Part I

of Lecture III; be this as it may, however, as it is difficult to decide the actual proportion of either of these influences, the weight of the Christian doctrine of Truth must not be altogether overlooked in such productions as Donatello's "Crucifixion" (Capella Bardi, S. Croce, Florence); Masolino's "Raising of Tabitha" (Carmine, Florence); Masaccio's Fresco (S. Maria del Carmine, Florence); Ucello's "Rout of S. Romano" (Uffizi); Andrea del Castagno's "Crucifixion" (in the Monastery of the Angeli, Florence); and the really beautiful statues of the Founders in the Cathedral of Naumburg.

[22] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 297: "The terrible consequences of 'freedom'--in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every problem. All order of rank is banished."

B. Protestantism.

For Protestantism was nothing more nor less than a general rebellion against authority.[23] By means of it the right of private judgment was installed once more, and to the individual was restored that importance which Christianity had acknowledged from the first, and which only the attitude of the Church had been able to modify. The layman, with his conscience acknowledged to be the supreme tribunal, was declared a free man, emancipated even from the law,[24] or, as Luther said, "free Lord of all, subject to none."[25]

Now, not only the immortal soul of every individual became important; but also every one of his proclivities, desires and aspirations. He was told that he could be his own priest if he chose,[26] and that Christ had obtained this prerogative for him. Megalomania, in fact, as Nietzsche declares, was made his duty.[27]

"Let men so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God."[28]

With these words St. Paul had addressed the Corinthians, and Luther did not fail to base his strongest arguments upon the text.[29]

"Even the Reformation," says Nietzsche, "was a movement for individual liberty; 'Every one his own priest' is really no more than a formula for _libertinage_.As a matter of fact, the words, 'Evangelical freedom' would have sufficed--and all instincts which had reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified."[30]

Was it at all likely that the formula, "Every one his own priest," was going to lead to trouble only in ecclesiastical matters? As a matter of fact we know that Luther himself extended the principle still further in his own lifetime. By his radical alterations in the church service Luther gave the laity a much more prominent place in Divine worship than they had ever had before; for, in addition to the fact that the liturgy as compiled by him was written almost entirely in the native tongue, the special attention he gave to the singing of hymns[31] allowed the people an opportunity of displaying their individual powers to such an extent that it has even been said that "they sang themselves into enthusiasm for the new faith."[31]

But these remarkable changes were only symbolic of the changes that followed elsewhere; for, once this spirit of individual liberty and judgment had invaded that department of life which theretofore had been held most sacred, what was there to prevent it from entering and defiling less sacred sanctuaries?

Bearing in mind the condition of the arts at the present day, and taking into account a fact which we all very well know; namely, that thousands upon thousands are now practising these arts who have absolutely no business to be associated with them in any way, we are almost inclined to forgive Protestantism and Puritanism their smashing of our images, and their material iconoclasm; so light does this damage appear, compared with the other indirect damage they have done to the spirit of Art, by establishing the fatal precedent of allowing everybody to touch and speak of everything--however sacred.

We may argue with Buckle that the English spirit is of a kind which is essentially Protestant in temper; but this only seems to make the matter worse.

When Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold point, the one to the evils of Liberalism, and the other to the evils of anarchy, we know to what they are referring. They are referring to the impossibility, nowadays, of awakening reverence for anything or for anybody.

"May not every man in England say what he likes?" Matthew Arnold exclaims. "But," he continues, "the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying.... Culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that."[32]

But what is fatal to culture is no less fatal to art, and thus we find Nietzsche saying--

"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it becometh mob."[33]

If in the Europe, and especially in the England of to-day, everybody has a right to every judgment and to every joy; if a certain slavish truthfulness to nature and reality, rawness and ruggedness, have well-nigh wrecked higher aspirations, and if everybody can press his paltry modicum of voice, of thought, of draughtsmanship, of passion and impudence to the fore, and thus spread his portion of mediocrity like dodder over the sacred field of Art; it is because the fundamental principles of the Christian faith are no longer latent or suppressed in our midst; but active and potent--if not almighty.

It might almost be said that they have reared a special instinct--the instinct of liberty and of taking liberties, without any particular aim or purpose; and, by so doing, have thrown all virtue, all merit, all ambition, not on the side of culture, but on the side of that "free personality"[34] and rude naturalness, or truth to man's original savagery, which it seems the triumph of every one, great or small, to produce.

No one any longer claims the kind of freedom that Pope Paul III claimed for his protégé Benvenuto Cellini:[35] this would be too dangerous, because, in a trice, it would be applied to all. Therefore the insignificant majority get more freedom than is good for them, and the noble minority are deprived of their birthright.

"Thus do I speak unto you in parable," cries Zarathustra, "ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of _equality_! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!

"But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light, therefore do I laugh in your faces my laughter of the height.

"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!

"Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for 'equality': your most secret tyrant longings disguise themselves in words of virtue!"[36]

And now recapitulating a moment, what have we found our heritage to consist of, in the realm of the religious spirit?

In the first place: a certain universal acknowledgment and claim of liberty, which has no special purpose or direction, and which is too fair to some and unfair to many. Secondly, a devotion to a truth that could be general, which perforce has reduced us to vulgar reality; thirdly, a prevailing depression in the value and dignity of man, resulting from the suspicion that has been cast upon all authority and all loftiness; and fourthly, a wanton desecrating and befingering of all sanctuaries by anybody and everybody, which is the inevitable outcome of that amateur priesthood introduced and sanctified by Martin Luther.

[23] Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, Vol. II, p. 140: "Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted, by all unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was neither more nor less than an open rebellion. Indeed, the mere mention of private judgment, on which it was avowedly based, is enough to substantiate this fact. To establish the right of private judgment was to appeal from the Church to individuals," etc. (See also p. 138 in the same volume.) _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, p. 166: "In the Edict of Worms, Luther had been branded as a revolutionary, then as a heretic, and the burden of the complaints preferred against him by the Catholic humanists was, that his methods of seeking a reformation would be fatal to all order, political or ecclesiastical. They painted him as the apostle of revolution, a second Catiline." And p. 174: "The most frequent and damaging charge levelled at Luther between 1520 and 1525 reproached him with being the apostle of revolution and anarchy, and predicted that his attacks on spiritual authority would develop into a campaign against civil order unless he were promptly suppressed."

[24] _A Treatise Touching the Libertie of a Christian_, by Martyne Luther (translated from the Latin by James Bell, 1579. Edited by W. Bengo' Collyer, 1817), p. 17: "So that it is manifest that to a Christian man faith sufficeth only for all, and that he needeth no works to be justified by. Now, if he need no works, then also he needs not the law: if he have no need of the law, surely he is then free from the law. So this also is true. The law is not made for the righteous man, and this is the same Christian libertie."

[25] _Ibid_., p. 3.

[26] _Ibid_., p. 31.

[27] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 211.

[28] 1 Cor. iv. 1.

[29] Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.

[30] _W. P._, Vol. I, p. 75.

[31] Emil Naumann, _History of Music_, Vol. II, p. 429: "With the Catholics, hymns in the mother tongue were only used at processions and on high festivals, and were then sung by the congregation only at Christmas, Easter, and certain other high feast days. With these exceptions, the Catholic congregational song consisted of short musical phrases chanted by the priests, to which the people either responded, or added their voices to the refrain sung by the choristers from the altar. The part assigned to the people then was but a very subordinate one." See also the Introduction to C. von Winterfeld's Sacred Songs of Luther (Leipzig, 1840).

[32] _The Beginnings of Art_, by Ernst Grosse, pp. 299, 300; and Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.

[33] Culture and Anarchy (Smith, Elder, 1909), pp. 11, 12.

[34] _Z._, I, VII.

[35] E. I., pp. 54, 55.

[36] _Sandro Botticelli_, by Emile Gebhart (1907), p. 9: "Paul III âme très haute, répond aux personnes qui lui dénoncent les vices de son spirituel spadassin: 'Les hommes uniques dans leur art, comme Cellini, ne doivent pas être soumis aux lois, et lui moins que tout autre.'"

C. Philosophical Influences.

Now, turning to our heritage in philosophy and science, do we find that it tends to resist, or to thwart in any way the principles of our religious heritage? Not in the slightest degree! At every point and at every stage it has confirmed and restated, with all the pomp of facts and statistics to support it, what the religious spirit had laid down for our acceptance. It is superficial and ridiculous to suppose, as Dr. Draper once supposed, that there has been a conflict between Religion and Science. I take it that he means the Christian Religion alone. Such a conflict has never taken place; what has taken place, however, is a conflict between Science and the Catholic Church. The Christian Religion and Science together, however, have never had any such antagonism, and least of all in England, where, from the time of Roger Bacon,[37] the first English Experimentalist, to the present day, nothing has been left undone, no stone has been left unturned, which might establish scientifically that which Christianity, as we have seen, wished to establish emotionally.

Universal liberty, without a purpose or a direction; the free and plebeian production of thoughts and theories divorced from all aim or ideal, after the style in which children are born in the slums; devotion to a truth that can be common to all; the depression of the value and dignity of man, and a certain lack of reverence for all things--these four aspirations of Christianity and Protestantism have been the aspirations of science, and at the present moment they are practically attained.

Unfortunately, it is in the nature of human beings to imitate success, and England's success as a colonizing and constitutional nation has undoubtedly been a potent force in spreading not only her commercial, but also her philosophical views among all ambitious and aspiring Western nations, who guilelessly took the evil with the good.

The empiricists, Francis Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, were among the first, by their teaching, to level a decisive blow at genuine thought, at the man who knows and who is the measure of all things;[38] and this they did by arriving at a conception of knowledge and thought that converted the latter into possessions which might be common to everybody--that is to say, by reducing all knowledge to that which can be made immediately the experience of all. This was the greatest blasphemy against the human spirit that has ever been committed. By means of it, every one, whatever he might be, could aspire to intellectuality and wisdom; for experience belongs to everybody, whereas a great spirit is the possession only of the fewest.

The Frenchmen, Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Maupertius, Condillac, Diderot, d'Alembert, La Mettrie and Baron Holbach, were quick to become infected, and in Germany, despite the essentially aristocratic influence of Leibnitz,[39] Kant was the first to follow suit.

Begun in this way, English philosophical speculation, as Dr. Max Schasler says, was forced to grow ever more and more materialistic[40] in character, and, if "Science has already come very generally to mean, not that which may be known, but only such knowledge as every animal with faculties a little above those of an ant or a beaver can be induced to admit," and if "incommunicable knowledge, or knowledge which can be communicated at present only to a portion--perhaps a small portion--of mankind, is already affirmed to be no knowledge at all,"[41] it is thanks to the efforts of the fathers of English thought.

Hence Nietzsche's cry, that "European ignobleness, the plebeian ism of modern ideas--is England's work and invention."[42]

But it is not alone in its vulgarization of the concept of knowledge, or in its materialistic tendency, that English influence has helped to reduce the dignity of man and to level his kind; the utilitarians from Bentham to John Stuart Mill and Sidgwick, by taking the greatest number as the norm, as the standard and measurement of all things, ably reflected the Christian principle, of the equality of souls, in their works, and, incidentally, by so doing, treated the greatest number exceedingly badly. For what is mediocre can neither be exalted nor charmed by values drawn from mediocrity, and is constantly in need of values drawn from super-mediocrity, for its joy, for its love of life, and for its reconciliation with drabby reality.[43]

[37] It is important here to note, first, that Roger Bacon was an Aristotelian through his intimate study of the Arabian treatises on the Greek philosopher, and, secondly, that although Greek speculation was governed more by insight than experience, Aristotle forms a striking exception to this rule.

[38] _G. E._, p. 210: "What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle--real power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."

[39] In reply to those who said, "Nothing exists in the intellect but what has before existed in the senses," Leibnitz replied: "Yes, nothing but the intellect."

[40] _Kritische Geschichte der Æsthetik_ (1872). Speaking of the English Æstheticians, he says (p. 285), "The fact that there is no decrease, but rather an increase of Materialism in their thought, no purification in their meditation from the coarseness of experience, but rather a gradual immersion in the same, may also be regarded as characteristic of the development of the English spirit in general."

[41] Coventry Patmore, _Principles in Art_, p. 209.

[42] _G. E._, p. 213.

[43] Even J. S. Mill saw the flaw in his own teaching in this respect, and acknowledged it openly. See his _Liberty_, chapter "The Elements of Well-Being," paragraph 13.

D. The Evolutionary Hypothesis.

Finally, in the latter half of the last century, these two tendencies at last reached their zenith, and culminated in a discovery which, by some, is considered as the proudest product of the English mind. This discovery, which was at once a gospel and a solution of all world riddles, and which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from Edinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypothesis as expounded by Darwin and Spencer.

A more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depressing conception of life and man cannot be conceived than this evolutionary hypothesis as it was presented to us by its two most famous exponents; and its immediate popularity and rapid success, alone, should have made it seem suspicious, even in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.

And yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost everybody, save those, only, whose interests it assailed.

How much more noble was the origin of the world as described even in Genesis, Disraeli was one of the first to see and to declare;[44] and yet, so strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means of its popular proof through so-called facts, could become the common possession of every tinker, tailor and soldier, that people preferred to think they had descended from monkeys, rather than doubt such an overwhelming array of data, and regard themselves still as fallen angels.

In its description of the prime motor of life as a struggle for existence; in its insistence upon adaptation to environment and mechanical adjustment to external influences;[45] in its deification of a blind and utterly inadequate force which was called Natural Selection; and above all in its unprincipled optimism, this new doctrine bore the indelible stamp of shallowness and vulgarity.

According to it, man was not only a superior monkey, but he was also a creature who sacrificed everything in order to live; he was not only a slave of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by his surroundings; he was not only a coward, but a cabbage; and, with it all, he was invoked to do nothing to assist the world process and his own improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous teachers, that "evil tended perpetually to disappear,"[46] and that "progress was therefore not an accident, but a necessity."[47]

Thus not only was man debased, but we could now fold our arms apathetically, and look on while he dashed headlong to his ruin.[48]

"No," said the evolutionists, "we do not believe in a moral order of things, although our doctrine does indeed seem to be a reflection of such an order; neither do we believe in God: but we certainly pin our faith to our little idol Evolution, and feel quite convinced that it is going to make us muddle through to perfection somehow--look at our proofs!"

And what are these proofs? On all sides they are falling to bits, and we are quickly coming to the conclusion that an assembly of facts can prove nothing--save the inability of a scientist to play the rôle of a creative poet.

Nietzsche was one of the first to see, that if Becoming were a reliable hypothesis, it must be supported by different principles from those of the Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in sketching out these different principles.[49]

"These English psychologists--what do they really mean?" Nietzsche demands. "We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it--that is to say, in slothfulness of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid,--what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction?"[50]

Not one of these advocates of mechanism, however, realized how profoundly he was degrading man, and how seriously he had therefore sullied all human achievement. In their scientific _réchauffé_ of the Christian concept of man's depravity, they all had the most hearty faith, and, as there was little in their over-populated and industrial country to contradict their conclusions, they did not refrain from passing these conclusions into law.

We can detect nothing in this greatest scientific achievement of the last century which seriously resists or opposes our heritage in the realm of the religious spirit. In their fundamentals, the two are one; And when we take them both to task, and try to discover their influence upon the world, we wonder not so much why Art is so bad, but why Art has survived at all.

For, though for the moment we may exclude the influence of earlier English thought upon general artistic achievement, at least the degraded condition of Art at the present day cannot be divorced in this manner from more recent English speculation, for even Mr. Bosanquet counts Darwin and Lyell among those who have ushered in the new renaissance of art in England![51]

"At present," says Nietzsche, "nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--for pathos of distance,... and even our politics are morbid from this want of courage!"[52]

To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and gods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised resentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence and reverence in general are the first needs of all?

We can only hope to find what we actually see, and that, as we all very well know and cannot deny, is a condition of anarchy, incompetence, purposelessness and chaos.

"Culture ... has a very important function to fulfil for mankind," said Matthew Arnold. "And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But, above all, in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because, here, that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree.... The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."[53]

We may trust that it is not in vain that men like Matthew Arnold and Nietzsche raised their voices against the spirit of the age. And we may hope that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up their cry.

In any case Nietzsche did not write in utter despair. His words do not fall like faded autumn leaves announcing the general death that is imminent. On the contrary, he saw himself approaching a new century, this century, and he drew more than half his ardour from the hope that we might now renounce this heritage of the past, the deleterious effects of which he spent his lifetime in exposing.

"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones!" he says. "From the future winds are coming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings for fine ears.

"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people, and from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise.

"Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already a new odour lieth around it, an odour which bringeth salvation--and a new hope."[54]

[44] See Froude's _The Earl of Beaconsfield_ (9th Edition), pp. 176, 177: "The discoveries of science are not, we are told, consistent with the teachings of the Church.... It is of great importance when this tattle about science is mentioned, that we should attach to the phrase precise ideas. The function of science is the interpretation of nature, and the interpretation of the highest nature is the highest science. What is the highest nature? Man is the highest nature. But I must say that when I compare the interpretation of the highest nature by the most advanced, the most fashionable school of modern science with some other teaching with which we are familiar I am not prepared to admit that the lecture room is more scientific than the Church. What is the question now placed before society, with a glib assurance the most astounding? The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the conscience of humanity."

[45] See p. 37.

[46] Spencer, _Social Statics_ (Ed. 1892), p. 27.

[47] _Ibid_., p. 31.

[48] Two Christian principles are concealed here: 1. The depravity of man. 2. Faith in a moral order of things.

[49] I have discussed this question, with as much detail as the space would allow, in _Nietzsche, his Life and Works_, Chap. IV. (Constable's Philosophies Ancient and Modern). See also my letter, "Nietzsche and Science," in the _Spectator_ of 8th January, 1910.

[50] _G. M._, p. 17.

[51] _A History of Æsthetic_, p. 445.

[52] _A._, Aph. 43.

[53] _Culture and Anarchy_ (Smith, Elder, 1909), p. 10.

[54] _Z._, I, XXII.

Lecture II[1]

Government in Art. Nietzsche's Definition of Art

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