint, either of marble or cf bronze; which leaves the\npicturesque to painting, and abandons dramatic interest to literature;\nwhich, confined to, but ennobled by, the nature of its materials\nand its limited domain, avoids the representation of details, of\nphysiognomy, of the casualties of human agitation, in order to detach\nthe pure and abstract form, and thus illuminate the sanctuaries with\nmotionless, peaceful, august effigies in which human nature recognized\nits heroes and its gods.\n\nStatuary, accordingly, is the central art of Greece; other arts are\nrelated to it, accompany it, or imitate it. No other art has so well\nexpressed the national life; no other was so cultivated or so popular.\nIn the hundred small temples around Delphi, in which the treasures of\nthe cities were kept, \"a whole world of marble, gold, silver, brass,\nand bronze, twenty different bronzes, and of all tints, thousands of\nglorified dead in irregular groups, seated and standing, radiated the\nveritable subjects of the god of light.\"[9] When Rome, at a later day,\ndespoiled the Greek world of its treasures, this vast city possessed a\npopulation of statues almost equal to that of its living inhabitants.\nAt the present time, after so many centuries and such devastation, it\nis estimated that more than sixty thousand statues have been discovered\nat Rome and in its surrounding Campagna. A like harvest of sculpture\nhas never been seen, such a prodigious abundance of flowers,--a display\nof flowers so perfect, a growth so natural, so continuous and varied.\nYou have just seen the cause of it, in digging up the earth layer by\nlayer, and in observing that all the foundations of the human soil,\ninstitutions, manners, ideas, have contributed to sustain it.\n\n\n\n[Footnote 1: Grote, _History of Greece--_Boeckh, _Political Economy of\nthe Athenians_--Wullon, _Slavery in Antiquity._]\n\n[Footnote 2: The Frogs of Aristophanes; the Cock of Lucian.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Their proper name was wall-piercers.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Thucydides, Book I. See the divers expeditions of the\nAthenians between the peace of Cimon and the Peloponnesian war.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Xenophon. The Lacedemonian Republic, _passim. _]\n\n[Footnote 6: The Dialogues of Plato. The Clouds of Aristophanes.]\n\n[Footnote 7: The Lacedemonians adopted this custom about the 14th\nOlympiad.--Plato.]\n\n[Footnote 8: Herodotus.]\n\n[Footnote 9: Michelet.]\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\nThis military organization common to all the cities of antiquity\nat length had its effect,--a sad effect. War being the natural\ncondition of things, the weak were over-powered by the strong, and,\nmore than once, one might have seen formed states of considerable\nmagnitude under the control or tyranny of a victorious or dominant\ncity. Finally one arose, Rome, which, possessing greater energy,\npatience, and skill, more capable of subordination and command, of\nconsecutive views and practical calculations, attained, after seven\nhundred years of effort, in incorporating under her dominion the\nentire basin of the Mediterranean and many great outlying countries.\nTo gain this point she submitted to military discipline, and, like a\nfruit springing from its germ, a military despotism was the issue.\nThus was the Empire formed. Towards the first century of our era, the\nworld, organized under a regular monarchy, seemed at last to have\nattained to order and tranquillity. It issued only in a decline. In\nthe horrible destruction of conquest cities perished by hundreds and\nmen by millions. During an entire century the conquerors themselves\nmassacred each other, and the civilized world having lost its free\nmen, lost the half of its inhabitants.[1] Citizens, converted into\nsubjects, and no longer pursuing noble ends, abandoned themselves to\nindolence and luxury, refused to marry and to have children. Machinery\nbeing unknown, and the hand the only instrument of labor, the slaves,\nwhose lot it was to provide for the pleasures, pomp, and refinements\nof society, disappeared under a burden too heavy for them to bear.\nAt the expiration of four hundred years the enervated, depopulated\nempire had not sufficient men or energy to repel the barbarians. The\nbarbarous wave entered, sweeping away the dykes; after the first, a\nsecond, then a third, and so on for a period of five hundred years.\nThe evils they inflicted cannot be described: people exterminated,\nmonuments destroyed, fields devastated, and cities burnt; industry,\nthe fine arts, and the sciences mutilated, degraded, forgotten; fear,\nignorance, and brutality spread everywhere and established. They were\ncomplete savages, similar to the Hurons and Iroquois suddenly encamped\nin the midst of a cultivated and thinking world like ours. Imagine a\nherd of wild bulls let loose amid the furniture and decorations of a\npalace, and after this another herd, so that the ruins left by the\nfirst perished under the hoofs of the second, and, scarcely installed\nin disorder, each troop of brutes had to arouse itself in order to\nbattle with its horns a bellowing, insatiable troop of invaders. When\nat last, in the tenth century, the last horde had made its lair and\nglutted itself, men seemed to be in no better condition. The barbarian\nchiefs becoming feudal barons, fought amongst themselves, pillaging\npeasants and burning their crops, robbing the merchants, and wantonly\nrobbing and maltreating their miserable serfs. The land remained waste,\nand provisions became scarce. In the eleventh century forty out of\nseventy years were years of famine. A monk, Raoul Glaber, relates that\nit got to be common to eat human flesh; a butcher was burnt alive for\nexposing it for sale in his stall. Add to this universal poverty and\nfilth, and a total neglect of the simplest of hygienic principles, and\nyou can well understand how leprosy, pests, and epidemics, becoming\nacclimated, raged as if upon their native soil. People degenerated\nto the condition of the anthropophagi of New Zealand, to the ignoble\nbrutality of the Papuans and Caledonians, to the lowest depths of the\nhuman cesspool, seeing that reminiscences of the past trenched on the\nmisery of the present, and since some thinking heads, still reading\nthe ancient language felt in a confused way the immensity of the fall,\nthe whole depth of the abyss into which the human species had been\nengulphed for a thousand years.\n\nYou may divine the sentiments which such a condition of things, so\nextreme and so lasting, implanted in people's breasts. At first there\nwas weakness, disgust of life, and the deepest melancholy; \"the\nworld,\" said a writer of that day, \"is nothing but an abyss of vice and\nimmodesty.\" Life seemed a foretaste of hell. Many withdrew from it,\nand not alone the poor, the feeble, and women, but sovereign lords,\nand even kings; such as possessed delicate and noble natures preferred\nthe tranquillity and monotony of the cloister. On the approach of the\nyear one thousand a general belief in the extinction of the world\nprevailed, and many, seized with fright, made over their property\nto churches and convents. On the other hand, and coupled with this\nterror and despondency, there arose an extraordinary degree of nervous\nexaltation. When men are very miserable they become excitable, like\ninvalids and prisoners; their sensibility increases, and acquires a\nfeminine delicacy; their heart is filled with caprices, agitations\nand despondency, excesses and effusions from which they are free in a\nhealthy state. They depart from moderate sentiments which alone can\nmaintain continuous masculine action. They indulge in re very, burst\ninto tears, sink down on their knees, become incapable of providing for\nthemselves, imagine infinite sweet and tender transports, yearning to\ndiffuse the excessive refinements and enthusiasm of their over-wrought\nintemperate imaginations; in short, they are prone to love. Hence, we\nsee them developed with an enormous exaggeration, a passion unknown\nto the stern and virile souls of antiquity, namely, the chivalric\nmystic love of the middle ages. The calm rational love of wedlock was\nsubordinated to the ecstatic and unruly love encountered outside of\nwedlock. Its subtleties were carefully defined and embodied in the\nmaxims of tribunals presided over by ladies. It was decreed there\nthat \"love could not exist between spouses,\" and that \"love could\nrefuse nothing to love.[2] Woman was no longer considered as flesh\nand blood like man, but was converted into a divinity; man was only\ntoo well compensated in the privilege of adoring: and serving her.\nHuman love was regarded as a celestial sentiment leading to divine\nlove and confounded with it. Poets transformed their mistresses into\nsupernatural virtue, and implored them to guide them through the\nempyrean to the tabernacle of God. You can easily appreciate the hold\nthe Christian faith derived from such sentiments. Disgust for the\nworld, a tendency to ecstacy, habitual despair and infinite craving\nfor tender sympathy, naturally impelled men to a doctrine representing\nthe earth as a vale of tears, the present life a period of trial,\nrapturous union with the Divinity as supreme happiness, and the love\nof God as the first of duties. Morbid or trembling sensibility found\nits support in the infinitude of terror and of hope, in pictures of\nflaming pits and eternal perdition, and in conceptions of a radiant\nparadise and of ineffable bliss. Thus supported, Christianity ruled all\nsouls, inspired art, and gave employment to artists. \"Society,\" says a\ncontemporary, \"divested itself of its old rags in order to clothe its\nchurches in robes of whiteness.\" Gothic architecture accordingly made\nits appearance.\n\nLet us observe the growth of the new Gothic edifice. In opposition to\nthe religions of antiquity, which were all local, belonging to castes\nor to families, Christianity is a universal religion which appeals\nto the multitude, and summons all men to salvation. It was necessary\naccordingly for this new edifice to be very large and capable of\ncontaining the entire population of any one city or district--the\nwomen, the children, the serfs, the artisans, and the poor as well as\nthe nobles and sovereigns. The small _cella_ which contains the statue\nof the Greek god, and the portico where the procession of free citizens\nwas displayed, were not sufficient for this immense crowd. An enormous\nvault was required, lofty naves multiplied and crossed by others, and\nmeasureless arches and colossal columns; generations of workmen flocked\nin crowds for centuries to labor here for the salvation of their souls,\ndisplacing mountains before the monument could be completed.\n\nThe men who enter here have sorrowing souls, and the ideas they come\nin quest of are mournful. They meditate on this miserable life, so\ntroubled and confined by such an abyss, on hell and its punishments,\nendless, measureless and unintermittent, on the sufferings and passion\nof Christ crucified, and those of persecuted and tortured saints and\nmartyrs. Listening to such religious teaching, and under the burden of\ntheir own fears, they could ill accommodate themselves to the simple\nbeauty and joyous effect of pure light; the clear and healthy light\nof day is accordingly excluded; the interior of the edifice remains\nsubject to cold and lugubrious shadow; light only comes in transformed\nby stained glass into purple and crimson tints, into the splendors of\ntopaz and amethyst, into the mystic gleams of precious stones, into\nstrange illuminations, seeming to afford glimpses of paradise.\n\nDelicate over-excited imaginations like these are not content with\nsimple architectural forms. And first, form in itself is not sufficient\nto interest them. It must be a symbol of and designate some august\nmystery. The edifice with its transverse naves represents the cross\non which Christ died; its circular window with its brilliant petals\nfigures the rose of eternity, the leaves of which are redeemed souls;\nall the dimensions of its parts correspond to sacred numbers. Again,\nthese forms in their richness, strangeness, boldness, delicacy and\nimmensity, harmonize with the intemperance and curiosity of a morbid\nfancy. Vivid sensations--manifold, changing, bizarre and extreme--are\nnecessary to such souls. They reject the column, the horizontal and\ntransverse beams, the round arch, in short, the solid construction,\nbalanced proportions, and beautiful simplicity of antique architecture;\nthey do not sympathize with those noble creations that seem to have\nbeen born without pain and to last without effort, which attain to\nbeauty the same time as to life, and the finished excellence of which\nneeds neither addition nor ornament.\n\nThey adopt for type, not the plain half-circle of the arcade, or\nthe simple angle formed by the column and the architrave, but the\ncomplicated union of two curves intersected by each other, forming the\nogive. They aspire to the gigantic, covering square acres of ground\nwith piles of stone, binding pillars together in monstrous columns,\nsuspending galleries in the air, elevating arches to the skies, and\nstage upon stage of belfry until their spires are lost in the clouds.\nThey exaggerate the delicacy of forms; they surround doors with\nseries of statuettes, and festoon the sides with trefoils, gables and\ngargoyles; they interlace the tortuous tracery of mullions with the\nmotley hues of stained glass; the choir seems to be embroidered with\nlace, while tombs, altars, stalls and towers are covered with mazes of\nslender columns and fringes of leaves and statues. It seems as if they\nwished to attain at once infinite grandeur and infinite littleness,\nseeking to overwhelm the mind on either side, on the one hand with\nthe vastness of a mass, and on the other with a prodigious quantity\nof details. Their object was evidently to produce an extraordinary\nsensation; they aimed to dazzle and bewilder.\n\nProportionately, therefore, to the development of this style of\narchitecture, it becomes more and more paradoxical. In the fourteenth\nand fifteenth centuries, the age of the flamboyant Gothic of Strasburg,\nMilan, York, Nuremburg, and the Church of Brou, solidity seems to\nhave been wholly abandoned for ornament. At one time it bristles with\na profusion of multiplied and superposed pinnacles; at another its\nexterior is draped with a lacework of mouldings. Walls are hollowed\nout, and almost wholly absorbed by windows; they lack strength, and\nwithout the buttresses raised against them the structure would fall;\never disintegrating, it is necessary to establish colonies of masons\nabout them constantly to repair their constant decay. This embroidered\nstonework, more and more frail as it ascends the spire, cannot sustain\nitself; it has to be fastened to a skeleton of iron, and as iron rusts,\nthe blacksmith is summoned to contribute his share towards propping up\nthis unstable, delusive magnificence. In the interior the decoration is\nso exuberant and complex, the groinings so richly display their thorny\nand tangled vegetation, and the stalls, pulpit, and railings, swarm\nwith such intricate, tortuous, fantastic arabesques, that the church\nno longer seems to be a sacred monument, but a rare example of the\njewellers art. It is a vast structure of variegated glass, a gigantic\npiece of filigree work, a festive decoration as elaborated as that of\na queen or a bride; it is the adornment of a nervous, over-excited\nwoman, similar to the extravagant costumes of the day, whose delicate\nand morbid poesy denotes by its excess the singular sentiments, the\nfeverish, violent, and impotent aspiration peculiar to an age of\nknights and monks.\n\nFor this architecture, which has lasted four centuries, is not confined\nto one country or to one description of edifice; it is spread over\nall Europe, from Scotland to Sicily, and is employed in all civil and\nreligious and public and private monuments. Not only do cathedrals and\nchapels bear its imprint, but fortresses, palaces, costumes, dwellings,\nfurniture, and equipments. Its universality, accordingly, expresses\nand attests the great moral crisis, at once morbid and sublime, which,\nduring the whole of the middle ages, exalted, and at the same time\ndisordered, the human intellect.\n\n\n[Footnote 1: _Rome, thirty years B. C,_ by Victor Durny.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Andre le Chapelain.]\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nHuman institutions, like living bodies, are made and unmade by their\nown forces; and their health passes away or their cure is effected\nby the sole effect of their nature and their situation. Among these\nfeudal chiefs who ruled and plundered men in the middle-ages one was\nfound in each country, stronger, more politic, and better placed than\nothers, who constituted himself conservator of public order; sustained\nby public sentiment, he by degrees weakened and subdued, subordinated\nand rallied the others, and, organizing a systematic obedient\nadministration, became under the name of king the head of the nation.\nTowards the fifteenth century, the barons, formerly his equals, were\nonly his officers, and towards the seventeenth century they were simply\nhis courtiers.\n\nNote the significance of this term. A courtier is a member of the\nking's court; that is to say, a person charged with some function or\ndomestic duty in the palace--either chamberlain, equerry, or gentleman\nof the antechamber--receiving a salary, and addressing his master with\nall the deference and ceremonial obsequiousness proper to such an\nemployment. But this person is not a valet, as in oriental monarchies,\nfor his ancestor, the grandfather of his grandfather, was the equal,\nthe companion, the peer of the king; and on this account he himself\nbelongs to a privileged class, that of noblemen. He does not serve\nhis prince solely through personal interest; his devotion to him is a\npoint of honor. The prince in his turn never neglects to treat him with\nconsideration. Louis XIV. threw his cane out of the window in order not\nto be tempted to strike Lauzun, who had offended him. The courtier is\nhonored by his master, and regarded as one of his society. He lives in\nfamiliarity with him, dances at his balls, dines at his table, rides\nin the same carriage, sits in the same chairs, and frequents the same\n_salon._ From such a basis court life arose; first in Italy and Spain,\nsubsequently in France, and afterwards in England, in Germany, and in\nthe north of Europe. France was its centre, and Louis XIV. gave to it\nits principal _\u00e9clat._\n\nLet us study the effect of this new state of things on minds and\ncharacters. The kings _salon_ is the first in the country, and is\nfrequented by the most select society; the most admired personage,\ntherefore, the accomplished man whom everybody accepts for a model, is\nthe nobleman enjoying familiarity with his sovereign. This nobleman\nentertains generous sentiments; he believes himself of a superior\nrace, and he says to himself, _noblesse oblige._ He is more sensitive\nthan other men on the point of honor, and freely risks his life at the\nslightest insult. Under Louis XIII. four thousand noblemen were killed\nin duels. Contempt of danger, in the eyes of this nobleman, is the\nfirst obligation of a soul nobly born. The dandy, the worldling, so\nchoice of his ribbons, so careful of his perruque, is ready to encamp\nin Flanders mud, and expose himself to bullets for hours together at\nNeerwinden. When Luxembourg announces that he is about to give battle,\nVersailles is deserted; all these young perfumed gallants hasten off\nto the army as if they were going to a ball. Finally, and through a\nremnant of the spirit of ancient feudalism, our nobleman regards the\nmonarch as his natural legitimate chief: he knows he is bound to him,\nas the vassal formerly was to his suzerain, and at need will give\nhim his blood, his property, and his life. Under Louis XYI. noblemen\nvoluntarily placed themselves at the king's disposal, and on the 10th\nof August many were slain in his behalf.\n\nBut they are nevertheless courtiers, that is to say, men of the world,\nand in this respect perfectly polite. The King himself sets them an\nexample. Louis XIV. even doffed his hat to a chambermaid, and the\nMemoirs of St. Simon mention a duke who saluted so frequently that he\nwas obliged to cross the courts of Versailles bareheaded. The courtier,\nfor the same reason, is accomplished in all that appertains to good\nbreed-ins; language never fails him in difficult circumstances; he\nis a diplomat, master of himself, an adept in the art of disguising,\nconcealing, flattering and managing others, never giving offence, and\noften pleasing. All these qualifications and these sentiments proceed\nfrom an aristocratic spirit refined by the usages of society; they\nattain to perfection in this court and in this century. Anybody of\nthe present time disposed to admire the choice flowers of this lost\nand delicate species need not look for them in our equalized, rude\nand mixed society, but must turn to the elegant, formal, monumental\nparterres in which they formerly flourished.\n\nYou can imagine that people so constituted must have chosen pleasures\nappropriate to their character. Their taste, indeed, like their\npersons, was noble; for they were not only noble by birth, but also\nthrough their sentiments; and correct because they were educated to\npractise and respect what was becoming to them. It was this taste\nwhich, in the seventeenth century, fashioned all their works of\nart--the serious, elevated, severe productions of Poussin and Lesueur,\nthe grave, pompous, elaborate architecture of Mansart and Perrault,\nand the stately symmetrical gardens of LeNotre. You will find its\ntraces in the furniture, costumes, house decoration, and carriages of\nthe engravings and paintings of Perelle, Sebastian Leclerc, Eigaud,\nNanteuil, and many others. Versailles, with its groups of well-bred\ngods, its symmetrical alleys, its my theological water-works, its\nlarge artificial basins, its trimmed and pruned trees modelled into\narchitectural designs, is a masterpiece in this direction; all its\nedifices and parterres, everything belonging to it, was constructed\nfor men solicitous about their dignity, and strict observers of the\nrecognized standard of social propriety. But the imprint is still\nmore visible in the literature of the epoch. Never in France or in\nEurope has the art of fine writing been carried to such perfection.\nThe greatest of French authors, as you are aware, belong to this\nepoch--Bossuet, Pascal, La Fontaine, Moli\u00e8re, Corneille, Racine, La\nRochefoucauld, Madame de S\u00e9vign\u00e9, Boileau, La Bruy\u00e8re, Bourdalone, and\nothers. Great men not only wrote well, but almost everybody; Courier\nasserted that a chambermaid of those days knew more about style than\na modern academy. In fact, a good style at that time pervaded the\nair, people unconsciously inhaling it; it prevailed in correspondence\nand in conversation; the court taught it; it entered into the ways of\npeople of the world. The man who aimed to be polished and correct in\ndeportment, got to be so likewise in the attributes of language and\nof style. Among so many branches of literature there is one, tragedy,\nwhich reached a singular degree of perfection, and which more than\nall the rest furnishes at that time the most striking example of the\nconcordance which links together man and his works, manners and the\narts.\n\nThe general features of this tragedy first claim attention; they are\nall calculated to please noblemen and members of the court. The poet\ndoes not fail in the blandishment, of truth, which by its nature is\noften crude; he allows no murders on the stage; he disguises brutality\nand repudiates violence, such as blows, butcheries, yells, and groans,\neverything that might offend the senses of a spectator accustomed to\nmoderation and the elegancies of the _salon._ For the same reason he\nexcludes disorder, never abandoning himself to the caprices of fancy\nand imagination like Shakespeare; his plan is regular, he admits no\nunforeseen incidents, no romantic poesy. He elaborates his scenes,\nexplains entrances, graduates the interest of his piece, prepares\nthe way for sudden turns of fortune, and skilfully anticipates and\ndirects d\u00e9nouements. Finally, he diffuses throughout the dialogue,\nlike a uniform brilliant varnish, a studied versification composed\nof the choicest terms and the most harmonious rhymes. If we seek the\ncostume of this drama in the engravings of the time we find heroes\nand princesses appearing in furbelows, embroideries, bootees, swords\nand plumes--a dress, in short, Greek in name, but French in taste and\nfashion; such as the king, the dauphin, and the princesses paraded in,\nto the music of violins, at the court performances of ballets.\n\nNote, moreover, that all his personages are courtiers, kings and\nqueens, princes and princesses of royal blood, ambassadors, ministers,\nofficers of the guard, _menins,_[1] dependants and confidants. The\nassociates of princes are not here, as in ancient Greek tragedy,\nslaves of the palace and nurses born under their master's roof, but\nladies-in-waiting, equerries, and gentlemen of the antechamber,\ncharged with certain duties in the royal household; we readily detect\nthis in their conversational ability, in their skill in flattery, in\ntheir perfect education, in their exquisite deportment, and in their\nmonarchical sentiments as subjects and vassals. Their masters, like\nthemselves, are French noblemen of the seventeenth century, proud\nand courteous, heroic in Corneille and noble in Racine; they are\ngallants with the ladies, faithful to their name and race, capable of\nsacrificing their dearest interests and strongest affections to their\nhonor, and incapable of uttering a word or an act which the most rigid\ncourtesy would not authorize. Iphigenia, in Racine, delivered up by her\nfather to her executioners, does not regret life, weeping like a girl,\nas in Euripides, but thinks it her duty to obey her father and her king\nwithout a murmur, and to die without shedding a tear, because she is a\nprincess. Achilles, who in Homer stamps, still unappeased, on the body\nof the dying Hector, feeling like a lion or wolf, as if he would \"eat\nthe raw flesh\" of his vanquished antagonist, is, in Racine, a Prince of\nCond\u00e9, at once brilliant and seductive, passionate concerning honor,\ndevoted to the fair, impetuous, it is true, and irritable, but with\nthe reserved vivacity of a young officer who, even when most excited,\nmaintains good breeding and never stoops to brutality. All these\ncharacters are models of polite address, and show a knowledge of the\nworld never at fault. Head, in Racine, the first dialogue of _Oreste_\nand _Pyrrhus,_ and the whole of the part of _Acomat_ and of _Ulysse;_\nnowhere is greater tact or oratorical dexterity apparent; nowhere\nmore ingenious compliments and flatteries, exordiums so well poised,\nsuch a quick revelation, such an ingenious adjustment, such a delicate\ninsinuation of appropriate motives. The wildest and most impetuous\nlovers--_Hippolyte, Britannicus, Pyrrhus, Oreste,_ and _Xiphar\u00e8s_\n--are accomplished cavaliers who turn a madrigal and bow with the\nutmost deference. However violent their passions may be, _Hermione,\nAndromaqne, Boxane,_ and _B\u00e9r\u00e9nice,_ preserve the tone of the best\nsociety. _Mithridate, Ph\u00e8dre,_ and _Athalie,_ when expiring, express\nthemselves in correct periods, for a prince has to be a prince to the\nlast, and die in due form. This drama might be called a perfect picture\nof the fashionable world. Like Gothic architecture, it represents a\npositive complete side of the human mind, and this is why, like that,\nit has become so universal. It has been imported into, or imitated by,\nalong with its accompanying taste, literature, and manners, every court\nof Europe--in England, after the restoration of the Stuarts; in Spain,\non the advent of the Bourbons; and in Italy, Germany, and Russia, in\nthe eighteenth century. We are warranted in saying that at this epoch\nFrance was the educator of Europe; she was the source from which was\nderived all that was elegant and agreeable, whatever was proper in\nstyle, delicate in ideas, and perfect in the art of social intercourse.\nIf a savage Muscovite, a dull German, a stolid Englishman, or any\nother uncivilized or half-civilized man of the North quit his brandy,\npipe, and furs, his feudal or hunting or rural life, it was to French\n_salons_ and to French books he betook himself, in order to acquire the\narts of politeness, urbanity, and conversation.\n\n\n[Footnote 1: Foster-brother, school-companion, or other intimate of\nthis class.]\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\nThis brilliant society did not last; it was its own development\nwhich caused its dissolution. The government being absolute, ended\nin becoming negligent and tyrannical; and, besides this, the king\nbestowed the best offices and the greatest favor only on such of the\nnobles of his court as enjoyed his intimacy. This appeared unjust to\nthe _bourgeoisie_ and to the people, who, having greatly increased\nin numbers, wealth and intelligence, felt their power augment in\nproportion to the growth of their discontent. The French Revolution was\naccordingly their work; and after ten years of trial they established\na system of democracy and equality, in which, according to a fixed\norder of promotion, all civil employments were ordinarily accessible\nto everybody. The wars of the empire and the contagion of example\ngradually spread this system beyond the frontiers of France, and\nwhatever may be local differences and temporary delays, it is now\nevident that the tendency of the whole of Europe is to imitate it. The\nnew construction of society, coupled with the invention of industrial\nmachinery, and the great abatement of rudeness in manners and customs,\nhas changed the condition as well as the character of man. Henceforth,\nman is exempt from arbitrary measures, and is protected by a good\npolice. However lowly born, all careers are open to him; an enormous\nincrease of useful articles, places within reach of the poorest,\nconveniences and pleasures of which, two centuries ago, the rich were\nentirely ignorant. Again, the rigor of authority is mitigated, both\nin society and in the family; a father is now the companion of his\nchildren, and the citizen has become the equal of the noble. Human\nlife, in short, displays a lesser degree of misery, and a lighter\ndegree of oppression.\n\nBut, as a counterpart of this, Ave see ambition and cupidity spreading\ntheir wings. Accustomed to comfort and luxuries, and obtaining here and\nthere glimpses of happiness, man begins to regard happiness and comfort\nas his due. The more he obtains, the more exacting he becomes, and the\nmore his pretensions exceed his acquisitions. The practical sciences\nalso having made great progress, and instruction being diffused,\nliberated thought abandons itself to all daring enterprises; hence it\nhappens that men, relinquishing the traditions which formerly regulated\ntheir beliefs, deem themselves capable, through intellect alone, of\nattaining to the highest truths. Questions of every kind are mooted,\nmoral, political and religious; men seek knowledge by groping their\nway in every direction. For fifty years past we behold this strange\nconflict of systems and sects, each tendering us new creeds and perfect\ntheories of happiness.\n\nSuch a state of things has a wonderful effect on minds and ideas.\nThe representative man, that is to say, the character who occupies\nthe stage, and to whom the spectators award the most interest and\nsympathy, is the melancholy, ambitious dreamer--Ren\u00e9, Faust, Werther\nand Manfred--a yearning heart, restless, wandering and incurably\nmiserable. And he is miserable for two reasons. In the first place he\nis over-sensitive, too easily affected by the lesser evils of life; he\nhas too great a craving for delicate and blissful sensations; he is\ntoo much accustomed to comfort; he has not had the semi-feudal and\nsemi-rustic education of our ancestors; he has not been roughly handled\nby his father, whipped at college, obliged to maintain respectful\nsilence in the presence of great personages, and had his mental growth\nretarded by domestic discipline; he has not been compelled, as in\nancient times, to use his own arm and sword to protect himself, to\ntravel on horseback, and to sleep in disagreeable lodgings. In the soft\natmosphere of modern comfort and of sedentary habits, he has become\ndelicate, nervous, excitable, and less capable of accommodating himself\nto the course of life which always exacts effort and imposes trouble.\n\nOn the other hand, he is skeptical. Society and religion both being\ndisturbed--in the midst of a p\u00eale-m\u00eale of doctrines and an irruption\nof new theories--his precocious judgment, too rapidly instructed,\nand too soon unbridled, precipitates him early and blindly off the\nbeaten track made smooth for his fathers by habit, and which they\nhave trodden, led on by tradition and governed by authority. All the\nbarriers which served as guides to minds having fallen, he rushes\nforward into the vast, confusing field which is opened out before his\neyes; impelled by almost superhuman ambition and curiosity he darts off\nin the pursuit of absolute truth and infinite happiness. Neither love,\nglory, knowledge nor power, as we find these in this world, can satisfy\nhim; the intemperance of his desires, irritated by the incompleteness\nof his conquests and by the nothingness of his enjoyments, leaves\nhim prostrate amid the ruins of his own nature, without his jaded,\nenfeebled, impotent imagination being able to represent to him the\n_beyond_ which he covets, and the unknown _what_ which he has not.\nThis evil has been styled the great malady of the age. Forty years\nago it was in full force, and under the apparent frigidity or gloomy\nimpassibility of the positive mind of the present day it still subsists.\n\nI have not the time to show you the innumerable effects of a like state\nof mind on works of art. You may trace them in the great development of\nthe lyrical, sentimental and philosophical poetry of France, Germany\nand England; again, in the corruption and enrichment of language and\nin the invention of new classes and of new characters in literature;\nin the style and sentiments of all the great modern writers, from\nChateaubriand to Balzac, from Goethe to Heine, from Cowper to Byron,\nand from Alfieri to Leopardi. You will find analogous symptoms in the\narts of design if you observe their feverish, tortured and painfully\narcheological style, their aim at dramatic effect, psychological\nexpression, and local fidelity; if you observe the confusion which has\nbefogged the schools and injured their processes; if you pay attention\nto the countless gifted minds who, shaken by new emotions, have opened\nout new ways; if you analyze the profound sympathy for scenery which\nhas given birth to a complete and original landscape art. But there\nis another art, Music, which has suddenly reached an extraordinary\ndevelopment. This development is one of the salient characteristics of\nour epoch, and the dependence of this on the modern mind, the ties by\nwhich they are connected, I shall endeavor to point out to you.\n\nThis art was born, and necessarily, in two countries where people\nsing naturally, Italy and Germany. It was gestating for a century and\na half in Italy, from Palestrina to Pergolese, as formerly painting\nfrom Giotto to Massaccio, discovering processes and feeling its\nway in order to acquire its resources. At the commencement of the\neighteenth century it suddenly burst forth, with Scarlatti, Marcello\nand Handel. This is a most remarkable epoch. Painting at this time\nceased to nourish in Italy, and in the midst of political stagnation,\nvoluptuous, effeminate customs prevailed, furnishing an assembly of\nsigisb\u00e9s, Lindors and amorous ladies for the roulades and tender\nsentimental scenes of the opera. Grave, ponderous Germany, at that time\nthe latest in acquiring self-consciousness, now succeeds in displaying\nthe severity and grandeur of its religious sentiment, its profound\nknowledge, and its vague melancholy instincts in the sacred music of\nSebastian Bach, anticipating the evangelical epic of Klopstock. Tn the\nold and in the new nation the reign and expression of _sentiment_ is\nbeginning. Between the two, half-Germanic and half-Italian, is Austria,\nconciliating the two spirits, producing Haydn, Gluck and Mozart. Music\nnow becomes cosmopolite and universal on the confines of that great\nmental convulsion of souls styled the French Revolution, as formerly\npainting under the impulse of the great intellectual revival known\nunder the name of the Renaissance. We need not be astonished at the\nappearance of this new art, for it corresponds to the appearance of a\nnew genius--that of the ruling, morbid, restless, ardent character I\nhave attempted to portray for you. It is to this spirit that Beethoven,\nMendelssohn and Weber formerly addressed themselves, and to which\nMeyerbeer, Berlioz and Verdi are now striving to accommodate themselves.\n\nMusic is the organ of this over-refined excessive sensibility and\nvague boundless aspiration; it is expressly designed for this service,\nand no art so well performs its task. And this is so because, on the\none hand, music is founded on a more or less remote imitation of a cry\nwhich is the natural, spontaneous, complete expression of passion, and\nwhich, affecting us through a corporeal stimulus, instantly arouses\ninvoluntary sympathy, so that the tremulous delicacy of every nervous\nbeing finds in it its impulse, its echo, and its ministrant. On the\nother hand, founded on relationships of sounds which represent no\nliving form, and which, especially in instrumental music, seem to be\nthe reveries of an incorporeal soul, it is better adapted than any\nother art to express floating thoughts, formless dreams, objectless\nlimitless desires, the grandiose and dolorous mazes of a troubled heart\nwhich aspires to all and is attached to nothing. This is why, along\nwith the discontent, the agitations, and the hopes of modern democracy,\nmusic has left its natal countries and diffused itself over all Europe;\nand why you see at the present time the most complicated symphonies\nattracting crowds in France, where, thus far, the national music has\nbeen reduced to the song and the melodies of the Vaudeville.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\nThe foregoing illustrations, gentlemen, seem to me sufficient to\nestablish the law governing the character and creation of works of\nart. And not only do they establish it, but they accurately define\nit. In the beginning of this section I stated that _the work of art\nis determined by an aggregate which is the general state of the mind\nand surrounding manners._ We may now advance another step, and note\nprecisely in their order each link of the chain, connecting together\ncause and effect.\n\nIn the various illustrations we have considered, you have remarked\nfirst, a _general situation,_ in other words, a certain universal\ncondition of good or evil, one of servitude or of liberty, a state of\nwealth or of poverty, a particular form of society, a certain species\nof religious faith; in Greece, the free martial city, with its slaves;\nin the middle ages, feudal oppression, invasion and brigandage, and\nan exalted phase of Christianity; the court life of the seventeenth\ncentury; the industrial and studied democracy of the nineteenth, guided\nby the sciences; in short, a group of circumstances controlling man,\nand to which he is compelled to resign himself.\n\nThis situation developes in man corresponding needs, distinct\n_aptitudes_ and _special sentiments_--physical activity, a tendency\nto revery; here rudeness, and there refinement; at one time a martial\ninstinct, at another conversational talent, at another a love of\npleasure, and a thousand other complex and varied peculiarities. In\nGreece we see physical perfection and a balance of faculties which no\nmanual or cerebral excess of life deranges; in the middle ages, the\nintemperance of over-excited imaginations and the delicacy of feminine\nsensibility; in the seventeenth century, the polish and good-breeding\nof society and the dignity of aristocratic _salons_; and in modern\ntimes, the grandeur of unchained ambitions and the morbidity of\nunsatisfied yearnings.\n\nNow, this group of sentiments, aptitudes and needs, constitutes, when\nconcentrated in one person and powerfully displayed by him, _the\nrepresentative man,_ that is to say, a model character to whom his\ncontemporaries award all their admiration and all their sympathy;\nthere is, for instance, in Greece, the naked youth, of a fine race and\naccomplished in all bodily exercise; in the middle ages, the ecstatic\nmonk and the amorous knight; in the seventeenth century, the perfect\ncourtier; and in our days, the melancholy insatiable Faust or Werther.\n\nMoreover, as this personage is the most captivating, the most important\nand the most conspicuous of all, it is he whom artists present to the\npublic, now concentrated in an ideal personage, when their art, like\npainting, sculpture, the drama, the romance or the epic, is imitative;\nnow, dispersed in its elements, as in architecture and in music,\nwhere art excites emotions without incarnating them. All their labor,\ntherefore, may be summed up as follows: they either represent this\ncharacter, or address themselves to it; the symphonies of Beethoven\nand the \"storied windows\" of cathedrals are addressed to it; and it\nis represented in the Niobe group of antiquity and in the Agamemnon\nand Achilles of Racine. _All art, therefore, depends on it,_ since the\nwhole of art is applied only to conform to, or to express it.\n\nA general situation, provoking tendencies and special faculties;\na representative man, embodying these predominant tendencies and\nfaculties; sounds, forms, colors, or language giving this character\nsensuous form, or which comport with the tendencies and faculties\ncomprising it, such are the four terms of the series; the first carries\nwith it the second, the second the third, and the third the fourth,\nso that the slightest variation of either involves a corresponding\nvariation in those that follow, and reveals a corresponding variation\nin those that precede it, permitting abstract reasoning in either\ndirection in an ascending or descending scale of progression.[1] As far\nas I am capable of judging, this formula embraces everything. If, now,\nwe insert between these diverse terms the accessory causes occurring\nto modify their effects; if, in order to explain the sentiments of\nan epoch, we add an examination of race to that of the social medium;\nif, in order to explain the works of art of any age, we consider,\nbesides the prevailing tendencies of that age, the particular period of\nthe art, and the particular sentiments of each artist, we shall then\nderive from the law not only the great revolutions and general forms\nof man's imagination, but, again, the differences between national\nschools, the incessant variations of various styles, and the original\ncharacteristics of the works of every great master. Thus followed out,\nsuch an explanation will be complete, since it furnishes at once the\ngeneral traits of each school, and the distinctive traits which, in\nthis school, characterize individuals. We are about to enter upon this\nstudy in relation to Italian art; it is a long and difficult task, and\nI have need of your attention in order to pursue it to the end.\n\n\n[Footnote 1: This law may be applied to the study of all literatures\nand to every art. The student may begin with the fourth term,\nproceeding from this to the first, strictly adhering to the order of\nthe series.]\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\nBefore proceeding further, gentlemen, there is a practical and personal\nconclusion due to our researches, and which is applicable to the\npresent order of things.\n\nYou have observed that each situation produces a certain state of\nmind followed by a corresponding class of works of art. This is why\nevery new situation must produce a new state of mind, and consequently\na new class of works; and therefore why the social medium of the\npresent day, now in the course, of formation, ought to produce its own\nworks like the social mediums that have gone before it. This is not\na simple supposition based on the current of desire and of hope; it\nis the result of a law resting on the authority of experience and on\nthe testimony of history. From the moment a law is established it is\ngood for all time; the connections of things in the present, accompany\nconnections of things in the past and in the future. Accordingly,\nit need not be said in these days that art is exhausted. It is true\nthat certain schools no longer exist and can no longer be revived;\nthat certain arts languish, and that the future upon which we are\nentering does not promise to furnish the aliment that these require.\nBut art itself, which is the faculty of perceiving and expressing the\nleading character of objects, is as enduring as the civilization of\nwhich it is the best and earliest fruit. What its forms will be, and\nwhich of the five great arts will provide the A'ehicle of expression\nof future sentiment, we are not called upon to decide we have the\nright to affirm that new forms will arise, and an appropriate mould\nbe found in which to cast them. We have only to open our eyes to see\na change going on in the condition of men, and consequently in their\nminds, so profound, so universal, and so rapid that no other century\nhas witnessed the like of it. The three causes that have formed the\nmodern mind continue to operate with increasing efficacy. You are\nall aware that discoveries in the positive sciences are multiplying\ndaily; that geology, organic chemistry, history, entire branches of\nphysics and zoology, are contemporary productions; that the growth of\nexperience is infinite, and the applications of discovery unlimited;\nthat means of communication and transport, cultivation, trade,\nmechanical contrivances, all the elements of human power, are yearly\nspreading and concentrating beyond all expectation. None of you are\nignorant that the political machine works smoother in the same sense;\nthat communities, becoming more rational and humane, are watchful of\ninternal order, protecting talent, aiding the feeble and the poor;\nin short, that everywhere, and in every way, man is cultivating his\nintellectual faculties and ameliorating his social condition. We cannot\naccordingly deny that men's habits, ideas and condition transform\nthemselves, nor reject this consequence, that such renewal of minds and\nthings brings along with it a renewal of art. The first period of this\nevolution gave rise to the glorious French school of 1830; it remains\nfor us to witness the second--the field which is open to your ambition\nand your labor. On its very threshold, you have a right to augur well\nof your century and of yourselves; for the patient study we have\njust terminated shows you that to produce beautiful works, the sole\ncondition necessary is that which the great Goethe indicated: \"Fill\nyour mind and heart, however large, with ideas and sentiments of your\nage, and work will follow.\"\n\n\nTHE END.","title":"The Philosophy of Art","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":25049}