Part II

Suggested Causes Of The Anarchy In Modern Art

"... To them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that do believe in his name."--_John_ i. 12.

And now, what are the causes of this depression and this madness in Art? For Nietzsche was not alone in recognizing it. Many voices, some wholly trustworthy, have been raised in support of his view.

It could only have been the unsatisfactory conditions, even in his time, that made Hegel regard Art as practically dead; for, as Croce and Monsieur Bénard rightly observe, Hegel's _Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_ are Art's dirge.[1] Schopenhauer's extraordinary misunderstanding of Art, also, precisely like Plato's,[2] can be explained only by supposing that the examples of Art which he saw about him misled his otherwise penetrating judgment. Even Ruskin's vague and wholly confused utterances on the subject are evidence of his groping efforts to find his way in the disorder of his time. And, as to the voices of lesser men, their name is legion.

Two eminent Englishmen of the last century, however, were both clear and emphatic in their denunciation of the age in which they lived. I refer to Matthew Arnold and William Morris. The former made a most illuminating analysis of some of the influences which have conduced to bring about the regrettable state of modern life, while William Morris--less philosophical perhaps, and more direct, though totally wrong in the remedies he advocates--bewailed Art's unhappy plight as follows--

"I must in plain words say of the Decorative Arts, of all the arts, that it is not merely that we are inferior in them to all who have gone before us, but also that they are in a state of anarchy and disorganization, that makes a sweeping change necessary and certain."[3]

There can be no doubt, therefore, that what Nietzsche saw was a plain fact to very many thinking men besides; but, in tracing the conditions to precise and definite causes, Nietzsche by far excelled any of his contemporaries.

Before proceeding, however, to examine the more general causes that he suggests, I should like to pause here a moment, in order to dispose of one particular cause which, although of tremendous importance for us moderns, can scarcely be regarded as having been active for a very long period. I refer to the manner in which Nietzsche accounts for a good deal that is incompetent and futile, in the Art of the present day only, by pointing to a psychological misapprehension which is, alas, but all too common. I should not have broken my general narrative with the consideration of this particular cause, had it not been that I feel sure it will help laymen, and artists as well, to account for much that will still remain obscure, even after the more general causes have been discussed.

[1] Benedetto Croce, _Æsthetic_ (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p. 308, and Monsieur Bénard's critical survey of Hegel's _Æsthetik_ in _Cours d'Esthétique_, Vol. V. p. 493.

[2] On this point see Schelling, _Sämmtliche Werke_, Vol. V, "Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums," pp. 346-47.

[3] _The Decorative Arts_, an address delivered before the Trades Guild of Learning, p. 11.

1. Morbid Irritability.

Nietzsche recognized that this age is one in which Will is not merely diseased, but almost paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women, youths and girls, who are unable to resist a stimulus, however slight; who react with excessive speed in the presence of an irritant, and who bedeck this weakness and this irritability with all the finest gala dresses and disguises that they can lay their hands on.[4]

In Determinism he saw the philosophical abstract of this fact; in our novels and plays he saw its representation under the cloak of passion and emotion; in the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment, he saw it logged out in scientific garb, and in the modern artist's dependence upon an appeal to Nature for inspiration--i. e. for a spur to react upon, he recognized its unhealthiest manifestation.

"The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane," he says; "the strength required in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased."[5]

"Man unlearns the art of _doing_, and _all he does is to react_ to stimuli coming from his environment."[6]

Speaking of the modern artist, he refers to "the absurd irritability of his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences, and deprives him of all calm reflection,"[7] and, while describing Europeans in general, he lays stress upon their "spontaneous and changeable natures."[8]

In calling our attention to these things, Nietzsche certainly laid his finger on the root of a good deal for which the other more general causes which I shall adduce fail to account.

There can be no doubt that this irritability does exist, and that it causes large numbers of unrefined and undesirable men and women to enter the arts to-day, who are absolutely mistaken in their diagnosis of their condition. We are all only too ready to conceal our defects beneath euphemistic interpretations of them, and we most decidedly prefer, if we have the choice, to regard any morbid symptoms we may reveal, as the sign of strength rather than of weakness. There is some temptation, therefore, both for our friends and ourselves, to interpret our natures kindly and if possible flatteringly; and, if we suffer from a certain "sickly irritability and sensitiveness" in the presence of what we think beautiful, we prefer to ascribe this to an artistic temperament rather than to a debilitated will.

We are acquainted with the irascible nerve patient who pours his curses on the head of a noisy child; and in his case we are only too ready to suspect a morbid condition of the body. But when we ourselves, or our young friends, or our brothers, sister, or cousins, suddenly display, when still in their teens, a sort of gasping enthusiasm before a landscape, a peasant child, or a sunset; when they show an inability to bide their time, to pause, and to remain inactive in the presence of what they consider beautiful, we immediately conclude from their conduct, not that they have little command of themselves, but that they must of necessity have strong artistic natures.

Our novels are full of such people with weak wills, so are our plays; so, too, unfortunately, are our Art Schools.

We know the Art student who, the moment he sees what he would call "a glorious view," or a "dramatic sunset or sunrise," hurls his materials together helter-skelter and dashes off, ventre à terre, to the most convenient spot whence he can paint it.

We have seen him seize the thing he calls an impression, his teeth clenched the while, and his nostrils dilated. But how often does it occur to us that such a creature has got a bad temper? How often do we realize that he is irritable, self-indulgent, sick in fact?

Only in an age like our own could this ridiculous travesty of an artist pass for an artist. It is only in our age that his neurotic touchiness could possibly be mistaken for strength and vigour; and yet there are hundreds of his kind among the painters and sculptors of the day.

Many a student's call to Art, at present, is merely a reminder, on the part of Nature, that he should cultivate restraint and forbearance, and should go in for commerce; for there is a whole universe between such a man and the artist of value. Not that sensitiveness is absent in the real artist; but it is of a kind which has strength to wait, to reflect, to weigh, and, if necessary, to refrain from action altogether.

"Slow is the experience of all deep wells," says Zarathustra. "Long must they wait ere they know what hath sunk into their depths."[9]

But the people I have just described have only a skin, and any itch upon it they call Art.

No lasting good, no permanent value can come of these irascible people who will be avenged on all that they call beauty, "right away"; who will, so to speak, "pay beauty out," and who cannot contain themselves in its presence. They can but help to swell the ranks of the incompetent, and even if they are successful, as they sometimes are nowadays, all they do is to wreck the sacred calling in which they are but pathological usurpers.

Now, in turning to the more general causes, we find that in accounting for the prevailing anarchy in Europe and in countries like Europe, and particularly in England and in countries like England, Nietzsche pointed to the whole heritage of traditional thought which prevailed and still does prevail in the civilized parts of the Western world, and declared that it was in our most fundamental beliefs, in our most unquestioned dogmas, and in our most vaunted birthrights that this anarchy takes its source.

If Art had lost its prestige in our midst, and even its justification; and if individualism, incompetence, eccentricity, mediocrity and doubt were rife, we must seek the causes of all this neither in Diderot's somewhat disappointing essay on painting, nor in the slur that Rousseau had once cast upon the culture of man, nor in John Stuart Mill's arguments in favour of individualism, nor yet in Spencer's declaration that "the activities we call play are united with the æsthetic

## activities by the trait that neither subserves in any direct way the

processes conducive to life."[10]

All these things are merely symptomatic. Diderot, Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Spencer were only symptoms of still deeper influences which have been at work for centuries, and those influences are to be sought in the most vital values upon which our civilization is based.

[4] _G. E._, p. 145.

[5] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 36.

[6] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 63.

[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 258.

[8] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 339.

[9] _Z._, I, XII.

[10] _The Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 627.

2. Misleading Systems of Æsthetic.

It is perfectly true that from classic times onward the guidance of European thought, on matters of Art, has been almost entirely inadequate if not misleading. But for the subconscious motives of artists and their spectators there seems to have been very little comprehension of what Art actually means and aspires to, and even these subconscious motives have been well-nigh stifled, thanks to the false doctrines with which they have been persistently and systematically smothered. Perhaps, however, the very nature of the subject condemns it to false theoretical treatment; for it has almost always been at the mercy of men who were not themselves performers in the arts. Of the few artists who have written on Art, how many have given us an adequate expression of what they themselves must have felt and aspired to? Not one. Ghiberti, Vasari, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mengs, Hogarth and Reynolds--to mention the most famous, teach us scarcely anything at all concerning the essence of their life passion, and this is, as Nietzsche observes, perhaps "a necessary fault; for," he continues, "the artist who would begin to understand himself would therewith begin to mistake himself--he must not look backwards, he must not look at all; he must give.--It is an honour for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can criticize he is mediocre, he is modern."[11]

Still, the greater part of this faulty guidance may, in itself, be but another outcome of the erroneous and rooted beliefs which lie even deeper in the heart of life than Art itself, and for these beliefs we must seek deep down in the foundations of European thought for the last two or three hundred years. In fact, we must ask ourselves what our heritage from by-gone ages has been.

Since Art is the subject of our inquiry, and "Art is the only task of life,"[12] it seems moderately clear that everything that has tended to reduce the dignity of Art must, in the first place, have reduced the dignity of man. Is our heritage of thought of a kind that exalts man, or is it of a kind that debases him? What are, in fact, its chief characteristics?

[11] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 256.

[12] Ibid., p. 292.

3. Our Heritage.--A. Christianity.

We shall find that the one definite and unswerving tendency of the traditional thought of Europe has been, first, to establish on earth that equality between men which from the outset Christianity had promised them in Heaven; secondly, to assail the prestige of man by proving that other tenet of the Faith which maintains the general depravity of human nature; and thirdly, to insist upon truth in the Christian sense; that is, as an absolute thing which can be, and must be, made common to all.

At the root of all our science, all our philosophy, and all our literature, the three fundamental doctrines of Christianity: the equality of all souls, the insuperable depravity of human nature, and the insistence upon Truth, are the ruling influences.

By means of the first and third doctrines equality was established in the spirit, and by means of the second it was established in the flesh.[13]

By means of the first, each individual, great or small, was granted an importance[14] undreamt of theretofore,[15] while the lowest were raised to the highest power; by means of the second, in which the pride of mankind received a snub at once severe and merciless, the highest were reduced to the level of the low, while the low were by implication materially raised; and by means of the third, no truth or point of view which could not be made general could be considered as a truth or a point of view at all. Practically it amounted to this, that in one breath mankind was told, first,

"Thy Lord for thee the Cross endured To save thy soul from Death and Hell;"[16]

secondly, "Thou shalt have no other God before Me;" and thirdly,

"From Greenland's icy mountains To India's coral strand, ... every prospect pleases, And only man is vile."[17]

But in each case, as I have pointed out, it was the higher men who suffered. Because they alone had something to lose. The first notion --that of equality, threatened at once to make them doubt their own privileges and powers, to throw suspicion into the hearts of their followers, and to make all special, exceptional and isolated claims utterly void. The third--the insistence upon a truth which could be general and absolute, denied their right to establish their own truths in the hearts of men, and to rise above the most general truth which was reality; while in the second--the Semitic doctrine of general sin, which held that man was not only an imperfect, but also a fallen being, and that all his kind shared in this shame--there was not alone the ring of an absence of rank, but also of a universal depreciation of human nature which was ultimately to lead, by gradual stages, from a disbelief in man himself to a disbelief in nobles, in kings and finally in gods.[18]

At one stroke, not one or two human actions, but all human performances, inspirations and happy thoughts, had been stripped of their glory and condemned. Man could raise himself only by God's grace --that is to say, by a miracle, otherwise he was but a fallen angel, aimlessly beating the air with his broken wings.

These three blows levelled at the head of higher men were fatal to the artist; for it is precisely in the value of human inspirations, in the efficiency of human creativeness, and in the irresistible power of human will, that he, above all, must and does believe. It is his mission to demand obedience and to procure reverence; for, as we shall see, every artist worthy the name is at heart a despot.[19]

Fortunately, the Holy Catholic Church intervened, and by its rigorous discipline and its firm establishment upon a hierarchical principle, suppressed for a while the overweening temper of the Christian soul, and all claims of individual thought and judgment, while it also recognized an order of rank among men; but the three doctrines above described remained notwithstanding at the core of the Christian Faith, and awaited only a favourable opportunity to burst forth and blight all the good that the Church had done.

This favourable opportunity occurred in the person of Martin Luther. The Reformation, in addition to reinstating, with all their evil consequences, the three doctrines mentioned above, also produced a certain contempt for lofty things and an importunate individualism which has done nought but increase and spread from that day to this.

Individualism, on a large scale, of course, had been both tolerated and practised in Gothic architecture, and on this account the buildings of the Middle Ages might be said to breathe a more truly Christian spirit[20] than most of the sculpture and the painting of the same period, which are more hieratic.[21] But it was not until the Reformation began to spread that the most tiresome form of individualism, which we shall call Amateurism,[22] received, as it were, a Divine sanction; and there can be no doubt that it is against this element in modern life that not only Art, but all forces which aim at order, law and discipline, will eventually have to wage their most determined and most implacable warfare.

[13] The Judaic story of the fall of man is at bottom an essentially democratic one. This absence of rank in sin had no parallel in the aristocratic Pagan world. Likewise, in the manner of the fall, there is a total absence of noble qualities. "Curiosity, beguilement, seductibility and wantonness--in short, a whole series of pre-eminently feminine passions--were regarded as the origin of evil." See _B. T._, pp. 78, 79.

[14] Bury, _History of the Later Roman Empire_, Vol. I, p. 33.

[15] _A._, Aph. 43 and 64.

[16] _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, No. 435.

[17] _Ibid_., No. 522.

[18] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 312: "When it occurs to inferior men to doubt that higher men exist, then the danger is great," etc. See, in fact, the whole of Aph. 874.

[19] See _A._, Aph. 49: "The concept of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrine of 'grace,' of 'salvation,' and of 'forgiveness'--lies through and through, without a shred of psychological truth. Sin,... this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, was invented solely for the purpose of making all science, all culture, and every kind of elevation and nobility utterly impossible."

[20] Ruskin, _On the Nature of Gothic Architecture_ (p. 7), contrasting the classic and Gothic style, says: "... In the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery [_i.e._ the slavery imposed by the classic canon] is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul."

[21] In a good deal of the painting and sculpture of the pre-Renaissance period, too, signs were not lacking which showed that the Christian ideal of truth was beginning to work its effects by leading to a realism which I have classified in Lecture II as Police Art. Of course, a good deal of this realism may also be accounted for by the reasons which I suggest at the end of