Part 10

, Aph. 24, and _G. E._, p. 145.

4. The Artist's and the Layman's View of Life.

If the artist's view of Life can no longer affect Life, if his ordering, simplifying and adjusting mind can no longer make Life simpler, more orderly and better adjusted, then all his power has vanished, and he has ceased from counting in our midst, save, perhaps, as a _decorator_ of our homes--that is to say, as an artisan; or as an _entertainer_--that is to say, as a mere illustrator of our literary men's work.

What is so important in the artist is, that disorder and confusion are the loadstones that attract him.[33] Though, in stating this, I should ask you to remember that he sees disorder and confusion where, very often, the ordinary person imagines everything to be admirably arranged. Still, the fact remains that he finds his greatest proof of power only where his ordering and simplifying mind meets with something whereon it may stamp its two strongest features: Order and Simplicity; and where he is strong, relative disorder is his element, and the arrangement of this disorder is his product.[34] Stimulated by disorder, which he despises, he is driven to his work; spurred by the sight of anarchy, his inspiration is government; fertilized by rudeness and ruggedness, his will to power gives birth to culture and refinement. He gives of himself--his business is to make things reflect him.

Thus, even his will to eternalize, and to stamp the nature of stability on Becoming, must not be confounded with that other desire for Being which is a desire for rest and repose and opiates,[35] and which has found its strongest expression in the idea of the Christian Heaven. It is, rather, a feeling of gratitude towards Life, a desire to show thankfulness to Life, which makes him desire to rescue one beautiful body from the river of Becoming, and fix its image for ever in this world,[36] whereas the other is based upon a loathing of Life and a weariness of it.

Defining _ugliness_ provisionally as disorder, it may have a great attraction for the artist, it may even be the artist's sole attraction, and in converting it--the thing he despises most--into _beauty_, which we shall define provisionally as order, he reaches the zenith of his power.[37]

"Where is beauty?" Zarathustra asks. "Where I must will with my whole will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.[38]

"For to create desireth the loving one, because he despiseth."[39]

It follows from this, therefore, that the realistic artist--the purveyor of Police Art--who goes direct to beauty or ugliness and, after having worked upon either, leaves it just as it was before,[40] shows no proof of power at all, and ranks with the bushmen of Australia and the troglodytes of La Dordogne, as very much below the hierophantic artist who transforms and transfigures. All realists, therefore, from Apelles[41] in the fourth century B.C. to the modern impressionists, portrait painters and landscapists, must step down. Like the scientists, they merely ascertain facts, and, in so doing, leave things precisely as they are.[42] Photography is rapidly outstripping them, and will outstrip them altogether once it has mastered the problem of colour. Photography could never have vied with the artist of Egypt, or even of China and Japan; because in the arts of each of these nations there is an element of human power over Nature or reality, which no mechanical process can emulate.

Now, what is important in the ideal and purely hypothetical layman is, that he has a horror of disorder, of confusion, and of chaos, and flees from it whenever possible. He finds no solace anywhere, except where the artist has been and left things transformed and richer for him. Bewildered by reality, he extends his hands for that which the artist has made of reality. He is a receiver. He reaches his zenith in apprehending.[43] His attitude is that of a woman, as compared with the attitude of the artist which is that of the man.

"Logical and geometrical simplification is the result of an increase of power: conversely, the mere aspect of such simplification increases the sense of power in the beholder."[44] To see what is ugliness to him, represented as what is beauty to him, also impresses the spectator with the feeling of power; of an obstacle overcome, and thereby stimulates his activities. Moreover, the spectator may feel a certain gratitude to Life and Mankind. It often happens, even in our days, that another world is pictured as by no means a better world,[45] and the healthy and optimistic layman may feel a certain thankfulness to Life and to Humanity. It is then once more that he turns to the artist who has felt the same in a greater degree, who can give him this thing--be it a corner of Life or of Humanity--who can snatch it from the eternal flux and torrent of all things into decay or into death, and who can carve or paint it in a form unchanging for him, in spite of a world of Becoming, of Evolution, and of ebb and flow. Just as the musician cries Time! Time! Time! to the cacophonous medley of natural sounds that pour into his ears from all sides, and assembles them rhythmically for our ears hostile to disorder; so the graphic artist cries Time! Time! Time! to the incessant and kaleidoscopic procession of things from birth to death, and places in the layman's arms the eternalized image of that portion of Life for which he happens to feel great gratitude.

[33] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 368.

[34] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 241.

[35] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 280.

[36] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 281.

[37] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 244.

[38] _Z._, II, XXXVII.

[39] _Z._, I. XVIII.

[40]_ T. I._,