{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_64443/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_64443","id":"gutenberg_64443","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64443","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Teaching & Education","Literature"],"text":"ART PRINCIPLES\n                              IN LITERATURE\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n                          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                  NEW YORK \u00b7 BOSTON \u00b7 CHICAGO \u00b7 DALLAS\n                         ATLANTA \u00b7 SAN FRANCISCO\n\n                        MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED\n                       LONDON \u00b7 BOMBAY \u00b7 CALCUTTA\n                                MELBOURNE\n\n                    THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.\n                                 TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n                             ART PRINCIPLES\n                              IN LITERATURE\n\n                      BY FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J.\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n                          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                  PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK      MCMXXV\n\n                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1923,\n                        BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n              SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1923.\n                         REPRINTED APRIL, 1925.\n\n                          REPRINTED JULY, 1928.\n\n         WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIn the _Art of Interesting_ (Kenedy, 1920) the writer began a discussion\nof the principles of art and of their application to writing and\nspeaking. In this work the discussion is carried further and is not\nrestricted to the one feature of arousing and fixing attention,\nespecially in oratory, which was the chief topic of the _Art of\nInteresting_. The following chapters represent the reactions of the\nwriter to literature both as composed today and as taught in our schools.\nAny active mind, bewildered by the ceaseless experimenting in literature\nand education, and not satisfied with a passive acceptance of even\nexcellent critics, is necessarily forced back upon first principles.\nSuch a mind will not yield to the despair of skepticism, that there\nare no first principles, nor to the despair of agnosticism, that there\nmay be such principles but we cannot know them, nor yet to the despair\nof pragmatism, that we must wait and see whether the human race ages\nfrom now will give us assurance that there really are principles of art\nbecause the last man has seen that these principles have been found to\nwork up to the moment prior to which he joined Tutankhamen.\n\nArt, just as morals and pure science, differs entirely from the natural\nsciences, which are generalizations based upon acquired information and\nmust change as long as the information upon which they are based can be\nmodified and enlarged. But where, as in art or pure science, principles\nare based on final truths, the principles have also a finality and can\nonly be rejected if their basis can be changed or modified. Aristotle\u2019s\nprinciples have something of that finality. Aristotle had for his study\na body of literature that has for centuries met with the approval of\nthe best taste in every age and of every critic. Aristotle\u2019s biology\nor physics are not final, but his ethics, his logic, his esthetics\nare in measurable distance of finality except where some additions\nhave been made to the materials upon which he based his analysis. In\nreligion, because of revelation, in music because of discoveries in\ninstrumentation, and perhaps in other arts, time has added to the\noriginal store, but in literature there are few additions to the fields\nwhich lay before Aristotle, and subsequent ages have not developed any\nkeener analytical powers than those of Aristotle.\n\nIt is Aristotle\u2019s principles that in the main have dominated the writer\u2019s\nreactions to modern art and literature. When Greek literature held an\nhonored place in our schools, there was less need of insisting on obvious\ntruths of art. The intense modernism now predominating everywhere has\ndriven classical literature and classical methods from school and life.\nHistory is modernized too or fails to supply the vital contact with\nthe ever-living past which earlier schools experienced in the poets,\nhistorians, orators and philosophers of Greece and Rome. So-called\ncultural subjects in modern education are chiefly informational. Culture\nis a word which calls for definition, but on its intellectual side at\nleast, culture for the largest number of persons in the world can be\ngauged most satisfactorily by their appreciation of literature and by\ntheir capacity to produce literature. The study of literature as an art\nis the chief topic of this book, and Aristotle\u2019s great principles need\nall the more stressing now that his philosophy of art and the supreme\nliterature on which he based his conclusions are passing away from\npresent-day consciousness.\n\nThe chapters that follow are popular rather than scientific in\npresentation. Readers who seek a fuller and wider view may be interested\nin such a work as Benedetto Croce\u2019s _\u00c6sthetic_, from the Italian by\nDouglas Ainslie. Its historical summary, especially for modern times,\nis valuable and good. For the Greeks and earlier periods, Butcher\u2019s\n_Aristotle\u2019s Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts_ is easily best. Professor\nRhys Roberts\u2019 editions of the works of Dionysius, Longinus and Demetrius\nare excellent for the traditions of classical rhetoric, a tradition weak\nin America.\n\nIn theory Croce is an extreme intellectualist in the principles of art.\nHe locates all of esthetics in pure intuition, which is \u201clyrical,\u201d\nthat is, emotional, because it represents \u201cthe states of the soul,\u201d\n\u201cpassionality, feeling, personality.\u201d For Croce \u201cnatural beauty\nis simply a stimulus to esthetic reproduction, which presupposes\nprevious production.\u201d He is therefore an idealist in his conception of\nbeauty. Even monuments of art seem to be only \u201cstimulants to esthetic\nreproduction\u201d and are not beautiful in themselves. In another place,\nhowever, Croce seems to be a realist. \u201cArt is governed entirely by\nimagination; its only riches are images. Art does not classify objects\nnor pronounce them real or imaginary nor qualify them nor define them.\nArt feels and represents them. In as far as it apprehends \u2018the real\u2019\nimmediately before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must\nbe called pure intuition.\u201d\n\nQuite to the other extreme in theory goes _The Psychology of Beauty_\nby Ethel D. Puffer. This author has much about sensations and their\nphysiology and but little about ideas. For Croce the last stage is in the\nidea; for Puffer it would seem to be in the work of art. \u201cThe low-lying\nwide expanse of some of the old Dutch landscapists give us repose, not\nbecause they remind us of the peaceful happiness of the land but because\nwe cannot melt ourselves into all those horizontal lines without the\nrestful feeling which accompanies such relaxation.\u201d This passage might\nalmost class the writer with the _Einf\u00fchlung_ school,\u2014the school which\ngives Ruskin\u2019s \u201cpathetic fallacy\u201d a number of advocates. Pathetic fallacy\nwas a complete misnomer when applied by Ruskin to the well-known tropes\nof metaphor and personification. Kingsley was not insane enough to\nimagine that a wave was actually cruel and actually crawled. He likened\nthe wave that drowned to a wild animal. But the school of Lipps in\nGermany desires you to moan with the wind and smile with the rose and lie\nflat with painted horizontal lines.\n\nPerhaps Puffer\u2019s formula of stimulation with repose and Croce\u2019s formula\nof intuition with lyricism can be reconciled with Aquinas\u2019 definition of\nthe beautiful, _qu\u00e6 visa placent_. A study of Maurice De Wulf\u2019s excellent\nlittle volume _L\u2019\u0152uvre d\u2019Art et la Beaut\u00e9_ gives us briefly and clearly\nthe neo-scholastic solution of the esthetic problem. The book is a\ngood example of the reasonable discussion which has won for scholastic\nphilosophy the universal designation as the philosophy of common sense.\nLonghaye\u2019s _Th\u00e9orie des Belles Lettres_, which is scholastic philosophy\napplied to literature, is another clear and sane presentation of the\nprinciples of the art.\n\nThe reader who desires to supplement the popular exposition of this\nbook with a systematic treatise on the esthetic and its application to\nliterature is recommended to De Wulf and to Longhaye. English is rich in\ncriticism but is deficient in works treating of the philosophy of beauty\nin literature.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                      PAGE\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\n    Connection with author\u2019s _Art of Interesting_\u2014Need of principles\n      of an art amidst violent experimentation in art and\n      education\u2014Aristotle\u2019s principles valid except where the basis\n      of his deductions has been modified\u2014With Greek literature\n      leaving our schools, Greek taste is needed against excessive\n      modernism\u2014Recent art discussions\u2014 Croce\u2019s _\u00c6sthetic_; Puffer\u2019s\n      _Psychology of Beauty_; De Wulf\u2019s _L\u2019\u0152uvre d\u2019Art et la Beaut\u00e9_     v\n\n                      ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE\n\n                               PART FIRST\n\n                  ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE\n\n                                    I\n\n                         ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\n    1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY                                  1\n\n        Talking to oneself in art\u2014Chaos in religion, morals\n          and art from unchecked individualism\u2014Altruism a better\n          principle\u2014Responsibility inevitable\u2014Responsibility a\n          help, no hindrance to the artist\u2014Greek drama; Italian\n          Madonnas; Horace.\n\n                                   II\n\n                         ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\n    2. VAGARIES OF INDIVIDUALISM                                         8\n\n        Modern literature and art and a sense of humor\u2014Fiction,\n          biographical and pathological\u2014New poetry shallow\u2014Riot\n          of emotionalism\u2014Novel of satire, European continental\n          type originating in low comedy\u2014Novel of Scott, epic\n          in origin\u2014Nature, experience, wisdom, the remedies of\n          individualism.\n\n                                   III\n\n                          ART AND HUMAN NATURE\n\n    1. THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENT                                            14\n\n        Art movements begin in nature\u2014Art is social\u2014Permanence\n          of literature due to universal appeal\u2014The camera and the\n          canvas\u2014Personality and individuality\u2014Shock of nerves not\n          the mental thrill of art.\n\n                                   IV\n\n                          ART AND HUMAN NATURE\n\n    2. REALISM AND REALITY                                              20\n\n        Real cake of soap on a painted wave\u2014Art a distinct world\n          from reality\u2014Motivation, not through logical discussion\n          but through probable incident\u2014Painting in the cake of\n          soap\u2014Realism depressing because of cynic moralizing\u2014Evil\n          in Shakespeare and Homer, relieved by pathos and humor,\n          not depressing.\n\n                                    V\n\n                           ART AND THE DIVINE\n\n    1. RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF ART                                          26\n\n        Rich tombs of the past testify to belief in\n          immortality\u2014Cro-Magnon cave pictures probably\n          religious\u2014Earliest art of all nations due to\n          religion\u2014Dancing, song, music, sculpture, architecture,\n          drama, epic\u2014Gothic cathedral of religious middle-ages,\n          synthesis of all arts.\n\n                                   VI\n\n                           ART AND THE DIVINE\n\n    2. THE KINSHIP OF ART AND RELIGION                                  31\n\n        Hebraism, Puritanism, Islamism, reacting against art\n          and the result\u2014Explanation of the origin of art\u2014Taine\u2019s\n          environment theory\u2014Spencer\u2019s play theory\u2014Theory of fear\n          and magic spells\u2014Adequate explanation found in man\u2019s\n          intellectual nature\u2014Art like religion intellectual\u2014Art\n          and religion idealistic\u2014Personal and emotional\u2014Art and\n          religion social in appeal\u2014Sublimity of art and the\n          revelation of _Genesis_\u2014Harmonious equation between soul\n          and the truth of reality, between soul and the good of\n          morality, same as equation between soul and beauty, all\n          founded on the fact that both soul and triple reality are\n          images of God.\n\n                                   VII\n\n                           ART AND THE DIVINE\n\n    3. ART IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE                                    39\n\n        The theomorphism of man in the threefold tendency\n          of science, morality and art\u2014Religion, a virtue;\n          art, a function of perceptions\u2014Ruskin\u2019s school of\n          the religion of beauty\u2014Moralizing not a function of\n          art\u2014Estheticism neither asceticism nor sensualism\u2014Evil\n          in art to be represented as evil\u2014Evil to be a\n          rationalized element\u2014Contemporary evil excites feelings\n          of reality\u2014Art and religion ennobling\u2014Art and religion\n          purifying\u2014Creation and disinterestedness most divine\n          elements in art.\n\n                                  VIII\n\n                       THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY\n\n        The critic\u2019s equipment\u2014Defective philosophy of\n          some modern critics, Mencken, Murry, Cohen\u2014Ugly\n          in art and its subdual\u2014Esthetic feeling not\n          concupiscence\u2014Disinterestedness of beauty excludes\n          sensuality of appetites\u2014Visceral reactions not from beauty    48\n\n                               PART SECOND\n\n                    ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE\n\n                                   IX\n\n                      LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE\n\n        Literature taught for use in Greece, Rome, and\n          elsewhere\u2014Science and history always changing; literature\n          lasting\u2014Object of literature in university\u2014True humanism,\n          equipping man\u2019s faculties with art\u2014Every school subject\n          teaches its like\u2014Correlations of literature and\n          creation\u2014Contemporary literature not suitable\u2014Scientific\n          study partly; artistic study is wholly satisfying             57\n\n                                    X\n\n                  UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE\n\n        Necessity of unity\u2014In university through profession\u2014No\n          unity in college electivism\u2014Unity impaired by\n          departments and by specializing\u2014Unity in France, Germany\n          and England\u2014Departmental system destroying the art appeal\n          of literature\u2014Science through knowing; art through\n          doing\u2014Recent mental tests accentuate expression and\n          language\u2014General education through art of literature          64\n\n                                   XI\n\n                  THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE\n\n        Spread of science\u2014System and eliminating of\n          personality\u2014Dissertations for the doctorate\u2014Scholarly\n          means encyclopedic\u2014The impersonal lecturer\u2014Justin\n          McCarthy\u2019s teacher and his methods\u2014Not scientific\n          specialization, but exercise of mental powers\u2014Formulas\n          and personality\u2014Another interesting teacher\u2014Literature\n          educates equally with science\u2014The ideal                       70\n\n                                   XII\n\n                         EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS\n\n        Life full of emotions\u2014Emotions intense in our crowded\n          civilization\u2014Morale, organized emotion\u2014Emotions\n          neglected in education\u2014Education of facts dominating\n          schools\u2014Twofold nature of emotions\u2014Emotions from concrete\n          imagining\u2014Kindled by contact\u2014Literature embodiment of\n          emotions\u2014Emotions developed by self-expression and\n          controlled by exercise                                        83\n\n                                  XIII\n\n                    KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM\n\n        Classics to be kept but taught differently\u2014Former help of\n          translation\u2014Literature overwhelmed by erudition\u2014Germany,\n          France, England, America\u2014True use of erudition\u2014Natural\n          sciences change; art endures\u2014Reproduction, the soul of\n          literary teaching\u2014Method of training\u2014Modern literatures\n          not yet able to supplant ancient literatures                  91\n\n                                   XIV\n\n                       THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD\n\n        Literary renaissances associated with Greek\n          literature\u2014Revivals through Irish monks\u2014Spain,\n          France, Scholasticism\u2014Germany with Wolf, Winckelmann,\n          Lessing\u2014England under Queen Anne and Queen Victoria\u2014Youth\n          of civilization in Greece                                    100\n\n                                   XV\n\n                  TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM\n\n        Story of Phidias\u2019 statue and Homer\u2014Homer tested\n          by art\u2014Flaws in material\u2014Absorption in immediate\n          effects\u2014Told story different from story read\u2014Outline of\n          a study on a broad scale\u2014Variety, alternation, growth in\n          Homeric battling\u2014Homeric palace, the place of Homer\u2019s\n          recital                                                      106\n\n                                   XVI\n\n                      THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE\n\n        Child-test in religion and morals, in the Bible\u2014Homer\u2019s\n          mother and child\u2014Hector and Andromache\u2014Child in later\n          literature rare\u2014Latin writers\u2014Conventionality instead of\n          Homeric naturalness                                          114\n\n                                  XVII\n\n                   THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE\n\n        Christ-Child in art\u2014Christmas and the drama\u2014In\n          Ireland\u2014Medieval and Renaissance writers\u2014Milton\u2019s\n          war-like child\u2014Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson,\n          Longfellow\u2014Return of naturalness in Stevenson, Carroll\n          and others\u2014Faith and its effects in Thompson and Tabb        119\n\n                                APPENDIX\n\n                         GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF\n\n        Mosaic of etymology\u2014Ecclesiastical sphere\u2014Diet, posies\n          and programs\u2014Geography, zoology, politics\u2014Pharmacies and\n          surgery\u2014Schools and composition\u2014Apology and epitaph          129\n\n                 NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT\n\n        Ownership not of the essence of beauty as of\n          good\u2014Perception sufficient for the enjoyment of the\n          beautiful\u2014No new faculty required\u2014Pleasure is normal life\n          consciously localized\u2014Esthetic Enjoyment in the simple\n          apprehension, not in judgment or inference as such\u2014Fact\n          not of the essence of esthetic enjoyment, which is had\n          in fiction too\u2014_Causa Exemplaris_\u2014Imagination, source of\n          originality\u2014Aristotle\u2019s principles: creation, motivation,\n          unity, universality                                          134\n\n    A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE                             159\n\n\n\n\nART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE\n\n\n\n\nPART FIRST\n\nART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nART AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\n\n1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY\n\nA group was standing before a futurist or cubist picture. The group did\nnot know what the picture was all about, but one spoke up in defense\nof the bewildering work: \u201cWell, after all, art is a language, and why\nshouldn\u2019t a man be permitted to speak his own language?\u201d A bystander,\nnot daring to address strangers, made answer under his breath: \u201cIf art\nis a language, this artist is talking to himself.\u201d Maudlin, incoherent\nremarks, disjointed utterances, and in general talking to one\u2019s self,\nall that, does not pass for high art among men, but for something quite\ndifferent. To talk to one\u2019s self is the extreme of individualism in\nconversation; to ignore the world addressed through artistic composition\nis the triumph of individualism in art.\n\nThe abrupt break with all tradition in every art, and the untrammeled\nexpression of the individual, have worked out to the inevitable and\nbizarre conclusions which a like rebellion has brought about in religion\nand morals. Every man his own dogmatist; every man his own moralist; that\nis the individualism which has divided mankind into multitudinous sects\nand has made millions of moral, unmoral and immoral moralists eager for\nlegislation of infinite variety without any fixed principles to enforce\nthe observance of even one law. Conscience, the executive impulse of all\nlegislation, used to be the voice of God, but individualism has made it\nanything from a survival of the fittest or an economic standard, through\ncountless varieties all the way to a Freudian complex.\n\nIndividualism has run amuck in art from classicism to cubism. It is a\nbarren day which does not produce a new system of religion or morals, and\nonly the occurrence of earthquake, war, fire or some other tremendous\nupheaval keeps our journals from recording some new theory of art,\nsome Tomism, Dickism or Harryism. Art for art\u2019s sake has been given an\nindividualistic interpretation and has produced the same rich crop, as\nthe individualistic cry, every man his own dogmatist and moralist, has\nproduced\u2014a rich crop of weeds.\n\nIf ever an individual could pursue his blissful way oblivious of the\nexistence of a surrounding universe, surely he may not do so now when\nthe universe impinges upon him every moment through ticker, telephone,\nwireless and unlimited \u201cextras.\u201d There is, however, no such thing as\nunrestricted individualism. Of God alone can be predicated existence for\nits own sake. Everybody his own dogmatist means ultimately everybody his\nown god. Art for art\u2019s sake, interpreted in an individualistic sense,\nwould not only destroy art but would destroy the world. Art for art\u2019s\nsake should read art for everybody\u2019s sake and for the sake of God, and\nsuch a reading will be infinitely better for art\u2019s sake.\n\nIt was an Irish colleen, accepting matrimony as a complete submergence\nof individuality, who replied to a friend dwelling on the dangers of a\nlong ocean trip to be taken by the new bride and groom: \u201cAnd why should I\nbe afraid, sure \u2019tis his loss if anything happen to me now!\u201d She was the\ncounterpart of the Irish lad who sang under similar circumstances, \u201cI\u2019m\nnot myself at all.\u201d There you have the complete altruism resulting from\nthe perfect union of matrimony. There is the antithesis of individualism,\nand such matrimonial communism is far better for every one than any cry\nof \u201cwife for wife\u2019s sake\u201d or \u201chusband for husband\u2019s sake.\u201d\n\nIt is quite evident that no artist can exempt himself from responsibility\nas though his art were a deity. If a picture or statue or poem would be\nan incentive to murder or suicide, the artist must stay his hand. He may\nnot manufacture bombs for soul destruction, no matter how artistic the\ncontainer, even if someone else is to supply the detonator. A lie in\nbeautiful language is a more ugly lie. Recent pretended upholders of\nthe Volstead law have printed an emphatic warning on compounds of their\nmanufacture: \u201cDo not add such an ingredient or this compound will violate\nthe law.\u201d May an artist na\u00efvely dissociate himself from responsibility by\nstating: \u201cDo not add human nature to my art-product or you will violate\nthe law\u201d? Were the artist a real creator, he would have to forecast\nresults and be dominated by a purpose. Nor may the artist, like God,\npermit evil, because no artist has omnipotence and infinite wisdom and\njustice and mercy, governing the permission of evil and guaranteeing\ngood as the final result. May a man who owns a wild tiger of surpassing\nbeauty, trusting in the right of property, parade down a crowded\nthoroughfare with his jungle pet tethered to a thread?\n\nBut why all these truisms? Because individualism in art aims in principle\nand production not only to free art from restrictions but even to exempt\nthe artist from responsibility. The artist may not talk to himself unless\nhe can find a South Sea island where there is neither man nor God. Nor\nis it a deadening of his artistic impulse for the artist to be ruled by\nhigh purposes, but rather it is a stimulus and an inspiration. Eschylus\nand Sophocles have a sublimer beauty than Euripides because the earlier\ndramatists recognized more fully and kept better in view the religious\npurposes of Athenian drama. Euripides, wishing to cater more to theatric\neffects, succeeded in being more emotional and in achieving a realistic\nbut transient interest, the hectic flush that marks decay and death\nin twilight and autumn and sinister disease. Is the marked revival of\nEuripides within recent years a sign of decadence?\n\nThe Madonnas of Italian art received from the painter a solemn beauty\nnot only because they depict Divine maternity, but even too because they\nwere to grace a religious shrine and to constitute part of a religious\nservice. That may be one reason why the Madonnas of Italy are far\nsuperior to the prettiness and sentimentality of more recent Madonnas\nwhich are painted for private homes and for ephemeral interest.\n\nThe purpose of the artist is one thing and the purpose of art is another\nthing. The purpose of a watch is to keep time whatever purpose the\nwatch-maker may have. It is likely, however, that if he makes the watch\nfor his mother, he will produce better results than if he worked for\nhis usual wage or than if he functioned as part of a machine, having\nno clearly defined ulterior purpose. So an artist will be inspired in\npainting, in sculpture, in music, in all arts, to elicit better his\nfull powers and to achieve finer results when he toils for a cathedral\nthan when he works for a cabaret. Noble responsibility conscientiously\nrecognized and fulfilled is no check, but rather a spur to the artist.\n\n\u201cArt for art\u2019s sake\u201d may, however, be taken to mean, \u201cEmbody beauty\nwherever found, or realize to the full your ideal,\u201d and such a meaning\nis excellent and fruitful unless excessive individualism insists upon\nexpressing its own perverted ideas of beauty and its own eccentric\nideals. When Horace said, \u201cLet justice be done though the heavens come\ncrashing down,\u201d a line that might be rendered, \u201cJustice for justice\u2019s\nsake,\u201d he was far from advocating the explosion of a bomb by some Roman\nanarchist whose idea of justice was to bring all to a dead level of ruin.\nThe progressive improvement in the realization of art-ideals may be very\nwell illustrated from the career of Horace. Horace gradually worked\nhimself free from the conventionality and baseness of his epodes and\nearlier satires, experienced the cleansing process of true humor in later\nsatires, took fire at the moral degeneracy of Rome in the initial odes\nof the third and last book of his first edited lyrics. There the _s\u00e6va\nindignatio_ of Horace brought him within distant sight of sublimity.\nHis progress in philosophy weighted the wings of his song but dowered\nhim with the crystal and clean wisdom of his epistles, of which it has\nbeen said one need not blot out a single line. Had Horace retained the\nyouthful vehemence of the republican amid the enervating peace of the new\nempire, he might have followed Dante and Milton from lyric beauty to epic\nsublimity, or might have risen with Shakespeare and Moli\u00e8re from song to\ncomedy or even to tragedy, but his hedonistic sleekness and his excessive\nself-consciousness kept his ripened philosophy in brief letters, when a\nmore vigorous mentality with the help of philosophy might have converted\nhis ennobled power of satire into comedy or transformed the lyric\nportraits of his early days into tragedy or epic story.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nART AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\n\n2. VAGARIES OF INDIVIDUALISM\n\nModern art has not followed Horace very far. It has broken with\nconventionality as Horace did with the _clich\u00e9s_ of Alexandria, but it\nhas not yet entered upon the path of right philosophy. The _Spoon River\nAnthology_, a typical specimen from the individualistic school of what\nmight be called localists or village gossips, is in the epode-stage of\nHorace, the stage of personalities, lubricity and garlic gruesomeness.\nHopes might be entertained that _Spoon River_ and _Main Street_ and other\nindividualistic photographs would progressively improve with Horace\nexcept for one sad deficiency: Horace had humor and laughed at others,\nand even at himself; modern individualists are so heavily armored with\nthe seriousness of their own views, that they don\u2019t even smile. To\nimagine the New Art laughing is impossible; if the New Art had humor\nand laughed, it would cease to be New Art and would join the larger\nbrotherhood of art uncapitalized. Had the new artists a sense of humor,\nit would probably be their death sentence. In the course of time they\nmight catch sight of their own art products, whether of painting or of\npoetry.\n\nIs it not an indication of individualism that so many recent novels are\nbiographies, that the stage is not holding up the mirror to life but\napplying the scalpel to an ulcer? The biography or personal views of\nScott and Shakespeare cannot be discovered in their works. The modern\npamphleteer distributes his paradoxes among various mouthpieces whose\nonly difference is in name, and this is called a play, when it is in\nreality propaganda. There are probably now no less than 100,000 college\ngraduates turning college escapades and flirtations into chapters,\nwhich their authors consider typical of life because the incidents\nwere individually experienced. And, as the long stories of the day are\nbiographies or problems and as the drama is a diagnosis of diseases,\nin the same way many of the short stories are pathological, but all\nare tending to be individualistic. The artist makes his own subjective\nexperience the full measure of his artistic expression and seems to\nimagine that his own peculiarities are good art because he sincerely\nexpresses what he feels. Individual nature is not human nature.\n\nAristotle has described poetry as the universal in the concrete. The\n\u201cnew poets\u201d give the individual in the concrete. Homer, Shakespeare, the\ntrue poets, plumb to the depths of the human heart; they voice ripened\nexperience and enshrine mellow wisdom, and so appeal to all men of all\ntimes. Much of the new poetry ostentatiously disdains tradition and\nrejects the wisdom of the ages in discarding its dress. You may see the\nrouge on the cheek and the freckle on the nose, but as far as life and\nexperience and heart are concerned, most of the new poetry is pitiably\nyoung and callous. Meticulous recording of disconnected and unrelated\nnovelties is no adequate substitute for the warmth and depth of life\ncrystallized by the ardent gaze of the true poet out of his experience.\nNew poetry is contemporaneous with the invention and use of the Kodak and\nhas all the responsibility and profundity of that instrument.\n\nIndividualism has come to such a pass in modern art that everything in\nit is resolving itself into pure emotionalism, and that an emotionalism\nwhich does not belong to art at all. Degenerates are the products of\ncivilization; they are decayed exotics. \u201cThe higher the organism, the\nmore noisome the decay,\u201d a science professor used to say when paying\nhis respects to diseased metaphysics. As only a believer can blaspheme\nluridly, so when an artist goes wrong, he goes wrong hideously. A\npistol in the hands of a marksman gone mad is more destructive than in\nthe hands of a savage. Colors, sounds, shapes, fair words and gorgeous\nimaginings are instruments of degradation and death if they are a finer\nveneer over what is false. Individual vagaries and whims, no matter how\nunusual, will not have the permanence of art because they are based on no\nprinciples, but devised simply to startle. Degrade the appeal of beauty\nto a spinal thrill and your artist will pander to concupiscence.\n\nIt is noteworthy that Homer\u2019s worst lapse in story-telling takes place\namong the luxurious Ph\u00e6acians, ancient prototypes of degeneracy. Homer\nmay have felt justified artistically because he was depicting the\nnon-Grecian world through whose monsters and marvels Odysseus was passing\nand making the first collection of sailors\u2019 yarns. But Homer shocked even\nthe pagan world and set an unhappy precedent. Lucian and Ovid, Petronius\nand Apuleius and the Byzantine eroticists made what was incidental in\nHomer their chief concern and practice. They perverted fiction into\ncalculated suggestiveness.\n\nThat depraved and sensual theory of story-telling was, however, more\nAristophanic than Homeric, despite the single unfortunate precedent in\nthe _Odyssey_. The tradition of Greek and Latin comedy was carried on\nby the medieval troubadours and by the story-tellers who catered to the\ndecadent nobility of Italy and France. They retorted on their clerical\ncensors and stimulated jaded appetites, substituting in shameless\nintrigues priests and nuns for the pagan gods. It was and is the glory\nof Scott that he broke away from these evil traditions which made the\nnovel a hateful thing to our forefathers. Scott deserted the continental\nschool of novelists and their English imitators, Fielding, Sterne,\nSmollett, the last of all Byron. Scott gave up the satirical purposes\nwhich handed on in fiction the vulgar devices of low comedy. He went to\nhistory, to chivalry, to healthy men and women and created romances, not\npathological studies. English, Irish and American fiction for a whole\ncentury yielded to the healthy and bracing impulse of Scott, but the\nyounger novelists in vogue today in England, Ireland and America have\ngone back to the continental type, individual, pathological biographical\nproblems, forsaking Scott\u2019s revival through balladry of the best Homeric\nmanner, where men \u201cdrank delight of battle with their peers far on the\nringing plains of Troy.\u201d\n\nThe individualist must emancipate himself by the contemplation of nature.\nPathological specimens, freakish oddities, all the surface impressions of\nthe local colorists are not nature any more than a face contorted with a\ntoothache is a man\u2019s likeness. Such exceptional exhibitions cannot form\nthe enduring basis of art. Personal experience must be widened by length\nof time, by merging into the stream of wisdom, flowing freighted from the\npast, or must, in exceptional cases, be won quickly by that intense and\nprobing comprehension of genius, which seems almost Divine intuition.\nExcessive individualism, like the latest fashion, will be quaint and\nincongruous on the morrow. Homer lives eternal because through strange\nnames and strange language and strange costumes we see our own sun and\nfields and ocean and sky and put our fingers on a pulse which registers\nthe beat of a heart throbbing as ours.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nART AND HUMAN NATURE\n\n\n1. THE UNIVERSAL ELEMENT\n\nA serious defect in most modern art movements is that they start from\nart; they are modifications of previous art movements. True art movements\nstart from human nature. When perfection in any art is standardized, when\ntradition and conventionality prevail, and the artist has originality\nenough to chafe at the restraints of classicism but not originality\nenough to reveal finer ideals through classic expression, his temptation\nis to rebel at conventionalities and to deem himself original because he\nis unconventional. He wishes to be different from other artists and seeks\nfor the difference by discarding the traditional medium rather than by\nimproving his own personal message. He prefers to be different and even\noriginal by cutting his ginger-bread into the shape of automobiles and\nair-planes instead of going back to mother\u2019s classic make and blending\nhis ingredients into a new creation, a creation which will make fresh\nappeal even in former animal shapes or in the traditional ginger-bread\ncart-wheels.\n\nArt is a social institution. If not by the people, art is of the people,\nand certainly for the people. When Greek literary art grew conventional\nin its different forms, the artists went back to the people for another\nmedium to be transfigured by art. Ruskin has called architecture a\n\u201cglorified roof.\u201d The sonata is a glorified folk melody; epic is\nglorified folk lore; and Greek drama is a glorified folk song, as\nElizabethan drama is a glorified folk chronicle. Both dramas have their\nroots in the religious services of the people. Homer told us about the\npublic he had, but the nineteenth century would not trust his word until\nSchliemann dug up the great halls where Demodokos and his fellows told\nthe people their own folk stories in a glorified, artistic form. Greek\nlyric and Greek pastoral were as public as Greek oratory, Greek choruses,\ntemples and statuary. It was left for Roman conquerors to begin the\nsegregation of art into the cold storage of the modern millionaire and of\nthe modern museum.\n\nThe permanence of Greek art is based upon that public appeal. Art is\nlong because it embodies nature, and most of all human nature. Homer\nhas appealed to man, woman and child for thousands of years. His human\nnature is our human nature despite external differences of every\nkind. Homer himself was aware of the appeal of nature in art. On the\nshield of Achilles, he marveled at the field which grew black behind\nthe plowing, a marvel of Homer\u2019s close study of nature as well as an\nexpression of his ideal for art. Nature is a language all can understand\nand human nature is a language all must and do understand. When lament\nwas made over the body of Patroklos, the elegy of Briseis stirred all,\n\u201cand thereon the women wailed, in semblance for Patroklos, but each\nfor her own woe.\u201d Similar is the appeal of art where in semblance of\nsomething else, each sees what belongs to self. Aristotle in seeking to\nexplain the characteristic pleasure of art ascribes it to _mimesis_ or\nre-presentation in another medium. Such staging, he says, not only robs\nthe terrifying of its terrors but enables all to understand and reason\nto the nature of each art product. Such understanding and reasoning\nmean surely something more than the mere recognition of photographic\naccuracy and likeness. If we may press the meaning of the Greek word used\nfor reason, the process of art enjoyment is similar to the syllogistic\nprocess which involves an appeal to a general statement. The process is\none which recognizes the general in a particular case, as the grief of\nBriseis found an echoing grief in every heart.\n\nWhether Aristotle and this interpretation of him is correct or not, it\nis evident that art must generalize. Art must select, both by choice of\nthe artist and by the limitations of his medium. Art does not photograph,\nbecause it has no sensitive plate for its medium. The photographer\u2019s\nart largely precedes the camera and consists in selecting that pose\nand that expression, out of many, which is yours. The camera is nature,\ncontrolled by mechanism, and is not art. If the photographer or painter\nor sculptor photographed you in some passing spasm, we should not\nlearn and reason that it was you. The spasm was realism and fact, but\nit was peculiar and individual; it was not you whom we have known and\ngeneralized from experience. In such a case, Aristotle says shrewdly,\nwe might get artistic pleasure from the workmanship or colors, that is,\nfrom the medium and the mechanics of art, but we should have no artistic\npleasure from the soul and substance of the art product because the\nproduct found no prototype in our experience, because we could not define\nit or generalize it. Art selects. It cannot give everything, and if it\nwould be true, it must give what all may understand; it must give what is\ngenerally true, and what is generally true of all men is human nature.\n\nSelective idealism has usually the advantage of being intelligible, but\nit labors under the disadvantage of becoming merely intelligible. It\ngives the truth, but through familiarity the beauty or artistic appeal\nof the truth has been dulled and tarnished, or, like the dandelion,\nuntil a Lowell gives it a new luster, its very commonness leaves us\nunmoved. We enjoy human nature in Homer because he was the creator of\nsleeping winds and of rosy-fingered dawns and of the mother\u2019s smile\nalight through tears. A modern who would transfer these same touches to\nhis own composition would leave us cold. He too must create; he must be\npersonal, but he must not be individual. Personality is the knowing and\nloving principle, and looks to the many with its thoughts and wishes.\nIndividuality is the principle of separation and isolation and is looking\ninward, not outward. When the artist, therefore, creates and gives his\nown winds or dawn or mother love, he should speak to us in his own\nconcrete embodiments of nature, and of human nature, using a language man\nunderstands. If selective idealism tends to become merely intelligible\nand unappealing, individualism tends to become unintelligible and to\nmystify.\n\nThe poet, the novelist, the painter have more depth than silver nitrate\non a photographic plate. Artists do not simply mirror nature; they do\nnot catch at the odd or freakish. That is photography, not creation.\nHorace did not give us a moving picture of a falling tree, but he saw\nthe humor and human interest of that \u201csorry log.\u201d Burns did not give\nus an anatomical study of the typhus-carrier on a lady\u2019s bonnet in a\nkirk, making it crawl upon ourselves and sending us after the kerosene\ncan and bath tub, but Burns soared away, from that sight with Horatian\nhumor and Horatian human nature, into the immortal lines, \u201cO wad some\npower the giftie gie us.\u201d The artist who confounds the generalized mental\nattractiveness found in true art with the shock of nerves or the tickling\nof concupiscence or with misguided realism, will not produce things of\nbeauty. He gets a thrill, but it is not the permanent, undying thrill of\nart, not the thing of beauty, which is a joy forever.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nART AND HUMAN NATURE\n\n\n2. REALISM AND REALITY\n\nAt an exhibition in New York City there was displayed a picture of an\nocean wave upon the crest of which the artist had nailed a real bar of\nsoap. The first idea of the spectator was to consider this peculiar\nproduct an advertisement, but it seems to have been intended as a\nserious, if perverted, attempt at art. If the artist was not slyly\nproposing the caricature of excessive realism, the cake of soap will\nserve well as a parable for those artists who do not distinguish between\nrealism and reality.\n\nThe ultra-realist forgets that art is a creation, the making of another\nworld. The artist cannot really create what he puts into his new world\nof sight or hearing or imagination, of color, of sound, of words. If\nhe could actually make something new, not based on nature or on human\nnature, he would do so on the penalty of being unintelligible. Neither\nshould he go to the other extreme and not leave the world of reality at\nall. He may not eat his cake and have it. If what he takes from actuality\nis not merged fully into his art form, he tries to give us fact and\nfiction, history and art, in the same product, and he nails a piece of\nsoap on a painted wave.\n\nAristotle insists above all on probability in art, or motivation, as\nit is now commonly called. A probable or well-motived impossibility,\nhe says, is more artistic and pleasing than an improbable, that is,\nan unmotived fact. For a like reason he demands that fiction be more\nphilosophical than history. We accept a chronicle of facts without\nnecessarily being aware of their causal connections. In the realms of\nart the connection must be established. This principle, so fruitful for\nart, is not to be understood as justifying or approving that school of\nsubjective novelists which is parsimonious in happenings but diffuse\nin reasoning and gives us a maximum of discussion with a minimum of\nincident. Aristotle is thinking more of the people who witness the\ndrama. The spectators want the motivation and plausibility of action\nrather than that of logic. The soliloquy has gone from the stage; the\nprinted soliloquy should be curtailed in the novel. A true understanding\nof motivation will send all artists back to nature and to human nature\nfor those incidents which are the springs of action and do not require\nlengthy logic to labor at their explanation. Homer is completely lacking\nin logical refining. Incident leads to feeling and talk, which gives rise\nto further incident. Action, feeling and character, Aristotle\u2019s trinity\nof art subjects, are mingled and detailed, and the story moves on in a\nway plausible and pleasing to Homeric audiences. When Homer runs short of\nmotivation, he does not resort to logic; he refers the causality to the\ngods, as modern writers refer all insoluble problems to evolution, which\nputs hardly more restrictions upon imagination than Homeric mythology.\n\nThe artist must transfer his product wholly to the world of art.\nSculptured horses must not neigh, nor painted flowers give perfume, but\nneighing and scents may be suggested even in stone, and in lines by\nart happenings, which all may read running if the artist will use the\nlanguage of human nature. He should paint his cake of soap in, not nail\nit on. If the exigencies of the story demand it, costumes of the night\nor costumes of bathing may be in place, but it is nailing on a cake of\nsoap, it is outraging probabilities, to force a story into a setting or\nto adopt a style of dress or of undress simply for the sake of producing\na shock. That is the shock of reality, not of art and beauty. Should the\ndramatist have an excellent quartet and stop the play in order to give a\nsong, he is nailing on a piece of soap, which may be magnificent soap,\nbut it is not art.\n\nWhy is the so-called realism depressing? Why is the Russian novelist left\nfor the connoisseur but is caviar to the general? Is it the presence or\nabsence of evil? Hardly that. Homer\u2019s stories are full of evil and of\ndeath; Sophocles\u2019 _King \u0152dipus_ and the _Prometheus_ of Eschylus are\nsurcharged with evil, but they do not depress. Euripides, on the other\nhand, and Lucian have more alleged realism and are depressing, even when\nthey cause a smile. The realist is cynical, and cynics do not soar off\ninto the world of art, but keep tethering themselves to the real world.\nThey do not lose themselves in their story because they are always\nthinking of keeping some one\u2019s nose against their grindstone. Why should\nthe optimistic moralizing of Polyanna be resented by critics any more\nthan the cynic moralizing of Shaw or of _Main Street_? The cheerful idiot\nand the purblind dyspeptic are depressing in real life, especially when\nthey are moralizing, but in and out of art we can laugh at the idiot,\nwhile we squirm at the assumed superiority of the cynic. The moralizing\nis a cake of soap.\n\nShakespeare is not depressing and Homer is not depressing. They do not\nblink the facts of life, and beyond the humor and humanity which saves\nthem and their audience, they lose themselves in their story. The evil\nthey depict is true evil, so recognized, in their art-world. It is,\nbesides, evil called for by their story, not lugged in for a moral or to\nexemplify a theory of art. They know that drab is not the only color in\nlife. They know that bright things are as real as black things, but they\nare not illustrating a theory but giving us a story. We pass with them\ninto a fictitious world, and the things which depress the denizens of\nthat world do not depress us if we are not brought back to reality by\nstumbling on a cake of real soap, not integrated with the story.\n\nThe sight of his dog Argos made the heart of Odysseus sink. Even for\nthose who think ugliness the only reality, Argos was covered with\nrealities and squatted on reality. He depressed his master but he does\nnot depress us. He lies upon Main Street and has a Polyanna wag to his\ntail. His optimism and his pessimism are, however, not tacked on. \u201cAnd\nlo, a hound raised up his head and pricked his ears, Argos, the hound of\nOdysseus.... Despised he lay (his master being afar) in the deep dung of\nmules and swine.... There lay the dog Argos, full of vermin. Yet even now\nwhen he was aware of Odysseus standing by, he wagged his tail and dropped\nboth his ears, but nearer to his master he had not the strength to draw.\nBut Odysseus looked aside and wiped a tear.\u201d Argos is the ideal dog of\na far away master; \u201cwho has lost his dominion,\u201d as Eum\u00e6us, the shepherd\nof Odysseus, says. Argos registers the fate of his master. We feel, but\nwe do not feel depressed. It is human; it is all inevitable; it is real\nas life but perfectly idealized by perfect transfer to the realm of art.\nEum\u00e6us gives us the morality of it, the truth of it, but he is far from\nmoralizing, either pessimistically or optimistically. Argos is the dog\nSchneider that Jefferson\u2019s Rip Van Winkle could not find to recognize\nhim; he is the picture in brief of his master\u2019s fate. Eum\u00e6us is as free\nfrom all obtrusive soap as Argos himself. The dog\u2019s fate is ascribed\nto the careless women who \u201care no more inclined to honest service when\ntheir masters have lost dominion, for Zeus takes away the half of a man\u2019s\nvirtue when the day of slavery comes upon him.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nART AND THE DIVINE\n\n\n1. RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF ART\n\nThe recent discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen has aroused the\ninterest of the world. The perseverance of the explorer, the variety,\nartistic excellence and intrinsic value of the discovery gave the news\na place in the press and signalized the latest triumph of the spade,\nwhich Schliemann converted into the best of historians. Dig in your\nback-yard, and you can read its past in the layers before your eyes.\nMake a cross-section of the country, and successive deposits will\ntell you its story. Lay bare the strata of the earth, and the buried\nfossils, the minerals, the gas, the oil, reveal the history of the world.\nGrave-digging is the most productive occupation to which science, art and\neven commerce can now be vocationally guided.\n\nWhat was it that enriched the Egyptian tomb and other tombs of the past\nin which man was buried? It was religion, and specifically it was belief\nin the immortality of the soul. The latest opened tomb repeats the truth\nthat was manifest in the pyramids of Egypt, which were temples as well\nas tombs. The beehive tombs of Mycen\u00e6 from which Schliemann actually\nshoveled gold ornaments of various kinds were also temples as well as\ntombs. The altar-stones in Catholic churches with their tiny _loculi_ for\nthe relic of a saint keep still the memory of the days when persecuted\nChristians found the Catacombs of the dead places of worship as well as\nof escape from the persecutor.\n\nThe caves of Cro-Magnon and Aurignac and other ancient deposits in France\nand Spain have disclosed the earliest evidence of man\u2019s art. The man was\nno mean artist, and the coloring and skillful drawing have astonished\nevery one. Why dark caverns, inaccessible to light, should have been\nso decorated has puzzled observers. Reinach calls the pictures early\n\u201cmagic,\u201d painting of animals to capture them. But there are paintings of\nmen as well as of bisons and reindeer. Professor Osborne is quoted as\nsaying that it seems to be art for art\u2019s sake, namely, that the sheer\npleasure of the drawing is its reason. An admission, it would seem, that\nthe professor has no real explanation to offer. Sir Bertram Windle has\nrecently asserted the religious origin of these pictures. They would\nseem to be the earliest appearance of stained-glass windows. The caves\nwere temples, and the explanation is confirmed by a comparison with the\nbeehive tombs of Mycen\u00e6 and with the Egyptian tombs. The altar, the\nsacrifice, the victims, the food, clothing and other accompaniments\nof life, are all evidences of religious feelings and a belief in a\ncontinued existence. The absence of the bodies in these caves may easily\nbe accounted for. Fleeting time with prowling animals has destroyed\nthem while it left the pictures on the wall. Art is even longer than\nLongfellow imagined.\n\nIf the earliest art so far found is religious in origin, these so called\nCro-Magnon or Aurignacian artists exemplify again what is a commonplace\nin the history of art. It would be easy to add to the following\nstatements found under \u201cArt\u201d in Hasting\u2019s _Dictionary of Religion_:\n\u201cThe religious aspect of art in Egypt includes almost all that is known\nof it.\u201d \u201cThere is hardly any doubt that the high level of Assyrian and\nBabylonian art is due to the deep religious feeling of the two nations.\u201d\n\u201cThe history of art in Greece is throughout its course intimately\nconnected with religion.\u201d The fact is beyond all denying. Religion and\nart are united, in music and song, from the dances of savages to the\nHebrew psalms and the stateliest liturgies; in painting, from the early\ncaveman to the modern man; in sculpture, from the crudest icons dug up\nat Troy to the idol statues of Greece and Rome, in the lions and bulls\nof buried Mycen\u00e6 and Crete, of Assyria and Egypt, in the tiny seal\nrings, in the ornaments and statuary of our modern churches; in oratory,\nfrom the prayers of the priest in the _Iliad_, to the fulminations of\nthe prophet and the eloquence of the pulpit; even in civic oratory\nwe find Demosthenes and Cicero in their sublimest heights touching\nupon religious motives; in the poetry of incantation, of oracle, of\nrevelation, in liturgy and drama; in the little tale of the fable and\nin the mighty story of the epic, for the full sweep of which Homer and\nVirgil, Dante and Milton must stage their events upon the background of\na Divine Providence; in architecture, from the tombs and temples of the\neastern world, to the temples of the Aztecs and to the Gothic cathedral.\n\nAquinas gave in his _Summa_ a synthesis of all science; Dante gave in\nhis _Divina Comedia_ a synthesis of man\u2019s life and destiny; the Gothic\ncathedral of the same age gave a synthesis of all the arts in one\nstructure, exemplifying in fullness and excellence the mutual interaction\nof art and religion in the middle ages, where manifestly religion\nheld sway as never before or since. The Morgan \u201cCollection\u201d in the\nMetropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in New York exhibits the dusty wreckage\nof that wonderful union of religion and art. No poet\u2019s imagination is\nneeded to rebuild those fragments into that marvelous structure, under\nwhose myriad statuary of serious saints and grotesque gargoyles, you pass\nthrough carved portals into the spacious aisles over which arches leap\naspiringly. The painter fascinates you with the story of many colors\nin the windows. The weaver hangs other pictures on the rich tapestry\ncurtaining the walls. The wood-carver is everywhere evoking beauty with\ncunning fingers. Music and song in the dramatic and antiphonal liturgy,\nthe sublime eloquence of the pulpit in turn charm and rest the ears.\n\nThe minutest detail is as artistic as the rich magnificence. The missal\non the altar will be a \u201cBook of Kells,\u201d a reflection on illuminated\nparchment of the religious and monastic life which produced it, by\nits patience, learning, devotion, silent application, and scrupulous\nexactness; \u201cexamined with a microscope for hours,\u201d says an authority,\n\u201cwithout detecting a false line or irregular interlacement.\u201d Near the\nmissal of the Gothic cathedral would be found a jeweled chalice, like\nthat of Ardagh, with three hundred and fifty-four distinct pieces,\nclassic and rich in all kinds of ornament. Baldwin Brown was surely right\nin declaring: \u201cIt is probable that nothing more artistically beautiful\nhas ever been seen than the Gothic cathedral,\u201d and the Gothic cathedral\nis the crowning glory of a deeply religious age.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nART AND THE DIVINE\n\n\n2. THE KINSHIP OF ART AND RELIGION\n\nThe history of art from its lowest manifestations to its highest gives\nevidence of its union and intimacy with religion. The fact is admitted,\nand might easily be confirmed by the very way in which religious\nmovements violently reacted against art. Hebraism knew the power of art\nover its followers, and Hebraic antagonism to sculpture and painting\nserved to give religious impulse freer outlet in Hebrew poetry and\noratory and other literature. The Bible is the supreme illustration of\nthe influence of religion upon literary art. Islamism opposed art, but\ngradually succumbed to its influence at least in architecture. That Islam\nhas not yielded more to art is an evidence of arrested civilization, as\nwell as of baser and more sensual religious feelings. Puritanism, the\nintensest form of Protestantism, opposed art in all its manifestations,\nbut Puritanism either diverted art energy to poetry and literature or\nprovoked excesses by its attempt to check the natural impulses of art,\nand Puritanism finally yielded to art. It is clear then that religious\nopposition to art serves but to show more strikingly the union of\nreligion and art. The religion that opposes art must direct the art\nimpulse into other channels or the religion degenerates. By their nature\nreligion and art are congenial.\n\nWhat now is the explanation of this close and continuous union of art\nand religion, found everywhere and in all ages? Taine and his school,\nled astray by some details in the artist\u2019s subject matter, have tried to\nexplain art by environment; but environment is an explanation absurd in\nitself, and cannon be adequate for an ubiquitous fact which transcends\nall environment. The theorists who ascribe the origin of art to play and\nthe deploying of superfluous energies liken, with Herbert Spencer, the\nart impulse to the acts of a kitten playing with a ball. Play may be\npartly an excess of energy, but not all energy is artistic, and animal\nplay is the stirring of appetite, bearing but a slight, superficial\nresemblance to man\u2019s early strivings for artistic expression. How many\ngames are imitative and made more attractive by art! From the very first,\nmind enters into early and even child art, and at the last the devotion\nof the artists to their ideals in the higher manifestations of art, a\ndevotion quite unlike play, shows that the art impulse is essentially\ndifferent from the instinctive impulse of the kitten, which pounces on a\nrat as it pounced on a ball of wool.[1]\n\nAnother school, striving to explain the connection between art and\nreligion, takes a directly opposite view to the play theory. Fear and\nmagic are, according to these authors, the controlling factors. The\ndifficulty in this theory is the utterly selfish element in the fear and\nmagic impulse, whereas the art impulse is disinterested and unselfish.\nBesides, religious belief precedes the fear and magic propitiation of\noffended powers. The voodoo and the hoodoo mark degradations of religious\nimpulses. Impulses in harmony with man\u2019s nature may go down as well as\nup, and even should we suppose that the unselfish impulse of art, which\nfinally becomes the evidence and glory of man\u2019s highest civilization,\ncould be traced back to the sordid details of selfish superstition, why\nshould such an ugly duckling evolve into a fair swan? Devolution and\ndegradation are easier than evolution. Why did the art impulse take the\nnarrow, upward path and shun the broad way down to perdition?\n\nThe perfection of the oak must have been in the potency of the acorn. The\noak could not come from a peanut, nor can all the powers of sun, rain\nand soil or any other factor of the environment evolve the fruit of the\npeanut vine into the majesty of the oak. We can explain by an extrinsic\ncause the stunting of an oak or the rotting of an oak, but we cannot\naccount for the existence of the oak\u2014except by an acorn. We may find\nperhaps a thwarted or corrupted art tendency in superstitious fear and\nits products, but that element of fear could not write a poem or compose\na sonata or rear a Gothic cathedral. The perfection reached by the art\nproduct must have been in the potency of the first artistic impulse in\ngerm.\n\nReligion and art were then united potentially in the original art impulse\njust as the strength and lofty beauty of the oak were latent in the\nacorn. The art impulse is natural to man; it is intellectual. It requires\nbrains to be artistic, as it requires brains to laugh, and no animal\nhas done either or will ever do either. The bird in building its nest\ndisplays an intelligence not its own; its nest building is inherited\njust as its song is. Jean Fabre\u2019s observations have shown conclusively\nthe wonders of instinct, coupled with the stupidity of the creature\npossessing the instinct. But the earliest scrawl or daub of the child\ndisplays the mind working on matter and the deliberate shaping of means\nto an end. All intellectual testers from Simon-Binet to the latest have\nfound the making or interpreting of pictures a measure of intellectual\npower. They are right. Art is rationalized pigments or sounds or words\nwith their images or some other rationalized material. Dr. James Harvey\nRobinson in _Mind in the Making_ says that we are wrong in rationalizing\nthe past to make up our minds, and how does he show it? By rationalizing\nanother past for us. The truth is we must rationalize the past, and Dr.\nRobinson should induce us, not to stop rationalizing, but to rationalize\ncorrectly and should give us something better than universal skepticism\nwith which to rationalize. The art tendency is one with the religious\ntendency in being rational and intellectual.\n\nArt and religion strive for high ideals; they are disinterested and\nunselfish. LaFarge says to Saint Gaudens: \u201cThat work is not worthy of\nyou,\u201d and Saint Gaudens picks up a hammer and smashes the sculpture. That\nis an instance paralleling the heroic following of religious ideals with\nlike sacrifices. Was it fear of bogies or love of their dead which filled\nso many tombs with precious articles? Believing in immortality, Egyptians\nand Myceneans gave to the dead what was most precious, and what was most\nprecious was the finest art in the costliest material. Love keeps graves\ngreen: fear erects a crematory.\n\nArt and religion are personal and emotional. Each has its own proper\nexpression. Of religion the expression is worship and of art it is\nconcrete embodiment of the ideal, and in both cases the expression is\nintimately personal and permeated with feeling. Art is more sensible and\nso more emotional because its expression must be presented to the senses\nor at least to the imagination. Religion whose primary expression is\nan act of the will, need not of its nature be attended with emotion or\nexternal display but it usually is, and feeling and expression commonly\nhelp to the fuller expression of religion. The rapture of art and the\necstasy of religion, though differing in much, have also much in common.\n\nIn their social appeal art and religion are akin. The artist and the\nsaint have their hours of solitary contemplation. St. Peter at Pentecost,\ndescribing the religious ecstasy of the inspired apostles, cried out:\n\u201cThese are not drunk as you suppose,\u201d and, continuing, he quoted the\nprophet Joel: \u201cYour young men shall see visions and your old men shall\ndream dreams.\u201d In the forming of their visions and dreams saint and\nartist are alike, though the substance of their visions differ. They\nare alike also in their impulse to give their visions expression and to\ninfluence men with them. Religion is apostolic and art is social, and\nthat is why in history they have gone forth so often hand in hand to\nsubdue the world. Whole nations had to conspire to erect the Egyptian\npyramids, the tower of Babel, the temples of Israel, of Rome, of Greece\nand of the Orient, and the Gothic cathedrals. Only a union of art and\nreligion could produce such stupendous results. Patriotism and the\nstate have at times come near to these great effects, when patriotism\nor love of country assumed the nature of religion. To produce these\nnational monuments a lasting cause as well as a cause of wide appeal\nwas necessary. Here again art and religion are akin. Art is long, and\nreligion is immortal.\n\nArt reaches its highest and most perfect expression in the sublime. Here\nreligion does not walk hand in hand with art, but bears art on high and\ngives to art some of its own divinity by endowing the artistic expression\nwith sublimity. The literature of the Bible attained to heights which\nwriters of other nations could not dream of nor ambition. Genesis sets\npoets and all artists upon a lofty eminence. By the revelation of\ncreation, the imagination and the vision of the artist became coterminous\nalmost with that of the Creator. Newton\u2019s theory of gravitation which\nshepherded the starry hosts of the universe into one obedient flock,\ngives us a realization of the effect of Genesis upon the world\u2019s\nimagination. The creation _motif_ in literature emancipating man\u2019s\nimagination, enlarging the boundaries of vision, and dowering the artist\nwith sublimity, deserves a treatise by itself and a history worthy of its\ngreatness.\n\nArt and religion are united in fact, so history teaches; art and religion\nare akin, so the study of their attributes reveals. What then is the only\nand full explanation of that fact and of that harmony? Philosophers hold\nthat the only and the full explanation of the harmony subsisting between\nthe mind and reality, which is called truth, is found in the fact that\nboth mind and reality are reproductions in creation of God\u2019s truthful\nknowledge of Himself. Ethicists hold that the only and full explanation\nof the harmony subsisting between the will and law, which is called moral\ngood, is found in the fact that both will and law are reproductions in\nthe finite of God\u2019s love of Himself. So philosophers must hold that the\nfull and only explanation of the harmony subsisting between the soul and\nart, which is called the expression of the beautiful, is found in the\nfact that like the innate tendency to truth and good, the tendency to\nbeauty is a reproduction of God\u2019s contemplation of Himself. Creation, as\nhas often been declared, is a manifestation of the art of God, a mimetic\npresentation in finite matter and spirit of the infinite ideal. All\nadvance in truth and virtue is an approach to divine truth and goodness,\nand all true progress in art is an approach to divine beauty. \u201cFilled\nwith enthusiasm,\u201d says De Wulf in _L\u2019\u0152uvre d\u2019Art et la Beaut\u00e9_, \u201cbefore\nthe greatness of the artist\u2019s power, Dante Alighieri compares it to that\nof Omnipotence:\n\n    \u201c\u2018Your art like the grand-child of God\u2019\n\n            (_Inferno_, XI, 103).\n\n\u201cArt is the grand-child of God because it is the offspring of man\u2019s\ncreative power as man himself has come from the hands of God.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nART AND THE DIVINE\n\n\n3. ART IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE\n\nThe fact that religion and art are connected is abundantly established\nby history. The naturalness of that connection is made clear by the many\ntraits art and religion possess in common. As philosophers have argued\nto the existence of God from the fact that the universal belief in His\nexistence can be accounted for satisfactorily on no other supposition;\nas philosophers also argue to the immortality of the soul from man\u2019s\nuniversal and inevitable tendency to unending existence, so in like\nmanner, it may be argued that since always and everywhere the art impulse\nis connected in its origin and growth with religion, that impulse too,\nlike belief in God and desire of immortality and conscience for law and\ntendency to truth, is a projection of the divine upon humanity, not the\nanthropomorphism of God but the theomorphism of man. The structure of our\neye, made to respond to light, justifies us in concluding there is light.\nThe nature of the soul, which can respond to infinite beauty, justifies\nus in concluding there is infinite beauty. He who said, \u201cLet there be\nlight,\u201d said also, \u201cLet us make man after our own image and likeness.\u201d\n\nAn explanation of the nature of these two human acts of art and religion\nwill disclose more analogies while revealing essential differences.\nReligion is a virtue of the will, a habit developed by the free act of\nman, a virtue which culminates in worship of God as the supreme being.\nThe impulse of art has not been analyzed as fully and as satisfactorily\nas the virtue of religion, but from Aristotle\u2019s analysis in the\n_Poetics_, through the Neo-Platonists and the Scholastics down to Kant\nand his followers, there is common agreement that the tendency to beauty\ndoes not belong to the inclination towards good, actuating appetite and\nwill, but that the enjoyment of beauty is a function of the perceptions,\nthe imagination, and the mind. The admitted disinterestedness of the\nart impulse is the paramount and irresistible evidence that it differs\nessentially from the self-seeking tendency of will and appetite which\ncannot be indifferent to good, since good is the very cause and condition\nof the appetite\u2019s existence. The enjoyment of a painted fruit is akin to\nthe enjoyment of verified theory or of a triumphant conclusion, and not\nlike the satisfaction felt in the ownership of the painting of fruit or\nin the actual craving or eating of the fruit.\n\nIt is evident, therefore, why a man may be artistic without being\nreligious. There is no more difficulty in understanding why an artist is\nnot a saint than in knowing that conscience is one thing and acting up\nto it another thing. Improvement in art does not always mean improvement\nin morals or in religion, any more than to know is to will. Nor, on the\nother hand, will the evil of an artist or of his work be evidence against\nthe divinity of art. The divine origin of conscience and the natural law\nis evident in the vice of the sinner as in the virtues of the saint. The\nessential difference between art and religion shows also that the school\nin which the prophet is Ruskin, the school which finds a religion in the\nbeauty of world or of art, is incorrect in its teaching. Love and fear\nare the mainsprings of action, the incentives to virtue. Beauty may grace\nthe attraction of good; it cannot take the place of good in virtue and\nreligion. Estheticism is not asceticism. Francis of Assisi was a poet\nand a saint, Francesca da Rimini enjoyed poetry, might have been a poet,\nbut was not always a saint, and many a Francisco and Francesca may be\nfound neither artistic nor religious, as many are talented without being\nvirtuous and virtuous without being talented.\n\nDespite the sad lack of harmony between the beauty of their art and the\nvirtue of their lives, artists have nevertheless always been revered. The\nhonor of their art has won them in their lapses a gentleness of treatment\nnot accorded to less favored mortals. They are fallen angels if they fall.\n\nDoes the union of religion and art mean then that the artist must be\na moralist? To moralize is not a function of art as such. I enjoy\nthe beauty of a tree without any feeling that it conveys a truth or\ninculcates a virtue. The artist may transfer the tree to canvas, where I\nenjoy it as I did in nature without any accessory implication, informing\nor ethical. Joyce Kilmer may put the tree in a poem and with it add\nbeauty to the truth that, \u201conly God can make a tree.\u201d The psalmist may\nput a tree in his sacred hymn and with it add beauty to his praise of\nthe life of a good man, who shall be \u201clike a tree planted near the\nrunning waters.\u201d Logical truth and moral good are not excluded from art,\nalthough the artist by profession is not a teacher. Modern critics are\noften inconsistent and hypocritical in welcoming every dramatist or poet\nor novelist who undisguisedly advocates various theories, but will be\nwithering in their scorn for any one who advocates the ten commandments.\nTo moralize, to dogmatize, to theorize is not the function of art, and\nthough these actions are not incompatible with the functions of art, very\nrarely in the history of art has it been successful when it undertook to\nteach or to preach. Didactic poetry, satire poetry and propaganda drama,\nhave great difficulty in becoming poetry and remaining poetry.\n\nReligion then is a virtue of the will, resulting in acts of worship;\nart, a power of the mind, resulting in various artistic creations.\nReligion may remain wholly spiritual, even in its expression, but, though\nthe mind\u2019s appreciation of beauty may rest on purely spiritual and\nintellectual objects, such as theories or virtues or God and heaven,\nart must express itself in sensible objects. Even in literature, the\nmost intellectual of arts, words and pictures of the imagination are\nessential. Angels might be conceived as having an art whose sole medium\nwas spiritual ideas, not so man, whose mind works through imagination.\nAquinas, stressing the intellectual nature of beauty, calls attention\nto the fact that while men speak of beautiful sights and beautiful\nsounds, they will rarely and only figuratively consider the acts of other\nsenses, as taste, touch and scent, beautiful. The actions of these senses\nare immersed in the material, whereas sight and hearing are closer to\nthe intellectual and spiritual. Man has not yet succeeded in making a\nfine art whose medium would be tastes and touches and fragrances. The\nunselfish enjoyment of art cannot be released in objects so material and\nso near to the appetites. The sensualist is not an artist in yielding\nto sense enjoyment, although he may wish to give his unhallowed ways\nan artistic gloss. The one who sees only an apple pie in rosy apples\nor senses slumbrous ease in soft velvets and in iridescent silks or\nperceives only the perfume in flower and fruit, is not experiencing\nesthetic emotions, but rather stirrings of the bodily appetites. If\nestheticism is not asceticism, neither is it, on the other hand,\nconcupiscence or mere sensualism.\n\nDoes the connection between art and religion exclude the presentation of\nevil in art? Art would be much handicapped if it were restricted entirely\nto good objects. Art is a manifestation of man\u2019s intellect and must\nact in accord with the nature of that faculty. If evil is artistically\npresented, it must be depicted as evil. To present moral evil as a good\nis a falsification as repugnant to the mind as would be the painting of\na blue sunrise, of a green moon or of a black-and-tan sea, and as absurd\nas the sculpture of a five-legged lion. The enlightened mind rejects\nsuch physical monstrosities, and the enlightened mind, despite the lower\nappetites, rejects moral disorders with equal, if not greater, repugnance.\n\nAgain, art requires that the evil, the moral ugliness or physical\nugliness, be a necessary and rational part of the presentation. A fact of\nnature becomes at once the material of science, because science concerns\nitself with unadorned truth. But for a fact of nature to be material of\nart, it must be idealized, that is, it must be made an integral part of\nthe art product. The pleasure of art does not arise from deception but\nfrom illusion which does not deceive. Painted grapes might deceive birds;\nbut did they deceive men, then the effect would not be that of art but of\nreality. The evil or ugly can never be pleasant as long as it is present\nand actual. The transfer of evil to the world of art if it becomes an\nintegral, justified and rationalized part of the illusion, is usually\nenough to rob evil of its actuality and unpleasantness.\n\nSometimes in contemporary realism, with every justification of ugliness\nfrom the art product, there is depression and not true art pleasure,\nbecause we cannot forget the actual world when contemplating the\nimaginary world of art. Suppose \u201cMacbeth\u201d or \u201c\u0152dipus\u201d were really\nhistorical and were acted in the presence of their contemporaries or of\nthe next generation. Would there be satisfaction and the emotional relief\narising from illusion? Hardly. Memories would be too much lacerated\nwith the actual to surrender to the illusion of art and to enjoy its\ncontemplation. Actuality would put back the salt into the tears that else\nmight have been sweetened by transfer of evil to remote and imaginary\nrealms. The Greeks and Shakespeare were right in making their tragedies\nhistorical, whereas modern realists are somber with pessimism because\nthey never forsake the actual.\n\nArt and religion are both concerned with life and so they both must\ntouch evil and ugliness, unhappily a large part of life. Religion as\na virtue must overcome evil and not permit it to master the will. Art\ndepicts evil in such a way as not to offend the enlightened mind, by\napproval of evil or by the artistically unjustified introduction of\nevil or by actual experience of evil. In all these cases the mind would\nnot experience the true and lasting pleasure of art. The taste of fruit\npasses; the contemplation of painted fruit is a joy forever. Art pleasure\nis not the playing with toys, as Plato would seem to make it, but the\nfine occupation of rational minds, which Aristotle made it, an occupation\nworthy of man because art interprets nature and man to himself, because\nart exercises man\u2019s rational faculties, because art releases man\u2019s\nemotions under conditions where the evil of actual life is removed.\nMacbeth and \u0152dipus in life were saddening spectacles; the echo of that\nsadness felt through dramatic representation has high pleasure for the\nmind.\n\nThe cathartic function of art brings it close to the virtuous and the\ndivine. What virtue does really, art does ideally, transforming evil into\ngood. The vicarious sacrifice of Calvary was the catharsis of mankind,\nan infinite cleansing, compared with which the vicarious feeling of\ndramatically enacted evil is but as a drop to the ocean. Close to the\ndivine, too, although at the same time infinitely remote, is the creation\nof art. Wisdom and love inspired God in His creation, but so also did\nthe quest of beauty. Aquinas called the universe God\u2019s sermon, and the\nuniverse is a divine picturing and sculpturing and harmonizing. The\nartist follows far after, rethinking through finite images the ideals\nwhich filled the thoughts of the Divine Artist.\n\nIn idealizing, in creating, is art akin to the divine, and, lastly,\nin its disinterestedness is art divine. All appreciation of beauty\nis divine. Contemplation will be the occupation of eternity, and\ncontemplation is the proper and the congenial attitude of the soul\ntowards beauty. Good inspires love and attracts to union, but when union\nhas been effected in eternity, the enraptured ecstasy of the beautiful\nwill be the soul\u2019s unending activity. Beauty is the supreme excellence\nof truth, the polish on the granite of fact, the uncloying fascination\narrested upon perfection. In eternity infinite good and infinite truth,\nobscured in time, will stream into the soul unclouded and refulgent, and\nbeauty will grace love and crown wisdom.\n\nThe millions of mankind who admire the red of every morning, and the\nforests breaking green through the silver mists and the birds in awakened\nsong rising from the flowers to the brightening sky, these millions\ndo not begrudge one another such beautiful spectacles, nor are they\nmutually jealous as they listen to beautiful sounds. That unselfish,\nthat unenvious contemplation of beauty marks off man from animals by an\nimpassable chasm and makes him an image of the self-sufficing Creator,\nthe source of all beauty, the exemplar of all beauty, whom the Blessed\nforever contemplate and forever enjoy, unenvying and unenviously.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY\n\n\n\u201cWhat is the prime requisite of a critic?\u201d was the question. \u201cHis\nsincerity,\u201d said one; \u201chis sympathy,\u201d said a second; \u201chis philosophy,\u201d\nsaid a third, \u201cbecause everything he says will be ruled by his\nprinciples, even his sincerity and sympathy.\u201d The answer of the third\nspeaker is pertinent to a symposium printed in the _New Republic_ on the\nfunction of criticism.\n\nIt is the common view of the seven writers that criticism is an art and\nthe critics, artists, but no one, except Mr. Francis Hackett, tries to\nshow what the label of artist means. Mr. Dickinson Miller, a professor\nin a theological seminary, very justly and quite fittingly insists on\nthe social responsibility of the artist, as one who deals with life.\nMr. Lovett goes to history and prepares the ground for a discussion\nof principles by grouping critics in several classes. Mr. Clive takes\nthe humblest and most practical view of the critic, calling him an\nappraiser, a function which Mr. H. L. Mencken vehemently repudiates and\nplaces a chip on his shoulder while belligerently proclaiming himself\nimpressionistic. He makes one deep remark which would seem to put him in\nthe same school of esthetics with Mr. Hackett. Presumably with humorous\nintent, or perhaps seriously, Mr. Mencken locates the artistic impulse in\n\u201chormones and intestinal flora.\u201d Hormones are secretions of the glands\n(we just looked it up!) and \u201cintestinal flora\u201d may mean ferments. Mr.\nMencken is abreast of the times. Graft on a new gland and masticate\nyeast, these are the new specifics for all the ills that flesh is heir to.\n\nThe other contributors to this interesting symposium, though not, with\nthe exception of Mr. Hackett, delving as deep as Mr. Mencken, would\nappear to be in philosophy individualists and subjectivists. The former\neditor of the _Athen\u00e6um_, Mr. J. Middleton Murry, accepts the dictum\nof R\u00e9my de Gourmont: \u201cErect personal impressions into laws,\u201d as the\n\u201ctrue motto of a critic.\u201d Mr. Murry is, however, too sensible to accord\nto individual impressions undue freedom and with some violence to his\nconsistency asserts that personal laws stand or fall by their agreement\nwith common experience and with human nature.\n\nMr. Morris Cohen puts himself into a fallacious dilemma from which he\ndoes not successfully extricate himself. According to Mr. Cohen, all\ncritics are led by personal impressions or by the authority of others. He\nshould know that between the blind feeling of impressionism and the blind\nfaith of authority there is enlightened reason. Mr. Cohen does not take\nthe path of reason, but endeavors to escape the horns of his own dilemma\nby recourse to pragmatism. He claims, what will be news to historians of\nphilosophy, that Euclid was the first pragmatist, although in the next\nbreath Mr. Cohen states that \u201cmathematicians of the nineteenth century\nhave shown that Euclid\u2019s axioms are mere guesses to be justified by\ntheir consequences in the factual realm.\u201d \u201cFactual realm\u201d seems to mean\nthe indefinitely remote future of pragmatism where the gold of truth\nis separated from meaner elements. Some chosen spirits of the \u201cfactual\nrealm\u201d now assure us that the \u201cself-evident principles\u201d of Euclid are\n\u201cguesses.\u201d Mr. Cohen is equipped to write an inside history of philosophy\nwith some entirely original features. The \u201cfactual realm\u201d leads back to\nskepticism, and Mr. Cohen is still impaled by his dilemma.\n\nMr. Francis Hackett makes the most serious attempt to get at the\nphilosophy of criticism and of art, and attacks at once the question\nof the beautiful. It is evidence of his thoroughness that he goes\nstraightway to the great problem of esthetics, \u201cCan an object be at once\nbeautiful and evil?\u201d Mr. Hackett answers promptly in the negative, but\nthen proceeds to confuse the point by going to another and different\nquestion, \u201cCan evil or an ugly object be represented in art?\u201d The answer\nto this question is evident. The elopement of Helen, the patricide and\nincest of \u0152dipus, the galleries of Dante\u2019s Inferno and Purgatorio, and\ncountless other happenings in the world of art, show that the evil\nand the ugly have been and may be represented in art. \u201cI can hardly\nconceive,\u201d says Mr. Hackett, \u201can artist as subduing a cancerous object\nto an esthetic design.\u201d But why not? Marriage with one\u2019s mother is\nmore repugnant than a cancer, and yet it was handled successfully by\nSophocles, however repulsive some of his imitators have been in their\ndetails.\n\nThe very transfer to the realm of art robs the ugly object of its\nactuality and imminence. Surely the ugly and evil have been and may be\nrepresented in art, but such objects may not be represented as beautiful\nand good. That were as false and untrue to nature as a centipede cow in a\npicture. Perhaps a cancer could not appear in a picture or poem or story\nexcept by suggestion. A stark realism would disgust, but a true artist\nmight subdue a cancerous object to artistic design as effectively as\nHomer subdued in his story the fleas of the dog, Argos, and the dung-heap\nwhere he lay.\n\nBeauty in art would lose one of its charms, the splendor of contrast, did\nnot admitted ugliness or evil occur in art. Bad art disgusts and so does\nbadness in art, when badness is approved or when it is projected into art\nfor purposes not artistic. Mr. Hackett\u2019s real trouble is that he has not\nproperly isolated the feeling of art awakened by beauty. He thinks that\nthe esthetic sense is sexual and visceral. If the mouth waters at painted\nfruit, would Mr. Hackett call art salival? Human beings are composites,\nand external objects while producing their essential and proper effects\nmay have concomitant effects accidentally brought into being. To admire\nthe beauty of an apple is an esthetic feeling entirely distinct in cause\nand faculty and in operation from the feeling of sensible satisfaction,\nanticipated or actual, which comes to the taste-buds, and different again\nfrom any visceral qualms that may arise from associated ideas of unhappy\nexperience with other apples.\n\nMr. Hackett has been led astray by not distinguishing the disinterested\nemotions of beauty from the selfish emotions of appetite. He calls\nbeauty, \u201cdisinterested satisfaction,\u201d and in that word \u201cdisinterested\u201d\nhe has a fact about beauty, a fact solving his problems, a fact which\nhas been admitted by every one who has studied the subject, and a fact\nwhich is capable of experimental demonstration at any moment. Professor\nPhelps of Yale once called esthetic emotions a spinal thrill; Mr. Mencken\nwould call them \u201chormones or intestinal flora\u201d; and Mr. Hackett declares\nthat \u201cthe true sources of esthetic satisfaction and dissatisfaction are\ndeep in our emotional and visceral life.\u201d The one essential quality of\ndisinterestedness, found in esthetic satisfaction, shows the absurdity of\nall such statements. Bodily emotions are all the outcome of appetites,\nand appetites are never disinterested but always self-seeking by their\nvery nature. They are actuated by good; they tend to an end, an end which\nthey do not and cannot seek disinterestedly. Even the act of the highest\ndisinterested love may be akin to the sense of beauty, but it is not as\nwholly disinterested because that unselfish love is still seeking good,\nand good as such does not come within the purview of beauty at all. It is\nimpossible to be disinterested towards good or evil.\n\nMr. Hackett speaks of beauty being a \u201csensuous satisfaction.\u201d Here again\nthere is a confusion between beauty of art and other beauty. Art appeals\nto the senses because art presents its beauty in concrete embodiments. To\nthat extent the satisfaction of beauty arises from sensible objects, but\nthe feeling of beauty transcends mere sensation. \u201cArt is long.\u201d \u201cA thing\nof beauty is a joy forever.\u201d The satisfaction of appetite is passing;\nthe satisfaction of beauty abides. Mr. Hackett does well to seek the\nsprings of beauty in personality. Personality is an abiding principle\nof intellectual beings. The enduring joy of beauty argues to an abiding\nprinciple which bears the dynamic charge of that joy. Beauty supposes a\nsoul.\n\n\u201cBeauty is a light that may follow any reality whatever and give us the\npower to release our emotions happily in the presence of that reality.\u201d\nSo states Mr. Hackett, and he is right, if he gives the correct meaning\nto \u201cemotions.\u201d Light or luster has been recognized from all time as an\nobjective element of beauty, which has been defined as the light of\ntruth. Mr. Hackett paraphrases a definition which has been incorrectly\nattributed to Plato. Kleutgen has defined beauty as the perfection of\nanything resplendently manifested.\n\nLet us hope that Mr. Hackett will remove \u201cvisceral\u201d from among the\nqualities of beauty and preclude critics from adding a fiftieth\nexplanation of Aristotle\u2019s _catharsis_ to the forty-nine varieties\nalready set forth. Wearers of Murphy buttons or those who have lost or\nmay lose sections of the intestinal tract should be assured in an amended\nedition of Mr. Hackett\u2019s esthetics that their sense of beauty has not\nbeen abbreviated or impaired. Sane philosophy is the prime requisite of\ntrue criticism.\n\n\n\n\nPART SECOND\n\nART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nLOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE\n\n\nThe teacher of literature today is looking backward when he should be\nlooking forward. Greek literature, Latin literature and, to a large\nextent, English literature are not orientated; they do not face the\nrising sun. It was not so in the Greek schools of Greek literature.\nGorgias and Isocrates taught literature for the morrow, and for practical\nand immediately practical purposes. In the Roman schools it was so from\nfirst to last. Recall Cicero\u2019s studies under Greek rhetoricians and\nCicero\u2019s own preachment in the _Archias_ speech. \u201cShame on those who bury\nthemselves so deep in literature that they harvest nothing for the good\nof all and bring nothing to light for our eyes to look upon.\u201d Recall\nQuintilian\u2019s _Institutes of Oratory_, and all the intervening schools\nof Rome. Rome had no vocational schools for road-building, but Rome did\nhave schools of grammar, poetry, rhetoric and philosophy where it trained\nleaders with vision and with the power to act. The brains of Rome trained\nin literature guided barbarian hands to lay down the roads over which\nChristianity traveled and civilization came down to us.\n\nLiterature looked forward in every period of the world\u2019s schooling.\nAusonius and Isidore, Alcuin and Petrarch, Boileau and Pope, England and\nFrance, and even Germany until about the middle of the nineteenth century\nand America until a little later, kept the literatures of Greece and Rome\norientated to the future by teaching them as arts, by making composition\nof literature the goal of the teaching of literature.\n\nScience is ever growing old; history is always being rewritten;\nliterature is ever young. We know more about Homer\u2019s history than\nLonginus knew, but we do not taste the delight of his poetry any better\nthan Longinus tasted it. \u201cHanding on the torch of learning\u201d is a trite\nphrase, but it is literally verified in the true teaching of literature.\nEach age adds to the advance of science and information, but art is long.\nLiterature and art do not belong to the past. Literally and without\nfigure of speech they are the past living in the present. They are the\nflaming torch, kindled in the past, never dimming and never to dim.\n\nWrite a history of artists; do not write a history of art. \u201cA thing\nof beauty is a joy forever.\u201d The information of science changes\nevery moment; the appreciation of art once gained is enduring. The\n_Encyclopedia Britannica_ has rewritten all its science and history; it\nreprints its appreciations of Sophocles by Campbell and of Demosthenes\nby Jebb and even of Johnson by Macaulay. Where the cause is the same,\nthe effect is the same, and so the beauty of Homer\u2019s rosy-fingered dawn\nawakens still the same appreciation.\n\nOf literature as a subject of investigation in university or graduate\nwork there is here no question. The investigator studies the origin, the\ndevelopment, the history of literature. He looks backward; his purpose\nis to amass information and to codify a science. That is not or should\nnot be the purpose of the teacher in high school and college. He is\neducating; he wishes to set in operation and perfect the faculties of\nthe class before him, to impress upon every faculty its own proper art,\nthat is, its habitual and excellent way of acting. The school teacher is\nconcerned with the education of acts; the university lecturer with the\neducation of facts.\n\nTake the _Ratio Studiorum_ of the Jesuits, a system embodying the\ntraditions of education and not differing fundamentally from other\nsystems of its time. The _Ratio Studiorum_ had no history of literature\nor lectures on the evolution of literature. It did not approach\nliterature as a science but as an art. It took the standard authors of\nLatin and Greek. Cicero was the staple of every class in Latin because\nfor nearly every kind of Latinity, history and poetry excepted, he was\na model. Cicero was analyzed, was appreciated, was imitated, that the\nstudent might express himself in writing and speaking as clearly, as\ninterestingly, as forcibly as Cicero, that the student might be master\nof acts of literature, not of facts about literature. That was and is\nhumanism; that is, making a man a man by equipping all his faculties with\nthe art proper to each. The humanities were so called because they embody\nman. Science is classified nature; literature is nature brought into\ntouch with man\u2019s personality and transmuted into art, man\u2019s only creation.\n\nYou cannot get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. Every other\nsubject in the curriculum produces its kind; so should literature.\nMathematics makes mathematicians, chemistry chemists, and physics\nphysicists. Art should produce artists; literature should result in\nliterature, in artistic expression, but it is made to produce historians,\nbiographers, perhaps critics. The history of literature, the evolution\nof literature should be put out of high school and college and relegated\nto the university or handed over to the lectures on history, leaving the\nvaluable time of literature for appreciation and expression.\n\nToday we have literature in one class and composition in another\nand perhaps rhetoric in another. Departments are the offspring of\nuniversities and the instruments of science. The rational school of\nliterary expression correlates author, precept and exercise. Information\nmay be imparted piecemeal and from different sources; it is multitudinous\nand capable of division. Formation is one and united; it is the faculty\nor power brought to the perfection of self-expression. Art requires a\nteacher and unifying of means; science may have a score of lecturers as\nits truths are found in a score of books. Let the teacher of literature\ntherefore take standard literature, make it understood, feel its\npersonality that students may feel it, note and appreciate its beauty\nthat others may take fire or at least get heat from the enthusiasm\nkindled within him, and then let the teacher see to it that his class\nexpress their own selves as the author expressed himself. Let students\ndo for Lincoln what Shakespeare did for Julius C\u00e6sar. If they cannot do\na play, perhaps they can do an act; if they cannot create a character,\nperhaps they can give one characteristic action; if they cannot write a\ndescription or tell a story, perhaps they can supply a noun for Lincoln\nor visualize his deeds in a verb or paint him in an epithet or coin him\nin a metaphor. And all this, not for an Elizabethan public, but for the\nstudents\u2019 own public here and now, looking forward, not backward.\n\nDesperate efforts have been made to galvanize literary courses by\nlectures on modern novels, current magazines and daily papers. The\nlamentable fact is that most recent products are not literature; that\nif there is in them art, it has not been made available for students,\nas the art of literary classics has been made available by centuries\nof criticism, and that, finally, the contents of contemporary writings\nare so easy of access and so inviting to the reader and yet often so\nephemeral, that the artistic form is neglected. There is no contemporary\nhistory, neither is there contemporary criticism. Literature, like all\nart, must pass beyond the prejudices and passions of the day to be known\nand appreciated as art at all. It is for the enlightened teacher of\nliterature to make the students embody their own experience in the finest\nart molds of the past, not distracting them by the multiplicity of modern\nliterature, but holding up the ideals, like torches, to light the paths\nbefore them and, like expert guides, to direct the trembling steps of\nbeginners to new goals.\n\nLiterature is not the study of words. Grammar or philology is the study\nof words. Science dehumanizes everything; it eliminates the personal\nequation; it is objective, unimpassioned, impersonal, subordinating\neverything to laws and principles. Literature is the opposite in every\nrespect. It is embodied humanity. Science contains some of man\u2019s\noperations; literature enshrines all; not truth alone, but good and\nbeauty as well; not simply the clear idea, the accurate statement, the\ncorrect conclusion, the consistent reasoning, but also the myriad visions\nof the imagination, the subtle analogies, the suggestive creations,\nhaunting beauties and idealized good. So literature actuates every power\nof man whether that power is a constituent part of man\u2019s soul or is a\nbodily power whose operation by reaction terminates in man\u2019s soul.\n\nAs literature is therefore the whole man, so far as humanity can be\nput in language, the understanding of literature, its appreciation and\nmost of all its creation will make every power of the student operate,\nif literature is taught as literature. Such results will not come\nautomatically; they come when the teacher by true appreciation creates\nagain before the student the literary masterpiece and when the student\nstrives to rival the masterpiece in the expression of his own experience\nand of his own dawning humanity. Literature is looking forward when it is\nmaking minds think and imaginations imagine and reasons reason and tastes\ntaste and emotions thrill. Teach literature as an art, which it is; not\nas a science, which it is not.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nUNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE\n\n\nUnity is most useful, if not essential, to a satisfactory course of\nstudies. In the university this unity is effected by the profession which\nthe student has chosen. His field of concentration in art, literature,\nlaw, medicine, science, engineering or divinity dictates to him his\nsubjects, and his own earnest choice, together with prescriptions and\nexaminations, insures unity and thoroughness in concentration courses.\n\nLecturing is the predominant method of the university because professors\nof higher branches are few and students are comparatively numerous.\nLecturing is the weakest and most ineffective of all means of education,\nand is only saved from complete failure by the serious purposes of\nuniversity students and much more by the sanction of repetitions and\nexaminations.\n\nIn the colleges, however, with the advent of electivism there was no\nunifying bond to the studies. University methods of studies and lectures\nprevailed where there were no university conditions. Thoroughgoing\nelectivists, like Dr. Eliot, admitted that the purpose of the college was\na general education or culture, but held that any and every study could\ngive such general training. President Lowell, Dr. Eliot\u2019s successor,\nbegan to put order into the chaos of extreme electivism. He saw his\ncoaches on the athletic fields build up expert athletes by a rigidly\nprescribed course of training, and proclaimed the analogy between body\nand mind, an analogy which would have been all the more cogent had his\nphilosophy been materialistic like that of Dr. Eliot. The prescribed\nexamination in one department at the end of four years is the latest\nadvance of Harvard toward definiteness and unity.\n\nAll colleges in America took up electivism to some extent, and even\nwhere studies were still prescribed they adopted in their catalogs the\nlanguage and methods of electivism. No longer were there classes, but\neverywhere you had courses and departments. One effect of this system\nhas been to make co\u00f6rdinate and of equal importance many subjects which\nhad formerly been subordinate. Colleges whose major subject, or field\nof concentration, had been language, with other subjects subordinate,\nnow tended to make every subject a major and every field a field of\nconcentration. The departmental system has helped to impair unity\nof education by disturbing the hierarchy of studies and by removing\nall subordination. It does not appear to be feasible to concentrate\non everything. In some cases colleges seem about to give up the\ngeneral-training idea and are tending to make their whole course\nsubservient to a profession, obliging every one to take a pre-medical\ncourse because the American Medical Association is mighty and medical\nschools are very exacting.\n\nFormerly high schools and colleges made language or self-expression the\nfield of concentration, and other subjects, like history, mathematics,\nsciences, were kept subordinate. College and high school had then one\npurpose, which unified all their studies, as a profession unified\nlectures in the university\u2014that purpose was the mastery of the art of\nexpression. The French lyc\u00e9es, the German gymnasia, the English public\nschools, the Jesuit _Ratio Studiorum_, prepared for the university by\nmaking students masters of writing and speaking. The writer and speaker\ncould express himself; his intellectual faculties could work properly,\nand therefore they had received a general training which prepared them\nfor professional work of a special kind. The field of concentration was\nshown in the names of the classes. The teachers were teachers, not of\nLatin, Greek, English, but of grammar, of poetry, of oratory, of clear,\ninteresting, forceful expression.\n\nThe departmental system destroys this fine unity or renders it very\ndifficult of attainment. The departmental system has been perhaps the\nchief reason why the classics have been taught as means towards the\nacquisition of various sciences rather than as exemplifications of\nliterary art. It is as literature and as models of perfect expression\nthat the classics have hitherto survived; as literature and models of\nexpression they were taught in the days preceding the university system\nof departments. Cicero was a model of letter-writing, of essay-writing,\nof speech-making. He was chosen with a view to composition; he was graded\nwith a view to composition.\n\nHow can a department teacher preserve the former unity of system, where\nall literature was studied with one dominating purpose, self-expression?\nIf the grade of the class is rhetoric or oratorical expression, will each\ndepartment teach its own authors, Greek, Latin and English, following\nthe same rhetorical precepts in the same order, or will each department\nfollow its own terminology and its own order, or will, as has happened\neverywhere, the teaching of rhetoric be relegated to English or to a\nseparate professor, leaving Cicero and Demosthenes to be taught as\ngrammatical documents or historical documents or as legal documents, not\nas speeches, not as models of oratorical expression? Will the professor\nof Latin teach Virgil as epic poetry, and the professor of Greek teach\nHomer as epic poetry, and the professor of English teach Milton as epic\npoetry, or will the teaching of poetry be avoided by the Greek and Latin\ndepartments entirely? Cicero and Demosthenes survive because they are\norators; Homer and Virgil live because they are epic poets, but the\ndepartmental system either forgets that fact entirely or has three\nprofessors teaching the same thing with confusion in the order and in\nthe rules of art. The departmental system, which is a university device\nadapted for specialization, makes unity of education extremely difficult,\nand has taken all the interest out of literature by teaching it as\neverything else but literature!\n\nBesides, as art is the power of doing, and science is chiefly\nsystematized information, the process of education for doing will be\ndifferent from the process of acquiring information. Too many cooks may\nspoil the broth because cooking is an art, but too many sign-posts may\nnot always confuse the traveler. It is far easier to divide information\namong various agents and impart it piecemeal than to apportion the\ndifferent faculties used in an art to different individuals who will\ntrain them to act together harmoniously. Different teachers may very well\nteach the geography of different countries, but it would not be feasible\nto let one teacher have the right hand and another the left in teaching\nthe art of piano-playing.\n\nOmitting the effect of personality, which is paramount in art, as the\nhistory of all religious movements shows it also to have been in the\nformation of character and in virtue, one cannot fail to see that\ndepartments cannot well co\u00f6perate in giving the formation of art. In\nfact, practically the art of composition has ceased to be the field of\nconcentration in modern high schools and colleges. All literatures,\neven English, are taught mostly as sciences. The only wholesome reaction\nin modern education against the predominance of science or systematized\ninformation is found in the present vogue for psychological tests.\nThese are professedly tests of power, not of mere information, and in\nthem the power of self-expression through language is pre\u00ebminent. All\nthe examinations are conditioned by the necessary medium of language,\nand by far the greater number of tests are and must always be tests in\nlinguistic expression.\n\nLanguage is the only practical measure of intelligence, and if such\ntests win favor, they may result in establishing once more the art of\nexpression as the field of concentration or major subject in high schools\nand colleges which give a general education. Language, when taught as an\nart, educates the mind, giving it the powers of expression which are the\nguaranties of the mind\u2019s adequate education. Professors become teachers\nof an art, not lecturers in a science. Perfect unity is found where\nthe finest models of self-expression in all languages, especially the\nclassical languages, are directed by one teacher to the mastery of the\nart of expression in one\u2019s own language.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE\n\n\nThe nineteenth century was a century of science. Its atmosphere was\nsurcharged with scientific discoveries and scientific theories, and\nradiated a scientific influence in every direction. Among other\neffects of that all-pervading spirit we may mention two that entered\nthe classroom and deeply modified the teaching of literature. Science\ninsisted on concrete results and tended to emphasize mechanical methods,\nenhancing system at the expense of personality.\n\nSystem was looked upon in some sense as automatic. Such a widespread\ndelusion, which is not yet fully dissipated, was the logical outcome\nof the mechanical explanation of the universe. The world had evolved\nalong the lines of inflexible laws. Man was part of the machine, and\nthough the mechanism was complicated in his case, yet it was nothing but\nmechanism after all. If system could run the universe without the help of\npersonality, it would not be hard for it to run the little universe of\nman. The same reasoning would hold in a classroom. The teacher might be\nasked to touch the button, but the system would do the rest.\n\nIt would not seem to require much argumentation to show the fallacy of\nsuch a theory. Do we not all know that nothing in this world is wholly\nautomatic? Motion is a function of personality. Perpetual motion in\nsystems and organizations, that would dispense with personality, is just\nas absurd as the same proposal in the physical order. Nothing in this\nworld will run of itself without personal co\u00f6peration. Somewhere there\nmust be a living, breathing, responsible individual. We may have to\ntravel a long way to find him, but we shall find him, the man behind the\nmotion. It is so with machines; it is much more so with organizations and\nsystems and laws; it is most of all so in education. Latin or German or\nphysics or anything else without a teacher (cf. catalog of correspondence\nschools) are phrases that belong to the language of advertisement which\nhas omitted from its ethics the chapter on lying. All success, all\ninterest, all enthusiasm are harvests whose sowing is in a human head or\nhuman heart. Even the universe calls for the constantly applied force\nof omnipotence to keep it from disintegrating into nothingness and the\nwatchfulness of Providence to prevent it from wrecking itself. While\nwriters on education have been tracing the causes of the decrease of\ninterest in the classics have they not been overlooking the necessary\nfactor of personality?\n\nThe other depressing effect upon education exercised by the scientific\natmosphere was the insistence upon concrete results, leading likewise\nto the elimination of human interest. Science said to every branch\nof knowledge, \u201cCollect your data, classify your instances, make your\ndeductions, enunciate your laws.\u201d The literary classics were bade to\nstand and deliver. They had to have data and deductions and laws. Homer\nand Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero became the chosen camping-ground\nof the specialists. The pupils that finished the _Iliad_ with a taste\ndeveloped, an imagination warmed, a soul uplifted, might be refused\na degree. The pupil who had Homer undergo the surgical operations of\nspecialism, who had him pigeon-holed, who had him weighed and counted,\nwas the honor man of the class. He could write an essay on Homeric\n\u00c6olisms or Homeric ship-building or Homeric word-building. He knew more\nabout Homeric pottery than Homeric poetry. What if his heart never beat\nfaster as he read; what if he was too busy measuring the length of\nHomeric swords or analyzing the metal of Homeric armor, to drink in the\nimaginative delight of battle, with Homeric peers, \u201cfar on the ringing\nplains of windy Troy,\u201d he was scientific, he had some concrete results to\nshow for his schooling, and he was the pet child of the century. Assets\nof the mind could not be weighed or measured; his doctor\u2019s dissertation\nin his grip could. It contained just twenty-five thousand words, and\nweighed one pound and a half, and had a superficial area of about a\nhundred square yards.\n\nThe final outcome of the baneful influence of the scientific atmosphere\nis the almost complete perversion of the good old word, scholar. No\none can lay claim now to the title scholarly, unless he is equipped\nwith a formidable array of facts and figures. He must bristle with the\nfretful quills of half a hundred sciences. In the study of the classics\nhe is so busy with the words of the text that he has not time for their\nmeaning. When he has settled the conflicting claims of innumerable\nvariant readings and all the arguments for the same, he has no leisure\nleft for the old-fashioned practice of trying to appreciate the accepted\nreading. Scholarship is now a matter of memory, a something that deals\nwith introductions, footnotes, excursuses and critical apparatuses. Plead\nguilty to an ignorance of all this, and you may be indulgently permitted\nto call yourself judicious, appreciative, discerning, capable of enjoying\na literary masterpiece, but you could not presume to call yourself\nscholarly. Justin McCarthy, in an article about his old schoolmaster,\nalludes to the same fact. \u201cI never knew a scholar,\u201d he declares, \u201cso\nthorough who was less of a pedant, but I ought to say, perhaps, that the\ngeneral character of his teaching was not what would be called in our\ndays scholarly.\u201d\n\nThis steady elimination of the subjective element of education with\nthe corresponding development of the objective side during the years of\nthe nineteenth century, all tended to the extinction of the individual.\nAnother factor also co\u00f6perated in achieving this result. The classes in\nschool and college grew more numerous, and the schoolmaster became in\nturn a teacher, a professor, a lecturer. With each change he drew further\naway from his hearers. The greater the audience the weaker the personal\nnote, the less individual the expression. The lecturer on a classical\nauthor must stray more from the text than the teacher. He is necessarily\nmore general and hence more impersonal. He feels bound to give facts more\nthan impressions. He is committed to the formulating of theories based\non a dissection of the text, and shrinks from setting forth the feelings\nwhich a masterpiece excites. The lecturer tends to subordinate the author\nto his lecture, where the teacher\u2019s more humble lot leads him to efface\nhimself in the presence of the author.\n\nThis leads us to set forth the proper attitude of the teacher toward\nthe text, and we could not begin the discussion better than by giving a\nfurther description of Justin McCarthy\u2019s old schoolmaster.\n\n    \u201cI have,\u201d he wrote, in March, 1899, \u201cthe most delightful and\n    tender memories of my dear old schoolmaster in Cork. He was\n    not, indeed, the first schoolmaster I ever had, but he taught\n    me all or put me in the way of learning all that I have ever\n    known, and after this long lapse of time I feel as strongly as\n    ever how much I owe him. His name was John Goulding, and he\n    kept a school in the city of Cork, my birthplace.\n\n    \u201cTo make us understand what we were reading and enjoy it, to\n    make us wish to read more and understand it better\u2014such was the\n    object of his whole method. There was very little of what is\n    called \u2018getting by heart\u2019 in his system, unless when he wished\n    to train memory merely for the sake of training it. When we\n    were studying some Latin author he told us all about the author\n    and the scenes described in the pages before us, and he invited\n    all manner of questions on the subject. He showed us on the\n    maps where the places were which the author was describing, and\n    he illustrated the author\u2019s meaning as if he were an artist\n    illustrating a story.\n\n    \u201cI do not know to describe his method of teaching better than\n    by saying that it was literary rather than scholastic. His\n    great desire was that a boy should be able to read Greek and\n    Latin as easily as he read Shakespeare and Addison, and he\n    regarded grammar as a necessary means to that end, but not\n    as the end itself. He always took care that historical and\n    geographical knowledge should work in with and illustrate our\n    literary studies.\n\n    \u201cI can only say for myself that whatever love of books I\n    may have had I owe in the main to his teaching and to his\n    influence, and I can say with literal truthfulness that\n    throughout a busy life in public and in private his influence\n    and teaching have always been with me and are with me still.\u201d\n\nJohn Goulding would not be considered in our day a remarkable pedagogist\nand has not bequeathed his name to a system of education; yet he presents\nmany traits of the true teacher, and these details of his life are\npertinent to our question.\n\nThe true commentator, whose suggestion we see in the Cork schoolmaster,\nwill not be a philologist, but will use philology; he will not be a\ngrammarian, but he will refuse no point of grammar that will help. He\nwill press every science into service, but he will be the slave of\nnone. He will remember that his supreme object in teaching is not to\ncompose a dictionary of antiquities nor to collect extracts for rhetoric\nor examples for grammar. His object rather is and should be to bring\nthe pupil to the text, to bring the mind of the author to the mind of\nthe reader. Away from dictionary and grammar, away from footnote and\nappendix, back to the text, should be the teacher\u2019s cry. The text should\nbe the center upon which every source of information should be focused,\nnot the center from which to radiate to the cheerless circumference of\nspecializations. We do not contend for superficiality, for slipshod\ngrammar, for inaccurate erudition. Thoroughness, care, accuracy, must\nrule in the classroom. We are simply for liberal education, which opposes\nearly specialization in courses and must equally oppose it in the\nteaching of literature.\n\nThe study of the classics should key up the whole intellectual apparatus.\nIt should sharpen the critical faculties, warm the imagination, cultivate\nthe judgment, develop the taste, ennoble the appreciation, exercise,\npartially at least, the reasoning faculty, and finally endow the student\nwith perfected powers of expression. To subordinate literature to any one\nof the swarm of sciences that sprang into life last century is to limit\nits efficiency and degrade it as a means of general culture.\n\nThe teacher, however, must not look for an infallible recipe in this\nmatter. He cannot expect to stir up interest in the pupils by any\nprescribed formula, by a rigid system of handling the text. A scheme\nof suggestions may be drawn up, topics for discussion or observation\nmay be arranged. Such devices are helpful, but they should not become\nstereotyped, because they deaden when they are hard and fast. It is a\nmark of a crystal to settle into straight lines at fixed angles; it is\ncharacteristic of organisms to be yielding and pliable in their outlines,\nwhile they retain their life. The meaning is the life of the text, the\nmeaning as it was in the author\u2019s mind, with all the associations that it\nhad for him. Let the meaning be the guide, and the explanation will not\nbe dead. Let the teacher use systems and hints and topics and all other\ndevices as helps to arrive at the sense and meaning, not as inflexible\nmolds into which he must always pour his commentary. A chemist may have\nweighed and labeled all the constituent elements of a living cell, and\nhe may even succeed in mingling them in such a way as to have all these\nelements in the very places they are in life, but his mixture will not\nhave the principle of life, that wonderful, unanalyzable bond that\nunites into one organism, permeates and vivifies the separate atoms and\nmolecules. Because his analysis is complete and perfect, it does not\nfollow that his synthesis will be complete and perfect. Neither may a\nteacher expect to get the synthesis of a vital, interesting commentary\nfrom the detailed formula of the literary laboratory. He must have his\nfinger on the pulse; he must have seized the beating, warm heart; he\nmust have grasped the permeating, vivifying soul of his author, if he\nwould make his commentary living, and there is no other way to the heart\nblood of an author, except by loving, enthusiastic meditation of his full\nmeaning.\n\nI remember the first time in class that Homer ceased to be for me an\nexample factory for grammar or a shop for Grecian antiquities. We had\nbeen translating Homer and parsing Homer; we now began to read him. The\nchange was as easy as it was pleasant. The teacher simply went back\nbehind the dictionary and the grammar, behind the cases and the tenses,\nto the author\u2019s meaning. He made us see the old priest of Apollo walking\nalong the seashore. He made us realize the fact that he was coming to\nspeak for his daughter. Our attention was called to the completeness and\nappropriateness of his little speech. In a word, we began to move in\nthe poet\u2019s world. We had used the grammar and dictionary to get there,\nbut when we reached our destination, we alighted from the train. We\nwere bound for the land of Homer, not for that of Goodwin or Liddell &\nScott, and the sooner we left our dusty, noisy cars, the better for us.\nOur professor knew the translation and knew the grammar, but he had\nleft them behind him. He was on higher levels, and he threw away his\nmountain staff and his guide rope. We were with him there, and we entered\ninto his enthusiasm for the broad view before us. Homer had been for us\na venerable mausoleum of well-preserved and dignified, but very dead\nmummies. His enthusiasm let the life and light into that ancient tomb,\nand the mummies took off their wraps and lived and moved. From that day\nof resurrection until the present, Homer has lived for me; from that time\nI have heard the Homeric heart beat and felt the Homeric pulse throb.\n\nNor need the teacher who follows these methods have fear that he is going\nwrong, or that he is neglecting the proper education of his pupils. He\nis achieving, too, concrete results, an achievement that must not be\nconsidered the monopoly of science. Science may not supplant literature\nin the school-room. It would be a sad day for both if ever it did. As\nregards observation and induction, it has not been our wish to protest\nagainst the use of these methods, but rather against the limiting of\ntheir scope. To observe grammar only or archeology or philology and\nneglect the author\u2019s meaning is as ridiculous as to observe the paint and\nnot the picture, to put a microscope to the marble and not notice the\nstatue. We do not want less development, rather we want more. Develop the\npowers of observation, but do not think that the only powers are the\nsenses. The world of imagination and the world of thought offer wider\nfields for observation than the world of external sense. The horizon of\nthe mind is not restricted to the sky line that narrows the vision of the\neye.\n\nIf you train the powers of observation in the laboratory by asking\nthe pupil to see, to touch, to taste, to smell, train them, too, in\nthe classroom, by asking them to listen to the harmony of a sentence,\nto trace out the development of a thought, to appreciate the wit, the\nbeauty, the sublimity of a passage. There was observation and training of\nthe powers of observation before the test tube was blown or the dynamo\nwas wound. Science has opened up new and wonderful worlds, not one of\nwhich would we see closed; but the lands of literature have not ceased\nfor that reason to be inviting, and the soul, wearied with facts and\nhampered with figures, gladly escapes into the restful regions of higher\nand ampler realities.\n\nThe crossing of the borders of mere expression, the living and moving\nin the realms of meaning, the appreciative following of an author\u2019s\nmind in all journeyings, may not develop grammarians or philologists\nor ethnologists or archeologists. Perhaps it is not the life-work of\nclassical literature to stock the market with such commodities. The\nstudent who travels with a master-mind through the land of thought, now\ncaptivated with a view just under his eyes, again catching a glimpse\nof some far-off scene, all the more glorious in promise, because it\nlacks definiteness of detail, such a one may turn out to be more of a\ntourist than a local antiquarian and may suffer some inconveniences in\nconsequence. He will be set right by the local antiquarian on names and\ndates connected with some obscure town, but in turn he will convey to his\nlearned friend some ideas on the relative importance of localities and on\nthe topography of the whole country. The tourist will not be provincial\nor municipal or suburban. He will not mistake his native hamlet for the\nworld or make it the sole standard of excellence. The tourist will give\nyou a map; the local antiquarian will draw up a surveyor\u2019s chart, with\nthe number of inches to the grade and the number of feet to the surface.\nShould not the teacher of literature consider it his duty to encourage\nthe tourist, to introduce the student into the world of meaning, and not\nto keep him with theodolite and the leveling-rod along the borders of\nexpression, counting words, measuring phrases, or drawing up lifeless\ncharts of tabulated facts? When the student has come home from his\ntravels, he may, if he chooses, lay aside his guide book, and, having\nseen the world, confine his energies to mastering a portion of it. If,\nhowever, he should have brought home from his wanderings nothing more\nthan a love of literature and all that means, will his teacher\u2019s life\nhave been in vain? John Goulding of Cork might be considered not entirely\nuseless, if he gave us no more than Justin McCarthy, who thus describes\nthe results of his master\u2019s work:\n\n    \u201cI do not venture to say that Mr. Goulding\u2019s method of teaching\n    was directly adapted to create a thoroughly scholastic\n    knowledge of Greek and Latin, and I do not know whether his\n    pupils would have been likely by means of his instruction alone\n    to take honors in any university competition, but I know that\n    it made all of us, who had a taste for such, ready and fluent\n    readers in Greek and Latin and as familiar with most of the\n    Greek and Latin poets as with Shakespeare and Keats. It was in\n    truth literary rather than scholastic instruction.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nEDUCATING THE EMOTIONS\n\n\nLife is full to the brim with emotions. Not war only nor political\nrallies nor the excited throngs at sports are vibrant with emotion, but\nthere is not a single act of life which has not some emotion, quiet\nor intense, as its source, its companion and its effect. Man ought to\nbe ruled by cold reason, but he responds to feelings and succumbs to\nfeelings.\n\nToday more than ever in the history of the world is emotionalism rampant.\nCivilization has made mankind a crowd. We touch elbows with the world.\nThe Egyptian hermit has now \u201cthe privacy of a goldfish in a glass bowl.\u201d\nAn individual by himself may indeed deliberate and philosophize, but\na crowd feels and acts. As soon as it stops cheering, it begins to\ndisintegrate into thinking individuals, who creep silently back to the\nhermitage of home. The war, with its drives of all kinds, the elections,\nthe athletic contests, have made us familiar with the nature of a crowd.\nThe mob is a high-pressure crowd, and the feelings which burn in the\ncrowd explode violently in a mob. Civilization has brought mankind into\nthe closeness of a crowd, but not yet to the explosive confusion of a mob.\n\nWar taught us too the great value of morale. What is morale? What is that\nlight in the sky, that solid ground under foot, that winged buoyancy of\nthe heart? Morale might be described as organized emotion. A crowd is\nfickle because it feels instead of reasons. Morale is the counter-force\nto fickleness. Emotions are awakened, are focused on a given point, are\nstabilized, and the result is morale. Courage hardens to pluck, duty\nflames into devotion and bravery is transfigured into heroism.\n\nLife therefore is flooded with emotion, all the way from every action of\nthe individual up to the responsive crowd, yielding to panic, exploding\ninto violence or steadied by morale. What then is education doing for the\nemotions? Whether education be considered a development of the individual\ncapacities, or an adjustment of man to the community, education should\nnot neglect the emotions. The controlling tendencies, however, of the\nmodern school would seem to ignore or belittle emotions. Modern schools\npride themselves on being practical and scientific. They have become\nmore immersed in matter than in man. They are materialistic in the wide\nsense, or naturalistic, but they are less and less humanistic. Three\ngreat fields lie before the spirit of man, the field of truth, the field\nof beauty and the field of good. No traveler can reach beauty and good\nexcept through truth, but education seems to think its work is done if it\ntravels the regions of truth and ignores the regions of beauty and good.\n\nAll education formerly could be divided into two stages, the earlier of\npreparation, the later of application. The individual was taught to speak\nand write and was equipped with the general information necessary to\nall. He who was able to speak and write was able to express himself, and\nself-expression, which argued that man\u2019s powers were working normally,\nwas the satisfactory goal in the first stage of education. After the\ndevelopment of the individual came his application to the study of his\nlife-work in professional schools and universities.\n\nIn the former of these two stages, as self-expression was the end,\nlanguage was the chief and almost exclusive means. Sciences were\nrelegated to the university and informational subjects were left strictly\nsubordinated, and the whole course was predominately humanistic.\nModern education has profoundly changed this simple arrangement. The\nuniversity method of education and electivism and specialization have\nbeen advanced to college, to high school and to grade school. Many\nnatural sciences have been systematized and brought into early classes.\nThe university chemistry and physics of fifty years ago are now in the\ngrades. Besides professional courses, pre-medical, pre-law, pre-divinity,\npre-engineering, pre-journalism, and in general pre-professional\nstudies are in our schools or at the doors. The trades are not behind\nthe professions. The million trades which concern themselves with the\nproduction of raw material or with the manufacture of raw material into\nfinished products or with the distribution of finished products, all\nthese are knocking at the door or looking in the window of our school.\nNor is that all. As the professions want pre-professional and the trades\npre-trade courses, so the state demands pre-citizen courses in civic and\nhygienics and military tactics, and the home exacts pre-family courses in\neugenics and many domestic sciences. Do not close your curriculum list\nyet. The profession, the trade, the home, the state are not all, and to\nleave out religion, which calls for pre-religious courses in private\nschools, we have the whole field of sport and play in pre-dancing,\npre-ball-playing, and at last pre-movies. To make the conquest of the\npractical complete, it is seriously advocated by a special committee of\nthe N. E. A. that this bewildering multiplicity of sciences, professions,\ntrades, civic, domestic and amusement courses should be begun at the\njunior high school or seventh grade.\n\nThere is the contrast. Life is emotional. The early schools that used\nto be devoted chiefly to writing and speaking, are now crowded with\na multiplicity of fact subjects, and even language and literature,\nthe most humanistic and emotional subjects of our courses, are taught\ntheoretically by university and scientific methods. In the Jesuit _Ratio\nStudiorum_, which did not differ essentially from other systems, four\nyears of the lower schools were given to correct expression of the truth,\none year to the element of interest, or beauty, in expression, and one\nwhole year to the element of force, or good, in expression. These two\nlatter classes were called humanities and rhetoric and correspond to the\npresent freshman and sophomore classes in Jesuit colleges.\n\nThe reason why a whole year was given to the elements of interest and\nforce in self-expression is found in the twofold nature of emotions.\nOne set of emotions arises from the apprehension of good or avoidance\nof evil. Another set arises from the perception of the novel, humorous\nand beautiful. These latter comprehend the emotions of surprise, wonder,\ndelight, awe, in general, the esthetic emotions. The other emotions,\ncalled appetitive, include love and hate, with desire and fear, joy and\nsadness, pity and anger and many others.\n\nFortunately for the teacher the teaching of emotions is somewhat\nsimplified by the fact that both kinds of emotions respond, not to\nabstract truth but to truth in the concrete and concrete truth takes on\nbeauty or good and awakens emotions through the imaginations of teacher\nand student. Teachers who themselves imagine will awaken emotions and\neducate emotions by exercising them. Teachers who imagine will make\npupils imagine by making them translate all truth from the abstract\nto the concrete. The perpetual question on the lips of the teacher,\n\u201cFor instance?\u201d will embody truth in the concrete, exercise students in\nimagination and make truth emotional and abiding.\n\nInteresting and enthusiastic teachers are always training emotions.\nEmotion is not imparted by instruction; it is kindled by contact.\nTeachers who have their subjects transferred from dead books to their\nwarm, living imaginations, will be interesting, will be moving. They\nwill excite surprise and wonder by novelty and beauty of presentation.\nThey will make their classes expand with love or shrink in horror at the\npictures of good or evil.\n\nAfter imagination and actual feeling on the part of both student and\nteacher, the next best means of educating emotions is the stimulating\nof action, especially in the way of original self-expression through\nthe written and spoken word. One of the happy tendencies of our modern\neducation is the restoring of oral expression to its former high place.\n\nThese means just mentioned will be helpful in any subject of the\ncurriculum, but the principal instrument in the schools for training\nthe emotions will be literature. Literature is the embodiment of human\nemotions, in story, in essay, poem, and speech. The schools must hold\non to the teaching of literature. They must make a stand against the\nimperialism of facts and so-called practical subjects. The schools must\nnever forget that it is at least just as practical to have a heart in\nlife as to have a head. A modern French scholar has said: \u201cHumanities\nand letters are man himself, to remove them from education, it would be\nnecessary to commence by taking man from man.\u201d\n\nInstruction in trades is a knack, not an education of man. A savage can\nlearn to run an automobile, and there are many today running automobiles,\nbut a savage does not enjoy literature or produce literature. Science has\nits center outside of man, it is impersonal and unemotional. Literature\nis human, is personal, it appeals to the heart which must not be starved\nwhile the head is stuffed.\n\nBut even when the teachers of literature have the works of man in their\nhands, they must not rob them of all emotions by making their teaching of\nthem historical only, or analytical only or theoretical only, lowering\nMacbeth to a footnote in Scottish history or to an argument for the\ntheory of the romantic movement or to a dissertation on the psychology of\ntemptation. Literature must be taught as literature, not as history, not\nas ethics. Literature should be taught as an art, not as a science. The\nteacher should keep self-expression in view. The teacher will consider\nthe work of literature as the expression of a man. Before the class the\nmasterpiece of literature will grow and crystallize into unity. The\nstudents will watch its creation; they will reflect the light from the\neyes of an enthusiastic teacher; they will grasp the truth vividly and\nemotionally; they will be thrilled with the truth that has taken shape\nin their teacher\u2019s imagination, that has been dramatized before them in\nsuggestive detail, that will teach the students themselves how to think,\nhow to imagine, how to find for the embodied truth a local habitation and\na name, how to express themselves in words which fascinate and inflame.\n\nSo will the emotions by their exercise be developed and by their\nexpression be controlled. The world of the classroom is a little world\nand its tiny emotions are as dew-drops to a deluge, but for the young\nhearts in school the world of the classroom is a gigantic world and its\nslight emotions are adequate to teach beginners. For a dew drop may be a\ndeluge for a violet and its very food and life.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nKEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM\n\n\nThis is not the time to drop Latin or Greek openly or under the\nsubterfuge of optional electives. Colleges everywhere are crowded.\nBuildings are too small for the students; classes are too large for the\nprofessors. Now is the time to impose stricter conditions rather than to\nopen wider the doors to colleges, and now is the proper time to restore\nthe classical languages, and especially Greek, if not to favor, because\nknowledge maketh a bloody entrance, and its weapons are resented, at\nleast to respectable toleration, by teaching them in the right way. Do\nnot empty the baby with the bath, but do draw off the stagnant waters\nand let the bright showers sparkle and sing and refresh. Don\u2019t throw out\nGreek, but do teach Greek as literature, as the art of self-expression,\nas a practical and permanent possession of the student through\nappreciation and through composition in his own language.\n\nGreek authors used to be put in the students\u2019 hands with a Latin\nparaphrase. In Jesuit schools the explanation of the author included a\ntranslation which might be dictated to the class. This was done because\nin Latin, and especially in Greek, which was not the language to be\nused in life, the proper and real work began after the interpretation\nwas known. That proper work was artistic appreciation and artistic\nreproduction in one\u2019s own language, formerly Latin and now various\nlanguages. Rather than cast out Greek, furnish the students with Loeb\nor Jebb or Murray or Lang, shorten grammatical drill, and then center\nattention on the appreciation and the reproduction of the finest\nliterary art of all ages, exacting compositions written and spoken in\nthe student\u2019s own language. This is not a revolutionary proposal, the\nsystem now prevalent is revolutionary; but it is a proposal to relegate\nto the university the specialism and scientific handling of literature,\nand an earnest plea to retain or restore to the classics, especially\nGreek, their age-old method, proper to the general training of academy\nand of college and profitable to every student if the art of speaking and\nwriting is of lifelong utility.\n\nThe teaching of literature has a handicap which is not found in the\nteaching of other arts. A painter must know some practical facts about\npreparing and applying paints, but he need not know the whole chemistry\nof pigments or the physics of colors. The sculptor must choose the\nright kind of marble, but he does not take a course in geology. In all\narts except literature the contact with the artist\u2019s work is almost\nimmediate. But in literature a language must be mastered, and in\nmastering that language a thousand sciences have obtruded themselves\nbetween the student and the masterpiece. Gustav Foch of Leipsic published\nsome years ago a catalog of dissertations printed in Germany during the\nlatter part of the nineteenth century. The catalog, which was by no means\ncomplete, containing only the items he was prepared to furnish, listed\n27,000 titles. This formidable number concerned itself entirely with the\nGreek and Roman writers and embodied special studies on the history, the\nevolution, the text, the erudition of classical literature. Practically\nnothing of this immense flood of special dissertations touched on the art\nof literature.\n\nNow, if all this tremendous erudition were left to the university,\nwhere it properly belongs, not much harm would be done; but unhappily\nthe study of literature as a science has almost completely excluded its\nstudy as an art. The small school of Dissen, Rehdantz and Blass, who\nrepresented in Germany the artistic appreciation of Greek literature, was\nsubmerged by the immensely greater number of scientific investigators.\nThe classical poets, with the exception of Homer, fared better than the\nprose authors; but all literature, instead of being a help to the art of\ncomposition, was subordinated to establishing a theory or to exemplifying\na generalization.\n\nFrance resisted almost entirely this scientific obsession of literature.\nEngland held out long. In both of these nations composition in the\nclassical languages was a fixed feature of the schools. Victorian\nliterature is steeped in the classics, especially of Greece; the golden\nage of England\u2019s eloquence, the age of Chatham, Fox and Burke, preceded\nthe scientific era of classicism and was the product of artistic\nappreciation and of composition.\n\nWhat of America? The earlier schools followed French and English\ntraditions and taught the classics with literary appreciation and with\nfruitful results for the literature of America. Then later America\nsent its professors to Germany; specialism and the departmental system\nseparated literature entirely from the classics; composition ceased\nexcept as a means of learning grammar, thus establishing a complete\nreversal of the original practice, where grammar was a means to\ncomposition.\n\nIt would be untrue to say that all the erudition, discovered and\nsystematized by numerous sciences and centering upon the classics, was\nuseless or unprofitable. Even the immense library which the Wolfian\ntheory of Homeric origins brought into existence has not been entirely\nin vain. Germany of the nineteenth century was the Alexandria of the\nmodern world, and as Alexandrian criticism was the forerunner of the\nbest in Latin literature, perhaps the immense activity of scientific\ninvestigators may have an artistic outcome. A selection of what is\ngood and true, and a clear, concise presentation of well-established\nfacts, such as P\u00e8re Laurand gives in his excellent series, _Manuels des\nEtudes Grecques et Latines_ (Picard, Paris), will help the study of the\nclassics. Erudition should take now its proper place of subordination.\nThe classics should resume the functions which history, evolution,\norigins and other scientific approaches have taken away; the classics\nshould once more be studied primarily as works of art. The medium\nand materials do not dominate other arts; they should not dominate\nliterature. Self-expression is the goal of all art; it should be the goal\nof literature.\n\nHave the teachers of the classics lost faith? Is artistic appreciation an\nidle thing or is it a thing of beauty, a joy forever? The experimental\nsciences are always changing in facts and theories. The chemistry of\na century ago is absurd; the chemistry of twenty-five years ago is\nantiquated; the chemistry of today will be old tomorrow. As Remsen long\nago saw and insisted on, what is valuable in the teaching of chemistry\nare the processes, not the theories, which will likely change tomorrow.\nChemistry, as a science, is a bit of classified information always\nmodified by research. Art and artistic appreciation is a thing of beauty\nand a joy forever. Give a man appreciation of literature; let him taste\nthe beauty of Homer and of Sophocles and of Demosthenes, and you have\ngiven him, not a catalog of facts which must always be rectified, not\na theory which must change with the facts, but a precious treasure in\nthe mind which will always remain. In teaching chemistry the processes\nare more important than the temporary information; in the teaching of\nliterature the processes are at least equally valuable, and besides last\nthrough life in abiding taste and in perfected self-expression.\n\nFormerly reproduction was the aim of the teacher of the classics.\n\u201cReproduction is the soul of the explanation or prelection,\u201d is the way\nearly Jesuit pedagogy put it, and every student of philosophy knows\nwhat the soul or formal cause contributes to the effect. How many in\nexplaining classical literature today guide themselves throughout by\nthe principle that their students are to reproduce artistically the\nmasterpiece which they explain? No doubt professors insist upon the\nformation of clear ideas and further demand explicit judgments in the\nway of propositions. Most too require that the links of reasoning\nbe sharply and definitely stated. Interpretation, in a word, is\nwell done. The intellectual element of the masterpiece is handled\nsatisfactorily. But what of the artistic form? Does the literature take\nshape in the student\u2019s imagination? Is the picture realized in the\nteacher\u2019s imagination and then by suggestion, through the sparkling\neye and sympathetic voice and interpreting gesture, by vivid, though\nnot histrionic, dramatization, is the author\u2019s message staged in the\nstudent\u2019s imagination? Scientific analysis, especially where a text\nbecomes a tag to some learned generalization, often prevents imaginative\nrealization and thus precludes artistic appreciation of literature.\n\nThe teaching of the classics has been and is now justified by the general\ntraining they impart, but it is chiefly when taught as literature that\nthey impart that general training. If the classics are subordinated to\nthe university lecturer\u2019s specialty, then the classics are imparting\nlittle general training and have hardly more right in the classroom,\nexcept for indirect results which may accrue from contact with art, than\nhave special courses in conchology or entomology. Let the teacher look\nupon the classics as art to be reproduced after being appreciated, and a\ngeneral training will be the outcome. Composition should be made the aim\nof literature.\n\nIdioms of languages, and their vocabulary and their structure differ, but\nthought and imagination may be the same. Set all the languages of the\nworld before a moving-picture, and each language will tell the common\nstory on the screen to its children in its own way of speaking. So the\nstudent of any language may learn from Homer how to select details and\ngroup them into artistic wholes, how to carry on the narrative through\nsignificant and choice events, how to dwell on the important and touch\nlightly on the insignificant, how to relieve a story and intensify a part\nof it by appropriate comparisons. As the student learns how to tell a\nstory, so too may he master the art of describing a scene, of creating\na character, of making a speech. He will be taught the way to focus an\nidea and give it discriminating expression by the right word, the way to\nembody good or evil in concrete and picturesque words and the way to be\nproficient in all the elements and processes of composition. The Greek\nHomer made the Latin \u00c6neid, the Greek Theocritus made the Latin Eclogue\nand, if Stedman is right, also the Tennysonian Idyll. The literary art of\nGreek and Latin has given and will give artistic form to the student\u2019s\nvernacular.\n\nThe classics will give a general training if they are made to do so.\nLiterature will not impart a general training automatically. Art is\na habit arising from a repetition of acts. The art of thinking is\nmastered by thinking, and the art of imagining by imagining, and that\nthinking and imagining will be done well if done under the guidance of\nmasters. Has the literary art of Greece, which created Latin literature\nand directly and indirectly shaped the literature of all civilization,\ndone its full work? Who can believe it? Every generation since Homer\nhas been influenced by the art of Homer in translation and imitation,\nand no generations more so than those of Cowper and Morris and Lang in\nEngland and of Bryant and Palmer in America. The time may come when\nliterary taste and literary art will be as well studied and demonstrated\nin modern languages as in those of Latin and Greek; the time may come\nwhen modern classics may be as well adapted for education as the\nclassics of Greek and Rome which have been in the classroom for century\nupon century, but that time does not appear to be tomorrow or the day\nafter. If the art of self-expression is the best test of education,\nif the art of self-expression is the most practical thing in life and\nthe most permanent treasure that can be gained in school, then Greek\nliterature, the finest masterpiece of self-expression, should remain,\nand Greek literature should be taught, as for centuries it was taught,\nwith interpretation and translation furnished to the student, leaving\nthe time of training to be devoted not to special sciences proper to the\nuniversity, but to the general training in appreciation and expression,\nproper to academy and college.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD\n\n\nThis title is not an advertisement for a patent medicine; it is the\nbrief statement of an important historical fact. \u201cEvery schoolboy knows\u201d\nthat the revival of learning in Italy came from the vitalizing touch of\nGreek. Out of that renaissance, which the Jesuits took over and embodied\nin their system of teaching, grew modern scholarship in England through\nLinacre, Lilly, Colet and More, the forerunners of the Elizabethans. It\nwas the beginning of modern scholarship in Germany, through Erasmus, the\nfriend of these Englishmen, and through Melanchthon, whose name, like\nthat of Erasmus, marks the power of Greek: out of that renaissance sprang\nthe rejuvenated civilization of our day. Every schoolboy knows that Greek\nbrought the modern world to life, but is it as well known or remembered\nthat Greek has always been vivifying everything it touched?\n\nThe civilization of Rome in every part felt the influence of Greece. Rome\nconquered the world by force of arms, but itself was humanized and then\nhumanized the world through Greece. Every modern language today feels\nthe force of Isocrates and Demosthenes through Cicero, and of Alc\u00e6us\nand Sappho through Horace, and of Greek tragedy through Seneca and of\nHomer through Virgil. When later the barbarians of the north severed\nRome from Greece and the Roman Empire and its civilization lay dead, who\nbrought the world to life again? \u201cWhen the accurate knowledge of Latin\nwas declining in Gaul, even Greek was not unknown in Ireland.\u201d[2] It\nwas the Irish monks who freshened into flame the blackening embers of\nEuropean civilization and began its restoration. The revival was brought\nabout through the schools of Bobbio and St. Gall, mostly indeed as the\nscattered books of their libraries show, by means of Latin literature but\nalways with the help of Greek, as the same libraries testify. That was\nan earlier renaissance in Italy and Switzerland. And who was the leading\nfigure in the revival in Spain about the same time? It was the Greek\nscholars, Isidore of Seville and, a little earlier, Hosius of Cordova,\nand, a little later, John of Gerona. Then France began to grope out of\nbarbarism under the leadership of Charlemagne, resuming close relations\nwith Greece and importing the Irish monks, Clement and Dungal, and the\nEnglish monk, Alcuin. But it was under Charlemagne\u2019s successor, Charles\nthe Bald, that this new renaissance took on a fresh energy which did not\nspend itself before the decline of scholasticism. John Scotus, John\nthe Irishman, who styled himself in his translation of Dionysius from\nthe Greek by the title of Erin-born, for a quarter of a century kept\nFrance intellectually alive, and did it chiefly by his Greek. John, the\nErin-born, was the forerunner of scholastic philosophy, which caught\nthe vital force of Greek through another channel also. When Spain was\nconquered by barbarians and lost its civilization, where did its Arabian\nconquerors go for the seeds of the new life? The Arabs went to Greece,\ngave Aristotle in translation to Europe, and ushered in the golden age\nof medieval philosophy. Rightly does Traini (1345), on an altar-piece in\nPisa, picture St. Thomas Aquinas receiving the light of knowledge from\nChrist through the Greek New Testament and from Aristotle on his right\nand from Plato on his left. As Aquinas combined patristic and scholastic\ntheology, he merged in his works the twofold Greek influences of Plato\nand Aristotle, who were the human aids in each of these theologies.\n\nPass over several centuries to the time when the Italian renaissance\nhad grown senile and when scholarship left Spain, Italy and, to a large\nextent, France, and found its home in the north. These nations lost\ntouch with Greek and their scholarship died down, while life moved\nnorthward in the wake of Greek. When F. A. Wolf went to Halle about the\nbeginning of the nineteenth century, he represented the reaction against\nthe realism of that day, and \u201chis conflict with the school of useful\nknowledge brought into clear relief his ideal of a culture founded on\nGreek traditions.\u201d[3] Time has shown that Wolf\u2019s theories of Homeric\nauthorship are all wrong, but the stimulus he gave to scholarship lasted\nall through the nineteenth century, and to no other single influence more\nthan to Wolf may Germany ascribe its undoubted supremacy in classical\nlearning during the last century. His inspiration came from the Greek,\nand in his vitalizing of Germany he was associated with others who had\nfelt the same inspiration and were already beginning the influence that\nstill in a measure persists: Heyne in the classics, Lessing in criticism\nand Winckelmann in art.\n\nEngland\u2019s partial reawakening under Queen Anne saw Bentley, the Greek\nscholar, and his contemporary, Pope, translator of the _Iliad_ and\n_Odyssey_, and let scholars say what they will about Pope\u2019s translation,\nthey cannot impugn the fine criticism of his introductions or the\nlasting influence for good of his versions. Passing over the prime of\nEnglish eloquence, whose living roots, as Goodrich has shown, are in\nGreek literature, we come to the fresh memories of our own time and to\nthe Victorian era. Again it is Greek which vitalizes every branch of\nliterature, philosophy and art with new and unexpected truth and life.\nWithout Greek the Victorian revival would not have come about. In poetry\nrecall Keats, who awoke to life through the reflected glory of Homer;\nrecall Cowper, translator of Homer, and Byron, who died for Greece,\nand Moore, who translated Anacreon, and Landor and Arnold and Tennyson\nand Browning, all of whom took substance and form and fire from Greek\nsources. In essay-writing you have Brougham, eloquent advocate of Greek\noratory; De Quincey, who could, as his tutor said, at the age of thirteen\nharangue a Greek crowd; Macaulay, who, even in manhood, weeps over his\nHomer on the streets of London. In art there are Ruskin and Morris and\nPater, who are saturated with Greek thought. Think of statesmanship and\nyou will recall Lord Derby and Gladstone, political rivals, at one in\ntheir love of Homer; think of criticism, and Lang, Saintsbury, Blackie,\nButcher and Jebb will say that through Greek they have dominated modern\ncriticism; think of history, and the names of Rawlinson and Grote and\nHallam, Grecians, will come forward in your mind. History! Why, you will\nremember that all ancient history has recently been rewritten with the\nspade, and it was Schliemann under the spell of Homer who turned the\nfirst sod.\n\nGo over the great names in literature and art, in philosophy, theology\nand scripture, in the sciences of history, mathematics, law, government,\nand you will find Greek giving life and vigor. Even in the newer sciences\nfounded on observation and experience, which have come into being within\na century, whenever an observer gets beyond the elementary stage of\nresearch and classification, he will resort to Greece for principles\nand intellectual categories just as he borrows the language of Greece\nwith which to name his discoveries. History shows that every people and\nevery system of education and every house of learning, when it gives up\nGreek, is headed towards inferiority and decay, but when it turns with\nfresh endeavor toward Greek it reaches forth to life and to light. Nor\nis all this surprising or strained. Our civilization was born and grew\nfor centuries in Greece. Our Christianity was early translated into the\nlanguage of Greece and for centuries spoke and thought chiefly in that\ntongue. So then in our minds and souls our youth will ever have been\nGreek, and from Greek must ever come, as it has come in the past, the new\nblood that will flush with dynamic energy the anemic arteries of cosmos,\nthe world, and of the microcosm, man.\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nTRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM\n\n\nThe story of Phidias and his pupil, Alcamenes has often been told. They\ncompeted for a prize in sculpture. The statue of Alcamenes was about\nto be chosen because of its exquisite finish when Phidias objected\nto any decision until the statues should be put in the high position\nthey were designed to occupy. At once, the opinions of the judges were\nreversed, for the apparently rough lines of Phidias\u2019s creation stood out\nin sublime majesty, while the polish of Alcamenes\u2019s was lost when the\nstatues were raised aloft. The story illustrates a splendid rule of art\nwhich has often been forgotten in the study of Homer. The epics of Homer\nwere not made for the test-tube and the microscope. They were not made\neven for readers; they were composed for listeners. Put them on their\nproper pedestals and the minuti\u00e6 revealed by the grammarian\u2019s microscope\nwill be lost in the grand sweep of the story. You would as soon halt\nShakespeare\u2019s _Macbeth_ because of the anachronisms, or condemn Leonardo\nda Vinci\u2019s \u201cLast Supper\u201d because of modern masonry in the walls or\ncarpentry in the table, as apply the philological and archeological tests\nof the higher critics to Homer.\n\nApply the tests of art to Homer and judge him by those. Take the matter\nof the contradictions which critics have talked so much about. In many\ncases, especially where mythology was concerned, the material the poet\nhad to handle bristled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Long ago\nAristotle laid down the sensible rule for drama, and it is equally true\nfor epic poetry, that the poet is not responsible for the improbabilities\nin his materials. The sculptor may have flaws in his block of marble; the\npainter may have defects in his lead or oil, or pigments; and the epic\npoet found contradictions in the fairy stories of mankind which he wove\ninto the story he sang. That one consideration will sweep away instantly\nheaps of higher criticism.\n\nAgain, the artist is more taken up with the end than he is with\nthe means. In the fervor of his composition he wreaks himself upon\nexpression, he burns to embody his ideal and, engrossed in that, he is\nlikely to be less observant of the material of his art. The achieving of\nthe effect is more to him than mathematical accuracy in the use of the\ninstruments by which he achieves the effect. He makes his hero win his\nbattle; he may unhappily forget some of the tactics or even the geography\nof the battlefield. His object is not to teach the art of warfare or\nfurnish the topography of the country, but to tell an interesting story\nin an interesting way. The _Iliad_ has a wall that vexes many critics.\nIt was built in the tenth year of the war, which was no time to build a\nwall, and was put up simply because Achilles left the field. Besides,\naccording to these critics the wall appears and disappears strangely.\nSo the conclusion is: Homer did not build the wall, but some other poet\ncame along and projected his masonry into the epic. In answer it has been\nshown that the wall behaves very well, but, whether it does or not, it\nmatters little. The poet is not a surveyor or a street commissioner. He\nwished to make his story interesting, to make the character of Achilles\nprominent, to bring some agreeable variety into what might prove a\nmonotonous catalog of similar battles. Those are reasons enough for a\npoet to build a Chinese wall or reduce it to dust when he does not want\nit, or conveniently overlook it in the heat of an imaginary charge.\n\nA story-teller is more concerned to please his hearers than to guard\nagainst inconsistencies which they would never detect as listeners, and\nwhich even close readers did not detect for about thirty centuries. A\nwork of art is not to be judged as a mass of machinery is, nor is a poem\nto be scrutinized with dictionary and grammar as you would a schoolboy\u2019s\nexercise. This is the statue of Phidias over again. A stage scene will\ndiffer somewhat from a miniature, and an epic takes liberties with walls\nand rivers and even mountains and oceans, liberties which would not be\ntolerated in a quatrain. These principles are as obvious as daylight, but\napostles of the obvious are needed in abundance in the harvest fields of\nhigher criticism.\n\nWhat is needed for Homer is a study of his art in a broad but not shallow\nway, comprehensive and fundamental like Aristotle\u2019s brief discussion.\nFor the wonderfully analytical mind of Aristotle Homer\u2019s _Iliad_ and\n_Odyssey_ were models of unity, because he looked upon them as works of\nart, not scrap-heaps of philology and archeology. Put the poems of Homer\non the pedestals for which he made them, for listeners who had to be\nentertained and clamored for variety. \u201cIt is a trait of Homer,\u201d says a\nwriter, \u201cconstantly to shift the scene. The motive may be weak, but the\neye of the poet was not on the motive, but on the scene; so he not only\nshifts the scene but varies the description of the events.\u201d The poet\u2019s\neye, it might be added, is also like the orator\u2019s, fixed steadily on his\naudience, and the audience must be relieved even if masonry or geography\nsuffer.\n\nThe paramount principles of variety and growth of interest which govern\nevery good story hold sway in Homer. Take a staple action of the _Iliad_,\nthe battles. Homer\u2019s audience wanted fighting, yet jaded listeners\nand the artistic poet knew there must be in the fighting variety and\ngrowth of interest. Even in the matter of killing men, which seems to us\nunimportant but which would not be to an audience of fighters, Homer has\nshown a wonderful variety. A German professor has diagnosed the Homeric\nsurgery with all the thoroughness of his class. The conclusions may be\nfound in Seymour\u2019s _Life in the Homeric Age_. The number and variety of\nthe wounds, the weapons used, the percentages of fatalities, are all\ngiven in full detail. \u201cHardly could the poet have covered more completely\nthe possibilities of wounds for the human body if he had proceeded\nsystematically and mechanically.\u201d Some will have it that Homer was a\nsurgeon and an army doctor. Certainly the history of anatomy has its\nfirst chapter in the _Iliad_.\n\nBut to pass over the variety displayed in the wounds and other smaller\npoints, consider the actual fighting. For the maneuvers we may refer to\ntwo interesting chapters in Lang\u2019s _World of Homer_, where the variety\nand consistency of Homeric warfare are well described and defended\nagainst the dissectionists. The point, however, we are working toward\nis the variety shown in even the external circumstances of the warfare.\nA closer study than we can afford to give would reveal more variety,\nbut we may mention the plain, the wall, the river, the night as in the\ntenth book, the mist. These are the various circumstances which the poet\nintroduces into his battles, relieving the monotony and sustaining the\ninterest. There is no falling off. The different heroes, too, succeed one\nanother; the victory alternates from one side to the other; the battle\non earth has its echo among the gods. The interest rises. Patroclos\nenters the fight, and then his fallen body becomes the center of the\nstruggle, as the wall and the ships had been before. Something, too, is\nleft for Achilles. Ferocious as may have been the fighting before, it\nbecomes a veritable shambles when Achilles enters the fray. Never were\nsuch frightful wounds, never such rivers of blood as may be witnessed in\nBook XX \u201cwhen the black earth ran blood,\u201d \u201cwhen beneath the great-hearted\nAchilles his whole-hooved horses trampled corpses and shields together;\nand with blood all the axle-tree below was sprinkled and the rims that\nran around the car, for blood-drops from the horses\u2019 hooves splashed\nthem and blood-drops from the tires of the wheels. But the son of Peleus\npressed on to win his glory, flecking with gore his irresistible hands.\u201d\n\nThen follows the battle in the river, and finally the battle of the gods\nthemselves, and after the necessary relief and lull and reawakening of\ninterest comes the last battle of all and the climax of the poem in the\nconflict of Achilles and Hector.\n\nA study of the art of Homer along its great lines will give us the true\nprinciples upon which to judge him. Such a study will put him in the\nright perspective. The statue of Phidias will mount on high where its\nartist wished to have it enshrined. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were meant\nto cross the bronze threshold of some great palace, \u201cwhere there was\na gleam as it were of sun or moon through the high roofed hall of a\ngreat-hearted King. Brazen were the walls which ran this way and that\nfrom the threshold to the inmost chamber, and round then was a frieze of\nblue and within were seats arrayed against the wall this way and that.\u201d\nThen \u201cafter the men had put from them the desire of meat and drink,\u201d\nthey called upon the minstrel. \u201cFor minstrels from all men on earth get\ntheir meed of honor and worship; inasmuch as the muse teacheth them the\npaths of song and loveth the tribe of minstrels.\u201d \u201cAnd the minstrel being\nstirred by the god began and showed forth his minstrelsy and took up the\ntale where it tells how the Argives sailed away.\u201d That was the setting of\nthe Homeric Epic, and thus speaks one whose \u201cheart had melted at the song\nand whose tears wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids.\u201d \u201cVerily it is a good\nthing to list to a minstrel, like to the gods in voice. Nay, as for me, I\nsay there is no more gracious or perfect delight than when a whole people\nmakes merry, and the men sit orderly at feasts in the halls and listen\nto the singer and the tables by them are laden with bread and flesh, and\npours it into cups. This fashion seems to me the fairest thing in the\nworld.\u201d\n\nThere is the place that Homer chose for his matchless poems, and there\nthey should be judged. The hearts that melt with song are not searching\nfor digammas or \u00c6olic forms. They want the story, the long voyages and\nthe strange adventures, the swaying lines of battle and the prowess of\nheroes. They look for and recognize the different characters which must\nbe as varied and as clearly marked as in the life around them. They must\nnot be surfeited with too much of anything. Voyages and battles must vary\nand grow in intensity and be crossed with pictures of nature, brief but\nthrilling and immensely relieving,\u2014the lion, the wheat field, the tossing\nocean and the steady downfall of an unending snow storm. With these and\nthe plot entangling and disentangling, the listeners to Homeric song and\nstory will not look for that polished smoothness and frigid exactness,\nthe absence of which vexes the minds of modern Germany. Phidias\u2019 statue\noccupies its proper pedestal, and the true judges award to Phidias his\nwell-deserved prize.\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nTHE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE\n\n\nTheir elders are too busy these days devising tests for the children. Is\nit not time for the children to retort on their testers? \u201cHaving pried\nand prodded into us to see if we measure up to you, dear elders, let us\nnow see,\u201d the children may well say, \u201cwhether you measure up to us.\u201d A\ngreat philosopher wished to make man the measure of everything. We have\na truer, a divine philosophy, a philosophy all the more persuasive, and\nthat philosophy makes the child the measure and test of man\u2019s worth\nand the arbiter of his eternal destiny. \u201cWhosoever shall not receive\nthe kingdom of God, as a child, shall not enter it.\u201d The millstone\nmooring the scandalizer in the ooze of ocean\u2019s darkest depths and the\nangels who see the face of their little one\u2019s Father, these are the\nextreme sanctions which guarantee the accuracy of the child-test for the\nmeasurement of man.\n\nThe child-test has often been applied to man\u2019s morals. Onan and Sanger,\nSparta and China, Calvin\u2019s unchristian infant damnation and the\nChristless infant sanctification of Pelagius, Malthus with his \u201cDecrease\nand subtract\u201d and Moses with his \u201cIncrease and multiply,\u201d all, from\nindividuals to nations, are ample evidence that the child is set for the\nruin and resurrection of many in Israel. The child-test is surely potent\nin rating the world\u2019s moral morons and moral geniuses.\n\nCan the child-test be applied to man\u2019s art and literature? Recall the\nwords of Job, \u201cWho shut up the sea with doors, when I made a cloud the\ngarment thereof and wrapt it in a mist in swaddling bands?\u201d That view of\nthe sea in the swaddling bands of infancy is a proof of an imagination\nlooking at the universe with the eyes of the Creator. The child-test\nis a measure of the sublimity of Hebrew literature. The revelation of\nGenesis gave the literature of the Bible an outlook never reached by\nother literatures. As the promise of the Messiah kept a hallowing guard\nover the cradles of Israel, so the vision of the Creator blotted out from\nthe concepts of the Hebrew imagination the crude and monstrous nativities\nwhich make all pagan mythologies hybrid and miscegenetic.\n\nHomer has fewer than others have of these nightmares, but it is not in\nthem nor in the tinsel sublimity of his divine machinery that Homer has\ntouched a wider circle of readers than any of his epic brethren. Rather\nit is in his unaffected and transparent portrayal of the human nature\nwe all understand that Homer has set the heart of the world throbbing\nfaster. Not the celibate Virgil, nor the Puritanic Milton, dissolver\nof matrimony, nor yet Dante, idealizer of the maiden Beatrice, gave us\nchildhood and motherhood as Homer has done. Homer is no sentimentalist,\nbut he has wider sympathies with mother and child than any author on the\nrolls of literature. The mother cow, lowing over its first-born; the\nmother dog, growling in defense of its litter; the mother lion, all its\nbrow wrinkled with the greatest frown ever sketched; the mother bird,\nstarving and dying for its young, yes, even the mother wasp, solicitous\nfor its menaced brood (note that, S. P. C. A.!) these are evidences of\nHomer\u2019s tenderness. Achilles likens his friend Patroclus to a little\nmaid fondly catching at her mother\u2019s dress and getting in her way with\npersistent tearful pleading till the mother takes her up. In the _Iliad_,\nHelen\u2019s sorrow for her abandoned Hermione is a pleasing element in her\nrepentance. Odysseus proudly styles himself the father of Telemachus;\nthe mother of Odysseus dies for longing of him, and his father, Laertes,\nin the most exquisite of the many recognition scenes of the _Odyssey_,\npasses from view in that story, while his long-absent son tells him of\nthe fruit trees, \u201cwhich,\u201d says Odysseus, \u201cthou once gavest me for mine\nown, and I was begging of thee this and that, being but a child and\nfollowing thee through the garden.\u201d We have natural sketches of the\nbabyhood of his two heroes, Achilles and Odysseus.\n\nYet, more than all these pictures, stands out in the world\u2019s imagination\nHector\u2019s boy, whose future fate Andromache, after Hector\u2019s death,\ndetails with a mother\u2019s despairing vividness, whose childish terror at\nhis father\u2019s helmet, while Andromache smiles through her tears, has\nbrought home to unnumbered thousands the grim specter of war. That scene\nhas etched itself so deeply into the heart of mankind that it has almost\nruined Homer\u2019s poem, alienating universal sympathy from Achilles to\nHector.\n\nAfter Homer, the child _motif_ in literature is less in evidence.\nDrama, of its nature, has little place for the child except to put a\nkeener poignancy in tragedy. So Sophocles used the children of \u0152dipus.\nSo in his time did Shakespeare with the princes of _Richard III_, with\nMarcellus in _Coriolanus_, with Macduff\u2019s sprightly lad, and with others.\nTheocritus has a child to furnish an aside for the gossipy Syracusan\ndames. Anacreon introduces the counterfeit of childhood in the Cupids,\nwhose sophisticated conventionality checked invention in Elizabethan\nlyrics as it did in art from Pompeii to Rubens and later. Cupids are\nsymbols, children of the brain, not of the heart, and figure in song and\npainting as signs. They have a message for the mind; they do not touch\nthe feelings, while on the other hand, they free the artist from seeking\nin life the expressive significance that Homer gave the child.\n\nLiterature had to wait long for the naturalness of Homer to reappear.\nVirgil has a little of it in Ascanius, another Cupid, and it is\nsignificant that Virgil\u2019s one outstanding natural touch is found in\nthe famous Messianic eclogue: _Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere\nmatrem._ As for other Latins, whether it be bachelorship or the erotic\npreoccupation of the lyricists, or the supreme power of the father\nin Roman customs and law, Latin literature does not mirror for us\nprominently the child and mother nor reflect their natural attractiveness\nas found in Homer. Well, even Greece seems to have lost the art, and a\nnew inspiration was needed. That inspiration came with the Divine Child\nof Bethlehem.\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\nTHE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE\n\n\nThe influence of the Christ-Child on painting was tremendous and\nlasting. A history of Christian art could be written around the Madonna,\nand the subject has attracted the notice of many writers, indexed in\nart libraries. Alice Meynell has treated the subject attractively and\nwith her studious insight in the _Children of the Old Masters_. In the\nCatacombs, Christian art felt and portrayed the Divine Child and His\nMother. Byzantine ornamentation and mosaics gave the Child a rigid\nmajesty which veiled His winsomeness, but the master painters came\ncloser to childhood and brought Madonnas from the walls of crypts and of\ncathedrals to the devotional shrine and the chapel, making the Child less\narchitectural and more natural.\n\nIn literature the Christ-Child had equal influence until Puritanism tried\nto remove Christmas from the calendar. Drama originated in the liturgy\nof Easter and of Christmas, and although Holy Week was more elaborate\nand in substance more dramatic, Christmas to Twelfth Night, offering\nmore incentive to play and song and more holidays, exercised a larger\ninfluence on the stage. In lyric poetry at the beginning of the sixth\ncentury we have already the familiar, intimate and loving contact with\nthe Christ-Child, which finds its latest expression in Thompson and Tabb.\nSt. Ita, the Irish saint (480-570), is of their faith and tenderness in\nthe song of \u201cIsucan,\u201d \u201cLittle Jesus,\u201d given in Sigerson\u2019s _Bards of the\nGael and Gall_:\n\n    Jesukin\n    Lives my little cell within\n    ...\n    Jesu of the skies who art\n    Next my heart thro\u2019 every night.\n\nThe bambino shines through medieval song in Adam of St. Victor and in\nother writers of hymns. The Catholic writers of the Renaissance celebrate\nthe same theme in the revived meters of classicism. Sarbievius, the\nJesuit lyricist of Poland, is full of the Christ-Child, and in his\nwell-known lines \u201cTo the Violet\u201d he calls upon that \u201cdawn of spring\u201d to\ncrown his \u201cLittle Lad\u201d with its flowers in place of the gold and gems and\npurple which weighted the Infant. Sarbievius was doing what the painters\ndid, discarding the Byzantine ornament and convention.\n\nTest Puritanism with the child and it fails; test it with the\nChrist-Child, and you will get the ponderous \u201cHymn to the Nativity\u201d of\nMilton, an imperialistic ode which must have gladdened Cromwell. No\nfamiliarity there, no mirthfulness, no Jesukin with violets for crown\njewels, not even Byzantine immobility. Milton does not even doff the\nhelmet of war, as Hector did; no, he sees\n\n              from Juda\u2019s land\n    The dreaded Infant\u2019s hand;\n    The rays of Bethlehem blind his [Osiris\u2019] dusky eyes.\n    ... Our Babe to show His Godhead true\n    Can in His swaddling clothes control the damn\u00e8d crew.\n\nA Prince of Peace indeed with a mailed fist! Merry medieval England would\nnot recognize Jesukin in Miltonic panoply. Fortunately for art it had\nattained excellence before the Puritanic blight fell upon the world, but\nfor literature in the English language we must wait until the nineteenth\ncentury to see the child come to its own. Wordsworth attempted a revival\nof Plato\u2019s philosophy and found immortality, if not familiarity, in\nchildhood when he wrote his \u201cOde on the Intimations of Immortality.\u201d\nWordsworth took a more fruitful lesson from the Greeks when he went back\nto nature in other poems to study childhood. Even before him, Blake,\npainter and poet, influenced no doubt by the traditions of painting,\nbegan to see the heart in childhood. The interminable moralizing stories\nof Ann and Jane Taylor and of Elizabeth Turner, which date from this\ntime, are heavy with grown up condescension. E. V. Lucas would have done\nbetter to republish in his _Book of Verses for Children_ the graceful\nand humorous lessons of the Greek fables than perpetuate Taylor and\nTurner.\n\nAfter Wordsworth we see the child _motif_ gradually taking a larger place\nin the literature of England and America. Despite Francis Thompson\u2019s\nvigorous effort in his famous essay, he has not succeeded in making\nShelley pass the child-test. Shelley had no faith, no humility, no\nhumor, no real tenderness, and even granting him the dreaming power of\nchildhood, which in Thompson\u2019s essay is largely a reflection of Thompson,\nShelley had not the heard of a child to enter into the Kingdom. Walter\nScott\u2019s friendship for Marjorie Fleming shows that the great poet and\nnovelist had the necessary qualifications, but no performance comes\nnow to mind except a lullaby and the glorification of merry England at\nChristmas. Swinburne glimpses gleams of a baby\u2019s pink toes and lists to\nlow laughter of mouths of gold. The child is picturesque for him. Moore,\nByron, Browning, for different reasons, fail in the child-test. Tennyson\ntouched the surface, although in the \u201cPrincess\u201d he came close to the\nmystery. Patmore, uxorious and paternal, came closer and even touched the\ndepths of the child in \u201cToys.\u201d Longfellow and Whittier were of the same\nschool.\n\nIt was Stevenson, in a _Child\u2019s Garden of Verses_ who brought back into\npoetry, as Lewis Carroll did in prose and verse, the natural child\nthat Homer saw about him, and that painting discerned in the Babe of\nBethlehem. Humor, imagination, sympathy, these were the factors which\ndiscovered the heart of childhood for our modern world. Barry and Belloc\nin England, Eugene Field and Riley in America, Earls and \u201cTom\u201d Daly and\nmany others have furthered the discoveries. There is no hope for the\nchild in the \u201cNew Poetry\u201d which takes itself too seriously. Who would\nhold up the world if the \u201cnew poets\u201d started in to mind the baby?\n\nOne more element was needed, and sorely needed, to enter fully into\nthe mystery of the child. That element is faith. Evolution looked on\nthe child as an epitome of its theory; pedagogy plotted out, weighed\nand measured the child and drew up formidable statistics; eugenics\nfaced the child as though it were a dire microbe, source of poverty,\nignorance, bootlegging, war, pestilence and famines. The modern child\nhad and still has before it a dismal prospect. It is the camping ground\nof the specialist, the experimental laboratory of the theorist, and the\npeculiarly delectable victim of physical and moral vivisectionists. Faith\nmust save the child, faith in the Babe of Bethlehem. Tabb and Thompson\nhad that faith. They are the counterpart in literature of a St. Anthony\nor a St. Stanislaus in life and art. They play with the Child Jesus.\nIsucan has come into His own again. Tabb sings in \u201cOut of Bounds\u201d:\n\n    O comrades, let us one and all\n    Join in to get Him back his ball!\n\nAnd Francis Thompson with medieval intimacy asks in \u201cEx Ore Infantium\u201d:\n\n    And did Thy Mother at the night\n    Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right?\n    And didst Thou feel quite good in bed,\n    Kissed, and sweet, and Thy prayers said?\n\n\u201cLook for me in the nurseries of Heaven,\u201d said Thompson. He will surely\nbe at home there, and Tabb and many another will be with him.\n\n\n\n\nThe first seven chapters of this work were given in substance as lectures\nat the Champlain Assembly, Cliff Haven, N. Y.\n\nChapter XII, Educating the Emotions, is a summary of an address given to\nthe Public School Teachers of Rhode Island.\n\nOther chapters have appeared in _America_, _Catholic World_, _Educational\nReview of Washington_, _School Interests_, _Classical Weekly_,\n_Magnificat_ and are reproduced through the courtesy of the editors.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\n\n\nGREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF\n\nAN ETYMOLOGICAL PHANTASY[4]\n\n\nDuring a period of lethargy I was petrified at a phantom, bounding from\nmy lexicon, with this cataract of phrases: \u201cAre you Baptist, Methodist,\nPresbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, or Christian? Without me, you are\nanonymous. Do you stigmatize heresy and schism, hypocrisy and blasphemy.\nDo you blame schemers against the Mosaic decalog? Do you impose anathemas\nin apostates, idolaters and atheists or exorcise the devil and his demons\nwith their diabolical pomps? Are you zealous for proselytes, and to\nbaptize neophytes after catechism, and to canonize orthodox martyrs with\nhalos and emblems, scandalizing frenzied iconoclasts? Then all that is\ndone through me.\n\nThe ecclesiastical sphere is practically mine. I am the architect\nof churches, cathedrals and basilicas, from the asphalt base in the\ncrypts of the catacomb, up to the apse and the chimes in the dome. I am\narchitect of monasteries for monks and anchorites, and of asylums for\norphans and lepers and maniacs. Mine is the Hierarchy, from the Pope on\nhis dais with his tiara, to the mitered Bishop in his diocese, and to\nthe parish priest in his presbytery. Deacons and acolytes, clergy and\nlaity, Papal encyclicals, diocesan synods, parochial homilies, and all\ndogmatic theology, with its mysteries and myriad topics, are mine. The\nBible is mine from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy of the Pentateuch, to\nthe Paralipomenon and the Psalms, to patriarchs and prophets, to the\nEvangelists of Christ, to the Epistles and Apocalypse of His Apostles.\nEpiphany, Pentecost, the Parasceve are mine The tunes of the hymns, the\nquiring of anthems, the Gregorian tones of the litanies and antiphons are\nmelodious through me and I composed the canon of liturgy with its symbols.\n\nGo to your home with me. Bushels of anthracite for the chimney, and a\ndiet of fancied nectar! Chairs and plates and dishes; oysters; butter\nand treacle; perch or trout or sardines in olive oil; the aroma of capon\nor partridge or pheasant; celery and asparagus and peppers; cherries\nand dates and currants, citrons and melons, prunes and quinces and\nplums; pumpkins marmalade and pastry; chestnuts and pippins; masses of\npurple hyacinths, with lily and crocus, with geraniums and heliotropes,\nwith narcissus and peony, with asters and orchids and posies of roses.\nWhat zest! Isn\u2019t that a panorama of paradise to tantalize you? Be not\neconomical or dyspeptic. Masticate beneath your mustache. Let choruses\necho in the parlor with music of organ and guitar, or let there be\nanecdotes on the piazza around a bottle of cheering tonic.\n\nI telephone or telegraph for my \u201cauto,\u201d and my machine goes to my\ntheater or hippodrome. There is on my program the symphony orchestra\nwith harmonious melodies; or on my program are scenes melancholy with\ntragedy, or hilarious with pantomime and melodrama, with comic monolog or\ndramatic dialog, with cyclists, gymnasts and acrobats. After the drama or\nkinematic photography, with match and lamp you go to attic canopies, and\nto the climes of Morpheus. For all these you are to reimburse me with the\ntreasuries of the purse.\n\nGo with me to the ocean, opposing the stratagems and tactics of barbarous\npirates, to meander by gulf and isthmus and archipelago, nomads through\nall climates, charting geography with my nautical atlases, from the\nArctic to the Antarctic through the tropic zone, from Polynesia to its\nantipodes. Then for my astronomy! What a panorama through my telescope in\nthe crystal atmosphere! Above the horizon in the empyrean are my planets\nand comets and meteors and galaxies of asteroids.\n\nWithout me where is your \u201czoo\u201d with its panthers and leopards with\ndolphin and crocodile and hippopotamus, with lynxes and hyenas, with\nostrich and pelican, with buffalo and dromedary, with ichneumons and\nscorpions, with the gigantic elephant and its proboscis and the pygmy\nsquirrel! Oh, what of my chimerical and utopian \u201czoo,\u201d with the phenix\nand dragon and griffins and chameleons and gorgons and gnomes and\nbasilisks and sphinxes and hybrids!\n\nBut I am not archaic; the scope of my dynamic energy is practical and\nnot eccentric. Mine are politics, the diadems of monarchs, the scepters\nof tyrants, barbarous anarchy and despotic autocracy, the panics of\ndemagogue and the parliaments of autonomy and democracy. Chemistry and\nchemical analysis, physics with phenomena of electricity, acoustics, and\noptics, mechanics, botany, geology, entomology, and all the \u201cologies\u201d\nwith their technical glossaries; they are mine.\n\nSo are all the apothecaries and pharmacies with glycerine and licorice\nand creosote and the antidotes for quinsy; for catarrh, dropsy,\nneuralgia, and for every \u201c-itis\u201d and \u201c-osis\u201d; emetics for the stomach;\nthe cathartics, calomel and castor-oil; doses of paregoric for colic;\nplasters for imposthumes; arsenic for spasms of epilepsy, and tonics for\nanemic arteries; a peptonoic diet for dysentery; oxygen against bronchial\nphlegm; bromides for asthma; iodine for pleurisy and parasites; narcotics\nto calm hysteria; antipyrin for agonizing rheumatism; antitoxins for\ndiphtheria and for the deleterious microbes of cholera or typhoid, and\nbottles of panaceas.\n\nAnatomy is mine and the surgeon, diagnosing symptoms, charting septic\norgans on the diagrams, trepanning the cranium, cauterizing for\nhemorrhage, is mine; so are his sponges and syringes and silk and his\nstyptics, and his prophylactic hygiene, and his an\u00e6sthetics, chloroform\nand ether, and his antiseptics against bacteria and gangrene, and his\nautopsy and his skeletons.\n\nThe school is mine with its desks, its programs and schedule and the\nscholars, from their alphabet to their diploma, their arithmetic and\ngeometry, their gymnasiums and athletics, and the school diamond and\namphitheater. Pause before you ostracize me from my schools.\n\nWould you be an essayist, sketching graphic stories or typical\ncharacters; an historian, cataloging the treasures of archives,\nand chronicling epochs of catastrophe and calm; or a philosopher,\nsystematizing theories of Stoics, Hedonists, Peripatetics and\nScholastics; or a poet, composing idylls and madrigals, lyrics and odes\nwith strophes and the epics with episodes, you are mine. Without me you\nhave not talents or ideas or paper or ink. Mine are your grammar and\nsyntax, your syllables, your paragraphs with their commas and colons and\nparentheses, your lexicons and encyclopedias and card-catalogs, your\ntopics and themes for ecstatic rhapsodies or for austere logic, your\nfantastic paradoxes and your idiotic theories. \u2019Tis I who phrase for you\nyour axioms, caustic criticisms, laconic epigrams, all your irony and\nsardonic sarcasm. If your technique is idiomatic, your methods puzzling\nor crystal, your tropes are metaphors graphic, your fancies hectic or\nan\u00e6mic, you are mine. I am your enthusiastic stenographer, jotting down\nand synopsizing your ideas and typing them to be stereotyped in your\nauthentic tomes, whether anonymous or under a pseudonym.\n\nI apologize for my tautologies, for this monotonous labyrinth, for the\nphalanx of technicalities and for the etymological mosaic which strangles\nyour larynx with \u201cics\u201d and \u201cisms.\u201d Whether it is all abysmal bathos, or\nthe climax and acme of the practical, I am to blame for it.\n\nBut pause before you ostracize me from my schools; pause ere the nemesis\nof chaos and disaster is yours; but if you are to be characterized as\nadamant and without sympathy, let the poets echo a threnody about my\ncoffin; let there be a chorus of p\u00e6ans under the cypress and cedar, the\nlarch and osier, the myrtle and amaranth, about my cenotaph; let there be\nin my cemetery a mausoleum with a monolith, and on it my epitaph:\n\nThe Lexicons of Europe Are the Trophies of Greece.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT\n\n\nEsthetic pleasure or the enjoyment of the beautiful is generally\nadmitted to be disinterested. Possession and ownership do not enter\ninto the esthetic act. The ownership of Da Vinci\u2019s \u201cMona Lisa\u201d is not\nan object of indifference or of disinterested attention. Thieves scheme\nfor the ownership, thousands covet it, guards protect it. But the\nenjoyment of \u201cMona Lisa\u201d is not selfish and exclusive in its nature.\nEsthetic enjoyment makes abstraction of possession and of selfish good.\nIt follows therefore that esthetic enjoyment is a function of man\u2019s\nknowledge, not of man\u2019s desires and appetites. The only condition upon\nwhich the appetites, whether bodily or spiritual, can operate is that\nthey be energized by personal good. Volition may be free, but it cannot\nbe disinterested. You may enjoy another\u2019s picture; you cannot eat his\ndinner, nor can you be indifferent to what you know to be for your good.\n\nSome have asserted that esthetic enjoyment belongs to a special power\napart from both knowledge and appetite. There is however no need of\nsuch power. Certainly beauty must be known to be enjoyed, but is not\nthe knowledge itself adequate to produce the characteristic effect of\nbeauty? Is not Aquinas right in saying, \u201cPulchrum dicitur id cujus\nipsa apprehensio placet\u201d (that is called beautiful which simply by\nits perception pleases)? Good, being an end, cannot delight solely by\nbeing perceived; good must be attained. But for beauty, is not its very\nperception an enjoyment? The solution of this question will be found in\nthe nature of enjoyment.\n\nEmotions and feelings, pleasure and pain are easy to understand and\nfor that reason difficult to express in satisfactory formulas. By its\nvery nature every faculty of man operating normally has an accompanying\npleasure, while if operating abnormally it has pain. The faculty itself\nis therefore the subject of the feeling just as life is inherent in the\norganism. Indeed feeling is consciously localized life. The feeling of\nthe toe is felt by the toe; the joy of seeing is felt by the eye. No\ndistinct power is required to carry the feeling. So it is with esthetic\nemotions. The mind itself feels the delight of beauty. Esthetic enjoyment\nis a function of perception.\n\nDoes esthetic enjoyment belong to the senses and to the imagination?\nHere again there is difference of opinion. It is probable, however, that\nsensible perception has no accompanying esthetic pleasure. St. Augustine\nappealed to experience and declared that esthetic enjoyment of the\nbeauty, say, of the sun, was possible, even when the sight suffered pain.\nA better reason may be found in the behavior of animals which, though\nclothed in beauty, give us no certain evidence of esthetic appreciation\nand enjoyment.\n\nEsthetic enjoyment therefore belongs to intellectual cognition. Now the\nintellect has many operations. Which one of these carries the esthetic\npleasure or esthetic pain, which one is charged with the vital thrill\nthat creates and appreciates the world of art? The mind reasons, the mind\njudges, the mind apprehends. Esthetic enjoyment belongs to the last.\nJudgments and inferences may be objects of esthetic enjoyment; to reason,\nto judge may precede or follow or may be even necessary conditions,\nbut the esthetic act is most probably one of simple apprehension.\nThere would seem to be general agreement that contemplation is the\ncharacteristic attitude of the mind in the presence of beauty. Aquinas\nexcludes distinctly the idea of end from beauty. Beauty is a form which\nwe contemplate. Croce calls the esthetic perception intuition. Theodore\nWatts-Dunton seems to be describing the same act when he calls poetry\n\u201cthe renascence of wonder.\u201d The efforts of reasoning and of judging\nappear to be alien to the mental attitude in the presence of beauty.\n\nThe simple apprehension is concerned with what is termed ontological\ntruth, whereas reasoning and judging result in logical truth. Now, just\nas esthetic enjoyment abstracts from possession or good, so does it\nabstract from the affirmations belonging to the logical truth of judgment\nand of rational inference. There is esthetic enjoyment of fiction as\nwell as of fact. Aristotle long ago saw that although the substance of\nart must be the persons, actions and feelings of man, the pleasure found\nin the work of art does not arise from its correspondence with reality.\nThe correspondence with reality gives the satisfaction of logical truth,\nof scientific truth, of historical fact. The truth which is the object\nof esthetic pleasure in art is the truth of consistency, of realization\nof ideal, the truth of reasonable congruity, of plot in a wide sense of\nthe term. This vision, this dream of the artist, scholastic philosophers\ncall _causa exemplaris_ or ideal. If we are right in our understanding\nof Croce, his intuition is nothing else but the simple apprehension of\nthe ideal. Esthetic enjoyment comes also, as is clear, from the simple\napprehension of beauty in natural realities where there is no fiction of\nart.\n\nTo localize the esthetic enjoyment in this way does not determine the\nconstituent elements of beauty, but clear definitions help to exclude\nmany false notions of beauty. The ideal of the artist is embodied in his\nimagination before it is expressed in its proper medium. The art of man\nalways must have a medium which can be perceived by the senses. That is\nwhy a vigorous imagination, which stores up and dispenses to its owner\nquickly and abundantly of its riches, is so useful to the artist. Through\nhis imagination the artist is original and personal. The pure thought of\nscience is abstract and alike in all minds; the artistic vision formed\nfrom individual experience will be different in every one. Therefore no\ntwo artists expressing themselves in the concrete can be alike as no two\nscenes of nature are alike in beauty.\n\nAristotle put the pleasure of art in perception. Art for him is a\n_mimesis_, which does not mean an imitation, in the sense of mirroring or\ncopying. That was Plato\u2019s notion, which Aristotle combated. Art is, in\nAristotle, a power analogous to nature, working like nature in another\nand limited world, of sound, of color, of human thoughts. Art is fiction,\na dramatizing, a staging of life, to be judged, not by correspondence\nwith fact, but by its own plausible and convincing rationalization. No\none has done more for art than Aristotle in his insistence upon the\nnecessity of cause and effect, of a motivation, sufficient at least for\nthe artist\u2019s public. Intrinsic unity, the fruit of perfect motivation,\nwas another necessary requisite in Aristotle\u2019s analysis of art. It is\nonly when the varied elements of the artist\u2019s imaginative experience\nhave fused themselves into a unity by having a well-motivated beginning,\nmiddle and end that the mind feels the beauty of its vision.\n\nUniversality in art is another fruitful idea of Aristotle. While confined\nto his sensible medium, the artist must link up the separate elements\nof his vision more closely than in the realm of fact. He will by that\nvery reason be general and universal because his motivation must approve\nitself to all. A moving picture of the death of C\u00e6sar as it really\noccurred would be valuable history. It would, however, be individual.\nShakespeare\u2019s death of C\u00e6sar has a beginning, middle and end, and the\nspectators see in it the working out of a plot in which every word\nand act has been carefully planned and fitted into the design. The\nindividuating notes are left out, and the death of a C\u00e6sar has universal\nappeal.\n\nArtistic creation, motivation, unity, universality, these are great\nprinciples of art formulated by Aristotle and not likely ever to\nbe superseded. The cognitive idea of beauty and those principles of\nAristotle have been followed in the chapters of this book.\n\nFor further discussion of the nature of esthetic pleasure, see author\u2019s\n\u201cArt of Interesting,\u201d Chap. V, Interest from Emotions; Chap. XVII, Is\nEsthetic Emotion a Spinal Thrill?\n\n\n\n\nA FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE\n\n(_To exemplify Chapter IX_)\n\n\nTHE METHOD\n\nTHE dry bones in the cold print of this lesson are to be galvanized into\nlife by a teacher in constant touch with the class and enlisting the\nco\u00f6peration by questions, by having the passage read aloud, by writing\non the board, by interchanges of ideas, by lively disputes between\nindividuals. No mere lecture with passive listeners, no mere study period\nwith a passive overseer, but real teaching, which is a fine conversation,\ndirected upon select subjects and carried to a destined end under expert\nguidance.\n\nAll of the technical terms, apprehension, judgment, inference and the\nrest are to be omitted. The intelligent use of such terms belongs to\ncollege, although the operations and objects which the terms designate\nbelong to all grades. Through simple, untechnical questions the whole\ntruth may be understood by each, and every student may be made to go\nthrough operations which are of daily occurrence and which the student\nmust make habitual by repeated exercise to insure a mastery of the art of\nexpression. The teacher is an expert mental director, and, setting before\nthe class a good passage of literature, he will make them think again\nand put in order again and express again what the author has done; he\nwill make them conceive, arrange and express thoughts of their own with\nthe excellence which teacher and class have noted and appreciated in the\npassage. The teacher of literature will be no lecturer in history or in\nphilosophy or in mathematics, but will be like the teacher of music or\nlike the physical trainer, who makes his class go through exercises which\nhe himself has exemplified and which the class immediately practice to\nacquire bodily skill then and for the future.\n\nA passage of poetry is designedly taken in this lesson to show how poetry\ncan be made to contribute to the art of expression. Literature for some\nis history, for others philosophy. These center attention on the facts\nor ideas. Literature for others is a dreamy, mysterious thing, which you\nmust look at with awe, speak about with esoteric rhapsody and carefully\nlock up again in a glass case. A forward looking lesson in literature\nmust know what the passage means, but is usually not concerned with the\norigin and past history of the author\u2019s meaning. The forward-looking\nlesson will not pretend to solve all the mysteries of art and beauty but\nwill take out of the clouds and put clearly before the class some point\nin the art of expression, a point which will be practical and of everyday\nuse. Such a lesson will be as decidedly vocational as hammering a nail or\nrigging up a radio set or rushing around a gymnasium.\n\nThe purpose ever before the literature teacher\u2019s mind is appreciation,\nleading to mental action and through repeated action to the art of\nexpression.\n\nTHE LESSON\n\n    The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,\n      The lowing herd wind slowly o\u2019er the lea,\n    The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,\n      And leaves the world to darkness and to me.\n\n\nI. ANALYSIS OF THOUGHT\n\n1. _Understanding._\u2014The meaning of each word, the meaning of each line,\nthe meaning of the whole stanza. This should not be a mere passive\nunderstanding. Students should be made to re\u00ebxpress the ideas, not only\nby paraphrase in other words but especially by _imaginative realization_.\n\u201cFor instance,\u201d \u201cJust like what?\u201d are two phrases to be often on the\nteacher\u2019s lips. \u201cHave you a heard a curfew?\u201d \u201cHave you heard a knell\ntolling?\u201d \u201cDid you ever see in picture or in reality a lowing herd\nwinding o\u2019er the lea?\u201d A thought illustrated by the thinker\u2019s imagination\nis realized fully, is felt as well as grasped, and will persist.\n\n2. _Judgment._\u2014What is the logical subject and logical predicate of each\nline and of the whole stanza? That is, what is the author\u2019s chief topic\nand what does he say about it? This need not always be the grammatical\nsubject of the passage. The art of expression is not only apprehending by\nvivid understanding, but it is also judging by predication, by affirming\nor denying something of the subject. There is not a class of any grade\nwhich cannot profitably exercise itself in clear and concise judgements.\nThe successive judgements briefly put are: The bell tells the end of day:\nthe cows return to the barn: the ploughman comes home: I am left alone in\nthe darkness.\n\n3. _Reasoning._\u2014As as single sentence may be analyzed into a definite\nsubject and a definite predicate for a judgment, so two or more sentences\nmay be compared to grasp the relation between them. Poetry does not go\nthrough a process of reasoning. It states thoughts and presents pictures,\npermitting the mind to infer. The three pictures in the opening lines\nhave a common trait which the mind detects: all three pictures are signs\nof nightfall. The mind draws an inference which is inductive in nature,\nand the whole stanza may be briefly stated: The coming of night leaves me\nalone in darkness.\n\nThese stages in analyzing the thought are elaborated here. In practice\nthey may be expedited. Before being read, the judgment and inference\nmay be presented as problems for solution: What does the writer say in\neach line? What one idea is found in the first three lines? What will\nbe the title, the head-line, the summary of each line and of the whole\nstanza?[5]\n\n\nII. ANALYSIS OF FORM\n\nForm includes not only the words and sentences, their choice and their\narrangement, but also the texture and color of the thoughts and their\nmodification ending in their perfect expression, as contrasted with\nthe bare and limited statements already determined. In the study of\nliterature, words are not merely materials for philologizing, or merely\nsentences, free opportunities for grammatical anatomizing with all the\nbones properly numbered and labeled. Such analyses look chiefly backward\nand are not productive of writers. Language anatomy has its great\nutility, but literature, or the art of expression, must look to the\nflesh and blood of the thoughts, to the personality, to the imagination,\nto the concrete embodiment of the writer\u2019s art. The student will take\nup, therefore, the thought already analyzed and note and appreciate how\nhis author has clothed the ideas, the judgments, the reasoning. He will\nre\u00ebnact the creative process the author went through, and so here, with a\nview to expression, he will strive to rival the excellence of Gray, but\nwill do so with his own thoughts.\n\n_Grading._\u2014At this stage the teacher may point out incidentally many\nexcellences in the art of expression, but will drill and have practice\non the particular excellence in expression, proper to his class. The\ntextbook ordinarily determines the grade, but if there is no textbook or\nprescribed program, the teacher will determine his own order of matter.\n\n_Right Word._\u2014Let us suppose the teacher is teaching the art of using the\nright word (_Model English_, 3), the word which states the thing exactly\nin kind. He may center attention on the line:\n\n    The lowing herd wind slowly o\u2019er the lea.\n\nThe class will be drilled in the author\u2019s choice of the right word\nby considering other possible but less exact combinations, e.g.: A\nnumber of noisy cows went reluctantly along. After this drill, the\nclass will appreciate what the right word is and be ready for the\nexpression of their own ideas in right words. They are not to paraphrase\nGray\u2019s meaning. That has already been done, but they are to provide\nsubject-matter of their own and express it with a like excellence. Did\nthey continue to speak of cows, they could not better Gray, but if they\nspeak of bees or bloodhounds or cavalry or autumn leaves or rioters or\nanything else that has come under their experience in life or in reading,\nthey might approach the exactness of Gray in giving the right word for\nthe sound, for the collection, for the action, for the manner and for the\nplace.\n\n    _Bees_: the buzzing swarm of bees circled thickly about the\n    hive.\n\n    _Bloodhounds_: the baying pack of hounds followed the trail\n    eagerly.\n\n    _Cavalry_: the clattering squadron of cavalry galloped swiftly\n    along the road.\n\n    _Autumn_: the heaps of rustling leaves were swept into every\n    corner by autumn winds.\n\n    _Rioters_: the yelling mob of rioters rushed wildly towards the\n    jail.\n\n_Imagination._\u2014Suppose the teacher is giving a lesson in imagination\n(\u201cModel English,\u201d Chap. X). If one of the _General Methods_, say\n_Reflecting_ (No. 69), is to be taught, then the class must vividly\npicture in their imaginations Gray\u2019s stanza. With the help of books on\nthe desk and with a gesture or two the scene and all its characters may\nbe _dramatized_. All this suggestively rather than with exact mimicry,\nunless there is in question a passage that may be reproduced by the class\nin a miniature pageant or play. To test whether the class is actually\nimagining, have them quickly number, one after another, the things they\nsee and hear directly by the words and indirectly suggested by the words.\nOr test in another way. Let each draw an outline of the frame of a\npicture and show how they would illustrate any line or the whole stanza,\nputting numbers on the blank space to locate the details and explaining\nto the side what the numbers stand for.\n\nSuppose a _particular method, significant part for the whole_ (No.\n73) be the matter of the lesson, then the whole which is expressed by\nGray is \u201cevening,\u201d or \u201cparting day,\u201d pictured by three significant\ndetails\u2014curfew, cows and ploughman. Have the class take an opposite\nsituation\u2014not evening in a graveyard in preparation for gloomy thoughts,\nbut morning on the farm looking to a busy, joyous day. Or again, what\nsignificant details will suggest the hush of evening in a city or on\nthe sea; noon in a factory, closing of school in the afternoon, coming\nof winter in December, dawning of spring in April, etc. Interest may be\naccentuated if one student gives the details and others imagine what is\nthe whole suggested. For example: The cock crows a greeting to the rising\nsun; the team of horses is hitched to the mowing machine, and soon the\nclicking knives lay low the waving grass (farm); the crank is whirled\nabout with a swift revolution and jerking stop; the low purr of a hidden\nengine steals upon the ear and a cloud of dust swallows up the rattling\ncar (a Ford); a sprig of shamrock graces the lapel of the coat; green\nribbons flaunt gayly above ruddy cheeks, and down the street steps a band\njigging Garryowen (St. Patrick\u2019s Day). In the same way elements of force\nor interest, metrical charm or poetic thought and many other points could\nbe taught from this stanza, according to the grade of the class before\nthe teacher. Whatever the passage taken, once the grade has been settled,\nthe artistic drill should be carried through the stages of grasping the\nthought definitely, of appreciating it with discrimination, of repeating\nthe process of creation, of dramatizing the complete product, and finally\nof self-expression on the part of the student, striving to rival the\nauthor in the excellence he has studied.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] Cf. De Wulf: _L\u2019\u0152uvre d\u2019Art et la Beaut\u00e9_, p. 40.\n\n[2] Sandys: _History of Classical Scholarship_, I, 438.\n\n[3] Sandys, III, 54.\n\n[4] This \u201cmosaic of etymology\u201d which I offer is not, I think, simply an\ningenious _tour de force_. It has a significance and a practical value.\nIt may illustrate the composite nature of the English language; it may\namuse a curious reader; it may enliven a Greek class with the touch of\nactuality; it may disclose dim vistas into the distant past through the\nmedium of everyday language, exemplifying history through common things.\nAll the words of this phantasy are of Greek origin, except the article,\nthe pronouns, the prepositions and conjunctions, and a few other small\nwords: \u201cso, as, then, home, let, go, do, all\u201d and parts of the verb\n\u201cto be.\u201d Skeat\u2019s _Etymological Dictionary_ (Student\u2019s edition) is the\nauthority. The exclusively technical words of modern sciences which are\nalmost wholly Greek have not, for the most part, been mentioned. It is\nneedless to remark that the prescriptions of the phantom\u2019s pharmacy are\nnot authoritative.\n\nThis _jeu d\u2019esprit_ has attracted so much attention as to be reprinted\nby the American Classical Association and to be noticed by several\nmetropolitan editors. That attention is the motive for giving the article\npermanent position in a book with which a novel plea for Greek has a\ncertain, though remote, connection.\n\n[5] For analysis of thought, see _Model English_, bk. II, chap. X, by F.\nP. Donnelly, S. J. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, New York and Chicago.","title":"Art principles in literature","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":33874}