{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_53369/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_53369","id":"gutenberg_53369","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53369","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics, German -- 19th century","Art","Category: Art","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 -- Aesthetics"],"text":"NIETZSCHE AND ART\n\nby\n\nANTHONY M. LUDOVICI\n\nAuthor of 'Who is to be Master of the World?'\n\n\n\"Rien n'est beau que le vrai, dit un vers respect\u00e9; et moi, je lui\nr\u00e9ponds, sans crainte d'un blasph\u00e8me: Rien n'est vrai sans beaut\u00e9.\"\n--Alfred de Musset.\n\n\nCONSTABLE & CO. LTD.\n\nLONDON\n\n1911\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Sekhet (Louvre)]\n\n\nPreface\n\n\n\"We philosophers are never more delighted than when we are taken for\nartists.\"[1]\n\n\nIn this book, which embodies a course of lectures delivered in a\nsomewhat condensed and summarized form at University College, London,\nduring November and December, 1910, I have done two things. I have\npropounded Nietzsche's general Art doctrine, and, with the view of\nillustrating it and of defining it further, I have also applied its\nleading principles to one of the main branches of Art.\n\nAs this has not been done before, either in English or in any\nContinental language, my book is certainly not free from the crudeness\nand inadvertences which are inseparable from pioneer efforts of this\nnature. Nevertheless it is with complete confidence, and a deep\nconviction of its necessity, that I now see it go to print; for,\neven if here and there its adventurous spirit may ultimately require\nmodification, I feel certain that, in the main, time itself, together\nwith the help of other writers, will fully confirm its general thesis,\nif I should be unable to do so.\n\nSooner or later it will be brought home to us in Europe that we\ncannot with impunity foster and cultivate vulgarity and mob qualities\nin our architecture, our sculpture, our painting, our music and\nliterature, without paying very dearly for these luxuries in our\nrespective national politics, in our family institutions, and even\nin our physique. To connect all these things together, and to show\ntheir inevitable interdependence, would be a perfectly possible though\narduous undertaking. In any case, this is not quite the task I have\nset myself in this work. I have indeed shown that to bestow admiration\non a work of extreme democratic painting and at the same time to be\nconvinced of the value of an aristocratic order of society, is to\nbe guilty of a confusion of ideas which ultimately can lead only to\ndisastrous results in practical life; but further than this I have not\ngone, simply because the compass of these lectures did not permit of my\nso doing.\n\nConfining myself strictly to Nietzsche's \u00e6sthetic, I have been content\nmerely to show that the highest Art, or Ruler Art, and therefore the\nhighest beauty,--in which culture is opposed to natural rudeness,\nselection to natural chaos, and simplicity to natural complexity,--can\nbe the flower and product only of an aristocratic society which, in its\ntraditions and its active life, has observed, and continues to observe,\nthe three aristocratic principles,--culture, selection and simplicity.\n\nFollowing Nietzsche closely, I have sought to demonstrate the\ndifference between the art which comes of inner poverty (realism, or\ndemocratic art), and that which is the result of inner riches (Ruler\nArt).\n\nIdentifying the first with the reflex actions which respond to external\nstimuli, I have shown it to be slavishly dependent upon environment\nfor its existence, and, on that account, either beneath reality\n(Incompetence), on a level with reality (Realism), or fantastically\ndifferent from reality (Romanticism). I have, moreover, associated\nthese three forms of inferior art with democracy, because in democracy\nI find three conditions which are conducive to their cultivation,\nviz.--(1) The right of self-assertion granted to everybody, and the\nconsequent necessary deterioration of world-interpretations owing to\nthe fact that the function of interpretation is claimed by mediocrity;\n(2) the belief in a general truth that can be made common to all, which\nseems to become prevalent in democratic times, and which perforce\nreduces us to the only truth that can be made common to all, namely\nReality; and (3) a democratic dislike of recognizing the mark or stamp\nof any _particular_ human power in the things interpreted, and man's\nconsequent \"return to Nature\" untouched by man, which, once again, is\nReality.\n\nIdentifying Ruler Art, or the Art of inner riches, with the function of\ngiving, I have shown it to be dependent upon four conditions which are\nquite inseparable from an aristocratic society, and which I therefore\nassociate, without any hesitation, as Nietzsche does, with Higher Man,\nwith Nature's rare and _lucky strokes_ among men. These conditions are\n--(1) Long tradition under the sway of noble and inviolable values,\nresulting in an accumulation of will power and a superabundance of good\nspirits; (2) leisure which allows of meditation, and therefore of that\nprocess of lowering pitchers into the wells of inner riches; (3) the\ndisbelief in freedom for freedom's sake without a purpose or without an\naim; and (4) an order of rank according to which each is given a place\nin keeping with his value, and authority and reverence are upheld.\n\nIn the course of this exposition, it will be seen that I have to lay\nrealism also at the door of Ruler Art; but I am careful to point out\nthat, although such realism (I call it _militant realism_ in respect\nto the art both of the Middle Ages and of the later Renaissance, as\nwell as of Greece) is a fault, of Ruler Art which very much reduces\nthe latter's rank among the arts; it is nevertheless above that other\nrealism of mediocrity which, for the want of a better term, I call\n_poverty realism_. (See Lecture II, Part II, end.)\n\nIn order firmly to establish the difference between the Ruler and\nDemocratic styles I ought, perhaps, to have entered with more\nthoroughness than I have done into the meditative nature of the one,\nand the empirical nature of the other. This, apart from a few very\nunmistakable hints, I have unfortunately been unable to do. I found\nit quite impossible to include all the detail bearing upon the main\nthesis, in this first treatise; and, though I have resolved to discuss\nthese important matters very soon, in the form of supplementary essays,\nI can but acknowledge here that I recognize their omission as a blemish.\n\nThe wide field covered by this book, and the small form in which I\nwas compelled to cast it, have thus led to many questions remaining\ninadequately answered and to many statements being left insufficiently\nsubstantiated. In the end I found it quite impossible to avail myself\neven of a third of the material I had collected for its production,\nand I should therefore be grateful if it could be regarded more in the\nlight of a preliminary survey of the ground to be built upon, rather\nthan as a finished building taking its foundation in Nietzsche's\nphilosophy of Art.\n\nWith regard to all my utterances on Egypt, I should like the reader\nkindly to bear only this in mind: that my choice of Egyptian art, as\nthe best example of Ruler Art we possess, is neither arbitrary nor\ncapricious; but, because it is neither arbitrary nor capricious, it\ndoes not follow that I regard a return to the types of Egypt as the\nonly possible salvation of the graphic arts. This would be sheer\nRomanticism and sentimentality. \"A thousand paths are there which have\nnever yet been trodden; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of\nlife. Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man's world\" (_Z._,\nI, XXII.).\n\nIt is rather the spirit which led to this Egyptian Art, which I regard\nas so necessary to all great achievements, either in legislation, art,\nor religion; and whether this spirit happens to be found on the banks\nof the Nile, in the Vatican, or in Mexico. I point to it merely as\nsomething which we ought to prize and cherish, and which we now possess\nonly in an extremely diluted and decadent form. It is the spirit which\nwill establish order at all costs, whose manner of exploiting higher\nmen is to look upon the world through their transfiguring vision, and\nwhich believes that it is better for mankind to attain to a high level,\neven in ones, twos, or threes, than that the bulk of humanity should\nbegin to doubt that man can attain to a high level at all.\n\nThis spirit might produce any number of types; it is not necessary,\ntherefore, that the Egyptian type should be regarded as precisely the\none to be desired. I do but call your attention to these granite and\ndiorite sculptures, because behind them I feel the presence and the\npower of that attitude towards life which the ancient Pharaohs held and\nreverenced, and which I find reflected in Nietzsche's Art values.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn quoting from German authorities, where I have not been able to\ngive reference to standard English translations, I have translated\nthe extracts from the original myself, for the convenience of English\nreaders; while, in the case of French works, I have deliberately given\nthe original text, only when I felt that the sense might suffer by\ntranslation.\n\nI should now like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Oscar Levy, who\nhas always been ready to place his valuable time and wide knowledge at\nmy disposal whenever I have expressed the smallest desire of consulting\nhim on any difficult point that may have arisen during the preparation\nof these lectures. And I should also like to acknowledge the help\nafforded me by both Mr. J. M. Kennedy and Dr. M\u00fcgge,--the one through\nhis extensive acquaintance with Eastern literature, and the other\nthrough his valuable bibliography of works relating to Nietzsche's life\nand philosophy.\n\nIt only remains for me to thank the Committee and the Provost of\nUniversity College, Gower Street, for their kindness, and for the\ngenerous hospitality which they have now extended to me on two separate\noccasions; and, finally, to avail myself of this opportunity in order\nto express my grateful recognition of the trouble taken on my behalf by\nProfessor Robert Priebsch and Mr. Walter W. Seton of London University,\non both occasions when I had the honour of delivering a course of\nlectures at their College.\n\n                                                   ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.\nFebruary 1911.\n\n\n[1] Friedrich Nietzsche's Ges\u00e4mmelte Briefe, vol. 111, p. 305.\n\n\n\n\n\n    CONTENTS\n\n\n    LECTURE I\n\n    PART I\n\n    Anarchy in Modern Art\n\n    The State of Modern Art\n\n    The Fine Arts:\n    1. The Artists\n    2. The Public\n    3. The Critics\n    4. Some Art-Criticisms\n\n    PART II\n\n    Suggested Causes of the Anarchy in Modern Art\n\n    1. Morbid Irritability\n    2. Misleading Systems of \u00c6sthetic\n    3. Our Heritage:--\n    (a) Christianity\n    (b) Protestantism\n    (c) Philosophical Influences\n    (d) The Evolutionary Hypothesis\n\n    LECTURE II\n\n    Government in Art--Nietzsche's Definition of Art\n\n    PART I\n\n    Divine Art and the Man--God\n\n    1. The World \"Without Form\" and \"Void\"\n    2. The First Artists\n    3. The People and their Man-God\n    4. The Danger\n    5. The Two Kinds of Artists\n\n    PART II\n\n    Deductions from Part I--Nietzsche's Art Principles\n\n    1. The Spirit of the Age incompatible with Ruler Art\n    2. A Thrust parried. Police or Detective Art defined\n    3. The Purpose of Art Still the Same as Ever\n    4. The Artist's and the Layman's View of Life\n    5. The Confusion of the Two Points of View\n    6. The Meaning of Beauty of Form and of Beauty of Content in Art\n    7. The Meaning of Ugliness of Form and of Ugliness of Content in Art\n    8. The Ruler-Artist's Style and Subject\n\n    PART III\n\n    Landscape and Portrait Painting\n\n    1. The Value \"Ugly\" in the Mouth of the Dionysian Artist\n    2. Landscape Painting\n    3. Portrait Painting\n\n    LECTURE III\n\n    Nietzsche's art principles in the history of art\n\n    PART I\n\n    Christianity and the Renaissance\n\n    1. Rome and the Christian Ideal\n    2. The Pagan Type appropriated and transformed by Christian Art\n    3. The Gothic Building and Sentiment\n    4. The Renaissance\n\n    PART II\n\n    Greece and Egypt\n\n    1. Greek Art\n    (a) The Parthenon\n    (b) The Apollo of Tenea\n    (c) The Two Art-Wills of Ancient Greece\n    (d) Greek Painting\n\n    2. Egyptian Art\n    (a) King Khephr\u00ebn\n    (b) The Lady Nophret\n    (c) The Pyramid\n\n    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n    Sekhet (_Louvre_) Frontispiece\n    The Marriage of Mary, by Raphael (_Brera, Milan_)\n    Saskia, by Rembrandt (_Dresden Royal Picture Gallery_)\n    The Canon of Polycleitus (_Rome_)\n    The Apollo of Tenea (_Glyptothek, Munich_)\n    The Medusa Metope of Selinus (_Palermo_)\n    King Khephr\u00ebn (_Cairo Museum_)\n    The Lady Nophret (_Cairo Museum_)\n\n\n\n\n    Abbreviations Used in Referring to Nietzsche's Works\n\n\n    E. I.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Future of our Educational Institutions.\n    B. T.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Birth of Tragedy.\n    H. A. H.   =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Human All-too-Human.\n    D. D.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dawn of Day.\n    J. W.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Joyful Wisdom.\n    Z.         =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thus spake Zarathustra.\n    G. E.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Beyond Good and Evil.\n    G. M.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Genealogy of Morals.\n    C. W.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner.\n    T. I.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Twilight of the Idols.\n    A.         =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Antichrist.\n    W. P.      =\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Will to Power.\n\n\n\n    The English renderings given in this book are taken from the\n    Complete and Authorized Translation of Nietzsche's Works\n    edited by Oscar Levy.\n\n    (This edition in 18 volumes is entirely being made available\n    at Project Gutenberg too, also with a linked index to all works\n    as last volume, and will be completed soon.--Transcriber's Note.)\n\n\n\nNietzsche and Art\n\n\n\n\nLecture I[1]\n\n\n\n\nPart I\n\n\nAnarchy in Modern Art\n\n\n    \"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord\n    did there confound the language of all the earth: and from\n    thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all\n    the earth.\"--_Genesis_ xi. 9.\n\n\n\n\"Concerning great things,\" said Nietzsche, \"one should either be\nsilent, or one should speak loftily:--loftily, that is to say,\ncynically and innocently.\"[2]\n\nArt is a great thing. Maybe it is the greatest thing on earth.\nWherever and whenever Nietzsche speaks about it he always does so\nloftily, and with reverence; while his position as an anchorite, and\nas an artist who kept aloof from the traffic for fame, allowed him to\nretain that innocence in his point of view, which he maintains is so\nnecessary in the treatment of such a subject.\n\nAs the children of an age in which Art is rapidly losing its prestige,\nwe modern Europeans may perhaps feel a little inclined to purse our\nlips at the religious solemnity with which Nietzsche approaches this\nmatter. So large a number of vital forces have been applied to the\nobject of giving us entertainment in our large cities, that it is now\nno longer a simple matter to divorce Art altogether in our minds from\nthe category of things whose sole purpose is to amuse or please us.\n\nSome there are, of course, who would repudiate this suggestion\nindignantly, and who would claim for Art a very high moral purpose.\nThese moralists apart, however, it seems safe to say, that in the\nminds of most people to-day, Art is a thing which either leaves them\nutterly unmoved, or to which they turn only when they are in need of\ndistraction, of decoration for their homes, or of stimulation in their\nthought.\n\nLeaving the discussion of Nietzsche's personal view of Art to the next\nlecture, I shall now first attempt, from his standpoint, a general\nexamination of the condition of Art at the present day, which, though\nit will be necessarily rapid and sketchy, will, I hope, not prove\ninadequate for my purpose.\n\nBefore I proceed, however, I should like to be allowed to call your\nattention to the difficulties of my task. As far as I am aware, mine is\nthe first attempt that has been made, either here or abroad, to place\nan exhaustive account of Nietzsche's Art doctrine before any audience.\nBut for one or two German writers, who have discussed Nietzsche\n--the artist--tentatively and hesitatingly, I know of no one who has\nendeavoured to do so after having had recourse to all his utterances\non the subject, nor do I know of anybody who has applied his \u00e6sthetic\nprinciples to any particular branch or branches of Art. It is therefore\nwith some reason that I now crave your indulgence for my undertaking\nand beg you to remember that it is entirely of a pioneer nature.\n\nMany of you here, perhaps, are already acquainted with Nietzsche's\nphilosophy, and are also intimately associated with one of the branches\nof Art. Nevertheless, let me warn you before I begin, that you may have\nto listen to heresies that will try your patience to the utmost.\n\nI also am intimately associated with one of the branches of Art, and my\ntraditions are Art traditions. I can well imagine, therefore, how some\nof you will receive many of the statements I am about to make; and I\ncan only entreat you to bear with me patiently until the end, if only\nwith the hope that, after all, there may be something worth thinking\nabout, if not worth embracing, in what you are going to hear.\n\nTwo years ago, in this same hall, I had the honour of addressing an\naudience on the subject of Nietzsche's moral and evolutionary views,\nand, since then, I have wondered whether I really selected the more\nimportant side of his philosophy for my first lectures. If it were\nnot for the fact that the whole of his thought is, as it were, of one\nsingle piece, harmoniously and consistently woven, I should doubt that\nI had selected the more vital portion of it; for it is impossible to\noverrate the value of his Art doctrine--especially to us, the children\nof an age so full of perplexity, doubt and confusion as this one is. In\ntaking Nietzsche's Art principles and Art criticism as a basis for a\nnew valuation of Art, I am doing nothing that is likely to astonish the\ncareful student of Nietzsche's works.\n\nFriends and foes alike have found themselves compelled to agree upon\nthis point, that Nietzsche, whatever he may have been besides, was at\nleast a great artist and a great thinker on Art.\n\nOn the ground that he was solely and purely an artist some have even\ndenied his claim to the title Philosopher. Among the more celebrated\nof modern writers who have done this, is the Italian critic Benedetto\nCroce;[3] while Julius Zeitler declares that \"Nietzsche's artistic\nstandpoint should be regarded as the very basis of all his thought,\"\nand that \"no better access could be discovered to his spirit than by\nway of his \u00e6sthetic.\"[4]\n\nCertainly, from the dawn of his literary career, Art seems to have\nbeen one of Nietzsche's most constant preoccupations. Even the general\nargument of his last work, _The Will to Power_, is an entirely artistic\none; while his hatred of Christianity was the hatred of an artist\nlong before it became the hatred of an aristocratic moralist, or of a\nprophet of Superman.\n\nIn _The Birth of Tragedy_, a book in which, by the bye, he declares that\nthere can be but one justification of the world, and that is as an\n\u00e6sthetic phenomenon,[4] we find the following words--\n\n\"To the purely \u00e6sthetic world interpretation ... taught in this book,\nthere is no greater antithesis than the Christian dogma, which is\n_only_ and will be only moral, and which, with its absolute standards,\nfor instance, its truthfulness of God, relegates--that is, disowns,\nconvicts, condemns--Art, all Art, to the realm of falsehood. Behind\nsuch a mode of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine, must\nbe hostile to Art, I always experienced what was _hostile to life_, the\nwrathful vindictive counter will to life itself: for all life rests on\nappearance, Art, illusion, optics, and necessity of perspective and\nerror.\"[5]\n\nNietzsche's works are, however, full of the evidences of an artistic\ntemperament.\n\nWho but an artist, knowing the joy of creating, for instance, could\nhave laid such stress upon the creative act as the great salvation from\nsuffering and an alleviation of life?[6] Who but an artist could have been\nan atheist out of his lust to create?\n\n\"For what could be created, if there were Gods!\" cries Zarathustra.[7]\n\nBut, above all, who save an artist could have elevated taste to such\na high place as a criterion of value, and have made his own personal\ntaste the standard for so many grave valuations?\n\n\"And ye tell me, my friends,\" says Zarathustra, \"that there is to be no\ndispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste\nand tasting!\n\n\"Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and\nalas for every living thing that would live without dispute about\nweight and scales and weighing!\"[8]\n\nBut it is more particularly in Nietzsche's understanding of the\ninstinct which drove him to expression, and in his attitude towards\nthose whom he would teach, that we recognize the typical artist, in\nthe highest acceptation of the word--that is to say, as a creature of\nabundance, who must give thereof or perish. Out of plenitude and riches\nonly, do his words come to us. With him there can be no question of\neloquence as the result of poverty, vindictiveness, spite, resentment,\nor envy; for such eloquence is of the swamp.[9] Where he is wrath, he\nspeaks from above, where he despises his contempt is prompted by love\nalone, and where he annihilates he does so as a creator.[10]\n\n\"Mine impatient love,\" he says, \"floweth over in streams, down towards\nthe sunrise and the sunset. From out silent mountains and tempests of\naffliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys.\n\n\"Too long have I yearned and scanned the far horizon. Too long hath the\nshroud of solitude been upon me: thus have I lost the habit of silence.\n\n\"A tongue have I become and little else besides, and the brawling of a\nbrook, falling from lofty rocks: downward into the dale will I pour my\nwords.\n\n\"And let the torrent of my love dash into all blocked highways. How\ncould a torrent help but find its way to the sea!\n\n\"Verily, a lake lies within me, complacent and alone; but the torrent\nof my love draws this along with it, down--into the ocean!\n\n\"New highways I tread, new worlds come unto me; like all creators I\nhave grown weary of old tongues. No longer will my spirit walk on\nworn-out soles.\n\n\"Too slow footed is all speech for me:--Into thy chariot, O storm, do I\nleap! And even thee will I scourge with my devilry.\n\n\"Thus spake Zarathustra.\"[11]\n\n\n[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 1st, 1910.\n\n[2] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 1.\n\n[2] \u00c6sthetic (translation by Douglas Ainslie), p. 350.\n\n[3] Nietzsches \u00c6sthetik, p. 5.\n\n[4] _B. T._, p. 183.\n\n[5] _B. T._, pp. 9, 10.\n\n[6] _Z._, II, XXIV.\n\n[7] _Z._, II, XXIV.\n\n[8] _Z._, II, XXXV. See also La Bruy\u00e8re's reply to his countrymen's\npopular belief, \"des go\u00fbts et des couleurs on ne peut discuter,\" in Les\nCaract\u00e8res: Des ouvrages de l'esprit, Aph. 10.\n\n[9] _Z._, III, LVI.\n\n[10] _Z._, II, XXXIV.\n\n[11] _Z._, II, XXIII.\n\n\n\n\nThe State of Modern Art.\n\n\nThe Art of to-day, unholy and undivine as the Tower of Babel, seems to\nhave incurred the wrath of a mighty godhead, and those who were at work\nupon it have abandoned it to its fate, and have scattered apart--all\nspeaking different tongues, and all filled with confusion.\n\nPrecisely on account of the disorder which now prevails in this\ndepartment of life, sincere and honest people find it difficult to show\nthe interest in it, which would be only compatible with its importance.\n\nProbably but few men, to-day, could fall on their knees and sob at\nthe deathbed of a great artist, as Pope Leo X once did. Maybe there\nare but one or two who, like the Taiko's generals, when Teaism was in\nthe ascendancy in Japan, would prefer the present of a rare work of\nart to a large grant of territory as a reward of victory;[12] and there\nis certainly not one individual in our midst but would curl his lips\nat the thought of a mere servant sacrificing his life for a precious\npicture.\n\nAnd yet, says the Japanese writer, Okakura-Kakuzo, \"many of our\nfavourite dramas in Japan are based on the loss and subsequent recovery\nof a noted masterpiece.\"[13]\n\nIn this part of the world to-day, not only the author, but also the\naudience for such dramas is entirely lacking.\n\nThe layman, as well as the artist, knows perfectly well that this\nis so. Appalled by the disorder, contradictoriness, and difference\nof opinion among artists, the layman has ceased to think seriously\nabout Art; while artists themselves are so perplexed by the want of\nsolidarity in their ranks, that they too are beginning to question the\nwherefore of their existence.\n\nNot only does every one arrogate to himself the right to utter his word\nupon Art; but Art's throne itself is now claimed by thousands upon\nthousands of usurpers--each of whom has a \"free personality\" which\nhe insists upon expressing,[14] and to whom severe law and order would be\nan insuperable barrier. Exaggerated individualism and anarchy are the\nresult. But such results are everywhere inevitable, when all \u00e6sthetic\ncanons have been abolished, and when there is no longer anybody strong\nenough to command or to lead.\n\n\"Knowest thou not who is most needed of all?\" says Zarathustra. \"He who\ncommandeth great things.\n\n\"To execute great things is difficult; but the more difficult task is\nto command great things.\"[15]\n\nDirect commanding of any sort, however, as Nietzsche declares, has\nceased long since. \"In cases,\" he observes, \"where it is believed that\nthe leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after\nattempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together\nof clever gregarious men: all representative constitutions, for\nexample, are of this origin.\"[16]\n\nAlthough, in this inquiry, the Fine Arts will be the subject of\nmy particular attention, it should not be supposed that this is\nnecessarily the department in modern life in which Nietzsche believed\nmost disorder, most incompetence, and most scepticism prevails. I\nselected the Fine Arts, in the first place, merely because they are the\narts concerning which I am best informed, and to which the Nietzschean\ndoctrine can be admirably applied; and secondly, because sculpture and\npainting offer a wealth of examples known to all, which facilitates\nanything in the way of an exposition. For even outsiders and plain men\nin the street must be beginning to have more than an inkling of the\nchaos and confusion which now reigns in other spheres besides the Fine\nArts. It must be apparent to most people that, in every department\nof modern life where culture and not calculation, where taste and\nnot figures, where ability and not qualifications, are alone able to\nachieve anything great--that is to say, in religion, in morality, in\nlaw, in politics, in music, in architecture, and finally in the plastic\narts, precision and government are now practically at an end.\n\n\"Disintegration,\" says Nietzsche,\"--that is to say, uncertainty--is\npeculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound\nfaith.... All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice\nwhich still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the\nmild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind--soon, where we are walking,\nno one will any longer be able to stand!\"[17]\n\nWe do not require to be told that in religion and moral matters,\nscarcely any two specialists are agreed--the extraordinarily large\nnumber of religious sects in England alone needs but to be mentioned\nhere; in law we divine that things are in a bad state; in politics even\nour eyes are beginning to give us evidence of the serious uncertainty\nprevailing; while in architecture and music the case is pitiable.\n\n\"If we really wished, if we actually dared to devise a style of\narchitecture which corresponded to the state of our souls,\" says\nNietzsche, \"a labyrinth would be the building we should erect. But,\" he\nadds, \"we are too cowardly to construct anything which would be such a\ncomplete revelation of our hearts.\"[18]\n\nHowever elementary our technical knowledge of the matter may be, we, as\nsimple inquirers, have but to look about our streets to-day, in order\nto convince ourselves of the ignominious muddle of modern architecture.\nHere we find structural expedients used as ornaments,[19] the most rigid\nparts of buildings, in form (the rectangular parts, etc.), placed\nnear the roof instead of in the basement,[20] and pillars standing\nsupporting, and supported by, nothing.[21] Elsewhere we see solids\nover voids,[22] mullions supporting arches,[23] key-stones introduced into\nlintels,[24] real windows appearing as mere holes in the wall, while the\nornamental windows are shams,[25] and pilasters resting on key-stones.[26]\n\nAnd, everywhere, we see recent requirements masked and concealed behind\nGreek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque embellishments,\nthrown together helter-skelter, and with a disregard of structural\ndemands which must startle even the uninitiated.[27]\n\nOur streets are ugly in the extreme.[28] Only at night, as Camille\nMauclair says, does the artificial light convert their hideousness\ninto a sort of lugubrious grandeur,[29] and that is perhaps why, to the\nsensitive artistic Londoner, the darkness of night or the pale glow of\nthe moon is such a solace and relief.\n\nAs to the state of modern music, this is best described perhaps, though\nwith perfectly unconscious irony, by Mr. Henry Davey, in the opening\nwords of his _Student's Musical History_.\n\n\"Music has indeed been defined,\" he says, \"as 'sound with regular\nvibrations,' other sounds being called noise. This definition,\" the\nauthor adds, \"is only suited to undeveloped music; modern music may\ninclude noise and even silence.\"[30]\n\nPeople are mistaken if they suppose that Nietzsche, in attacking\nWagner as he did, was prompted by any personal animosity or other\nconsiderations foreign to the question of music. In Wagner, Nietzsche\nsaw a Romanticist of the strongest possible type, and he was opposed\nto the Romantic School of Music, because of its indifference to form.\nAlways an opponent of anarchy, despite all that his critics may say\nto the contrary, Nietzsche saw with great misgiving the decline and\ndecay of melody and rhythm in modern music, and in attacking Wagner\nas the embodiment of the Romantic School, he merely personified the\nmovement to which he felt himself so fundamentally opposed. And in\nthis opposition he was not alone. The Romantic movement, assailed by\nmany, will continue to be assailed, until all its evil influences are\nexposed.\n\n\"Since the days of Beethoven,\" says Emil Naumann, \"instrumental\nmusic, generally speaking, has retrograded as regards spontaneity of\ninvention, thematic working, and mastery of art form,\"[31] and the same\nauthor declares that he regards all modern masters as the natural\noutcome of the Romantic era.[32]\n\nNietzsche has told us in his Wagner pamphlets what he demands from\nmusic,[33] and this he certainly could not get from the kind of music\nwhich is all the rage just now.\n\nWhat it lacks in invention it tries to make up in idiosyncrasy,\nintricacy, and complexity, and that which it cannot assume in the\nmatter of form, it attempts to convert into a virtue and a principle.[34]\n\n\"Bombast and complexity in music,\" says P. von Lind, \"as in any other\nart, are always a sign of inferiority; for they betray an artist's\nincapacity to express himself simply, clearly, and exhaustively--three\nleading qualities in our great heroes of music (_Tonheroen_). In this\nrespect the whole of modern music, including Wagner's, is inferior to\nthe music of the past.\"[35]\n\nBut of all modern musical critics, perhaps Richard Hamann is\nthe most desperate concerning the work of recent composers. His book on\nImpressionism and Art entirely supports Nietzsche's condemnation of the\ndrift of modern music, and in his references to Wagner, even the words\nlie uses seem to have been drawn from the Nietzschean vocabulary.[36]\n\nBriefly what he complains of in the music of the day is its want of\nform,[37] its abuse of discord,[38] its hundred and one different artifices\nfor producing nerve-exciting and nerve-stimulating effects,[39] its\npredilection in favour of cacophonous instruments,[40] its unwarrantable\nsudden changes in rhythm or tempo within the same movement,[41] its habit\nof delaying the solving chord, as in the love-death passage of Tristan\nand Isolde,[42] and, finally, its realism, of which a typical example is\nStrauss's \"By a Lonely Brook\"--all purely Nietzschean objections!\n\nWell might Mr. Allen cry out: \"Oh for the classic simplicity of a\nbygone age, the golden age of music that hath passed away!\"[43] But\nthe trouble does not end here; for, if we are to believe a certain\norgan-builder, bell-founder and pianoforte-maker of ripe experience, it\nhas actually descended into the sphere of instrument-making as well.[44]\n\n\n[12] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Book of Tea_, pp. 112, 113.\n\n[13] _The Book of Tea_, p. 112.\n\n[14] See in this regard _B. T._, pp. 54, 55.\n\n[15] _Z._, II. XLVI.\n\n[16] _G. E._, p.121.\n\n[17] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 55.\n\n[18] _D. D._, Aph. 169.\n\n[19] This is such a common fault that it is superfluous to give\nparticular examples of it, but the New War Office in Whitehall is a\ngood case in point.\n\n[20] Local Government Board building; Piccadilly Hotel (Regent St.\nside).\n\n[21] Piccadilly Hotel (Piccadilly side), and the Sicilian Avenue,\nBloomsbury.\n\n[22] New Scotland Yard.\n\n[23] Gaiety Theatre; the new Y.M.C.A. building, Tottenham Court Road.\n\n[24] Local Government Board.\n\n[25] Gaiety Theatre.\n\n[26] Marylebone Workhouse.\n\n[27] See Fergusson's Introduction to his _History of Modern\nArchitecture_.\n\n[28] See W. Morris's _Address on the Decorative Arts_, pp. 18, 19.\n\n[29] _Trois crises de l'art actuel_, p. 243.\n\n[30] _The Student's Musical History_, p. 1.\n\n[31] _History of Music_, Vol. II, p. 927. See also _The Student's\nMusical History_, by Henry Davey, p. 97. \"Weakness of rhythm is the\nmain reason of the inferiority of the romantic composers to their\npredecessors.\"\n\n[32] _History of Music_, p. 1195. See also P. v. Lind, _Moderner\nGeschmack und moderne Musik_, in which the author complains of the\nexcessive virtuosity, want of faith and science of modern music, while\non p. 34 he, too, calls all modern musicians romanticists.\n\n[33] See especially _C. W._, pp. 59, 60.\n\n[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 276.\n\n[35] _Moderner Geschmack und moderne Musik_, p. 54.\n\n[36] Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst.\n\n[37] _Ibid_., pp. 53, 57.\n\n[38] _Ibid_., p. 64.\n\n[39] _Ibid_., p. 67.\n\n[40] _Ibid_., p. 69.\n\n[41] _Ibid_., p. 74.\n\n[42] _Ibid_., p. 61.\n\n[43] _The Fallacy of Modern Music_, p. 10.\n\n[44] _A Protest against the Modern Development of Unmusical Tone_, by\nThomas C. Lewis.\n\n\n\n\nThe Fine Arts.--1. The Artists.\n\n\nTurning, now, to Painting and Sculpture, what is it precisely that we\nsee?\n\nIn this branch of Art, chaos and anarchy are scarcely the words to use.\nThe condition is rather one of complete and hopeless dissolution. There\nis neither a direction, a goal, nor a purpose. Slavish realism side\nby side with crude conventions, incompetence side by side with wasted\ntalent, coloured photography side by side with deliberate eccentricity,\nand scientific principles applied to things that do not matter in\nthe least: these are a few of the features which are noticeable at a\nfirst glance. Going a little deeper, we find that the whole concept of\nwhat Art really is seems to be totally lacking in the work of modern\npainters and sculptors, and, if we were forced to formulate a Broad\ndefinition for the painting and sculpture of our time, we should find\nourselves compelled to say that they are no more than a _field in which\nmore or less interesting people manifest their more or less interesting\npersonalities_.\n\nThere is nothing in this definition which is likely to offend the\nmodern artist. On the contrary, he would probably approve of it all\ntoo hastily. But, in approving of it, he would confess himself utterly\nignorant of what Art actually is, and means, and purposes in our midst.\n\nOr to state the case differently: it is not that the modern artist\nhas no notion at all of what Art is; but, that his notion is one\nwhich belittles, humiliates and debases Art, root and branch.\n\nTo have gazed with understanding at the divine Art of Egypt, to have\nstudied Egyptian realism and Egyptian conventionalism; to have stood\ndoubtfully before Greek sculpture, even of the best period, and to have\nknown how to place it in the order of rank among the art-products of\nthe world; finally, to have learnt to value the Art of the Middle Ages,\nnot so much because of its form, but because of its content: these are\nexperiences which ultimately make one stand aghast before the work of\nour modern men, and even before the work of some of their predecessors,\nand to ask oneself into whose hands could Art have passed that she\nshould have fallen so low?\n\nWhether one look on a Sargent or on a Poynter, on a Rodin or on a\nBrock, on a Vuillard or on a Maurice Denis, on an Alfred East or on a\nMonet, the question in one's heart will be; not, why are these men so\npoor? but, why are they so modest?--why are they so humble?--why, in\nfact, are their voices so obsequiously servile and faint? One will ask:\nnot, why do these men paint or mould as they do? but, why do they paint\nor mould at all?\n\nUgliness, in the sense of amorphousness, one will be able to explain.\nUgliness, in this sense, although its position in Art has not yet been\nproperly accounted for, one will be able to classify perfectly well.\nBut this tremulousness, this plebeian embarrassment, this democratic\ndesire to please, above all, this democratic disinclination to assume\na position of authority,--these are things which contradict the\nvery essence of Art, and these are the things which are found in the\nproductions of almost every European school to-day.\n\nBut, as a matter of fact, to do artists justice, beneath all the\ntremendous activity of modern times in both branches of the art we are\ndiscussing, there is, among the thinking members of the profession,\na feeling of purposelessness, of doubt and pessimism, which is ill\nconcealed, even in their work. The best of these artists know, and\nwill even tell you, that there are no canons, that individuality is\nabsolute, and that the aim of all their work is extremely doubtful, if\nnot impossible to determine. There is not much quarrelling done, or\nhand-to-hand scuffling engaged in; because no one feels sufficiently\nfirm on his own legs to stand up and oppose the doctrine that \"there is\nno accounting for tastes.\" A clammy, deathlike stillness reigns over\nthe whole of this seething disagreement and antagonism in principles.\nNot since Whistler fired his bright missiles into the press has the\nreport of a decent-sized gun been heard; and this peace in chaos, this\nsilence in confusion, is full of the suggestion of decomposition and\ndecay.\n\n\"Art appears to be surrounded by the magic influence of death,\" says\nNietzsche, \"and in a short time mankind will be celebrating festivals\nof memory in honour of it.\"[45]\n\nWith but one or two brilliant exceptions, that which characterizes\nmodern painting and modern sculpture is, generally speaking, its\ncomplete lack of Art in the sense in which I shall use this word in my\nnext lecture. This indeed, as you will see, covers everything. For the\npresent purpose, however, let it be said that, from the Nietzschean\nstandpoint, the painters and sculptors of the present age are deficient\nin dignity, in pride, in faith, and, above all, in love.\n\nThey are too dependent upon environment, upon Nature, to give a\ndirection and a meaning to their exalted calling; they are too\ndisunited and too lawless to be leaders; they are in an age too chaotic\nand too sceptical to be able to find a \"wherefore\" and a \"whither\" for\nthemselves; and, above all, there are too many pretenders in their\nranks--too many who ought never to have painted or moulded at all--to\nmake it possible for the greatest among them to elevate the Cause of\nArt to its proper level.\n\nNo \u00e6sthetic canon is to be seen or traced anywhere; nobody knows one,\nnobody dares to assert one. The rule that tastes cannot be disputed is\nnow the only rule that prevails, and, behind this rule, the basest,\nmeanest and most preposterous individual claims are able to make their\ninfluence felt.\n\nCertainly, it is true, there is no accounting for tastes; but, once\na particular taste has revealed itself it ought to be possible to\nclassify it and to point out where it belongs and whither it is going\nto lead. Undoubtedly a man's taste cannot be taken from him, because\nits roots are in his constitution; but, once he has identified himself\nwith a particular form of taste, it ought to be possible to identify\nhim too,--that is to say, to realize his rank and his value.\n\nIf it is impossible to do this nowadays, it is because there is no\ncriterion to guide us. It will therefore be my endeavour to establish a\ncriterion, based upon Nietzsche's \u00e6sthetic, and, in the course of these\nlectures, to classify a few forms of taste in accordance with it.\n\nMeanwhile, however, the inquiry into the present condition of the Fine\nArts must be continued; and this shall now be done by taking up the\npublic's standpoint.\n\n\n[45] _H. A. H._, Vol. I, pp. 205, 206.\n\n\n\n\n2. _The Public._\n\n\nThe man who goes to a modern exhibition of pictures and sculptures,\nexperiences visually what they experience aurally who stand on a\nSunday evening within sight of the Marble Arch, just inside Hyde Park.\nNot only different voices and different subjects are in the air; but\nfundamentally different conceptions of life, profoundly and utterly\nantagonistic outlooks.\n\nThe Academy, The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and\nGravers, The Royal Society of British Artists, The New English Art\nClub, The Salon des Artistes Fran\u00e7ais, and the Salon des Beaux Arts,\nare all alike in this; and the International's scorn of the Academy,[46]\nxvi or the Academy's scorn of it, is as ridiculous as the Beaux Arts'\nscorn of the Salon, or vice vers\u00e2.\n\nIt is quite foolish, therefore, to inveigh against the public for their\nbad taste, Philistinism and apathy. How can they be expected to know,\nwhere there are no teachers? How can they be otherwise than apathetic\nwhere keen interest must perforce culminate in confusion? How can they\nhave good taste or any taste at all, where there is no order of rank in\ntastes?\n\nWe know the torments of the modern lay student of Art, when he asks\nhimself uprightly and earnestly whether he should say \"yes\" or \"no\"\nbefore a picture or a piece of sculpture. We know the moments of\nimpotent hesitancy during which he racks his brains for some canon\nor rule on which to base his judgment, and we sympathize with his\nblushes when finally he inquires after the name of the artist, before\nvolunteering to express an opinion.\n\nAt least a name is some sort of a standard nowadays. In the absence of\nother standards it is something to cling to; and the modern visitor to\nan Art exhibition has precious little to cling to, poor soul!\n\nStill, even names become perplexing in the end; for it soon occurs to\nthe lay student in question that, not only Millais, but also Leighton,\nWhistler, Rodin, Frith, Watts, Gauguin, John, and Vuillard have names\nin the Art world.\n\nNow, it is generally at this stage that such a student of Art either\nretires disconcerted from his first attempts at grappling with the\nproblem, and takes refuge in indifference; or else, from the depth of\nhis despair, draws a certain courage which makes him say that, after\nall, _he knows what he likes_. Even if he does utter a heresy at times\nagainst fashion or against culture, he knows what pleases him.\n\nAnd thus is formed that large concourse of people who set up what they\nlike and dislike as the standard of taste.\n\nIt is in vain that painters and sculptors deplore the existence of this\npart of their audience. It is they themselves who are responsible for\nits existence. It is the anarchy in their own ranks that has infected\nthe bravest of their followers.\n\nThe taste of the masses, endowed with self-confidence in this way, is\nnow a potent force in European Art, and among those so-called artists\nwho do not suffer under the existing state of affairs, there are many\nwho actually conform and submit to this mob-rule. In my next lecture I\nshall show how even the art-canons of the lay masses have been adopted\nby some painters and sculptors in perfect good faith.\n\n\"Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, these petty people,\"\nsays Zarathustra. \"Thus we have at last given them power as well;--and\nnow they teach that 'good' is only what petty people call 'good.'\"\n\nIt is on this account that many sincere and refined natures turn\nreluctantly away from Art altogether nowadays, and begin to doubt\nwhether it serves any good purpose in the world at all. They grow weary\nof the humbug of the studios, the affectation of gushing amateurs, and\nthe snobbery of the lionizing disciple of one particular school, and\ndoubt the honesty even of his leader. They grow timid and renounce\nall judgment in Art, wondering whether any of it really matters. In\na gingerly fashion they still hold on to generally accepted views,--\nviews that time seems to have endorsed,--and thus they very often give\nall their attention to the Old Masters.[48]\n\nAnd yet, it is in thus turning away with contempt from modern Art, that\nsincere people tacitly acknowledge how profoundly serious the question\nis on which they have turned their backs. For, it is the horror of its\ndisorder that makes them disconsolate: they could continue facing this\ndisorder only if the matter were less important.\n\nPassing over that unfortunately large percentage of up-to-date people,\nin whose minds Art in general is associated with jewellery, French\npastry and goldfish, as a more or less superfluous, though pleasing,\nluxury, the rest of the civilized world certainly feels with varying\ndegrees of conviction that Art has some essential bearing upon life;\nand, though few will grant it the importance that Nietzsche claims for\nit, a goodly number will realize that it is quite impossible to reckon\nwithout it.\n\nNow, if by chance, one of the last-mentioned people, having grown\ndisgusted at the prevailing degeneration of Art, should start out in\nquest of a canon, or a standard whereby he might take his bearings in\nthe sea of confusion around him, what are we to suppose would await him?\n\nUnfortunately, we know only too well what awaits him!\n\nHe may turn to the art-critics--the class of men which society\nsustains for his special benefit in art matters,--or he may turn to\nthe philosophers. He may spend years and years of labour in studying\nthe Art and thought of Antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of the\nRenaissance; but, unless he have sufficient independence of spirit to\ndistrust not only the Art, but every single manifestation of modern\nlife, and to try to find what the general corrosive is which seems to\nbe active everywhere, it is extremely doubtful whether he will ever\nsucceed in reaching a bourne or a destination of any sort whatsoever.\n\nHe will still be asking: \"What is a good poem?\" \"What is good music?\"\n--and, above all, \"What is a good picture or a good statue?\"\n\nWe know the difficulties of the layman, and even of the artist in\nthis matter; for most of us who have thought about Art at all have\nexperienced these same difficulties.\n\nThe general need, then, I repeat, is a definite canon,[49] a definite\nstatement as to the aim and purpose of Art, and the establishment of an\norder of rank among tastes. Once more, I declare that I have attempted\nto arrive at these things by the principles of Nietzsche's \u00c6sthetic;\nbut, in order to forestall the amusement which an announcement of this\nsort is bound to provoke nowadays, let me remind you of two things:\n_First_, that any artistic canon must necessarily be relative to a\ncertain type of man; and _secondly_, that the most that an establishment\nof an order of rank among tastes can do for you, is to allow you the\nopportunity of exercising some choice--a choice of type in manhood,\ntherefore a choice as to a mode of life, and therefore a choice of\nvalues, and the customs and conditions that spring from them.\n\nAt present you have no such choice. You certainly have the option of\nfollowing either Rodin and Renoir, or Whistler and Manet, or Sargent\nand Boldini, or John and Gauguin, or Herkomer and Lavery; but not one\nof you can say, \"If I follow the first couple I shall be going in such\nand such a direction,\" or, \"If I follow the second couple I shall be\ntravelling towards this or that goal,\"--this you would scarcely be\nable to say; neither could your leaders help you.\n\n\n[46] For some amusing, and, at the same time, shrewd, remarks\nconcerning the International Society, I would refer the reader to Mr.\nWake _Cook's Anarchism in Art_ (Cassell & Co.). I agree on the whole\nwith what Mr. Wake Cook says, but cannot appreciate his remarks on\nWhistler.\n\n[47] _Z._, IV, LXVII.\n\n[48] In a _Times_ leader of the 20th December, 1909, the writer puts\nthe case very well. After referring to the heated controversy which\nwas then raging round the Berlin wax bust that Dr. Bode declared to be\na Leonardo, the writer goes on to say: \"... it is amusing to see how\nthe merit of the work is forgotten in the dispute about its origin. It\nseems to be assumed that if it is by Leonardo it must be a great work\nof art, and if by Lucas nothing of the kind.... This fact proves what\nneeds no proving, that there are many wealthy connoisseurs who buy\nworks of art not for their intrinsic merit, but for what is supposed to\nbe their authenticity.... This state of things reveals an extraordinary\ntimidity in buyers of works of art. If they all trusted their own\ntaste\" [that is to say, if they had a taste of their own based upon\nsome reliable canon] \"names would have no value. The intrinsic merit\nof a work of art is not affected by the name it bears.... Yet in the\nmarket the name of a great painter is worth more than the inspiration\nof a lesser one.... Hence many people believe that it is far more\ndifficult to understand pictures than literature.... But there is no\nmore mystery about pictures than about literature. It is only the\nmarket that makes a mystery of them, and the market does this because\nit is timid.\" In other words: because it does not know.\n\n[49] On this point see _Questionings on Criticism and Beauty_, by the\nRt. Hon. A. J. Balfour. (Oxford University Press.) Mr. Balfour entirely\nagrees that to-day we are driven to a kind of anarchy of individual\npreferences, and he acknowledges that he is not satisfied to remain in\nthis position. He does not seem to recognize, however, how curiously\nand almost perfectly this anarchy in Art coincides with a certain\nanarchy in other departments of life, and thus, although it displeases\nhim, he sees in it no imminent danger, or no hint that Art and life\nreact in any way upon each other.\n\n\n\n\n3.\u00a0The Critics.\n\n\nNow, to return to our lay-student of Art, let us suppose that he first\napproaches the art-critics of the day for guidance. Will there be one\namong these men who will satisfy him? Is there a single art-critic\neither of the nineteenth or twentieth century who knew, or who knows,\nhis business?\n\nIt is possible to point to one or two, and even so, in doing this, one\nis prompted more by a sense of kindness than by a sense of accuracy.\nSome Continental critics, Camille Mauclair and Muther among them, and\nhere and there an English critic like R. A. M. Stevenson, occasionally\nseem to hit a nail on the head; but as a rule, one can say with\nCoventry Patmore: \"There is little that is conclusive or fruitful in\nany of the criticism of the present day.\"[50]\n\nFor the most part it is written by men who know absurdly little of\ntheir subject, and who, if they do know it, are acquainted much more\nwith its chronological and encyclop\u00e6dic than with its philosophical\nside. There is not much conscience either, or much acumen, in these\nmen; and they are as a rule concerned with questions that are\nirrelevant to the point at issue. Like a certain kind of insect, as\nNietzsche very justly remarks, they live by stinging; but their stings\nserve no purpose save that of providing them with their food.[51]\n\nThey are, perhaps, less to blame than the artists themselves for the\nstate of affairs that exists to-day; but, while the artists have\nbetrayed only themselves, the critics have betrayed the reading\npublic. They have neither resisted nor condemned the flood of anarchy\nthat has swept over the art-world; they have rather promoted it in\nevery way in their power, abetting and applauding artists in their\nlawlessness. In fairness to some of them, however, it should be said,\nthat in encouraging the confusion and disorder around them they very\noften acted with almost religious sincerity. This reservation applies\nto Ruskin, for instance, and to many other critics writing for the\nbetter-class papers.\n\nLest this be considered as an overstatement of the case, hear what one\nof these men himself actually says concerning his own profession! Mr.\nFrank Rutter, writing in 1907, expressed himself as follows:--\n\n\"In olden days the press used to lead public opinion; now it meekly\nfollows because its courage has been sapped by servile cringing to\nthe advertiser, because its antics and sensational inaccuracy have\nbrought it into contempt. No longer commanding the authority of a\nparent or guardian, it seeks to attract attention by the methods of the\ncheap-jack. The few exceptions surviving only prove the rule.\"[52]\n\nFinding themselves forced to speak of other things than \"The Purpose of\nArt,\" \"The Standard of Beauty,\" and \"The Canons of Art\"--simply because\nnobody now knows anything about these matters, or dares to assert\nanything concerning them,--the better-class art-critics, feeling that\nthey must do something more than state merely their opinions concerning\nthe work under notice--in fact, that they must give their reasons for\ntheir praise or blame--have lately been compelled to have recourse to\nthe only field that is open to them, and that is _technique_.\n\nNow, while Mr. Clutton Brock seems perfectly justified in deprecating\nthese tactics on the part of some of his brother critics, and while\nMr. Rutter seems quite wrong in upholding them, the question which\nnaturally arises out of the controversy is: what is there left to the\ncritic to talk about?\n\nIf he is no longer able to judge of the general tendency and teaching\nof a play, and if he is no longer able to regard it \u00e6sthetically,\nwhat can he do but analyse the playwright's grammar, and seek out the\nlatter's split infinitives, his insufficient use of the subjunctive\nmood, his Cockney idioms and Cockney solecisms?\n\nWe agree with Mr. Clutton Brock that ... \"the public has no concern\nwith the process of production but only with the product\"; and\nthat \"if Art _were in a healthy state_[53] the public would know this\nand would not ask for technical criticism.\" We also agree that \"the\ncritic's proper business is with the product, not with the process of\nproduction; to explain their own understanding and enjoyment of the\nmeaning and beauty of works of art, and not the technical means by\nwhich they have been made.\"[54]\n\nBut, while we agree with all this, we cannot help sympathizing with the\nlate R. A. M. Stevenson and his admirer Mr. Frank Rutter; for their\ndilemma is unique.\n\nWhen Monsieur Domergue of the French Academy assured his friend\nBeauz\u00e9e confidentially that he had discovered that Voltaire didn't\nknow grammar, Beauz\u00e9e very rightly replied with some irony: \"I am much\nobliged to you for telling me; now I know that it is possible to do\nwithout it.\"[55]\n\nAnd this is the only reply that ought to be made to any criticism which\nanalyses the technique of a real work of Art; since it is obvious,\nthat if technical questions are uppermost, the work is by implication\nunworthy of consideration in all other respects.[56]\n\n\n[50] _Principles in Art_, p. 4.\n\n[51] _H. A. H_., Vol. II, Aph. 164.\n\n[52] _The Academy_, August 24th, 1907. Article, \"The Pursuit of Taste.\"\n\n[53] The italics are mine.\n\n[54] _The Academy_, Oct. 26th, 1907. Article, \"The Hypochondria of Art.\"\n\n[55] Monsieur de Saint Ange's Reception Speech, 1810.\n\n[56] There is, however, a further excuse for Mr. Rutter and his school\nof critics, and that is, that in an age like this one, in which\nAmateurism is rampant, the critic very often performs a salutary office\nin condemning a work on purely technical grounds. I, for my part,\nam quite convinced that the morbid attention which is now paid to\ntechnique is simply a result of the extraordinary preponderance of the\nart-student element in our midst.\n\n\n\n\n4. Some Art Criticisms.\n\n\nIn order further to establish my contention, it might perhaps be an\nadvantage to refer to some criticisms that have actually been made.\nIt will not be necessary to give more than one or two of these,\nbecause everybody must know that similar instances could be multiplied\nindefinitely; but while I shall limit the selection, I should not like\nit to be thought that the cases I present are not absolutely typical.\n\nQuite recently the art-world has been staring with something akin to\namazement, not unmingled here and there with indignation, at the work\nof one Augustus John, in whose pictures they have found at once a\nproblem and an innovation.\n\nNow, without for the present wishing to express any opinion at all upon\nMr. John's work, this at least seemed quite clear to me when I first\nsaw it; namely, that it challenged profound analysis. Unconsciously or\nconsciously, Mr. John seemed to re-question a whole number of things\nafresh. The direction of Art, the purpose of Art, the essence of\nArt, the value of Art--these are some of the subjects into which he\nprovoked me to inquire.\n\nHere was an opportunity for the more wise among the critics to show\ntheir wisdom. This was essentially a case in which the public required\nexpert guidance. Augustus John comes forward with a new concept of what\nis beautiful. He says pictorially this and that is beautiful. Are we to\nfollow him or to reject him?\n\nHear one or two critics:--\n\nCommenting upon one of Mr. Max Beerbohm's caricatures in the Spring\nExhibition of the New English Art Club, 1909, the Times critic writes\nas follows--\"Here an art-critic meets a number of Mr. John's strange\nfemales with long necks and bent, unlovely heads, like a child's\ncopy of a Primitive; and the puzzled critic ejaculates, 'How odd\nit seems that thirty years hence I may be desperately in love with\nthese ladies!' Odd, indeed, but perfectly possible,\" continues the\nTimesexpert. \"Some of us have learned, in twenty years, to find nature\nin Claude Monet, and the time may come when the women in Mr. John's\n'Going to the Sea,' or in the 'Family Group' at the Grafton, will seem\nas beautiful as the Venus de Milo. The 'return of Night primeval and of\nold chaos' may be nearer than we think.\" Then after paying Mr. John's\ndrawing a compliment, the writer continues: \"But can any one, for\nall that, whose mind is not warped by purely technical prepossession\nin favour of a technician, say that the picture would not have been\nenormously improved if the artist had thought more of nature and less\nof his 'types' If Mr. John would throw his types to the winds, look\nfor a beautiful model, and paint her as she is, we should not have to\nwait the thirty years of Mr. Max Beerbohm's critic, but might begin to\nfall in love with her at once.\"[57]\n\nAnd this, let me assure you, is a comparatively able criticism!\n\nBut, what guidance does it give? Why is it so timid and non-committing?\nAnd, where it is committing, why is it so vague? The words \"beautiful\nmodel\" mean absolutely nothing nowadays. How, then, can the critic\nemploy them without defining the particular sense in which he wishes\nthem to be understood?\n\nI examined this picture of Mr. John's, as also the one at the Grafton.\nBoth of them were full of his personal solution of the deepest problems\nassociated with the ideas of Art and beauty; but how can we know\nwhether to accept these solutions unless they are made quite plain by\nour critics? It may be suggested that Mr. John's solutions of these\nproblems is not sufficiently important. Why, then, discuss them at all?\n\nThe _Daily Telegraph_ also contained a so-called criticism of Mr. John.\nAfter commenting, as the previous critic did, upon Mr. Max Beerbohm's\ncaricature and the words accompanying it, the writer proceeds: \"How\ntrue--to give the most obvious of all instances--with respect to\nWagner! And yet Mr. Max Beerbohm, the satirist, is as regards the\nactual moment, not quite, quite up to date. To-day, for fear of\nbeing accused of a B\u0153otian denseness, we hasten to acclaim, if not\nnecessarily to enjoy, C\u00e9zanne, Maurice Denis, the neo-Impressionists,\netc., etc.\"[58]\n\n\"For fear of being accused of B\u0153otian denseness!\" Yes, that is the\nwhole trouble! Apparently, then, if we are to believe the _Daily\nTelegraph_ critic, Mr. John has been acclaimed, simply in order that his\ncritics may escape the gibe of being classically dense!\n\nPossessing neither the necessary knowledge, nor the necessary values,\nnor yet the necessary certainty, to take up a definite stand for or\nagainst, these critics \"acclaim\" novelty, in whatever garb it may come,\nlest, perchance, their intelligence be for one instant doubted. Very\ngood!--at least this is a confession which reveals both their humility\nand their honesty, and, since it entirely supports my contention, I am\nentirely grateful for it.\n\nBut what ought to be said to the implied, ingenuous and perfectly\nunwarrantable assumption, that that which posterity endorses must of\nnecessity have been right all along? Why should Wagner be vindicated\nsimply because an age subsequent to his own happens to rave about\nhim? Before such posthumous success can vindicate a man, surely the\nage in which it occurs must be duly valued. In the event of its being\nmore lofty, more noble, and more tasteful than the age which preceded\nit, then certainly posthumous fame is a vindication; but if the case\nbe otherwise, then it is a condemnation. In an ascending culture the\nclassic of yesterday becomes the primitive of to-morrow, and in a\ndeclining culture the decadent of yesterday becomes the classic of\nto-morrow. Thus in valuing, say, Michelangelo, it all depends whence\nyou come. If you come from Egypt and walk down towards him, your\nopinion will be very different from that of the man who comes from\ntwentieth-century Europe and who walks up towards him.\n\nBut we are not ascending so rapidly or so materially--if we are\nascending at all--as to make posthumous success a guarantee of\nexcellence. In fact, precisely the converse might be true, and men\nwho are now quickly forgotten, may be all the greater on that account\nalone. In any case, however, the matter is not so obvious as to allow\nus to make the broad generalizations we do concerning it.\n\nPerhaps, in order to be quite fair, I ought now to refer to other\ncritics, as well as to other criticisms concerning John written by the\ncritics already quoted. True, in the Times for October 14th, 1905,\nthere appears a more elaborate discussion of Mr. John's powers. (I say\nmore elaborate, but I mean more lengthy!) And the _Daily Telegraph_ has\nalso given us more careful views, as, for instance, in their issues of\nOctober 17th, 1905, and November 23rd, 1909. I doubt, however, whether\nit could be honestly said that one really understands any better how to\nplace Mr. John after having read the articles in question, though, in\nmaking this objection, I should like it to be understood, that I regard\nit as applying not only to the art-criticism of the two particular\npapers to which I have referred, but to art-criticism in general.[59]\n\nMost of what we read on this matter in the sphere of journalism is\npure badinage, and little besides--entertainingly and ably written\nit is true, but generally very wide of the fundamental principles at\nstake, and of that consciousness of dealing with a deeply serious\nquestion, which the subject Art ought to awaken.\n\nNo one seems to feel nowadays that a picture, like a sonnet, like a\nsonata, and like a statue, if it claim attention at all, should claim\nthe attention of all those who are most deeply concerned with the\nproblems of Life, Humanity, and the Future; and that every breath of\nArt comes from the lungs of Life herself, and is full of indications as\nto her condition.\n\nWhen one says these things nowadays, people are apt to regard one as a\nlittle peculiar, a little morbid, and perhaps a little too earnest as\nwell. Only two or three months ago, a certain critic, commenting upon a\nsentence of mine in my Introduction to Nietzsche's _Case of Wagner_,[60]\nin which I declared that \"the principles of Art are inextricably bound\nup with the laws of Life,\" assured the readers of the Nation that \"the\nplainest facts of everyday life contradict this theory of non-artistic\nphilosophers in their arm-chairs.\"[61] And thus the fundamental\nquestions are shelved, year after year, while Art withers, and real\nartists become ever more and more scarce.\n\n\"I loathe this great city,\" cried Zarathustra.\n\n\"Woe to this great city!--And I would that I already saw the pillar of\nfire in which it will be consumed!\n\n\"For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this\nhath its time and its own fate.\"[62]\n\n\n[57] _The Times_, May 22nd, 1909.\n\n[58] _The Daily Telegraph_, May 31st, 1909.\n\n[59] A further example of what I mean can be found in the _Morning\nPost's_ article (4th April), on the International Society's 1910\nShow. Here the writer's only comments on a Simon Bussy (No. 149),\nwhich really required serious treatment, or no treatment at all, are:\n\"Could any English tourist at Mentone see that resort in the terms\nof M. Bussy?\" And his comments on an important Monet (No. 133) are:\n\"What happy Idler at Antibes other than a Frenchman could record\nthe particular impression of Monet (No. 133), even in enjoying the\nhospitalities of Eilenroe?\"\n\n[60] Dr. Oscar Levy's Authorized English Edition of Nietzsche's\n_Complete Works._\n\n[61] _The Nation_, July 9th, 1910.\n\n[62] _Z._, III, LI.\n\n\n\n\nPart II\n\n\nSuggested Causes Of The Anarchy In Modern Art\n\n\n    \"... To them gave he power to become the sons of God, even\n    to them that do believe in his name.\"--_John_ i. 12.\n\n\n\nAnd now, what are the causes of this depression and this madness in\nArt? For Nietzsche was not alone in recognizing it. Many voices, some\nwholly trustworthy, have been raised in support of his view.\n\nIt could only have been the unsatisfactory conditions, even in his\ntime, that made Hegel regard Art as practically dead; for, as Croce\nand Monsieur B\u00e9nard rightly observe, Hegel's _Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik_\nare Art's dirge.[1] Schopenhauer's extraordinary misunderstanding\nof Art, also, precisely like Plato's,[2] can be explained only by\nsupposing that the examples of Art which he saw about him misled his\notherwise penetrating judgment. Even Ruskin's vague and wholly confused\nutterances on the subject are evidence of his groping efforts to find\nhis way in the disorder of his time. And, as to the voices of lesser\nmen, their name is legion.\n\nTwo eminent Englishmen of the last century, however, were both clear\nand emphatic in their denunciation of the age in which they lived. I\nrefer to Matthew Arnold and William Morris. The former made a most\nilluminating analysis of some of the influences which have conduced\nto bring about the regrettable state of modern life, while William\nMorris--less philosophical perhaps, and more direct, though totally\nwrong in the remedies he advocates--bewailed Art's unhappy plight as\nfollows--\n\n\"I must in plain words say of the Decorative Arts, of all the arts,\nthat it is not merely that we are inferior in them to all who have\ngone before us, but also that they are in a state of anarchy and\ndisorganization, that makes a sweeping change necessary and certain.\"[3]\n\nThere can be no doubt, therefore, that what Nietzsche saw was a plain\nfact to very many thinking men besides; but, in tracing the conditions\nto precise and definite causes, Nietzsche by far excelled any of his\ncontemporaries.\n\nBefore proceeding, however, to examine the more general causes that he\nsuggests, I should like to pause here a moment, in order to dispose\nof one particular cause which, although of tremendous importance for\nus moderns, can scarcely be regarded as having been active for a very\nlong period. I refer to the manner in which Nietzsche accounts for a\ngood deal that is incompetent and futile, in the Art of the present day\nonly, by pointing to a psychological misapprehension which is, alas,\nbut all too common. I should not have broken my general narrative with\nthe consideration of this particular cause, had it not been that I feel\nsure it will help laymen, and artists as well, to account for much that\nwill still remain obscure, even after the more general causes have been\ndiscussed.\n\n\n[1] Benedetto Croce, _\u00c6sthetic_ (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p.\n308, and Monsieur B\u00e9nard's critical survey of Hegel's _\u00c6sthetik_ in\n_Cours d'Esth\u00e9tique_, Vol. V. p. 493.\n\n[2] On this point see Schelling, _S\u00e4mmtliche Werke_, Vol. V,\n\"Vorlesungen \u00fcber die Methode des akademischen Studiums,\" pp. 346-47.\n\n[3] _The Decorative Arts_, an address delivered before the Trades Guild\nof Learning, p. 11.\n\n\n\n\n1. Morbid Irritability.\n\n\nNietzsche recognized that this age is one in which Will is not merely\ndiseased, but almost paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women, youths\nand girls, who are unable to resist a stimulus, however slight; who\nreact with excessive speed in the presence of an irritant, and who\nbedeck this weakness and this irritability with all the finest gala\ndresses and disguises that they can lay their hands on.[4]\n\nIn Determinism he saw the philosophical abstract of this fact; in our\nnovels and plays he saw its representation under the cloak of passion\nand emotion; in the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment,\nhe saw it logged out in scientific garb, and in the modern artist's\ndependence upon an appeal to Nature for inspiration--i. e. for a spur\nto react upon, he recognized its unhealthiest manifestation.\n\n\"The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane,\" he says; \"the strength\nrequired in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most\nseriously diseased.\"[5]\n\n\"Man unlearns the art of _doing_, and _all he does is to react_ to\nstimuli coming from his environment.\"[6]\n\nSpeaking of the modern artist, he refers to \"the absurd irritability of\nhis system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences,\nand deprives him of all calm reflection,\"[7] and, while describing\nEuropeans in general, he lays stress upon their \"spontaneous and\nchangeable natures.\"[8]\n\nIn calling our attention to these things, Nietzsche certainly laid his\nfinger on the root of a good deal for which the other more general\ncauses which I shall adduce fail to account.\n\nThere can be no doubt that this irritability does exist, and that it\ncauses large numbers of unrefined and undesirable men and women to\nenter the arts to-day, who are absolutely mistaken in their diagnosis\nof their condition. We are all only too ready to conceal our defects\nbeneath euphemistic interpretations of them, and we most decidedly\nprefer, if we have the choice, to regard any morbid symptoms we may\nreveal, as the sign of strength rather than of weakness. There is some\ntemptation, therefore, both for our friends and ourselves, to interpret\nour natures kindly and if possible flatteringly; and, if we suffer\nfrom a certain \"sickly irritability and sensitiveness\" in the presence\nof what we think beautiful, we prefer to ascribe this to an artistic\ntemperament rather than to a debilitated will.\n\nWe are acquainted with the irascible nerve patient who pours his curses\non the head of a noisy child; and in his case we are only too ready to\nsuspect a morbid condition of the body. But when we ourselves, or our\nyoung friends, or our brothers, sister, or cousins, suddenly display,\nwhen still in their teens, a sort of gasping enthusiasm before a\nlandscape, a peasant child, or a sunset; when they show an inability\nto bide their time, to pause, and to remain inactive in the presence\nof what they consider beautiful, we immediately conclude from their\nconduct, not that they have little command of themselves, but that they\nmust of necessity have strong artistic natures.\n\nOur novels are full of such people with weak wills, so are our plays;\nso, too, unfortunately, are our Art Schools.\n\nWe know the Art student who, the moment he sees what he would call \"a\nglorious view,\" or a \"dramatic sunset or sunrise,\" hurls his materials\ntogether helter-skelter and dashes off, ventre \u00e0 terre, to the most\nconvenient spot whence he can paint it.\n\nWe have seen him seize the thing he calls an impression, his teeth\nclenched the while, and his nostrils dilated. But how often does it\noccur to us that such a creature has got a bad temper? How often do we\nrealize that he is irritable, self-indulgent, sick in fact?\n\nOnly in an age like our own could this ridiculous travesty of an artist\npass for an artist. It is only in our age that his neurotic touchiness\ncould possibly be mistaken for strength and vigour; and yet there are\nhundreds of his kind among the painters and sculptors of the day.\n\nMany a student's call to Art, at present, is merely a reminder, on the\npart of Nature, that he should cultivate restraint and forbearance,\nand should go in for commerce; for there is a whole universe between\nsuch a man and the artist of value. Not that sensitiveness is absent\nin the real artist; but it is of a kind which has strength to wait, to\nreflect, to weigh, and, if necessary, to refrain from action altogether.\n\n\"Slow is the experience of all deep wells,\" says Zarathustra. \"Long\nmust they wait ere they know what hath sunk into their depths.\"[9]\n\nBut the people I have just described have only a skin, and any itch\nupon it they call Art.\n\nNo lasting good, no permanent value can come of these irascible people\nwho will be avenged on all that they call beauty, \"right away\";\nwho will, so to speak, \"pay beauty out,\" and who cannot contain\nthemselves in its presence. They can but help to swell the ranks of the\nincompetent, and even if they are successful, as they sometimes are\nnowadays, all they do is to wreck the sacred calling in which they are\nbut pathological usurpers.\n\nNow, in turning to the more general causes, we find that in accounting\nfor the prevailing anarchy in Europe and in countries like Europe,\nand particularly in England and in countries like England, Nietzsche\npointed to the whole heritage of traditional thought which prevailed\nand still does prevail in the civilized parts of the Western world,\nand declared that it was in our most fundamental beliefs, in our most\nunquestioned dogmas, and in our most vaunted birthrights that this\nanarchy takes its source.\n\nIf Art had lost its prestige in our midst, and even its justification;\nand if individualism, incompetence, eccentricity, mediocrity and doubt\nwere rife, we must seek the causes of all this neither in Diderot's\nsomewhat disappointing essay on painting, nor in the slur that Rousseau\nhad once cast upon the culture of man, nor in John Stuart Mill's\narguments in favour of individualism, nor yet in Spencer's declaration\nthat \"the activities we call play are united with the \u00e6sthetic\nactivities by the trait that neither subserves in any direct way the\nprocesses conducive to life.\"[10]\n\nAll these things are merely symptomatic. Diderot, Rousseau, John Stuart\nMill, and Spencer were only symptoms of still deeper influences which\nhave been at work for centuries, and those influences are to be sought\nin the most vital values upon which our civilization is based.\n\n\n[4] _G. E._, p. 145.\n\n[5] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 36.\n\n[6] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 63.\n\n[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 258.\n\n[8] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 339.\n\n[9] _Z._, I, XII.\n\n[10] _The Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 627.\n\n\n\n\n2. Misleading Systems of \u00c6sthetic.\n\n\nIt is perfectly true that from classic times onward the guidance\nof European thought, on matters of Art, has been almost entirely\ninadequate if not misleading. But for the subconscious motives of\nartists and their spectators there seems to have been very little\ncomprehension of what Art actually means and aspires to, and even these\nsubconscious motives have been well-nigh stifled, thanks to the false\ndoctrines with which they have been persistently and systematically\nsmothered. Perhaps, however, the very nature of the subject condemns\nit to false theoretical treatment; for it has almost always been at\nthe mercy of men who were not themselves performers in the arts. Of\nthe few artists who have written on Art, how many have given us an\nadequate expression of what they themselves must have felt and aspired\nto? Not one. Ghiberti, Vasari, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mengs, Hogarth\nand Reynolds--to mention the most famous, teach us scarcely anything\nat all concerning the essence of their life passion, and this is, as\nNietzsche observes, perhaps \"a necessary fault; for,\" he continues,\n\"the artist who would begin to understand himself would therewith begin\nto mistake himself--he must not look backwards, he must not look at\nall; he must give.--It is an honour for an artist to have no critical\nfaculty; if he can criticize he is mediocre, he is modern.\"[11]\n\nStill, the greater part of this faulty guidance may, in itself, be but\nanother outcome of the erroneous and rooted beliefs which lie even\ndeeper in the heart of life than Art itself, and for these beliefs we\nmust seek deep down in the foundations of European thought for the last\ntwo or three hundred years. In fact, we must ask ourselves what our\nheritage from by-gone ages has been.\n\nSince Art is the subject of our inquiry, and \"Art is the only task\nof life,\"[12] it seems moderately clear that everything that has tended\nto reduce the dignity of Art must, in the first place, have reduced\nthe dignity of man. Is our heritage of thought of a kind that exalts\nman, or is it of a kind that debases him? What are, in fact, its chief\ncharacteristics?\n\n\n[11] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 256.\n\n[12] Ibid., p. 292.\n\n\n\n\n3. Our Heritage.--A. Christianity.\n\n\nWe shall find that the one definite and unswerving tendency of the\ntraditional thought of Europe has been, first, to establish on earth\nthat equality between men which from the outset Christianity had\npromised them in Heaven; secondly, to assail the prestige of man by\nproving that other tenet of the Faith which maintains the general\ndepravity of human nature; and thirdly, to insist upon truth in the\nChristian sense; that is, as an absolute thing which can be, and must\nbe, made common to all.\n\nAt the root of all our science, all our philosophy, and all our\nliterature, the three fundamental doctrines of Christianity: the\nequality of all souls, the insuperable depravity of human nature, and\nthe insistence upon Truth, are the ruling influences.\n\nBy means of the first and third doctrines equality was established in\nthe spirit, and by means of the second it was established in the flesh.[13]\n\n\nBy means of the first, each individual, great or small, was granted an\nimportance[14] undreamt of theretofore,[15] while the lowest were raised\nto the highest power; by means of the second, in which the pride of\nmankind received a snub at once severe and merciless, the highest were\nreduced to the level of the low, while the low were by implication\nmaterially raised; and by means of the third, no truth or point of\nview which could not be made general could be considered as a truth or\na point of view at all. Practically it amounted to this, that in one\nbreath mankind was told, first,\n\n    \"Thy Lord for thee the Cross endured\n    To save thy soul from Death and Hell;\"[16]\n\nsecondly, \"Thou shalt have no other God before Me;\" and thirdly,\n\n    \"From Greenland's icy mountains\n    To India's coral strand,\n    ... every prospect pleases,\n    And only man is vile.\"[17]\n\nBut in each case, as I have pointed out, it was the higher men who\nsuffered. Because they alone had something to lose. The first notion\n--that of equality, threatened at once to make them doubt their own\nprivileges and powers, to throw suspicion into the hearts of their\nfollowers, and to make all special, exceptional and isolated claims\nutterly void. The third--the insistence upon a truth which could be\ngeneral and absolute, denied their right to establish their own truths\nin the hearts of men, and to rise above the most general truth which\nwas reality; while in the second--the Semitic doctrine of general sin,\nwhich held that man was not only an imperfect, but also a fallen being,\nand that all his kind shared in this shame--there was not alone the\nring of an absence of rank, but also of a universal depreciation of\nhuman nature which was ultimately to lead, by gradual stages, from a\ndisbelief in man himself to a disbelief in nobles, in kings and finally\nin gods.[18]\n\nAt one stroke, not one or two human actions, but all human\nperformances, inspirations and happy thoughts, had been stripped of\ntheir glory and condemned. Man could raise himself only by God's grace\n--that is to say, by a miracle, otherwise he was but a fallen angel,\naimlessly beating the air with his broken wings.\n\nThese three blows levelled at the head of higher men were fatal to the\nartist; for it is precisely in the value of human inspirations, in\nthe efficiency of human creativeness, and in the irresistible power\nof human will, that he, above all, must and does believe. It is his\nmission to demand obedience and to procure reverence; for, as we shall\nsee, every artist worthy the name is at heart a despot.[19]\n\nFortunately, the Holy Catholic Church intervened, and by its rigorous\ndiscipline and its firm establishment upon a hierarchical principle,\nsuppressed for a while the overweening temper of the Christian soul,\nand all claims of individual thought and judgment, while it also\nrecognized an order of rank among men; but the three doctrines above\ndescribed remained notwithstanding at the core of the Christian Faith,\nand awaited only a favourable opportunity to burst forth and blight all\nthe good that the Church had done.\n\nThis favourable opportunity occurred in the person of Martin Luther.\nThe Reformation, in addition to reinstating, with all their evil\nconsequences, the three doctrines mentioned above, also produced a\ncertain contempt for lofty things and an importunate individualism\nwhich has done nought but increase and spread from that day to this.\n\nIndividualism, on a large scale, of course, had been both tolerated and\npractised in Gothic architecture, and on this account the buildings of\nthe Middle Ages might be said to breathe a more truly Christian spirit[20]\nthan most of the sculpture and the painting of the same period,\nwhich are more hieratic.[21] But it was not until the Reformation\nbegan to spread that the most tiresome form of individualism, which we\nshall call Amateurism,[22] received, as it were, a Divine sanction;\nand there can be no doubt that it is against this element in modern\nlife that not only Art, but all forces which aim at order, law and\ndiscipline, will eventually have to wage their most determined and most\nimplacable warfare.\n\n\n[13] The Judaic story of the fall of man is at bottom an essentially\ndemocratic one. This absence of rank in sin had no parallel in the\naristocratic Pagan world. Likewise, in the manner of the fall, there\nis a total absence of noble qualities. \"Curiosity, beguilement,\nseductibility and wantonness--in short, a whole series of pre-eminently\nfeminine passions--were regarded as the origin of evil.\" See _B. T._,\npp. 78, 79.\n\n[14] Bury, _History of the Later Roman Empire_, Vol. I, p. 33.\n\n[15] _A._, Aph. 43 and 64.\n\n[16] _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, No. 435.\n\n[17] _Ibid_., No. 522.\n\n[18] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 312: \"When it occurs to inferior men to doubt\nthat higher men exist, then the danger is great,\" etc. See, in fact,\nthe whole of Aph. 874.\n\n[19] See _A._, Aph. 49: \"The concept of guilt and punishment, inclusive\nof the doctrine of 'grace,' of 'salvation,' and of 'forgiveness'--lies\nthrough and through, without a shred of psychological truth. Sin,...\nthis form of human self-violation _par excellence_, was invented solely\nfor the purpose of making all science, all culture, and every kind of\nelevation and nobility utterly impossible.\"\n\n[20] Ruskin, _On the Nature of Gothic Architecture_ (p. 7), contrasting\nthe classic and Gothic style, says: \"... In the medi\u00e6val, or especially\nChristian, system of ornament, this slavery [_i.e._ the slavery imposed\nby the classic canon] is done away with altogether; Christianity having\nrecognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of\nevery soul.\"\n\n[21] In a good deal of the painting and sculpture of the\npre-Renaissance period, too, signs were not lacking which showed that\nthe Christian ideal of truth was beginning to work its effects by\nleading to a realism which I have classified in Lecture II as Police\nArt. Of course, a good deal of this realism may also be accounted for\nby the reasons which I suggest at the end of Part I of Lecture III;\nbe this as it may, however, as it is difficult to decide the actual\nproportion of either of these influences, the weight of the Christian\ndoctrine of Truth must not be altogether overlooked in such productions\nas Donatello's \"Crucifixion\" (Capella Bardi, S. Croce, Florence);\nMasolino's \"Raising of Tabitha\" (Carmine, Florence); Masaccio's\nFresco (S. Maria del Carmine, Florence); Ucello's \"Rout of S. Romano\"\n(Uffizi); Andrea del Castagno's \"Crucifixion\" (in the Monastery of the\nAngeli, Florence); and the really beautiful statues of the Founders in\nthe Cathedral of Naumburg.\n\n[22] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 297: \"The terrible consequences of\n'freedom'--in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every\nproblem. All order of rank is banished.\"\n\n\n\n\nB. Protestantism.\n\n\nFor Protestantism was nothing more nor less than a general rebellion\nagainst authority.[23] By means of it the right of private judgment\nwas installed once more, and to the individual was restored that\nimportance which Christianity had acknowledged from the first, and\nwhich only the attitude of the Church had been able to modify. The\nlayman, with his conscience acknowledged to be the supreme tribunal,\nwas declared a free man, emancipated even from the law,[24] or, as\nLuther said, \"free Lord of all, subject to none.\"[25]\n\nNow, not only the immortal soul of every individual became important;\nbut also every one of his proclivities, desires and aspirations. He was\ntold that he could be his own priest if he chose,[26] and that Christ had\nobtained this prerogative for him. Megalomania, in fact, as Nietzsche\ndeclares, was made his duty.[27]\n\n\"Let men so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards\nof the mysteries of God.\"[28]\n\nWith these words St. Paul had addressed the Corinthians, and Luther did\nnot fail to base his strongest arguments upon the text.[29]\n\n\"Even the Reformation,\" says Nietzsche, \"was a movement for individual\nliberty; 'Every one his own priest' is really no more than a formula\nfor _libertinage_.As a matter of fact, the words, 'Evangelical freedom'\nwould have sufficed--and all instincts which had reasons for remaining\nconcealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly\nacquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified.\"[30]\n\nWas it at all likely that the formula, \"Every one his own priest,\" was\ngoing to lead to trouble only in ecclesiastical matters? As a matter of\nfact we know that Luther himself extended the principle still further\nin his own lifetime. By his radical alterations in the church service\nLuther gave the laity a much more prominent place in Divine worship\nthan they had ever had before; for, in addition to the fact that the\nliturgy as compiled by him was written almost entirely in the native\ntongue, the special attention he gave to the singing of hymns[31]\nallowed the people an opportunity of displaying their individual powers\nto such an extent that it has even been said that \"they sang themselves\ninto enthusiasm for the new faith.\"[31]\n\nBut these remarkable changes were only symbolic of the changes that\nfollowed elsewhere; for, once this spirit of individual liberty and\njudgment had invaded that department of life which theretofore had\nbeen held most sacred, what was there to prevent it from entering and\ndefiling less sacred sanctuaries?\n\nBearing in mind the condition of the arts at the present day, and\ntaking into account a fact which we all very well know; namely, that\nthousands upon thousands are now practising these arts who have\nabsolutely no business to be associated with them in any way, we are\nalmost inclined to forgive Protestantism and Puritanism their smashing\nof our images, and their material iconoclasm; so light does this\ndamage appear, compared with the other indirect damage they have done\nto the spirit of Art, by establishing the fatal precedent of allowing\neverybody to touch and speak of everything--however sacred.\n\nWe may argue with Buckle that the English spirit is of a kind which\nis essentially Protestant in temper; but this only seems to make the\nmatter worse.\n\nWhen Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold point, the one to the evils of\nLiberalism, and the other to the evils of anarchy, we know to what they\nare referring. They are referring to the impossibility, nowadays, of\nawakening reverence for anything or for anybody.\n\n\"May not every man in England say what he likes?\" Matthew Arnold\nexclaims. \"But,\" he continues, \"the aspirations of culture, which\nis the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say,\nwhen they may say what they like, is worth saying.... Culture\nindefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the\nrule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense\nof what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw\nperson to like that.\"[32]\n\nBut what is fatal to culture is no less fatal to art, and thus we find\nNietzsche saying--\n\n\"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it becometh mob.\"[33]\n\nIf in the Europe, and especially in the England of to-day, everybody\nhas a right to every judgment and to every joy; if a certain slavish\ntruthfulness to nature and reality, rawness and ruggedness, have\nwell-nigh wrecked higher aspirations, and if everybody can press his\npaltry modicum of voice, of thought, of draughtsmanship, of passion\nand impudence to the fore, and thus spread his portion of mediocrity\nlike dodder over the sacred field of Art; it is because the fundamental\nprinciples of the Christian faith are no longer latent or suppressed in\nour midst; but active and potent--if not almighty.\n\nIt might almost be said that they have reared a special instinct--the\ninstinct of liberty and of taking liberties, without any particular aim\nor purpose; and, by so doing, have thrown all virtue, all merit, all\nambition, not on the side of culture, but on the side of that \"free\npersonality\"[34] and rude naturalness, or truth to man's original savagery,\nwhich it seems the triumph of every one, great or small, to produce.\n\nNo one any longer claims the kind of freedom that Pope Paul III claimed\nfor his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Benvenuto Cellini:[35] this would be too dangerous,\nbecause, in a trice, it would be applied to all. Therefore the\ninsignificant majority get more freedom than is good for them, and the\nnoble minority are deprived of their birthright.\n\n\"Thus do I speak unto you in parable,\" cries Zarathustra, \"ye who make\nthe soul giddy, ye preachers of _equality_! Tarantulas are ye unto me,\nand secretly revengeful ones!\n\n\"But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light, therefore do I\nlaugh in your faces my laughter of the height.\n\n\"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of\nvirtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!\n\n\"Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant frenzy of impotence crieth thus\nin you for 'equality': your most secret tyrant longings disguise\nthemselves in words of virtue!\"[36]\n\nAnd now recapitulating a moment, what have we found our heritage to\nconsist of, in the realm of the religious spirit?\n\nIn the first place: a certain universal acknowledgment and claim of\nliberty, which has no special purpose or direction, and which is too\nfair to some and unfair to many. Secondly, a devotion to a truth that\ncould be general, which perforce has reduced us to vulgar reality;\nthirdly, a prevailing depression in the value and dignity of man,\nresulting from the suspicion that has been cast upon all authority\nand all loftiness; and fourthly, a wanton desecrating and befingering\nof all sanctuaries by anybody and everybody, which is the inevitable\noutcome of that amateur priesthood introduced and sanctified by Martin\nLuther.\n\n\n[23] Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, Vol. II, p. 140:\n\"Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted, by\nall unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was neither more\nnor less than an open rebellion. Indeed, the mere mention of private\njudgment, on which it was avowedly based, is enough to substantiate\nthis fact. To establish the right of private judgment was to appeal\nfrom the Church to individuals,\" etc. (See also p. 138 in the same\nvolume.) _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, p. 166: \"In the Edict of\nWorms, Luther had been branded as a revolutionary, then as a heretic,\nand the burden of the complaints preferred against him by the Catholic\nhumanists was, that his methods of seeking a reformation would be\nfatal to all order, political or ecclesiastical. They painted him as\nthe apostle of revolution, a second Catiline.\" And p. 174: \"The most\nfrequent and damaging charge levelled at Luther between 1520 and 1525\nreproached him with being the apostle of revolution and anarchy, and\npredicted that his attacks on spiritual authority would develop into a\ncampaign against civil order unless he were promptly suppressed.\"\n\n[24] _A Treatise Touching the Libertie of a Christian_, by Martyne\nLuther (translated from the Latin by James Bell, 1579. Edited by\nW. Bengo' Collyer, 1817), p. 17: \"So that it is manifest that to a\nChristian man faith sufficeth only for all, and that he needeth no\nworks to be justified by. Now, if he need no works, then also he needs\nnot the law: if he have no need of the law, surely he is then free from\nthe law. So this also is true. The law is not made for the righteous\nman, and this is the same Christian libertie.\"\n\n[25] _Ibid_., p. 3.\n\n[26] _Ibid_., p. 31.\n\n[27] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 211.\n\n[28] 1 Cor. iv. 1.\n\n[29] Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.\n\n[30] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 75.\n\n[31] Emil Naumann, _History of Music_, Vol. II, p. 429: \"With the\nCatholics, hymns in the mother tongue were only used at processions\nand on high festivals, and were then sung by the congregation only\nat Christmas, Easter, and certain other high feast days. With these\nexceptions, the Catholic congregational song consisted of short musical\nphrases chanted by the priests, to which the people either responded,\nor added their voices to the refrain sung by the choristers from the\naltar. The part assigned to the people then was but a very subordinate\none.\" See also the Introduction to C. von Winterfeld's Sacred Songs of\nLuther (Leipzig, 1840).\n\n[32] _The Beginnings of Art_, by Ernst Grosse, pp. 299, 300; and\nCambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.\n\n[33] Culture and Anarchy (Smith, Elder, 1909), pp. 11, 12.\n\n[34] _Z._, I, VII.\n\n[35] E. I., pp. 54, 55.\n\n[36] _Sandro Botticelli_, by Emile Gebhart (1907), p. 9: \"Paul III \u00e2me\ntr\u00e8s haute, r\u00e9pond aux personnes qui lui d\u00e9noncent les vices de son\nspirituel spadassin: 'Les hommes uniques dans leur art, comme Cellini,\nne doivent pas \u00eatre soumis aux lois, et lui moins que tout autre.'\"\n\n\n\n\nC. Philosophical Influences.\n\n\nNow, turning to our heritage in philosophy and science, do we find\nthat it tends to resist, or to thwart in any way the principles of our\nreligious heritage? Not in the slightest degree! At every point and\nat every stage it has confirmed and restated, with all the pomp of\nfacts and statistics to support it, what the religious spirit had laid\ndown for our acceptance. It is superficial and ridiculous to suppose,\nas Dr. Draper once supposed, that there has been a conflict between\nReligion and Science. I take it that he means the Christian Religion\nalone. Such a conflict has never taken place; what has taken place,\nhowever, is a conflict between Science and the Catholic Church. The\nChristian Religion and Science together, however, have never had any\nsuch antagonism, and least of all in England, where, from the time of\nRoger Bacon,[37] the first English Experimentalist, to the present\nday, nothing has been left undone, no stone has been left unturned,\nwhich might establish scientifically that which Christianity, as we\nhave seen, wished to establish emotionally.\n\nUniversal liberty, without a purpose or a direction; the free and\nplebeian production of thoughts and theories divorced from all aim\nor ideal, after the style in which children are born in the slums;\ndevotion to a truth that can be common to all; the depression of the\nvalue and dignity of man, and a certain lack of reverence for all\nthings--these four aspirations of Christianity and Protestantism have\nbeen the aspirations of science, and at the present moment they are\npractically attained.\n\nUnfortunately, it is in the nature of human beings to imitate success,\nand England's success as a colonizing and constitutional nation has\nundoubtedly been a potent force in spreading not only her commercial,\nbut also her philosophical views among all ambitious and aspiring\nWestern nations, who guilelessly took the evil with the good.\n\nThe empiricists, Francis Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, were among the first,\nby their teaching, to level a decisive blow at genuine thought, at the\nman who knows and who is the measure of all things;[38] and this they\ndid by arriving at a conception of knowledge and thought that converted\nthe latter into possessions which might be common to everybody--that is\nto say, by reducing all knowledge to that which can be made immediately\nthe experience of all. This was the greatest blasphemy against the\nhuman spirit that has ever been committed. By means of it, every one,\nwhatever he might be, could aspire to intellectuality and wisdom;\nfor experience belongs to everybody, whereas a great spirit is the\npossession only of the fewest.\n\nThe Frenchmen, Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Maupertius, Condillac,\nDiderot, d'Alembert, La Mettrie and Baron Holbach, were quick to\nbecome infected, and in Germany, despite the essentially aristocratic\ninfluence of Leibnitz,[39] Kant was the first to follow suit.\n\nBegun in this way, English philosophical speculation, as Dr. Max\nSchasler says, was forced to grow ever more and more materialistic[40]\nin character, and, if \"Science has already come very generally to\nmean, not that which may be known, but only such knowledge as every\nanimal with faculties a little above those of an ant or a beaver can be\ninduced to admit,\" and if \"incommunicable knowledge, or knowledge which\ncan be communicated at present only to a portion--perhaps a small\nportion--of mankind, is already affirmed to be no knowledge at all,\"[41]\nit is thanks to the efforts of the fathers of English thought.\n\nHence Nietzsche's cry, that \"European ignobleness, the plebeian ism of\nmodern ideas--is England's work and invention.\"[42]\n\nBut it is not alone in its vulgarization of the concept of knowledge,\nor in its materialistic tendency, that English influence has helped\nto reduce the dignity of man and to level his kind; the utilitarians\nfrom Bentham to John Stuart Mill and Sidgwick, by taking the greatest\nnumber as the norm, as the standard and measurement of all things, ably\nreflected the Christian principle, of the equality of souls, in their\nworks, and, incidentally, by so doing, treated the greatest number\nexceedingly badly. For what is mediocre can neither be exalted nor\ncharmed by values drawn from mediocrity, and is constantly in need of\nvalues drawn from super-mediocrity, for its joy, for its love of life,\nand for its reconciliation with drabby reality.[43]\n\n\n[37] It is important here to note, first, that Roger Bacon was an\nAristotelian through his intimate study of the Arabian treatises on the\nGreek philosopher, and, secondly, that although Greek speculation was\ngoverned more by insight than experience, Aristotle forms a striking\nexception to this rule.\n\n[38] _G. E._, p. 210: \"What is lacking in England, and has always been\nlacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd\nmuddle-head Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces\nwhat he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle--real\npower of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short,\nphilosophy.\"\n\n[39] In reply to those who said, \"Nothing exists in the intellect but\nwhat has before existed in the senses,\" Leibnitz replied: \"Yes, nothing\nbut the intellect.\"\n\n[40] _Kritische Geschichte der \u00c6sthetik_ (1872). Speaking of the\nEnglish \u00c6stheticians, he says (p. 285), \"The fact that there is no\ndecrease, but rather an increase of Materialism in their thought, no\npurification in their meditation from the coarseness of experience,\nbut rather a gradual immersion in the same, may also be regarded as\ncharacteristic of the development of the English spirit in general.\"\n\n[41] Coventry Patmore, _Principles in Art_, p. 209.\n\n[42] _G. E._, p. 213.\n\n[43] Even J. S. Mill saw the flaw in his own teaching in this respect,\nand acknowledged it openly. See his _Liberty_, chapter \"The Elements of\nWell-Being,\" paragraph 13.\n\n\n\n\nD. The Evolutionary Hypothesis.\n\n\nFinally, in the latter half of the last century, these two tendencies\nat last reached their zenith, and culminated in a discovery which,\nby some, is considered as the proudest product of the English mind.\nThis discovery, which was at once a gospel and a solution of all\nworld riddles, and which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from\nEdinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypothesis as expounded by\nDarwin and Spencer.\n\nA more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depressing conception of\nlife and man cannot be conceived than this evolutionary hypothesis\nas it was presented to us by its two most famous exponents; and its\nimmediate popularity and rapid success, alone, should have made it seem\nsuspicious, even in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.\n\nAnd yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost everybody, save those,\nonly, whose interests it assailed.\n\nHow much more noble was the origin of the world as described even in\nGenesis, Disraeli was one of the first to see and to declare;[44]\nand yet, so strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means of\nits popular proof through so-called facts, could become the common\npossession of every tinker, tailor and soldier, that people preferred\nto think they had descended from monkeys, rather than doubt such an\noverwhelming array of data, and regard themselves still as fallen\nangels.\n\nIn its description of the prime motor of life as a struggle for\nexistence; in its insistence upon adaptation to environment and\nmechanical adjustment to external influences;[45] in its deification of a\nblind and utterly inadequate force which was called Natural Selection;\nand above all in its unprincipled optimism, this new doctrine bore the\nindelible stamp of shallowness and vulgarity.\n\nAccording to it, man was not only a superior monkey, but he was also\na creature who sacrificed everything in order to live; he was not\nonly a slave of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by his\nsurroundings; he was not only a coward, but a cabbage; and, with it\nall, he was invoked to do nothing to assist the world process and his\nown improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous teachers, that\n\"evil tended perpetually to disappear,\"[46] and that \"progress was\ntherefore not an accident, but a necessity.\"[47]\n\nThus not only was man debased, but we could now fold our arms\napathetically, and look on while he dashed headlong to his ruin.[48]\n\n\"No,\" said the evolutionists, \"we do not believe in a moral order of\nthings, although our doctrine does indeed seem to be a reflection of\nsuch an order; neither do we believe in God: but we certainly pin our\nfaith to our little idol Evolution, and feel quite convinced that it\nis going to make us muddle through to perfection somehow--look at our\nproofs!\"\n\nAnd what are these proofs? On all sides they are falling to bits, and\nwe are quickly coming to the conclusion that an assembly of facts can\nprove nothing--save the inability of a scientist to play the r\u00f4le of a\ncreative poet.\n\nNietzsche was one of the first to see, that if Becoming were a reliable\nhypothesis, it must be supported by different principles from those of\nthe Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in sketching out these\ndifferent principles.[49]\n\n\"These English psychologists--what do they really mean?\" Nietzsche\ndemands. \"We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same\ntask of pushing to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world,\nand looking for the efficient, governing and decisive principle in that\nprecise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would\nbe the most reluctant to find it--that is to say, in slothfulness of\nhabit, or in forgetfulness, or in blind and fortuitous mechanism and\nassociation of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex,\nmolecular, or fundamentally stupid,--what is the real motive power\nwhich always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction?\"[50]\n\nNot one of these advocates of mechanism, however, realized how\nprofoundly he was degrading man, and how seriously he had therefore\nsullied all human achievement. In their scientific _r\u00e9chauff\u00e9_ of the\nChristian concept of man's depravity, they all had the most hearty\nfaith, and, as there was little in their over-populated and industrial\ncountry to contradict their conclusions, they did not refrain from\npassing these conclusions into law.\n\nWe can detect nothing in this greatest scientific achievement of the\nlast century which seriously resists or opposes our heritage in the\nrealm of the religious spirit. In their fundamentals, the two are one;\nAnd when we take them both to task, and try to discover their influence\nupon the world, we wonder not so much why Art is so bad, but why Art\nhas survived at all.\n\nFor, though for the moment we may exclude the influence of earlier\nEnglish thought upon general artistic achievement, at least the\ndegraded condition of Art at the present day cannot be divorced in this\nmanner from more recent English speculation, for even Mr. Bosanquet\ncounts Darwin and Lyell among those who have ushered in the new\nrenaissance of art in England![51]\n\n\"At present,\" says Nietzsche, \"nobody has any longer the courage for\nseparate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence\nfor himself and his equals,--for pathos of distance,... and even our\npolitics are morbid from this want of courage!\"[52]\n\nTo-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and\ngods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised\nresentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence\nand reverence in general are the first needs of all?\n\nWe can only hope to find what we actually see, and that, as we all very\nwell know and cannot deny, is a condition of anarchy, incompetence,\npurposelessness and chaos.\n\n\"Culture ... has a very important function to fulfil for mankind,\"\nsaid Matthew Arnold. \"And this function is particularly important\nin our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much\ngreater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical\nand external, and tends constantly to become more so. But, above all,\nin our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because,\nhere, that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take\neverywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree.... The idea of\nperfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance\nwith the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and\nnowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us.\"[53]\n\nWe may trust that it is not in vain that men like Matthew Arnold and\nNietzsche raised their voices against the spirit of the age. And we may\nhope that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up their cry.\n\nIn any case Nietzsche did not write in utter despair. His words do not\nfall like faded autumn leaves announcing the general death that is\nimminent. On the contrary, he saw himself approaching a new century,\nthis century, and he drew more than half his ardour from the hope\nthat we might now renounce this heritage of the past, the deleterious\neffects of which he spent his lifetime in exposing.\n\n\"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones!\" he says. \"From the future winds are\ncoming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings\nfor fine ears.\n\n\"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a\npeople, and from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall\narise.\n\n\"Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already\na new odour lieth around it, an odour which bringeth salvation--and a\nnew hope.\"[54]\n\n[44] See Froude's _The Earl of Beaconsfield_ (9th Edition), pp. 176,\n177: \"The discoveries of science are not, we are told, consistent with\nthe teachings of the Church.... It is of great importance when this\ntattle about science is mentioned, that we should attach to the phrase\nprecise ideas. The function of science is the interpretation of nature,\nand the interpretation of the highest nature is the highest science.\nWhat is the highest nature? Man is the highest nature. But I must say\nthat when I compare the interpretation of the highest nature by the\nmost advanced, the most fashionable school of modern science with some\nother teaching with which we are familiar I am not prepared to admit\nthat the lecture room is more scientific than the Church. What is the\nquestion now placed before society, with a glib assurance the most\nastounding? The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my\nLord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and\nabhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the conscience\nof humanity.\"\n\n[45] See p. 37.\n\n[46] Spencer, _Social Statics_ (Ed. 1892), p. 27.\n\n[47] _Ibid_., p. 31.\n\n[48] Two Christian principles are concealed here: 1. The depravity of\nman. 2. Faith in a moral order of things.\n\n[49] I have discussed this question, with as much detail as the space\nwould allow, in _Nietzsche, his Life and Works_, Chap. IV. (Constable's\nPhilosophies Ancient and Modern). See also my letter, \"Nietzsche and\nScience,\" in the _Spectator_ of 8th January, 1910.\n\n[50] _G. M._, p. 17.\n\n[51] _A History of \u00c6sthetic_, p. 445.\n\n[52] _A._, Aph. 43.\n\n[53] _Culture and Anarchy_ (Smith, Elder, 1909), p. 10.\n\n[54] _Z._, I, XXII.\n\n\n\n\nLecture II[1]\n\n\nGovernment in Art. Nietzsche's Definition of Art\n\n\n\n\nPart I\n\n\nDivine Art and the Man-God\n\n\n    \"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,\n    and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and\n    have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of\n    the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the\n    earth.\"--Genesis i. 28.\n\n\n\nMan has ceased from believing in miracles, because he is convinced that\nthe divine power of the miracle-worker has departed from him. At last\nhe has proclaimed the age of wonders to be at an end, because he no\nlonger knows himself capable of working wonders.\n\nHe acknowledges that miracles are still needed. He hears the\ndistressing cry for the super-natural everywhere. All about him to-day\nhe feels that wonders will have to be worked if the value of Life,\nof his fellows, and of himself is to be raised, by however little;\nand yet he halts like one paralyzed before the task he can no longer\naccomplish, and finding that his hand has lost its cunning and that\nhis eye has lost its authority, he stammers helplessly that the age of\nmiracles has gone by.\n\nEverything convinces him of the fact. Everybody, from his priest to\nhis porter, from his wife to his astrologer, from his child to his\nneighbour, tells him plainly that he is no longer divine, no longer a\ngod, no longer even a king!\n\nNot only has the age of miracles gone by; but with it, also, has\nvanished that age in which man could conceive of god in his own image.\nThere are no gods now; because man himself has long since doubted that\nman is godlike.\n\nSoon there will be no kings,[2] finally there will be no greatness\nat all, and this will mean the evanescence of man himself.\n\nTo speak of all this as the advance of knowledge, as the march\nof progress, as the triumph of science, and as the glories of\nenlightenment, is merely to deck a corpse, to grease-paint a sore, and\nto pour rose-water over a cesspool.\n\nIf the triumph of science mean \"The Descent of Man\"; if the glories of\nenlightenment mean, again, the descent of man; and if progress imply,\nonce more, the descent of man; then the question to be asked is: in\nwhose hands have science, enlightenment and the care of progress fallen?\n\nThis world is here for us to make of it what we will. It is a field of\nyielding clay, in which, like sandboys, we can build our castles and\nrevel in our creations.\n\nBut what are these people doing? In building their castles they grow\never more like beavers, and ants, and beetles. In laying out their\ngardens they grow ever more like slugs, and worms, and centipedes. And\ntheir joy seems to be to feel themselves small and despised.\n\nOnce, for instance, their sky was the mighty god Indra; the clouds were\nhis flock, and he drove his flock across his vast fields--blue and\nfragrant with delicate flowers. Their fruitful rain was the milk which\ntheir god Indra obtained from his herd of cows, and their seasons of\ndrought were times when the god Indra was robbed by brigands of his\nflock.\n\nNow, their sky is infinite space. Their clouds are masses of vapour in\na state of condensation more or less considerable, and their rain is\nthe outcome of that condensation becoming too considerable.\n\nNot so many years ago their Heaven and their Earth were the father and\nmother of all living things, who had become separated in order that\ntheir offspring might have room to live and breathe and move. And thus\ntheir mists were the passionate sighs of the loving wife, breathing her\nlove heavenwards; and the dew, the tearful response of her affectionate\nand sorrowful spouse.\n\nNow, their Heaven is a thing that no one knows anything at all about.\nTheir Earth is an oblate spheroid revolving aimlessly through a\nhypothetical medium called ether; their mists are vaporous emanations;\nwhile their dew is a discharge of moisture from the air upon substances\nthat have irradiated a sufficient quantity of heat.\n\nTheir Sun was once a god with long, shining streams of golden hair, of\nwhich every year their goddess Night would rob him, thus leaving Winter\nmistress of the earth.\n\nNow, their sun is the central orb of their Solar system. It consists of\na nucleus, it is surrounded by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and\nhas a disease of the face called \"spots.\"\n\nThe facts remain the same; the mist still rises, the dew still falls,\nand the canopy of Heaven still spans the two horizons. Whatever the\ninterpretation of these phenomena may be, this at least is certain,\nthat they are still with us. But there is one thing that changes; one\nthing that cannot remain indifferent to interpretation--even though\nthe facts do not alter,--and that is the soul of man.\n\nA million times more sensitive to changes in interpretation than the\ncolumn of mercury is to changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man\nrises or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of the meaning\nwhich he himself puts into things; and, just as, in this matter, he may\nbe his own regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin.\n\n\n[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910.\n\n[2] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 187: \"The time of kings has gone by, because\npeople are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol\nof their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends.\" See also\n_Z._, III, LVI.\n\n\n\n\n1. The World \"without form\" and \"void.\"\n\n\nFor, in the beginning, the world was \"without form\" and \"void,\" things\nsurrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably\nthe same number of impressions as they do now--and perhaps more--but\nthese impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither\ncalculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3] them to his\nfellows.\n\nBefore he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the\nthings of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination,\norganization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process,\nhowever arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs\nof thinking man.\n\nEverything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some\nplace; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the\nterms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a\nposition relative to humanity.\n\nPerhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of\nevery creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and\nrecorded.[4] But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied\nprimeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order\nthat he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his\nimpressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a\nthing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must\nbe given a name, a place, an order, a meaning--however arbitrary,\nhowever fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic,\nbewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5] organized,\nclassified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims\nand needs of a particular kind of man.\n\nThus interpretation was the first activity of all to thinking humanity,\nand it was human needs that interpreted the world.[6]\n\nThe love of interpreting and of adjusting--this primeval love and\ndesire, this power of the sandboy over his castles; how much of the\njoy in Life, the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow in\nLife, does not depend upon it! For we can know only a world which we\nourselves have created.[7]\n\nThere was the universe--strange and inscrutable; terrible in its\nstrangeness, insufferable in its inscrutability, incalculable in its\nmultifariousness. With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or a\nshower might be anything to man--a godlike friend or a savage foe. The\ndome of blue behind was also prodigious in its volume and depth, and\nthe stars upon it at night horrible in their mystery.\n\nWhat, too, was this giant's breath that seemed to come from nowhere,\nand which, while it cooled his face, also bent the toughest trees like\nstraws? The sun and moon were amazing--the one marvellously eloquent,\ncommunicative, generous, hot and passionate: the other silent,\nreserved, aloof, cold, incomprehensible.[8]\n\nBut there were other things to do, besides interpreting the stars, the\nsun, the moon, the sea, and the sky above. There was the perplexing\nmultiplicity of changes and of tides in Life, to be mastered and\nsimplified. There was the fateful flow of all things into death and\ninto second birth, the appalling fact of Becoming and never-resting, of\nchange and instability, of bloom and of decay, of rise and of decline.\nWhat was to be done?\n\nIt was impossible to live in chaos. And yet, in its relation to man\nNature was chaotic. There was no order anywhere. And, where there is\nno order, there are surprises,[9] ambushes, lurking indignities. The\nunexpected could jump out at any minute. And a masterful mind abhors\nsurprises and loathes disorder. His Will to Power is humiliated by\nthem. To man,--whether he be of yesterday, of to-day or of to-morrow--\nunfamiliarity, constant change, and uncertainty, are sources of great\nanxiety, great sorrow, great humiliation and sometimes great danger.\nHence everything must be familiarized, named and fixed. Values must\nbe definitely ascertained and determined. And thus valuing becomes a\nbiological need. Nietzsche even goes so far as to ascribe the doctrine\nof causality to the inherent desire in man to trace the unfamiliar\nto the familiar. \"The so-called instinct of causality,\" he says, \"is\nnothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at\nfinding something in it which is already known.\"[10]\n\nIn the torrent and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed\nfor the purpose of human orientation. In the avalanche of evolutionary\nchanges, pillars must be made to stand, to which man can hold tight for\na space and collect his senses. The slippery soil of a world that is\nfor ever in flux, must be transformed into a soil on which man can gain\nsome foothold.[11]\n\nPrimeval man stood baffled and oppressed by the complexity of his task.\nFacts were insuperable as facts; they could, however, be overcome\nspiritually--that is to say, by concepts. And that they must be\novercome, man never doubted for an instant--he was too proud for that.\nFor his aim was not existence, but a certain kind of existence--an\nexistence in which he could hold his head up, look down upon the world,\nand stare defiance even at the firmament.\n\nAnd thus all humanity began to cry out for a meaning, for an\ninterpretation, for a scheme, which would make all these distant and\nuncontrollable facts their property, their spiritual possessions. This\nwas not a cry for science, or for a scientific explanation, as we\nunderstand it; nor was it a cry for truth in the Christian sense.[12]\nFor the bare truth, the bare fact, the bald reality of the thing was\nobvious to everybody. All who had eyes to see could see it. All who had\nears to hear could hear it. And all who had nerves to feel could feel\nit. If ever there was a time when there was a truth for all, this was\nthe time; and it was ugly, bare and unsatisfying. What was wanted was a\nscheme of life, a picture of life, in which all these naked facts and\ntruths could be given some place and some human significance--in fact,\nsome order and arrangement, whereby they would become the chattels\nof the human spirit, and no longer subjects of independent existence\nand awful strangeness.[13] Only thus could the dignity and pride of\nhumanity begin to breathe with freedom. Only thus could life be made\npossible, where existence alone was not the single aim and desire.\n\n\"The purpose of 'knowledge,' \"says Nietzsche, \"in this case, as in\nthe case of 'good,' or 'beautiful,' must be regarded strictly and\nnarrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order\nthat a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its\nconception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and\nconstant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility\nof preservation--and _not_ some abstract or theoretical need to eschew\ndeception--stands as the motive force behind the development of the\norgans of knowledge.... In other words, the measure of the desire\nfor knowledge depends upon the extent to which the _Will to Power_ grows\nin a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of\nreality in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount into its\nservice.\"[14]\n\nAnd thus \"the object was, not to know, but to schematize, to impose as\nmuch regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs required.\"[15]\n\n\"The whole apparatus of knowledge,\" says Nietzsche, \"is an abstracting\nand simplifying apparatus--not directed at knowledge, but at the\nappropriation of things.\"[16]\n\nNo physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than\nthis thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar,\nfamiliar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the\nspirit.[17]\n\nLife without food and drink was bad enough; but Life without\nnourishment for this spiritual appetite, this famished wonder,[18]\nthis starving amazement, was utterly intolerable!\n\nThe human system could appropriate, and could transform into man, in\nbone and flesh, the vegetation and the animals of the earth; but what\nwas required was a process, a _Weltanschauung_, a general concept of\nthe earth which would enable man to appropriate also Life's other\nfacts, and transform them into man the spirit. Hence the so-called\nthirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and\nconquest,[19] and the \"will to truth\" to a process of establishing\nthings, to a process of making things true and lasting.... Thus\ntruth is not something which is present and which has to be found and\ndiscovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its\nname to a process, or better still, to the \"will to overpower.\"[20]\n\nFor what is truth? It is any interpretation of the world which has\nsucceeded in becoming the belief of a particular type of man.[21]\nTherefore there can be many truths; therefore there must be an order of\nrank among truths.\n\n\"Let this mean Will to Truth unto you,\" says Zarathustra, \"that\neverything be made thinkable, visible, tangible unto man!\n\n\"And what ye have called the world, shall have first to be created by\nyou:[22] your reason, your image, your will, your love shall the world be!\nAnd, verily, for your own bliss, ye knights of Knowledge!\"[23]\n\n\"The purpose was to deceive oneself in a useful way; the means thereto\nwas the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which, the\nconfusing multifariousness of Life could be reduced to a useful and\nwieldly scheme.\"[24]\n\nThis was the craving. Not only must a meaning, a human meaning, be\ngiven to all things, in order to subordinate them to man's power; but\nLife itself must also be schematized and arranged. And, while all\nhumanity cried aloud for this to be done, it was humanity's artists and\nhigher men who set to and did it.[25]\n\n\n[3] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 72: \"... Communication is necessary, and for\nit to be possible, something must be stable, simple and capable of\nbeing stated precisely.\"\n\n[4] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 65.\n\n[5] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Book of Tea_, p. 58: \"Adjustment is Art.\"\n\n[6] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 13. See also Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_,\nVol. I, p. 25. Speaking of interpretation, he says: \"And this tendency\nwas notably strengthened by the suspicious circumstances of external\nlife, which awoke the desire for clearness, distinctness and a logical\nsequence of ideas.\"\n\n[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 21. See also Max M\u00fcller, _Introduction to the\nScience of Religion_, pp. 198-207, _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19.\n\n[8] Hegel, in his _Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik_ (Vol. I, p. 406), says:\n\"If we should wish to speak of the first appearance of symbolic Art\nas a subjective state, we should remember that artistic meditation in\ngeneral, like religious meditation--or rather the two in one--and even\nscientific research, took their origin in wonderment.\"\n\n[9] Hegel makes some interesting remarks on this point. See his\n_Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik_, Vol. I, p. 319. He shows that the extreme\nregularity of gardens of the seventeenth century was indicative of\ntheir owners' masterful natures.\n\n[10] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 58. See also p. 11: \"to 'understand' means\nsimply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of\nsomething old or familiar.\"\n\n[11] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 88.\n\n[12] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 26: \"The prerequisite of all living things\nand of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith,\nthat it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and\nthat there should be no doubt at all concerning values. Thus it is\nnecessary that something should be assumed to be true, _not_ that it is\ntrue.\"\n\n[13] Felix Clay, _The Origin of the Sense of Beauty_, p. 95: \"The\nmind or the eye, brought face to face with a number of disconnected\nand apparently different facts, ideas, shapes, sounds or objects, is\nbothered and uneasy; the moment that some central conception is offered\nor discovered by which they all fall into order, so that their due\nrelation to one another can be perceived and the whole grasped, there\nis a sense of relief and pleasure which is very intense.\"\n\n[14] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 12.\n\n[15] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 29.\n\n[16] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 24.\n\n[17] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 76. Hegel was also approaching this truth\nwhen he said, in his introduction to the _Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik_\n(pp. 58, 59 of the translation of that Introduction by B. Bosanquet):\n\"Man is realized for himself by poetical activity, inasmuch as he\nhas the impulse, in the medium which is directly given to him, and\nexternally presented before him, to produce himself. This purpose he\nachieves by the modification of external things upon which he impresses\nthe seal of his inner being. Man does this in order, as a free subject,\nto strip the outer world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy, in\nthe shape and fashion of things, a mere external reality of himself.\"\n\n[18] Hegel again seems to be on the road to Nietzsche's standpoint,\nwhen he says: \"Wonderment arises when man, as a spirit separated\nfrom his immediate connection with Nature, and from the immediate\nrelation to his merely practical desires, steps back from Nature and\nfrom his own singular existence, and then begins to seek and to see\ngeneralities, permanent qualities, and absolute attributes in things\"\n(Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik, Vol. I, p. 406).\n\n[19] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 339. See also Hegel (_Vorlesungen \u00fcber\n\u00c6sthetik_, p. 128): \"The instinct of curiosity and the desire\nfor knowledge, from the lowest stage up to the highest degree of\nphilosophical insight, is the outcome only of man's yearning to make\nthe world his own in spirit and concepts.\"\n\n[20] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 60.\n\n[21] \"Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of\nliving being cannot exist\" (_W. P._, Vol. II, p. 20). See also _G.\nE._, pp. 8, 9: \"A belief might be false and yet life-preserving.\"\nSee also _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 36, 37: \"We should not interpret\nthis _constraint_ in ourselves to imagine concepts, species, forms,\npurposes, and laws as if we were in a position to construct a real\nworld; but as a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our\nexistence is ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable,\nsimplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.\"\n\n[22] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 76.\n\n[23] _Z._, II, XXIV. See also _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 33: \"Truth is\nthe will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach\nconsciousness; it is the will to classify phenomena according to\ndefinite categories.\"\n\n[24] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. M. See also Schelling, _System des\ntranscendentalen Idealismus_, p. 468, where the author says, \"Science,\nin the highest interpretation of this term, has one and the same\nmission as Art.\"\n\n[25] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 28, 90, 103.\n\n\n\n\n2. The First Artists.\n\n\nFor it was then that man's strongest instinct became creative in\nman's highest product--the artist--and the discovery was made that\nthe world, although \"without form\" and \"void,\" as a fact, could be\nsimplified and made calculable and full of form and attractions, as a\nvaluation, as an interpretation, as a spiritual possession. With the\nworld at a distance from him, unfamiliar and unhuman, man's existence\nwas a torment. With it beneath him, inside him, bearing the impress of\nhis spirit, and proceeding from him, he became a lord, casting care to\nthe winds, and terror to the beasts around.\n\nMan, the bravest animal on earth, thus conceived the only possible\ncondition of his existence; namely, to become master of the world.\nAnd, when we think of the miracles he then began to perform, we cease\nfrom wondering why he once believed in miracles, why he thought of God\nas in his own image, and why he made his strongest instinct God, and\nthereupon made Him say: \"Replenish the earth and subdue it!\"\n\nIt was therefore the powerful who made the names of things into law.[26]\nIt was their Will to Power that simplified, organized, ordered\nand schematized the world, and it was their will to prevail which made\nthem proclaim their simplification, their organization, their order\nand scheme, as the norm, as the thing to be believed, as the world of\nvalues which must be regarded as creation itself.\n\nThese early artists conceived of no other way of subduing the earth\nthan by converting it into concepts; and, as time soon showed that\nthere actually was no other way, interpretation came to be regarded\nas the greatest task of all.[27] Naming, adjusting, classifying,\nqualifying, valuing, putting a meaning into things, and, above all,\nsimplifying--all these functions acquired a sacred character, and he\nwho performed them to the glory of his fellows became sacrosanct.\n\nSo great were the relief and solace that these functions bestowed upon\nmankind, and so different did ugly reality appear, once it had been\ninterpreted by the artist mind, that creating and naming actually\nbegan to acquire much the same sense. For to put a meaning into\nthings was clearly to create them afresh[28]--in fact, to create\nthem literally. And so it came to pass that, in one of the oldest\nreligions on earth, the religion of Egypt, God was imagined as a Being\nwho created things by naming them;[29] while, in the Judaic notion\nof the creation of the world, which was probably derived from the\nEgyptians themselves, Jehovah is also said to have brought things into\nexistence merely by pronouncing their names.[30]\n\nThe world thus became literally man's Work of Art,[31] man's Sculpture.[32]\nMiracle after miracle at last reduced Nature to man's chattel, and it\nwas man's lust of mastership, his will to power, which thus became\ncreative in his highest specimen--the artist--and which, fighting for\n\"the higher worthiness and meaning of mankind,\"[33]transfigured reality by\nmeans of human valuations, and overcame Becoming by falsifying it as\nBeing.[34]\n\n\"We are in need of lies,\" says Nietzsche, \"in order to rise superior to\nreality, to truth--that is to say, in order to live.... That lies\nshould be necessary to life, is part and parcel of the terrible and\nquestionable character of existence. \"Metaphysics, morality, religion,\nscience--all these things are merely different forms of falsehood,\nby means of them we are led to believe in life. 'Life must inspire\nconfidence;' the task which this imposes upon us is enormous. In order\nto solve this problem man must already be a liar in his heart. But he\nmust, above all, be an artist. And he is that. Metaphysics, religion,\nmorality, science--all these things are but an offshoot of his will to\nArt, to falsehood, to a flight from 'truth,' to a denial of 'truth.'\nThis ability, this artistic capacity, _par excellence_, of man--thanks\nto which he overcomes reality with lies--is a quality which he has in\ncommon with all other forms of existence....\n\n\"To be blind to many things, to see many things falsely, to fancy\nmany things. Oh, how clever man has been in those circumstances in\nwhich he believed that he was anything but clever! Love, enthusiasm,\n'God'--are but subtle forms of ultimate self-deception; they are\nbut seductions to life and to the belief in life! In those moments\nwhen man was deceived, when he befooled himself and when he believed\nin life: Oh, how his spirit swelled within him! Oh, what ecstasies he\nhad! What power he felt! And what artistic triumphs in the feeling of\npower!... Man had once more become master of 'matter'--master of\ntruth!... And whenever man rejoices, it is always in the same way:\nhe rejoices as an artist, his Power is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as\nhis power.\"[35]\n\n\"Subdue it!\" said the Jehovah of the Old Testament, speaking to man,\nand pointing to the earth: \"have dominion over the fish of the sea, and\nover the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon\nthe earth.\"\n\nThis was man's original concept of his task on earth, and with it\nbefore him he began to breathe at last, and to feel no longer a worm,\nentangled in a mysterious piece of clockwork mechanism.\n\n\"What is it that created esteeming and despising and value and will?\"\nZarathustra asks.\n\n\"The creating self created for itself esteeming and despising, it\ncreated for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself\nspirit, as a hand to its will.\"[36]\n\nTo appraise a thing was to create it for ever in the minds of a people.\nBut to create a thing in the minds of a people was to create that\npeople too; for it is to have values in common that constitutes a\npeople.[37]\n\n\"Creators were they who created peoples, and hung one belief and one\nlove over them,\" says Zarathustra; \"thus they served life.\"[38]\n\n\"Values did man stamp upon things only that he might preserve himself\n--he alone created the meaning of things--a human meaning! Therefore\ncalleth he himself man--that is, the valuing one.\n\n\"Valuing is creating: listen, ye creators! Valuation itself is the\ntreasure and jewel of valued things.\n\n\"Through valuing alone can value arise; and without valuing, the nut of\nexistence would be hollow. Listen, ye creators!\n\n\"Change of values--that is, change of creators.[39]\n\n\"Verily a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me,\nye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a yoke on the\nthousand necks of this animal?\"[40]\n\n\"All the beauty and sublimity with which we have invested real and\nimagined things,\" says Nietzsche, \"I will show to be the property and\nproduct of man, and this should be his most beautiful apology. Man\nas a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power. Oh, the regal\nliberality with which he has lavished gifts upon things!... Hitherto\nthis has been his greatest disinterestedness, that he admired and\nworshipped, and knew how to conceal from himself that he it was who had\ncreated what he admired.\"[41]\n\n\"Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power\"--this man,\nfollowing his divine inspiration to subdue the earth and to make it\nhis, became the greatest stimulus to Life itself, the greatest bond\nbetween earth and the human soul; and, in shedding the glamour of his\npersonality, like the sun, upon the things he interpreted and valued,\nhe also gilded, by reflection, his fellow creatures.\n\nThere is not a thing we call sacred, beautiful, good or precious, that\nhas not been valued for us by this man, and when we, like children,\ncall out for the Truth about the riddles of this world, it is not for\nthe truth of reality which is the object of Christianity and of science\nfor which we crave; but for the simplifications[42] and values of\nthis man-god, who, by the art-form, into which he casts reality, makes\nus believe that reality is as he says it is.\n\nIf this man is lacking, then we succumb to the blackest despair. If he\nis with us, we voluntarily yield to boundless joy and good cheer. His\nfunction is the divine principle on earth; his creation Art \"is the\nhighest task and the properly metaphysical activity of this life.\"[43]\n\n\n[26] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 28; also C.E., p. 288. See also Schelling,\nS\u00e4mmtliche Werke, Vol. V, \"_Vorlesungen \u00fcber die Methode des\nakademischen Studiums_,\" p. 286: \"The first origin of religion in\ngeneral, as of every other kind of knowledge and culture, can be\nexplained only as the teaching of higher natures.\"\n\n[27] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 89: \"The Will to Truth at this stage is\nessentially the art of interpretation.\"\n\n[28] Thus Schiller, in one of his happy moments, called beauty our\nsecond creator (zweite Sch\u00f6pferin).\n\n[29] Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 67.\n\n[30] That those who successfully determined values even in\ncomparatively recent times should have been regarded almost universally\nas enjoying \"some closer intimacy with the Deity than ordinary\nmortals,\" proves how very godlike and sacred the establishment of order\nwas thought to be. See Max M\u00fcller, _Introduction to the Science of\nReligion_, p. 88.\n\n[31] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 102.\n\n[32] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 107.\n\n[33] _H. A. H._, Vol. I, p. 154.\n\n[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 108: \"Art is the will to overcome Becoming,\nit is a process of eternalizing.\" And p. 107: \"To stamp Becoming with\nthe character of Being--this is the highest Will to Power.\" See also\n_G. M._, p. 199.\n\n[35] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 289, 290. See also H.A.H., Vol. I, p. 154.\n\n[36] _Z._, I, IV.\n\n[37] Schelling and Hegel both held this view; the one expressed it\nquite categorically in his lectures on Philosophy and Mythology, and\nthe other in his _Philosophy of History_.\n\n[38] _Z._, I, XI.\n\n[39] _Z._, I, XV.\n\n[40] _Z._, I, XVI.\n\n[41] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 113.\n\n[42] See Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, p. 46, who, speaking of\nthe old Ionian Nature-philosophers, says: \"The bold flight of\ntheir imagination did not stop at the assumption of a plurality of\nindestructible elements; it never rested till it reached the conception\nof a single fundamental or primordial matter as the essence of natural\ndiversity.... The impulse to simplification, when it had once been\naroused, was like a stone set in motion, which rolls continuously till\nit is checked by an obstacle.\" See also Dr. W. Worringer, _Abstraktion\nund Einf\u00fchlung_, p. 20.\n\n[43] _B. T._, p. 20.\n\n\n\n\n3. The People and their Man-God.\n\n\nThink of the joy that must have spread through a wondering people like\nthe Greeks, when they were told that Earth, as the bride of Heaven, and\nfertilized by his life-giving rain, became the mother not only of deep\neddying Ocean, but also of all that lives and dies upon her broad bosom!\n\nImagine the jubilation, the feeling of power and the sense of extreme\nrelief that must have filled the hearts of the ancient New Zealanders,\nwhen the first great Maori artist arose and said to his brothers and\nsisters that it was the god of the forests, Tane Mahuta, with his tall\ntrees that had wrenched the sky by force from mother Earth, where once\nupon a time he used to crush her teeming offspring to death.[44]\n\nWith what superior understanding could they now gaze up into the\nsky, and snap their fingers scornfully at its former azure mystery!\nNo wonder that the artist who could come forward with such an\ninterpretation became a god! And no wonder that in strong nations gods\nand men are one! The fact that the explanation was not a true one,\naccording to our notions, did not matter in the least.\n\nHistory not only reveals, but also proves that lies are not necessarily\nhostile to existence.\n\nFor thousands of years the human race not only lived, but also\nflourished with the lie of the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens on their\ntongue.\n\nFor centuries men thrived and multiplied, believing that the lightning\nwas Jehovah's anger, and that the rainbow was Jehovah's reminder of a\ncertain solemn covenant by which He promised never again to destroy all\nlife on earth by a flood.\n\nI do not wish to imply that these two beliefs are false. For my part,\nI would prefer to believe them, rather than accept the explanations\nof these phenomena which modern science offers me. Still, the fact\nremains that these two Judaic explanations have been exploded by\nmodern science, though the question whether, as explanations, they are\nsuperior to modern science, scarcely requires a moment's consideration.\n\nAt any rate they were the work of an artist, and when we think of the\njoy they must have spread among wondering mankind, we cannot wonder\nthat such an artist was made a god. It was an artist, too, who created\nthe unchanging thing;[45] who created every kind of permanency, _i.e._\nStability out of Evolution, and among other unchangeable things, the\nsoul of man, which was perhaps the greatest artistic achievement that\nhas ever been accomplished.\n\nAnd this Man-God who created Being--that is to say, a stable world,\na world which can be reckoned with, and in which the incessant\nkaleidoscopic character of things is entirely absent--this same\nMan-God who found the earth \"without form\" and \"void,\" and whose\nmagnificent Spirit \"moved upon the face of the waters\"; when people\ngrew too weak to look upon him as their brother and God at the same\ntime,[46] was relegated to his own world, and from a great distance they\nnow pray to him and worship him and say: \"For Thine is the Kingdom, the\nPower and the Glory, For ever and ever. Amen.\"\n\n\"For ever and ever;\" this was something they could not say of the world\nas it is; and the thought of stability and of Being was a delight to\nthem.\n\nIt may be difficult for us to picture how great the rejoicings must\nhave been which followed upon every fresh ordering and arranging of the\nuniverse, every fresh interpretation of the world in the terms of man.\n\nPerhaps only a few people to-day, who are beginning to cast dubious\nglances at Life, and to question even the justification of man's\nexistence, may be able to form some conception of the thrill that must\nhave passed through an ancient community, when one of its higher men\nuprose and ordered and adjusted Life for them, and, in so ordering it,\ntransfigured it.\n\nHow much richer they must have felt! And how inseparable the two\nnotions \"artist\" and \"giver\" must have appeared to them!\n\n\"If indeed this is Life,\" they must have said; \"if Life is really as he\norders it\"--and his voice and eye allowed them to prefix no such \"if\"\nwith genuine scepticism--\"then of a truth it is a well of delight and\na fountain of blessedness.\"\n\nThus Art--this function which \"is with us in order that we may not\nperish through truth,\"[47] this \"enhancement of the feeling of Life and\nLife's stimulant,\"[48] which \"acts as a tonic, increases strength and\nkindles desire\"[49]--became the \"great seducer\" to earth and to the world;[50]\nand we can imagine the gratitude that swelled in the hearts of men\nfor him whose function it was. How could he help but become a god!\nEven tradition was not necessary for this. For at the very moment when\nhis creative spirit lent its glory to the earth, man must have been\nconscious of his divinity or of his use as a mouthpiece by a Divinity.[50]\n\n\"O, Lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy heart!\" sang the\nancient Hindus.\n\n\"Thou who knowest the place of the birds that fly through the sky, who\non the waters knowest the ships.\n\n\"Thou the upholder of order, who knowest the twelve months with the\noffspring of each, and who knowest the month that is engendered\nafterwards.\n\n\"Thou who knowest the track of the wind, of the wide, the bright, the\nmighty; and knowest those who reside on high.\n\n\"Thou the upholder of order, Varuna, sit down among thy people, thou,\nthe wise, sit there to govern.\n\n\"From thence perceiving all wondrous things, thou seest what has been\nand what will be done.\n\n\"Thou who givest to men glory, and not half glory, who givest it even\nto our own selves.\n\n\"Thou, O wise god, art Lord of all, of heaven and earth!\"[51]\n\nWe can follow every word of this heartfelt worship with perfect\nsympathy now.\n\n\"Thou, the upholder of order, who knowest the twelve months with the\noffspring of each\"--this is no empty praise. It is the cry of those\nwho feel inexpressibly grateful to their great artist; to him who has\nput some meaning, some order into the world.\n\nAnd \"Thou who givest men glory, and not half glory\"--here is the\nsincere recognition of a people who have been raised and who not only\nrejoice in their elevation, but also recognize that it has been a\ncreative act--a gift and a blessing from one who had something to\ngive. For the soul of man is a million times more sensitive to changes\nin interpretation than the column of mercury is to changes in the\natmosphere, and nothing can be more grateful than the soul of man when\nit is raised, however little, and thereby glorified.\n\n\n[44] See Max M\u00fcller, _India. What can it teach us?_ pp. 154. 155; also\npp. 150 and 151.\n\n[45] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 88, 89: \"Happiness can be promised only by\nBeing: change and happiness exclude each other. The loftiest desire\nis thus to be one with Being. That is the formula for the way to\nhappiness.\"\n\n[46] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 313.\n\n[47] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 264.\n\n[48] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244.\n\n[49] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 252.\n\n[50] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 290. See also p. 292: \"Art is more divine\nthan truth.\"\n\n[51] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 133. See also Schopenhauer, _Parerga und\nParalipomena_, Vol. II, Chap. XV, \"_Ueber Religion_,\" para. 176, where\nthis view is ably upheld.\n\n[52] Rig-Veda, I, 23.\n\n\n\n\n\n4. The Danger.\n\n\nNow, having reached this point, and having established--First: that\nit is our artists who value and interpret things for us, and who put\na meaning into reality which, without them, it would never possess;\nand, secondly: that it is their will to power that urges them thus to\nappropriate Nature in concepts, and their will to prevail which gives\nthem the ardour to impose their valuation with authority upon their\nfellows, thus forming a people; the thought which naturally arises is\nthis: The power that artists can exercise, and the prerogative they\npossess, is one which might prove exceedingly dangerous; for while it\nmay work for good, it may also work very potently for evil. Does it\nmatter who interprets the world? who gives a meaning to things? who\nadjusts and systematizes Nature? and who imposes order upon chaos?\n\nMost certainly it matters. For a thousand meanings are possible, and\nmen may have a thousand been aiming for years, other interpretations\nare still possible.\n\nListen to your artistic friend's description of the most trifling\nexcursion he has made, and then set your inartistic friend to relate\n--say, his journey round the world. Whereupon ask yourself whether it\nmatters who sees things and who interprets life for you. The first,\neven with his trifling excursion in his mind, will make you think\nthat life is really worth living, that the world is full, of hidden\ntreasure. The second will make you conclude that this earth is an\nuninteresting monster, and that boredom can be killed only by the\ndangers of motor racing, aerial navigation and glacier climbing.\n\n\"A thousand paths are there which never have been trodden,\" says\nZarathustra, \"a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life. Still\nunexhausted and undiscovered is mankind and man's world.\"[53]\n\nThis interpreting of Nature and this making and moulding of a people\nmight therefore have brilliant or sinister results. There are many who\nwish to prevail; there are many who wish to lure their fellows on, and\nnot all are standing on a superior plane.\n\nFor though artists, as a rule, are men of strong propensities[54] and\nsurplus energy, there is an instinct of chastity in the best of them,[55]\nwhich impels them to devote all their power to prevailing in concepts\nrather than in offspring, and which makes them avoid precisely that\nquarter whither other men turn when they wish to prevail.[56]\n\nThe question as to what kind of man it is who walks up to Life and\norders and values her for us, is therefore of the most extraordinary\nimportance. Nothing could be more important than this. Because, as we\nhave seen, the question is not one of truth in the Christian and modern\nscientific sense. A belief is often life-preserving and still false\nfrom the standpoint of reality.[57] It is a matter, rather, of\nfinding that belief, whether true or false, which most conduces to the\nlove of an exalted form of Life. And if we ask, Who is the man who is\ninterpreting life for us? What is he? What is his rank? we practically\nlay our finger upon the very worth of our view of the world.\n\nThere is no greater delight or passionate love on earth for the artist\nthan this: to feel that he has stamped his hand on a people and on\na millennium, to feel that his eyes, his ears, and his touch have\nbecome their eyes, and their ears, and their touch. There is no deeper\nenjoyment than this for him: to feel that as he sees, hears and feels,\nthey also will be compelled to see, hear and feel. Only thus is he able\nto prevail. A people becomes his offspring.[58]\n\nWhile their elation and blessedness consisted in being raised in\nconcepts to his level, and in seeing the world through his artistic\nprisms--in fact, in scoring materially by allowing him, their higher\nman, to establish their type; it was his solitary and unfathomable\nglory to prevail for ever through their minds, and to lay the\nfoundation of his hazar, his thousand years of life on earth, in the\nspirit of his fellows.\n\nUtilitarian, if you will, are both points of view: the one giving from\nhis abundance, simply because he must discharge some of his plenitude\nor perish, found his meaning in giving. The others, stepping up on the\ngifts bestowed, found their meaning in receiving.[59]\n\nThe artist, then, as the highest manifestation of any human community,\njustifies his existence merely by living his life, and by imparting\nsome of his magnificence to the things about him. To use a metaphor of\nGeorge Meredith's, he gilds his retainers as the sun gilds, with its\nlivery, the small clouds that gather round it. This is the artist's\npower and it is also his bliss. From a lower and more economical\nstandpoint, he justifies his life by raising the community to its\nhighest power; by binding it to Life with the glories which he alone\ncan see, and by luring it up to heights which he is the first to scale\nand to explore.[60]\n\n\n[53] _Z._, I, XXII.\n\n[54] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243.\n\n[55] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 259. Also _G. M._, p. 141.\n\n[56] In this regard it is interesting to note that: \"The Teutonic\n'Kunst' (Art) is formed from _k\u00f6nnen_, and _k\u00f6nnen_ is developed from\na primitive Ich kann. Ich kann philology recognizes a preterite form\nof a lost verb, of which we find the traces in Kin-d, a child; and the\nform Ich kann, thus meaning originally, 'I begot,' contains the germ of\nthe two developments--_k\u00f6nnen_, 'to be master,' 'to be able,' and\n'kennen' to know\" (_Sidney Colvin_, in the _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_,\n9th Edition. Article, \"Art\").\n\n[57] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 14. See also _G. E._, pp. 8, 9.\n\n[58] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 368: \"The great man is conscious of his\npower over a people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily with\na people or with a century--this magnifying of his self-consciousness\nas causa and voluntas is misunderstood as 'altruism': he feels driven\nto means of communication: all great men are inventive in such means.\nThey want to form great communities in their own image; they would fain\ngive multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to\nbehold chaos.\"\n\n[59] _W. P._, pp. 255, 256.\n\n[60] Even Fichte recognizes this power in Art to stamp values\nupon a people. See the S\u00e4mmtliche Werke, Vol, IV, p. 353: \"Art converts\nthe transcendental standpoint into the general standpoint.... The\nphilosopher can raise himself and others to this standpoint only with\ngreat effort. But the artistic spirit actually finds himself there,\nwithout having thought about it; he knows no other standpoint, and\nthose who yield to his influence are drawn so imperceptibly over to\nhis side, that they do not even notice how the change takes place.\"\n\n\n\n\n5. The Two Kinds of Artists.\n\n\nUp to the present I have spoken only of the desirable artist, of him\nwho, from the very health and fulness that is in him, cannot look on\nLife without transfiguring her; of the man who naturally sees things\nfuller, simpler, stronger and grander[61] than his fellows.[62] When\nthis man speaks of Life, his words are those of a lover extolling his\nbride.[63] There is a ring of ardent desire and deep longing in his speech,\nwhich is infectious because it is so sincere, which is convincing\nbecause it is so authoritative, and which is beautiful because it\nis so simple.\n\nIntoxicated[64] by his love, giddy with enthusiasm, he rhapsodizes\nabout her, magnifies her; points to vast unknown qualities and beauties\nin her, to which he is the first to give some lasting names; and stakes\nhis life upon her myriad charms. This Dionysian artist, the prototype\nof all gods and demi-gods that have ever existed on earth, exalts Life\nwhen he honours her with his love; and in exalting her, exalts humanity\nas well.[65]\n\nFor the mediocre, simply because they cannot transfigure Life in that\nway, benefit extremely from looking on the world through the Dionysian\nartist's personality. It is his genius which, by putting ugly reality\ninto an art-form, makes life desirable. Beneath all his dithyrambs,\nhowever, there is still the will to power and the will to prevail--\njust as these instincts are to be found behind the magnificats of the\neveryday lover; but, in the case of the former, it is the power in the\nspirit.\n\nThere is, however, another kind of man who walks towards Life to value\nand to order her. The kind of man who, as we saw in my last lecture,\ndeclares that \"man is born in sin,\"--\"that depravity is universal,\"\n--\"that nothing exists in the intellect but what has before existed\nin the senses; \"and that \"every man is his own priest\"; the man who\ndefines Life as \"the continuous adjustment of internal relations to\nexternal relations\"; and who says: \"it is only the cultivation of\nindividuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human\nbeings\"; the man who declares that we are all equal, that there is one\ntruth for all, if only it can be found; and who thus not only kills all\nhigher men, but also deprives his fellow creatures of all the beauty\nthat these higher men have brought, and might still bring, into the\nworld; finally, the man who values humanity with figures and in the\nterms of matter, who values progress in the terms of the engineer's\nworkshop, and who denies that Art can have any relation to Life.\n\nThis man is a sort of inverted Midas at whose touch all gold turns to\ntinsel, all pearls turn to beads, and all beauty withers and fades, His\nbreath is that of the late autumn, and his words are hoarfrost. Having\nnothing to give,[66] he merely robs things of the beauty that was once\nlaid in them, by insisting upon the truth of their reality; and he sees\nLife smaller, thinner, weaker, and greyer than it is even to the people\nthemselves. He is the antithesis of the Dionysian artist. He comes from\nthe people, and very often from a substratum lower than they. How,\ntherefore, can he give the people anything they do not already possess?\nHe is a housewives have not already seen or felt? People have no use\nfor him, therefore, and whenever they are drawn to his side by his\nseditious songs about equality, they find, when it is too late, that he\nhas made the world drabbier, uglier, colder, and stranger for them than\nit was before.\n\nThis is the man who insists upon truth. Forgetting that truth is\nugly[67] and that humanity has done little else, since it first became\nconscious, than to master and overcome truth, he wishes to make this\nworld what it was in the beginning, \"without form\" and \"void,\" and to\nempty things of the meaning that has been put into them, simply because\nhe is unable to create a world for himself.[68]\n\nAiming at a general truth for all, he is reduced to naked reality,\nto Nature as it was before God's Spirit moved upon the face of the\nwaters, and this is his world of facts, stripped of all that higher\nmen have put into them. This man of science without Art, is gradually\nreducing us to a state of absolute ignorance; for while he takes from\nus what we know about things, he gives us nothing in return. How often\ndo we not hear people who are influenced by his science, exclaim that\nthe more they learn the less they feel they know. This exclamation\ncontains a very profound truth; for science is robbing us inch by inch\nof all the groundfield-labourer among field-labourers, a housewife\namong housewives--how could he point to any beauty or desire which\nfield-labourers and that was once conquered for us by bygone artists.[69]\n\nSuch a man, if he can be really useful in garnering and accumulating\nfacts, and in devising and developing novel mechanical contrivances,\nought in any case to be closeted apart, so that none of his breath\ncan reach the Art-made world. And when he begins valuing, all windows\nand doors ought speedily to be barred and bolted against him. He is\nthe realist. It is he who sees spots on the sun's face; it is he who\ndenies that mist is the passionate sigh of mother Earth, yearning for\nher spouse the sky; it is he who will not believe that the god of the\nforest with his tallest trees separated the earth and the heavens\nby force, and the explanations he gives of things, though they are\ndoubtless useful to him in his laboratory, are empty and colourless.\nGranting, as I say, that he does anything useful in the department of\nfacts, let his profession at least be a strictly esoteric one. For his\ninterpretations are so often ignoble, in addition to being colourless,\nthat his business, like that of a certain Paris functionary, ought to\nbe pursued in the most severe and most zealous secrecy.\n\nIf the world grows ugly, and Life loses her bloom; if all winds are\nill winds, and the sunshine seems sickly and pale; if we turn our eyes\ndubiously about us, and begin to question the justification of our\nexistence, we may be quite certain that this man, this realist, and his\ntype, are in the ascendancy, and that he it is who is stamping his ugly\nfist upon our millennium.\n\nFor the function of Art is the function of the ruler. It relieves the\nhighest of their burden, so that mediocrity may be twice blessed,\nand it makes us a people by luring us to a certain kind of Life. Its\nessence is riches, its activity is giving and perfecting,[70] and while\nit is a delight to the highest, it is also a boon to those beneath them.\n\nThe attempt of the Dionysian artist[71] to prevail, therefore, is\nsacred and holy. In his efforts to make his eyes our eyes, his ears our\nears, and his touch our touch, though he does not pursue any altruistic\npurpose, he confers considerable benefits upon mankind. Whereas\nthe attempt of that other man to prevail--the realist and devotee\nof so-called truth--is barbarous and depraved. By his egoism he\ndepresses, depreciates and dismantles Life in great things as in small.\nWoe to the age whose values allow his voice to be heard with respect!\nThere are necessary grey studies to be made, necessary uglinesses to\nbe described, perhaps. But let these studies and descriptions be kept\nwithin the four walls of a laboratory until the time comes when, by\ntheir collective means, man can be raised and not depressed by them.\nScience is not with us to promulgate values. It is with us to be the\nmodest handmaiden of Art, working in secrecy until all its ugliness\ncan be collected, transfigured, and used for the purpose of man's\nexaltation by the artist. It may be useful for our science-slaves,\nworking behind the scenes of Life, to know that the sky is merely our\nlimited peep into an infinite expanse of ether--whatever that is. But\nwhen we ask to hear about it, let us be told as follows--\n\n\"O heaven above me! Thou pure! Thou deep! Thou abyss of light! Gazing\non Thee, I quiver with godlike desires.\n\n\"To cast myself up unto thy height--that is my profundity! To hide\nmyself in thy purity--that is mine innocence.\n\n\"We have been friends from the beginning, thou and I. Sorrow and horror\nand soil we share: even the sun is common to us.\n\n\"We speak not to each other, for we know too many things. We stare\nsilently at each other; by smiles do we communicate our knowledge.\n\n\"And all my wanderings and mountain-climbings--these were but a\nnecessity and a makeshift of the helpless one. To fly is the one thing\nthat my will willeth, to fly into thee.\n\n\"And what have I hated more than passing clouds and all that defileth\nthee!\n\n\"The passing clouds I loathe--those stealthy cats of prey. They take\nfrom thee and me what we have in common--that immense, that infinite\nsaying of Yea and Amen.\n\n\"These mediators and mixers we loathe--the passing clouds.\n\n\"Rather would I sit in a tub, with the sky shut out; rather would I\nsit in the abyss without a sky, than see thee, sky of Light, denied by\nwandering clouds!\n\n\"And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold wires of\nlightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their\nbellies.\n\n\"An angry drummer, because they bereave me of thy Yea and Amen I--\nthou heaven above me, thou pure, thou bright, thou abyss of Light! And\nbecause they bereave thee of my Yea and Amen.\n\n\"Thus spake Zarathustra.\"[72]\n\n\n[61] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243: \"Artists should not see things\nas they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger. To this\nend, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual\nelation, must be peculiar to their lives.\" See also T. I., Part 10,\nAph. 8.\n\n[62] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 243. See also T. I., Part 10, Aph. 9.\n\n[63] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 248.\n\n[64] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 241: \"The feeling of intoxication\n(elation) is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to a sensation of surplus\nstrength.\" See also p. 254.\n\n[65] Schelling also recognized the transfiguring power of Art;\nbut he traced it to the fact that the artist invariably paints Nature\nat her zenith. See p. II, _The Philosophy of Art_ (translation by A.\nJohnson): \"Every growth of nature has but one moment of perfect beauty,\n... Art, in that it presents the object in this moment, withdraws it\nfrom time, and causes it to display its pure being in the form of\neternal beauty.\" This is making the natural object itself the adequate\nsource of its own transfiguration, and the theory overlooks the power\nof the artist himself to see things as they are not.\n\n[66] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244: \"The sober-minded man, the tired\nman, the exhausted and dried-up man, can have no feeling for Art,\nbecause he does not possess the primitive force of Art, which is the\ntyranny of inner riches.\"\n\n[67] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 101.\n\n[68] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 89: \"The belief that the world which\nought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the unfruitful,\nwho do not wish to create a world. They take it for granted, they\nseek for ways and means of attaining it. 'The will to truth' [in\nthe Christian and scientific sense] is the impotence of the will to\ncreate.\"\n\n[69] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 104: \"The development of science tends\never more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is\nto do the _reverse_, and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the\nunknown to the known. In short, science is laying the road to sovereign\nignorance, to a feeling that knowledge does not exist at all, that it\nwas merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing.\"\n\n[70] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 263: \"The essential feature in art is\nits power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and\nplenitude. Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the\ndeification of existence.\"\n\n[71] Fichte comes near to Nietzsche, here, with his idea of\nthe \"beautiful spirit\" which sees all nature full, large and abundant,\nas opposed to him who sees all things thinner, smaller, and emptier\nthan they actually are. See Fichte's _S\u00e4mmtliche Werke_, Vol. IV, p.\n354. See also Vol. III, p. 273.\n\n[72] _Z._, III, XLVIII.\n\n\n\n\nPart II\n\n\nDeductions from Part I.\n\n\nNietzsche's Art Principles\n\n\n    \"For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the\n    scribes.\"-- Matthew vii. 29.\n\n\n\n\n1. The Spirit of the Age Incompatible with Ruler-Art.\n\n\nWith Nietzsche's concept of Art before me I feel as if I had left the\narts of the present day many thousand leagues behind, and it is almost\na hardship to be obliged to return to them. For unless most of that\nwhich is peculiar to this age be left many thousand leagues to the\nrear, all hope of making any headway must be abandoned.\n\nWe live in a democratic age. It is only natural, therefore, that all\nthat belongs to the ruler should have been whittled down, diluted, and\ndespoiled of its dignity; and we must feel no surprise at finding that\nno pains have been spared which might reduce Art also to a function\nthat would be compatible with the spirit of the times. All that\nsavours of authority has become the work of committees, assemblies,\nherds, crowds, and mobs. How could the word of one man be considered\nauthoritative, now that the ruling principle, to use a phrase of Mr.\nChesterton's, is that \"twelve men are better than one\"?[1]\n\nThe conception of Art as a manifestation of the artist's will to power\nand his determination to prevail, is a much too dangerous one for the\npresent day. It involves all kinds of things which are antagonistic to\ndemocratic theory, such as: Command, Reverence, Despotism, Obedience,\nGreatness and Inequality. Therefore, if artists are to be tolerated\nat all, they must have a much more modest, humble, and pusillanimous\ncomprehension of what their existence means, and of the purpose and\naim of their work; and their claims, if they make any, must be meek,\nunprivileged, harmless and unassuming.\n\nWhile, therefore, the artist, as Nietzsche understood him, scarcely\nexists at all to-day, another breed of man has come to the fore in\nthe graphic arts, whose very weakness is his passport, who makes no\nclaims at establishing new values of beauty, and who contents himself\nmodestly with exhibiting certain baffling dexterities, virtuosities\nand tricks, which at once amaze and delight ordinary spectators or\nArt-students, simply because they themselves have not yet overcome even\nthe difficulties of a technique.\n\nMonet's pointillisme, Sargent's visible and nervous brush strokes,\nRodin's wealth of anatomical detail, the Impressionist's scientific\nrendering of atmosphere, Peter Graham's gauzy mists, Lavery's\npost-Whistlerian portraits of pale people, and the touching devotion of\nall modern artists to Truth, in the Christian and scientific sense, are\nall indications of the general \"funk\"--the universal paralysis of will\nthat has overtaken the Art-world.\n\nBut I am travelling too fast. I said that no pains have been spared\nwhich might reduce Art also to a function that would be compatible with\nthe democratic spirit of the times. Now in what form have these pains\nbeen taken?\n\nTheir form has invariably been to turn the tables upon Art, and to make\nits beauty dependent upon Nature, instead of Nature's beauty dependent\nupon it.[2]\n\nTradition, of course, very largely laid the foundation of this mode of\nthinking, and, from the Greeks to Ruskin, few seem to have realized how\nmuch beauty Art had already laid in Nature, before even the imitative\nartist could consider Nature as beautiful.\n\nAs Croce rightly observes: \"Antiquity seems generally to have been\nentrammelled in the meshes of the belief in mimetic, or the duplication\nof natural objects by the artist;\"[3] but when we remember that, as\nSchelling points out, in Greece speculation about Art began with Art's\ndecline,[4] we ought to feel no surprise at this remote underestimation\nof the artistic fact.[5]\n\nIn reviewing the work of \u00e6stheticians from Plato to Croce, however,\nwhat strikes me as so significant is the fact that, from the time\nof Plotinus--who practically marks the end of the declension which\nstarted in Plato's time--to the end of the seventeenth century,\nscarcely a voice of any magnitude was raised in Europe on the subject\nof Art.[6]\n\nThat there was no real \"talk\" about Art, at the time when it was\nrevived in the Middle Ages, and at the time when it flourished in\nthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that all the old Hellenic\ndiscussions on the subject should have been taken up again at a\nperiod when the last emaciated blooms of the Renaissance and of the\ncounter-Renaissance were bowing their heads, only shows how very sorry\nthe plight of all great human functions must be when man begins to hope\nthat he may set them right by talking about them.\n\nWhen it is remembered, however, that, from the end of the seventeenth\ncentury onward, Art was regarded either as imitation pure and simple or\nas idealized imitation by no less than fifteen thinkers of note--that\nis to say, roughly speaking, by the Earl of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson,\nHome, Burke and Hume in England, by Batteux and Diderot in France,\nby Pagano and Spaletti in Italy, by Hemsterhuis in Holland, and by\nLeibnitz, Baumgarten, Kant, Schiller and Fichte in Germany; and that\nif Winckelmann and Lessing opposed these ideas, it was rather with the\nrecommendation of another kind of imitation--that of the antique--\nthan with a new valuation of Art; we can feel scarcely any surprise\nat all at the sudden and total collapse of the dignity of Art in the\nnineteenth century, under the deadly influence of the works of men like\nSemper and his followers.\n\nIt is all very well to point to men like Goethe, Heydenreich,\nSchelling, Hegel, Hogarth and Reynolds--all of whom certainly did a\ngood deal to brace the self-respect of artists; but it is impossible\nto argue that any one of them took up either such a definite or such a\ndetermined attitude against the fifteen others whom I have mentioned,\nas could materially stem the tide of democratic Art which was rising\nin Europe. And if in the latter half of the nineteenth century we have\nRuskin telling us that \"the art which makes us believe what we would\nnot otherwise have believed, is misapplied, and in most instances very\ndangerously so\";[7] and if we find that his first principle is, \"that our\ngraphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce something\nwhich shall look as like Nature as possible,\"[8] and that, in extolling\nthe Gothic, he says it was \"the love of natural objects for their\nown sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained\nby artistic laws\";[9] we realize how very slight the effect of those\nexceptional spirits, headed by Goethe, must have been.\n\n\n[1] See his evidence before the Joint Committee on the Stage\nCensorship.--Daily Press, September 24th, 1909.\n\n[2] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19: \"Man believes the world itself to be\novercharged with beauty,--he forgets that he is the cause of it. He\nalone has endowed it with beauty.... In reality man mirrors himself in\nthings; he counts everything beautiful which reflects his likeness....\nIs the world really beautiful, just because man thinks it is? Man has\nhumanized it, that is all.\"\n\n[3] _\u00c6sthetic_ (Douglas Ainslie's translation), p. 259. See also B.\nBosanquet, _A History of \u00c6sthetic_, pp. 15-18.\n\n[4] _S\u00e4mmtliche Werke_, Vol. V, \"Vorlesungen \u00fcber die Methode des\nakademischen Studiums,\" pp. 346, 347.\n\n[5] Dr. Max Schasler (_Kritische Geschichte der \u00c6sthetik_, p. 73)\nagrees that the understanding of Art in classical antiquity seems to\nbe quite barbaric in its stupidity (\"_von einer geradezu barbarischen\nBornirtheit_\"); but he adds that this may be an argument in favour of\nthe antique; for it may prove the unconsciousness of the artists and\nthe absolute unity of the artistic life and of artistic appreciation in\nantiquity.\n\n[6] Aristotle was, of course, studied and commentated to a very great\nextent during these fifteen centuries; but in all the branches of\nscience save \u00c6sthetic. Where his Poetic was examined, the philological\nor literary-historical interest was paramount. Augustine and St. Thomas\nAquinas do not differ materially from Plotinus and Plato.\n\n[7] _Lectures on Art_ (1870), p. 50.\n\n[8] _Aratra Pentelici_ (1870), p. 118. It is true that this is followed\nby a restriction; but what does this restriction amount to? Ruskin\nsays: \"We must produce what shall look like Nature to people who know\nwhat Nature is.\"\n\n[9] _On the Nature of the Gothic_ (Smith, Elder, 1854), p. 19.\n\n\n\n\n2. A Thrust parried. Police or Detective Art defined.\n\n\nBut to return to the movement initiated by Semper[10]--here we\ncertainly have the scientific and Christian _coup de gr\u00e2ce_ levelled\nat the expiring spirit of nineteenth-century Art. For the actors in\nthis movement not only maintained that Art is imitation, but that it\nactually took its origin in imitation--and of the basest sort--that\nis to say, of accidental combinations of lines and colours produced in\nbasket-work, weaving and plaiting.\n\nThis conclusion, which was arrived at, once more, by means of a\nformidable array of facts, and which called itself \"Evolution in\nArt,\" was, like its first cousin, \"Evolution in the Organic World,\"\nabsolutely democratic, ignoble, and vulgar; seeking the source of the\nhighest human achievements either in automatic mimicry, slavish and\neven faulty copying, or involuntary adoption of natural or purely\nutilitarian forms.\n\nTaking the beauty of Nature for granted--an assumption which, as\nthe first part of this lecture shows, is quite unwarrantable--these\nArt-Evolutionists sought to prove that all artistic beauty was the\noutcome of man's Simian virtues working either in the realm of Nature\nor in the realm of his own utilitarian handiwork. And from the purely\nimitative productions found in the Madeleine Cavern in La Dordogne,\nto the repetitive patterns worked on wooden bowls by the natives in\nBritish New Guinea, the origin of all art lay in schoolboy \"cribbing.\"\n\nThis was a new scientific valuation of Art--foreshadowed, as I have\nshown, by philosophical \u00e6sthetic, but arriving independently, as it\nwere, at the conclusion that Art was no longer a giver, but a robber.\n\nVolumes were written to show the origin in technical industry of\nindividual patterns and ornaments on antique vases. And as Alois Riegl\nrightly observes, the authors of these works spoke with such assurance,\nthat one might almost have believed that they had been present when the\nvases were made.[11]\n\nEven Semper, however, as Riegl points out, did not go so far as his\ndisciples, and though he believed that art-forms had been evolved--a\nfact any one would be ready to admit--he did not press the point that\ntechnical industry had always been their root.\n\nWhen we find such delicate and beautifully rhythmic patterns as those\nwhich Dr. A. C. Haddon gives us in his interesting work on Evolution\nin Art, and are told that they originated in the frigate birds, or in\nwoodlarks, which infest the neighbourhood from which these patterns\nhail;[12] when we are shown a Chinese ornament which resembles\nnothing so much as the Egyptian honeysuckle and lotus ornament,[13]\nand we are told that it is derived from the Chinese bat, and when we\nare persuaded that an ordinary fish-hook can lead to a delightful\nbell-like[14] design; then our knowledge of what Art is protests\nagainst this desecration of its sanctity--more particularly after\nwe have been informed that any beauty that the original \"Skeuomorph\"[15]\nmay ultimately possess is mostly due to rapid and faulty copying\nby inexpert draughtsmen, or to a simplifying process which repeated\ndrawings of the same thing must at length involve.\n\nThis is nonsense, and of a most pernicious sort. No mechanical copying\nor involuntary simplification will necessarily lead to designs of great\nbeauty. One has only to set a class of children to make dozens of\ncopies of an object--each more removed than the last from the original\n--in order to discover that if any beauty arises at all, it is actually\n_given_ or _imparted_ to the original by one particular child, who happens\nto be an artist, and that the rest of the class will be quite innocent\nof anything in the way of embellishments, or beauty of any kind.\n\nIt would be absurd to argue that the beak of a frigate bird had not\nbeen noticed by particular natives in those parts of the world where\nthe creature abounds; but the creative act of making an ornamental\ndesign based upon a pot-hook unit, such as the frigate bird's beak\nis, bears no causal relation whatsoever to the original fact in the\nartist's environment, and to write books in order to show that it\ndoes, is as futile as to try and show that pneumonia or bronchitis or\npleurisy was the actual cause of Poe's charming poem, \"Annabel Lee.\"\n\nRiegl, Lipps, and Dr. Worringer very rightly oppose this view of Semper\nand others. In his book, _Stilfragen_, Riegl successfully disposes of\nthe theory that repetitive patterns have invariably been the outcome\nof technical processes such as weaving and plaiting, and points out\nthat, very often, a vegetable or animal form is given to an original\nornamental figure, only after it has been developed to such an extent\nthat it actually suggests that vegetable or animal form.[16]\n\nDr. Worringer goes to great pains in order to show that there is\nan Art-will which is quite distinct from mimicry of any kind, and\nthat this Art-will, beginning in the graphic arts with rhythmic and\nrepetitive geometrical designs, such as zigzags, cross-hatchings and\nspirals, has nothing whatsoever to do with natural objects or objects\nof utility, such as baskets and woven work, which these designs happen\nto resemble.[17]\n\nHe points out that there is not only a difference of degree, but\nactually a marked difference of kind, between the intensely realistic\ndrawing of the Madeleine finds and of some Australian cave painting\nand rock sculptures,[18] which are the work of the rudest savages, and the\nrhythmic decoration of other races; and that whereas the former are\nsimply the result of a truly imitative instinct which the savage does\nwell to cultivate for his own self-preservation--since the ability\nto imitate also implies sharpened detective senses[19]--the latter is\nthe result of a genuine desire for order and simple and organized\narrangement, and an attempt in a small way to overcome confusion. \"It\nis man's only possible way of emancipating himself from the accidental\nand chaotic character of reality.\"[20]\n\nThe author also shows very ably that, even where plant forms are\nselected by the original geometric artist, it is only owing to some\npeculiarly orderly or systematic arrangement of their parts, and that\nthe first impulse in the selective artist is not to imitate Nature, but\nto obtain a symmetrical and systematic arrangement of lines,[21] to gratify\nhis will to be master of natural disorder.\n\nThese objections of Riegl and Worringer are both necessary and\nimportant; for, as the former declares: \"It is now high time that we\nshould retreat from the position in which it is maintained that the\nroots of Art lie in purely technical prototypes.\"[22]\n\nEven in the camp of the out-and-out evolutionists, however, there seems\nalways to have been some uncertainty as to whether they were actually\non the right scent. One has only to read Grosse, where he throws doubt\non the technical origin of ornament, and acknowledges that he clings\nto it simply because he can see no other,[23] and the concluding word of\nDr. Haddon's book, _Evolution in Art_,[24] in order to understand how\nvery much a proper concept of the Art-instinct would have helped these\nwriters to explain a larger field of facts than they were able to\nexplain, and to do so with greater accuracy.\n\nNobody, of course, denies that the patterns on alligators' backs, the\nbeaks of birds, and even the regular disposition of features in the\nhuman face, have been incorporated into designs; but what must be\nestablished, once and for all, is the fact that there is a whole ocean\nof difference between the theory which would ascribe such coincidences\nto the imitative faculty, and that which would show them to be merely\nthe outcome of an original desire for rhythmic order, simplification,\nand organization, which may or may not avail itself of natural or\ntechnical forms suggestive of symmetrical arrangement that happen to be\nat hand.\n\nIt is an important controversy, and one to which I should have been\nglad to devote more attention. In summing up, however, I don't think\nI could do better than quote the opening lines of the Rev. J. F.\nRowbotham's excellent _History of Music_, in which the same questions,\nalthough applied to a different branch of Art, are admirably stated and\nanswered.\n\nIn this book the author says--\n\n\"The twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves, the gurgling of\nbrooks, have provoked the encomiums of poets. Yet none of these has\never so powerfully affected man's mind that he has surmised the\nexistence of something deeper in them than one hearing would suffice\nto disclose, and has endeavoured by imitating them to familiarize\nhimself with their nature, so that he may repeat the effect at his own\nwill and pleasure in all its various shades. These sounds, with that\ndelicate instinct which has guided him so nicely through this universe\nof tempting possibilities, he chose deliberately to pass over. He heard\nthem with pleasure maybe. But pleasure must possess some \u00e6sthetic\nvalue. There must be a secret there to fathom, a mystery to unravel,\nbefore we would undertake its serious pursuit.\n\n\"And there is a kind of sound which exactly possesses these\nqualities--a sound fraught with seductive mystery--a sound which is\nNature's magic, for by it can dumb things speak.\n\n\"The savage who, for the first time in our world's history, knocked\ntwo pieces of wood together, and took pleasure in the sound, had other\naims than his own delight. He was patiently examining a mystery; he was\npeering with his simple eyes into one of Nature's greatest secrets. The\nsomething he was examining was rhythmic sound, on which rests the whole\nart of music.\"[25]\n\nThus, as you see, there is a goodly array of perfectly sensible people\non the other side. Still, the belief that graphic art took its origin\nin imitation must undoubtedly have done a good deal of damage; for the\nnumbers that hold it and act upon it at the present day are, I am sorry\nto say, exceedingly great.\n\nBy identifying the will to imitate with the instinct of\nself-preservation pure and simple, however, we immediately obtain its\norder of rank; for having already established that the will to Art is\nthe will to exist in a certain way--that is to say, with power, all\nthat which ministers to existence alone must of necessity fall below\nthe will to Art. In helping us to make this point, Dr. Worringer and\nMr. Felix Clay have done good service, while Riegl's contribution to\nthe side opposed to the Art-Evolutionists cannot be estimated too\nhighly.\n\nWe are now able to regard the realistic rockdrawings and cave-paintings\nof rude Bushmen, as also the finds in the Madeleine Cavern, with an\nunderstanding which has not been vouchsafed us before, and in comparing\nthese examples of amazing truth to Nature--which, for want of a better\nname, we shall call Detective or Police Art[26]--with the double\ntwisted braid, the palmette, and the simple fret in Assyrian ornament,\nwe shall be able to assign to each its proper order of rank.\n\nIt seems a pity, before laying down the principles of an art, that\nit should be necessary to clear away so many false doctrines and\nprejudices heaped upon it in perfect good faith by scientific men. It\nis only one proof the more, if such were needed, of the vulgarizing\ninfluence science has exercised over everything it has touched, since\nit began to become almost divinely ascendant in the nineteenth century.\n\n\n\n[10] \"_Der Stil in der technischen und tektonischen K\u00fcnsten, oder\npraktische \u00c6sthetik_.\"\n\n[11] See the excellent work, _Stilfragen_, p. 11.\n\n[12] _Evolution in Art_, by A. C. Haddon. See especially figures 26,\n27, 30, 31, 32, pp. 49-52. See also figure 106, p. 181.\n\n[13] _The Evolution of Decorative Art_, by Henry J. Balfour, p. 50.\n\n[14] _Evolution in Art_, by A. C. Haddon, p. 76.\n\n[15] A word Dr. Colley March introduced to express the idea of an\nornament due to structure.\n\n[16] _Stilfragen_, p. 208 _et seq_. See also Dr. W. Worringer's really\nvaluable contribution to this subject: _Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung_, p.\n58.\n\n[17] _Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung_, pp. 4, 8, 9, 11.\n\n[18] _Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung_, p. 51. See also Grosse, The\nBeginnings of Art, pp. 166-169 et seq.\n\n[19] For confirmation of this point see Felix Clay, _The Origin of the\nSense of Beauty_, p. 97.\n\n[20] _Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung_, p. 44.\n\n[21] _Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung_, p. 58.\n\n[22] Stilfragen, p. 12.\n\n[23] _The Beginnings of Art_, pp. 145-147.\n\n[24] p. 309: \"There are certain styles of ornamentation which, at all\nevents in particular cases, may very well be original, taking that word\nin its ordinary sense, such, for example, as zigzags, cross-hatching,\nand so forth. The mere toying with any implement which could make\na mark on any surface might suggest the simplest ornamentation\n[_N.B._--It is characteristic of this school that even original design,\naccording to them, must be the result of \"toying\" with an instrument,\nand of a suggestion from chance markings it may make] to the most\nsavage mind. This may or may not have been the case, and it is entirely\nbeyond proof either way, and therefore we must not press our analogy\ntoo far. It is, however, surprising and is certainly very significant\nthat the origin of so many designs can be determined although they are\nof unknown age.\"\n\n[25] _The History of Music_, by J. F. Rowbotham, 1893, pp. 7, 8. See\nalso Dr. Wallaschek's _Anf\u00e4nge der Tonkunst_ (Leipzig, 1903).\n\n[26] The Bertillon system of identification and Madame Tussaud's,\ntogether with a large number of modern portraits and landscapes, are\nthe highest development of this art.\n\n\n\n\n3. The Purpose of Art Still the Same as Ever.\n\n\nBut in spite of all the attempts that have been made to democratize\nArt, and to fit it to the Procrustes bed of modernity, two human\nfactors have remained precisely the same as they ever were, and show\nno signs of changing. I refer to the general desire to obey and to\nfollow, in the mass of mankind, and to the general desire to prevail in\nconcepts, if not in offspring, among higher men.\n\nWherever one may turn, wherever one inquires, one will discover that,\nat the present day, however few and weak the commanders may be, there\nis among the vast majority of people an insatiable thirst to obey,\nto find opinions ready-made, and to believe in some one or in some\nlaw. The way the name of science is invoked when a high authority\nis needed--just as the Church or the Bible used to be invoked in\nyears gone by--the love of statistics and the meekness with which\na company grows silent when they are quoted; the fact that the most\npreposterous fashions are set in clothing, in tastes, and in manners;\nthe sheep-like way in which people will follow a leader, whether in\npolitics, literature, or in sport, not to dilate upon the love of great\nnames and the faith in the daily Press which nowadays, so I hear, even\nprescribes schemes for dinner-table conversation--all these things\nshow what a vast amount of instinctive obedience still remains the\nbirthright of the Greatest Number. For even advertisement hoardings and\nthe excessive use of advertisements in this age, in addition to the\nfact that they point unmistakably to the almost omnipotent power of the\ncommercial classes (a power which vouchsafes them even the privilege\nof self-praise, which scarcely any other class of society could claim\nwithout incurring the charge of bad-taste), also show how docilely\nthe greatest number must ultimately respond to repeated stimuli, and\nfinally obey if they be told often enough to buy, or to go to see,\nany particular thing. And, in this respect, the Nietzschean attitude\ntowards the greatest number is one of kindness and consideration.\n\nThis instinct to obey, says Nietzsche, is the most natural thing in the\nworld, and it must be gratified. By all means it must be gratified.\nWhat is fatal is not that it should be fed with commands, but that it\nshould be starved by the lack of commanders, and so be compelled to go\nin search of food on its own account.\n\n\"Inasmuch as in all ages,\" says Nietzsche, \"as long as mankind has\nexisted, there have always been human herds (family alliances,\ncommunities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great\nnumber who obey in proportion to the small number who command--in\nview, therefore, of the fact that obedience has been most practised\nand fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that,\ngenerally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as\na kind of _formal conscience_ which gives the command: 'Thou shalt\nunconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from something.'\nIn short, 'Thou shalt.' This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill\nits form with a content; according to its strength, impatience and\neagerness, it thereby seizes, as an omnivorous appetite, with little\nselection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts\nof commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public\nopinion.\"[27]\n\nEverywhere, then, \"he who would command finds those who must obey\"[28]--\nthis is obvious to the most superficial observer; because it is easier\nto obey than to command.\n\n\"Wherever I found living things,\" says Zarathustra, \"there heard I also\nthe language of obedience. All living things are things that obey.\n\n\"And this I heard secondly: whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.\nSuch is the nature of living things.\n\n\"This, however, is the third thing I heard: to command is more\ndifficult than to obey. And not only because the commander beareth the\nburden of all who obey, and because this burden easily crusheth him:--\n\n\"An effort and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it\ncommandeth, the living thing risketh itself.\n\n\"Yea, even when it commandeth himself, then also must it atone for its\ncommanding. Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and\nvictim.\"[29]\n\nFor opinions are a matter of will; they are always, or ought to\nbe always, travelling tickets implying a certain definite aim and\ndestination, and the opinions we hold concerning Life must point to\na certain object we see in Life;--hence there is just as great a\nmarket for opinions, and just as great a demand for fixed values to-day\nas there ever was, and the jealous love with which men will quote\nwell-established views, or begin to believe when they hear that a view\nis well established--a fact which is at the root of all the fruits of\nmodern popularity--shows what a need and what a craving there is for\nauthority, for authoritative information, and for unimpeachable coiners\nof opinions.\n\nNow all the arts either determine values or lay stress upon certain\nvalues already established.[30] What, then, are the particular values\nthat the graphic arts determine or accentuate? It must be clear that\nthey determine what is beautiful, desirable, in fact, imperative, in\nform and colour.\n\nThe purpose of the graphic arts, then, has remained the same as it ever\nwas. It is to determine the values \"ugly\" and \"beautiful\" for those who\nwish to know what is ugly and what is beautiful. The fact that painters\nand sculptors have grown so tremulous and so little self-reliant as\nto claim only the right to imitate, to please and to amuse, does not\naffect this statement in the least; it is simply a reflection upon\nmodern artists and sculptors.\n\nSince, however, these values beautiful and ugly are themselves but the\noutcome of other more fundamental values which have ruled and moulded\na race for centuries, it follows that the artist who would accentuate\nor determine the qualities beautiful or ugly, must bear some intimate\nrelation to the past and possible future of the people.\n\nPlace the Hermes of Praxiteles and especially the canon of Polycletus\nin any part of a cathedral of the late Gothic, and you will see to what\nextent the values which gave rise to Gothic Art were incompatible with,\nand antagonistic to, those which reared Praxiteles and Polycletus.\nNow, if you want a still greater contrast, place an Egyptian granite\nsculpture inside a building like le Petit Trianon, and this intimate\nassociation between the Art and the values of a people will begin to\nseem clear to you.\n\nYou may ask, then, why or how such an art as Ruler-art can please?\nSince it introduces something definitely associated with a particular\nset of values, and commands an assent to these values, how is it that\none likes it?\n\nThe reply is that one does not necessarily like it. One often hates\nit. One likes it only when one feels that it reveals values which are\nin sympathy with one's own aspirations. The Ruler-art of Egypt, for\ninstance, can stir no one who, consciously or unconsciously, is not in\nsome deep secret sympathy with the society which produced it; and as an\nexample of this sympathy--if you wish to know why the realism which\ncomes from poverty[31] tends to increase and flourish in democratic times,\nit is only because there is that absence of particular human power in\nit which is compatible with a society in which a particular human power\nis completely lacking.\n\nFor it is absolute nonsense to speak of _l'art pour l'art_ and of the\npleasure of art for art's sake as acceptable principles.[32] I will show\nlater on how this notion arose. Suffice it to say, for the present,\nthat this is the death of Art. It is separating Art from Life, and it\nis relegating it to a sphere--a Beyond--where other things, stronger\nthan Art, have already been known to die. The notion of art for art's\nsake can only arise in an age when the purpose of Art is no longer\nknown, when its relation to Life has ceased from being recognized, and\nwhen artists have grown too weak to find the realization of their will\nin their works.\n\n\n[27] _G. E._, p. 120.\n\n[28] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 105.\n\n[29] _Z._, II, XXXIV.\n\n[30] T. I., Part 10, Aph. 24: \"A psychologist asks what does all art\ndo? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does\nit not bring into prominence? In each of these cases it strengthens or\nweakens certain valuations. ... Is this only a contingent matter?--an\naccident, something with which the instinct of the artist would not at\nall be concerned? Or rather, is it not the pre-requisite which enables\nthe artist to do something? Is his fundamental instinct directed\ntowards art?--or is it not rather directed towards the sense of art,\nnamely, life? towards desirableness of life?\"\n\n[31] See p. 119.\n\n[32] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 246. See also T. I., Part 10, Aph. 24, and _G.\nE._, p. 145.\n\n\n\n\n4. The Artist's and the Layman's View of Life.\n\n\nIf the artist's view of Life can no longer affect Life, if his\nordering, simplifying and adjusting mind can no longer make Life\nsimpler, more orderly and better adjusted, then all his power has\nvanished, and he has ceased from counting in our midst, save, perhaps,\nas a _decorator_ of our homes--that is to say, as an artisan; or as an\n_entertainer_--that is to say, as a mere illustrator of our literary\nmen's work.\n\nWhat is so important in the artist is, that disorder and confusion are\nthe loadstones that attract him.[33] Though, in stating this, I should ask\nyou to remember that he sees disorder and confusion where, very often,\nthe ordinary person imagines everything to be admirably arranged.\nStill, the fact remains that he finds his greatest proof of power only\nwhere his ordering and simplifying mind meets with something whereon it\nmay stamp its two strongest features: Order and Simplicity; and where\nhe is strong, relative disorder is his element, and the arrangement\nof this disorder is his product.[34] Stimulated by disorder, which he\ndespises, he is driven to his work; spurred by the sight of anarchy,\nhis inspiration is government; fertilized by rudeness and ruggedness,\nhis will to power gives birth to culture and refinement. He gives of\nhimself--his business is to make things reflect him.\n\nThus, even his will to eternalize, and to stamp the nature of stability\non Becoming, must not be confounded with that other desire for Being\nwhich is a desire for rest and repose and opiates,[35] and which has\nfound its strongest expression in the idea of the Christian Heaven.\nIt is, rather, a feeling of gratitude towards Life, a desire to show\nthankfulness to Life, which makes him desire to rescue one beautiful\nbody from the river of Becoming, and fix its image for ever in this\nworld,[36] whereas the other is based upon a loathing of Life and a\nweariness of it.\n\nDefining _ugliness_ provisionally as disorder, it may have a great\nattraction for the artist, it may even be the artist's sole attraction,\nand in converting it--the thing he despises most--into _beauty_, which\nwe shall define provisionally as order, he reaches the zenith of his\npower.[37]\n\n\"Where is beauty?\" Zarathustra asks. \"Where I must will with my whole\nwill; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely\nan image.[38]\n\n\"For to create desireth the loving one, because he despiseth.\"[39]\n\nIt follows from this, therefore, that the realistic\nartist--the purveyor of Police Art--who goes direct to beauty or\nugliness and, after having worked upon either, leaves it just as it was\nbefore,[40] shows no proof of power at all, and ranks with the bushmen\nof Australia and the troglodytes of La Dordogne, as very much below\nthe hierophantic artist who transforms and transfigures. All realists,\ntherefore, from Apelles[41] in the fourth century B.C. to the modern\nimpressionists, portrait painters and landscapists, must step down.\nLike the scientists, they merely ascertain facts, and, in so doing,\nleave things precisely as they are.[42] Photography is rapidly outstripping\nthem, and will outstrip them altogether once it has mastered the\nproblem of colour. Photography could never have vied with the artist of\nEgypt, or even of China and Japan; because in the arts of each of these\nnations there is an element of human power over Nature or reality,\nwhich no mechanical process can emulate.\n\nNow, what is important in the ideal and purely hypothetical layman\nis, that he has a horror of disorder, of confusion, and of chaos, and\nflees from it whenever possible. He finds no solace anywhere, except\nwhere the artist has been and left things transformed and richer for\nhim. Bewildered by reality, he extends his hands for that which the\nartist has made of reality. He is a receiver. He reaches his zenith in\napprehending.[43] His attitude is that of a woman, as compared with the\nattitude of the artist which is that of the man.\n\n\"Logical and geometrical simplification is the result of an increase\nof power: conversely, the mere aspect of such simplification increases\nthe sense of power in the beholder.\"[44] To see what is ugliness to him,\nrepresented as what is beauty to him, also impresses the spectator with\nthe feeling of power; of an obstacle overcome, and thereby stimulates\nhis activities. Moreover, the spectator may feel a certain gratitude\nto Life and Mankind. It often happens, even in our days, that another\nworld is pictured as by no means a better world,[45] and the healthy\nand optimistic layman may feel a certain thankfulness to Life and to\nHumanity. It is then once more that he turns to the artist who has\nfelt the same in a greater degree, who can give him this thing--be it\na corner of Life or of Humanity--who can snatch it from the eternal\nflux and torrent of all things into decay or into death, and who can\ncarve or paint it in a form unchanging for him, in spite of a world of\nBecoming, of Evolution, and of ebb and flow. Just as the musician cries\nTime! Time! Time! to the cacophonous medley of natural sounds that pour\ninto his ears from all sides, and assembles them rhythmically for our\nears hostile to disorder; so the graphic artist cries Time! Time! Time!\nto the incessant and kaleidoscopic procession of things from birth to\ndeath, and places in the layman's arms the eternalized image of that\nportion of Life for which he happens to feel great gratitude.\n\n\n[33] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 368.\n\n[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 241.\n\n[35] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 280.\n\n[36] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 281.\n\n[37] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244.\n\n[38] _Z._, II, XXXVII.\n\n[39] _Z._, I. XVIII.\n\n[40]_ T. I._, Part 10, Aph. \"Nature, estimated artistically,\nis no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps.\nNature is accident. Studying 'according to nature' seems\nto me a bad sign; it betrays subjection, weakness, fatalism;\nthis lying-in-the-dust before petit fails is unworthy of a\ncomplete artist. Seeing what is--that belongs to another\nspecies of intellects, to the anti-artistic, to the practical.\"\n\n[41] See Woltmann and Woermann, _History of Painting_,\nVol. I, p. 62.\n\n[42] _B. T._, p. 59. See also Schopenhauer, _Parerga und\nParalipomena_, Vol. II, p. 447.\n\n[43] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 255.\n\n[44] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 241.\n\n[45] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 95: \"A people that are proud of\nthemselves, and who are on the ascending path of Life,\nalways picture another existence as lower and less valuable\nthan theirs.\"\n\n\n\n\n5. The Confusion of the Two Points of View.\n\n\nIt is obvious that if both pleasures are to remain pure and undefiled--\nif the artist is to attain to his zenith in happiness, and the layman\nto his also--their particular points of view must not be merged,\ndulled, or blunted by excessive spiritual intercourse.[46] For a very large\namount of the disorder in the arts of the present can easily be traced\nto a confusion of the two points of view.\n\nIn an ideal society, the artist's standpoint would be esoteric, and the\nlayman's exoteric.\n\nNowadays, of course, owing to the process of universal levelling which\nhas been carried so far that it is invading even the department of sex,\nit is hard to find such distinctions as the artist's and the layman's\nstandpoint in art sharply and definitely juxtaposed. And this fact\naccounts for a good deal of the decrease in \u00e6sthetic pleasure, which\nis so characteristic of the age. In fact, it accounts for the decrease\nof pleasure in general, for only where there are sharp differences can\nthere be any great pleasure. Pessimism and melancholia can arise only\nin inartistic ages, when a process of levelling has merged all the joys\nof particular standpoints into one.\n\nLet me give you a simple example, drawn from modern life and the\npictorial arts, in order to show you to what extent the standpoint of\nthe people or of the layman has become corrupted by the standpoint of\nthe artist, and vice-vers\u00e2.\n\nStrictly speaking, artists in search of scope for their powers should\nprefer Hampstead Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau[47] to the\ncarefully laid-out gardens of our parks and of Versailles. Conversely,\nif their taste were still uncorrupted, the public ought to prefer the\ncarefully arranged gardens of our parks and of Versailles to Hampstead\nHeath or the Forest of Fontainebleau.\n\nSome of the public, of course, still do hold the proper views on these\npoints, but their number is rapidly diminishing, and most of them\nassume the airs of artists now, and speak with sentimental enthusiasm\nabout the beautiful ruggedness of craggy rocks, the glorious beauty of\nuncultivated Nature, and the splendour of wild scenery.[48]\n\n[Illustration: The Marriage of Mary. By Raphael. (Brera, Milan.)]\n\nArtists, on the other hand, having become infected by the public's\noriginal standpoint--the desire for order--either paint pictures\nlike Raphael's \"Marriage of Mary,\"[49] his \"Virgin and Child attended\nby St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas of Bari,\"[50] and Perugino's\n\"Vision of St. Bernard,\"[51] in which the perfectly symmetrical aspect and\nposition of the architecture is both annoying and inartistic, owing to\nthe fact that it was looked at by the artist from a point at which it\nwas orderly and arranged before he actually painted it, and could not\ntherefore testify to his power of simplifying or ordering--but simply\nto his ability to avail himself of another artist's power, namely, the\narchitect's; or else, having become infected by the public's corrupt\nstandpoint--the desire for disorder and chaos as an end in itself--\nthey paint as Ruysdael, Hobbema and Constable painted--that is to\nsay, without imparting anything of themselves, or of their power to\norder and simplify, to the content of the picture, lest the desire for\ndisorder or chaos should be thwarted.[52]\n\nThis is an exceedingly important point, and its value for art criticism\ncannot be overrated. If one can trust one's taste, and it is still a\npurely public taste, it is possible to tell at a glance why one cannot\nget oneself to like certain pictures in which either initial regularity\nhas been too great, thus leaving no scope for the artist's power, or in\nwhich final irregularity is too great, thus betraying no evidence of\nthe artist's power.\n\nLooking at Rubens' \"Ceres,\"[53] in which the architecture is\nviewed also in a frontal position, you may be tempted to ask why such\na picture is not displeasing, despite the original symmetry of the\narchitecture in the position in which the painter chose to paint it.\nThe reply is simple. Here Rubens certainly placed the architecture\nfull-face; but besides dissimulating the greater part of it in shadow--\nwhich in itself produces unsymmetrical shapes that have subsequently to\nbe arranged by tone composition--lie carefully disordered it by means\nof garlands and festoons, and only then did he exercise his artistic\nmind in making a harmonious and orderly pictorial arrangement of it,\nwhich also included some cupids skilfully placed.\n\nAll realism, or Police Art, therefore, in addition to being the outcome\nof the will to truth which Christianity and its offshoot Modern Science\nhave infused into the arts, may also be the result of the artist's\nbecoming infected either with the public's pure taste, or with the\npublic's corrupted or artist-infected taste, and we are thus in\npossession of one more clue as to what constitutes a superior work of\ngraphic art.\n\n\n[46] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 255, 256.\n\n[47] In regard to this point it is interesting to note that Kant, in\nhis _Kritik der Urteilskraft_, actually called landscape-painting a\nprocess of gardening.\n\n[48] I do not mean to imply here that all the sentimental gushing\nthat is given vent to nowadays over rugged and wild scenery is the\noutcome only of a confusion of the artist's and layman's standpoints.\nThe influence of the Christian and Protestant worship of pointless\nfreedom, together with that of their contempt of the work of man, is\nlargely active here; and the sight of unhandseled and wild shrubs,\nand of tangled and matted grasses, cheers the heart of the fanatical\nbeliever in the purposeless freedom and anarchy which Christianity and\nProtestantism have done so much to honour and extol. That the same man\nwho honours government and an aristocratic ideal may often be found\nto-day dilating upon the charms of chaotic scenery, only shows how\nmuddle-headed and confused mankind has become.\n\n[49] The Brera at Milan.\n\n[50] The National Gallery, London. Raphael was very much infected with\nthe people's point of view, hence the annoying stiltedness of many of\nhis pictures.\n\n[51] Pinakothek, Munich.\n\n[52] See particularly, Ruysdael's \"Rocky Landscape,\" \"Landscape with a\nFarm\" (Wallace collection); Hobbema's \"Outskirts of a Wood\" and many\nothers in the Wallace collection; and Constable's \"Flatford Mill\" and\n\"The Haywain\" (National Gallery).\n\n[53] Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg.\n\n\n\n\n6. The Meaning of Beauty of Form and of Beauty of Content in Art.\n\n\nSo far, then, I have arrived at this notion of beauty in Ruler-Art,\nnamely: that it may be regarded almost universally as that order,\nsimplicity and transfiguration which the artist mind imparts to the\ncontent of his production. This notion seems to allow of almost\nuniversal application, because, as I showed in the first part of\nthis lecture, it involves one of the primary instincts of man--the\novercoming of chaos and anarchy by adjustment, simplification and\ntransfiguration. It is only in democratic ages, or ages of decline,\nwhen instincts become disintegrated, that beauty in Art is synonymous\nwith a lack of simplicity, of order and of transfiguration. I have\nshown, however, that the second kind of beauty, or democratic beauty,\nis of an inferior kind to that of the first beauty, or Ruler beauty,\nbecause, while the former takes its root in the will to live, the\nlatter arises surely and truly out of the will to power.[54] Either\nbeauty, however, constitutes ugliness in its opponent's opinion.\n\nBut there is another aspect of Beauty in Art which has to be\nconsidered, and that is the intrinsic beauty of the content of an\nartistic production. You may say that, _ex hypothesi_, I have denied that\nthere could be any such beauty. Not at all!\n\nSince the ruler-artist transfigures by enhancement, by embellishment\nand by ennoblement, his mind can be stimulated perfectly well by an\nobject or a human being which to the layman is vertiginously beautiful,\nand which to himself is exceedingly pleasing. In fact, if his mind\nis a mind which, like that of most master-artists, adores that which\nis difficult, it will go in search of the greatest natural beauty it\ncan find, in order, by a stupendous effort in transfiguration, to\noutstrip even that; for the embellishment of the downright ugly and the\ndownright revolting presents a task too easy to the powerful artist--a\nfact which explains a good deal of the ugly contents of many a modern\npicture.\n\nWhat, then, constitutes the beauty of the content in an artistic\nproduction, as distinct from the beauty of the treatment? In other\nwords, what is beauty in a subject?\n\nFor the notion that the subject does not matter in a picture is one\nwhich should be utterly and severely condemned. It arose at a time\nwhen art was diseased, when artists themselves had ceased from having\nanything of importance to say, when the subjects chosen had no meaning,\nand when technique was bad. And it must be regarded more in the light\nof a war-cry coming from a counter-movement, aiming at an improved\ntechnique and rebelling against an abuse of literature in the graphic\narts, than in the light of sound doctrine, taking its foundation in\nnormal and healthy conditions.\n\nThe intrinsic beauty of the content or substance of a picture or\nsculpture may therefore be the subject of legitimate inquiry, and in\ndetermining what it consists of, we raise the whole question of content\nbeauty.\n\nVolumes, stacks of volumes, have been written on this question. The\nmost complicated and incomprehensible answers have been given to it,\nand not one can be called satisfactory; for all of them would be\nabsolute.\n\nWhen, however, we find a modern writer defining the beautiful as\n\"that which has characteristic or individual expressiveness for sense\nperception or imagination, subject to the conditions of general or\nabstract expressiveness in the same medium,\"[55] we feel, or at least\n_I_ feel, that something must be wrong. It is definitions such as these\nwhich compel one to seek for something more definite and more lucid\nin the matter of explanation, and if, in finding the latter, one may\nseem a little too prosaic and _terre-\u00e0-terre_, it is only because the\ntranscendental and metaphysical nature of the kind of definition we\nhave just quoted makes anything which is in the slightest degree\nclearer, appear earthly and material beside it.\n\nIt is obvious that, if we could only arrive at a subject-beauty which\nwas absolute, practically all the difficulties of our task would\nvanish. For having established the fact that the purpose of the\ngraphic arts is to determine the values beautiful and ugly, it would\nonly remain for us to urge all artists to advocate that absolute\nsubject-beauty with all the eloquence of line and colour that our\nconcept of Art-form would allow, and all the problems of Art would be\nsolved.\n\nBut we can postulate no such absolute in subject-beauty. \"Absolute\nbeauty exists just as little as absolute goodness and truth.\"[56] The\nterm \"beautiful,\" like the term \"good,\" is only a means to an end. It\nis simply the arbitrary self-affirmation of a certain type of man in\nhis struggle to prevail.[57] He says \"Yea\" to his type, and calls it\nbeautiful. He cannot extend his power and overcome other types unless\nwith complete confidence and assurance he says \"Yea\" to his own type.\n\nYou and I, therefore, can speak of the beautiful with an understanding\nof what that term means, only on condition that our values, our\ntraditions, our desires, and our outlook are exactly the same. If you\nagree with me on the question of what is good, our agreement simply\nmeans this, that in that corner of the world from which you and I hail,\nthe same creator of values prevails over both of us. Likewise, if you\nand I agree on the question of what is beautiful, this fact merely\ndenotes that as individuals coming from the same people, we have our\nvalues, our tradition and our outlook in common.\n\n\"Beautiful,\" then, is a purely relative term which may be applied to a\nhost of dissimilar types and which every people must apply to its own\ntype alone, if it wishes to preserve its power. Biologically, absolute\nbeauty exists only within the confines of a particular race. That race\nwhich would begin to consider another type than their own as beautiful,\nwould thereby cease from being a race. We may be kind, amiable, and\neven hospitable to the Chinaman or the Negro; but the moment we begin\nto share the Chinaman's or the Negro's view of beauty, we run the risk\nof cutting ourselves adrift from our own people.\n\nBut assuming, as we must, that all people, the Chinese, the Negroes,\nthe Hindus, the Red Indians, and the Arabs between themselves apply\nthe word beautiful only to particular individuals among their own\npeople, in order to distinguish them from less beautiful or mediocre\nindividuals--what meaning has the term in that case?\n\nObviously, since the spirit of the people, its habits, prejudices\nand prepossessions are determined by their values, and values may\nfix a type, that creature will be most beautiful among them who is\nthe highest embodiment and outcome of all their values, and who\ntherefore corresponds most to the ideal their \u00e6sthetic legislator had\nin mind when he created their values.[58] Thus even morality can\nbe justified \u00e6sthetically.[59] And in legislating for primeval peoples,\nhigher men and artist-legislators certainly worked like sculptors on a\nyielding medium which was their own kind.\n\nThe most beautiful negro or Chinaman thus becomes that individual negro\nor Chinaman who is rich in those features which the life-spirit of the\nEthiopian or Chinese people is calculated to produce, and who, owing to\na long and regular observance of the laws and traditions of his people,\nby his ancestors for generations, has inherited that regularity of form\nin his type, which all long observance of law and order is bound to\ncultivate and to produce.[60] And in reviewing the peoples of Europe\nalone, we can ascribe the many and different views which they have held\nand still hold of beauty, only to a difference in the values they have\nobserved for generations in their outlook, their desires and their\nbeliefs.\n\nIt is quite certain, therefore, that, in the graphic arts, which either\ndetermine or accentuate the values \"ugly\" and \"beautiful,\" every artist\nwho sets up his notion of what is subject-beauty, like every lover\nabout to marry, either assails or confirms and consolidates the values\nof his people.[61]\n\nExamples of this, if they were needed, are to be found everywhere. See\nhow the Gothic school of painting, together with men like Fra Angelico,\nFilippo Lippi, Botticelli, El Greco, and subsequently Burne-Jones,\nset up the soulful person, the person of tenuous, nervous and\nheaven-aspiring slenderness, as the type of beauty, thus advocating and\nestablishing Christian values in a very seductive and often artistic\nmanner; while the Pagans, with Michelangelo, Titian, and even Rubens,\nrepresented another code of values--perhaps even several other codes--\nand sought to fix their type also.\n\nNote, too, how hopeless are the attempts of artists who stand for the\nPagan ideal, when they paint Christian saints and martyrs, and how\nsingularly un-Pagan those figures are which appear in the pictures of\nthe advocates of the Christian ideal when they attempt Pagan types.\nChrist by Rubens is not the emaciated, tenuous Person suffering from\na wasting disease that Segna represents him to be; while the Mars and\nVenus of Botticelli in the National Gallery would have been repudiated\nwith indignation by any Greek of antiquity.\n\nWhen values are beginning to get mixed, then, owing to an influx of\nforeigners from all parts of the world, we shall find the strong\nbiological idea of absolute beauty tending to disappear, and in its\nplace we shall find the weak and wholly philosophical belief arising\nthat beauty is relative. Thus, in Attica of the fifth century B.C.,\nwhen 300,000 slaves, chiefly foreigners, were to be counted among the\ninhabitants, the idea that beauty was a relative term first occurred to\nthe \"talker\" Socrates.\n\nStill, in all concepts of beauty, however widely separated and however\ndiametrically opposed, there is this common factor: that the beautiful\nperson is the outcome of a long observance through generations of\nthe values peculiar to a people. A certain regularity of form and\nfeature, whether this form and feature be Arab, Ethiopian or Jewish,\nis indicative of a certain regular mode of life which has lasted for\ngenerations; and in calling this indication beautiful, a people once\nmore affirms itself and its values. If the creature manifesting this\nregularity be a Chinaman, he will be the most essential Chinaman that\nthe Chinese values can produce; his face will reveal no fighting and\ndiscordant values; there will be no violent contrasts of type in\nhis features, and, relative to Chinese values, his face will be the\nmost regular and harmonious that can be seen, and therefore the most\nbeautiful.[62] The Chinese ruler-artist, in representing a mediocre\nChinaman, would therefore exercise his transfiguring powers to overcome\nany discordant features in the face before him, and would thus produce\na beautiful type.[63] Or, if his model happened to be the highest\nproduct of Chinese values, his object would be to transcend even that,\nand to point to something higher.\n\nOnce again, therefore, though it is impossible to posit a universal\nconcept of subject-beauty, various concepts may be given an order of\nrank, subject to the values with which they happen to be associated.\n\n\n[54] If this book be read in conjunction with my monograph on\n_Nietzsche: his Life and Works_ (Constable), or my _Who is to be\nMaster of the World?_ (Foulis), there ought to be no difficulty in\nunderstanding this point.\n\n[55] B. Bosanquet, _A History of \u00c6sthetic_, p. 4.\n\n[56] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 246. See also _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19: \"The\n'beautiful in itself' is merely an expression, not even a concept.\"\n\n[57] _T. I._, Part 10, Apr. 19: \"In the beautiful, man posits himself\nas the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in\nthat standard. A species _cannot_ possibly do otherwise than thus say\nyea to itself.\"\n\n[58] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 361: \"Legislative moralities are the\nprincipal means by which one can form mankind, according to the fancy\nof a creative and profound will: provided, of course, that such an\nartistic will of the first order gets the power into its own hands,\nand can make its creative will prevail over long periods in the form\nof legislation, religions, and morals.\" See p. 79 in the first part of\nthis lecture.\n\n[59] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 185.\n\n[60] _G. E._, p. 107: \"The essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is,\napparently, that there should be long obedience in the same direction;\nthere thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run,\nsomething which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue,\nart, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever that is\ntransfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine.\"\n\n[61] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 24.\n\n[62] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 47: \"Even the beauty of a race or family,\nthe pleasantness and kindness of their whole demeanour, is acquired by\neffort; like genius, it is the final result of the accumulated labour\nof generations. There must have been great sacrifices made to good\ntaste; for the sake of it, much must have been done, and much refrained\nfrom--the seventeenth century in France is worthy of admiration in\nboth ways; good taste must then have been a principle of selection, for\nsociety, place, dress, and sexual gratification, beauty must have been\npreferred to advantage, habit, opinion, indolence. Supreme rule:--we\nmust not 'let ourselves go,' even when only in our own presence.--Good\nthings are costly beyond measure, and the rule always holds, that he\nwho possesses them is other than he who acquires them. All excellence\nis inheritance; what has not been inherited is imperfect, it is a\nbeginning.\"\n\n[63] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 245: \"'Beauty,' therefore, is, to the artist,\nsomething which is above order of rank, because in beauty contrasts\nare overcome, the highest sign of power thus manifesting itself in the\nconquest of opposites; and achieved without a feeling of tension.\" See\nalso Hegel, _Vorlesungen \u00fcber \u00c6sthetik_, Vol. I, pp. 130, 144.\n\n\n\n\n7. The Meaning of Ugliness of Form and of Ugliness of Content in Art.\n\n\nUgliness in Art, therefore, is Art's contradiction.[67] It is the absence\nof Art. It is a sign that the simplifying, ordering and transfiguring\npower of the artist has not been successful, and that chaos, disorder\nand complexity have not been overcome.\n\nUgliness of form in Art, therefore, will tend to become prevalent\nin democratic times; because it is precisely at such times that a\ngeneral truth for all is believed in, and, since reality is the only\ntruth which can be made common to all, democratic art is invariably\nrealistic, and therefore, according to my definition of the beautiful\nin form, ugly.\n\nIn this matter, I do not ask you to take my views on trust. A person\nwho will seem to you very much more authoritative than myself--a man\nwho once had the honour of influencing Whistler, and who, by the bye,\nis also famous for having flung down the Colonne Vend\u00f4me in Paris--\nonce expressed himself quite categorically on this matter.\n\nAt the Congress of Antwerp in 1861, after he had criticized other\nartists and other concepts of art, this man concluded his speech as\nfollows: \"By denying the ideal and all that it involves, I attain to\nthe complete emancipation of the individual, and finally to democracy.\nRealism is essentially democratic.\"[68]\n\nAs you all must know, this man was Gustave Courbet, of whom Muther said\nthat he had a predilection for the ugly.[69]\n\nArtists infected with the pure or the corrupt layman's view of Art,\nas described in the previous section, and artists obsessed by the\nChristian or scientific notion of truth, will consequently produce ugly\nwork. They will be realists, or Police-artists, and consequently ugly.\n\nBut how can content- or subject-ugliness be understood? Content- or\nsubject-ugliness is the decadence of a type.[70] It is the sign\nthat certain features, belonging to other peoples (hitherto called ugly\naccording to the absolute biological standard of beauty of a race),\nare beginning to be introduced into their type. Or it may mean that\nthe subject to be represented does not reveal that harmony and lack\nof contrasts which the values of a people are capable of producing.\nIn each case it provokes hatred, and this \"hatred is inspired by the\nmost profound instinct of the species; there is horror, foresight,\nprofundity, and far-reaching vision in it--it is the profoundest of\nall hatreds. On account of it art is _profound_.\"[71]\n\nThe hatred amounts to a condemnation of usurping values, or of\ndiscordant values; in fact, to a condemnation of dissolution and\nanarchy, and the judgment \"ugly\" is of the most serious import.\n\nThus, although few of us can agree to-day as to what constitutes a\nbeautiful man or woman, there is still a general idea common to us all,\nthat a certain regularity of features constitutes beauty, and that,\nwith this beauty, a certain reliable, harmonious, and calculable nature\nwill be present. Spencer said the wisest thing in all his philosophy\nwhen he declared that \"the saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but\na skin-deep saying.\"[72]\n\nFor beauty in any human creature, being the result of a long and\nsevere observance by his ancestors of a particular set of values,\nalways denotes some definite attitude towards Life; it always lures to\nsome particular kind of life and joy--as Stendhal said, \"Beauty is\na promise of happiness\"--and as such it seduces to Life and to this\nearth.\n\nThis explains why beauty is regarded with suspicion by negative\nreligions, and why it tends to decline in places where the sway\nof a negative religion is powerful. Because a negative religion\ncannot tolerate that which lures to life, to the body, to joy and to\nvoluptuous ecstasy.\n\nIt is upon their notion of spiritual beauty, upon passive virtues, that\nthe negative religions lay such stress, and thus they allow the ugly to\nfind pedestals in their sanctuaries more easily than the beautiful.\n\n\n[67] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 252.\n\n[68] A. Estignard, _Gustave Courbet_ (Paris, 1896), p. 118.\n\n[69] _Geschichte der Malerei_, Vol. III, p. 204.\n\n[70] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 241, 242, 245. See also T. I., Part 10, Aph.\n20: \"The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration; that\nwhich reminds us in the remotest manner of degeneracy prompts us to\npronounce the verdict 'ugly.' Every indication of exhaustion, gravity,\nage or lassitude; every kind of constraint, such as cramp or paralysis;\nand above all the odour, the colour, and the likeness of decomposition\nor putrefaction, be it utterly attenuated even to a symbol:--all these\nthings call forth a similar reaction, the evaluation 'ugly.' A hatred\nis there excited: whom does man hate there? There can be no doubt: _the\ndecline of his type_.\"\n\n[71] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 20.\n\n[72] _Essays_, Vol. II (1901 Edition), p. 394.\n\n\n\n\n8. The Ruler-Artist's Style and Subject.\n\n\nUp to the present, you have doubtless observed that I have spoken only\nof man as the proper subject-matter of the graphic Arts. In maintaining\nthis, Nietzsche not only has Goethe and many lesser men on his side,\nbut he has also the history of Art in general. I cannot, however, show\nyou yet how, or in what manner, animal-painting, landscape-painting,\nand, in some respects, portrait-painting are to be placed lower than\nthe art which concerns itself with man. Let it therefore suffice, for\nthe present, simply to recognize the fact that Nietzsche did take up\nthis attitude, and leave the more exhaustive discussion of it to the\nnext part of this lecture.\n\nNow, eliminating for a moment all those pseudo-artists who have been\nreared by the two strongest public demands on the Art of the present\nage--I speak of portrait-painting and dining-room pictures--there\nremains a class of artists which still shows signs of raising its head\nhere and there, though every year with less frequency, and this is the\nclass which, for want of a better term, we call Ruler-artists.\n\nAs I say, they are becoming extremely rare; their rarity, which may be\neasily accounted for,[73] is one of the evil omens of the time.\n\nThe ruler-artist is he who, elated by his own health and love of Life,\nsays \"Yea\" to his own type and proclaims his faith or confidence in\nit, against all other types; and who, in so doing, determines or\naccentuates the values of that type. If he prevails in concepts in so\ndoing, he also ennobles and embellishes the type he is advocating.\n\nHe is either the maker or the highest product of an aspiring and an\nascending people. In him their highest values find their most splendid\nbloom. In him their highest values find their strongest spokesman. And\nin his work they find the symbol of their loftiest hopes.\n\nBy the beauty which his soul reflects upon the selected men he\nrepresents in his works, he establishes an order of rank among his\npeople, and puts each in his place.\n\nThe spectator who is very much beneath the beauty of the ruler-artist's\nmasterpieces feels his ignominious position at a glance. He realizes\nthe impassable gulf that is for ever fixed between himself and that!\nAnd this sudden revelation tells him his level. Such a man, after\nhe has contemplated the ruler-artist's work, may rush headlong to the\nnearest river and drown himself. His despair may be so great when he\nrealizes the impossibility of ever reaching the heights he has been\ncontemplating, that he may immolate himself on the spot. Only thus can\nthe world be purged of the many-too-many.\n\n\"Unto many life is a failure,\" says Zarathustra, \"a poisonous worm\neating through into their heart. These ought to see to it that they\nsucceed better in dying.\n\n\"Many-too-many live.... Would that preachers of swift death might\narise! They would be the proper storms to shake the trees of life.\"[74]\n\nIn the presence of beauty, alone, can one know one's true rank, and\nthis explains why the Japanese declare that \"until a man has made\nhimself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty,\"[75] for \"great art\nis that before which we long to die.\"[76]\n\nBut, to those who see but the smallest chance of approaching it, beauty\nis an exhortation, a stimulus, a bugle-call. It may drive them to means\nfor pruning themselves of ugliness; it may urge them to inner harmony,\nto a suppression of intestinal discord.\n\n\"Beauty alone should preach penitence,\"[77] says Zarathustra. And in this\nsentence you have the only utilitarian view of beauty that has any\naristocratic value, besides that which maintains that beauty lures to\nLife, and to the body.\n\nHence, beauty need not impel all men to the river. There are some who,\nafter contemplating it, will feel just near enough to it not to despair\naltogether of attaining to its level, and this thought will lend them\nboth hope and courage.\n\nThe ruler-artist, therefore, in order that his subject-beauty may have\nsome meaning, must be the synthesis of the past and the future of a\npeople. Up to his waist in their spirit, he must mould or paint them\nthe apotheosis of their type. Only thus can he hope to prevail with his\nsubject--Man.\n\nThe German philosopher, Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, was one of the first\nto recognize this power of the ruler-artist, and the necessity of his\nbeing intimately associated with a particular people, although above\nthem; and in his little book, _System der \u00c6sthetik_, he makes some very\nilluminating remarks on this matter.[78]\n\nThus Benedetto Croce rightly argues that in order to _appreciate_ the\nartistic works of bygone and extinct nations, it is necessary to have\na knowledge and understanding of their life and history--in other\nwords, of their values.[79] What he does not point out, however, and\nwhat seems very important, is, that such historical research would be\nquite unnecessary to one who by nature was _a priori_ in sympathy with\nthe values of an extinct nation; and also, that all the historical\nknowledge available could not make any one whose character was not\na little Periclean or Egyptian from the start, admire, or even\nappreciate, either the Parthenon, or the brilliant diorite statue of\nKing Khephr\u00ebn in the Cairo Museum.\n\nAll great ruler-art, then, is, as it were, a song of praise, a\nmagnificat, appealing only to those, and pleasing only those, who feel\nin sympathy with the values which it advocates. And that is why all art\nof any importance, and of any worth, must be based upon a certain group\nof values--in other words, must have a philosophy or a particular view\nof the world as its foundation. Otherwise it is pointless, meaningless,\nand divorced from life. Otherwise it is acting, sentimental nonsense,\nor _l'art pour l'art_.\n\nAll great ruler-art also takes Man as its content; because human values\nare the only values that concern it. All great ruler-art also takes\nbeauty within a certain people as its aim; because the will-to-power is\nits driving instinct, and beauty, being the most difficulty thing to\nachieve, is the strongest test of power. Finally, all great ruler-art\nis optimistic; because it implies the will of the artist to prevail.\n\nBut what constitutes the form of the ruler-artist's work? In what way\nmust he give us his content?\n\nThe ruler-artist's form is the form of the commander. It must scorn\nto please.[80] It must brook no disobedience and no insubordination,\nsave among those of its beholders about whom it does not care, from\nwhom it would fain separate itself, and among whom it is not with its\npeers. It must be authoritative, extremely simple, irrefutable, full\nof restraint, and as repetitive as a Mohammedan prayer. It must point\nto essentials, it must select essentials, and it must transfigure\nessentials. The presence of non-essentials in a work of art is\nsufficient to put it at once upon a very low plane. For what matters\nabove all is that the ruler-artist should prevail in concepts, and in\norder to do this his work must contain the definite statement of the\nvalue he sets upon all that he most cherishes.\n\nHence the belief all through the history of \u00e6sthetic that high art is\na certain unity in variety, a certain single idea exhaled from a more\nor less complex whole, or, as the Japanese say, \"repetition with a\nmodicum of variation.\"[81]\n\n_Symmetry_, as denoting balance, and as a help to obtaining a complete\ngrasp of an idea; _Sobriety_, as revealing that restraint which a\nposition of command presupposes; _Simplicity_, as proving the power\nof the great mind that has overcome the chaos in itself,[82] to reflect\nits order and harmony upon other things,[83] and to select the\nmost essential features from among a host of more or less essential\nfeatures; _Transfiguration_, as betraying that Dionysian elation and\nelevation from which the artist gives of himself to reality and makes\nit reflect his own glory back upon him; _Repetition_, as a means of\nobtaining obedience; and _Variety_, as the indispensable condition of all\nliving Art--all Art which is hortatory and which does not aim at repose\nalone, at sleep, and at soothing and lulling jaded and exasperated\nnerves,--these are the principal qualities of ruler-art, and any work\nwhich would be deficient in one of these qualities would thereby be\nutterly and deservedly condemned to take its place on a lower plane.\n\nPerhaps the greatest test of all, however, in regard to the worth of an\nartistic production is to inquire whence it came, what was its source.\nHas hunger or superabundance created it?[84]\n\nIf the first, the work will make nobody richer. It will rather rob\nthem of what they have. It is likely to be either (A) true to Nature,\n(B) uglier than Nature, or (C) absurdly unnatural. A is the product of\nthe ordinary man, B is the product of the man below mediocrity, save\nin a certain manual dexterity, and C is the outcome of the tyrannical\nwill of the sufferer,[85] who wishes to wreak his revenge on all that\nthrives, and is beautiful and happy, and which bids him weave fantastic\nworlds of his own, away from this one, where people of his calibre can\nforget their wretched ailments and evil humours, and wallow in their\nown feverish nightmares of overstrained, palpitating and neuropathic\nyearnings. A is poverty-realism or Police Art. B is pessimism and\nincompetent Art. C is Romanticism.\n\nWhere superabundance is active, the work is the gift and the blessing\nof the will to power of some higher man. It will seem as much above\nNature to mediocre people as its creator is above them. But, since it\nwill brook no contradiction, it will actually value Nature afresh, and\nstimulate them to share in this new valuation.\n\nWhere poverty is active, the work is an act of robbery. It is what\npsychologists call a reflex action resulting from a stimulus--the\nonly kind of action that we understand nowadays: hence our belief in\nDeterminism, Darwinism, and such explanations of Art as we find in\nbooks by Taine and other writers who share his views.\n\nThe Art which must have experience and which is not the outcome of\ninner riches brought to the surface by meditation--this is the art of\npoverty. The general modern belief in experience and in the necessity\nof furnishing the mind by going direct to Nature and to reality shows\nto what extent the Art of to-day has become reactive instead of active.\n\nThe greater part of modern realism is the outcome of this poverty. It\nis reactive art, resulting from reflex actions; and, as such, is an\nexceedingly unhealthy sign. Not only does it show that the power of\nresisting stimuli is waning or altogether absent; but it also denotes\nthat that inner power which requires no stimulus to discharge itself is\neither lacking or exceedingly weak.\n\nWith these words upon the subject of realism, I shall now conclude this\npart of Lecture II.\n\nI shall return to realism in my next lecture; but you will see that\nit will be of a different kind from that of which I have just spoken.\nIt will be superior, and will be the outcome of riches rather than\nof poverty. Although beneath genuine Ruler-art, which transfigures\nreality, it will nevertheless be superior to the poverty-realism\nwhich I have just discussed; for it will be of a kind which is forced\nupon the powerful artist who, in the midst of a world upholding other\nvalues than his own, is obliged to bring forward his ideal with such\na preponderance of characteristic features as would seem almost to\nrepresent a transcript of reality. This realism I call _militant\nrealism_, to distinguish it from the former kind.\n\nIn discussing medi\u00e6val. Renaissance and Greek Art, in my next lecture,\nthis distinction will, I hope, be made quite plain to you.\n\n\n[73] _G. E._, p. 120\n\n[74] _Z._, I, XXI.\n\n[75] _The Book of Tea_, p. 152.\n\n[76] _Ibid._ 199.\n\n[77] _Z._, I, XXVI.\n\n[78] _System der \u00c6sthetik_ (1790), pp. 9, 10, 11, where,\nin replying to the question why the arts were not only pursued with\nmore perfection by the ancients, but also judged with more competence\nby them, he says: \"Their material was drawn from the heart of their\nnation, and from the life of their citizens, and the manner of\nrepresenting it and of framing it was in keeping with the character\nand needs of the people.... If the Greek lent his ear to the poet, or\nhis eye to the painter and sculptor, of his age, he was shown subjects\nwhich were familiar to his soul, intimately related to his imagination,\nand, as it were, bound by blood-relationship to his heart.\" On pp. 12,\n13, he also shows that if Art is less thrilling nowadays, it is because\npeoples are too mixed, and a single purpose no longer characterizes\ntheir striving.\n\n[79] _\u00c6sthetic_ (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p. 210 et seq.\n\n[80] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 277: \"The greatness of an artist is\nnot to be measured by the beautiful feelings which he evokes: let this\nbelief be left to the girls. It should be measured according to the\nextent to which he approaches the grand style, according to the extent\nto which he is capable of the grand style. This style and great passion\nhave this in common--that they scorn to please; that they forget to\npersuade; that they command; that they will....\" See also p. 241.\n\n[81] This was first brought to my notice by my friend, Dr.\nWrench. See _The Grammar of Life_, by G. T. Wrench (Heinemann, 1908),\np. 218. Although the development of this idea really belongs to a\nspecial treatise on the laws of Style in painting, it is interesting\nto note here that this excellent principle is quickly grasped if the\npowerfully alliterative phrases: \"Where there's a will there's a way,\"\nor \"Goodness gracious!\" or \"To-morrow, to-morrow, and not to-day,\" be\nspoken before certain pictures, or written beneath them. The first\nphrase, for instance, written beneath the \"Aldobrindini Marriage,\" or\nBotticelli's \"Birth of Venus,\" is seen immediately to be next of kin to\nthese pictures as an art-form; and the same holds good of the second\nwritten beneath Reynolds's \"John Dunning (First Lord Ashburton) and his\nSister,\" or Manet's \"Olympia.\"\n\n[82] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 277.\n\n[83] _W. P._, Vol. II. p. 288. \"The most convincing artists\nare those who make harmony ring out of every discord, and who benefit\nall things by the gift of their power and their inner harmony: in\nevery work of art they merely reveal the symbol of their inmost\nexperiences--their creation is gratitude for their life.\" See also p.\n307.\n\n[84] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 280: \"In regard to all \u00e6sthetic\nvalues I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every\nindividual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been\ncreative here?\"\n\n[85] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 281.\n\n\n\n\nPart III\n\n\nLANDSCAPE AND PORTRAIT PAINTING\n\n\n    \"He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for\n    the service of man: that he may bring forth fruit out of the\n    earth.\"--Psalms civ. 14.\n\n\n\n\n\n1. The Value \"Ugly\" in the Mouth of the Creator.\n\n\nIn the last section of this lecture, I told you of three kinds of\nugliness. I said there was the ugliness of chaos and disorder, which\nprovokes the hate of the layman, and which the artist overcomes. I\nspoke of the ugliness of form in Art, which appeared when the artist\nhad failed in his endeavour to master disorder, or when he had selected\na subject already ordered, in which he has left himself no scope\nfor manifesting his power; and I also pointed to that ugliness of\nsubject in Art, in which the ordinary beholder, as well as the artist,\nrecognizes the degeneration of his type or a low example of it.\n\nThere is, however, a fourth aspect of ugliness, and that is the\nesoteric postulation of the value \"ugly\" by the creator. I have shown\nhow creating also involves giving, and therefore loss--just as\nprocreation does; but what is the precise meaning of the word \"ugly\" in\nthe mouth of the Dionysian artist?\n\nWe must remember that his eyes are not our eyes, and that his mind is\nnot our mind. He cannot look at Life without enriching her. But what is\nhis attitude to the transfigurations of former artists?\n\nBefore these the Dionysian artist can feel only loathing, and, in\na paroxysm of hatred, he raises his axe and shatters the past into\nfragments. All around him, a moment before, people said: \"The world\nis beautiful!\" But he, thoroughly alone, groans at its unspeakable\nugliness.\n\nHe rejoices as he sees the fragments fly beneath his mighty weapon,\nand the greater the beauty of the thing he destroys, the higher is his\nexultation. For, to him, \"the joy in the destruction of the most noble\nthing and at the sight of its gradual undoing,\" is \"the joy over what\nis coming and what lies in the future,\" and this \"triumphs over actual\nthings, however good they may be.\"[1]\n\nWhat he calls \"ugly,\" then, has nothing whatsoever in common with any\nother concept of ugliness; it is simply the outcome of his creative\nspirit \"which compels him to regard what has existed hitherto as no\nlonger acceptable, but as botched, worthy of being suppressed--ugly!\"[2]\nAnd thus it is peculiar to him alone.\n\nI have shown you that Nietzsche explains pleasure, \u00e6sthetically, as\nthe appropriation of the world by man's Will to Power. Pain, or evil,\nnow obtains its \u00e6sthetic justification. It is the outcome of the\ndestruction that the creator spreads in a world of Becoming; it is the\nperiodical smashing of Being by the Dionysian creator who can endure\nBecoming. No creator can tolerate the past save as a thing which once\nserved as his schooling. But a people are usually one with their past.\nTo them it is at once a grandfather, a father, and an elder brother.\nIn a trice the creator deprives them of these relatives. Through him\nthey are made orphans, brotherless and alone. Hence the pain that is\ninevitably associated with the joy of destruction and of creation.\n\nNot only a creative genius, however, but also a creative age, may use\nthe word ugly in this Dionysian sense. For a robust and rich people\nscorn to treasure and to hoard that which has gone before. And thus our\nmuseums, alone, are perhaps the greatest betrayal of our times.\n\nWhen the Athenians returned to their ruined Acropolis in the first\nhalf of the fifth century before Christ, they did not even scratch\nthe ground to recover the masterpieces that lay broken, though not\ncompletely destroyed, all around them. And, as Professor Gardner\nobserves, it is fortunate for us that no mortar was required for the\nbuildings which were being erected to take the place of those that\nhad been destroyed; otherwise these fragments of marble sculpture\nand architecture, instead of being buried to help in filling up the\nterraced area of the Acropolis, would certainly have gone to the\nlime-kiln.[3]\n\nThe men of the Renaissance, in the same way, regarded the buildings of\nancient Rome merely as so many quarries whence they might bear away\nthe materials for their own constructions. And whether Paul II wished\nto build the Palazzo di Venezia, or Cardinal Riario the Cancellaria,\nthe same principle obtained. At the same period we also find Raphael\ndestroying the work of earlier painters by covering it with his own\ncompositions,[4] and Michelangelo not hesitating to obliterate\neven Perugino's altar frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in order to paint\nhis \"Judgment.\" While in comparatively recent times, at a moment\nwhen a great future seemed to be promised to modern Egypt, Mehemet\nAli sent his architect to the sacred Pyramids of Gizeh, to rob them\nof the alabaster which he required for his magnificent mosque on the\ncitadel of Cairo.[5]\n\nFrom a purely arch\u00e6ological and scholastic point of view, therefore,\nit is possible to justify our museums--the British Museum, for\ninstance. But from the creative or artistic standpoint, they are simply\na confession of impotence, of poverty, and of fear; and, as such, are\nutterly contemptible. In any case, however, I think that, for the\nsake of public taste and sanity, some of the ugly fragments--such as\ntwo-thirds of the maimed and mutilated parts of bodies from the Eastern\nand Western pediments of the Parthenon--ought never to have been\nallowed to stand outside a students' room in a school of arch\u00e6ology or\nof art, and even in such institutions as these, I very much question\nthe value of the pieces to which I have referred.\n\n\n[1] _W. P._, Vol I, p. 333. See also _B. T._, pp. 27, 28.\n\n[2] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 333.\n\n[3] _A Handbook of Greek Sculpture_, by E. A. Gardner, M.A., p. 212.\n\n[4] Piero della Francesca's decorations in the Vatican, painted under\nthe direction of Pope Nicholas V, were ultimately destroyed by Raphael.\nSee W. S. Waters, M.A., _Piero della Francesca_, pp. 23, 24, 108.\n\n[5] See also Fergusson, _A History of Architecture_, Vol. I, p. 48:\n\"... If we had made the same progress in the higher that we have in the\nlower branches of the building art, we should see a Gothic Cathedral\npulled down with the same indifference, content to know that we could\neasily replace it by one far nobler and more worthy of our age and\nintelligence. No architect during the Middle Ages ever hesitated to\npull down any part of a cathedral that was old and going to decay;\nand to replace it with something in the style of the day, however\nincongruous that might be; and if we were progressing as they were, we\nshould have as little compunction in following the same course.\"\n\n\n\n\n2. Landscape Painting.\n\n\nUp to the present, I have spoken only of Man as the proper subject\nof Ruler-Art. I have done this because Man is the highest subject of\nArt in general, and because the moment humanity ceases from holding\nthe first place in our interest, something must be amiss, either with\nhumanity, or with ourselves.\n\nStill, there are degrees and grades among ruler-artists. All of them\ncannot aspire to the exposition of the highest human values. And just\nas some turn to design and to ornament, and thus, in a small way,\narrange and introduce order into a small area of the world, so others\n--standing halfway between these designers and the valuers of humanity\n--apply their powers quite instinctively to Nature away from Man. They\nhave a thought to express--let us say it is: \"Order is the highest\ngood,\" or \"Power is the source of all pleasure and beauty,\" or \"Anarchy\ncontends in vain against the governing power of light which is genius,\"\nand in the case of this last thought they paint a rugged scene which\nthey reveal as arranged, simplified and transfigured by the power of\nthe sun. In each of these cases they use Nature merely as a symbol, or\na vehicle, by means of which their thought or valuation is borne in\nupon their fellows; and they do not start out as actual admirers of\nmere scenery, wishing only to repeat it as carefully as possible.\n\nEven when it uses Nature merely as a symbol or a vehicle, however,\nthere can be little doubt that this kind of Ruler-Art is a degree lower\nin rank than the art which concerns itself with man; and when this\nkind of art becomes realistic, as it did with Constable and all his\nfollowers, it is literally superfluous. Only when the landscape is a\nminor element, serving but to receive and convey the mood or aspiration\nof the artist, is it a subject for Ruler-Art, and then the hand of\nman should be visible in it everywhere. With the artist's arranging,\nsimplifying and transfiguring power observable in Nature, landscape\npainting, as Kant very wisely observed in his _Kritik der Urteilskraft_,\nbecomes a process of pictorial gardening, and as such can teach very\ngreat lessons.\n\nStill, all landscapes ought to be approached with caution by the lover\nof Ruler-Art; for unless they are treated with an extreme ruler-spirit,\nthey point too imperatively away from man, to promise a development\nthat can be wholesomely human.\n\nWhen it is remembered that landscape painting only became a really\nimportant and serious branch of art when all the turmoil and\ncontradiction which three successive changes of values had brought\nabout were at their height--I refer to the blow levelled at Medi\u00e6val\nvalues by the Renaissance, to 'the blow levelled at the Renaissance\nby the Counter-Renaissance and Protestantism (in its German form of\nEvangelism and in its English form as Puritanism), and to the blow\nlevelled at the artistic spirit of Europe in general by the rise of\nmodern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--and when,\ntherefore, doubt and confusion had already entered men's minds as to\nwhat was to be believed about Man and Life; when it is remembered also\nthat it was precisely in the north, where, as we shall see, culture was\nless a matter of tradition than in the south, that landscape found its\nmost energetic and most realistic exponents--from Joachim Patenier[6]\nto Ruysdael; and that it was in the north, even after the\nRenaissance, that the negative character of Christianity, in regard to\nhumanity and to Life, found its strongest adherents; the importance of\nestablishing a very severe canon in regard to all landscape painting,\nand of insisting upon very high ruler qualities in this branch of the\nart, ought to be clear to all who take this subject to heart.\n\nFor, difficult as it may seem to realize it, there is nothing\nwhatsoever artistically beautiful in landscape.[7] Only sentimental[8]\ntownspeople, compelled by their particular mode of existence\nto gaze daily on their own hideous homes and streets, ever manifest\na senselessly ardent and determined affection for green fields and\nhills, for their own sake; and with English psychologists, it would be\nquite admissible here to say that all beauty that particular people\nbelieve to exist in country scenery, is the outcome of association. The\nancients liked the sunlit and fruitful valley because of its promise of\nsustenance and wealth; but they showed no love of nature as such.[9]\n\nMr. S. H. Butcher,[10] for instance, points out how landscape painting\nonly became a serious and independent branch of art among the Greeks\nafter the fourth century B.C.--that is to say, long over a century\nafter the date when, according to Freeman, the decline of Hellas\nbegan; and, in speaking of the Greeks in their best period, he says:\n\"They do not attach themselves to nature with that depth of feeling,\nwith that gentle melancholy, that characterizes the moderns....\nTheir impatient imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to\nthe drama of human life.\" J. A. Symonds tells us that \"Conciseness,\nsimplicity and an almost prosaic accuracy are the never-failing\nattributes of classical descriptive art--moreover, humanity was always\nmore present to their minds than to ours. Nothing evoked sympathy\nfrom the Greek unless it appeared before him in human shape, or in\nconnection with some human sentiment. The ancient poets do not describe\ninanimate nature as such, or attribute a vague spirituality to fields\nand clouds. That feeling for the beauty of the world which is embodied\nin such poems as Shelley's _Ode to the West Wind_ gave birth in their\nimagination to definite legends, involving some dramatic interest and\nconflict of passions.\"[11] And Mahaffy and Mr. W. R. Hardie tell the same\nstory.[12]\n\nBut even among sensible moderns, uninfected by sentimental fever, the\nlove of nature is mostly of a purely utilitarian kind, as witness the\nlove of cornfields, hayfields and orchards. The farmer at certain times\ngazes kindly at the purple hills behind his acres of cultivated land,\nbecause their colour indicates the coming rain. The cattle-breeder\nsmiles as he surveys the Romney marshes, and thinks of the splendid\npastureland they would make.\n\nIn fact, the attitude of sensible mankind in general towards landscape,\nas landscape, seems to have been pretty well summarized by the writer\nof the 104th Psalm, from whom, according to W. H. Rhiel, the Christian\nworld, and especially the Teutonic part of it, seems to have derived\nmuch of their love of the beauties of Nature.[13]\n\nWhat constitutes the artistic beauty in a painted landscape, then, is\nthe mood, the particular human quality, that the artist throws into\nit. As the French painters say, a landscape is a state of the soul;\nand unless the particular mood or idea with which the artist invests\na natural scene have some value and interest, and be painted in a\ncommanding or ruler manner, it is a mere piece of superfluous foolery,\nwhich may, however, find its proper place on a great railway poster or\nin an estate agent's illustrated catalogue.\n\nThere is, on the other hand, another kind of love of nature, which\ndates only from the eighteenth century, and which is thoroughly and\nunquestionably contemptible. This also, like the above, is the result\nof association, and has nothing artistic in its constitution; but this\ntime it is an association which is misanthropic and negative. I refer\nto what is generally known as the love of the Romantic in Nature, the\nlove of mountains, torrents, unhandseled copses, virgin woods, and\nrough and uncultivated country.\n\nIn this love a new element enters the appreciation of Nature, and\nthat is a dislike and mistrust of everything that bears the stamp of\nman's power or his labour, and therefore an exaltation of everything\nuntutored, uncultured, free, unconstrained and wild.\n\nThis attitude of mind seems to have been unknown not only to the Greeks\nand to the Romans,[14] but, practically, to all European nations up\nto the time of Rousseau. As Friedl\u00e4nder says, it would be difficult\nto find evidence of travellers going to mountain country in quest of\nbeauty, before the eighteenth century,[15] and the majority of those who\nwere forced to visit such country, before that time, in their Journeys\nto foreign cities, describe it as horrible, ugly and depressing. Oliver\nGoldsmith is a case in point. Riehl declares that in guidebooks, even\nas late as 1750, Berlin, Leipzig, Augsburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, etc.,\nare spoken of as lying in nice and cheerful surroundings, whilst the\nmost picturesque parts (according to modern notions) of the Black\nForest, of the Harz, and the Thuringian woods are described as \"very\ngloomy,\" \"barren,\" and \"monstrous,\" or at least as not particularly\npleasant. And then he adds: \"This is not the private opinion of the\nindividual topographists: it is the standpoint of the age.\"[16]\n\nEven in the Bible illustrations of the eighteenth century, we also find\nthe same spirit prevailing. Paradise--that is to say, the original\npicture of virgin glory in natural beauty--is made to look like what\nmoderns would call a monotonously flat garden, devoid of any indication\nof a hill, in which the Almighty, or Adam, or somebody, has already\nclipped all the trees and hedges, and carefully trimmed the grass.\n\nYou may argue with Riehl[17] that medi\u00e6val painters must have thought\nrough, wild and barren country beautiful; otherwise, why did they put\nit in their pictures? One low-German painter of the Middle Ages, for\ninstance, painted a picture of Cologne, and, contrary to the genuine\nnature of the surrounding country, introduced a background of jagged\nand rocky mountains. Why did he do this, if he did not think jagged and\nrocky mountains beautiful?\n\nIn reply to this I cannot do better than quote Friedl\u00e4nder again, who\non this very question writes as follows--\n\n\"At least the lack of a sense for the beauty of mountain scenery, which\nis noticeable in the poetry and travels of the Middle Ages, viewed as\na whole, ought to lead us to suspect that this same sense could have\nbeen only very slightly apparent in the realm of pictorial art. But\nought we not to ascribe the fantastic and romantic art ideal of the old\nmasters, in landscape, rather to their endeavour to transfer the scene\nand figures of their pictures from reality to an imaginary world?...\nEven if historical painters like John van Eyck and Memling eagerly\nintroduced jagged rocks and sharp mountain (which apparently they had\nnever seen) into their backgrounds ... it is difficult to recognize\nany real understanding or even knowledge of the nature of mountains in\nall this; but simply an old and therefore very conventional form of\nheroic landscape which was considered as the only suitable one for a\nlarge number of subjects.\"[18]\n\nBut there is other evidence, besides that to be found in medi\u00e6val\npoetry and travels, which shows to what extent the particular sense\nfor natural beauty, which I am now discussing, was lacking in the\nMiddle Ages. Its absence is also illustrated by the arrangement of\ncastles and other buildings. Mr. d'Auvergne, in his work _The English\nCastles_, more than once calls attention to this, and instances a tower\nat Dunstanburgh Castle,[19] which, though commanding a wildly romantic\nprospect, was selected for the vilest domestic uses.\n\nSuddenly, all this is contradicted and reversed. Precisely where man's\nhand has been, everything is supposed to be polluted, unclean, and\nugly; and rough, uncultivated nature, however rugged, however unkempt,\nis exalted above all that which the human spirit has shaped and trained.\n\nHow did this change come about?\n\nTo begin with, let it be said, that it was not quite so sudden as\nFriedl\u00e4nder would have us suppose. Long before the dawn of the\neighteenth century, the very principles that were at the base of\nEuropean life and aspirations--the principle of the depravity of man,\nthe principle of liberty for liberty's sake, the principle of the\npursuit of general truth; and finally, the principle that experience\n--that is to say, a direct appeal to nature--was the best method of\nfurnishing the mind--all these principles had been leading steadily to\none conclusion, and this conclusion Rousseau was the first to embody in\nhis energetic and fulminating protest against culture, tradition, human\npower and society. And the fact that his doctrine spread so rapidly,\nthat within fifty years of its exposition, with the help of men like\nCoxe, Ramond de Carbonni\u00e8res, \u00c9tienne de S\u00e9nancour, T\u00f6ppefer, Saussure\nand Bourit, it had practically become the credo and the passion of\nEurope, shows how ready the age must have been for the lessons Rousseau\ntaught it.\n\nAll of you who have read the fulsome and bombastic praise of Nature,\ntogether with the bitter disparagement of the work of man, in such\nworks as _La Nouvelle H\u00e9loise_, the _Confessions_, his letters to _Monsieur\nde Malesherbes_, and his _Reveries of a lonely Rambler_, will not require\nto be told the gospel Rousseau preaches.[20]\n\nSuffice it to say, that he successfully created a love of the rough, of\nthe rugged, the unhandseled and the uncultivated in the minds of almost\nall Europeans--especially Northerners, and that this love was rapidly\nreflected in landscape painting.\n\nThis new feeling for the romantic, for the unconstrained and for\nthe savage in Nature, although it soon dominated art, was, in its\nessentials, quite foreign to art and to the artist. It had nothing\nin common with the motives that prompt and impel the artist to his\ncreations. Its real essence was moral and not artistic; its fundamental\nfeature was its worship of the abstract principles of liberty, anarchy\nand the absence of culture, which rude nature exemplifies on all sides;\nand it was a moral or scientific spirit that animated it, whether in\nRousseau or in his followers.\n\nFriedrich Schiller, who entirely supports Rousseau's particular kind\nof love for Nature, frankly admits this[21] in his able and profound\nanalysis of the sentiment in question; whatever self-contempt, and\ncontempt of adult manhood, may have lain behind Rousseau's valuations,\nSchiller brings all of it openly into the light of day, and in his\nefforts to support the Frenchman's school of thought, literally exposes\nit to ridicule.\n\nOne or two voices, such as Hegel's[22] and Chateaubriand's, were raised in\nprotest against this thoroughly vulgar and sentimental attitude towards\nsavage and wild phenomena; but they were unable to resist a movement,\nthe strength of which had been accumulating for so many centuries in\nthe hearts of almost all Europeans; and, ultimately, numbers triumphed.\n\nEven the hand of man--of the artist--in a painted landscape, got\nto be a thing of the past. Realism--because it most conscientiously\nrepeated that unconstrained and anarchical spirit which the romantic\nage loved to detect in matted weeds, in tangled and impenetrable\ncoppices, in thick festoons of parasitic plants, in unhandseled\nbrambles and in babbling brooks--became the ruling principle.\nClassical influence alone was able for a while to resist too rapid a\ndecline; but soon we find Constable declaring in the early part of\nthe nineteenth century, that \"there is nothing ugly,\" and addressing\naspiring artists in these words: \"Observe that thy best director, thy\nperfect guide is Nature. Copy from her. In her paths is thy triumphal\narch. She is above all other teachers; and ever confide in her with\na bold heart:\"[23] and a whole host of people following in his wake and\napplauding his principles.\n\nJust as England by her influence had created Rousseau and his peculiar\nmode of thinking,[24] so, again, British influence was to show its\npower in the world of Art. The parallel is striking, but nevertheless\ntrue. In the years 1824, 1826 and 1829, Constable, whom Muther calls\nthe father of landscape painting,[25] and whom Meier Graefe calls the\nfather of modern painting,[26] exhibited in Paris, and his style soon\nbecame a dominant force.[27]\n\nStendhal, though very much too moderate, was one of the first to\nraise, his voice against the lack of idealism (transfiguration,\nsimplification) in these English pictures; but his efforts were of\nno avail, and he might just as well have shouted in the face of a\nhurricane.\n\n\n[6] According to Dr. Wilhelm L\u00fcbke, _Outlines of the History of Art_\n(Vol. II, p. 452), Patenier might almost be called the founder of the\nmodern northern school of landscape painting. See also p. 575 in the\nsame volume. On this subject see also Muther, _Geschichte der Malerei_,\nVol. II, p. 72: \"Although in a way it is possible to establish in what\nrespect the painting of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century ran\nparallel with that of Italy, it is also necessary to emphasize the\nfact, on the other hand, that painting.\" Muther mentions Hendrik Met de\nBles, Joachim de Patenier and Bosch as the leaders of this tendency.\n\n[7] See W. H. Riehl, _Culturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten_, p. 67.\n\n[8] This use of the word sentimental in regard to the love of nature\nfor its own sake, is not by any means unprecedented. Schiller, in his\nessay _Ueber naive und sentimentale Dichtung_, as an advocate in favour\nof the love in question, constantly refers to it as sentimental. (See\n1838 Edition of _Works_, Vol. XII, pp. 167-281.)\n\n[9] See W. R. Hardie, _Lectures in Classical Subjects_, pp. 16-17:\n\"What are the scenes in Nature which had the greatest attraction\nfor the ancients? The landscape which a Greek would choose for his\nenvironment was a tranquil one, a cultivated spot or a spot capable\nof cultivation;\" and p. 21: \"... apart from the work of one or two\nexceptional poets like \u00c6schylus or Pindar, it must be allowed that the\nancient view of Nature was somewhat prosaic and practical, showing a\ndecided preference for fertile, habitable and accessible country.\"\n\n[10] _Some Aspects of Greek Genius_, p. 252. See also his remarks,\npp. 246-248, concluding thus: \"The great period, indeed, of the Attic\ndrama, when the dialectic movement of thought was in full operation,\ncan hardly be called 'simple' in Schiller's sense\" [he is quoting\nSchiller on \"Simple and Sentimental Poetry,\" where in the opening\nparagraph Schiller applies the word _naiv_, simple, to a natural\nobject, as meaning that state in which nature and art stand contrasted\nand the former shames the latter]; \"yet even then, as in Homer, nature\nis but the background of the picture, the scene in which man's activity\ndisplays itself. The change of sentiment sets in only from the time\nof Alexander onwards. Nature is then sought for her own sake; artists\nand poets turn to her with disinterested love; her moods are lovingly\nnoted, and she is brought into close relationship with man.\"\n\n[11] _Studies of the Greek Poets_, Vol. II, p. 258.\n\n[12] See _Social Life in Greece_ (Mahaffy), p. 426, and _What have the\nGreeks done for Modern Civilization?_ (Mahaffy, 1909), p. 11: \"External\nnature was the very thing that the Greeks, all through their great\nhistory, felt less keenly than we should have expected. Their want of a\nsense of the picturesque has ever been cited as a notable defect.\" See\nalso W. R. Hardie, _Lectures on Classical Subjects_ (1903), p. 8: \"To\nwhat extent do the modern feelings and fancies about Nature appear in\nthe ancient poets?... The usual and substantially true answer is that\nthey appear to a very slight extent. Like Whitehead, the Greek is slow\nto recognize 'a bliss that leans not to mankind.'\"\n\n[13] _Culturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten_ (2nd Edition, 1859), p. 63.\n\n[14] See S. H. Butcher, _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_, pp. 265,\n266: \"Mountains and lonely woods and angry seas, in all periods of\nGreek literature, so far from calling out a sublime sense of mystery\nand awe, raise images of terror and repulsion, of power divorced from\nbeauty and alien to art. Homer, when for the moment he pauses to\ndescribe a place, chooses one in which the hand of man is visible;\nwhich he has reclaimed from the wild, made orderly, subdued to his own\nuse. Up to the last days of Greek antiquity man has not yet learnt\nso to lose himself in the boundless life of Nature, as to find a\ncontemplative pleasure in her wilder and more majestic scenes.\"\n\nSee also J. A. Symonds, _Studies of the Greek Poets_, Vol. II, p. 257:\n\"The Greeks and Romans paid less attention to inanimate nature than\nwe do, and were beyond all question repelled by the savage grandeur\nof marine and mountain scenery, preferring landscapes of smiling\nand cultivated beauty to rugged sublimity or the picturesqueness of\ndecay....\"\n\nSee also W. R. Hardie, _Lectures on Classical Subjects_, pp. 3, 9, 17,\nand Friedlander, _Roman Life and Manners_, Vol. I. pp. 391, 392, 393,\n395.\n\n[15] _Ueber die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Gef\u00fchls f\u00fcr das\nRomantische in der Natur_, pp. 4, 10.\n\n[16] _Culturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten_, p. 57.\n\n[17] _Ibid._, pp. 59, 60.\n\n[18] _Ueber die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Gef\u00fchls f\u00fcr das\nRomantische in der Natur_, pp. 2, 3.\n\n[19] E. B. d'Auvergne, _The English Castles_, pp. 216, 217.\n\n[20] See _Lettres Nouvelles address\u00e9es \u00e0 Monsieur de Malesherbes_\n(Geneva, 1780), 3rd letter, p. 43. Speaking of a lonely walk in the\nneighbourhood of his country house, he says: \"J'allois alors d'un pas\nplus tranquille chercher quelque lieu sauvage dans la for\u00eat, quelque\nlieu d\u00e9sert, o\u00f9 rien ne me montrant la main de l'homme ne m'annon\u00e7\u00e2t\nla servitude et la domination, enfin quelqu' asyle o\u00f9 je pusse croire\navoir p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9 le premier, et o\u00f9 nul tiers importun ne vint s'entreposer\nentre la nature et moi. C'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 qu'elle sembloit d\u00e9ployer \u00e0 mes\nyeux une magnificence toujours nouvelle. L'or des gen\u00eats et la pourpre\ndes bruy\u00e8res frappoient mes yeux d'un luxe qui touchoit mon c\u0153ur; la\nmajest\u00e9 des arbres\"--and so on in the same romantic strain for twenty\nlines. It is impossible to reproduce every passage I should like\nto quote, in order to reveal the full range of Rousseau's passion\nfor nature and his bitter contempt of man and man's work; but the\nabove is typical, and other equally gushing passages may be found in\n_Les R\u00eaveries du Promeneur Solitaire_ (Paris, 1882), pp. 119, 138,\netc., etc.; _La Nouvelle H\u00e9loise_, especially the 11th letter; _Les\nConfessions_ (Ed. 1889, Vol. I), Bk. VI, pp. 229, 234, 238, 245, and\nBk. IV, p. 169: \"... on sait d\u00e9j\u00e0 ce que j'entends par un beau pays.\nJamais pays de plaine, quelque beau qu'il f\u00fbt, ne parut tel \u00e0 mes yeux.\nIl me faut des torrents, des rochers, des sapins, des bois noirs, des\nmontagnes, des chemins raboteux \u00e0 monter et \u00e0 descendre, des pr\u00e9cipices\n\u00e0 mes cot\u00e9s, qui me fassent peur.... J'eus ce plaisir ... en approchant\nde Chamb\u00e9ri ... car ce qu'il y a de plaisir dans mon go\u00fbt pour des\nlieux escarp\u00e9s, est qu'ils me font tourner la t\u00eate: et j'aime beaucoup\nce tournoiement pourvu que je sois en suret\u00e9.\"\n\n[21] _S\u00e4mmtliche Werke_ (Stuttgart and T\u00fcbingen, 1838), Vol. XII,\n\"Ueber naive und sentimentale Dichtung,\" p. 168, 169: \"This kind of\npleasure at the sight of Nature is not an \u00e6sthetic pleasure, but a\nmoral one: for it is arrived at by means of an idea, and it is not\nfelt immediately the act of contemplation has taken place, neither\ndoes it depend for its existence upon beauty of form.\" And, p. 189,\nafter pointing out that the Greeks completely lacked this feeling for\nNature, he says: \"Whence comes this different sense? How is it that we\nwho, in everything related to Nature, are inferior to the ancients,\nshould pay such homage to her, should cling so heartily to her, and\nbe able to embrace the inanimate world with such warmth of feeling?\nIt is not our greater conformity to Nature, but, on the contrary, the\nopposition to her, which is inherent in our conditions and our customs,\nthat impels us to find some satisfaction in the physical world for our\nawakening instinct for truth and primitive rudeness, which, like the\nmoral tendency from which that instinct arises, lies incorruptible and\nindestructible in all human hearts and can find no satisfaction in the\nmoral world.\"\n\n[22] See _Hegels Leben_, by Karl Rosenkranz, especially pp. 475, 476\nand 482, 483.\n\n[23] See _The Life and Letters of John Constable_, by C. R. Leslie,\nR.A., pp. 343, 349.\n\n[24] See J. Morley's _Rousseau_, Vol. I, pp. 85, 86: \"According to\nhis own account, it was Voltaire's Letters on the English which first\ndrew him seriously to study, and nothing which that illustrious man\nwrote at this time escaped him.\" And p. 146: \"Locke was Rousseau's most\nimmediate inspirer, and the latter affirmed himself to have treated\nthe same matters exactly on Locke's principles. Rousseau, however,\nexaggerated Locke's politics as greatly as Condillac exaggerated his\nmetaphysics.\" And p. 147: \"We need not quote passages from Locke to\ndemonstrate the substantial correspondence of assumption between him\nand the author of the Social Contract. They are to be found in every\nchapter.\"\n\n[25] _Geschichte der Malerei_, Vol. III, p. 175.\n\n[26] _Modern Art_, Vol. I, p. 140.\n\n[27] _Ibid._, p. 138: \"What his fatherland neglected was taken over\nby the Continent. Strange as this neglect may seem, the rapidity\nwith which Europe assimilated Constable is even more remarkable.\nThe movement began in Paris.... France needed what Constable had to\ngive.... The young Frenchmen saw the traditional English freedom with\neyes sharpened by enthusiasm.\"\n\n\n\n\n3. Portrait Painting.\n\n\nWhen one now adds to these influences, the steady rise of the power of\nthe bourgeoisie in Europe, from the seventeenth century onward, and,\nas a result of this increasing power, an uninterrupted growth in the\nart of portrait painting--a growth that attained such vast proportions\nthat it cast all attainments of a like nature in any other age or\ncontinent into the shade--one can easily understand what factors have\nbeen the most formidable opponents of Ruler-Art in the Occident, since\nthe event of the Renaissance.\n\nAfter all that I have said concerning the principles of Ruler-Art, it\nwill scarcely be necessary for me to expatiate upon those elements in\nportrait painting which are antagonistic to these principles; for when\nyou think of portrait painting as it has been developed by the claims\nof the bourgeoisie in Europe, you must not have Leonardo da Vinci's\n\"Mona Lisa\" in mind. Neither must you consider that portrait work\nin which, by chance, the artist has had before him a model who, in\nevery feature of face or of figure, corresponded to his ideal; nor\nthat in which the artist has been able to allow himself to exercise\nhis simplifying and transfiguring power. Otherwise some of the best\nof Rubens' and Rembrandt's work would of necessity come under the ban\nwhich we must set upon by far the greater number of portraits.\n\n[Illustration: Saskia By Rembrandt.]\n\nWhen Rembrandt painted his bride Saskia,[28] for instance, the extent to\nwhich he exercised his simplifying and transfiguring power is amazing,\nand precludes all possibility of our classing this work among the\nportraits which should be condemned. He knew perfectly well that poor\nSaskia was not beautiful--what beautiful girl would have condescended\nto look at Rembrandt?--so what did he do? He cast all the upper and\nright side of her face in shadow, and deliberately concentrated all\nhis attention, and consequently the attention of the beholder as well,\nupon three or four square inches of nice round muscle in the lower part\nof Saskia's young cheek and neck. But how many plain daughters of rich\nbourgeois would allow three or four square inches of their cheek and\nneck to be exalted in this way, at the cost of their eyes and their\nnose and their brow? The same remarks also apply to Rembrandt's \"Jewish\nRabbi\" in the National Gallery. There he had to deal with an emaciated,\ncareworn old Jew. How did he overcome the difficulty? All of you who\nknow this picture will be able to answer this question for yourselves,\nand I need not, therefore, go into the matter.\n\nThis, then, is not the class of portrait work which need necessarily\ndeteriorate the power of art. What does deteriorate this power, is\nthat other and more common class of portrait painting which began in\nHolland in the seventeenth century, and in which each sitter insisted\nupon discovering all his little characteristics and individual\npeculiarities; in which, as Muther says, each sitter wished to find \"a\ncounterfeit of his personality,\" and in which \"no artistic effect, but\nresemblance alone was the object desired.\"[29]\n\nIt was the insistence upon this kind of portrait work by the wealthy\nbourgeoisie of England, which well-nigh drove Whistler, with his\nruler spirit, out of his mind, and it is precisely this portrait work\nwhich is dominant to-day. In order to be pleasing and satisfactory\nto the people who demand it, this class of painting presupposes the\nsuppression of all those first principles upon which Ruler-Art relies\nin order to flourish and to soar; and where it is seriously and\nearnestly pursued, art is bound to suffer.\n\nThis was recognized three hundred years ago by the Spanish theoretician\nVincenti Carducho, and his judgment still remains the wisest that has\never been written on the subject. In formulating the credo of the\nsixteenth century, he wrote as follows--\n\n\"No great and extraordinary painter was ever a portraitist, for such\nan artist is enabled by judgment and acquired habit to improve upon\nnature. In portraiture, however, he must confine himself to the model,\nwhether it be good or bad, with sacrifice of his observation and\nselection; which no one would like to do who has accustomed his mind\nand his eye to good forms and proportions.\"[30]\n\nOur art at the present day is, unfortunately, very largely the\ndevelopment and natural outcome of the two influences I have just\ndescribed, and that accounts for a good deal for which I have failed to\naccount hitherto.\n\nArt no longer gives: it takes. It no longer reflects beauty on reality:\nit seeks its beauty in reality. And that is why it falls to pieces\njudged by the standard of Ruler-Art. It cannot bear the fierce light\nof an art that is intimate with Life and inseparable from Life. In\nits death-throes it has decked itself with all kinds of metaphysical\nplumes, in order that it may thus, perhaps, live after death. But these\nplumes have been used before by dying gods and have proved of no avail.\n\"Virtue for virtue's sake,\" was the cry of a dying religion. \"Art for\nart's sake,\" is now the cry of an expiring godlike human function.\n\nBut unless this cry be altered very quickly into a cry of art for the\nsake of Life, there will be no chance of saving it. Before this art for\nLife's sake can be discovered, however; before the purpose after which\nit will strive can be determined and established, the first thing to\nwhich we shall have to lend our attention is not art, but mankind.\n\nThe purpose of man is a thousand times more important than the purpose\nof art. The one determines the other. And as a proof of how intimately\nthe two are connected, see how much doubt there is as to the purpose of\nart, precisely at a moment when men also, owing to the terrible civil\nwar which is raging among their values, are beginning to doubt the real\npurpose of human existence.\n\nIt would be useless to indulge in a detailed criticism of individual\nartists. To all those who have followed my arguments closely, no such\nclumsy holding up of particular modern artists to ridicule will seem\nnecessary. In some of your minds these men are idols still, and it\npleases only the envious and the unsuccessful to see niche-statues\nstoned.\n\nThe great artist, as I have shown you, is the synthetic and superhuman\nspirit that apotheosizes the type of a people and thereby stimulates\nthem to a higher mode of life. But where should we go to-day, if we\nwished to look for a type or for a desirable code of values which that\ntype would exemplify?\n\nWe know that we can go nowhere; for such things do not exist. They are\nutterly and hopelessly extinct.\n\nOur first duty, then, is not to mend the arts--you cannot mend a\ncripple. But it is rather to mend the parents who bring forth this\ncripple--to mend Life itself, and above all Man.\n\n\"Away from God and Gods did my will allure me,\" says Zarathustra; \"what\nwould there be to create if there were Gods!\n\n\"But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my burning will; thus doth it\ndrive the hammer unto the stone.\n\n\"Alas, ye fellow-men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me,\nthe image of all my visions! Alas that it should perforce slumber in\nugliest stone!\n\n\"Now rageth my hammer, ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone\nfly the fragments: what's that to me?\n\n\"I shall end the work: for a shadow came unto me--the stillest and\nlightest of all things once came unto me.\n\n\"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Alas my brethren,\nwhat are the gods to me now!\"[31]\n\n\n[28] Dresden Royal Picture Gallery.\n\n[29] _History of Painting_ (Eng. Trans.), Vol. II, pp. 572, 576.\n\n[30] Muther, _History of Painting_ (English Translation), Vol. II, p.\n481.\n\n[31] _Z._, II, XXIV.\n\n\n\n\nLecture III[1]\n\n\n\nNietzsche's Art Principles in the History of Art\n\n\n\n\nPart I\n\n\nChristianity and the Renaissance\n\n    \"For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die: but if ye\n    through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye\n    shall live.\"--Romans viii. 13.\n\n\nI shall now endeavour to show you when and where Nietzsche's Art\ndoctrine, or part of it, has raised its head in the past, and to touch\nlightly upon the conditions which led to its observance.\n\nIn doing this I shall travel backwards, zigzag fashion, from Rome,\nvi\u00e2 Greece to Egypt, and beginning with Christianity, I shall show\nhow the Holy Catholic Church succeeded in establishing one of the\nconditions necessary to all great Art, which, as I have said, is unity\nand solidarity lasting over a long period of time, and forming men\naccording to a definite and severe scheme of values.\n\n\n[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 15th, 1910.\n\n\n1. Rome and the Christian Ideal.\n\n\nThe compass of these lectures does not allow me to say anything\nconcerning the Art of Rome. There are many aspects of this Art which\nare both interesting and important from the historical standpoint;\nbut, from the particular point of view which I am now representing,\ntemporal Rome does not concern me nearly as much as sacred Rome and its\nprovincial Government.\n\nFor the first act of the Christian power was not to volatilize the\nstone bulwarks of the monuments of antiquity, neither was it to\nspiritualize the citizen of the Roman Empire; but it was to convert\nRome the secular administration into Rome the Eternal City.\n\nLong before the exterior of the Gr\u00e6co-Roman column was divided up and\nsub-divided, until, despite its volume, it seemed to have no solidity\nwhatever; and long before men's eyes and bodies were transformed from\nbroad, spacious wells of life into narrow, tenuous cylinders of fire,\na teaching was spread broadcast over the Roman Empire, the devouring\npower of which was astounding, and the like of whose digestion has not\nbeen paralleled in history.\n\nThe Romans in their latter days had degenerated through the decline\namong them of that very principle which is the basis of all great\nart--restraint. Always utilitarians, in the end they had become\nmaterialists, and finally their will power had disintegrated.\n\nThen, suddenly--perhaps through the very fact that their will power had\ndeclined, and through a preponderance among them of a class of people\nwho were unfit to allow themselves any material enjoyment, and who were\nconscious of this shortcoming--the pendulum of Life swung back with a\nforce so great to the opposite extreme, that the Pagan world was shaken\nto its foundations, and in its death-agony stretched out its arms and\nembraced the foreign creed which said--\n\n\"Flesh is death; Spirit is life and peace. The body is dead because of\nsin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If ye live after\nthe flesh ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the\ndeeds of the body, ye shall live.\"[2]\n\nHere was a fundamentally new valuation, a totally novel outlook upon\nthe world of man. Some extraordinarily magnetic creator of values had\nspread his will over an empire, and stamped his hand upon a corner of\nthe globe, and \"the blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums\nas upon brass,\"[3] promised to be his.\n\nHere was a principle which obviously must have found its origin in a\nclass of mind which, in order to overcome the flesh at all, knew of no\nbetter means thereto than to cut it right away and for ever. It was not\na matter of contriving some sort of desirable inner harmony; the will\nof the people in whom this creed took its roots was incapable of such\nan achievement. The order went: \"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck\nit out, and cast it from thee ... if thy right hand offend thee, cut\nit off!\" Whenever the Spirit was mentioned it was spelt in capital\nletters and uttered in exalted tones; while the body, on the other\nhand, as the great obstacle to salvation, was written small. States of\nthe soul became surer indices to the qualities \"good,\" \"beautiful,\"\nand \"virtuous,\" than states of the body, and the paradox that Life was\nthe denial of Life, was honestly believed to be an attainable ideal.\nIn L\u00fcbke's words: \"Christianity disturbed the harmony between man and\nnature, and introduced a sense of discordance by proclaiming to man a\nhigher spiritual law, in the light of which his inborn nature became a\nsinful thing which he was to overcome.\"[4]\n\nThe people who acclaimed this teaching by instinct ultimately organized\nthemselves, conquered the Pagan world, enlisted Pagan elements into\ntheir organization--Pagan spirit and Pagan order--and gradually\naccomplished a task which no other European values seem to have\nbeen able to do. They established one idea, one thought, one hope,\nin the breasts of almost all great Western peoples, from Ireland to\nConstantinople, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.\n\nThe power of their creation--the Church--was such that it\nco-ordinated the most heterogeneous elements, the most conflicting\nfactors, and the most absurd contrasts. And, however much one may\ndeprecate the nature of the type they advocated, and the ignoble\nvaluation of humanity upon which their religion was based, as a\nNietzschean, one can but acknowledge the power they wielded, the might\nwith which they made one ideal prevail, and the art with which for a\nwhile they united and harmonized such discordant voices as those of the\npeople of Europe.\n\nOne can admire all this, I say, even though it is but a spiritual\nreflection of Rome's former power, her former victories, and her former\nlaw and order.[5]\n\nFor, soon, however un-Pagan the ideal may have been which the Church\nmade to prevail, the methods it employed were purely Pagan methods.\n\nFearing nothing, respecting nothing that was opposed to it, and not\nlosing heart before the difficulty of vanquishing even the most\nformidable enemies of the expiring Empire--the Teutons away in the\nNorth--spiritual Rome thus set about its task of appropriating\nhumanity; and all the art of the organizer, of the orator, of the\npainter, sculptor and architect, was speedily ordered into its service.\nIf the type to which its ideal aspired were not already a general fact,\nthen it must be made a general fact. It must be reared, cultivated\nand maintained.\n\nStrangely enough, the feat of vanquishing the German nation proved a\nthousand times easier to Rome the Eternal City, than it had done to\nRome the Metropolis of the Greatest Empire of antiquity. The ancient\nGermans, with their strong tendency to subjectivity, to fantastic\nbrooding and to cobweb spinning, and with their coarse, brutal natures\nunused either to restraint or to the culture that arises from it, fell\neasy victims to this burning teaching of the spirit, of faith, and\nof sentiment;[6] and it was in their susceptible and untutored\nbreasts that Christianity laid its firmest foundation.\n\nIn its work of appropriation and consumption, as I say, the Church\nhalted at nothing.\n\n[2] Romans viii. 6, 10, 13.\n\n[3] _Z._, III, LVI.\n\n[4] _Outlines of the History of Art_, Vol. I, p. 445.\n\n[5] See H. H. Milman, D.D., _History of Latin Christianity_ (Ed.\n1864), Vol. I, p. 10. Speaking of Catholicism, he says: \"It was\nthe Roman Empire, again extended over Europe by a universal code,\nand a provincial government; by a hierarchy of religious pr\u00e6tors\nor proconsuls, and a host of inferior officers, each in strict\nsubordination to those immediately above them, and gradually descending\nto the very lowest ranks of society, the whole with a certain degree of\nfreedom of action, but a restrained and limited freedom, and with an\nappeal to the spiritual C\u00e6sar in the last resort.\"\n\n[6] See J. B. Bury, _A History of the Roman Empire_, Vol. I, p. 17:\n\"It has been said that the function of the German nations was to\nbe the bearers of Christianity. The growth of the new religion was\nindeed contemporary with the spread of the new races in the Empire,\nbut at this time in the external events of history, so far from\nbeing closely attached to the Germans, Christianity is identified\nwith the Roman Empire. It is long afterwards that we see the mission\nfulfilled. The connection lies on a psychological basis: the German\ncharacter was essentially subjective. The Teutons were gifted with\nthat susceptibility which we call heart, and it was to the needs\nof the heart that Christianity possessed endless potentialities of\nadaptation.... Christianity and Teutonism were both solvents of the\nancient world, and as the German nations became afterwards entirely\nChristian, we see that they were historically adapted to one another.\"\n\n\n\n\n2. The Pagan Type appropriated and transformed by Christian Art.\n\n\nJust as St. Paul had not refrained from taking possession of the\nUnknown God whom the Athenians ignorantly worshipped, by declaring\nHim to be precisely the God whom he had come among them to proclaim,\nso Christianity did not refrain from incorporating all the suitable\nfeatures of the Pagan faith into its own creed.\n\nThe Pagan type was thus the first thing to be assimilated and absorbed,\nand in the early Christian paintings of the catacombs you must not be\nsurprised to find the Saviour depicted with all the beauties and charms\nof the classical god or hero. Here he appears as a Hermes, there as an\nApollo, and yonder as an Orpheus.[7] Beardless, young, and strong, Christ\nstalks towards you. His gait is free his carriage majestic. Across his\nshoulders you will sometimes see, as in the catacombs of the Via Appia\nin Rome, that he bears a sheep, and he looks for all the world like a\nyoung Hermes, who, as you know, was the Greek god of flocks.\n\nElsewhere he looks like a Roman senator, as in the catacomb of St.\nCallixtus, for instance; his mother Mary looks like a Roman matron,\npraying with uplifted hands, and the apostles Peter and Paul, together\nwith the prophets, appear as peripatetic philosophers, grasping\nlearned-looking scrolls of manuscript, while Daniel is presented as\na Hercules.[8]\n\nEven the famous bronze statue of St. Peter in his great\nchurch at Rome is in fact an antique statue of a consul which has\nbeen transformed into a Peter, and the original of this monument was\nprobably quite innocent of the sanctity which has caused the foot of\nhis effigy to be worn away by the kisses of the faithful.[9]\n\nThis bold manner of appropriating the Pagan ideal in Art was but\nthe symbol of what was actually occurring in the outside world; for\nthe object was not to glorify the Pagan type, but to overthrow it,\nto transform it by degrees into the type which was compatible with\nChristian values, and thus to obliterate it.\n\nWe can watch this process. We can see the classic features and form\nof body surely and permanently vanishing from the wall decorations of\nthe fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D., and the Christian type\nasserting itself with ever greater assurance. Already in San Paolo\nfuori-le-mura in Rome, which had been decorated about the middle of\nthe fifth century,[10] Christ appears bearded,[11] ugly and gloomy, and his\napostles reflect his appearance and mood. In the Church of San Vitale\nin Ravenna, of the sixth century, the spirit of the antique had almost\npassed away;[12] in the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori-le-mura the bearded\nChrist is no longer sublime and dignified, but wan and emaciated;[13] while\nin the Church of SS. Nazarus and Celsus at Ravenna, there is a mosaic\nof the fifth century in which even the sheep are beginning to look with\ngloomy and dissatisfied eyes upon the world about them.\n\nExamples could be multiplied almost indefinitely to prove how slow but\nsure was this gradual self-assertion of the type that was compatible\nwith Christian values, and the early period of medi\u00e6val art is well\ndescribed by Woltmann and Woermann as one in which the classical cast\nof figure and features gets swallowed up in ugliness.[14]\n\nFinally, in the seventh century, the most daring and most extraordinary\nartistic feat of all was accomplished. The greatest paradox the world\nhad ever seen--a god on a cross--was portrayed for men's eyes\nto behold. The Crucifixion became one of the loftiest subjects of\nChristian art, and the god of the Christians was painted in his death\nagony.\n\nI will not dwell upon the manifold influences exercised by this\nclass of picture; I simply record the fact, in order to show with\nwhat steadily increasing audacity the Church ultimately realized and\nexhibited its type.\n\nFor, the fact that Christian Art was didactic, as all art is which is\nassociated with the will and idea of a fighting cause, and which is\nborn on a soil of clashing values, nobody seems to deny.[15] Paulinus\nof Nola, Gregory the Great, Bishop Germanus, Gregory the Second,[16] John\nof Damascus and Basil the Great were all agreed as to the incalculable\nworth of images in the propagation of the Christian doctrine, and their\nattitude, subsequently adopted by the Franciscans and Dominicans,\nlasted, according to Milman, until very late in the Middle Ages. When\nit is remembered, moreover, that illuminated manuscripts, which were\ndestined to remain in the hands of single individuals, retained the\nclassical mould of body and features much later than did the work for\nchurch decoration, it is not difficult to discover the strong motive\nwhich lay behind the production of public art.[17]\n\nWith Roman culture and art, the western and northern provinces of Gaul,\nSpain, Germany and Britain thus received their religion and their ideal\ntype; and if to-day, in our ball-rooms and drawing-rooms we are often\nconfronted with tenuous, flamelike, swan-necked creatures, that recall\nBurne-Jones, Botticelli, Duccio and Segna to our minds, we know to\nwhich values these people owe their slender, heaven-aspiring stature,\nand their long, sensitive fingers.\n\nFor the attitude of the Christian ideal to Life, to the body, and to\nthe world was an entirely negative one. The command from on high was,\nthat the deeds of the body should be mortified through the Spirit. All\nbeauty, all voluptuousness, smoothness and charm were very naturally\nregarded with suspicion by the promoters of such an ideal; for beauty,\nvoluptuousness and shapeliness lure back to Life, lure back to the\nflesh, and ultimately back to the body.\n\nWhat else, then, could possibly have been expected from such an ideal\nthan the ultimate decline and uglification of the body? To what else\ndid such an ideal actually aspire? For was not ugliness the strongest\nobstacle in the way of the loving one, in the way of him who wished\nonly to affirm and to promote life?\n\nWhen the student of medi\u00e6val miniatures, wall-paintings and\nstained-glass windows finds bodily charm almost completely eliminated,\nwhen he sees ugliness prevailing, and even made seductive by a host\nof the most subtle art-forms, by a gorgeous wealth of ornament\nand repetitive design; and when he perceives a certain guilty\nself-consciousness in regard to the attributes of sex revealing\nitself in such paintings as that on the ceiling of the Church of St.\nMichael at Hildesheim, where Adam and Eve are represented as naked\nhuman monstrosities, exactly alike in frame and limbs, and with all\nindications as to sex, save Eve's long tresses and Adam's beard,\ncarefully suppressed,[18] what can be concluded from all this irrefutable\nand unimpeachable evidence?\n\nWhen he finds the Gothic type of figure growing ever more tenuous, ever\nmore emaciated and more sickly as the centuries roll on; when he hears\nof a Byzantine canon of the eleventh century in which the human body\nis actually declared to be a monstrosity measuring nine heads; when he\nfinds strength and manhood gradually departing from the faces and the\nlimbs of the men, and an expression of tender sentiment, culminating\nin puling sentimentality becoming the rule; finally, when he stands\nopposite Segna's appalling picture of \"Christ on the Cross\" at the\nNational Gallery; what, under these circumstances, is he to say, save\nthat he is here concerned with an art which is antagonistic and hostile\nto beauty, to Life and the world?\n\nFor the qualities of this art, qua art, although they never once attain\nto the excellence of Ruler-Art, are sometimes exceedingly great. With\nMeier Graefe I should be willing to agree that there has been no real\nstyle since the Gothic,[19] or certainly not one that can claim anything\nlike such general distribution. And, if it had not been for the fact\nthat the more the paradox at the root of Christian doctrine was\nrealized, the more paradoxical it appeared--a fact which called forth\nthe energies of scores of apologists, commentators, and dialecticians,\nand which made pictures retain to the very end a rhetorical,\npersuasive, and therefore more or less realistic manner, sometimes\nassisted (more especially towards the close of the Middle Ages) by\nalmost lyrical ornament and charm; there is no saying to what simple\npower Christian art might not have attained. For behind it were all the\nconditions which go to produce the greatest artistic achievements.\n\nAs a style, apart from its subject--or content beauty; as the\nmanifestation of a mighty will--who can help admiring this art of\nChristianity? If only its ideal had been a possible one, and one which\nwould have required no rhetoric, seduction, or emotional oratory,\naccompanied by the ringing of all the precious metals, to support it\nuntil the end; it might have ascended to the highest pinnacle of art in\nsimplicity, restraint and order. Into simplicity, however, it was never\nable to develop, while its constant need of explaining made it to the\nvery last retain more or less realism in the presentation of its ideal\ntype.\n\n\n[7] On this point see Kraus, _Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, Vol.\nI, pp. 41, 46 et seq. Muther, _Geschichte der Malerei_, Vol. I, p. 13.\nWoltmann and Woermann, _History of Painting_, Vol. I. pp. 151-156. Paul\nLacroix, _Les Arts au Moyen Age et \u00e0 l'Epoque de la Renaissance_ (Ed.\n1877, Paris), p. 254.\n\n[8] See J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, _The History of Painting\nin Italy_ (Ed. 1903), Vol. I, p. 4. Woltmann and Woermann, _op. cit._,\nVol. I, p. 156.\n\n[9] Woltmann and Woermann, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 156.\n\n[10] J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._, pp. 14, 15.\n\n[11] For a discussion of the material causes of the change of type, see\nMilman, _op. cit._. Vol. IX, p. 324.\n\n[12] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 24, 25.\n\n[13] Woltmann and Woermann, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 185.\n\n[14] Woltmann and Woermann, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 230.\n\n[15] See an interesting discussion on the early Christian attitude\ntowards art in Kraus, _Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, Vol. I, pp.\n58 et seq. See also Milman's conclusions on the subject, _History of\nLatin Christianity_, Vol. II, pp. 345, 346.\n\n[16] See his letter to Leo the Isaurian, quoted by Milman, _op. cit._,\nVol. II, pp. 358-361. See also the Rev. J. S. Black's article on\n\"Images\" in the _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_ (9th Edition).\n\n[17] The Rev. J. S. Black says, in his article on \"Images,\" above\nreferred to, that even as early as the fourth or fifth centuries there\nis evidence of the tendency to enlist art in the service of the Church,\nwhile Woltmann and Woermann (_op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 167) quote the\nfollowing instance: \"When St. Nilus (A.D. 450) was consulted about\nthe decoration of a church, he rejected as childish and unworthy the\nintended design of plants, birds, animals, and a number of crosses,\nand desired the interior to be adorned with pictures from the Old\nand New Testaments, with the same motive that Gregory II expressed\nafterwards....\"\n\n[18] Kraus seems to be of the opinion that this suppression of primary\nsexual characteristics in paintings was not at all uncommon in the\nMiddle Ages. See _Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, Vol. II, p. 280.\n\n[19] _Modern Art_, Vol. I, p. 24.\n\n\n\n\n3. The Gothic Building and Sentiment.\n\n\nBut the hierarchy of the Church, although it left no doubt in the minds\nof its followers as to the genuine type which was the apotheosis of\nChristian values, was nevertheless unable completely to impose its culture\nupon the barbarians under its sway. And soon, somewhere towards the end\nof the twelfth century, there began to appear in Europe, in things that\ndid not seem to matter from the moral or didactic standpoint, a certain\nuncouth and uncultured spirit, which showed to what extent the despotic\nrule of Rome was beginning to be flouted.\n\nIn architecture, which, like music, has for some reason or other\nalways seemed to Europeans to be less intimately connected with the\nthought and will of man than the graphic arts, an un-Catholic spirit\nwas preparing its road to triumph. When I say un-Catholic, I mean\nemancipated from the law and order of the Universal Church.[20] And in\nthe Gothic edifice, from its early stages to its development\ninto the flamboyant style, all the impossibilities, all the terrible\nself-immolations imposed by the Christian ideal upon man, begin to make\nthemselves openly felt.\n\nNow churches begin to tower aloft into heights undreamt of heretofore.\nHuge columns spring heavenwards, bearing up a roof that seems almost\nethereal because it is so high. Spires are thrust right into the very\nbreasts of clouds, and acres are covered by constructions which,\nmechanically speaking, are alive. Kicks from the vaulted arches against\nthe hollowed-out walls below, necessitate counter-kicks; buttresses and\nflying buttresses strive and struggle against the crushing pressure of\nthe stone or brick skies of these fantastic architectural feats. All\nthe parts of this mass of stone on baked clay are at loggerheads and at\nvariance with each other, and their strife never ceases.\n\nTypical of the contest going on within the body of the medi\u00e6val\nChristian, and the vain aspirations of his soul, the lofty buildings\nare also symbolic of the discord and lack of equilibrium which, as\nL\u00fcbke says, Christianity introduced into man's relations to Nature and\nto himself. And when we find the columns of these buildings carved and\nmoulded to look like groups of pillars embracing each other to gain\nstrength, the salient parts of the construction grooved and striped,\nand the extremities of the clustered pillars spreading after the manner\nof a fan, over our heads; we are amazed at the manner in which mass and\nvolume have been volatilized, spiritualized, and apparently dissipated.\n\nElsewhere, too, there is variegated glass, gigantic filigree work,\nfestive decoration, as elaborated as that of a queen or a bride;\ninfinite grandeur and infinite littleness.[21] The ornament is nervous\nand excited, festoons, trefoils, gables, gargoyles and niches, all\nthrust themselves at you; all strive for individual effect, individual\nattention, and individual value, with a restlessness and an importunacy\nwhich knows no limits; until your eyes, bewildered and dazzled by the\njutting, projecting and budding details, and out-startled by surprise,\ninstinctively drop at last, and perhaps close in a paroxysm of despair,\nbefore the High Altar.[22]\n\nThis was the germ of Protestantism in stone. Long before Martin Luther\nburned the Papal Bull in the market-place of Wittenberg, the elements\nof Protestantism had already found expression in Gothic architecture.\nTrue the Pagan and Catholic spirit was still sufficiently master to\ndominate them, just as it did the heretics, by a tremendous force\nof style; but they are nevertheless present, and it is in this\narchitecture, if we choose to seek it, that we shall find, at once, all\nthe beauty, all the ugliness, and all the incompatible elements of the\nChristian ideal.\n\nIts beauty and the fact for which we ought to be grateful to it, is,\nthat by its one-sided and earnest advocacy of the spiritual in man, it\nextended the domain of his spirit over an area so much greater than\nthat which had been covered theretofore, that only now can it be said\nthat he knows exactly where he stands and who he is. Its ugliness lies\nin its contempt of the body and of Life; and its incompatible elements\nare its negation of Life and the necessary attitude of affirmation\ntowards Life which all living creatures are bound to assume.\n\nIf, however, the above description of the Gothic may seem unfair, hear\nwhat one of the greatest friends of the Gothic has said on the subject!\n\nJohn Ruskin, in the early days of the last half of the nineteenth\ncentury, wrote as follows--\n\n\"I believe that the characteristic or moral elements of the Gothic are\nthe following, placed in order of their importance: (1) Savageness, (2)\nChangefulness, (3) Naturalism, (4) Grotesqueness, (5) Rigidity, (6)\nRedundance.\"[23]\n\nHe speaks of it as being \"instinct with work of an imagination\nas wild and wayward as the Northern Sea\";[24] lays stress upon its\nrudeness,[25] and declares that it is that strange disquietude of\nthe Gothic spirit--that is its greatness, \"that restlessness of the\ndreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and\nflickers feverishly around, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be\nsatisfied.\"[26]\n\nIn fact, in no instance could the saying, \"preserve me from my own\nfriends,\" be more aptly applied than in Ruskin's defence of the Gothic.\nFor Ruskin was a conscientious student, and things which even enemies\nof his subject would be likely to overlook, he brings forward proudly\nand ingenuously, like a truculent mother presenting an ugly child to a\nfriend, and with a broad smile in his forcible prose which sometimes\nthrows even the experienced reader quite off his guard.\n\nHippolyte Taine speaks of the people of the Middle Ages as being\npossessed of delicate and over-excited imaginations, of morbid fancy\nunto whom vivid sensation--manifold, changing, bizarre and extreme\n--are necessary. In referring to their taste in ornament, he says,\n\"It is the adornment of a nervous, over-excited woman, similar to\nthe extravagant costumes of the day, whose delicate and morbid poesy\ndenotes by its excess the singular sentiments, the feverish, violent,\nand impotent aspiration peculiar to an age of knights and monks.\"[27]\n\n[Illustration: The Canon of Polycleitus (_Rome_)]\n\nAnd if you think of the physical and spiritual operations they had been\nmade to undergo, you will not feel very much inclined to question these\nconclusions. It must not be supposed that the canon of Polycletus,\nmeasuring seven heads, was transformed into the Byzantine canon,\nmeasuring nine heads, without some one's suffering--even though it\ntook centuries to effect the change. It must not be believed that the\ncalm Pagan idea of death was converted into the Christian terror of\ndeath without the sacrifice of something; nor must these emaciated,\ncareworn, and neurotic faces in Medi\u00e6val paintings be conceived as mere\ninventions of morbid phantasy. The deeds of the body are not mortified\nthrough the Spirit with impunity. Such brilliant achievements have\ntheir accounts to pay, and the Church never once deceived itself or\nits followers as to what was paying, what was suffering, or where the\namputations and vivisections were taking place.\n\nLook at the type of which the monks approved! Examine it in Cimabue's,\nDuccio's, Segna's and the Cologne painters' pictures. Examine it in the\ntapestry of Berne, known as the \"Adoration of the Kings\"; look at it\nin countless stained glass windows, and see its repetition in hundreds\nof illuminated manuscripts, some of which, like the Latin missal of\nthe Church of St. Bavon at Ghent, and the _Lives of the Saints_ by Simeon\nMetaphrasi, have found their way into the British Museum.\n\nThen ask yourself whether or not humanity was suffering in conforming\nitself to this holy creed. \"Like those mothers,\" says Lecky, \"who\ngovern their children by persuading them that the dark is crowded\nwith spectres that' will seize the disobedient, and who often succeed\nin creating an association of ideas which the adult man is unable\naltogether to dissolve, the Catholic priests, by making the terrors of\ndeath for centuries the nightmare of the imagination, resolved to base\ntheir power upon the nerves.\"[28]\n\nAnd, now that all this is known and realized, what is the meaning of\nthe Renaissance, what is its explanation?\n\n[20] Speaking of Gothic buildings in general, Fergusson, in A History\nof Architecture, Vol. I, p. 41, says: \"It is in Nature's highest works\nthat we find the symmetry of proportion most prominent. When we descend\nto the lower types of animals we find we lose it to a great extent, and\namong trees and vegetables generally find it only in a far less degree,\nand sometimes miss it altogether. In the mineral kingdom among rocks\nand stones it is altogether absent. So universal is this principle in\nNature that we may safely apply it to our criticism on art, and say\nthat a building is perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived\nregularity, and departs from the highest type in the ratio in which\nsymmetrical arrangement is neglected. It may, however, be incorrect to\nsay that an oak-tree is a less perfect work of creation than a human\nbody, but it is certain that a picturesque group of Gothic buildings\nmay be as perfect as the stately regularity of an Egyptian or classic\ntemple; but if it is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a\nlower and inferior class of design.\" Page 34: \"The revival of the\nrites and ceremonies of the Medi\u00e6val Church, our reverent love of our\nown national antiquities, and our admiration of the rude but vigorous\nmanhood of the Middle Ages, all have combined to repress the classical\nelement, both in our literature and in our art, and to exalt in their\nplace Gothic feelings and Gothic art to an extent which cannot be\njustified on any grounds of reasonable criticism.\"\n\n[21] See Hippolyte Taine, _On the Nature of the Work of Art_\n(translated by John Durand), pp. 130, 131, 132, 133, 134.\n\n[22] Dr. Wilhelm L\u00fcbke, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 14, 15, says, speaking\nof the Gothic: \"What a contrast to the quiet, sober masses of the\nRomanesque style ...! Here, on the other hand, everything thrusts\nitself into prominence, everything strives for outward effect,\neverything endeavours to work out its individuality with spirit and\nenergy. ... At the choir ... a positive sense of disquiet and confusion\nis produced, which may indeed excite the fancy, but cannot satisfy the\nsense of beauty.\"\n\n[23] _On the Nature of Gothic Architecture_ (1854), p. 4.\n\n[24] _On the Nature of Gothic Architecture_, p. 6.\n\n[25] _Ibid_., p. 11.\n\n[26] _Ibid_., p. 19.\n\n[27] _On the Nature of the Work of Art_, pp. 131-33, 134.\n\n[28] _History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne_, Vol. I,\np. 211.\n\n\n\n\n4. The Renaissance.\n\n\nThe Renaissance, in its early stages, at least, was a period neither\nof pure realism nor of classicalism; it was neither a revival of\nlearning nor a revival of antiquity. These words are mere euphemisms,\nmere drawing-room phrases. For, at its inception, the Renaissance\nwas nothing more nor less than man's convalescence, after an illness\nthat had lasted centuries. It was his first walk into the open, after\nleaving his bed and his sick-room.\n\nAccording to the Nietzschean doctrine of art, this realism of Van Eyck,\nof Van der Weyden, Quintin Massys, Donatello, Pisanello, Masolino,\nUcello and others ought to disgust you. It is not art, or if it is, its\nrank is inferior. Why, then, does it claim attention? Why is it far\nsuperior to the realism of the present day, despite some appallingly\nugly features?[29]\n\nIt is superior only in this sense, that it is the work of\nconvalescents. After they had been laid on the rack in the attempt to\nstretch their limbs and bodies to infinity, you must not be surprised\nthat these men could only limp along. How could they be expected to\nwalk majestically and with grace? That they could stand at all was a\nmercy. That they were able to hobble along as they did was a triumph.\n\nTo expect these recovering invalids to impart something of themselves\nto Life, to enrich her and to transfigure her, would be to expect the\nimpossible. But if you applaud them at all, applaud them for their\nrecovery, for the fact that it is well that they can give us even\ndrabby reality as it is. Do not congratulate them yet on their health.\nFor their realism, as realism, is as hopeless, as uninteresting and as\nunelevating as any realism ever was and ever will be.\n\nIt is deceptive, too, for what seem to be beauties in their pictures\nare borrowed from such of their predecessors of the late Gothic period\nas were already overloading their pictures with ornamental art forms,\nin order to disguise the ugliness of the type they presented. Where\nthey beguile you, it is often with a wealth of sweet ornament.[30]\n\nIn Ucello's \"Battle of Sant' Eglidio,\" at the National Gallery, it is\nimpossible not to recognize the pains the artist has taken to make your\neye dwell on the dainty trappings and accoutrements of the knights\nand their steeds, on the distracting balls of gold in the shrubbery,\nartfully repeated in the bridles of the horses, and on the complex maze\nof pikes, spears and lances, which makes the glimpse of hills in the\ndistance all the more restful and pleasing.\n\nAlso in Pisanello's \"St. Anthony and St. George\" (National Gallery),\nwhatever charm there is to be seen is still a Gothic charm, and the\nsame holds good of this painter's remarkable picture of the \"Vision\nof St. Eustace,\" in which the deliberately ornamental purpose of the\nanimals in the background charms you more than their startling realism.\n\nIf you leave these pictures, in the National Gallery, and walk over to\nOrcagna's \"Coronation of the Virgin,\" you will see where the ornamental\ncharm of the early Renaissance realists probably found its origin. For\nthese convalescent men made no sudden and unanticipated appearance.\nThey were preceded by painters like Orcagna, who were beginning to feel\nthe impossibility of making a beautiful image out of the Christian\ntype, and who therefore crammed their pictures with ornament in a\nmanner so prodigal that the human portion of them assumed quite a\nsubordinate place.\n\nLook at this picture of Orcagna's. It seems positively to ring with\ngold. Massed halos of the precious metal convert the faces of the\npeople into mere decorative discs of colour. The golden embroidery on\nthe dresses and on the hangings in the background give you a feeling of\nsunshine, of wealth and of luxury, which makes you forget the ideal for\nwhich all this lavish display is acting but as a subtle impresario. And\nthe utilization of every square inch of room by filigrees, festoons,\nfrills and fretwork of gorgeousness, almost convinces you at last that\nyou are in front of an art which says \"Yea\" to the glory of sunshine,\nbeauty and life.\n\nIn this very need of extravagant ornament, however, Orcagna confesses\nquite openly to you that, as far as humanity is concerned, he, as\nan artist, is bankrupt and destitute. His picture, like most things\nconnected with the art of Christianity, is a pictorial paradox; and\nwhen you leave it, to wander through the other rooms, your mind must be\nof a singularly ingenuous stamp if it feels no suspicion with regard to\nOrcagna's use of such a deafening brass band in the exaltation of his\nideal.\n\nIf you doubt all this, how can you explain the fact that those painters\nof the early Renaissance who remained faithful to the Christian\ntype--such men, I mean, as Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Alesso\nBaldovinetti, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio--all remained more or less\nfaithful, too, to Orcagna's belief in ornament and pretty accessories;\nwhile all those painters who either carried on or developed the new\nspirit in Pisanello's, Ucello's, Masolino's and Masaccio's work--\nsuch men as Pollajuolo, Verrochio, Perugini, Bellini, and ultimately\nLeonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael--all discarded\npretty and seductive accessories, or, when they did use them, made them\ncompletely subordinate to the human element in their work?\n\nThe gradual growth in the importance of the human body and of the Pagan\ntype, in the Renaissance painters, from Masaccio to Michelangelo, with\nwhom there can no longer be any question of convalescence, the rapid\nreturn to a healthy life-affirming type, and the ultimate triumph of\nthis type in the very heart of the Vatican--the headquarters of the\ngreatest negative religion on earth,--these are the facts which make\nthe art of this age so admirable and so thrilling.\n\nIt represents the greatest stand which Europe has ever made against the\ndenial of life, humanity and beauty; and if some of the artists, like\nPisanello, Piero della Francesca, and ultimately Titian, in their great\nzeal, returned to nature with almost as much interest as to man, this\nis easily accounted for when it is remembered how long nature and man\nhad been separated.[31]\n\nBut the fact that makes the final glory of the Renaissance type all the\nmore glorious is the extraordinary circumstance that almost every one\nof the artists who fought for it, and for the principles it involved,\nfrom Piero della Francesca to Titian, were one after the other captured\nand enchained by the Church itself. Often it was in the very atmosphere\nof the high altar, with the fumes of the incense about them, that they\nasserted their positive faith in Life and Man. The greatest dangers,\nthe greatest temptations surrounded them But they planted their\nbanner, notwithstanding, in the centre of their true enemy's camp,\nand, for a while, their true enemy acquiesced, because the command was\nin the hands of men who were artists and pagans themselves, and who\nconsequently did not believe in one single tenet of the negative creed\nwhich they professed.\n\nJust as the realism of some of the early Renaissance artists, however,\nwas the inevitable outcome of their convalescent state, so the strong\nrealism of many of the painters and sculptors of the late Renaissance\nwas the natural result of their combative attitude.\n\nFighting for a particular kind of man, against centuries of false\nand unhealthy tradition, it was necessary to bring forward the new\nideal with every characteristic plainly, emphatically and powerfully\nexpressed; for every characteristic of a new ideal is of the highest\nimportance.\n\nThese new values of the Renaissance spirit were scarcely one hundred\nyears old, when Michelangelo set himself the task of embodying them in\nhis sculpture and painting. Would it be fair to criticize him from the\nstandpoint of Egypt or even of Greece?\n\nFrom the standpoint of Egypt he is disappointing. The preponderance\nof characteristic traits over simplicity in his work spoils the power\nof his conceptions. His prevailing lack of simplicity makes you guess\nat the youth of the values on which he stood, and his tortuous bodies\noften make you question whether his types have entirely left the\nnerves of the Gothic period behind them. But are not all these defects\nprecisely of a kind which are unfortunately inseparable from the\nposition which Michelangelo assumed?\n\nHe was the greatest of the Renaissance artists. In criticizing him, I\nhave said all that can be said, from this particular standpoint, of his\npredecessors and contemporaries. His power lies in the forcibleness,\nthe exhilaration, the exuberance and the wealth with which he brings\nforward his type. It lies in his absolute contempt of seductive\nprettiness, his sometimes terrible strength, his vehemence and his\nenergy, and above all in his magnificent conceptions and the types with\nwhich he illustrates them. Compared with the art from which it had\nsprung, his art was stupendous.\n\nAnd where he is weak, compared with a higher--and by no means a modern\n--concept of art, he suffers from the virtues of his position as a\nfighter and as an innovator.\n\nIn valuing him, as I said in my first lecture, it all depends whence\nyou come. If you hail from Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth\ncentury, you can but go on your knees before him. If you hail from\nMemphis of the year 4000 B.C., you can but criticize and feel ill at\nease before his work.\n\nI have not yet said anything concerning the relation of the Renaissance\nartists to Greece, simply because, taking in view the circumstances of\ntheir development, the relation seems fairly obvious. In discussing\nthe art of Greece itself, however, the matter will probably appear\nquite clear to you. How much of the transfiguration in late Renaissance\nart is actually due to Greek influence, or to the Dionysian spirit\nof the age, it is difficult to determine. In my opinion, the latter\ninfluence was more potent, and to the Greek influence I should be more\nprepared to ascribe the spur which originally led to the adoption of a\nthoroughly Pagan type.\n\n\n[29] Kraus, in his _Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, Vol. II, denies\nthat the revival of the antique was predominant in the Renaissance,\nand argues that individualism and nature study were the prominent\nnotes. Venturi, the Italian art-historian, declares that the antique\nbegan to be paramount only in the sixteenth century, and that with\nit the decadence began. While Eug\u00e8ne M\u00fcntz, in his monumental work,\n_L'Histoire de l'Art pendant la Renaissance_, Vol. I, p. 42, speaking\nof the two movements of the period, says: \"Deux voies s'ouvraient aux\nnovateurs, ou le naturalisme \u00e0 outrance, un naturalisme qui, n'\u00e9tant\nplus soutenu par les hautes aspirations du moyen \u00e2ge, risquait fort\nde sombrer dans la vulgarit\u00e9 (l'exemple de Paolo Ucello, d'Andrea del\nCastagna, de Pollajuolo l'a bien prouv\u00e9) ou bien la nature contr\u00f4l\u00e9e,\npurifi\u00e9e, ennoblie par l'\u00e9tude des mod\u00e8les anciens.\" The latter was the\nlater movement. See also Woltmann and Woermann, _History of Painting_,\nVol. II, Introduction.\n\n[30] Muther, in his _History of Painting_, Vol. I, p. 87, actually\ndeclares that Jan van Eyck and Pisanello in their dainty manner\nremained Gothic.\n\n[31] Of Piero della Francesca, Muther says, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 97:\n\"He created the grammar of modern painting.... Four hundred years ago\nhe proposed the problem of realism, and endeavoured, as the forerunner\nof the most modern artists, to establish in what manner atmosphere\nchanges colour impressions.\"\n\n\n\n\nPart II\n\n\nGreece and Egypt\n\n\n    \"The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land\n    make thy father and brethren to dwell.\"--Genesis xlvii. 6.\n\n\n\n\n1. Greek Art.\n\n\nI have now spoken to you of Christian Art, and you have not been taken\naltogether by surprise; because, in England at least, people are not\nunacquainted with the fight Art has had with Puritanism. And you were,\ntherefore, partly prepared for what I had to say. The views I have\nexpressed concerning the Renaissance were not entirely new to you\neither, and, if they were, I can only hope that they will assist you in\ngiving to the Art of that period its proper valuation. Now, however,\nI fear I am going to level a blow at what must seem to you even more\nsacred, even more invulnerable and even more thoroughly established\nthan either Christian or Renaissance Art. I refer to the Art of Greece.\n\nAlbeit, before I proceed with my task, do not be surprised if, like\nCharles the First's executioner, Brandon, I kneel to kiss the hand\nof my victim, if only by so doing I may seem to you to understand\nthe grave nature of my business, and satisfy you that the blow I am\nabout to deliver is prompted more by conviction than by that cheap\nirreverence for great things which is, alas, only too prevalent to-day.\n\nGoethe says somewhere that, if we find fault with Euripides at all we\nshould do so on bended knees. It seems to me that this ought also to\nbe the attitude of people and critics in this age who attempt to value\nwhat the Greeks achieved in the graphic arts. For the earnestness and\nvigour wherewith, collectively, they set up their triumphs and ideals\nin stone and marble, the moment any opportunity arose for them to\naffirm and exalt their type, is deserving of the utmost praise and\nadmiration.\n\nToo many great writers have exalted the Greeks, however, to make it\nnecessary for me to edify you with any long and enthusiastic praise of\nthose qualities which Nietzsche admired in them.\n\nFairness alone, therefore, compels me to acknowledge the grandeur\nof the type their art advocates. With Nietzsche I can but extol the\nyea-saying of this type to the passions, to beauty, to health, in\nfact to life. The fearlessness of the Greeks before beauty was their\nacknowledgment that life was a blessing to which it was worth while to\nbe lured and seduced. And their innocent acceptance of the strongest\npassions is sufficient to show to what extent they had not only\nmastered them, but had also enlisted them into their service.\n\nNevertheless, though it is only decent to exercise some reserve in this\nmatter, it certainly is necessary to point to a curious fact in regard\nto Greek Art in general, and that is, that, with the exception of some\nof its archaic examples, it has been revered with ever-increasing\nfervour by strangers, from the second century before Christ to the\npresent day,--when I say strangers, I mean people whose thought and\naspirations were not necessarily the outcome of Hellenic values,--and\nthat this general appreciation of Greek Art by foreigners implies that\nthere is some quality in it which is only too common to everybody and\nto anybody, irrespective of nationality and education. If it were asked\nwhat this common factor was, I should reply, it is Nature herself, to\nwhich Greek Art, in its so-called best period, is undeniably in close\nand intimate relationship.\n\nIn examining the works of the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries\nbefore Christ, it is well to bear in mind the peculiar state of the\ncountry in which they appeared, its division into states, and its mixed\npopulation. It is well to think of the many ideals that dominated these\npeople, and of the fact that the citizen of one city was often regarded\nas an alien, without any political rights whatever, if he ventured to\ntransfer his abode to another city but a few miles distant from his\nown; and allowances should be made for the rivalry and competition this\nstate of affairs conduced to bring about. It is also well to remember\nthe individual lives the colonists lived, and the altered outlook on\nlife to which their independent positions were bound to lead, and\nwhich, when they returned to their mother city, as many of them used to\ndo, must have shed a new and strange light upon what they saw.\n\nAlthough a certain uniformity can be traced in the political history\nof most Greek states, no one would dare to maintain that the Greeks,\nat any time in their history, were a perfectly united people observing\nthe same values; whilst even in the history of each separate state,\nchanges occurred so constantly that a stable political type is a rare\nand practically negligible fact.\n\nIn spite of the many heroes and geniuses which arose from time to time,\nthere never seems to have been that power, either human or superhuman,\nwhich might have welded these peoples indissolubly together, or which,\ntaking its root in one of the contending races, could have made that\nrace completely absorb and digest the others.\n\nEven the games of Greece, which, it might be argued, tended to unite\nthe various peoples, cannot be said to have gone very far in this\nrespect, since the very fact that the Hellenic nation enforced a\nsacred armistice during the month of the games, between states that\nwere at war, shows that the most this institution could achieve was a\nsuspension of arms.\n\nOn the whole, therefore, the fact that one can talk of different\ntypes as characteristic of particular schools or ideals is amply\naccounted for, and when the general spirit of rivalry that animated\nthe whole nation for centuries is duly taken into consideration it\nis not difficult to explain a certain preponderance of manifold\ncharacteristics over simplicity, which is observable in the greater\npart of Greek sculpture--a preponderance which sometimes led very\nrapidly to the crudest realism, and which at other times approached\nrealism only after a considerable lapse of time. Such phenomena are the\ninevitable result of that lack of the powerful master or ruler spirit\nwho unifies and co-ordinates heterogeneity, and who thereby makes\nsimplification and powerful art possible, as the outcome of relative\npermanency.[32]\n\nFor, when technique is largely mastered, realism, as I have shown in\nthe case of Medi\u00e6val and Renaissance Art, may in a great measure be the\noutcome of a desire to make one's own particular ideal unmistakably\nplain, and although this kind of truth to nature always reveals a\nclashing of values or types, it is of a kind which may be regarded as\ninfinitely superior to the realism which has nothing to say at all, and\nwhich merely copies out of poverty of invention.\n\nWhen talking to strangers about an ideal they do not share with you,\nit is necessary to bring all your powers to bear upon an adequate and\nperfectly vivid representation of what you have in your mind.\n\nI, on this platform, assuming that Nietzsche as an art valuer was\nstrange to you, had to present him to you with all the realism and\ndetail I could dispose of. If I had been talking to people who knew\nthe Nietzschean views of art perfectly well, I might have indulged in\ncertain artistic simplifications and poetical transfigurations which I\nconsidered unsuited to the present circumstances.\n\nThis same feeling, I believe, partly explains the tendency to realism\nin Greek art. And it is precisely to this tendency to realism that I\nthink it is now high time to call attention, after all the fulsome\npraise which has for ages been lavished upon the products of the\nHellenic spirit.\n\nWhen you turn to the granite statue of the Egyptian goddess Sekhet in\nthe Louvre, or to the lions of Gebel Barkal in the Egyptian Gallery\nof the British Museum, you are conscious of a sensation of great\nstrangeness, of humiliating unfamiliarity, of almost incalculable\ndistance. You may look at these things for a moment and wonder what\nthey mean; you may even pass on with a feeling of indifference\namounting to scorn;[33] but whatever your sensations are, you will be\nquite unable to deny that what you have seen does not belong to your\nworld, that it is utterly and completely separated from you, and that\nyou felt in need of a guide and of an initiator in its presence.\n\nYou may laugh at the lions of Gebel Barkal, you may deny that they are\nbeautiful; but, whoever you are, scholar, poet, painter or layman, you\nwill admit that they are cruelly distant and strange, terribly remote\nand uncommunicative.\n\n\n\n\nA. The Parthenon.\n\n\nNow, if you turn round and bear to the right in the Egyptian Gallery at\nthe British Museum, you will find a broad passage lined with statues\nthat seem very much more familiar to you than those which you are just\nleaving behind; and, in the distance, you will espy the maimed figures\nof the Eastern pediment of the Parthenon. In a moment you will be in\nthe Elgin Room, and everywhere about you you will see all that remains\nof the ancient temple of Athens which is worth seeing.\n\nIf you have not been to Athens, you must not suppose that you have\nmissed much, as far as the Parthenon is concerned. Unless you are very\nmodern and very romantic, and can take pleasure in visiting a gruesome\nruin by moonlight, you would be only depressed and disappointed by\nthe decayed and ugly mass of stones that now stands like a battered\nskeleton on the Acropolis. You may take it, therefore, that, as\nyou stand in the Elgin Room, you have around you the best that the\nParthenon could yield after its partial destruction and dismantlement\nin 1687 by the victorious Veneto-German army. And what is it that you\nsee?\n\nRemember that you are a man of the twentieth century A.D., and that you\nhave just been bored to extinction by a walk in the Egyptian Gallery.\nRemember, too, that you have very few fixed opinions about Art, and\nthat the artistic condition of your continent is one of chaos and\nanarchy.\n\nIn spite of all this, however, you will walk up to the horse's head at\nthe extreme right of the Eastern pediment of the Parthenon, and the two\nthousand and four hundred years that separate you from it will vanish\nas by magic.\n\nFor years I have taken men, women and children up to this horse's\nhead. In some cases these people have been technical connoisseurs of\na horse's points; in others they have been mere bourgeois people,\nindifferent both to the art of Greece and to equine anatomy; and with\nthe children I was concerned with raw manhood that cared not a jot for\nArt, and whose one sole, savage instinct was to recognize and classify\nwhat was before them.\n\nIf you supposed, however, that the verdict of these different people\nwas anything but unanimous, you would be vastly mistaken. The children\ncried with delight. Their powers of recognizing things was stimulated\nto the utmost. One of them told me it was like a real bus-horse. The\nconnoisseurs of a horse's points began to draw plausible conclusions\nfrom the existing head as to the probable conformation of the body\nwhich the artist had deliberately omitted, and the bourgeois people\ndeclared that they loved the fascinating softness and convincing\nlooseness of the mouth.--All of them were charmed. All of them\nunderstood. Not one of them felt that this horse held itself aloof from\nthem and kept its distance, as the austere Egyptian lions had done. And\nall of them were children of the twentieth century A.D., and over two\nthousand years separated them from the objects they were inspecting.\n\nTheir comments on the Parthenon Frieze were much the same. Once or\ntwice one of them would say that there was a monotonous similarity of\nfeature in the men and in the horses--a comment which immediately\nrevealed to me that 2,400 years had indeed wrought some change. On the\nwhole, however, the attitude of those I escorted amazed me; for, with\nbut few exceptions, it was one of sympathy and understanding. I will\nnot say that I did not stimulate their interest a good deal, by making\nthem feel that their criticism was valuable to me; I will not pretend\nthat if they had been alone they would have troubled to concentrate\ntheir minds to any great extent upon the exhibits around them; but this\nI will affirm, with absolute confidence: that if all the men, women\nand children who stream through the Elgin Room daily were given the\nsame stimulus to exercise their critical faculty, and were similarly\ninduced to give particular attention to all they saw, the sympathy and\nunderstanding which I observed among the groups of visitors I escorted\nwould be found to be a fairly general, if not a common occurrence.\n\n[Illustration: The Apollo of Tenea, Glyptothek, Munich.]\n\n\n\n\nB. The Apollo of Tenea.\n\n\nTake the same people down to the Cast Room and show them the Apollo of\nTenea, and what will they say?\n\nWhen I first halted before this bewilderingly beautiful statue in the\nGlyptothek at Munich, I felt I was in the presence of something very\nmuch more masterful, very much more impressive, and infinitely more\ncommanding than anything Greek I had ever seen in London, Paris, or\nAthens.\n\nHere was a style which was strange. But it was evidently a style which\nwas the product of a will, and of a long observance of particular\nvalues that had at last culminated in a type; for this Apollo resembled\nnothing modern, Egyptian, Assyrian, Medi\u00e6val, or of the Renaissance.\n\nThis statue scorns to make a general appeal. It is the apotheosis of\na type. Of this there can be no question. It is the work of a loving\nand powerful artist, who could simplify the human frame, and express\nstenographically, so to speak, the essential features of the people\nhe represented, because he knew the essential features to which their\nvalues aspired.\n\nThe arms, alone, transcend everything that I have ever seen in Hellenic\nArt for consummate skill in transfiguring and retaining bare essentials\nalone; and although, here and there, particularly in the breast,\nthere is a broadness and a sweeping ease, which I admit ought to be\nattributed more to incomplete control of essentials than to their\nactual simplification, the whole figure breathes a spirit so pure, so\ncertain and so sound, that it is the nearest approach I can find in\nGreek Art to that ideal artistic fact in which the particular values\nof a people find their apotheosis in the transfigured and simplified\nexample of their type.\n\nI would deny that the qualities of this statue are not ultimate\nqualities. I would deny that there is anything transitional or archaic\nin them. What is archaic, what is transitional, is the weak treatment\nof the chest and abdomen. Compared with the simplified chest and\nabdomen of an Egyptian statue of the fourth or fifth dynasty, it shows\na minimum rather than a maximum of command of, and superiority over,\nreality. Any healthy development of such an art, however, ought only to\nhave led to greater perfection in the treatment of the parts mentioned,\nand I seriously question the general belief that it marks a progress in\nsculpture which must ultimately lead to the rendering of the athletic\ntypes for which the sculptors of Argos and Sicyon became famous. There\nis something strange and foreign in this statue which does not reappear\nin the Hellenic Art of the Periclean age.[34] Like the vases of the\nsixth century and some of the ante-Periclean Acropolis statues, there\nis a Ruler form in its execution that makes quite a limited appeal--\na fact which would be consistent with its having been the apotheosis\nof a type. Its exhortation is not directed at mankind in general. It\ncommunicates little to the modern European, and the crowds that stream\nthrough the Elgin Room of the British Museum would probably pass it by\nwithout either sympathy or understanding.\n\nAnd yet, as I have shown, it cannot be regarded as a perfect specimen\nof Ruler-art; there are too many uncertainties and too many doubts in\nit.\n\nAs marking an advanced stage in a very high class of Ruler-art,\nhowever, it is magnificent, and any transformation of its form to\ngreater realism would be a descent, rather than an ascent, in taste.\n\nIf you turn from it to the sculptures of the temple of Selinus, which,\nas far as one can say, must have been carved not more than about half\na century earlier, you will see that these are indeed archaic. They\nare beneath realism in their coarseness and crudity. But it is in the\nsculptures of Selinus, and not in the Apollo of Tenea, or in the best\nvases of the sixth century, that you must seek the motive spirit of the\nArt which has made the Periclean age so glorious; This striving after\nrealism, although unsuccessful in the metopes of Selinus, reveals a\ndifferent aspiration, a totally different will, from that which created\nthe Munich Apollo, and it was precisely this aspiration that was fully\nrealized, with but a slight admixture of the other will, in Athens of\nthe fifth century.\n\nSome will say that Egyptian influence is apparent in the Apollo of\nTenea, and they will add that the Greek colonists in Selinus, finding\nthemselves in very close contact with their commercial rivals the\nPh\u0153nicians, very naturally scorned all Eastern canons and ideas when\nerecting their temples.\n\nBoth of these suggestions are perfectly legitimate. The Apollo of\nTenea either betrays Egyptian influence or, owing to its Ruler form,\nit takes one's mind back involuntarily to the Ruler-art of the Nile.\nThe sculptures of Selinus may also be the outcome of the conscious\nrenunciation of Eastern influence, or they may be the manifestation of\na particular \"Art-Will,\" as Worringer has it, which aimed at realism\nand was quite guiltless of any other ulterior motive. In both cases\nI favour the latter alternative, and I should like to believe that\nin addition to the influences I have already mentioned in respect\nof realism there were two Art-Wills active in ancient Greece--each\nstriving for supremacy and power.\n\n\n\n\nC. The two Art-Wills of Ancient Greece.\n\n\nI cannot see how any one rising from a study of Hellenic Art can arrive\nat any other conclusion. A superior will aiming at a Ruler-art form is\nthe one, an inferior will aiming at realism is the other. And it is a\nsignificant fact, that while the first will sent forth its last blooms\nin the sixth century--a period when, according to Freeman, Hellenic\nlife readied its zenith,[35] the ultimate triumphs of the other and\ninferior will, in the fifth century, marks the first stage in a decline\nthat was never to be arrested.[36]\n\n[Illustration: The Medusa Metope of Sellinus, Palermo.]\n\nThis is not the usual view, I know. As a rule, the art of the age of\nPericles is considered to be the highest that Greece ever produced.\nBut in this art I see a preponderance of realism which reveals to what\nextent the other and inferior will was beginning to prevail. And when I\nstudy Hellenistic art, and see this evil assuming such proportions as\nto make even modern historians and Art-scholars deliberately denounce\nit, I cannot help but recognize the germs of this decay in the art\nwhich hitherto has been most praised and admired.\n\nAs I say, I am judging purely from the artistic records. But I have no\ndoubt that, if I possessed the necessary scholarship, I could trace\nthe two Art-wills to two distinct races of men who, from the days of\nthe fall of Mycen\u00e6an culture, strove for mastership in Greece. I also\nentertain no doubts that the fall of Greece might be attributed to the\ngradual triumph of that race which possessed the inferior Art-will, and\nnothing I have read, either in Grote, Bury, Oman, Curtius, Schnaase,\nMiss Harrison and others, has led me seriously to hesitate before\nsuggesting this hypothesis.\n\nProfessor Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece leads me to suppose that\nthe problem might be solved in the way I suggest. But, in any case,\nwhether this is so or not, the style of the art of Pheidias shows\na descent from the style of the Apollo of Tenea, which only an age\nwith a mistaken conception of what art really is could possibly have\noverlooked.\n\nThe art of the fifth and fourth centuries, I will not and cannot deny,\ncontains a large proportion of Ruler form, or what modern and ancient\nart-historians call the \"ideal.\"[37] No people, any portion of which\nhad been capable of producing the Apollo of Tenea, could have avoided\nit; but that it preponderates in realism, the evidence of history,\nalone, apart from that of our own senses, proves beyond a doubt.\n\nThe appreciation which it has met with at the hands of almost all\nEuropeans of all ages, and particularly at the hands of the Renaissance\nrealists, shows how general its appeal has been; and no art which has\nbeen so very much above Nature as to apotheosize the particular values\nof a particular people at its zenith, has ever made such a general\nappeal.\n\n\n\n\nD. Greek Painting.\n\n\nIn regard to the painting of Greece, I will not detain you long.\nPractically all I have said in regard to Greek sculpture may be applied\nwith equal force to Greek painting, and I cannot do better than sum\nup this side of the question with the words of that profound Japanese\nartist Okakura-Kakuzo.\n\nIn speaking of the great style of the Greeks, in painting--a style\nwhich vanished with the sixth century,--he says--\n\n\"The great style of the Greeks in painting--that style which was\ntheirs before a stage chiaroscuro and imitation of Nature were brought\nin by the Appellesian school,--rises up before us with ineffaceable\nregret ... and we cannot refrain from saying that European work, by\nfollowing the later school, has lost greatly in power of structural\ncomposition and line expression, though it has added to the facility of\nrealistic representation.\"[38]\n\nWhen it is remembered that the demands of theatrical scenery are\ngenerally admitted to have exercised considerable influence over\nGreek painting, we need feel no surprise at the necessarily vulgar\nnature of its ultimate development; while in raising this point about\nchiaroscuro, Okakura-Kakuzo really opens a very serious and needful\ninquiry.\n\nIt may be seriously questioned whether the chiaroscuro which\nApollodorus is said to have introduced in the fifth century was not the\nworst possible blow that has ever been levelled at Ruler-Art, and it is\ndifficult to separate this discovery from the people who made it.\n\nOnce it is recognized that chiaroscuro implies a blending of colours\ntogether, an elimination of all those sharp contrasts which the\ncompromising spirit of a democratic age cannot abide, and a general\nhugging and embracing of all colours by each other, at the cost of the\nlife of all definite lines; once it is acknowledged, moreover, that all\ngradations and blurred zones of contact lead inevitably to the very\nworst forms of Police Art, such as Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Timanthus\npractised, and that escape from realism is not only difficult,\nbut almost impossible under such conditions, the question whether\nApollodorus is to be praised or cursed becomes a very weighty and vital\none; and in saying that he ought to be cursed, I make a very important\nstatement, however unreasonable it may seem to you at present.\n\nYou have noticed that until now I have not compared the Periclean art\nof Greece with the art of any other country, but simply with what\nis generally called the archaic art of Greece itself. I have spoken\nOnly of the Apollo of Tenea, and of certain promising features in the\nsixth-century sculptures which were discovered on the Acropolis within\nrecent years.\n\n\n\n[32] See Edward A. Freeman, _The Chief Periods of European History_, p.\n6: \"The mission of the Greek race was to be the teachers, the beacons,\nof mankind, but not their rulers.\" Page 9: \"The tale of Hellas shows us\na glorified ideal of human powers, held up to the world for a moment to\nshow what man can be, but to show us also that such he cannot be for\nlong.\"\n\n[33] The attitude of such men as L\u00fcbke and Winckelmann to Egyptian art\nis typical of the lack of understanding with which modern Europeans\nhave approached the monuments of the Nile. See _History of Sculpture_,\nby Dr. Wilhelm L\u00fcbke, Vol. I, pp. 22-25, and _History of Ancient Art_,\nby John Winckelmann, Vol. I, pp. 169, 171, 175.\n\n[34] This view seems quite opposed to that of a great authority on the\nsubject, Mr. A. S. Murray; but how this author comes to the conclusion\nthat \"... in describing the progress of sculpture from its early days\nto its highest development, it is convenient to speak of it as a\ngradual elimination of realism,\" I am quite at a loss to understand.\nSee _A History of Greek Sculpture_, p. 239.\n\n[35] See _The Chief Periods of European History_, pp. 21-23. See also\nBury, _History of Greece_, Chaps. IV and V.\n\n[36] In studying the actual decline of Greek art it would, I think, be\nvery necessary to lay some stress upon the part taken by the people\nin general, in judging and criticizing artistic productions under the\ndemocracies. See Rev. J. Mahaffy (_Social Life in Greece_), who is\ntalking entirely from the Hellenic standpoint, p. 440: \"The really\nvital point was the public nature of the work they (the Athenian Demos)\ndemanded; it was not done to please private and peculiar taste, it was\nnot intended for the criticism of a small clique of partial admirers,\nbut it was set up, or performed for all the city together, for the\nfastidious, for the vulgar, for the learned, and for the ignorant. It\nseems to me that this necessity, and the consequent broad intention of\nthe Greek artist, is the main reason _why its effects upon the world\nhas never been diminished, and why its lessons are eternal_\" (the\nitalics are mine).\n\n[37] T. G. Tucker, in his _Life in Ancient Greece_, does his best\nto reconcile the realism of Greek art with the \"ideal,\" and helps\nhimself out of the difficulty by reasserting Schelling's claim in\n_The Philosophy of Art_ (see note to p. 91 in this book). Mr. Tucker\nsays, p. 186: \"Many people imagine that Greek sculpture--to take that\nsalient province again--deliberately avoided truth to Nature, and aimed\nat some utterly conventional thing called the ideal. Nothing could be\nmore mistaken. The whole aim of Greek sculpture was to reproduce the\nliving man or woman, and the sublime of its execution was attained only\nwhen the carving seemed instinct with life--a life not merely of the\nlimbs, but a life of the soul, which informed the countenance, and was\nfelt to be controlling every limb. A Greek sculptor like Praxiteles\nstudied long and lovingly.... To anatomy he is as true as an artist\nneed wish to be. But are not his figures ideal? Doubtless, but what\ndoes 'ideal' mean? That they are abstract, conventional, or frankly\nsuperhuman? Anything but that. It means simply that he carves figures\nwhich, while entirely true to strict anatomy, entirely lifelike in\nall their delicate modelling ... are examples of nature in happiest\ncircumstances....\"\n\n[38] _Ideals of the East_, p. 53.\n\n\n\n\n2. Egyptian Art.--A. King Khephr\u00ebn.\n\n\nIf, however, I now choose to compare the art of the Temple of Zeus at\nOlympia, and the Parthenon at Athens[39] with that of Egypt, the first\nfalls absolutely to pieces. If I walk from the lions of Gebel Barkal,\nwhich Reginald Stuart Poole considers as the \"finest example of the\nidealization of animal forms that any age has produced,\"[40] over to\nthe horses of the Parthenon, the latter seem poor, feeble, and slavish\nbeside the powerfully simplified and commanding work of Egypt. And if,\nwith vivid recollections of the diorite statue of King Khephr\u00ebn at\nCairo, I walk up to the best Greek work of the Periclean age, or after,\neither in London or Paris, I marvel at the denseness of an age which\ncan put the Egyptian Pharaoh second in the order of rank.\n\n[Illustration: King Khephr\u00ebn, Cairo Museum]\n\nWe now know too much to believe that the noble simplicity of King\nKhephr\u00ebn--the builder of the second pyramid of Gizeh--is the result\nof incompetence or of limited means in dealing with the stone out\nof which he was carved. No artist who follows the careful lines and\nprofiles of this statue, and who understands the broad grasp with\nwhich each undulation, however sweeping, comprehends and comprises all\nthat is essential and indispensable, can doubt for an instant that the\nsculptor who carved it was not only capable of realism, but infinitely\nsuperior to it. And he who does not admire the consummate Ruler form\nof this statue, and see in it the expression of the greatest artistic\npower that has ever existed on earth, and probably the portrait of the\ngreatest human power that has ever existed on earth, confesses himself,\nimmediately, unfamiliar with the fundamental spirit of great art.[41]\n\nThe type of King Khephr\u00ebn it is quite impossible to admire and to\nlike, unless one is to some extent in sympathy with his ideals and his\naspirations. His features will remain strange and quite inscrutable\nas long as one does not feel one's self leaning, however slightly, to\nhis side, in thought and emotion; but the masterly treatment of his\napotheosized portrait by a man who was probably his greatest artist,\nought to be apparent to all who have thought and meditated upon the\nquestion of what constitutes the greatest art.\n\nHere is to be seen that autocratic mode of expression which brooks\nneither contradiction nor disobedience; the Symmetry which makes the\nspectator obtain a complete grasp of an idea; the Sobriety which\nreveals the restraint that a position of command presupposes; the\nSimplicity proving the power of a great mind that has overcome the\nchaos in itself and has reflected its order and harmony upon an object,\nthe most essential features of which it has selected with unfailing\naccuracy; the Transfiguration that betrays the Dionysian ecstasy and\npathos from which the artist gives of himself to reality and makes\nit reflect his own glory back upon him; the Repetition which ensures\nobedience, and finally the Variety which is the indispensable condition\nof all living Art.[42]\n\nFor the artist who carved this monument was no coward. His duty was to\nsurpass the beauty of the most beautiful subject on earth in his time.\nThis man whom he has bequeathed to us in stone was not only a king, but\na god, and none but the most masterful mind, none but the most ultimate\nproduct of ages spent in the observance of a definite and particular\nset of values, could have been capable of giving this simplified\nrendering, this selection of essentials, of a man-god who was the\nhighest outcome of these same values.\n\nHow was this possible? How were these values maintained so long?\n\nIn the first place, it can now be affirmed with confidence that the\nEgyptians, in the days of Khephr\u00ebn, were a very pure and united race,\nhaving remained, thanks to their isolated position on the Delta of\nthe Nile, aloof and free from the ethical and blood influence of the\nforeigner for probably thousands of years. Secondly, everybody seems to\nagree that, whatever its ultimate purity may have been, the Egyptian\npeople, thanks to the inordinate power of their values, certainly had\na capacity for absorbing and digesting foreign elements which was\nsimply extraordinary;[43] and, thirdly, we have it on the authority\nof Wilkinson that \"the superiority of their legislation has always been\nacknowledged as the cause of the duration of an empire which lasted\nwith a very uniform succession of hereditary sovereigns, and with the\nsame form of government for a much longer period than the generality of\nancient states.\"[44]\n\nWe can understand King Khephr\u00ebn, then, only as the apotheosis of a type\nwhich was the product of the values of his people. For that they loved\nhim and worshipped him quite willingly and quite heartily, no honest\nstudent of their history can any longer doubt.\n\nIt was with great rejoicings, and not, as Buckle and Spencer thought,\nwith the woeful and haggard faces of ill-used slaves, that his people\nassembled annually to continue and to complete the building of his\npyramid. Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, Wilkinson, Dr. Petrie,[45] and\nmany others have cleared up all our doubts on this point, and only\nan Englishman like Buckle,[46] who could not divorce labour from the\nmodern idea of sweating, and absolute monarchy from the modern idea of\ncruelty, and slavery from the modern idea of brutality,[47] was able\nto think otherwise.\n\nFor it was highly probable that King Khephr\u00ebn had no standing army. It\nis certain that his predecessor had not.[48] It is even probable that\nhe had no armed bodyguard. What, then, was the power which, every year,\ncould muster thousands of his fellow-countrymen about him, and which\ninduced them cheerfully to undertake this most strenuous, this most\nskilful, and this most highly artistic labour for him?\n\nThis power, there can no longer be any doubt, was the power of\naffection and profound and sincere reverence. An examination of the\npyramids of Gizeh, alone, apart from all historical evidence, is\nsufficient to convince any one who has any knowledge of what forced\nlabour produces, that love was very largely active in the work of\nthese Egyptians of the third and fourth dynasties;[49] and, if we turn\nfrom the actual monuments themselves to the sculpture that adorned\nthem, we become convinced that the people who built them were a united,\nlaw-abiding race, who recognized in Khephr\u00ebn the highest product of\ntheir values. And yet, that enormous power was wielded by this one\nman-god, is proved by every detail that history and the arch\u00e6ological\nrecords have handed down to us. He was the remote predecessor of a king\nwho one day would be able to declare--\n\n\"I teach the priests what is their duty: I turn away the ignorant man\nfrom his ignorance.... The gods are full of delight in my time, and\ntheir temples celebrate feasts of joy. I have placed the boundaries of\nthe land of Egypt at the horizon. I gave protection to those who were\nin trouble, and smote those who did evil against them. I placed Egypt\nat the head of all the nations, because its inhabitants are at one with\nme in the worship of Amon!\"[50]\n\nHe was a man the moral standards of whose people were in many respects\nhigher than those of the Greeks;[51] he and his subjects felt very strongly\nthe value of strength of character and of self-control;[52] though perhaps\nthey laid \"greater stress upon discretion and quietness than on any\nqualities of character. In the repudiation of sins an Egyptian would\nsay: 'My mouth hath not run on;' 'My mouth hath not been hot;' 'My\nvoice hath not been voluble in my speech;' 'My voice is not loud.'\"[53]\n\n\"Ptahotep urged similar discreetness; he said: 'Let thy heart be\noverflowing, but let thy mouth be restrained.'\"[54] While another Egyptian\nmoralist said: \"Do not be a talker!\"[55]\n\nThus we find all the evidences of precisely that principle which goes\nto rear a great people--the belief that restraint is necessary,\nand part of the art of life, and that in order to have one group of\nadvantages, another group must be sacrificed.\n\nFor this is the principle of all great legislation; it is the principle\nof all great art,--and it is the principle of all great life.\n\nA great legislator has to discover what sacrifices his people can\nafford to make, what things they will be able for ever to discard in\norder to reap the advantages of a certain mode of life. His teaching\nmust include restraint. It is the renunciation of some things and the\ncareful cultivation of others that builds up a noble type. As Mr.\nChesterton once observed, with really uncustomary wisdom, you cannot\nbe King of England and the Beadle of Balham at the same time. To be\nthe one you must sacrifice the advantages which are associated with\nthe other. All values, all art,[56] and all life is based upon this\nprinciple--that if you grasp all, you lose all; or, as Nietzsche\nhas it: \"The belief in the pleasure which comes of restraint--this\npleasure of a rider on a fiery steed.\"[57]\n\nYou may argue that the enjoyment of one set of joys is better in your\nopinion than the enjoyment of another set; but you cannot claim the\nenjoyment of all; that is impossible. It is only among an uncultured\nor democratic people that every one aspires to all pleasures, and it\nis precisely among such a people that some form of Puritanism becomes\nan urgent need--that is to say, as a substitute for the art of life.[58]\nBecause the indiscriminate pursuit of all joys perforce ends in\nfailure, and therefore in unhappiness. But measure is the delight only\nof \u00e6sthetic natures;[59] hence, where the art of living has not yet been\nlearned, some kind of severe puritanical morality will be a condition\nof existence, and if that is dropped excesses will soon begin to make\ntheir presence felt.\n\nI do not wish you to imagine, therefore, that the Egyptians were an\naustere, ascetic and self-castigating race; on the contrary, as all\nauthorities declare, they were full of the joy of life and of the\nlove of life;[60] and it was precisely because they recognized\nwell-defined limits in particular things that they could allow\nthemselves a certain margin in others.\n\nIn the art of Egypt I recognized this principle of restraint, long\nbefore I discovered that it existed in their life and system of\nsociety, and I was not surprised to find it observed with greater\nseverity by their rulers than by the mass of the people themselves.[61]\n\nNo one can command who has not first learnt to obey his own will.\nNobody could command as that Man-God Khephr\u00ebn commanded,[62] before\nhe had become complete master of himself.\n\n\"He who cannot command himself shall obey,\" says Zarathustra.[63] And about\nfive thousand years ago Ptahotep--the great moralist of the fifth\ndynasty of Egypt--said: \"He that obeyeth his heart, shall command!\"[64]\n\nThis atmosphere is strange to us. We, who are used to seeing liberty\nand authority granted indiscriminately as ends in themselves, to\neverybody and anybody, find it difficult to realize this manner of\nthought. If we know of it at all, we misunderstand it and confound the\nmoderation of weak natures with the restraint of the strong.[65]\n\nThis art of life which takes as a fundamental principle that every joy\nis bought by some sacrifice, is strange and archaic now. The people it\nreared communicate little to our age, as their statues will prove if\nyou look at them; the art it created leaves modern spectators cold;\nand yet, as every great legislator and artist should know, it is\nprecisely upon the principle with which the Egyptian people of the\nfourth dynasty were reared, and with which the splendid statue of King\nKhephr\u00ebn was carved, that all great life and art repose.\n\nIt cannot be said too often, therefore, that the Egyptians were a happy\nand contented people, and this they were because there was some power\nabroad in their world, and because he who wielded that power could make\nthem believe that the human race was as high as a pyramid, although but\none man perhaps could ever represent the apex.\n\n\n\nB. The Lady Nophret.\n\n\nBut you may object that in some of the works of this period the\nEgyptian artists showed a lack of restraint, a lack of the instinct\nthat knows how much to sacrifice, which far surpassed this same vice\nin the art of the Greeks. You may point to the perfectly stupendous\nrealism of the Lady Nophret and her husband or brother, and declare\nwith Fergusson that \"nothing more wonderfully truthful and realistic\nhas been done since that time, till the invention of photography.\"[66]\n\n[Illustration: The Lady Nophret (Cairo Museum)]\n\nI confess that when I drew near to these statues in the Museum at\nCairo, it is no exaggeration to say that I was literally startled by\ntheir lifelike appearance. Like Miss Jane Harrison, I felt that the\n\"Lady Nophret,\" at least, must be able to rise and come forward,[67] so\nridiculously fresh and warm did she appear in her spotless white dress\nand her majestic wig. I soon realized that I was in the presence of a\nkind of realism which transcended anything I had ever seen in ancient\nor modern art, for its convincingness and truth; and it was difficult\nto believe that this piece of wholesale deception--certainly more\nperfect than any waxwork figure I had ever known,--like the statue of\nthe Man-God Khephr\u00ebn, was a product of the pyramid period.\n\nYou must not gather, from what I have just said, that the Lady Nophret\nis in the slightest degree as vulgar or as commonplace as an ordinary\nwaxwork figure or modern portrait. Though its vitality cannot be\ndenied,[68] there are artistic qualities in the simple moulding of the\nfigure which place it very much higher than the realistic work either\nof ancient Greece or of modern Europe. It is only beside the statue\nof King Khephr\u00ebn that it appears so weak; and, as it is almost a\ncontemporary of this magnificent person, the manner in which it has\nbeen presented to us by the artist seems to be a problem.\n\nThe first lesson it teaches you is this--that whatever you may think\nabout the conventionalism of King Khephr\u00ebn, such conventionalism has\nnothing whatever to do with archaic clumsiness, inability to see\nNature, or incompetence. It is clear that the Egyptians were greater\nmasters in rendering nature realistically than any people before or\nafter them.[69] If they had not been, they could never have produced\nthe portrait-statues of the architect Ti; the two portrait-statues of\nRanofir, priest of Ptah of Memphis, and that of the Scribe and of the\nCheikh-el-Beled[70]--all in the museum at Cairo.\n\nWhen they are not realistic, then, it is because they do not wish to\nbe; it is because they deliberately desire to rise above nature, to\ntransfigure it, simplify it, and arrange it--in fact, to be artists.\n\nWhat, then, was the object of these realistic portrait-statues about\nwhich I have chosen to speak collectively in my references to the Lady\nNophret?\n\nThey were never intended by the artist who made them to be seen by the\neye of man. They were never intended to be works of Ruler-art, set up\nto emphasize and underline the values of a people. They had a definite\npurpose, of course, but this purpose was quite foreign to that of Art\nas I defined it in my last lecture. What was this purpose?\n\nIt was related to Death.[71] No realistic sculptural work was\nassociated with Life by the ancient Egyptians. As men who were still\nable to believe in a Man-God, and were still convinced of the power\nof man-wrought miracles, how could they associate realism or that\nprinciple of manufacture whereby a man deliberately suppresses his\nwill to art and makes himself subservient to nature--how could they\nassociate this with Life,--Life which to these dwellers on the Nile\nwas inextricably bound up with the hand, the thought, the will, and the\npower of man?\n\nNo--these realistic sculptures which throw all our puerile Police Art\ninto the shade were associated not with Life, but with the opposite of\nLife--with Death, with underground tombs and sarcophagi, with mummies\nand musty mastabas, and with the hope of conquering Eternal Sleep.\n\nThe Egyptians believed that a living man consisted of a body, a Ka or\nghost, and a Ba or soul. At death, the Ka and Ba were supposed to be\nliberated; but it was hoped that a day would nevertheless come when the\nKa, which was the element in which the life of the deceased person was\nspecially believed to reside, would come back to the body and effect\nits resurrection. Hence the care with which a body was embalmed and\npreserved from putrefaction.\n\nAccidents, however, might happen, thought the ancient Egyptians. The\nembalmed mummy might perish, it might be destroyed. What would the\nunfortunate Ka do, if it returned and found the mummy of its former\nbody annihilated? A way out of this difficulty quickly occurred to the\nnimble minds of these imaginative people. If the mummy had perished,\nthey thought, the Ka might possibly enter an effigy of its former\nbody, provided that effigy were sufficiently lifelike. In this way the\nrealistic Ka-statues were introduced, and for fear lest even these\nmight perish, wealthy people would sometimes multiply their number to\nwhat would seem a ridiculous extent.\n\nOnce they were manufactured, these Ka-statues would be placed far away\nfrom the sight of living man, in the tomb of the departed person, and\nin this way his resurrection was supposed to be ensured.[72]\n\nFor the Egyptians could imagine no world better than their own. And\neven a resurrection could but occur amid surroundings which were as\nlike as possible to those of everyday life on earth.\n\nThe realism of the Ka-statue of the Lady Nophret, therefore, need\nnot frighten us. On the contrary, it only helps to throw the\ntransfiguration and power of King Khephr\u00ebn's diorite statue into\ngreater relief. The Egyptians knew perfectly well that a Ka-statue was\nonly a duplication, a copy, and a repetition of reality, and they knew\nalso that its proper place was underground and out of sight.[73]\nIf Lady Nophret and her companion Ka-statues had never been found,\nhowever, we might have believed, as many have believed, that the\nconventionalism of Egyptian sculpture was beneath instead of very much\nabove Nature.\n\nBut even when we know what we do know, it is only with the utmost\ndifficulty that an artist who is a child of this weak and impotent age\ncan feel any love for these strange, transcendentally powerful, and\nalmost superhuman figures in granite and diorite which the sculptors\nof Egypt have left us. The artist may perhaps get nearer to them than\nany one else in his age, because he, by virtue of the modicum of\ncreative power that is in him, initiates himself almost automatically\ninto the mysteries of this great Egyptian simplicity, order, and\ntransfiguration. But others who are not artists can only pass them by.\nFor these figures are the apotheosis of a particular type. They are\nwhat all art should be, a stimulus, and a spur to a life based upon a\ndefinite set of values. How, then, could people stop and admire them\nwho are living under values which are possibly the very reverse of\nthose which this art advocates, or under no definite values at all?\n\nThe style of the statue of King Khephr\u00ebn, with but a few modifications,\nwas the style of all Egyptian statuary until the days of Psammetichus,\nover two thousand years later: how can we, the changeable and restless\nchildren of Europe, understand these things?\n\n\n\n\nC. The Pyramid.\n\n\nHow can we admire and understand even the symbol of King Khephr\u00ebn's\nsocial organization--the Pyramid, when we know and love only the level\nplain?\n\nThe Pyramid, which in its form embodies all the highest qualities of\ngreat art, and all the highest principles of a healthy society, is the\ngreatest artistic achievement that has been discovered hitherto.\n\nThis symbolic wedlock of Art and Sociology still stands, with all its\nsix thousand years of age, on the threshold of the desert--that is\nto say, on the threshold of chaos and disorder, where none but the\nwind attempts to shape and to form; and reminds us of a master will\nthat once existed and set its eternal stamp upon the face of the world\nin Egypt, so that posterity might learn whether mankind had risen or\ndeclined.\n\nIn its synthesis of the three main canons, simplicity, repetition and\nvariety,[74] nothing has ever excelled it; in its mystic utterance\nof the conditions of the ideal state, in which every member takes his\nplace and ultimately succeeds in holding highest man uppermost and\nnearest the sun, it is unparalleled in history; and in its sacred\nrevelation that Man can attain to some height if he chooses, that\nhe can believe in Man the God, and Man the Hierophant, and Man the\nProphet, if he chooses, and that he can be noble, happy, lasting and\npowerful in so doing--in this treble advocacy of these sublime ideals,\nthe pyramid and the Egyptians who created it stand absolutely alone in\nthe history of the world.\n\nThe best in Greece was borrowed from them; the best we still possess is\nperhaps but a faint after-glow of their setting sun, and the cold and\nunfamiliar tone in which their art seems to appeal to modern men ought\nto prove to us how remote, how incalculably far off, they are from\nour insignificant age of progress and advancement, of feebleness and\nmediocrity, and of hopeless errors, in which \"the prince proposes, but\nthe shopkeeper disposes!\"[75]\n\nI cannot go into the details of their society with you now. I can but\nassure you that the more you read about it in the works of men like\nWilkinson, Petrie and Brugsch-Bey, the more convinced you will become\nof its transcendental superiority. And if, in praising their art above\nthat of any other nation, I have been forced to deal all too hastily\nwith their morals and their State, it is simply because I can conceive\nof no such perfect art being possible, save as the flower of the noble\nand man-exalting values which I find at the base of the Egyptian\nPyramid.\n\nIn identifying Nietzsche's art canon with that admired and respected\nby Egypt at its best, I have done nothing at all surprising to those\nwho know Nietzsche's philosophy. Everything he says on Art in his\nmaturest work, _The Will to Power_, drove me inevitably, not to Italy,\nnot to Greece, not to Holland, and not to India--but to the Valley\nof the Nile; while in two books already published I forestalled these\nlectures, in one respect, by declaring Nietzsche's ideal aristocratic\nstate to have been based symbolically upon the idea of the Egyptian\nPyramid.\n\nOnly a romantic idealist would have the sentimental fanaticism to stand\nup before you now to preach an Egyptian Renaissance. I wish to do\nnothing of the sort. I know too well to what extent the Art of Egypt\nwas the product of a people reared by a definite set of inviolable\nvalues, to hope to transplant it with any chance of success on to our\ndemocratic and anarchical soil. What I do wish to advocate, however,\nis, that when you think of the best in Art, your mind should go back to\nthe severe and vigorous culture of Egypt and not to that of any other\ncountry.\n\nThis will at least give you a standard of measurement, according to\nwhich most of the culture of the present day will strike you as tawdry\nand putrescent. In this way a salutary change may be brought about, and\nthe words of Disraeli concerning the Egyptians may also come true, in\nwhich he said: \"The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the\nhigh powers of that mysterious and imaginative people.\"[76]\n\nNothing can be done, however, until our type is purified,[77] until we have\nat least become a people. For until that time it will be impossible to\ndiscover a type which may become the subject-matter of the graphic arts.\n\n\"Upwards life striveth to build itself with columns and stairs: into\nremote distances it longeth to gaze: and outwards after blissful\nbeauties--_therefore_ it needeth height!\n\n\"And because it needeth height, it needeth stairs and contradiction\nbetween stairs, and those who can climb! to rise striveth life, and in\nrising to surpass itself!\n\n\"Verily, he who here towered aloft his thought in stone knew as well as\nthe wisest ones about the secret of life!\n\n\"That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty and war for power\nand supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.\n\n\"Thus spake Zarathustra.\"[78]\n\n\n[39] I am quite willing with Mr. Gardner to acknowledge the superiority\nof the latter over the former. See _Handbook to Greek Sculpture_, p.\n216 _et seq._\n\n[40] _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_ (9th Edition), Article, \"Egypt.\"\n\n[41] See Dr. Petrie, _A History of Egypt_. On page 54 of this book,\nthe author says, speaking of King Khephr\u00ebn: \"It is a marvel of art;\nthe precision of the expression combining what a man should be to win\nour feelings, and what a King should be to command our regard. The\nsubtlety shown in this combination of expression--the ingenuity in the\nover-shadowing hawk, which does not interfere with the front view; the\ntechnical ability in executing this in so resisting a material--all\nunite in fixing our regard on this as one of the leading examples of\nancient art.\"\n\n[42] Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, _A History of Art in Ancient\nEgypt_, Vol. II, p. 239: \"The true originality of the Egyptian style\nconsists in its deliberately epitomizing that upon which the artists\nof other countries have elaborately dwelt--in its lavishing all its\nexecutive powers upon chief masses and leading lines, and in the\nmarvellous judgment with which it seizes their real meaning, their\nproportion, and the sources of their artistic effect.\"\n\n[43] _A History of Egypt_, by Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, Vol. I, p. 7:\n\"Although in so long a space of time as sixty centuries, events and\nrevolutions of great historical importance must of necessity have\naltered the political state of Egypt, yet, notwithstanding all, the old\nEgyptian race has undergone but little change; for it still preserves\nto this day those distinctive features of physiognomy, and those\npeculiarities of manners and customs, which have been handed down to\nus by the united testimony of the monuments and the accounts of the\nancient classical writers, as the hereditary characteristics of this\npeople.\"\n\n[44] _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, Vol. I, p. 293.\n\n[45] _A History of Egypt_, p. 40: \"It is said that a hundred\nthousand men were levied for three months at a time (i.e. during\nthe three months of the inundation, when ordinary labour would be\nat a standstill); and on this scale the pyramid building occupied\ntwenty years.\" [He is speaking of the Great Pyramid built by Kheops,\nKhephr\u00ebn's predecessor; but this does not affect my contention.] \"On\nreckoning number and weight of the stones, this labour would fully\nsuffice for the work. The skilled masons had large barracks, now behind\nthe second pyramid, which might hold even four thousand men; but\nperhaps a thousand would quite suffice to do all the fine work in the\ntime. Hence there was no impossibility in the task, and no detriment\nto the country in employing a small proportion of the population at a\nseason when they were all idle by the compulsion of natural causes. The\ntraining and skill which they would acquire by such work would be a\ngreat benefit to the national character.\"\n\nAnd the same writer says in _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_, p.\n211: \"Thus we see that the traditional accounts that we have of the\nmeans employed in building the great Pyramid, require conditions of\nlabour supply which are quite practicable in such a land, which would\nnot be ruinous to the prosperity of the country, or oppressive to the\npeople, and which would amply and easily suffice for the execution of\ntheir work.\"\n\n[46] _History of Civilization in England_ (Ed. 1871), Vol. I, pp. 90,\n91, 92, 93. And Herbert Spencer's _Autobiography_, Vol. II, pp. 341-343.\n\n[47] Quite typical of Western inability to understand the basis of a\npatriarchal government, and of the misinterpretation of such a form,\nwhich writers like Buckle did their best to increase and spread, was\nthe first Act of the play _Fallen Idols_, recently presented at His\nMajesty's Theatre, London, in which Egyptian slaves were seen cringing\nand crawling before an inhuman taskmaster, who continually lashed out\nat them with a big whip.\n\n[48] Fergusson, _History of Architecture_, Vol. I, p. 95: \"Nor is our\nwonder less when we ask ourselves how it happened that such a people\nbecame so strongly organized at that early age as to be willing to\nundertake the greatest architectural works the world has since seen\nin honour of one man from among themselves. A king without an army,\nand with no claim, so far as we can see, to such an honour, beyond the\ncommon consent of all, which could hardly have been attained except by\nthe title of long-inherited services acknowledged by the community at\nlarge.\" And on p. 94, speaking of the pictures in the Great Pyramid,\nthe author says: \"On these walls the owner of the tomb is usually\nrepresented seated, offering first-fruits on a simple table-altar to\nan unseen god. He is generally accompanied by his wife, and surrounded\nby his stewards, who enumerate his wealth in horned cattle, in oxen,\nin sheep and goats, in geese and ducks. In other pictures some are\nploughing and sowing, some reaping or thrashing out corn, while others\nare tending his tame monkeys or cranes, and other domesticated pets.\nMusic and dancing add to the circle of domestic enjoyments, and fowling\nand fishing occupy his days of leisure. No sign of soldiers or of\nwarlike strife appears in any of these pictures, no arms, no chariots\nor horses. No camels suggest foreign travel.\"\n\n[49] I should like to reproduce here Fergusson's enthusiastic account\nof the work in the interior of the Great Pyramid. I have not space,\nhowever, and earnestly recommend readers to refer to it on pp. 93, 94\nof Vol. I in his _History of Architecture_.\n\n[50] Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, _History of Egypt under the Pharaohs_, Vol.\nI, pp. 444-445.\n\n[51] Dr. Petrie, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_, p. 86.\n\n[52] _Ibid._, p. 112.\n\n[53] _Ibid._, p. 116.\n\n[54] Dr. Petrie, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_, p. 116.\n\n[55] _Ibid._, p. 117. This moralist was Any.\n\n[56] _G. E._, p. 107: \"Every artist knows how different from the\nstate of letting himself go, is his 'most natural' condition, the\nfree arranging, locating, disposing and constructing in the moments\nof 'inspiration'--and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a\nthousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all\nformulation by means of ideas.\"\n\n[57] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 309.\n\n[58] See Nietzsche's remarks on the great need of Christianity in\nEngland, _G. E._, p. 211.\n\n[59] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 309.\n\n[60] See Brugsch-Bey, _A History of Egypt_, Vol. I, p. 25; Wilkinson,\n_The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, Vol. I, p. 156;\nGeorges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, _A History of Art in Ancient\nEgypt_, p. 38; Dr. Petrie, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_,\np. 162.\n\n[61] See Wilkinson, Vol. I, p. 179.\n\n[62] See _Ibid._, p. 167. Where he is speaking of the Pharaohs he says:\n\"By the practice of justice towards their subjects, they secured to\nthemselves that good-will which was due from children to a parent ...\nand this, Diodorus observes, was the main cause of the duration of the\nEgyptian state.\"\n\n[63] _Z._, III, LVI.\n\n[64] Dr. Petrie, _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_, p. 120.\n\n[65] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 309.\n\n[66] _History of Architecture_, Vol. I, p. 95.\n\n[67] Miss Jane Harrison, _Introductory Studies in Greek Art_, p. 6.\n\n[68] Dr. Petrie, _A History of Egypt_, p. 35. Referring to the Lady\nNophret and her husband, the author says (speaking quite in the style\nof a modern art-critic): \"These statues are most expressive, and stand\nin their vitality superior to the works of any later age in Egypt.\"\n\n[69] On the walls of some of the tombs I inspected at Sakarah, the\nconsummate mastery with which some of the minutest characteristics of\ndomestic animals were represented in bold outline gave me a standard\nby the side of which even M. Boutet de Monvel's beautiful studies of\nanimals seemed to fall into the shade. (See his illustrations to La\nFontaine's fables.)\n\n[70] Models of the Scribe and of the Cheikh-el-Beled are to be seen at\nthe British Museum; but they give one but a poor idea of the originals.\n\n[71] Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, _A History of Art in Ancient\nEgypt_, Vol. II, p. 181. Speaking of these portrait statues, they say:\n\"They were not ideal figures to which the desire for beauty of line\nand expression had much to say; they were stone bodies, bodies which\nhad to reproduce all the individual contours of their flesh-and-blood\noriginals; when the latter was ugly, its reproduction had to be ugly\nalso, and ugly in the same way.\"\n\n[72] See Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, _A History of Art in\nAncient Egypt_, Vol. II, p. 181. Speaking of the arrangements which\nwere necessary to enable the inhabitants of the tomb to resist\nannihilation, the authors say: \"Those arrangements were of two kinds, a\nprovision of food and drink, which had to be constantly renewed, either\nin fact or by the magic multiplication which followed prayer, and a\npermanent support for the Ka or double, a support that should fill the\nplace of the living body of which it had been deprived by dissolution.\"\n\n[73] Okakura-Kakuzo passes a funny remark in regard to our modern\nrealistic portraits; he says: \"In Western houses we are often\nconfronted with what appears to us useless reiteration. We find it\ntrying to talk to a man while his full-length portrait stares at us\nfrom behind his back. We wonder which is real, he of the picture, or\nhe who talks, and feel a curious conviction that one of them must be a\nfraud.\"--The Book of Tea, p. 97.\n\n[74] See Hogarth, _The Analysis of Beauty_ (Ed. 1753), p. 21: \"There\nis no object composed of straight lines that has so much variety, with\nso few parts, as the pyramid: and it is its constantly varying from\nits base gradually upwards in every situation of the eye (without\ngiving the idea of sameness as the eye moves round it) that has made\nit esteemed in all ages, in preference to the cone, which in all views\nappears nearly the same, being varied only by light and shade.\"\n\n[75] _Z._, III, LI.\n\n[76] Contarini Fleming.\n\n[77] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 318: \"Purification of taste can only be the\nresult of strengthening of the type;\" and p. 403: \"Progress is the\nstrengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will power;\neverything else is a misunderstanding and a danger.\"\n\n[78] _Z._, II, XXIX.","title":"Nietzsche and Art","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":66052}