HARMONISM AND CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION WALSTON THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES HARMONISM AND CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL i. ARISTODEMOCRACY. From the Great War back to Moses, Christ, and Plato. — (Murray, 1916 and 1920.) 2. TRUTH. — An Essay in Moral Reconstruction. — (Cambridge University Press, 1919.) 3. THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING BROTHERHOOD AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.— (Cambridge University Press, 1919.) 4. PATRIOTISM: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL.— 1917. 5. WHAT GERMANY IS FIGHTING FOR.— 1917. 6. THE NEXT WAR.— Wilsonism and Anti-Wilsonism.— 1918. ?. THE POLITICAL CONFESSION OF A PRACTICAL IDEALIST— A Pamphlet. (Murray, 1911.) 8. THE EXPANSION OF WESTERN IDEALS AND THE WORLD'S PEACE.— 1899. 9. THE BALANCE OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT— 1878. 10. THE SURFACE OF THINGS: THREE CONVERSA- TIONAL STORIES.— 1895. 1 1 . WHAT MAY WE READ.— No. IV of the Ethics of the Surface Series. 1897. (John Murray, 1917.) 12. THE JEWISH QUESTION AND THE MISSION OF THE JEWS.— 1894. 13. EUGENICS, CIVICS, AND ETHICS.— A Lecture. (Cam- bridge University Press, 1920.) WORKS ON ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY ESSAYS ON THE ART OF PHEIDIAS (Cambridge University Press, 1885); THE WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN (Harper & Brothers, 1893) ; THE STUDY OF ART IN UNIVERSITIES (Harper & Brothers, 1896); THE ARGIVE HER^EUM (with others) ( Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902-1905) ; ART IN THE NINE- TEENTH CENTURY (Cambridge University Press, 1903) ; HER- CULANEUM : PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE (with Leonard Shoobridge) (Macmillan & Co., 1908); GREEK SCULPTURE AND MODERN ART (Cambridge University Press, 1913). HARMONISM AND CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION BY SIR CHARLES WALSTON (Waldstein) M.A., LITT.D. (CANTAB. AND COLUMBIA UNIV., NEW YORK), PH.D. (hEIDELBERC), HON. LITT.D. (TRIN. COLL., DUBLIN) FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; SOMETIME READER IN CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, DIRECTOR OF THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART, CAMBRIDGE, AND DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES, ATHENS Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. M i lton : LA llegro. Regnum Optimi. "Progress must be rationally imaginative; neither fatalistic nor fantastic." LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1922 All Rights Reserved / c TO F E. W. \\ . aj 5_-^ PREFACE It has been my ambition and my hope, in the writing of this book, that it should prove to be intelligible to all those general readers who, without being special- ists in philosophy, are interested in the problems of life and thought, and are conversant with our ordinary English language. I have therefore avoided, as far as possible, all technicalities and technical terms. As I have maintained, especially in the Second Part of this book when dealing with Conscious Evolution, I deem it essential to the advance of human know- ledge that each period should clearly establish in its own contemporary language, most fully expressive of the mentality of each age, the highest state of knowledge to which it has attained ; and that it therefore is essential that such thought be not trans- ferred to, or translated into, the terminology of previous ages possessing their own mentality and differing from that of later ages. I have therefore also avoided putting my own thoughts into the language of earlier or contemporary thinkers, who have viewed the whole problem or parts of it from different points of view, in different facets of the same body of truth. The main lines of this inquiry were formulated in my mind over forty-six years ago, when, after con- tinuing my academic studies in America, at Heidelberg for three years under Kuno Fischer and Professor Wundt (following the latter to his psycho-physical laboratory at Leipzig in 1876), I was engaged in writing a dissertation on the relation between Kant and Hume. After settling in London in the autumn of that year, Vll Vlll PREFACE while occupied with my dissertation, I was led further afield into an inquiry into the history of Scepticism. It then became clear to me that the only escape from Scepticism lay in the direction of aesthetics and its fundamental principles in life and mind, and I decided to enlarge and deepen my studies on the historical side of aesthetics in the history of Art, more especially Greek Art, which had formed a part of my studies and my examination for the Doctorate at Heidelberg. By a singular coincidence I was invited to give a course of lectures on" The History of Greek Sculpture " by the Greek Department of King's College, London, in the Elgin Room at the British Museum in June 1878, and after further archaeological studies in Italy and Greece in that year and the next I was appointed Lecturer and then Reader in Classical Archaeology at Cambridge in 1880. From that time onward, Greek Art and Archaeology, leading on to the general History and Theory of Art, became the centre of my academic work and duties. But during all these years, partly in my writings on various subjects, as well as in my lectures in the University and elsewhere, some of the leading ideas of the Philosophy of Harmonism have been touched upon. It was not until 1915, during the Great War, that, in dealing with ethical and political problems in my book Aristodemocracy, etc., 1 I anticipated the publication of some aspects of the main theory. In the Preface of the second American edition of that book 2 occurs the following passage : " The sketch for the reconstruction of civilised morals here given is only part of a general philosophical system — the ethical and political part — of which again it only forms the prolegomena. The final and complete 1 Aristodemocracy — from the Great War back to Moses, Christ, and Plato (John Murray, 1916-20). 3 p. xi. PREFACE ix elaboration of the system, to which I gave the title ' Harmonism,' I have reserved for the closing years of my life. For, though the essential plan of this work was already drawn up and established as early as 1876, the professional conditions of my life since those early days necessarily diverted me from this task." Realising the same urgency for the early publica- tion of the whole system in its unity and continuity in the immediate present, I gave a course of lectures on " Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Harmonism " in the University of Cambridge during the autumn and winter of 1920-1. A considerable part of the subject was thus given in a different form in those lectures. But there exists, finally, a still more personal motive for the publication of this book at the present moment, and in its present form. During all these years, while constantly made aware, by many among those with whom I came into intimate contact, that they were struggling under the serious disadvantage of not possessing a complete and convincing theory of life and mind which could ultimately direct them in thought and action, and give to them the inestim- able blessing of peace of mind and freedom from distressing doubt, on the other hand I found in myself that this philosophy of Harmonism freed me from such disconcerting and depressing doubt, and enabled me to think and act with peace and directness, and with the underlying confidence of complete reconciliation and harmony between the immediate and ultimate aims of life and thought. The Real and the Ideal, the Practical and the Theoretical, the Useful and the Good, Truth and Beauty, self-interests and the claims of others, our actual life and the life of religious aspiration, were not severed in irrecon- cilable conflict, but were harmonised into peaceful unity, full of vitality and hope. Moreover, as the x PREFACE conviction which moved me at the beginning of the war to anticipate the publication of a special portion of the system, so urgently required during that tragic period, was the need of a reconstitution of ethics and religion, the inadequacy and insincerity of which in those days and for many years before were ultimately accountable for the advent of the great world-catas- trophe ; so now I feel convinced that the same need for a reconstruction of our fundamental views of life and mind is similarly, and even more urgently, pressing with regard to every aspect of individual and collec- tive life. This applies not only to our ethical and religious outlook, but to the problem of reconciling Capital and Labour, the modification of democracy, if it is to survive, of the State and international relationships, and many other problems of modern life and thought. What is needed is a new and convincing outlook upon the whole of modern life and thought, and a reform of our ethics, leading to the reform of religion. We must bring before the eyes of modern man the true, clear, and adequate ideal of the perfect man and the perfect life dependent upon our best thought and our most complete realisation of what is best in the actual life and in the actual mind of man, as it has been evolved through ages, and out of the full realisation of which we can look forward to the future and fashion it in harmony with our conception of the Best. The first, or general, part of the book deals with the origin and dominance of the aesthetic, or har- monistic, instinct and principle in the ordinary life of man, and traces its origin back to the earliest organic life in the animal and even in the plant world. The second or special part applies Harmonism to the higher systematic knowledge of man in the various departments of Science, Art, Pragmatics, Ethics, PREFACE xi Politics, and Religion, and develops the principle of Conscious Evolution in the life of reasoning beings, individual and collective. I have added in an appendix a reprint of a lecture on " The Future of the League of Nations," given at the University of Cambridge in August 1920, and an article on "America and the League of Nations " from the Fortnightly Review of March 1921, as well as two French articles, the one on " Respublica Littera- torum," in Les Lettres of April 1920, the other on " La Societe des Nations contre l'Anarchie Nationale et Internationale," with a short introduction by the late M. £mile Boutroux, in La Renaissance Politique, April 24, 1920, because, having published my previous writings on that subject from 1899 onwards in a recent book on The English-speaking Brotherhood and the League of Nations, 1 I desire to supplement what I have there said by these recent contributions to that all-important subject. I must again — as on several previous occasions — express my sincere thanks to my friend and colleague, Prof. J. B. Bury, for revising the manuscript and making numerous important corrections and valuable suggestions. As a leading historian, thinker, and scholar, as well as a sympathetic friend of long stand- ing, I have attached the greatest weight to his opinion. My wife has again rendered me valuable help, and again my friend Sir George Leveson Gower has revised the proofs and has offered pertinent criticism. Finally, I must thank Mr. Harold B. Hart and Miss Elsie Day for much clerical assistance, under the exceptionally difficult conditions of the writing and printing of this book. The Author. Newton Hall, Newton, Cambridge. April 1922. 1 Cambridge University Press, 19 19. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE PAGB vii PART I GENERAL CHAPTER I. THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY . 3 II. SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY. THE PRIN- CIPLE OF HARMONY . . - .12 III. CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 2$ IV. THE HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE IN EARLIEST FORMS OF ORGANIC AND SENTIENT LIFE 30 V. HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE AND THE DOMINANCE OF THE AESTHETIC ATTITUDE OF MIND ..... 52 VI. THE ACTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE AESTHETIC OR HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE . . 62 VII. THE DOMINANCE OF THE ESTHETIC ATTI- TUDE OF MIND IN CULTURED LIFE . 7$ PART II SPECIAL INTRODUCTION . . . . .87 I. EPISTEMOLOGY . . . .96 (a) MATHEMATICS AND LOGIC . . IOI xiii xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE epistemology — continued (b) CONVICTION .... IO3 (c) SCIENCE ..... 108 (d) CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION THROUGH SCIENCE ..... IO9 (e) SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC STUDIES . I 1 3 (/) CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES . 114 (g) RESEARCH, INVENTION AND DIS- COVERY OF NEW TRUTHS . Il6 (h) EXPOSITION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH Up II. ESTHETICS, ART INTRODUCTION ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES A. FORM — PURE ART SELECTIVE ARTS THE WORK OF ART . CREATIVE ART MUSIC ..... THE ART OF ORNAMENTATION OR DECORATION B. ARCHITECTURE .... C. THE ARTS OF " MEANING " (SCULPTURE, PAINTING, THE LITERARY AND DRA- MATIC ARTS, MUSIC, THE ART OF LIVING) ..... GENERAL PRINCIPLES 123 124 126 130 *37 142 142 I46 157 (a) SCULPTURE (b) PAINTING . l6l I6l 179 193 CONTENTS xv page • 218 . 221 • 228 • 233 (fiction) . 237 • 247 meaning) 249 . 256 • 26l , 262 , 264 CHAPTKB (c) THE LITERARY ARTS LYRICAL POETRY THE DRAMA . THE PROSE DRAMA PROSE LITERATURE THE SHORT STORY (d) MUSIC (AS AN ART OF THE OPERA . THE MELODRAMA D. BEAUTY IN NATURE . E. THE ART OF LIVING . III. PRAGMATICS IV. ETHICS .... DUTY TO THE FAMILY DUTY TO THE IMMEDIATE COMMUNITY IN WHICH WE LIVE, AND SOCIAL DUTIES DUTIES TO THE STATE DUTY TO HUMANITY THE DUTIES WHICH ARE NOT SOCIAL AND THE IMPERSONAL DUTIES DUTY TO OUR SELF DUTY TO THINGS AND ACTS DUTY TO GOD CONCLUSION. ETHOGRAPHY V. POLITICS .... FRATERNITY . LIBERTY .... EQUALITY INTERNATIONAL AND SUPERNATIONAL RELATIONS . 271 275 289 291 303 304 306 309 313 316 323 331 336 337 339 365 xvi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VI. RELIGION ...... 373 VII. EDUCATIONAL EPILOGUE . . 381 APPENDIX I. THE FUTURE OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS . 4OI II. RESPUBLICA LITTERATORUM : REPONSE DE SIR CHARLES WALSTON . . . 422 III. LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS CONTRE L'ANAR- CHIE NATIONALE ET INTERNATIONALE 426 IV. AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS . 444 INDEX 453 PART I GENERAL CHAPTER I THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY The aim of all works of art is to respond to the aesthetic instinct of man and to produce aesthetic pleasure. In so far aesthetics is clearly distinguish- able from logic, epistemology, or systematised know- ledge in science, ethics, pragmatics, and religion. I may say here that, as we proceed (above all in Part II) we shall establish more clearly the corre- lation of these departments of human knowledge to one another, and more especially their relation to aesthetics. In giving this summary definition of art I have not defined either the term aesthetics itself or the term instinct, and still less the term pleasure. I may also warn the reader that, at the present stage of our inquiry, we are not concerned when we use the common and complex term " pleasure " with qualifying our conception of aesthetics under the general heading of a hedonistic theory of life and thought or anything of the kind. As regards the term aesthetics, in contradistinction to the other departments of thought, its distinguishing feature is that in all objects with which it is concerned the form is essential to the matter. In this, by the way, we have been anticipated by Aristotle. In every work of art or in every aesthetic attitude of mind towards the objects perceived or reflected upon, the form in which the subject-matter of perception or 3 4 THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY feeling or thought presents itself is essentially and indissolubly bound up with the matter ; while in all other departments of mental processes the subject- matter is essential, and we can always conceive it as capable of being apprehended in some different form as a vehicle of perception, feeling, or reflection. In aesthetic perception, feeling, or reflection, though the form may not be the exclusive element of stimulation in all processes, it always remains the essential and central factor in the determina- tion of these perceptions, as well as feelings and reflections. Moreover, this faculty of the human mind, of the human senses — in fact, of the whole human organism — is primary (not secondary) and elemental, in every respect equivalent to the other faculties which under- lie perception of outer objects and produce knowledge, thought, truth, and science ; or which contribute to self-preservation in providing for the physical interests of life, to what we call utility or, in social and political life, concerns the desirable relation of man to his fellow-men — what is good for him as well as for human society — in ethics ; or even, finally, in his relation to the supernatural powers and to his strivings to satisfy his religious instincts and aspira- tions. We may even find as we proceed that (to use the terminology of Kant as he applies it to Practical Reason) there is a Primacy inherent in the aesthetic instinct which may ultimately lead or refer the satisfaction and development of all these other instincts and aims back to the aesthetic instinct as the primary element out of which the others are evolved. I am fully aware that this main thesis of the Philosophy of Harmonism may, in this unqualified statement, appear to many readers in the light of a paradox. De gustibus non est disputandum is uni- PRIMACY OF /ESTHETIC INSTINCT 5 versally accepted as so unquestionably true, that it is admitted as one of the current commonplaces, if not truisms. It is commonly believed that all aesthetic perceptions and preferences — all that is related to art and taste — are essentially subjective and personal, compared with those perceptions and thoughts based upon truth and capable of logical or scientific proof, or with those judgments concerning utility or the ethically good which are all supposed to be objective and impersonal in character. But I hope to show that aesthetic perceptions, emotions, and principles are objective in character, and that they are so primary and so elemental in the evolution and the activity of the human mind that, ultimately, Truth, Utility, and Goodness must be referred back to them. Now, the harmonious state of sentience and intellect which the satisfaction of the aesthetic instinct produces in man is pleasurable, not only in so far as the satisfaction of any instinct or craving is pleasurable, but because the emotion resulting from form is determined purely by the perceptive emotional or reflective activity itself, and is not determined or absorbed by any further aim inherent in the object perceived. For this reason the objects of aesthetics have been called " contemplative " (anschauend), " theoretic," " disinterested," corre- sponding to the attitude of play, and not of work or effort. The work of art, therefore, has as its originative aim the production of aesthetic pleasure. Its object is not to establish or promote truth or utility, or good- ness, or holiness. We find ourselves thus on the verge of the endless discussion concerning the relation of aesthetics to ethics, and science and religion, on which so much has been written, but which it would be confusing, as well as premature, to enter upon in 6 THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY any detail at the present stage of our inquiry. For these relationships, both as regards similarities and differences, will become abundantly clear as we pro- ceed. The mistake generally made in such discussions arises out of an unduly narrow conception of aesthetics as dealing exclusively, or at least primarily, with " Works of Art " ; though it cannot, and need not, be denied that a work of art, being the direct and, more or less, conscious attempt on the part of man to satisfy his aesthetic instinct and craving, is the purest and in some aspects the most illuminating vehicle for the study of aesthetics. But the questions at once arise, what this aesthetic faculty really is, what is its origin, and what is its position in the develop- ment of the individual human mind and in that of the whole human species ? When we endeavour to answer these questions we soon perceive that by the pre- mature intrusion of art we have focussed the aim of our inquiry far too narrowly to lead to full and thorough apprehension of the truth. As a matter of fact, this fatal mistake has been made, and is being made, by many theorists and writers on aesthetics, and is constantly biasing their sound per- ception of facts, their judgment and generalisa- tions. ^Esthetics does not deal exclusively, or even primarily, with man's " works of art," however important this province of the study may in its due position and proportion become, and however illu- minating it may always be for us to deal with definite objects which are designedly and directly meant to respond to that instinct and faculty of man. Nor is it even wise to dwell too much at an early stage of inquiry upon the differentiae between aesthetics, science, pragmatics, ethics, and religion. The safer method, and the most likely to lead to true results, NOT ONLY WORKS OF ART 7 will be to observe and to analyse with concentrated accuracy the aesthetic instincts and faculties in them- selves, and to trace their origin down to their earliest beginnings and elements in human, and even in animal, life and throughout nature. I may here anticipate, and enter into, a more specialised department of the general subject, namely, the historical aspect of the study of aesthetics, more especially the evidence bearing upon the subject as derived from archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, and, still more specially, from excavations and the materials presented by them. In my own excava- tions, as also in those of many of my colleagues and of the numerous anthropological and local exca- vators of prehistoric sites, it has been the practice (excusable in itself, because so natural) to show the greatest eagerness to find, and the care of preserving and of tabulating with full precision the more highly decorated objects (which approach the claim of being " works of art "). The excavator is thus led to pass over or to discard a large number — generally by far the larger number — of undecorated objects in which a symmetrical form or a higher decoration is not manifest, or in which such decoration is of a most rudimentaryand tentative character. The result would be that the whole proportion, in the first place, of the finds and, consequently, in the second place, of the summary picture of the actual life which they illus- trate and the creative and artistic activities of the primitive peoples, would be distorted and give no true presentment of that life and no justification for many of the generalisations based upon the data. I am convinced that this is especially the case as regards the earliest prehistoric discoveries of primitive man. To arrive at a true understanding of aesthetics we must go much deeper down and further afield, and must not limit ourselves to works of art, but must 8 THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY consider those works of nature which man selects — though he has not created them — because they respond to his aesthetic instinct. Among these will be found, not only in the primitive and subsequent periods of civilised man's history, but in the savage life of people still extant, as well as in the objects preferably chosen by children, a large number of articles found in nature and adapted to use, not only because they serve a need but because they give delight by their form or colour, to the touch, to the eye, or even to the lower senses. Let me merely suggest the important part which shells have universally played in the life of the most primitive and of later peoples, from the simple bowl-like shape and symmetry of form of the Echinus (the body of the Doric capital is called Echinus !) to variegated and beautiful shells with intricate and harmonious variety of patterns. When we are thus led from the creation of the work of art proper to the selection of aesthetic objects, we have advanced a step towards the understanding of the aesthetic instinct. But from this active selection we naturally proceed to inquire into the principles inherent in the objects of nature which produce and guide such a selection with its implied preference, and we thus are face to face with the complicated problem of the aesthetic principle in nature — as yet only the perceptive side of that principle which leads man to prefer and to select, and not yet the objective elements of form to be discovered in nature itself irrespective of man. But do not assume that I am now about to jump to a more complex and later department of our study in which the highly trained and cultured man, with fully developed aesthetic faculties, contemplates what is called the " beauties of nature " such as have been so eloquently described by many writers, among SELECTION OF ESTHETIC OBJECTS 9 whom I might single out Ruskin. 1 This question belongs to a far later phase of our inquiry. 8 What the previous remarks on the elementary and primitive " selection " of works of nature by the men of the Stone Age and contemporary savages are meant to impress is that the problem of aesthetics will not reveal itself to us if we only deal with the " work of art," or even with the selection of natural objects according to aesthetic principles, but that this selection and preference itself depends upon an attitude of mind, a psychological condition in which man per- ceives, contemplates, and reacts upon nature. We are thus forced to take a much wider purview of the problem before us when we realise that we do not merely wish to develop a Theory of Art and a Theory of Beauty which aesthetically correspond to a fundamental attitude of the mind ; but that this aesthetic principle and instinct really is a view-point of nature, life, and the works, actions, and thoughts of man, a fundamental response to an instinct, as well as to all perception, cognition, imagination, reasoning, and action. We shall find that this view- point, this principle of sentience and consciousness, is fundamental. I shall even endeavour to show, as I said before, that it underlies all other principles of Epistemology, Pragmatics, Ethics, Politics, and Religion. I must also repeat again that this aesthetic view-point is that in which the form is, if not the whole object, at least essential to the thing perceived, the object which stimulates the senses, is felt or is reflected upon. The narrow denotation of the term " art " in the English language, moreover, which always implies a predominance of painting and sculpture, is most 1 See The Work of John Ruskin, by the present writer (Harper & Bros., 1893), especially cap. ii, " Ruskin as the Founder of Pheno- menology of Nature," p. 65 seq. 2 See Chap. II, Pt. II. 10 THE ESTHETIC INSTINCT AND FACULTY misleading in directing the mind of the inquirer towards a theory of aesthetics. For such inquiry music and the decorative arts are safer guides, if we wish to penetrate to the foundations of the aesthetic principle, to its earliest origin and its most developed manifestations. It is even often confusing and misleading to make too free use of the term " Beauty." We must seek the principle still further down in the foundations of the human mind, and perhaps of nature as well, and resort to the principles of pro- portion and of Harmony. I therefore generally substitute the term Harmony for that of Beauty. We thus find ourselves ultimately approaching the suggestive metaphysical principles that have only come down to us in a few fragmentary sentences of the ancient philosopher Pythagoras, such as " number is the essence of all things," and the phrase " the music of the spheres." Above all, it is our duty to inquire into the origin and the development of the aesthetic faculty in man : (i) in full-grown normal man, and in the constitution of his higher senses ; and we must trace this back in the fundamental constitution of the mind, the physiology and psychology of the human being, and in the evolution of the lower animals, until we find that these aesthetic principles are impressed upon man through life in every phase of his sentience and consciousness ; and (2) as they are impressed upon him by nature itself and the aesthetic principles which man can there discover in the objects of nature, including also the contemplation of the human form as such an object ; and (3) in human life, including ethics, pragmatics, sociology, and politics ; and (4) in the higher intellectual life of man, in science and philosophy, and theology, and in the search for the principle of the universe, including the life of man. A further principle of scientific subdivision of our HARMONY AND BEAUTY 11 own immediate subject, as well as of all scientific and philosophical inquiry in other spheres of thought, is that between (a) the theoretical, or passive, or receptive, and (b) the practical, or active, or creative, aspect of aesthetics. As for the term " beauty " we have substituted the terms " harmony," " symmetry," and " pro- portion," so we must further reduce harmony, as far as possible, to first principles, in order that aesthetics as a science should be of undeniable and universal validity, not a matter of individual and subjective opinion — the distinction which the ancient Greeks drew between i7narr]/j,rj and 86£a. It will then also establish the relation between generalised and lasting types, not individual and ephemeral objects, just as in the exact and natural sciences the aim is to recog- nise and to establish the " laws " of nature and of thought and the formulae which clearly embody them — most clearly established in logic and mathematics and laboriously and conscientiously aimed at in the natural and experimental sciences, which latter approach the more closely to their ultimate aim the more they approach to the definiteness, exactness, and finality of the more deductive sciences — logic and mathematics. Part I of this book, the more general aspect of the inquiry, will thus deal with the origin of the harmonistic and aesthetic instinct in the nervous system and in the developed human senses, as well as its dominance in the fully developed human mind. Part II, the special aspect of our inquiry, will estab- lish the fundamental effectiveness of the Harmonistic Principle and of Conscious Evolution in Epistemology, ^Esthetics, Pragmatics, Ethics, Politics, and Religion. CHAPTER II SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY THE PRINCIPLE OF HARMONY Beautifully-shaped objects which we can touch and see, and beautiful sounds which we can hear, are pleasant. Esthetic pleasure in normal man with normally developed senses is, in the first instance, produced by the perception of symmetry — har- monious proportion of coexistence in space, har- monious and rhythmical succession in time. We need not hesitate to lay this down as an absolute " law " when studying the perceptive faculties of man after the embryonic or earliest infantile stages in all times, and in all conditions of his individual and social development, as this thesis is always illustrated in the most primitive prehistoric conditions of man's work in what might be called primitive art. We shall presently go deeper down into the origin of this pleasure in the earlier morphological and physiological stages of human life, animal, and perhaps even vegetable life, as we shall also in the opposite direction pursue this principle to its higher and most complex developments in the artistic, intellectual, and moral life of man. Remember, in taking our stand on this, more or less, central platform of our scientific journey downward, as well as upward, we are assuming the fully developed functioning of man's perceptive senses, especially of what we might call his " higher " senses — sight, hearing, and touch. The following simple drawings will make my meaning clear : — 12 SYMMETRY AND THE " HIGHER n SENSES 13 Symmetrical or Asymmetrical. Fig. I. We have here before us simple regular or sym- metrical forms, such as a straight line, a square, a triangle, a curve, a wavy line, a circle, and a simple trefoil. Opposed to these regular lines we have an example of irregular lines joined into a most irregular body. Now, there can be no doubt that these regular or symmetrical forms are easily perceived and produce pleasure to the senses of sight or touch in their natural functioning, whereas this is emphatically not the case with regard to the irregular body. This truth can be readily proved by experiment. A rough and ready experiment, in the case in which a child or an infant cannot express in words the sensation which it feels, is furnished by the expression of its face, manifesting ease and pleasure in perceiving a symmetrical form ; as, per contra, by contracting its brow into a frown, it will show its difficulty in perceiving the irregular or asymmetrical body. More accurately and objectively the measurements of time which it takes for the apprehension of the one and of the other will clearly demonstrate the greater rapidity and facility, and hence pleasure, in the perception of symmetrical over asymmetrical bodies. Still more " objective " experiments can be made by the help of instruments indicating the curves in a chart ; and, finally, by the still more subtle Symmetrical measurement of blood-pressure. • * The same applies to the sense of -«« .^-v"- " w - hearing ; and the following figures ^-~~^^*-^^>s^- show by means of dots, lines, and jJ^^^^^^s^ curves representing long and short or Asymmetrical sounds and their intervals, regu- __•/" \ w /\""^ larity and symmetry, as distinct fig. a. 14 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY from irregular asymmetrical succession, while waves and parallel waves indicate the graphic charts of tones and harmony of tones, in contradistinction to the irregular and intersecting lines and curves of confused sounds, which we call noises. Here again experi- ments readily demonstrate that tones and harmonies are more easily perceived and are more pleasurable to the ear than confused sounds or noises. An important result, corresponding in the senses to this aesthetic quality of harmonious coexistence and succession, is no doubt due to the fact that the higher organs of sensation — the eyes, the ears, and the hands — are dualistic, that they are in pairs. They are or ought normally to be symmetrical themselves. Complete and individual perception depends upon the co-ordinate working of the two organs together — what, with regard to the eye, is called " accom- modation." ' Numerous experiments can be made and have been made, to demonstrate this normal functioning of the higher senses. But the fact that such complete " accommodation " is required for the full sense- perception is amply proved with regard to the eye by the effect which the pathological condition called " astigmatism " has upon vision, and the resultant discomfort, ultimately leading to a disturbance of the whole organism, to pain, and even disease. With regard to the sense of hearing, it can equally be demonstrated that causes which disturb the harmonious centralised functioning and accommoda- 1 Of course, outer objects or stimuli may in their relation exclusively or more strongly affect one of the two organs (one eye, one ear, or one organ of touch) ; but, as has been demonstrated (especially by Lceb, in dealing with heliotropism) the result of unilateral stimuli produces a definite movement which corresponds to a regular mathematical or symmetrical formula. The normal tendency in the human being, however, is as far as possible, to rectify and complete all perception of dualistic senses by centralised perception, in which both organs act equally and harmoniously. SYMMETRICAL "TYPE" 15 tion of the two ears interferes with complete percep- tion, its facility and pleasurableness. 1 In the further processes of mental activity arising out of simple perception, it is important for our purpose to know the bearing of symmetry, contrasted with asymmetry, upon the memory,* for it will readily be seen that the symmetrical body or stimulus can be easily retained and on future occasions recognised by its identity or similarity with the first impression, whereas this is not the case with a highly individual irregular or asymmetrical body. And we shall see at a later stage of our inquiry that the irregular and essentially individual stimulus or body will be recalled or described by its deviation from the symmetrical or " typical " body most clearly related to it. We shall also find that all apprehension of individual things and beings as such, what gives them their " individuality " or " originality," is received and imparted by fixing or emphasising the deviation from the regular, symmetrical, or typical forms to which they belong, as in the simplest geometrical or arithmetical formulae we should describe a singular body or relationship by its deviation from the most typical form or relation. So, for instance, we should describe an irregular line or curve, or body, by its deviation from the straight line or circular curve, or triangle, square, or any other regular known shape ; and, in dividing seventeen, the schoolboy would naturally recall that it is three times five plus two, or three times six minus one. One fact stands out clearly, namely, that in our 1 I know of the case of a highly trained lover of music who, late in life, was forced to give up hearing all concerted music, from which he had formerly derived much pleasure, because a disturbance in one of his ears led to the perception of accord as discord. J This question will be more specially considered in Part II, in dealing with that harmonistic principle in its relation to human knowledge or epistemology. 16 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY simple sense-perception regularity, symmetry, and harmony are most readily perceived and produce aesthetic pleasure. We have hitherto only dealt with what we have called, in an inaccurate phrase, the " higher senses," and have noted that these are dualistic in the organs of perception. But it may fairly be questioned whether the " lower " senses (smell and taste) are not also provided with dualistic organs. We must remember that we have two nostrils ; that the tongue has two sides ; and that taste depends upon the co-ordination and co-operation of the palate, lips, and the other sensitive mucous membranes of the mouth, as well as their co-operation with the olfactory organs and nerves. It is also of great importance at this early stage to remember that the whole of the human body is symmetrical in its division into two halves, and that the outer direction of stimuli on the right and left, front and back, up and down, are all based upon geometrical and symmetrical principles. But a very wide field of further inquiry is open to the experimental physiologist and psychologist in determining whether our sensations of smell and touch, though differing in degree, are not in kind of the same aesthetic nature as those of our " higher " senses. Experiments can even now clearly show the different reactions in the sense of smell to the perfume of a rose or the stench of a putrifying body, as well as the sweet taste of one article of food, or the acid or bitter taste of another. It may be possible to produce charts reflecting to the eye symmetry in the one case and asymmetry in the other. Finally, I would suggest that the normal physiological functions of the body in the circulation of the blood and in digestion, etc., are rhythmical, periodic, and sym- metrical, and that any interruption or disturbance of normality and health produces pain, whereas ASYMMETRY AND INFINITY 17 symmetry indicates the normal state and, when per- ceived, produces pleasure. In any case, the fact remains that symmetry underlies aesthetic pleasure. But, without wishing to confuse the reader at this elementary stage of our inquiry by anticipating complexities, the solution of which belongs to a much later, if not the last, stage of our researches (meta- physics and religion), I must (if only as a warning against extreme and hasty generalisation) show that what is clearly asymmetrical or discordant from one point of view may, from a later or higher point of view of relativity, become symmetrical and har- monious. To put this question — or rather problem — into an epigrammatic form : When we proceed to the infinitely great or to the infinitely small, what was asymmetrical and discordant may become sym- metrical and harmonious ; and I cannot refrain from adding to this, as a mere suggestion for thoughtful reflexion, the fact that in the whole of human life and thought this result provides a hopeful element in the outlook upon life in its relation to the universe, and forms the basis for optimism and hope instead of pessimism and despair. To illustrate this by Fig. i here, in which, in the first instance, the symmetrical form stands in direct contrast to the asymmetrical form, we shall find that, if we approach the infinitely small by taking even a comparatively large subdivision of this symbol of asymmetry, and still more when we apply the microscope, each section presents in itself a completeness of symmetry. It is instructive to note that the most repulsive pathological specimens under the microscope — the stronger the power the more so — assume often the most artistic decorative and pleasing forms, whereas the greater the distance from which we see the figure irregularities recede. The same applies to elements of sound and succession. If, on the other 3 18 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY hand, we take this complex tangle of lines as a unit and reduce it to the smallest dimensions in which it becomes but a round spot, it will correspond to other spots and will form a unit for further symmetrical combinations. Contemplate the picture of a starry night, and remember what the form of a planet may be when seen in proximity. Thus, if we take our specimen of an asymmetrical body (Fig. i) we find that as we enlarge it, until finally we examine its portions under a microscope, each portion or segment of this asymmetrical figure becomes symmetrical or regular. Those which are parts of a straight line running in any haphazard direction or intersecting one another become, when thus reduced in dimensions, straight lines and show definite regular angles ( /\ ) in their change of direction. Those which are curved running in a haphazard direction become definite and harmonious segments of a circle or an arc ( ^ /**" /""^ ) Each section thus presents complete symmetry and harmony. On the other hand, if, keeping the asymmetrical figure in sight, you recede backwards at varying distances, you will again find that the asymmetry and irregularity diminish as you recede. If a number of photographs are taken, you will note how, with the increase in regularity and symmetry of the figure as a whole, portions of the detail in line drop out, while others are relatively accentuated until you reduce the complex body to comparative sim- plicity. The interior too changes its colour, gradually turning from lighter grey to a darker shade, until, finally, at the furthest distance, the body is reduced to a simple dot or circle which, as a regular unit, might form any part of a complex symmetrical series. H < a. «-► «C> -> .. _ w o 1 z < • & H-» Q >- M >< . 05 ■" W "" *-< n *5 t-~ £ -o ^ S tAi "> *o Q M H co ■z » 3 Oi > -s 05 rt H 8 « c S 2 — - ^5 > e* "5 s* < rt •a fc S> o g « z -S O a) 1-1 fi # 05 en ^ 'So ? tn O S en o H ~~ 2 H s 05 W a, rO\__ X q5?^ w *<^ CO £ CONVERSION INTO SYMMETRY 19 I have made numerous experiments to verify the continuous predominance of symmetry as an asym- metrical body is viewed at gradually increasing distances. It is a noteworthy fact that with " ab- normal " — especially " astigmatic " — vision some indi- vidual lines asserted undue prominence and direction. But with normal vision the growth of symmetry was undoubted and manifest. The series of figures (Plate I, Fig. 3) were produced photographically at the laboratory of the Cambridge & Paul Scientific Instrument Company, and show the changes in the appearance of the asymmetrical body at the dis- tances of 9, 18, 36, and 72 feet. Though this aspect of the problem concerns a later stage of our inquiry, we may anticipate the suggestion that we have here before us, in broad outline, the chief elements of the mental process, from a simplest perception, through all forms of conception and generalisation, to ratiocination. In any case, the microscopic process corresponds to the analytic faculty of mind, as the megascopic corresponds to the synthetic faculty. It is, however, important to remember that even the analytic process is not purely passive, negative, and dissolvent, but calls into play some positive or imaginative activity, and that both are determined by the harmonistic principle in the perception of regularity and symmetry. Now, to leave this parenthetical episode on asym- metry and to search for the reason for this result of aesthetic pleasure upon human perception arising out of symmetry, we find, in the first instance (a), that this pleasure, especially as regards our higher senses, is caused by the need of such symmetry owing to the dualism of these higher senses, in that we have two eyes, two ears, and two arms and legs. Without venturing deeply into the problems of physiological optics, or the physiology of the ear, what is called accommoda- 20 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY tion of the eyes in ocular perception is an essential factor in that perception, the importance of which becomes especially manifest when there is a patho- logical inefficiency in the act of accommodation. Thus, to say the least, a symmetrical form is more easily perceived than an asymmetrical one ; the latter may become relatively painful as regards the per- ceptive effort, while the former will only become relatively pleasurable. It takes the infant some time to accommodate its perceptive functions in space and time to the realities of outer life, and to acquire the power of localising outer objects and their relation to itself and its needs by means of the proper function- ing of both its eyes, both its ears, and both its hands. 1 If we rise from these simpler elements of sense-per- ception to the higher forms of conscious perception, to the forming of concepts, the rudimentary but clear and complete sense-perception through the accom- modation of the dualistic organs of sense leads further to a clearer and higher phase of apprehension and cognition which gradually, and even at an early stage, confirms and makes conscious objective perception and the establishment of consciousness in some form or other, fixing the relation which the outer object bears to self in the satisfaction of wants and desires or in the satisfaction arising out of successful activity or functioning of the organs themselves. At all events, the easier and more complete this form of sense activity and sense-perception is, the more does it avoid pain and positively lead to satisfaction and pleasure, conditioned by what may be called the harmony of the outer object perceived, (b) But a second and more advanced condition arises out of this objective harmony, namely, in the fact that the 1 We shall have occasion as we proceed to consider the question of the symmetry of other organs and of the human body in relation to the organic and inorganic world. INFLUENCE OF DUALISTIC ORGANS 21 symmetrical or harmonious presents the senses with a generalised or typical form, while the asymmetrical and discordant remain individual. The result is that, with repetition and repercussion, the harmonious or generalised forms become still more easy and pleasant of apprehension, while the others do not. Still further (c), it thus forms the groundwork for memory and association which, as is universally admitted, form the basis for the whole development of the human intellect. I also need not insist upon the fact that this symmetrical form, so easily and fully appre- hended, and establishing a general type in itself, in contradistinction to the distinctly individual nature of the asymmetrical body, can, and as a matter of fact will, and must, as regards its harmonious nature be repeated in experience and can be readily remembered and recognised with regard to its identity or similarity — which is not the case with asymmetrical bodies. The same, of course, applies the nearer we approach towards the work of art in which a definite tune or shape can be remembered and accurately reproduced ; whereas the same cannot apply to an accidental tangle of form or noise. I must here point to a very significant and im- portant fact, namely, that what we thus call the " higher " senses (I maintain because of this primarily cesthetic quality of theirs) have evolved generalised attributes fixed by human language, while the ' lower " and purely elementary or procreative senses and instincts have not. This of itself leads us to all forms of spiritual generalisation, even to the highest abstractions of the human mind. Thus all the ele- ments of Euclidian geometry, appealing to eyesight as well as touch, in their simplest sensual form are established by means of general terms, which can be applied to an infinite number of individual objects. The same applies to colours growing in variety and 22 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY nomenclature, as man progresses in civilisation and productiveness, including the minutest shadings of definite colours. The same also applies to musical rhythms, to the variety of notes, harmonies, notation of tempi, and of the other highly differentiated and exact notations of music : whereas, when we come to the sensation of taste, with the exception of sweet, sour, and bitter (and we cannot include hot and cold, or hard and soft, as these are probably borrowed from the sense of touch), and to smell (in which '.' sweet " is probably only borrowed from the palate), the attributes are not generalised, but can only be conveyed by the distinct taste or smell of the indi- vidual object. Whether the " higher " and " lower " depend upon the difference between the dualistic senses (eyes, ears, arms, etc.), in contradistinction to the single organs of perception, I will not endeavour to determine now. But, leaving these dualistic senses, we must turn to these single organs of perception — in which again the sesthetic principle of pleasure in the business of perception constitutes an elementary principle. But I must at once point out that the dual nature bearing so immediately upon touch, 1 in the arms and hands, is not always necessary to our perception of touch by other means ; for we may — and, as a matter of fact, do — often perceive with one hand only (though this again is made up of five fingers). Now, with regard to the problem immediately before us, it is most important for us to realise that the single organs of sense are inseparably attached to the human body (as well, of course, as the dual organs). They are thus, as I venture to call them, 1 In this connection I must also remind the reader that touch applies to the whole peripheral surface of the human body or skin and also to what might be called the muscular sense, especially as regards the perception of hot and cold, hard and soft, front and back, right and left, etc. SOMATOCENTRIC ORGANS 23 somatocentric, or, as the mathematicians would call it, centrobaric. This in simple language means that they are attached to the human body as a whole, and lose their nature as organs of sense when severed from the body. Their activity as organs of nerve activity is thus determined by the fact that they are tied down to their central position, and must radiate their activity from that centre. I must here at once anticipate and suggest the importance of this fact in the creation of the consciousness of the ego, or of self-consciousness, in the evolution of the human mind. Every sensory act received or conveyed by these somatocentric organs is therefore determined by this central bodily point, whether it be centrifugal or centripetal. It is thus a form of motion. But, in so far as it becomes perceptive and responsive, the ease or facility, the economy of effort, and (if we may call it so) the perfection of the motion, determines its pleasurableness or its painfulness — which, again, follows the law of least resistance. Now, this ease or economy of effort, or even of force, in such a somatocentric motion, is to be found in two broad subdivisions : the one the straight and continuous line ; the other the curve and circle, which will naturally, from the centre outward and back to the fixed starting-point, take an elliptical form. These again fall under the same heading of symmetry and harmony as being the most highly generalised form applicable to all objects facilitating apprehension and producing memory and association, to which I have just referred above, as a result of the activity of the dualistic organs of sense. The straight line and its combinations in all geometric forms is the easiest and most economical form of motion. Whether this continuous straight line is made up of innumerable interrupted dots and spots or not does not affect our argument and its conclusion, because the same 24 SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY principle in respect of time will apply to arithmetical regularity and proportion, and again brings us face to face with the epigrammatic principle of Pythagoras, that " number is the essence of all things." I may here also throw out the metaphysical suggestion, which as early as 1878 J I ventured to make, that pure realism or pure idealism — that is monism — can only be established when space is converted into time, or time into space. Besides the straight line, with its continuation and combination into angles, triangles, squares, etc., there is the curve which is the necessary consequence of any motion emanating from a fixed centre and especially the natural motion of the hand with the arm fixed to the shoulder of the human body. Therefore, as all somatocentric motion and function is summarised under these two main divisions of the straight line and the curve, while conforming, if not producing, the consciousness of the ego of the human embryo or the infant, these geometric forms, which in common parlance we should call regular or symmetrical, being the most economical form of effort, the easiest, and therefore the most pleasurable, also produce the sesthetic principle which we have hitherto found always interwoven with the acts of sense-perception. 1 The Balance of Emotion and Intellect, p. 40 seq. (Kegan, Paul & Co., 1878). CHAPTER III CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS Here we must pause for one moment and consider more closely the concept Consciousness in connection with the influence of the somatocentric and centro- baric movements and functions. Biologists, as well as psycho-physicists, cannot be too frequently reminded of the fact that Consciousness implies a complexity presenting an infinite number of grada- tions. These range from the simplest form of reflex actions to the highest form of self-consciousness and abstract and generalised reasoning. As far as our present knowledge goes, the simplest and earliest manifestation of reflex action is connected with galvanic stimulation in which the very slightest degree of sentience can be assumed or no sentience at all. We shall deal with these earlier phases when we are considering the evolution of the nervous system and of sentience in the simplest organisms and phases of animal life. For the present we must confine our- selves to the human being from birth upwards. Here, too, there are a large number of phases through which sentience passes until it reaches consciousness, and all the philosophic systems which begin with self-consciousness are, in the light of modern research, greatly at fault. For we must note that self- consciousness — the consciousness of the ego — marks a comparatively very late stage. But even the scientific modern physiologist or psychologist must take great care to keep clearly separate in his mind 33 26 CONSCIOUSNESS, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS the several distinguishable phases, or his conclusions are apt to be confused and faulty. The somatocentric and centrobaric functions which point to somato- tropic quality of the nervous system in man go far to make clear to us some elements and phases in the mental evolution which leads finally to developed self-consciousness. This " tropism " manifests itself in the earliest phases, and, to take a rough and ready instance, in the very first and significant moment in the birth of the infant — namely, in the first sound or cry emitted by the normal infant leading to normal respiration. This sound or cry, even though it be stimulated by outer chemical elements, is a spon- taneous activity of the vocal chords. From this moment numerous somatocentric activities proceed which — unconsciously to the infant or organism itself — establish its relationship to its own functioning body and to the outer world. But with the growth of sentience and nervous activity all the physiological activities of the child are somatocentric and manifest geometrical or rhythmical regularity, establishing the harmoniotropic tendency and principle of activity. It takes a considerable time and numerous evolutionary phases have to be undergone before the child adapts itself to the outer world, and more or less realises the existence of things without. But it is all-important to remember that these things without are ex- clusively related to the bodily centre itself, and are not distinguishable in the consciousness of the child — if we may use the term consciousness at all — from that centre. For a long time subject and object are mixed up together, and while the outer objects are all limited in their subjective existence to the relation to the child's own body, with growing " unconscious " perception, its own body is not yet distinguished from the outer objects. Thus for a long time the child will speak of itself — namely, its LATENESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF 27 bodily existence as baby, or something on a par with the outer objects which have come within its range of perception. Then gradually the range of outer objects becomes more extended in space and enlarged in number. But even then all these perceptions are egocentric and their existence is limited by the relation- ship to self. The further differentiation of the outer world takes place in that things without are, through memory and association, " integrated " on the grounds of symmetry or likeness, and then the more remote, or newer, or more unlike, objects are classified with the nearer, more familiar, and more identical objects of its past perceptions. Thus every man and woman is at first classed as dadda or mamma, until they are at last endowed with independent individuality of their own. It is at a comparatively late stage that the consciousness of self, as distinguished from the outer world, is developed and established, and that the whole world of relationships in perception, feeling, and thought unites to make up the mental individuality and the higher faculties of feeling and reason by means of the function of memory and association with which we shall deal in the Second Part. It is, of course, at a still later stage that the moral and social relationships of self to human beings, to society and to the whole universe are developed in man. In conclusion we must note that it is quite con- ceivable that, through the process of integration, repetition, and association of stimuli, the unity of the body may become a recognised centre, and that the several organs are attached to, and form part of, that body and lead to consciousness. The step to self-consciousness is more difficult to account for and marks a comparatively late stage in the evolution of the human mind. But, no doubt, from the recogni- tion of the parts and organs of his own body, the 28 CONSCIOUSNESS, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS human being proceeds to the recognition of similar parts and organs in those habitually about the infant ; this is strengthened when once, through the senses (especially through the eye in reflecting bodies such as water or shining substances acting as mirrors), the infant sees itself. Finally, through the perception and full recognition of its own desires and activities, their satisfaction and their success, or their unfulfil- ment or failure, coupled with that of the full per- sonality of other human beings, friends and foes, evoking hopeful attraction or fear, love or hate — all similar, if not identical with, its own body and bodily activities — the fuller consciousness of self and self- consciousness are developed and completely estab- lished ; until language and thought finally lead to the most complete realisation of self and its relation to other individuals and the whole outer and inner world. What, however, is here of chief importance to our inquiry is the realisation of the fact that, fundamen- tally and ultimately, the somatocentric and centro- baric movements and functions, with all the resultant influences, are based upon the harmonistic principle. Now, the principle of symmetry in static bodies and in motion, implying also regularity in time — the principle of harmony — is thus the principle of all sense-perception in its most elementary form, and corresponds, because of this economy in effort and in force, to the rudimentary feeling of ease, and consequently of pleasure, in the function of each sense organ. It may be said that the principles here insisted upon really come under the heading of utilitarianism, and not of sestheticism. I readily admit that, in these early phases of the working of the human organism and mind, these two divisions of what might be called utility and harmony have not yet HARMONY AND UTILITY 29 bifurcated as they will do in the later and more advanced stages of human development. Self- preservation implies the concept self, which we have seen is a late development in the history of the organism. At most we might assume consciousness in the functioning organs and in the function itself ; but this would be of a harmonistic or sesthetic nature and not simply self-preservation of the individual as such or " utility." I maintain that the concept utility is not simple and elementary, but is complex, and is therefore grossly misleading when applied to these elementary phases of physiology and psychology. For the connotation of utility presupposes a fixed, fully developed, and consciously existing number of units, who either of themselves or by some directing agent without, a deus ex machina, immediately minister to the self-preservation and advancement of these several units. It certainly implies a fixed and self-conscious unit. Our principle of harmony, as we have seen, thus leads through the actual working of it on the lines of least resistance and of regularity in the static and the moving nature of its functions, to the gradual production, or at least the confirmation, of such an ego, and therefore belongs to an earlier phase. Moreover, the aesthetic response in these rudimentary forms, as applied to the human senses, is immediately and wholly the outcome of this harmonious nature of the function itself, whereas the idea of utility necessarily implies a further object or end beyond the function itself, through which it becomes useful. I shall have occasion to show (when we deal more especially with the works of man relating to art) that objects in nature and those produced by means which are in their entirety destined to be useful, are principally determined in their form by their purely aesthetic quality. CHAPTER IV THE HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE IN EARLIEST FORMS OF ORGANIC AND SENTIENT LIFE We shall, in the course of our inquiry, trace still further the development of the aesthetic instinct, and show how it is primary and dominant in the functioning and growth of the mind from birth upwards. But, before we proceed in establishing this dominance in human life we must find, as far as possible, the foundations and the origin of the aesthetic instinct in those elementary forms of life and sentience preceding the complex organisation of the human mind with man's fully developed nervous system. Of course it is more difficult to ascertain the sense- perception in animals, as they have no direct means of communicating their own perceptions to us as perceptions. It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to discover their feelings or consciousness concerning the nature and quality of their perceptions. We can only ascertain what is immediately painful or pleasant to them by direct stimulation. But there is no doubt, for instance, that gentle and rhythmical stroking is pleasant, whereas violent and spasmodic jerking or patting is not, and that sudden and unwonted ex- periences startle or frighten, while those familiar do not. It is really in the domain of the simple functioning of their organs — and in these we should have to antici- pate the consequent subdivision of our inquiry from the passive or receptive to the active and functioning of the senses — that we can again discover the aesthetic 30 HARMONIOTROPISM 31 principle statically symmetrical or rhythmically and symmetrically moving. Thus, in all the functioning of the internal life of animals regularity and periodicity are continuously dominant, while in their outward activities and progression, whether it be walking or running on two, four, or more legs, or even crawling on the ground like a snake, or the flying of birds and the swimming of fishes, we can discover symmetrical and rhythmical action in these organs of progression, or rectilinear or curved and wavy or spiral principles in their movement, whether in the air, on the ground, or in the water. We must trace it in all its phases of animal life and especially in the lowest and simplest organisms in order to establish its objective validity as a fundamental instinct in mind, as well as a force in life ; and, finally, in the universe as a whole. We must do this by examining the structure of the sensory organs, their development, as well as their functioning (anatomically, morphologically, and physiologically). We must thus face the problems of the elementary principles of life and sentience in the organic world, in the structure and the development of organisms, as well as in their simplest functioning. In dealing with this aspect of the question we must, for the time being, shift our point of view from man, with his fully developed nervous system and organs of sense-perception, and even from the more developed animals, and descend to the study of the lower organisms. It will therefore be advisable to sub- stitute for the term " aesthetic " sense and perception, as well as " aesthetic " pleasure, which we have hitherto used, some term conveying the fundamental and purely objective nature of the principle applying to the lower organisms and their life out of which the " higher " has logically and by the actual functioning of these organisms grown. The terms we thus use for the aesthetic principle in its simpler and lower forms are the 32 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE harmonistic principle and the harmoniotropic tendency or instinct. At a later stage, when full conscious- ness is established, the harmoniotropic instinct and functioning of the human mind is frequently replaced by the form which I call aristotropism l in mental activity. Now, we shall find as we proceed that all the higher aesthetic sensations and mental functions in man, all conscious or subconscious impulses, activities, as well as habits and instincts, can ultimately be reduced either to the aristotropic or the harmoniotropic faculties and principles as the simplest ultimate and decisive factors. In the same way we shall find that the harmoniotropic principle constitutes the simplest and ultimate element to which the functions and activities of all organisms, even the lowest, must be reduced as the principles of life and mind beyond which we cannot descend. We may even find, at a more metaphysical later stage of our inquiry, in the Second Part, that in the organic world and the ultimate active principle in the universe is the same harmonistic principle. This principle also prevails, whether we regard all life ontogenetically or phylo- genetically (in the development of the living being or of the species), morphologically or physiologically (the form as well as the functions of organs). A fortiori will this be the case with living beings, endowed with perception, feelings, intelligence, thoughts — a soul. But in every case it will be possible not only to reduce all higher mental activities of man to this simple elementary principle, but also to understand 1 Even in dealing with the simplest activities of the lowest organisms. Professor Jennings has introduced the term optimum, which by analogy anticipates this complex and highly developed form of intelligent activity in what I call aristotropism. (See Jennings, Behaviour of the Lower Organisms, p. 295 : " Towards or away from the optimum. By optimum we mean here the conditions most favourable to the life process of the organism in question.") ROMANES 33 the development out of the simplest manifestation of the harmoniotropic force and instinct by natural, gradual, and logical growth into all the higher forms of mental faculties and activities. We shall thus find that the harmonistic principle is always present and active in all phases of mental life, and that thus, at least as a hypothesis, it tends to explain the phenomena of life and mind. From the very outset of my philosophical in- quiries more than forty years ago, after a whole new field of inquiry had been opened out to me during my intercourse and studies with the late Professor Wundt at Heidelberg and Leipzig from 1873 to 1876, I felt the need of confirming the more philosophical results by observation and experiment in the new development of psycho-physics, as well as of physio- logy and biology. It was between the years 1877 and 1882 that I directly turned to my friend the late George Romanes, while I was working on these aesthetic principles as underlying the whole of mental activity, and inquired of him whether there was any evidence furnished by his own researches (which at the time he, as well as Eimer, were so successfully carrying on into the nervous system of medusae and similar organ- isms) to warrant my generalisation. I felt at the time that the real crux in the problem of the evolution of the nervous system was to find an explanation for the step from purely muscular activity to nervous or sensory activity. The problem appeared to me then, as it does now, whether, in the essential nature of excitation and receptivity of outer stimuli a specific principle could be detected in the transition from the muscular tissue into nervous tissue. The hypothesis which was in my mind at the time was that, if, by the specific outer activity of stimuli, as well as the specific quality of muscular tissue and the component cells, it could be assumed that regular channels were 4 34 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE formed in the muscular organism, the regularity, identity, or even similarity of repercussion would establish regularity and periodicity of receptive activity, and might lead to the formation of definite channels or fibres. When once these were developed as the natural structures or organs for receptivity and transmission they could by such continuous concen- tration and repercussion produce endings to collective stimulation and transfer activities both in an afferent receptivity of stimuli as in an efferent channel of force or function from the organism itself outwards. Such a hypothesis would to some degree account for the evolution of the nerve fibres and ganglia and finally a central nervous system. My friend Romanes's replies to these questions were most encouraging. But the chief and central point of my inquiry was (ultimately from the aesthetic point of view) that the nature of this biological and morphological process depended in its essence upon the distinctive nature of the outer stimulation and inner receptive agents which was again to be found in the regularity and symmetry, in what I now call the Harmonistic Principle inherent in such force or activity. My direct work and my researches on this problem were interrupted at this stage for many years until — though many confirmatory sidelights have since then accumulated — I have again turned to them, to find that the stupendous advance made in that period in biological, physiological, and psycho-physical inquiry has only confirmed my conviction as to the effective and universal validity of that principle ; though at the same time the leading theories as to the origin of life and mind have developed antagonistic principles differing from the system I would adopt, but in reality, I venture to think, strongly confirming it. I must therefore now turn to a brief consideration of the bearings of my harmonistic principle as SYMMETRY OF STRUCTURE 35 ultimately underlying the development of life and mind in the light of the leading theories of the present day with which I am acquainted. To begin with the anatomical and morphological aspect of the problem : one fact of supreme import- ance must be admitted, namely, that the cell itself and its evolutionary history, as of all the minutest histological elements, are distinctly symmetrical in their structure and in their growth and multiplication, in their processes of segregation. When we proceed to more developed organisms we again find fully established throughout this principle of symmetry, and this must be admitted in spite of differences between the parts of the organism in the regular geometrical subdivision of the sides, front and back, upper and lower parts. This regularity of " orienta- tion," though no doubt applying to all objects in the universe in space, has supplied a more definite and fixed centre for regular orientation in those separate units and organisms which have an independent existence of their own in space and, especially in those that live and move and depend for their sub- sistence upon such orientation and direction in a fixed geometrical and arithmetical relationship, the distinct divisions in space being of essential importance. We have seen above how the somatocentric and centrobaric activities of organisms have a direct and important bearing on the origin and development of sentience and higher mental functions. In the more complex structures of higher organisms the further we advance the less reason there is to doubt that some of these oriented parts, in which the symmetrical principle on the whole prevails, are not symmetrical. Thus the front and back may differ in line and form as well as the upper and lower portions and, in some cases, the right and left ; and such differences within the prevailing symmetry are perhaps most marked 36 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE in the higher organisms, the higher we rise in the scale of organic beings. Thus the different parts of the human body, as we proceed from the head to the feet, and when we contrast the front with the back view, are markedly different and differentiated, as also the several internal organs are not all of them reduplicated and are placed singly on either side of the body. But in the main system of structure symmetry prevails in that there is a regular bisection of the two halves of the body, symmetrically corresponding to one another, as also the main organs of activity and locomotion are those symmetrically dualistic — especi- ally all organs concerned with sentience and con- sciousness. If this symmetrical and harmonistic principle prevails in the main outlines of structure, this is still more the case as regards the regularity of functioning in time and the rhythmical principle of movement in the main acts of living, of self-preservation, and of locomotion. It has quite recently been maintained by Professor Kofoid " that the protoplasm of single- celled animals known as Ciliates and Flagellates exhibited definite structural regions to be compared with the muscles and nerves of higher animals, and that the motions of these actively swimming, sensitive drops of protoplasm had brought about changes in structure ; a division of the cell into right and left sides which could be traced through the processes of reproduction." But in dealing with the anatomical and morpho- logical aspect of the question as manifested in the structure of the animal world, the same principle of symmetry has been amply shown to be present and active in the plant world, as also in those interesting transitional forms in which heliotropic activity has been manifest and has been turned to such good purpose in throwing new light upon the region of the EVOLUTION OF NERVOUS SYSTEM 37 sensory organs, especially by such biologists as Professor Loeb. Researches on the elementary nervous system have recently been summarised by Professor G. H. Parker. 1 Without considering for the moment the more highly developed nervous system in man and in the higher animals, we find that in the earthworm the neurones, i.e. " the simple cellular elements," are, according to Parker, " arranged upon a comparatively uniform plan." The spiral nerve and spiral chord of such vertebrates show a certain symmetrical arrangement in the disposition of the sensory and motor neurones. When we proceed still further down to the whole group of sea-anemones, jelly-fish, etc., especially the ccelenterates, we meet with the receptor-effector system and the proto-neurones, in which the nervous activities are as yet uncentralised and the sensory nerve-net is diffused in its action and near the surface, the tendency being more and more to concentrate these sensory organs away from the surface, from the epithelial region, retreating inwards, and being thus protected and strengthened, so that, in the step from the ccelenterates to the earthworm, we come from the diffuse epithelial regions to the central band of tissue. But in all these organisms, as in the sea- anemone, the diffused nervous transmission of the nerve-nets has a tendency to form definite tracts, which mark the beginning of a central nervous system ending in, besides receptor and effector, the adjustor, the central nervous organs in the higher animals. But in all these earlier stages we note the dominance either of polarisation in function or of what is called synapsis, a function in one direction only, which marks a most important step in the evolution of the central nervous system. In any case, however, we 1 The Elementary Nervous System (Lippincott Co., Philadelphia and London, 1919). 38 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE can discover the more or less pronounced effectiveness of regular geometrical or symmetrical principles. The same holds good in the still earlier stages and more elementary conditions of animal life in the sponges, where we cannot yet establish neurones or proto-neurones but where what might be called a neuro- muscular mechanism exists. In the canal system of the calcareous sponge the superficial pores receivewater from the exterior in definite directions, and by a regular process of muscular contraction and relaxation pass through the canal and are ejected at the osculum at the apex. But it will be admitted that not only in the organic structure of the sponges, but in their rudi- mentary functioning in receiving and ejecting water — which itself generally is received from without in regular or rhythmical periodicity inherent in waves or currents — the principle of symmetry is predominant. However, in dealing with the anatomical and morphological aspect of the question as manifested in the structure of these earliest organisms and their several organs, we find that these are directly depend- ent upon stimulation, function, and various activities in the very development of these several organ-forms. We are thus driven to face the main problems of these biological functions themselves, the physiology of these lower organisms. It is here that, in recent times, the main problem of the physiology and evolution of the nervous system has been dealt with in two main directions which stand opposed to one another. These two main fundamental points of view and theories, which thus stand in direct opposition to one another, might best be termed the Mechanistic and the Vitalistic Theories of Life and Mind ; the one most definitely represented by Professor Loeb 1 1 This difference has been put by Professor Loeb in several passages, e.g. Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, p. 10 seq. MECHANISTIC AND VITALISTIC 39 and his various writings, the other by Professor Driesch. Professor Loeb maintains that biological science cannot remain content, and has not really solved the chief problems of that science, unless, by means of exact observation, coupled with experiment, it can ultimately reduce all the phenomena of organic life to the mechanistic principle and, ultimately, to the physico-chemical force, and even to the final chemical element out of which the phenomena of life and of psychic activity evolve. The Vitalists, on the other hand, discover, even in the simplest funda- mental forms of organic life, the element of " purpose- fulness," the entelechy, which underlies the activity of the simplest organic units and out of which, by natural process, sentience and all psychic activities are in due course evolved. These two monistic views stand in direct opposition to one another. With whatever respect and admiration we must regard the theories and conscientious experiments and investigations of the numerous biologists who belong to either of these opposed schools, the unbiased but critical mind, which must in the last instance weigh the evidence presented by such thorough observation and experiment and has the right to test their validity, cannot remain satisfied with either for the ultimate explanations of these all-important phenomena of biological science. It cannot further the solution of these problems to fall into the very error with which the experimental scientist charges his opponents " by substituting mere words for facts " and classifying all differing views under the deprecia- tory term of " metaphysics." This charge is itself a flagrant instance of such use of mere words. The final test of all evidence, including that based upon observation and experiment, is unbiased reason ; and this can justifiably and profitably be applied by the sympathetic student who carefully follows the 40 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE recorded observations and experiments of the biologist. In spite of the most remarkable and striking evidence adduced by Professor Loeb, I cannot feel that he is successful in explaining fully the funda- mental principles of sentience on the grounds of pure mechanism or physico-chemical forces. You might accumulate and strengthen the mechanistic principle to the infinite degree, you will not account for or explain the phenomenon of sentience. On the other hand, the vitalistic theory, with its concept entelechy or " purposefulness " inherent in the elementary organs of sentience, connotes to so high a degree the anthropomorphic, human, or personal element, that it cannot satisfy the scientific mind as to the explana- tion of the essential factor out of which sentience grows. Now I venture to believe that the principle of Harmonism and of harmoniotropic tendency or function inherent in all the simplest elements con- cerned in psychical, as well as in physiological and physical elements, will supply to mechanistic activity that requisite element which may help us to under- stand the activity of those mechanistic forces which ultimately lead to sentience. On the other hand, it will dissolve the anthropomorphic and personal element inherent in such concepts as entelechy and " purposefulness " ; while substituting, in an imper- sonal and objective form, throughout the whole of nature as well as in man, his mental processes, his designed wills and aims, the harmonistic principle for that more subjective and human factor which these concepts of the vitalist undoubtedly contain, and thus provide an explanation of the origin and development of life and mind. 1 1 Entelechy and " purposefulness " in this sphere of biological inquiry appear to me to have the same defects as those which in other passages (see chapter on Pragmatics) I have ascribed to the concepts Pragmatism and HARMONISM RECONCILES 41 I even believe that in the remarkable inquiries into the integrative action of the nervous system which have led Professor Sherrington ' to such important results, the application of the harmoniotropic principle will go far to make these results more effective in explaining the underlying principle of integration and co-ordination of movements in the lowest organisms. The same may even apply to the " taxis " of Professor Jennings,* " concepts " and " tonus " of Professor Uexkuell.' I maintain that both these antagonistic theories will fail as monistic explanations of natural phenomena because they are too doctrinaire and (if I may say so without offence) too " metaphysical." For such a monistic principle we may have to substitute not even a dualistic conception, but a triadic principle. The harmonistic and harmoniotropic principle of life and mind manifests itself, not only in one form, but in three forms, the union of which is essential to account for all those phenomena on which the several biologists — whether they belong to the mechanistic or the vitalistic camp — base their conclusions. I venture to maintain that there is not a single observa- tion or experiment recorded by biologists explanatory of the phenomena they investigated, and on which their general principle is based, in which three different manifestations of harmonism and harmoniotropism cannot be discerned as effective and even indis- pensable. The first of these tripartite manifestations of harmonism is inherent in the receptive organ and Utility in relation to Art, Ethics, and Human Life. They are dis- tinctly " opportunistic," and can only apply to definite individual complex conditions, varying with the purpose and aim in each individual case, but do not furnish us with an impersonal " law " or principle unvaryingly active in the same direction. 1 The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1906). - Behaviour of the Lower Organisms (Columbia University Press, 1906) . 3 Leitfaden in das Studium der experimentellen Biologie der Wasser- thiere (Wiesbaden, 1905). 42 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE its quality — a symmetrical or harmonic quality of the organ, which is stimulated, whether this be in the form of neurones, ganglia, or higher central organs, or merely in the muscular tissue manifesting a special form of " irritability " or " conductibility." The second aspect of harmonism appertains to the outer stimulus, what might roughly be called the " laws of nature " ; even though the stimuli may be reduced to purely physico-chemical activities, such as photo- chemistry (which Professor Loeb, no doubt with conscious poetic licence, would sometimes call the " will " or the " soul " of the organism affected). The third harmonistic aspect is the harmonistic relation between each instance of stimulation and receptivity. The coincidence of these three harmon- isms is essential to anything of the nature of sentience. The activities of outer nature in every form — even if we reduce it to physico-chemical factors, or even to one physico-chemical element — are active in the universe and are present to, or press upon, the organism continuously. They may affect one organism as they affect the objects of inorganic nature without producing any biological or psycho- logical result. They may even affect certain parts of the organism and not others ; and they may even affect the same part at one time and not at another. There are billions — in fact innumerable — stimulations of this kind active ; but only just one produces the biological or psychological stimulation which the observer and experimenter notes. It is in the harmony between the outer stimulus and the receptive, as well as functioning, organism that a new relation is established which culminates in the biological phenomenon underlying all forms of sentience, even the most elementary. It is this triadic principle which must be substituted for the monistic principle. But the essential factor in these three aspects of the THE TRIADIC FUNCTION 43 same principle is, after all, Harmonism. When this triadic harmony is, by habit or instinct, consciously or subconsciously aimed at ; when once sentience is established with success and completion results in the activity of any organism and after the harmonio- tropic instinct is effective, sentience and higher mental activities then manifest themselves. 1 In spite of the criticism of the mechanistic theory of life and mind contained or implied in what has just been said above, I gladly admit that Professor Loeb's Mechanistic Theory is the safest method to be applied by the biologist as promising the most positive and scientific results. Above all, it ensures against the obtrusion of the personal equation in the re- searcher, which can be summarised under the term 11 idols." * Yet I cannot see how the acceptance of the Harmonistic Theory can in any way exert a dis- turbing influence upon the strict pursuit of observa- tion and experiment on mechanistic lines. On the contrary, the results of his own researches and those of his fellow-workers distinctly tend to confirm the principle of harmonism and of harmoniotropism which reinforced the effectiveness of the various tropisms (heliotropism, geotropism, chemotropism, galvano- tropism, etc.). Symmetry or some other form or modification of harmonism prevails in every aspect of such observations and experiments and the results deduced from them. i We shall see in Pt. II, Chap. I, how this same current of harmonio- tropic activity, developing into the aristotropic force, manifests itself in the imagination. » It will be seen in the first chapter of Part II, on Epistemology, that I there maintain that all observational and experimental sciences reach their highest point when results can be verified by experiments and by " synthetic " reproduction of natural bodies, which again implies that they approach the stage in which the elements and data of their scientific generalisation can be represented by mathematical or arith- metical relationships, which when applied to words and not to forms and numbers means pure logic. 44 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE 1. To begin with the organs themselves, their con- stitution and their function, they all manifest a har- monistic form or tendency. The generality of such organs is dualistic, distributed on either side of the animal, and in their functions they thus tend to act in a regular geometrical line or in rhythmical succession in time. When not dualistic, we shall see that, while no longer following the rectilinear or straight- line system, they function in a spiral or curved line, again manifesting geometrical regularity or harmony. In any case " irritability " and " conductibility," as we shall see, are of those qualities which imply response to regular stimulation in all truly biological functioning or stimulation. The degree of " facility " as regards the reception of stimuli — of " facility " in contradistinction to complete adaptation of definite tracts or organs for the function of receiving stimuli and of regular reaction to them (such as Professor Loeb ascribes to muscular tissue in opposition to those who uphold the necessity of nerve-ganglia to account for " instincts ") — merely marks a difference of degree and not of kind in the harmonistic nature of such receptive bodies. 2. When we come to the outer stimulation of those physico-chemical " laws " which are assumed by the mechanistic school to furnish the complete explanation of all biological and psychical phenomena in these lowest organisms, I need not waste much time in insisting upon the fact that these " laws " essentially connote the most complete and, at times, the most complex regularity or relationship in time and space, and ultimately present themselves to us in geometrical or arithmetical formulae illustrating the purest regu- larity and harmony. I shall dwell upon this fact in the first chapter of Part II, in relation to Epistemology, the origin and development of " knowledge." 3. But when the mechanist maintains that he can HARMONIOTROPISM 45 now, or hopes in the future to, explain fully the phenomena of life and sentience by these physico- chemical factors of the outer world in any individual organism, he overshoots the mark. We cannot for a moment admit, on the ground of the very striking and numerous experiments adduced in support of such a view, that, for instance, the Bunsen-Roscoe photo-chemical law, or even those laws of movement of light on the optic nerve as shown by S. S. Maxwell and C. D. Snyder, can be considered the " will " of the winged aphids or any other organisms — " that in this instance the light is the ' will ' of the animal which determined the direction of its movement, just as its gravity in the case of a falling stone or the movement of a plant." * Adopting the same poetic licence, I might say that it is neither the light nor the light-receiving organs of the aphid, but the relation between the two, which produces the phenomenon, both being attuned harmonically and, as far as we may even in figurative speech use the term, " will." It is the harmoniotropic force inherent in the aphid, that which necessarily, all-constrainingly, subjects it to the harmonic activity in natural laws, and in its own organisation and functioning power, which is the " will " accountable for the deed or activity. The preliminary activity is on both sides, and the consummation is due to the harmonic principle inherent in both and active in combining them. Thus, again to quote Professor Loeb himself : " if a positively heliotropic animal is illuminated from one side, a compulsory turning of the head toward the source of light occurs only when the 1 Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Life, p. 40 (University of Chicago Press, 1912). See also Loeb, Physiology of the Brain and Com- parative Psychology, xi, " Relationships between Orientation and Function of certain Elements of the Segmental Ganglia" (Putnam's Sons, New York, and John Murray, 1900). 46 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE difference in the rate of certain photo-chemical reactions in the two eyes reaches a certain value." It will here be seen how the functional activity of the animal is as essential to the phenomenon as is the stimulation without ; and it will be seen how subtly important it is that the relationships between the two should exactly synchronise and harmonise, when the passage quoted proceeds : " If the intensity of the light is sufficient and the active mass of photo-chemical substance in the animal great enough, it requires only a short time, for instance, the fraction of a second, before the difference in the mass of the reaction products formed on the two sides of the animal reaches the value necessary for the compulsory turning of the head toward the source of light. In this case the animal is a slave of the light ; in other words, it has hardly time to deviate from the direction of the light rays ; for if it turns the head even for the fraction of a second from the direction of the light rays, the difference in the photo-chemical reaction products in the two retinae becomes so great that the head is at once turned back automatically toward the source of light. But if the intensity of the light or the photo-sensitiveness of the animal is lessened the animal may deviate for a longer period from the direction of the light rays." It will here be seen how delicate and all-important is this harmonic relation between stimulation and receptivity, and how the final effect depends essen- tially upon the harmonic quality of the receptor, as well as of the stimuli, and, above all, the harmony between the two. Nor can I admit the conclusion of Professor Loeb when he proceeds to say : " It is therefore not a case of a qualitative, but of a quantitative, difference in the behaviour of helio- tropic animals under greater or lesser illumination, and it is therefore erroneous to assert that helio- STIMULATION AND RECEPTIVITY 47 tropism determines the movement of animals toward the source of light only under strong illumination, but that under weaker illumination an essentially different condition exists." It is neither the mere quantity or quality of the light alone, nor of the animal alone, but in the har- monic relationship between the two that the effects are produced. Whatever changes may be experi- mentally produced in the animal to heighten or diminish its photosensitiveness, the result cannot be ascribed wholly to one or other element, as little as (and here I may indeed lay myself open to the charge of using " rhetoric ") we claim to explain the fact that an orator, poet, or musician can or cannot make good speeches, write beautiful verses, or produce good music when he is drunk, by maintaining that it is the alcohol which has or has not produced these mani- festations of art. His nerves and brain are certainly under different conditions through alcoholic stimula- tion ; but it still remains through them and through the will of his individual personality that the works of art are produced by him. When it is further maintained ' that " heliotropic phenomena are de- termined by the relative rates of chemical reactions occurring simultaneously in symmetrical surface elements of an animal," it is essential to remember that we have already granted the " symmetrical surface elements " as well as the " simultaneous occurrence," which are in their essence manifestations of the harmonistic principle. In fact, the sensitive- ness of the animal varies, and Professor Loeb has thus given a definite term to the variations of the sensitive receptors, namely, " differential sensibility " {Unterschiedsempfindlichkeit). He rightly reminds us ' that " the progress of natural science depends 1 Op. cit., p. 54. a Op. cit., p. 59. 48 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE upon the discovery of rationalistic elements or simple natural laws " ; but he has also shown that photo- chemical stimulation does not entirely depend for specific reactions on the part of the organism upon the symmetrical surface elements of the animal. Thus, the Ranatra and robber-fly, as shown by experi- ments of Parker, Holmes, Garrey, and others, 1 while following a straight line when possessed of the use of two eyes, will follow definite curved or spiral lines when one eye is blackened. In all these cases, how- ever, the result of the activity follows definite geo- metrical directions, and the whole process of such accommodation in asymmetrical animals as well shows the dominance of the principle of harmonism. We are thus inevitably driven to the conclusion that the laws of nature, including the physico- chemical forces, manifest to the highest degree the principle of harmonism, and that in the chemical process what has roughly been termed Chemical Affinity is one of the most perfect expressions of the connotation of harmony. But this same affinity and harmony must be extended to the nature of the receptive organ in order that a new affinity or harmony be established which results in the biological and psychical activities. 8 Not only, whether the receptive substance is hard or soft, warm or cold, a stone or a muscular or nerve tissue, will these forces act differ- ently upon them ; but in every case it depends upon just that harmony of relationship between all the three factors to produce each definite phenomenon. I may also add that, in spite of the general objection which, as stated above, I have to the vitalistic theory as expounded by Professor Driesch, because of the 1 Loeb, Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct, p. 52 seq. (Lippincott Co., Philadelphia and London, 1918). a It will help the general reader, in the whole course of these argu- ments to establish the harmonistic principle, to bear in mind the analogy of wireless telegraphy. HABIT AND INSTINCT 49 anthropomorphic concepts of entelechy and " purpose- fulness," I feel that in some of his ideas and expositions — notably when, for instance, he refers to " har- monious equipotential systems " x — I find myself in many points in agreement with his conclusions. We have seen above (see Chaps. II, III) how in the higher organisms, notably in the human being from birth upwards, through the agency of what we called somatocentric and centrobaric movement, the develop- ment of consciousness and, finally, of self-conscious- ness was distinctly furthered, if not produced. In the case of the lower organisms with which we are here dealing, we can more or less understand how sentience develops into functional activities through the formation of " habit " and " instinct," and how the morphological development, leading to the evolution of the nervous system, is established through the effective intermediary influence of the harmonistic principle. It can hardly be maintained that in the morphological aspect of this question the introduction of the harmonistic principle should not be helpful in every one of the theories of evolution, including not only those based upon biological experiments, but also those which apply the Mendelian principle of observation to selective heredity in time. For, beginning with the receptive muscular tissue of the surface of organisms and rising, through all the stages of the development of nervous tissue, to nerve- centres of the highest order, we can see how, in the accumulation in time and in space {i.e. of the actual modification of the receptive tissue itself in space and through stimulation in time), the repercussion of stimuli would not be effective in producing the morphological changes which lead to the development of the nervous system, without the harmonistic principle in space and 1 History and Theory of Vitalism, pp. 208-9 (authorised translation by C. K. Ogden, Macmillan & Co., 1914). 5 50 HARMONISTIC PRINCIPLE time to act as the " cement " between the individual " building blocks " of the structure. Out of the regular repercussion of currents, forming regular or symmetrical channels, so that not only outer stimula- tions but also the inner functioning and spontaneous impulse or activity in the organism run in this same direction and produce similar symmetrical activities, there is formed what by analogy we may call " habit," and such " habit " subconsciously produces certain activities or actions even though attention and consciousness be concentrated in other directions. The step from this habitual subconscious or even unconscious activity to the establishment of instinct is a natural and logical one, and also (and this we shall further see in the chapter on Epistemology) accounts for the development of memory and association and, through them, of higher mental activities. But in all phases of this gradual evolution it will be found that the harmonistic principle of symmetry, be it through identity and repercussion, affinity, or inherent association, is fundamentally the active principle. We must further note that it is finally in the triadic aspect of this harmony that, when in the mental activities of the highest organisms this triadic harmony is consciously or subconsciously (by habit or instinct) aimed at, the designed or purposed or willed action is completed, and that the harmoniotropic instinct is directly effective. 1 We thus rise from the earliest origins of sentience through reflex action, as well as subconscious or habitual activity, to instinct, and from consciousness to self- consciousness, and, finally, to designed self-assertion and self-repression, to fore- and after-thought, and all highest mental and moral activities. 1 We shall see in the chapter on Epistemology (Part II) how the function of imagination plays an important part in this process in the human mind. UTILITY AND HARMONY 51 As we have seen, the symmetrical motion, when not curved, leads us to the straight line, and thus to the line of least resistance and the economy of move- ment, function, or perception. And it is here that what might thus be called the utilitarian or economic element meets with, and is identified with, the aesthetic principle of proportion and symmetry. Now, biological researches during the last hundred years have gone to show us how in the rudimentary forms of animal life the continuous functioning of any organs, and even of the continuous line of stimulation which precedes and leads over to the development of such an organ, is by the continuity of such a line productive of a regular symmetrical channel. CHAPTER V HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE AND THE DOMIN- ANCE OF THE ^ESTHETIC ATTITUDE OF MIND When we leave this elementary phase in which we have recognised the dominance of the principle of proportion and harmony in the constitution of the senses of man in their relation to perception, and assuming the full and conscious development of the sensory organs in man, namely, his perception of nature and its objects, the effect of these aesthetic principles upon the formation, the development, and the habituation of the perceptive senses and their functions becomes still more manifest. In dealing with this aspect of the question we must again take timely warning, while considering the perception of natural objects, that we are not drawn into that complex and misleading department of the theory of art which deals with Art in Nature — or rather, with the highly artistic contemplation of nature by the developed and cultured individuals who have been habitually trained in the contempla- tion and the appreciation of works of the highest art. It is not in this aspect that I now propose to deal with nature from the point of view of sense-perception, but in a much more rudimentary phase of the whole question. I wish merely to show how, in the con- templation of nature and its objects, the human perceptive senses are constantly, continuously, and forcibly impressed by aesthetic principles of the most valid and generalised form. We must therefore 52 DISHARMONY IN NATURE AND LIFE 53 become thoroughly clear in our mind that, on the whole, when we consider nature and art, the work of nature and the artifact, the products of nature and the products of man — nay, even, as has repeatedly been shown, the actual course of nature and what we call Progress — stand as antitheses rather than as identical or harmonious elements. Stoic philosophy and its tenets are shaken to their very foundations by those writers and critics who have dwelt upon the cruelty, the constant internecine warfare of nature, as also in life the Optimist who believes in the preva- lence of justice and the immediate predominance of virtue and merit and continuous progress of humanity, has been severely shaken by the arguments of the Pessimist, who points to the constant pre- dominance of injustice and the defection of virtue and merit in this world of ours, and the retrogressions of human society towards savagery. The constant and resistless flow of nature and life with its change, leading to dissolution and death, and the struggle for existence which is discerned in every department of its progression, are in direct opposition to the har- monious completeness and reposefulness of art-design and fulfilment of effort. The works of man's art and craft thus stand in direct opposition, from this point of view at least, to the objects of nature, so much so that, when man finds complete form and responsive- ness to his feelings and needs in these objects of nature, he uses the significant phrase " freak of nature," as he is also pleasantly surprised when a coincidence in the outer world not directed by his own design or will brings, by what he might call accident or " luck," the good fortune which his design would have led him to create. I have perhaps sufficiently illustrated what I mean to insist upon, as a warning against hasty generalisa- tion with regard to the sensory experiences of man in 54 HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE his perception of nature and its works as being pro- ductive in these senses of the proportion and harmony which constitute the aesthetic principle. But, having thus recalled the difference, if not the opposition, between nature and art, we now turn to those percep- tible elements in nature in which, by its constitution, the aesthetic instinct in man and the aesthetic element in his sense-perceptions are, if not exclusively pro- duced, at all events confirmed throughout his life from earliest infancy to the end. We have already seen how in the lowest organisms — even in sponges — the rhythmical and periodic functioning of the organism confirms the harmonistic principle. So in man the periodic and rhythmical functions (the heart-beat and other periodic bodily activities) subconsciously confirm in him the con- tinuous insistence of symmetrical and harmonious succession. But in his more complex experiences of outer nature, to begin with the important subdivision of time in his conscious existence, the harmonious rhythmical and numerical subdivision of time in the conscious existence of man is impressed upon him through his perceptive senses from their earliest awakening to the end of his life continuously, and at regular intervals — darkness and light, sunrise and sunset, dawn and evening twilight, the consciousness of the year and its subdivisions with the periodic changes of seasons which, at an early period he may, more or less, clearly and perfectly identify with the sun and moon, and with the constellations in the sky, from the general and harmonious framework of his consciousness in time. Again, he . experiences cold and warmth ; cloudiness, stillness, and wind- swept turmoil and storms ; in racing nebulae changing their shapes at every moment ; the world of sound, confused and escaping the grasp of his perceptions HARMONISM IN TUNE 55 through the very confusion in which no single tone predominates ; and, on the other hand, the familiar rhythmical cadence of sounds in the songs of birds or the bleating of animals, or the calls and chants of his fellow-men — through all this endless complexity and confusion there issues out and impresses his senses with the regularity and symmetry of their form or their relation to one another, or their fixed and recurrent relation to his own existence, the principle of harmony and proportion which through the elusive and disturbing complexities of nature and life brings pleasure to his senses, his emotions and thoughts. And in the movement of his own kind, and of the animal world about him (to which I referred above in relation to the functioning of the progressive organs in the animal world), as well as in the growth of the whole vegetable kingdom about him, the trees and plants in their wholeness and in every part, the structure of the land and of the mineral world and the regularity, symmetry, pro- portion, and inner harmony of their stratification and structural composition, reflecting the number and regularity of the long ages of gradual growth and organisation (of which geological evolution he may have no ken whatever) — all these impress upon his senses from earliest infancy the dominance of symmetry, of proportion and form. And when he examines individual objects more closely, he notices — though generally subconsciously — in every tree and shrub the principle of growth in the structure from the trunk to the distribution in varied symmetry of the branches and twigs, and of the leaves upon them ; and in these leaves and buds and flowers, the most marvellously varied though perfectly symmetrical and harmonious configuration of their form. Furthermore, the movement of masses of plants, swayed by the wind, the rippling 56 HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE of the stream, the rush of waves, and the great surging of the sea — nay, if he but examine a flower or the smallest herb and leaf or snowflake on his hand he would see in it all the variegated forms in which his eye delights, as well as in the innumerable shells which he finds on the seashore — until at last he chooses the most perfectly rounded pebble and the most har- moniously variegated shell, and delights in the touch and the sight of them and even at last turns them, not only to his use, but as ornaments for his own body or for his surroundings. Surely it is enough merely to suggest a few of these items in which the aesthetic principle of harmony, in the process as well as in the products, in the change and movement as well as in the static repose of nature as man learns to see it as a whole and in each of its innumerable parts, is constantly and continuously impressed upon his senses. Now it is these elements which make for ease and repose within the difficulty of apprehension and the restlessness of changes which he cannot control ; thus modifying his senses and their inner needs until he indissolubly associates these aesthetic elements with perceptive pleasure. When we turn from outer nature to man himself as an object of contemplation of form, his appearance, his body and face, we must, above all, remember that among all objects which man observes most fre- quently and continuously and with greatest interest, human beings are prominent. Moreover, these are impressed upon him from the first awakening of his senses to the end of his life. We can therefore, for instance, understand why the ancients — among them Vitruvius — sought to trace the origin of architectural forms back to human forms in their general propor- tion, and even with regard to some definite details. Though these analogies were frequently fanciful, it remains eminently true that the general sense of HARMONY IN OBJECTS OF NATURE 57 proportion and feeling for form as applied to all things, if they do not originate in the proportions of the human figure, are greatly influenced by the habitual standards established by this continuous observation. No doubt the proportions in the outwardly visible form of the human figure may ultimately be expressive of the perfect anatomical and physiological adjustment of the organs of the body ; but in their specious manifestation the standards of proportion, modified by the general life- standards of the peoples in various localities and periods of history, are fully established in themselves and in relations of proportions which respond to the aesthetic sense of harmony. Not only are there thus established the broad distinctions as regards the body between the cripple on the one hand and the perfectly-shaped man on the other ; but a great variety of shadings in the proportions of the body as a whole and in the relationship of the various members of the body to one another and to the whole, are directly fixed in the appreciative sense of the various peoples. So much is this the case that this scale of proportion as applied to all things, animate and inanimate, becomes subconsciously a norm of an appreciation of form. I would, for instance, even maintain that the lines expressed by what aestheticians have long since called the " golden section " (corre- sponding, roughly speaking, to the ordinary cross) arise out of the fact that, in facing and regarding the human beings whom we meet or with whom we converse, the face and head being the most important part of our observation, the relation of the head to the rest of the body, joined by the neck, has thus estab- lished the main subdivision between the upright and the horizontal, not, as might naturally be supposed, by a horizontal line of equal dimensions running through the centre of the perpendicular line, but 58 HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE the horizontal line from shoulder to shoulder, or ex- tended from hand to hand stretched out horizontally, thus accentuating the chief demarcation between the head, with the neck, and the rest of the body. No doubt the cross, familiarised to all modern peoples as a symbol of Christianity, which served to receive the body with extended arms, has thus further familiarised such a subdivision, unconsciously or subconsciously, with the so-called " golden section." Further, we must remember that the lines and proportions of the human face and of the body itself, presenting the most perfect harmony, have in their aesthetic appearance had a most important influence on the sexual instinct and sexual selection ; and that thus this, one of the most important elements, emotions, and passions in the life of man (and animals as well), is directly associated with, if not originated and modified by, the aesthetic aspect of form. But we must also realise that, even with primitive man and savages, and especially with civilised man, the nude body is covered from head to foot by different forms of raiment and embellishments, and these again in their outer appearance manifest in the highest degree of complexity all the varieties of line, colour, and form, and of purely aesthetic impressions. Further, civilised man — and to a lesser, though considerable, degree prehistoric man and the savage — is, above all, a domestic animal. Consider the all- important fact that, though he may spend much of his time in nature in the open air, his real life, and to him the most important part of his life, at least from the point of view of pleasurable impressions, happi- ness, and all that directly or remotely comes under the category of aesthetic enjoyment, is spent in his house, or in similar structures in town or village. From earliest infancy upwards the form of the dwellings is thus impressed upon his senses and associated with his IN DOMESTIC SURROUNDINGS 59 very existence on every side. Consider, furthermore, that in its outer appearance, whether artistically ornamented in detail or not, the house manifests in the most impressive form the harmonious pro- portions of a well-defined unity of structure in the whole and in all its parts and in the relation between the parts and the whole, from foundation to roof. The intersection of doors and windows, with cornices and mouldings, present the most pro- nounced harmony of lines joined into unity, divided symmetrically — in short, the simplest and most convincing form of all principles of art. From this point of view there is much justification in the claim of the architect that his art is the mother of all arts ; but, without in any way considering it as a work of art, the mere constant repercussion of such a mani- festation of absolute symmetry in the house as a unit, in its relation to the other houses and to the street as a whole, and the street with its pavement and middle roadway and symmetrically ivided parts and direction, is a most potent vehicle for the trans- mission of this sense of proportion in every moment of the visual life of civilised man. And when we come to the interior, the planning and arrangement of the rooms and hallways and stairs, with steps and banisters, to the rooms themselves, in which most of the lives of most people are spent from infancy upwards, whether in work, play, or repose, consider the structure of the rooms with the low or high wains- coting, with the doors and their setting, as well as the window frames and the windows, with the cornice leading over to'the ceiling, simple or ornate in moulding or decoration, with the position of the fireplace in its relation to doors and windows, until we come to the furniture and its position in the room, and to the articles of furniture themselves, displaying in chairs, couches, tables, in each as a whole and in every part 60 HARMONIOTROPISM IN HUMAN LIFE of their structure, plain or decorated, the most complex and most pronounced symmetry and harmony of proportion ; and when finally we con- sider that the eye and the sense of touch and the whole perceptive consciousness of every man and woman is thus continuously living within surroundings which, above all, impress in their totality and in their every detail proportion of line, shape, and colour in the most pronounced and continuously impressive form, we must realise that the lives of civilised men and women are set in a world of clearly and con- vincingly expressed harmony, symmetry, and pro- portion. Yet, furthermore, every article of dress and of use, apart from those which are meant by their artistic form directly to satisfy the aesthetic instinct, clearly and wholly show in their structure and the finish of elaboration (as did the stone implements of pre- historic man) the feeling for form, appealing to touch or sight. I have more than once insisted upon the fact that the greater proportion of our industries in crafts and manufacture, in the making of them and in their appeal to the purchaser, are intended to stimulate and to satisfy the feeling for form. Even in the transportation and packing of them, whether in a paper parcel, box, or case, the symmetry of form is the most manifest feature. It is no exaggeration to say that there is hardly a moment that passes in the existence of civilised man in which some of his senses are not impressed by these purely aesthetic stimulations and elements. And it is therefore not to be wondered at that in the phraseology, not only of the cultured and educated classes or individuals, but in that of the simplest people, far removed from what has been called the " Hellenic spirit," and quite unconscious of " art for its own sake " or aesthetics in any form, the terminology used to express ESTHETIC HABITUATION 61 their approval or disapproval of the constant experi- ences in their daily life as well as of the people and objects about them, and even of their work and occupation, is essentially of an aesthetic nature. With the least cultured people, things and work are either nice or nasty, fine or mean, splendid or poor, beautiful, ugly, or beastly, or they may use still more emphatic adjectives of approval or disapproval borrowed from the outer appearance of things. If we really dwell upon, and fully appreciate, these simple influences of daily life upon civilised man, we shall realise the dominant part which the aesthetic factor plays in his existence. CHAPTER VI THE ACTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE AESTHETIC OR HAR- MONISTIC PRINCIPLE All that has hitherto been said concerning the aesthetic element as dominating the perceptive facul- ties applies more to the passive and receptive per- ceptions themselves. We now come to the element of aesthetic satisfaction or pleasure in the active aspect of the organs of sense-perception, namely, in their function as such, in the liberation of their functional energy, as distinguished from their reception of outer stimuli. Here again we must establish two main subdivisions : (i) The delight in the function itself for its own sake purely and simply, whether physical or mental ; (2) the direction or modification of the aesthetic element, by the search for formal harmony, beauty, and even use. In this second division we approach more closely and directly the development of art and the theory of that department of mental activity. But, before entering upon this inquiry into the active side of our perceptive senses and faculties, we must in a few words consider the sexual instincts ; but only in their bearing upon the harmoniotropic and aesthetic instincts. The supreme importance of the sexual instinct in life, upon which the preservation and continuance of the species depends, can hardly be overestimated. Whether the sexual impulses are based merely upon the normal internal functioning of the physiological elements concerned in the normal 62 LOVE 63 life of all organisms and in man, we need not consider here. That they are most active and powerful must be admitted. But we are concerned with the excita- tion of these functions through outer and inner stimuli which produce desire, passion, and that emotional state in man termed love. Here again arises the question whether the conditions producing this stimulation are due to the racial " affinities " (or harmonies), or affinities among the same species or between definite individuals among these, sub- consciously producing " attraction " (as per contra antagonisms are similarly produced) ; or whether they are, in a higher degree of consciousness, awakened and intensified by the perception of quality in indi- viduals which produces what in one simple word we call " admiration." Our subdivision, be it understood, does not exclude the combination and fusion of both these elements, the subconscious and the conscious. In the first source of stimulation it is evident that in the " affinity " or harmony of the outer object, itself a direct and complete manifestation of the har- monistic principle, and its harmonious response to the mentality as well as to the physical nature of the receptive being (whether plant, animal, or man), the harmonistic and aesthetic element is emphatically dominant. Darwin even uses the highly complex term " beauty " as being the dominant element in sexual affinity and selection, on which latter the evolution of organisms and man greatly depends. In the second origin of erotic tendencies, to which the term " love " may more fittingly be applied, sexual affinity and selection are no doubt also active, as they are in the lower organisms. But sexual affinity is turned into " elective affinity." Furthermore, the object which thus incites and develops sexual emotion produces, through the perceiving senses, what again in one simple term we call " admiration." Those 64 INFLUENCE OF /ESTHETIC PRINCIPLE qualities which produce " admiration " may in man be of a physical or of a mental and spiritual nature. They may be perceived and realised with full con- sciousness or in various degrees of subconsciousness, and may be the outcome of direct or reminiscent stimulation of those elements which produce the emotion of " admiration." They may be aroused by one single quality or group of qualities or by the personality or object as a whole. Finally, the individual thus affected may, as far as conscious reali- sation is concerned, be in error in assigning to the one or other quality the cause of his admiration. Admiration as an emotional state thus responds to qualities and objects not necessary to the physical subsistence of human beings — purely physical — in nature, but may be mental and spiritual ; and thus the love or Eros of Plato applies to all love of the perfect, the ideal, including even the cognitive Eros which impels man to the love of Wisdom or Philo- sophy. It thus produces the mental or spiritual desire and passion which underlie all mental and moral activities. But what is essential to the meaning of love as the expression of the sexual instinct and passion is that " admiration " is an active emotional state producing desire which impels man to act and to create. It is thus the foundation of all willed activity, all pro- ductivity and creativeness in man — it forms the out- going, " poietic " passion which, beyond mere physical subsistence in the lower organisms, leads man to will and to act, to produce and to create, and thus enters into every activity and every phase of life and mind in the existence of man. What, however, we are concerned with is that, whether through racial and subconscious " affinity " and sexual selection, or through admiration, the aesthetic instinct and faculty are strengthened in JOIE DE VIVRE 65 the mental life of man, and, through them, permeate his every activity. There is attached to, or implied in, all normal functioning of the human organs an aesthetic element, depending, not only upon the function of individual organs as such, but also upon the harmonious relation of all the several organs of the human body, including those directly concerned in mental activity. This relationship of the part to the whole is directly con- cerned with normality and health, the basis of all the physiological life of the individual organic being, both from the anatomical and physiological point of view. As the subject of theoretical study this leads us to anatomy and physiology, just as the disturbance of such organic harmony in the living individual being constitutes the study of pathology. But when we regard this group of phenomena, not from the outside as objects of such study, but within the individual reflecting the sensory and emotional states correspond- ing to the normal and healthy function, approaching from the subconscious to the conscious dwelling upon such complete and harmonious relationship of structure and vitality, we have a direct response in human perception, emotion, and consciousness to the aesthetic principle of harmony. In a general sense the sum of such emotion arising out of the normal and healthy functioning, when sufficiently strong to manifest itself in a general perception, emotion, or in consciousness, leads to a feeling of vigorous vitality, and may be summarised under the French phrase la joie de vivre ; just as per contra a disturbance in the functioning of the human organs and an inhar- monious relationship in their organic inter-activity produce disease, discomfort, pain, or at least what neuro-pathologists have called " organ-sensations," in which latter condition the functioning of those single organs — -essential to normal self-preservation, 6 66 INFLUENCE OF AESTHETIC PRINCIPLE each in complete subordination to the organic unity of functions — becomes obtrusively aggressive and in so far disturbs the mental and emotional equilibrium. On the other hand, not by the involuntary obtrusion of such organ-sensations, but when the designed desire of activity or a completely directed conscious activity of will is centred upon some individual function, the perfect functioning of individual organs or groups of organs, apart from their normal subordination to the central object of physiological self-preservation, may also become directly pleasurable in the con- scious or subconscious realisation of the harmony in the functioning of such organs themselves. Thus the complete, accurate or comprehensive perceptive or receptive activities of the eye and the ear and of touch in perceiving form and colour and sound may in themselves as functions, when realised to be working harmoniously and perfectl}' - , be a source of such aesthetic pleasure. The same applies to our muscular activity and the realisation of its stored up energy and vitality, as we see by the delight of the infant in its own vitality in movement and in exercise, by the jumping and dancing of children, their shouting and their singing, and by the pleasure in exercise and sport of adults. It may not be inadvisable here to cast by anticipa- tion a suggestive glimpse into the later region of fully developed art and the aesthetic principles which underlie and permeate it. Now, it is out of this delight in the spontaneous liberation of vital energy (muscular, organic, and mental) as well as in the spon- taneous and perfect functioning of our muscles and organs, that,! on the physical side, all that may be summarised under the word play and, on the mental side, all that approaches directly to art, are developed in the human species. The pleasure in what we call exercise pure and simple, walking, PLAY AND ART 67 running, jumping, shouting, leads to our organised games, and the whole development of our athletic institutions. On the mental side the same liberation of mental energy leads to art in all its forms. Between the two, where the physical and mental join and intermingle, we come to symmetrical and rhythmical or consciously harmonious movement in dance, or we convert the shouting into singing, and find delight in the regularity of beat or metre, in the dancers, the regular clapping of hands, or striking of the " tom- tom," or in the music and even the verses of the most primitive people, until out of these simple forms of pleasure in harmonious muscular activity and sense-perception, there spring all the creative arts and crafts of time and space in decorative arts, in architecture, sculpture, painting, as well as in music and poetry. I must still further point out and antici- pate what belongs to later inquiry, the fact that such aesthetic activity cannot occur when function and exertion are directed to some definite outer production responding to duty or utility, if this outer object absorbs the whole of attention and motive force and leaves no opportunity for pleasure in the function itself. This marks the difference between work and play, as it also does in later stages between the prag- matic or useful, the ethical or good, or the scientific or true, attitude of the mind. Play and art thus do not belong to the activities immediately necessary for physical self-preservation, but constitute what might be called, with some suggestive vagueness of meaning, luxury, in contradistinction to necessity. Though it is therefore only in the more restful moments of recreation or in the comparatively more advanced organisation of social life that such " luxury ' of existence becomes a conscious aim of human activity, and then produces " culture," we have not yet found, in even the most primitive phases of existence in 68 INFLUENCE OF /ESTHETIC PRINCIPLE historic and prehistoric times, any period when such activities did not form a part of the life and were not of paramount importance to primitive human beings. On the other hand, the more highly civilised societies become, the more fully are these elements of existence recognised, organised, and developed. In this respect it is a most suggestive fact in history that the ancient Greeks, to whom civilised man down to the present day owes what is most essential to our civilisation in all departments, were also the first to have developed, on the one side, athletic games as an essential institu- tion of their communal and national society, and on the other art — and, moreover, pure art, that is, art the physical expression of which, e.g. picture, statue, drama, poem, music, etc., served no other purpose than the immediate and complete satisfaction of the sesthetic instinct as such. For many years I have been engaged in lecturing for the Gilchrist Educational Trust l to the working 1 The most illustrious as well as most successful lecturers, among many others, were Huxley, Sir Robert Ball, and Dr. Dallinger. In every lecture we addressed hundreds and even thousands of skilled and un- skilled labourers in every part of the country, from the North of Scotland to Land's End and from the West of Ireland to the east coast of England. They were chiefly in the industrial centres, but also extended to agri- cultural and fishing districts. They generally lasted for an hour and a quarter, during which these large and mixed audiences manifested unbroken attention, sustained interest sometimes rising to enthusiasm. The lecture from which a passage is here given began with the state- ment that, in singling out among qualities which tended to make life efficient and happy, perhaps the most prominent was the sense of pro- portion. It was this sense which enabled us justly to balance the claims of others and our own, the importance of individual disappointments and sorrows in their relation to our life as a whole, and it even enabled us to be just to ourselves in that we could justly harmonise our duties with our capabilities. The most important aspect of our life in which it produced beneficent peace and contentment was the division and harmony between our life of work and of play. It was with the latter division with which the lecture was chiefly concerned. The second half of the lecture was devoted to Greek Art with illustrations. Abso- lute evidence was produced that these audiences learnt fully to appre- ciate, e.g., the beauties of the Parthenon pediments. THE POSTMAN 69 population of the United Kingdom, one of which was on " Labour and Art in English Life, illustrated by- Greek Art," which I am justified in saying was eminently successful in bringing home to the labouring population the position which art has held, and ought to hold, in the life of a civilised community. It may be useful to quote a passage here illustrative of the preceding contention. Of course, in bringing home to them in some form the distinctive character of artistic perception, one was bound to avoid, as far as possible, abstract generalities, and to employ definite examples. Beginning with the production or the purchase of a walking-stick, or of a pipe, one endeavoured to convince them how potent was the artistic instinct in their choice of such objects, and how this choice illustrated the essential principles of art in proportion and harmony. But, with regard to the artistic element in the functioning of the human organism just referred to, I always found two special examples of convincing effectiveness : the first was a detailed account of the duty of the postman on his daily round ; the other was the form and colour of an apple. " The postman has to go from this place X to that village Y, which is six miles off. Day by day, in rain or sunshine, whether he is tired or fresh, ill or well, he has to trudge his daily round and deliver his letters. Every limb and muscle of his body is subordinated to this supreme task of making his round, and his eyes and his attention must not wander ; they must be fixed on the letters which are in his charge, so that he may deliver each one to the house indicated by the address on the envelope. You will all admit that this is work — hard work. Now, you or I, who happen not to be postmen, but are working men, each one of us in our several ways, are cooped up for every day of the working week in our workshop, in the factory or the mill, down in 70 INFLUENCE OF AESTHETIC PRINCIPLE the pits, or in our shop, in our office, in our study — we are all working men, at least I hope so. Well, let us say we have a holiday, or a half-holiday — a whole holiday would be better — and, being normal, healthy human beings, possessing the two great requisites for happiness and efficiency — a good digestion and a good conscience — we are not satisfied to remain indoors and mope, and we do not wish to work at what is our exclusive occupation during the week ; so our healthy energy drives us out and we take the same walk which the postman took. But, mark the difference ! Every step we take, the act of planting our feet firmly and pushing back our knees vigorously, of contracting and extending our every muscle — these acts are not subordinated to any further duty or task, but the exertion of energy becomes a pleasure in itself. The expansion of our chest as we breathe in the fresh pure air in this beautiful country when you get beyond the town and the smoke of the factories, the very act of breathing, becomes a source of pleasure. We need not trudge on wearily and reluctantly, as the postman does — our very effort is the object and aim of our moving and is in itself a source of delight. And our eyes ! They are not riveted upon the letters and the address of the houses which we may pass ; but we allow them free scope to drink in all the beauty of the country about us. The road itself, winding along like a bright fawn-coloured ribbon, as it ascends the hills and dips into the valleys ; the hedgerows on either side with the lovely mass of plants and shrubs, each smallest particle of which presents a world of beautiful lines and hues and colours against the blue sky ; and, further afield, the gracefully undulating country, rich in its green turf, more beautiful than any velvet carpet that man's hand can weave ; even the colour of the ploughed field, from dark russet and brown, through yellowish buff and mauve, changing with every season and always beautiful to the eye ; and where the dip is down the valley, where the bubbling, babbling stream rushes along between the over- hanging trees ; and up again to your beautiful hills THE APPLE 71 whose green slopes gradually fade away into a misty blue — all this your eyes drink in with a gladness that fills your soul. And, when the sunset comes — such as we had this evening — you see beyond and between each hill the whole sky streaked and flecked with clouds, deep blackish-grey on either side, and between them the setting sun sinks down, a fiery vermilion globe. And, as it gradually disappears between the masses of grey clouds to right and left, the sky between becomes a bright luminous transparent endless sea of molten silver, that gradually grows deeper, turning more to yellow, until it becomes again a fiery mass of molten gold. And from gold it grows ruddy, at first a delicate pink ; then a richer crimson in the centre, and, through the delicate pink, the clouds that are touched by it are embroidered with a luminous golden band between the mass of pink, bright and filled with light ; they fade towards green, to a delicate light sea-green as this whole mass of light and colour sends its last rays, sweeping over the darkening green fields ; and you stand in the midst of all this world of colour and form, drunken with the sight of it, and your heart is filled with the beauty of its harmonious life, until your joy becomes too solemn for expression and fills your whole nature with a glow of responsive gratitude. This walk is the play-side ; the postman's walk was the work- side. " Let me give you one more instance : " An apple is, to most of us, simply an article of pleasant food and nothing more. Now, remember, only one person can possess that apple and eat it ; and if two people want the same apple — ah, that is the beginning of all envy, hatred, and malice 1 And if two nations want the same tract of land, as we have seen but recently in the south-east of Europe, they spring at each other's throats, and the fields flow in blood. But has it ever occurred to you that there is another way of regarding that apple ? When you go home this evening, do me the favour to take an apple, and put it on your hand and look at it. Don't consider it as an article of food, and forget 72 INFLUENCE OF ESTHETIC PRINCIPLE the fact that it belongs to you. Only look at its form and colour. Has it ever occurred to you what a beautiful object an apple is ? Note the lovely rondeur of it, the beautiful roundness. Not the roundness of a circle drawn with a pair of compasses, hard and mechanical in its absolute regularity, but a lovely variegated rondeur full of movement and life in the flow of lines ; slightly flattened at the top, where it dips down in the little hollow that we did not like as children because we could not eat it ; curves intersecting each other on either side — not one apple is exactly like the other, and each contains a world of beautiful harmonious form. And the colour of it ! On the one side you have a deep cherry red, most intense in the centre of it and gradually shading off more delicately into tender reddish hues that grow more and more pink and then end inter- fused with a tinge of yellow that leads over into a greenish hue as you come to the other side ; and the green, quite pale, becomes more intense and deeper until it grows into a rich verdant green opposite to the deep crimson red on the other side ; the small roughly rounded object presenting you with a world of colour and gradations of colour in itself, harmonised throughout, and lines and mass and curves and colours uniting into one harmony and beauty of form and, through your eyes, fills your own soul with its own harmony and beauty. " Now, mind you — and this is an important point — not only you can thus enjoy it. Every other person who looks at it in the same way and in the same spirit can derive the same refining and elevating pleasure out of it, and its substance is not diminished thereby. It does not become the apple of desire and discord ; it is not consumed by one person only with the enjoyment of the eating of it. The desire to possess it does not produce antagonism between people who crave for it, hatred and malice among them, and greed that fills their soul with wrath. On the contrary, the fact of enjoying it, the fact that there are kindred souls who can be moved by the same ennobling spirit of artistic delight, draws you together. THE SPIRIT OF ART 73 That is the spirit of art ; it is the golden chain that knits humanity together, instead of severing them ; that purifies and elevates the soul and leads it on to love and fellowship of mankind and of all the works of God. The more people enjoy a work of art, the more does it fulfil its sacred destiny, and the substance of the work itself is not diminished. On the contrary, we may say the vitality of its existence is thereby confirmed and increased. A great drama or a great poem that is not heard by a large number of people who can thrill with the harmony of diction, and can be moved by the scenes and the stirring events and feelings which they convey, is dead and does not exist ; but the more people who are thus moved by such a work, the greater is its artistic life and vitality. A great symphony or oratorio or any work of music that does not cause the heart-strings of the listeners to vibrate in harmony with its own beautiful tones and the rhythmical sequence of its melody and metric harmony is dead ; but the more it thus moves, refines, and elevates the greatest number of people, the more does it live. And so with a statue that presents the most beautiful forms in nature in har- monious masses, with gracious curves which repro- duce the great types and ideals which have been evolved by nature in its struggles towards perfection for countless ages ; so also with a great picture that transfers the beautiful forms of nature and the semblance of man and his life on the flat canvas ; and by means of drawing and composition of lines and colours harmonised, and light and shade and perspective, selects from the world without what is most beautiful and gives it back to the eye of man, capable of receiving the noblest gift of beauty which this life can present to us. So with art in all its forms. And all these great works treasured up through past centuries, from every race and from every clime, produced by the great geniuses of the world with the work of their hands and the sweat of their brows — nay, the blood of their hearts — they are all there ready for us. And how many of you enjoy their fruit, and give back to them the very soul 74 INFLUENCE OF AESTHETIC PRINCIPLE of their vitality for which they were created and for which they exist for mankind ? " I am not overstating my case when I say to you that every man and woman of ordinary intelligence, possessed of normal senses (for if they are born colour- blind or note-deaf they cannot appreciate pictures or music), can arrive at the appreciation of the highest works of art — provided you are given the chance and, above all, give yourselves a chance of cultivating and training your faculties. But how often have I heard you say : ' These things are not for us ; they are for our betters.' That is not true. Such servility of mind, unworthy of free men, arises out of mental sloth and intellectual cowardice. The great art treasures in our country belong to the nation — they belong to you ; and what good are they to you, what use do you make of them ? " If you were told that beneath the soil on which I am now standing there were treasures of precious metals or valuable chemicals, you would think that it was ' flying in the face of Providence ' that such values remained unused, that such huge capital brought no interest. And here, in the great works of art, the most valuable treasure, the noblest spiritual capital of the nation, remains unused, yields no interest as far as you are concerned — in fact, is by your indolence and subserviency deprived of its life, lies dead ! For, as I have said, a work of art which is not perceived is dead, and can only be resuscitated to life by the responsive human soul, by aesthetic appreciativeness. ' ' Thus art is the final and most direct expression of the active influence of the harmonistic and aesthetic principle dominating the senses and the whole mind of man. CHAPTER VII THE DOMINANCE OF THE ^ESTHETIC ATTITUDE OF MIND IN CULTURED LIFE The result of our inquiry into the active functioning of the human mind, as affected by the aesthetic or harmonistic principle, has shown us how it leads to " play " and, finally, to the production of art. These results will be further investigated from a more special point of view in the chapter on ^Esthetics in the Second Part. But we must now return to consider the influence and dominance of the aesthetic attitude of mind in civilised, and even cultured, life as produced by our mental need for symmetry, proportion, order, law in the highly organised life of what we may call the historical period of human society. In the various aspects of this life we are concerned with the life of reason, of use, and economy, of social and ethical order, of political organisation, and, finally, of religious ideals, as well as with art ; and these subdivisions of the main question, as I have already said, will be dealt with specially in the chapters on Epistemology, ^Esthetics, Pragmatics, Ethics, Politics, and Religion in the Second Part. At the same time, however, while we are now endeavouring to realise the influence and dominance of the aesthetic and harmonistic attitude of mind within the wholeness of life, we must point to those facts in the actual ordinary life of civilised man which prove this dominant influence in our conscious existence. 75 76 DOMINANCE OF ESTHETIC ATTITUDE In the first instance, it is all-important for us to consider that civilised man — and this is true even of the beginnings of civilisation when purely animal instincts and passions predominated over the organ- ised life of the family and of society — undergoes from birth upwards, far into adult life, a process of training or education to prepare and fit him as a member of ordered civilised existence. Now, it is through this training and education in the home and in the school that system, order, law, harmonious relationship of man to man and to the material and moral world in which he lives, are designedly and systematically impressed upon him from infancy upwards, until, habitually and subconsciously, as well as consciously and in willed action, his whole mentality is based upon this summary ideal of social harmony. This applies to his mental faculties, to the direction of his will, to the control of all elements that make up intelligence and to his own individual deportment as an individual. From infancy upwards he is insistently impressed with the general framework of his existence within order and law, in the division of time for his life and his occupation, according to firmly established principles ; in the regulation of time ; in the broad division of occupations between work and play, between duty and recreation ; in the indulgence and realisation of his own needs and desires, as well as of those of others ; in his deportment, habits, and manners in order to contribute to the peaceful and pleasant flow of human intercourse and the avoidance of conflicts and dis- turbances ; and, finally, in the direct modification of his own personality so that it should be aesthetically attractive and not repulsive — the care and cleanliness of his person beyond mere hygienic needs (though these also are ultimately reducible to harmonistic principles), including to the care and embellishment of his dress. All these factors constantly and continuously ORDER, MANNERS, DRESS 77 impress upon him the ordered and harmonious life, the foundation of an aesthetic principle of guidance directing the existence of each individual towards a harmonious whole of civilised society. When we come to his direct ethical and intellectual training we again have a completely organised and ordered system harmonious in itself, as well as in the propor- tion which it bears to the wholeness of civilised life, as developed in the teaching of school and in the home. The life of reason and the life of justice and goodness are thus impressed upon him by the estab- lished rules of order and proportion and harmony ; while in the elementary and advanced teaching of this life of reason, thought, and knowledge, as we shall more fully realise as we proceed, he is subconsciously, if not consciously, impressed and habituated by means of the harmonious structure and method of the various departments of knowledge and thought. In these particulars, by systems developed through many ages, in the simplest subjects like language, grammar, and arithmetic, as well as in the higher departments of science, the harmonious structure of reason applied to the world of things, to the material and to the spiritual world, is infused into his whole mentality. Through education and continuous experience civilised man thus becomes the reasoning being and is thereby distinguished from the brute animal world, and this life of reason becomes a dominant quality in his consciousness, in his normal existence, in contradistinction to the unreasoning, the chaotic, and casual, as well as inharmonious, existence of the haphazard sequence of events, ending in conflict, which would be his condition were it not guided by such established and dominant order. However much and frequently in the experiences of his life he may meet with the power and often the prevalence of unreason, of stupidity, and even of insanity ; how- 78 DOMINANCE OF ESTHETIC ATTITUDE ever much he, or those with whom he associates, may prove blind or deaf to the vision and the hearing of truth and reason, the shock, pain, or revulsion which will be thereby caused will only the more confirm the ruling supremacy of reason as the normal condition of his conscious mentality through which he can realise with wonder, pain, or opposition the excep- tional obtrusion of unreason — just as before we noticed that in his perception of nature the accidental and inharmonious phenomena only confirm the symmetrical and harmonious laws of form in nature. The same applies to the conditions of use and economy in life and in the occupations and material aims of man's existence. His own work and that of others is organised so as to fit harmoniously in with the work and the needs of the society in which he lives ; and again, in spite of the failures and imper- fections, disharmonies, ineptitudes, and injustices which may divert the successful striving after economic harmony ; and in spite of the continuous changes and conflicts which arise in order to har- monise supply and demand, and the means and ends of material subsistence, it is because this final goal of establishing complete harmony within the discord is the leading factor in our mentality that the dis- harmonies are felt and that society struggles for final adjustment and harmony. The same again emphatically applies to man's specifically social life and the codes of laws and morals, including manners, which are developed in each successive period, harmonious in themselves, in order to lead to the final harmony of collective life. If man is differentiated from animal as an intellectual being, he is also eminently so as a moral and social being. From childhood up, a civilised man — even if he develops into a criminal — has impressed upon him the ruling moral standards of the society in which MORAL HARMONY IN JUSTICE, ETC. 79 he lives. Justice and charity are infused into his mentality from his earliest years upwards. All the actions of the human animal before the establishment and recognition of these leading moral laws, and the moral consciousness of the society in which he lives, were casual and unrelated to one another, caused and directed merely by the momentary instinct or impulse, until, through the evolution of consciousness and self-consciousness and the relation to other conscious and active beings like himself, by means of memory and association, his actions are all integrated in his consciousness as emanating from himself — those of the past as well as the present — including even his prospective desires and activities in the future, his intentions, hopes, and aspirations. Out of this confluence and integration of mental activities there grows his Conscience, the mental power and constraining force which unites all his past actions and the memory of them into a unit and recognises their living relationship to his own self and to other beings and to the world of things without. Corre- sponding to this organic and complex relationship, indissolubly bound in the consciousness of man into a unity which constitutes his own moral personality, there arises in him what in one word is called his conscience, which again harmonises with the collective conscience of the community in which he lives. In the light of this ruling spiritual factor of man's actions as seen and felt, he is bound to feel the constraining impulse to harmonise his actions with his conscience. Justice and charity in social life are the expressions of that need for moral harmony towards which, by the very nature of his mentality, he must strive. But here again, as we have seen before, the actual experiences of life will show that these moral laws do not always exercise their unquestioned sway. Wrongdoings, injustices, and 80 DOMINANCE OF AESTHETIC ATTITUDE criminalities abound— the Good does not prevail in this life. We finally come to the second subdivision in this phase of our inquiry, namely, the mere functioning of the organs themselves, to the higher activities as directed and strongly modified by the aesthetic element. But I wish my readers to distinguish here a somewhat difficult and intricate point. Remember that we are still considering the origin and the development of the aesthetic element in the mind, which will enable us later on to realise not only the whole of human activity as directly produced, or affected by the aesthetic instinct as such, but also its continuous and all-pervading effectiveness, if not its dominance, throughout all the phases of life. We are therefore now merely trying to grasp the produc- tion of the aesthetic instinct as well as the confirmation and strengthening of that instinct, the view-point and the habit of mind, so that finally we shall be able fully to comprehend to what degree this element be- comes a directing part of our whole mentality (more especially through the emotions and the imagination) and of all our activities. It is from this point of view, and from this point of view only, that I wish you to realise how the whole of our experiences of human life thus impress upon us in their totality, as well as in detail, the aesthetic principle. Here again, as in the recognition of natural laws, in education, and in economics, the experiences which counteract the dominance of moral law and order in life confirm their rule within our consciousness as standards of perfect life — of all life. For, however the constant repercussion of our life- experience may impress upon us the rule of injustice, so that at times we may question WTiether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, THE PERFECT STANDARD OF LIFE 81 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them ? For who would bear the whips and scorns of time. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? whatever irrationalities may thwart the expectancy of, and the desire for, a reasoned succession of events by due cause and effect without the intervention of what we call chance, good fortune, luck ; however inharmonious and discordant from our reason all about us may be, — these experiences only confirm in us the dominant harmony of our spirit, the ever- present longing for justice, for the rational balance of moral cause and effect, for success in our well- directed enterprise, for the admiration of the great and good man, and of pure and noble lives, with the recognition of supreme eminence instead of undeserved failure. We do indeed find the mean and bad man successful and prosperous. Yet all our longings for moral balance, for the victory of moral principles, for the realisation of Poetic Justice, only confirm the passionate and ever-present hope that complete harmony may succeed the discord and cacophony about us ; and this hope or passionate endeavour, this protest or unremitting fight is the mainspring of our conscious existence and of the human will, indi- vidual and collective. It matters not that we may relegate perfect harmony to Utopia, or that, realising this imperfect world of ours, we may be fully aware that such harmony is still indefinitely remote. But the standard of the perfect world is the basis of all our values, and harmony of life the guiding principle of our consciousness, from which the disheartening realities are but tortuous deviations and bypaths. 7 82 DOMINANCE OF AESTHETIC ATTITUDE The pessimist is really a disappointed optimist, as the sceptic is the disappointed dogmatist. They profess scepticism or pessimism because the highest standards and ideals dominate their inner life as opposed to outer life and reality. And, after all, perhaps were we to tabulate our experience with statistical accuracy, we should find that the cases in which true merit is unsuccessful and the unworthy wins the day are really exceptional, and that, when our experiences are summed up and balanced the good and best are really the victors. In organised society, in politics, in the life of communities and States, man is again impressed throughout his life with their orderly and harmonious organisation, in contradistinction to disorganisation, anarchy, and disharmony. It is an old commonplace that " order is the soul of the State." In every State and in every organised community within it, the harmonious relationship of all individuals to their corporate bodies is the recognised guiding principle. However they may differ in form and conception, they all directly tend to further peace, contentment, progress, and the harmonious collective life within their separate organisations ; but, further, the life of these separate bodies, local or federal, must be har- monised with the wider unit, and finally nations and States must ultimately be harmonised (among each other) in their due relationships, confirming justice and peace. In spite of all the changes in political organisation during the ages of historical evolution, in spite of all the differing forms of government, in spite of all discontent, reform, and even revolution, the one fact remains — that the aim and the soul of all government is the realisation of harmony between the citizens of the State and of other States which will confirm freedom, peace, and prosperity by means of law and order. It is here that, from childhood POLITICS AND RELIGION 83 upwards, all civilised men and women have impressed upon them throughout their lives the dominance of harmony in human existence, even if they be criminals or revolutionists. Finally, in religion man aspires to the realisation of the perfect life, the supreme harmony between his highest aspirations and conceptions, and the ultimate realisation, in this or in some other life, of these highest ideals. The soul of harmony is here complete. In spite of all imperfections which, in the outer realisation of this ultimate religious harmony, the creeds of man may show in their successive phases, from crass superstitions, magic, fetishism, idol- worship of the most material nature upwards, through the lives of saints and martyrs and the creeds which inspired them, the ultimate aim and soul of all religion is this striving for supreme and final harmony. The impress which the religious life and teaching thus give to the mind is, above all and most directly, the Principle of Harmonism. It is thus that in the existence of civilised man, and in the whole development of his mentality and his subconscious as well as conscious life, he has con- stantly impressed upon him, as the basis of all civilised spiritual existence, in which mind dominates over matter, the principle of Harmony manifested in him by the aesthetic attitude of mind. PART II SPECIAL PART II INTRODUCTION In the first part of this book, dealing with the problem of Harmonism from the general point of view, we were concerned in discovering the origin of the sesthetic instinct in life and mind and its dominance in man in the form of Harmoniotropism, leading to Aristotropism, made more effective by the presence and activity of the dualistic senses and the sym- metrical division of organic bodies, organs, and senses, and their functions, and in the single (not dualistic) senses by their somatocentric and centrobaric tend- encies, which latter in turn facilitate the development of sentience, perception, consciousness, and, finally, self-consciousness. We traced the origin of these principles back through the animal and plant world to the most rudimentary organisms, and finally saw how the life-experience of human beings, possessed of normally developed minds, accounted for the dominating influence of this aesthetic instinct in man underlying all conscious and subconscious activities. We now turn in the life of the fully developed normal human being to the special or philosophical aspect of the question. We shall here again see how in the mental development of man, as manifested in the several departments constituting his systematic conscious life — in Epistemology, ^Esthetics, Prag- matics, Ethics, Politics, and Religion — the aesthetic instinct, operating through the harmoniotropic and aristotropic principles, is ultimately dominant and 87 88 INTRODUCTION constitutes the elementary and final principle of rational existence. We found that, even with lower organisms, sentience — which by gradual stages leads to consciousness — did not depend upon a purely monistic principle, in which either the outer stimulus itself " mechanis- tically " determined the nature of sentience, nor yet upon the inner disposition of the receptive organ, be it through entelechy or through " purposefulness. " It really depends upon the triadic harmonistic relation- ship in the nature of the outer stimuli, in the receptive organs themselves, and between the two, all three re- lationships establishing the final harmonistic relation. It is again through the harmonistic principle in time and space, by periodic repercussion on the one hand, and by physical and sensory affinity on the other, producing corresponding changes in the receptive organs, that these organs are developed in the line of sentience, and a corresponding state of the organism results from such repercussion of stimuli and sensory states, out of which grow memory and association. But memory depends upon the most pronounced form of harmonism, namely, identity of successive stimula- tions, or something closely approximating identity ; while association depends upon the harmonious affinity in the outer stimuli (physico-chemical or more complex), as well as upon the inner harmonious affinity of the sensory organs and their activities. Now, when in the fully developed human being memory and the associative feelings are once estab- lished, all conscious impressions from without, all perceptions, are conveyed by means of images. 1 These images, however, always produce what we call 1 Even in the lower organisms it has been determined that images are thus conveyed, and that, for instance, in fishes images in the form of colour patterns are transmitted through the optic nerve to the 3urface and are actually reproduced in the scales of fishes. IMMOTION, EMOTION, IMAGINATION 89 an immotion, a receptive nervous activity corre- sponding to the stimulation. This immotion, when sentience is complete, produces an emotion, a general mental state or condition corresponding to, and harmonising with, the perceptive image. Otherwise the outer stimulus, though striking the peripheral receptor organs, fails to be perceived. An inorganic body, a stone, or even an organic body not possessed of sensory organs attuned to the outer stimulation, fails to feel the stimulation and is not moved by it. Through the more passive state of immotion the step is made to the more active state of emotion. Through memory and association a similar or harmonic emo- tional state or mood is thus spontaneously evoked and recalled. No conscious or subconscious stimulation or im- motion is purely objective in the developed mentality of man. We might even say that no so-called reflex action (excepting perhaps those depending upon galvanotropism) is purely objective. They are none of them unalloyed as regards the emotional state of the mentally developed organism. The receptor organ or organs are not purely passive recipients of an objective stimulation. An emotive state, based upon memory and association, at once reacts to every stimulation and perception by calling up similar images which in the higher human mind take the form of (literally) Imagination, and which essentially directs the reaction to the outer stimulus or perception of outer objects. Now, it depends upon the relative clearness of the image thus evoked through the imagination to what degree the emotional and motive activity becomes conscious, designed, and reasoned, or subconscious, vague, and unreasoned. There is thus an infinite gradation from the most mechanical form of reflex action, through all stages of subconsciousness, to 90 INTRODUCTION clear purpose, design, will, reasoned volition, and purposeful activity. Excluding the insane and mentally deficient, as well as all states of hypnosis, and also of those states when we are what we call " blinded " by passion, or are in fits of " absent-mindedness " (when purely by the spontaneous activity of subconscious memory and association our emotional states dominate our consciousness and resultant activity), 1 every conscious form of activity, controlled and directed by the mind, is determined by the activity of the imagination, dependent upon and directed by the harmoniotropic tendency in its higher conscious form of the aristotropic faculty of the mind. The step from the harmoniotropic to the aristo- tropic activity of the mind is analogous to, though not identical with, that noted from sexual affinity and selec- tion to elective affinity in sexual life referred to in Part I. Every single action, however simple, common, and material, as well as our most complex, exceptional, and spiritual activities, if wholly conscious, are all preceded by an image presented to our inner con- sciousness. This image directs our activity, our energy, our desire and aim. The clearer the image, the more conscious, the more completely willed, and the more intellectually reasoned does that action become. The vaguer the emotion, the less defined in consequence will be the image, the less clear our purpose and design — our Will — and the more are we guided by subconscious emotional images, blurred 1 The fundamental thesis of a remarkable book by my brother, the late Dr. Louis Waldstein, is that " in whatever degree or manner these perceptions may have been received, they are registered permanently ; they are never absolutely lost." In this book on The Subconscious Self and its Relation to Education and Health, published in 1897, but written some years before this, in spite of some marked difference in conclusions and exposition, the author had, if not anticipated, at least come to some of the chief conclusions since made public by Dr. Freud. FROM THE HARMONIOTROPIC 91 and vague in outline and design ; but ever present as imaginative stimuli in action. The clearer our determination, the more active is the aristotropic tendency, even though it arise from a vague and perhaps faulty image. Within the focus of this determined activity there are subconscious resonances and reminiscences of a variety of images out of which the one which attracts and ultimately directs our activity stands forth in sharpest precision, even though it be wrapped in emotional indefiniteness of design. Take the commonest acts of daily life — the eating of an apple, the shutting of a door, the moving in one direction or another — and all the innumerable acts that we do not perform automatically or in a fit of aberration or absent-mindedness, but as conscious activities. Somewhere in the mind there appears with greater or less distinctness, according to the degree of " concentration " of our activity, an image of the perfect accomplishment and achievement of such an act. It is the realisation of the act of eating the apple, with perhaps even the anticipation of the pleasant effects, the perfect consummation of the deed, which presents itself in some form and draws us on to the directly designed action. We see the completeness in the act of closing the door, which presents itself as the aim and stimulus to that simple action of ours. We more or less see ourselves arrived at the point which has determined us to move in a certain direction as the stimulation to our movement. Further than that, our imagination may often evoke at the same time several alternative activities, and our decision then is marked by what we should call our " preference," which only means that we choose what at the time we consider the " best " — our action is then directly determined by aristotropism. Every single conscious action is thus preceded by 92 INTRODUCTION the evocation in some form and in varying degrees of consciousness, of the most perfect consummation of the act, its completion — what Plato would have called the idea or ideal of the act. We may have " made a mistake " in choosing the one image or ideal in preference to another, and our action may be im- perfect, faulty, foolish, or even criminal. 1 But when we consciously chose our aim for a definite activity, it appeared to us the best at the time, and the aristo- tropic force of the human mind was active in pro- ducing complete harmony between our individual will and the definite thing or action without or within. Still more is this the case in the higher activities of an intellectual, moral, and social order. Our pre- ference may be guided by pure selfishness, passion, greed, and all the " affects " ; but these still produce a clear and designed image towards which we con- sciously strive. So also the image which forms our design may have been born out of an accumulated habit, of prejudice, or unreasonable and immoral traditions of a perverted character or ethos. Still, it is definitely there as what we consider best. All our actions may be directly tainted by the supreme love of self ; not, as some biologists would have us believe, because of any conscious realisation of the " instinct for self-preservation," but because of the emotional states arising out of our character, which has been allowed to become absorbingly " selfish." Still, at the time our " selfish " aims appeared to us to be the best. Nevertheless, as civilised human beings of a higher order, our conscience can be, and ought to be, directed by the laws of ethics, as our reason is trained by the laws of thought, and our taste is permeated by pure 1 The question of legal or criminal psychology is very much con- cerned in thus defining what are " premeditated " actions for which an individual is responsible. ARISTOTROPISM AND PROGRESS 93 harmony and beauty. Thus the higher standards of preference above the shifting uncertainty and variety of individual interest, passion, and prejudice will permeate our character and lead our emotion, moved by our imagination, to choose what is truly best. There is then developed the higher reasoning man ; and collectively, in human society, through countless ages of spiritual activity, there have been evolved civilisation and the summary of spiritual laws which have led to science, art, ethics, and religion, and through these to the conception of progress. This progress, this evolution of the collective human mind, is directly and consciously aristotropic ; not fatalisti- cally tied down to mere adaptation to the surround- ings — in themselves blind forces — by the " survival of the fittest " in the struggle of forces and conditions not directed by a reasoning and moral intelligence ; but consciously aristotropic ; in which in each age the highest results are formulated, grouped, and apprehended by reasoning man. Taking a firm footing on these highest results of Conscious Evolution — willed design — each age directed by the harmonio- tropic and aristotropic forces leads upwards in natural, though designed, progression. In this aspect of the reasoned mental life of man we have been primarily considering the ordinar}' activities of daily life, in which the object of each activity is clearly guided by reason through the aristotropic imagination. But the end thus " held in view " and the attainment of each ultimate object itself are the main incentive to our will, however much it may be guided by reason and by the striving for the Best. In one word : our attitude is eminently, if not wholly, " practical," and the mental and moral aspect ends with the attainment of the object. But there is another and higher aspect of such reasoned activity in civilised man, individual and collective, 94 INTRODUCTION in which the reasoned design and purpose, based upon the various relationships themselves, are the objects of mental activity, and no further individual or practical end. This we call the theoretic attitude, in contradistinction to the practical. But here again this willed activity of the mind is the more complete and perfect and the clearer, the more it is the outcome of pure will concentrated upon the mental relation- ships themselves and not the outcome of habit, instinct, passion, prejudice, or other subconscious impulses. Through the most highly developed functioning of the associative faculties of the mind, mental activity is concentrated upon the relationships, spiritual and material, which present themselves to perception and thought, leading to the final appre- hension of the so-called " laws of thought " and the " laws of nature " with which all individual pheno- mena are to be harmonised. Moreover, this willed activity of the mind may be consciously directed upon various aspects of such relationships. First, the relationships of all mental phenomena to the laws of thought and nature, out of which grow epistemology and systematised knowledge — science. It may be concentrated upon the relationship of form and proportion in things material or spiritual, pure harmony in itself, or beauty, which leads to art. It may further consider the relationship of outer things to the individual use of man, out of which grow pragmatics and the pragmatic attitude of mind. It may further penetrate into and systematise human relationships as such — of man to himself, to his fellow- men, to human society, and to nature — which con- stitutes ethics. It may establish the special relation- ship of man to the separate groupings in human society — politics. Finally, it may establish the relationships between the human mind and the highest ideals of life and mind — religion. ARISTOTROPISM 95 As the psychological facts with which we have just been dealing are themselves the outcome of an attempt to establish the true relationships of human thought, reason, will, knowledge, and the truth result- ing from the discovery of such true relationships, so we must now turn to that systematised department of the human mind which may best be termed Epistemology, and examine how far this department, of supreme importance to the understanding of life and mind, is affected by, or dependent upon, the principle of Harmonism. CHAPTER I EPISTEMOLOGY It is from the very outset important for us to realise that, though we have for the time established the difference between the practical and theoretical attitude of mind, and that though we ourselves and civilised human society collectively during many ages of historical evolution have established pure science, all these forms of mental activity in every case present themselves as activities and actions, as outcomes of the human will, though in its highest and most con- centrated form. I must insist upon the importance of realising that the highest and most purely theoretical mental activity — pure thought — represents such activities and does not represent passive states independent of the will of the mind that thinks them. When we think we are performing a willed and designed mental act, in contradistinction to dreaming in " night-dreams " or " day-dreams." In the latter our will and consciousness are passive, and it is our subconscious self or one group of ideas or feelings which themselves are active without the direct control of our will and the concentration of thought directed to accurate perception, knowledge, and the appre- hension of truthful relations. Every act of thinking is preceded and succeeded by an emotional state fully related to, and harmonising with, the thought. It is the failure to realise this fact which accounts for the mistakes so frequently made by those who put theory and practice in irreconcilable opposition to each 9 6 THOUGHT AND ACTION 97 other, who turn their backs on theory and insist upon the primary and supreme validity of action as opposed to thought. 1 If we have thus established the fact that all reasoned thought is not merely passive but also active, willed, through the immotions and emotional states, the imagination and aristotropic principle of choice and action, we have also realised that the more they are thus permeated by reason the more are they directly willed and active, until at last we reach the highest stage of ethical or scientific thought. For we thus have presented to us a rising scale of reasoned mental activity long after we have left the early and rudimentary forms pertaining to the undeveloped 1 I cannot refrain here from drawing attention to one of the most perfect didactic poems in the English or any other language, namely, Mr. Kipling's " If — ." Confirming one of the most striking defects of British life and mentality, within all the distinctive qualities and virtues of the British people, Mr. Kipling, in the second stanza of that remark- able poem, carried away in his exaltation of the supreme value of courageous, sane, moral, and efficient life, ignores, and more than ignores — in fact expunges — the fundamental importance of the theoretical striving of man for truth, the moral as well as the practical value of pure thought. This second stanza runs : If you can dream — and not make dreams your master ; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim ; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same ; With all due respect and deference for the great poet, I venture to suggest as a possible emendation for the second line in this stanza : Can think and act or make pure thought your aim. For Mr. Kipling himself no doubt realises the supreme value of pure thought and all scientific thought, penetrating as it does the funda- mental phases of actual existence as well as the highest regions of spiritual aspirations ; but he must also realise that it is one of the greatest and most urgent lessons to be impressed upon the mass of the British people that pure thought and the search after truth in itself are amongst the highest duties of a civilised community. Perhaps I might even add that the change as regards the repetition at the beginning of the line — " If you can," etc. — may relieve a certain insistent monotony caused by such repetition in the relationship between the three first stanzas. 8 98 EPISTEMOLOGY nervous system of lower organisms and higher animals, and have ascended to human beings with fully developed minds. In the human mind we have distinguished as precursors to higher mental activity the states which we have called immotion and emotion and which have directly affected the imagination of man. In what we call immotion the accent is to a great degree placed on the outer stimulus producing a response in the nervous system. Immotion is thus chiefly dependent upon memory, which, as we have seen, arises out of the repetition of identical stimuli or of those having a specific " affinity " (which implies pure objective harmony in these stimuli, so that the same stimulations coalesce or " integrate " and group themselves together. Out of these memory images, based upon the affinity of such harmonic stimulations and experiences, grows the power of " association " which forms the groundwork for all 11 reasoning." Moreover, these coalesced groups have the natural tendency to predominate in the mind and thus produce feelings and moods — emotional states — which dominate consciousness and all mental activity. All heterogeneous stimuli (outside the integrative group and not possessing affinity or har- mony with it) are disturbing and are thus " ignored " or discarded. The result of this emotional state in its active, moving force is " concentration " or attention, leading to conscious and willed activity itself, arising out of the emotion and mood corre- sponding to the summary of such group — stimulation, memories, and associations. In contradistinction to immotion, in emotion, as we have seen, the accent is placed on the inner functioning of the nervous system, the perceptive organs, memory, association, reasoning, will. The co-operation of all these elements together produces a mood of the whole mind, and it is through this mood, as the unit and centre of corresponding ACTIVITY IN CONVICTION 99 mental and physical activity, that such activity is effective. The guiding principle of harmoniotropism underlying this activity is, through the imagination, converted into aristotropism, and leads to designed and reasoned mental acts. In these activities, however, the mind is com- paratively passive, as it is dominated by the immo- tional and emotional states pertaining to the mind and consciousness — the mood — as a whole. In the highest scientific apprehension, however, the attention and concentration are more actively freed from general emotional states and are designedly, by a supreme act of will, turned upon pure apprehension and thought — apprehension, moreover, of the relation- ships in thought, of truth, and of the laws of evidence. These mental relationships themselves are converted into one dominating emotion. The mental activity arising out of this emotion when truthful relationships are completely apprehended, so far from being passive, is the most active feat of the human will. Attention and concentration imply that the mind is fixed upon these definite relationships, and in this act a rigorous selection is made on the principles of harmony, in that all stimuli, apprehensions, and facts which are " irrelevant " to the relationship arresting the atten- tion are discarded ; until, by this strictly concentrated act, the mind is at last filled with one supreme emotion corresponding to the pure harmony of such relation- ships, and what we call " Conviction," or " Belief," in the highest form, is produced. The importance of these emotive images in this phase of scientific apprehension and the creation of a corresponding emotion or mood must be manifest. For the clearer the image and the more in harmony with the reality and " truth " of the relationships, the clearer and more " single-minded " (harmonious) becomes the emotion or mood, and therefore the more direct, 100 EPISTEMOLOGY vigorous, and complete the act of apprehension. If the image is vague, the emotion or mood is vague and undecided ; if it evokes heterogeneous or dis- cordant associations and thoughts, " negative in- stances," exceptions, etc., there arise in us doubts, and the less complete is the final conviction corre- sponding to objective truth. It is upon this selective immotiveness of the human mind, of an essentially aesthetic order, and upon the resultant emotion of conviction (which is also essentially harmonistic or aesthetic in principle) that the highest scientific apprehension is dependent. In the ideal world and in the ideal phase of science this deductive and selective ' activity of the mind would supersede the inductive method of apprehen- sion. We shall see how in art the ideal phase would be reached when " composition " would be the absorbing and central activity of the artist, not material and technical activity. In composition the selection of elements making for perfect harmony in the work of art would be the essence of artistic creativeness ; and the technique dealing with colour and line, with the writing of words in literature and tones in music, with the building up of architectural structure, etc., would be reduced to a minimum by means of mechanical reproduction. In science the laws of nature — force, movement, and variation in the outer world — would be so thoroughly known, that we could produce them and regard them in the light of established relationships. Physics, chemistry, and biology would be reduced to a " synthetic " phase, not requiring previous analysis of observation ; until, at last, by means of mathematical formulae, 1 See Chapter on .^Esthetics, in which I endeavour to show how the ordinary act of seeing and perception through other senses is not purely passive but is active — moreover, an act of selection partaking of the essential nature of artistic creativeness. PUREST HARMONISM 101 physical, chemical, and even biological forms could be directly reproduced by experiment. Something approaching this stage may conceivably exist on one of the other planets. It certainly is with God and with the purely godlike life. Mathematics and Logic The purest form of systematic scientific appre- hension is to be found in Mathematics and Logic, which directly represent the laws of thought, the mental relationships applying to all things in life and mind. 1 The full realisation of truth depends upon pro- ducing conviction, which is a form of emotion based upon the harmony of relationships ; this harmony is most completely embodied in the studies of mathe- matics and logic. Both these sciences directly and in the purest form embody these relationships with- out any disturbing admixture of individual facts and forces which appeal to, and stimulate, other senses, interests, and passions which are not immediately concerned with these relationships, and in so far counteract the essential harmony upon which truth and the emotion of conviction depend for their apprehension by the human mind. Therefore, when facts and thoughts and their complicated inter- relation are to be apprehended in their relationship, independent of their accidental and purely individual nature and condition, they must be reduced to the laws of mathematics and logic in order to be appre- hended scientifically and with lasting validity. But it is important for us to remember that numbers and other mathematical formulae, as well 1 We shall see how in art, the arts of music and of pure ornamentation hold an analogous position compared to the other arts of space and time. The step from the music of Bach to the work of the highest mathematician is, in so far, but a small one. 102 EPISTEMOLOGY as logic and grammar, 1 deal only with the counters or symbols of things (abstract as well as concrete) — not with the things themselves — in order that the pure relationship should stand out in unalloyed purity to be apprehended by the mind. Both mathematics and logic (including grammar) present most wonderful structure, the ordered and beautiful complexity of which is rarely apprehended by the ordinary human being, who has been instructed in these sciences in a mechanical manner from child- hood upwards, and, through mechanical habituation, is rarely cognisant of the harmonious complexity of these highest achievements of the human mind, taking them for granted as commonplace facts of ordinary life. 2 When a fact or a problem is to be fully appre- hended so that evidence and proof produce the final emotion of conviction, the highest stage is reached when such evidence can be brought home in a mathe- matical or purely logical form. But again I wish emphatically to note that all these relationships which make for truth in its ultimate form — mathematical 1 It is important for philologists to remember this simple fact, as well as for certain philosophers and psychologists who do not realise that language in itself, as the means of conveying things and thoughts through sound, is not primary and elementary in the world of life and mind, and that thought is far from being identical with words and that word-thinking does not cover the whole of human thought. 2 In ordinary teaching the child is hardly ever led to realise the marvel, almost miracle, of the fact that in " sums " an addition, a multiplication, a division, should " come out right," and apply to the relationship of all things in life in unvarying security of this Tightness. So also, having associated in its mind the tedium and distastefulness of the dry laws of grammar, it is unable ever to realise the marvel and harmonious complexity of the system of language, like the most beau- tiful and elaborate Gothic cathedral, in which definite meanings, unerringly communicable to its fellow-men in the exactitude of all the innumerable shadings of meaning, thought, and feeling, should be conveyed by just that one right and harmonious relationship between words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books, or in continuous speech, presented to it first through grammar and then through logic. MUST CORRESPOND TO THE REAL 103 as well as formally logical — rest upon the principle of harmony, and that, in order that the mind should not merely be engaged in a play of faculties, a game like solving a puzzle, without any deeper significance to individual and general life and the world as a whole, mathematical and logical principles must be related to and conform to the outer and inner world. They must be realities, and we must find their mathematical or logical harmony reflected in the outer and inner world, i.e. in the " laws of nature " and the " laws of thought." As we have said before, the highest aim of science will ever be to approach as nearly as possible to the phase in which even, beyond logic, all truths of experimental science can be reduced to ultimate mathematical formulae. We thus find ourselves face to face with the (unfortunately) fragmentary epigram of Pythagoras that " number is the essence of all things." The end of science is thus not found in the mechanistic and synthetic reproduc- tion of outer facts of nature and of life by means of experiment, as Professor Loeb and those who think with him would have us believe, but in the reduction of all facts of life and mind to the purest form of harmonistic relationships. Conviction On the other hand, though the test of truth thus remains with mathematics i and logic, there are other 1 Even as regards mathematics as a whole there are such individual differences among people. I may perhaps give my own experience which led me, as a boy, to be proficient in Euclid and geometry, while I was emphatically weak when beginning algebra and later forms of arithmetical studies. This was no doubt due to the fact that the sense of vision and touch — perhaps the aesthetic instinct — were most pro- nounced in my mental development, and that if I could reduce mathe- matical relationships to a visual form, there was a more immediate and complete appeal to the mental state, leading to conviction, than the less visible and plastic vehicle of relationship in numbers or mere symbols. 104 EPISTEMOLOGY forms of expressing the relationships which lead to truth and " conviction," which appeal to us through other senses than the immediate harmoniotropic sense so fully and directly conveyed by mathematics and logic. According to our individual mental consti- tution conviction comes to us more readily or more forcibly through other senses and conditions. There may be the demonstratio ad oculos. In such " demon- stration " and in experiment, the sense of the eye, of touch, even of taste and smell, may be vehicles for conveying truthful relation and evoking emotion and conviction. Such experiments and demonstra- tions may prove through the eye, or through the corresponding sense of touch, the truthful relation of things and facts to one another, and even in the test- tube of the chemist, not only the colour of his solution, but also the smell and the taste may furnish complete evidence producing conviction. We must, however, always remember that in demonstratio ad oculos, as well as in " synthetic reproduction by experiment," there are two elements in such a phrase, demonstratio and oculos. Demonstratio must produce a convincing emotion, and the eye must respond harmoniously to produce the emotion or mood. Synthetic is a harmonistic reproduction of identical conditions and phenomena by means of designed experiment. In every case, again, it depends upon such har- monistic relations which evoke a corresponding emotion. Whether perceptions and thoughts are innate or acquired, intuitive or experimental, transcendental or empirical ; whether acquired habits and knowledge can be transmitted by heredity or not, the fact remains that truth, truthful perception and appre- hension, cannot affect the human mind towards con- viction without the corresponding emotion. 1 Reduce 1 See The Balance of Emotion and Intellect, p. 5 seq. CONVICTION AND EMOTION 105 all perceptions and problems to the simplest laws of reason and thought in mathematics and logic, in order to be effective in their appeal to the human mind they must not remain a matter of pure intellect, but must be converted into an emotional state and mood corresponding to conviction. " I see, but am not convinced," " This may be all true, but I do not believe it," show that, though the formal relationships in their undoubted organic sequence and inter-relation may have been apprehended by the senses or the intellect, they have not yet succeeded in producing the emotional state necessary to conviction. This emotion is based upon harmony in the outer world of facts, and the inner world of thought in a direct appeal to what we might call the " sense of truth," filling it full with its correspondence or harmony, without the intrusion of inharmonious elements disturbing and polluting this harmony (such as negative instances, contradictory facts, prejudices, traditions, mental habits, etc.). All is based upon harmony. 1 As I have indicated above, these highest abstract relationships in mathematics and logic must, in order to stimulate the emotions, conform to the realities of outer life. It may thus be maintained that all that we have found in this epistemological inquiry is exclusively, or in too great a degree, dependent upon the merely psychological sphere or point of view. But science has amply shown that, even without the human mind, in what we term the " laws of nature," 1 A large field for inquiry and experiment is here opened up to the experimental psychologist and physiologist to find, if possible, whether some outer physical test can be established for this harmony of truthful relationship and conviction. Experiments made by Mr. Richard Kerr and Mrs. Watts Hughes on water-colour films or charts illustrating symmetrical forms as in music, in corresponding harmonious pictures, might perhaps be produced to represent such harmony of relationship establishing truth. 106 EPISTEMOLOGY the principles of symmetry and harmony prevail. In the outer manifestations of the law of causality, of all physical and chemical laws, of astronomical observation — besides mathematics and logic, to which they are undoubtedly related — nay, even in biological science, in the realisation of the work of Darwin and Weismann, of Galton, and, recently (in Mendelian research and in Biostatics as represented by Professor K. Pearson and others), — in all these the dominance of such mathematical and logical harmony and symmetry is manifest as the fundamental and all- pervading principle. It is thus that in this highest intellectual activity all subjective, all specifically human, desires and prejudices must be cast out of the mind when we face the world in search of pure knowledge. We should strive to attain the attitude of mind, to use the words of Spinoza, " neither to weep nor to laugh, neither to despise nor to admire — but to know " (neque flere, neque rider e, neque contemnere, neque admirare — sed intelligere). As we shall see, this attitude of mind differs from the more practical and less theoretical attitude from the essentially human (though spiritual) point of view in art, pragmatics, ethics, politics, and religion. But besides assuming this general attitude we must deliberately and in every case cast out of the mind all " prejudice." Harmonism in the relation between outer objects (including thoughts), as we have seen, may of itself (through memory and association) produce Immotion, but not Emotion, which corresponds to Conviction, unless its objective harmony so fills consciousness and creates a completely corresponding mood which we call Conviction, because it may be blocked by a thick layer of " prejudice," " convention," or " authority." We may, as it were, be in a state of Suggestion or Auto-suggestion, which interferes with the moral PREJUDICE, CONVENTION, AUTHORITY 107 effectiveness of the objective harmonism seeking its way to consciousness. Consider what occurs when people say : " That may all be demonstrably true ; but I am not convinced 1 " Apart from all-pervading passions, or equally distracting absent-mindedness — in which case the outer harmony does not penetrate or act at all upon consciousness — the subconscious elements, ever present in the human mind, may permeate the mood and dominate the emotions to such a degree as to attenuate, or essentially to modify, if not totally to divert, the direct stimuli coming from such outer harmony consciously received. These subconscious forces, collectively opposing themselves to the complete reception of outer evidence con- sciouslv received, form the mass of what we should commonly call " prejudice," and take the form of suggestion, based upon cumulative habit, education, superstition, tradition, fashion, convention, etc. In addition to this source of prejudice a more personal form can be distinguished under the term " Authority " — in which case the Authority takes the form of an active suggestive agent, or a " Suggestor." In any case the path leading to the reception of the pure outer harmony in the relationships of things in nature, as well as in thought, by the conscious thinking mind is blocked by the mass of prejudice. But what this really shows is that some objective " proof " and evidence, even the mere statement and demonstration of laws of thought in logic and of universal relationships in mathematics and the conformity of the individual fact or problem to these, are not efficient and truly active in the mind, unless they produce the emotion of conviction and, as it were, stimulate and set vibrating the central organ or sense responding to such harmony, and thus pro- ducing an aesthetic mood fully attuned to truth, as the immediately aesthetic mood responds to beauty, 108 EPISTEMOLOGY another to goodness, and still another to the ideals of religious life. Only when the mind and, through the mind, the whole personality of man, is moved by such an " aesthetic " mood is conviction complete. Con- viction thus ultimately depends upon an aesthetic mood. Science Now, out of this concentrated activity of the mind, individually and collectively, through ages — from the elementary prehistoric feeling and thinking of man, half-animal, through all stages of civilisation, ending in the highly cultured life of the historical period, from the East through Greece and Rome, the Italian Renaissance, and the successive periods of modern enlightenment ; out of this continuous and inter- relative activity, complex and beautiful, though fused into effective unity, has grown up the huge structure called Science. This Cosmos or conscious, systema- tised knowledge emerging out of the chaos of confused and unrelated sensations, experiences and thoughts, as well as passions, disordered and casual, without correlation, organisation, and unity of design or form, from childhood to maturity in the mental develop- ment of the individual and from the infancy of man- kind through all ages of the human species, has established the vast and beautiful system of mental life of Reason and of Science. By the supreme and ever-active force of its inner harmony the subject- matter of thought, governed by the divine, formful and beautiful Spirit of Truth, has grouped itself by inner affinities and harmonies, spurred onward and upward by the conscious image of the Best, until there have emerged, not like Athene, sprung fully armed in adult virginal beauty from the head of Zeus, but by long struggle and labour, by continuous TRADITION AND PROGRESS 109 evolution, the fully harmonised departments of human knowledge. It is this inherent and funda- mental quality of the human mind, at once harmonio- tropic and aristotropic, which has produced this highest consummation of the human spirit. But it is well for us to remember that in the development of systematised knowledge among the individuals of successive ages direct education has always played its part. Education has been active from the rudimentary forms of teaching by example, by verbal injunction, in the earliest prehistoric ages of man, to our own highly developed systems ; and this important factor in the progress of human life and mind must ever be borne in mind. Even if " acquired " habits and mental achievements are not transmitted by heredity through individuals, and thus evolution and progress through the individual are not manifestly assured, at least collectively, in the tradition which solidifies and continues the effectiveness of all fruits of civilisation in science, art, ethics, and religion, as well as in manners, customs, and modes of living of civilised societies, progress can be guarded and directed and made to last in the continuity of its aristotropic effectiveness. Conscious Evolution through Science In order that this progression may move in its natural evolution with the advance of the human mind and of human society, it cannot be left to the blind " struggle of existence," leading in nature to the " survival of the fittest " ; it cannot mean fatalistic renunciation to outer force, but, in harmony with the aristotropic mind of man, it must be con- verted into what we have called Conscious Evolu- tion. Responding to the aristotropic principle, the conditions to secure this must lead us, in the first 110 EPISTEMOLOGY instance, to establish in every period the formulation of the highest achievements in each department of science by means of the clearest exposition in the language most representative of the mentality of each period, and not obscured by authoritative standards or dominant modes of expression issuing from the mentality of a previous period, but clearly, and with supremely conscientious honesty in the most precise and most convincing terms of the age itself, and, finally, by the activity of the imagination, saturated with and guided by the spirit of science, to forecast the further tasks, ends, and ideals towards which truth itself and the human spirit are to tend and strive. Humanity has amply learnt in the past how great scientific discoveries — and even hypotheses — may alter the standard and mental focus of each age and establish new methods, new standards of concentration and effort, limitations of scope and admissions of further relativities unknown. Through ancient Greece and Rome to the gates of modern times, when Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton altered and advanced the vision of the whole of civilised human society in its outlook upon nature, down to our immediate times, when even the unthinking masses have, through such discoveries as wireless telegraphy, altered their out- look upon the universe, and in these very days when we have issued from our purely atomistic conception to some more or less perfect realisation of the nature and activity of electrons and protons, 1 and of the problems of Relativity as brought before the world by the theories of Professor Einstein — through all these, and many intermediary phases, the civilised world has completely modified its mental attitude 1 I would here remind the reader that these elemental units of matter in the world combine to produce all objects in nature according to their relative distribution, and that all individual differences thus depend upon numerical relationships which are the purest expression of the harmonistic principle. CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION THROUGH SCIENCE 111 towards nature and ultimately even towards the daily experiences of life. It may be that psychological research, carried forward by those qualified to deal with the problems and mysteries of mind, may still further revolutionise and advance the range of thought and the scope of truth. But it is of supreme im- portance that, before accepting demonstrations or hypotheses, the results be tested and finally confirmed, until they are rightly admitted to affect the founda- tions of actual knowledge and to indicate the direction of future efforts and ideals. 1 Not only in the concentrated pursuit of special knowledge in the various departments of science within the esoteric body of scientists, but in view of the immediate transformation of the public mind in each period, must the general platform upon which our human intelligence moves be raised and modified from time to time in order adequately to respond to the advance of knowledge itself. This in one word is one of the most important spheres of Education. When, for instance, the theories of Professor Einstein have issued from the critical tests of those qualified to confirm, reject, or modify the highest results of pure science, they ought, through all the machinery of education, to be made to permeate the consciousness of the general public. I must, for instance, confess that I myself — owing chiefly to my preparatory education from youth upwards — find myself unable to grasp the essence of this theory, and the con- sequences arising out of its applications. I am confidently assured that our children, if properly instructed, will not, or ought not to, find any such difficulty. But to take an ordinary and trite analogy, I believe that most parents will share my own experience, that our children, who are growing up in 1 See Truth — An Essay in Moral Reconstruction, ch. iii and v, p. 38 seq. 112 EPISTEMOLOGY the age of the familiar use of motor-cars and of aeroplanes have an incomparably greater faculty of understanding the construction, the working, and use of these modern instruments of transportation than ourselves. Thus, besides all means of publicity, by books, and even by journalistic articles, all solidly established achievements of science and art (not mere ephemeral theories and fashions) must lead to the diffusion and infusion into the public mind of the progress of science. Still more directly is this the function of our educa- tional institutions, schools, and universities. To enter still more practically into the means of ensuring the progressive evolution of the human mind and human society, I would suggest that one of the chief functions of the heads of all educational institutions should be to ensure the successful establishment of the scientific consciousness of each age. Thus, for instance, the well-qualified head-master of every school ought every year to give one or more lectures to the assembled staff, representing every department of instruction, however remote from pure science, epitomising the results of new discoveries in science and art, not only of mechanical and experimental sciences but also including humanistic studies, his- tory, criticism, philosophy, and the works of art and literature. Thus every master and mistress of a school may be helped to keep pace with the progress of knowledge, and, through their personality, this mental evolution in them would permeate their teaching and create the true intellectual atmosphere of each age for the younger generation as it grows up. In universities similarly there ought to be periodic assemblies of all the teachers in every faculty at which those qualified would epitomise the contemporary advances in his or her department of study. We have until now considered the mind in its SYNTHETIC ACTIVITY 113 relation to knowledge as it is affected by reasoned evidence in every given instance, and by the summary of known truth in the complete organisation of science in all its departments, and we have seen how this ordered spiritual Cosmos or Reason affects both the individual and the collective mind in each period of history with this reasoned orderliness and harmony, in contradistinction to the casual and inharmonious, unreasoning, world of contending individual passions, desires and prejudices. But science in this form depends upon the conscious and concentrated activity of individuals in all ages, who devote their life- activities to the strenuous discovery of truth in every sphere reached by human consciousness. Each one of these seekers after truth (philosophers and men of science) contribute to the organic completeness and harmony of such systematic knowledge in the period in which he lives. It is the active work of scientific research of all designed discovery and invention. Special Scientific Studies We have before seen how the reasoning mind of ordinary man, not devoted to specialised scientific inquirj', responds to truth, not merely in a passive form, but in acts of clear perception, as well as reflection and ratiocination, and performs an active function in establishing the harmonious relationship between outer truth and the receptive organs of truth, inducing objective harmonious relation by means of selection, concentration of attention, and elimination of whatever is irrelevant or disturbing. Now the mind of the searcher after truth, the philosopher, the observer of nature, the experimenter, discoverer, and inventor of all new facts and relationships is still more active in the functioning of his mental powers by means of selection of relevant facts and in the concentration upon the relationships between pheno- 9 114 EPISTEMOLOGY mena and thoughts. Still less than the ordinary reasonable observer do his observations and his reasoning upon them partake of the nature of a haphazard dip into the lucky-bag of the innumerable facts without and within ; but his observation, con- centration and reflection become stringently methodi- cal, and take the form of selection on the one hand and of isolation of phenomena on the other, both based upon, and guided by, the essential affinity and harmony between the phenomena with which he is dealing and the willed avoidance of all phenomena and relationships that are " irrelevant." Classification of Sciences At an early stage in the development of science civilised mankind has thus recognised and fixed the different departments of knowledge according to that inner affinity or harmony within the groupings of phenomena and the relationships of thought. This has led to the establishment of the various departments of science. Each of these again have developed their distinctive methods, themselves based upon the affinity and harmony in the distinctive nature of the phenomena with which that department deals. Various systems of grouping the departments of systematised human knowledge can be and have been adopted, as we face the problems of the universe which is thus to be known in the greatest possible fullness and accuracy. Thus we may divide the whole knowable world into (i) the outer world or nature, viewed as far as possible by itself and in itself ; and (2) nature and the universe in their relation to man and to the human reasoning mind. The one might thus be called Natural Science and the other Humanistic Science ; or again, we may face the problems primarily in the conception of the universe CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 115 and the relation of this earth to it, in which case we should begin with Astronomy and, related to it, Physics and Chemistry and the mathematical aspects of these sciences. Turning next to this earth we might begin with Geology, Geography (in its various forms), Physics, Chemistry, Biology (subdivided again into Botany and Zoology — which studies have again been subdivided and specialised into varied group- ings, especially in modern times) ; until we come to human life and the human body and its study in the normal state, including Anatomy and Physiology, the latter again being subdivided into Histology and numerous other subdivisions of study, while both again can be, and are, studied specially in their relation to the rest of the organic world and the evolution of one form of life out of the other in Morphology and general Biology. On the other hand, the human body and its life may be studied, not in its normal constitution, but in its abnormal states of Pathology ; and out of these several points of view have been developed all the varied depart- ments of medical study. In the wide and all- important study of man and human life we are led to the mind of man, to Psychology in its several aspects, which again opens the doors to Epistemology, which on its side may lead to the study of language and other forms of expression. But at an early stage the work of man, including all material and spiritual achievements and relationships, forms a vast department of human knowledge, sub- divided into definite and highly organised special studies and dealing with man's life and his achieve- ments in all stages of the past, leading on to the present and the future. In wider groupings we have the most general study of so-called Sociology, in- cluding Anthropology and Ethnology, and Archaeo- logy. These again naturally lead, with regard to the 116 EPISTEMOLOGY recorded achievements of human society and group- ings in the past, to the study of History in all its varied departments, including also the special aspect of human relationships — Economics and Politics, Ethics and the study of Religions ; while the achieve- ments of man in art and literature in the past can form special groupings of extensive studies, historical in character and method. Human language, as the most important and direct vehicle of expression of man's reasoned life and thought, and again in all its varied manifestations and inter-relations, be it as a specialised study of Philology or as a study of Litera- ture in all its forms, has been developed in all its ramifications into a completely organised system throughout the world. But, as we shall see, the less theoretical, but more practical aspects of such harmonistic studies have led to the systematic inquiries into human relationships on the ground of moral laws, individual and collective, in Ethics and Politics, as also to the production of literature and art, as the direct expression of the aesthetic instinct and needs of man. And, finally, there remains that department of human knowledge dealing with the broad relationships between all these several depart- ments and with the final summary of harmonious relationships to man and man's spirit in Philosophy and Theology. Research, Invention and Discovery of New Truths Now, the life-work of the men of science and philosophers, who have concentrated their chief energies upon the recognition of truth within the several departments of science and with the definite aim of adding new knowledge to the body of truth already possessed by man, is again not purely pas- sive. Outer truths are not simply received by the ACTIVITY IN RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY 117 receptive organs as passive agents, as the simplest organisms react upon galvanic stimulation ; but the investigator is supremely and positively active in the search, the hunt, the battle for truth. His selective and concentrated mental activity, the outcome of his cognitive emotion and imagination, spurs and leads him onward in the direction prescribed by the several methods established for each department of science in order to discover the several relationships by selection and isolation of the innumerable phenomena about him, in conformity with the harmony subsisting between these phenomena themselves, and to join them together into that unity which corresponds to truth. These methods of investigation again are, in their turn, modified according to the special pheno- mena and their relationships, and his life-work leads him in conscientious concentration and in preserving- continuity of effort to harmonise these several relationships. In this hunt after truth, this struggle with the confused data and irrelevancies, and in the final victory over all the opposing forces of confusion and ignorance, as well as over the obtrusion of personal passions and desires, filling the breast of man, and out of harmony with the pure theoretical truth which he purposes to grasp in its harmonious purity, there issues in his mind and soul, through the gates of conviction, the joy of discovery, when truth reveals herself in the sublimated clearness of divine light. His activity is indeed not passive, but eminently active, creative, poetic. The harmonies which enter his soul do not remain immotive, but become emotive, and lead him to discovery and invention and the establishment of new relationships before unknown. His activity is distinctly synthetic. Even when his task of observation and thought consists in the analysis of material or spiritual phenomena into their component parts, the mental activity itself is not 118 EPISTEMOLOGY purely analytical, but always synthetic, emotive, creative, in establishing new harmonious relation- ships. His constructive imagination leads him to recognise the single elements out of which the pheno- mena are composed in their organic and harmonious relationships, and in so far all his work is that of composition, essentially of the same nature as that of the creative artist and poet — for his every art and achievement is poietic, creative ; and the source and fountain of this supreme spiritual activity is the thirst and passion for Truth, which drives us onwards to grasp and retain its elusive yet beautiful form. The dominant mood which overcomes him while he struggles on or is exultant in victory is that of in- spiration and enthusiasm, filled with and moved by the Love of Truth of Plato, the Amor Dei of Spinoza. Ask the true scientific investigator in even the most sober, jejune, and apparently dry subject of study, what he feels when he sees, as in a flash (not only by conscious and disciplined elimination of irrelevant and negative instances), the fact and arguments all fusing together organically into a living unit, har- monious in form and substance, as if, almost beyond his will, if not against it, 1 an outer inspiration and enthusiasm were blown into his soul and set his brain moving in harmony with the whole truth which binds the innumerable particles of facts and evidence together. It is the Music of the Spheres vibrating in his soul ; the great god Eros of Hesiod and Plato who rules over the world ; the emanation of the Holy Ghost of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, filling the heart of man with true enthusiasm, so that for the time he becomes evOeos, filled with the Spirit of God. The fundamental, the ultimately ruling, 1 I believe that the daimon of Socrates (though his intervention was generally restraining), the spirit which he claimed moved him beyond his own power of will, can best be explained in this sense. ESTHETIC QUALITY OF EXPOSITION 119 spirit underlying all theoretic activity of the purest and highest philosopher, scholar, inventor, or dis- coverer of truth is essentially of an aesthetic and harmonistic nature. Exposition of Scientific Truth If thus we have recognised the fundamental dominance of the harmonistic and aesthetic factor in the general systematic recognition of truth, as well as in the creative work of the scientific investigator, the effective dominance of the same mental activity is still more prominent when the man of science turns to the exposition of his discoveries. This is the final stage in the work of the man of science and philosopher. As the schoolboy who has not mastered his lesson and hides his ignorance or imperfect knowledge under the plea that he " knows, but cannot express it," the greatest discoverer, experimenter, and thinker is not fully possessed of his own discoveries of truth until he can convincingly impart them to others, and previously to himself, in an objective form, adequately conveying the har- monious and truthful relationships which he has endeavoured to establish. But it is here that his activity approaches so nearly to that of the creative artist that the one can hardly be distinguished from the other, and that in their main nature they are fundamentally the same. Language itself, as we have seen before, presents to us the most harmonious structure. The welding together into living organic unity of separate sounds in words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books, presenting one harmonious whole, in which each word is in exactly the right place within the harmonious context, is in the fullest sense the pre- sentation of a work of art, as its primary appeal is to 120 EPISTEMOLOGY the aesthetic senses and emotions, ultimately leading to the response of truth in conviction. For the time being the man of science, habituated to the discipline of pure induction, of minute analysis and observa- tion, to the most sober curbing of passions, feelings and desires, has become a poet moved by the same feelings and forces as the musical composer or the composer of a picture or a statue. In so far he is eminently inspired, the inspiration coming from the harmonious relationships in the world without and in the intelligible world of thought within, as opposed to the cacophonous, inharmonious chaos of unrelated facts that have not been united into the organic unity of truth. As we have seen before and shall note again, music, of all arts, is the one which directly and completely expresses this harmonious relationship in its purity. It is worthy of note that the German poet Schiller in a letter to Goethe writes : " Before I compose, whether in verse or prose, I am overcome by (uberkommt mich) a musical mood (Stimmung)." The exponent of a great work of science must struggle with the innumerable facts which he wishes to present in their essential interdependent unity to convey the fullest apprehension of truth, in order to place the several elements constituting this unity in their harmonious sequence and inter-relation. He must bear in mind the wholeness of the truth while dealing with every part, he must be guided at every stage by the laws of thought in logic, and he must maintain the due proportion and harmony in significance corresponding to the quantitative and qualitative emphasis which he gives to each part justly subordinated to the final unity of the whole. To call this " rhetoric," with the derogatory implication of the superiority of science over art, the experimenter over the poet, truth over beauty, is unfair, as it fails PLEASURE IN APPREHENDING TRUTH 121 to recognise the true nature of science. We shall dwell upon the distinctive and different attitudes of mind in science and art, in Epistemology and ^Esthetics, as also upon the difference between these points of view and those of Ethics ; but, more especially in the expository work of the man of science, in formulating and in making intelligible and convincing the results of his scientific inquiry, the activity is essentially the same as in the other more practical departments of mental activities. Nor, I hope, need this occasion surprise to my readers who have followed our previous results even up to this point of the inquiry, when we realise that ultimately they are all derived from the harmonistic principle underlying the laws of nature and the laws of thought. But, not only to the production and exposition but to the consequent understanding of great works of science and philosophy, does the dominance of the harmonistic or aesthetic principle apply. To read intelligently and to understand a dialogue of Plato, or a book of Aristotle, the works of Spinoza and of Kant, the Principia of Newton, the mature and clear exposition in the writings of Darwin and Huxley — nay, to understand and to appreciate the construction of the Forth Bridge, and the machinery in a motor- car, or an aerial machine-gun, produces the same class of emotion as when we read or see a great drama or a play of Shakespeare, a great poem of Homer or Dante, a comedy of Moliere, the masterpieces of Goethe, or what overcame the spectator when standing before the Zeus and Athene of Pheidias, or in the Sistine Chapel of Rome, or before " The Last Supper " of Leonardo, or the great cathedrals of Chartres or Amiens, Durham or Lincoln, or when we are thrilled by the music of Bach and Beethoven, or the music- drama of Wagner. Read the great works of science and philosophy, and if you are able to concentrate 122 EPISTEMOLOGY your attention upon them and are sufficiently pre- pared to understand the facts that are conveyed in logical sequence and in harmonious composition by the master minds, there will pervade your conscious- ness the same aesthetic feelings which moved you in the reading of Shakespeare or Dante. At times in the reading of these great poets or in the Faust of Goethe, or even in one of the sonnets of Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Matthew Arnold, we cannot distinctly discern whether it be the supreme truth conveyed or the beautiful rhythm and harmonious melody of the language which stirs our aesthetic emotions ; but in every case, in the work of the philosopher or of the poet, it is through the harmonious composition that truth penetrates our consciousness and fills us with the corresponding emotional mood as the beauty of form and language fill our con- sciousness with the harmony that is essentially of the same nature as that of truth. 1 Thus in the final exposition of the research of the votary of pure science and philosophy we have a reflection of that larger harmony which we have seen produces the laws of nature and the laws of thought. We have thus realised that, not only in the sys- tematic apprehension of truth in Science, are we ultimately dependent upon the active emotion responding to the harmoniotropic and aristotropic needs and functions of the mind, but that especially in the discovery of truth, as well as in its exposition, the philosopher and the man of science are ultimately moved by the aesthetic emotion which dominates their imagination and directs their will in creative intellectual activity. 1 See Balance of Emotion and Intellect, p. 1 1 seq. CHAPTER II aesthetics — art Introduction I must here premise one general remark which applies to this and all other departments of human activity, and must constantly be borne in mind by the reader. Life is one organic whole and can as such never be mechanically subdivided into watertight compart- ments. This complexity of organic interdependence between the various departments of human activity grows with the advance in civilisation from the sim- pler primitive conditions to the highest complexities of life and thought in highly cultured communities. Thus the instinct, motives and aims which led men to the earliest expression of the aesthetic order and were markedly, if not exclusively, active in primitive periods, join forces with numerous other motives coming from the other departments of mind in later phases of civilisation. We shall thus find that in every work of art at a comparatively early stage elements and aims which belong to the other departments, such as Epistemology (the true), Prag- matics (the useful), Ethics (the good), Politics (the social), and Religion (the ideal), have intruded and are inseparably mixed. We shall now see this with regard to works of art. But I must remind the reader that, as works primarily and ultimately aiming at Truth in Science and Philosophy directly appeal to our sense of Harmony and Form in 133 124 AESTHETICS, ART Discovery and Exposition (so that in a written book as well as in an oral exposition, the harmony, adequacy or beauty of form are essential to or absorb the conscious attention of reader and audience to a high degree), so in a work of literary, dramatic, even musical, plastic, and graphic art, Truth and convincing per- suasion become an important, at times a dominant, element in the attention, interest, and enjoyment produced by the work of art. In the same way works of art and science, being part of mental life and reflecting upon it, have definite relationships to utility, ethical fitness, social and political peace and progress, and religious ideals and aspirations ; while works of use and of morals are penetrated by beauty and truth. Finally social, political and religious principles and ideals must stand the test of criticism and truth, and must appeal to our sense of harmony and beauty in the world and in life. Elementary Principles ' We have seen in the later portions of the preceding chapter how, even in Epistemology, the aesthetic imagination, the instinct for harmony, is active in the discovery and exposition of truth, and we have maintained throughout the whole chapter the primary and fundamental activity in the human mind of the harmoniotropic and aristotropic instincts. But the fact remains that the direct aim of all thought, science, 1 Though I have designedly refrained from quoting the literature on the subjects with which I am dealing here, and have merely confined myself in these prolegomena to a summary account of the philosophy of Harmonism, I think it might be helpful to the reader to give here some indication of the bibliography to aesthetics, a subject not familiar to most readers, especially a fairly complete one, Bibliography to General ^Esthetics, by Edward Bullough (privately printed for use in lectures, 1909), supplemented by his recent article (The British Journal of Psychology, June 1921) on " Recent Work in Experimental ^Esthetics." ESTHETICS A SCIENCE 125 and philosophy is the recognition and establishment of truth, and not harmony, beauty or artistic effects. In aesthetics and art, on the other hand, harmony, proportion, form and beauty are the direct aim and end of man's mental activity and of the production of all works which belong to the category of art. Esthe- tics thus deals with man's direct activity to realise in nature, life and thought, by means of his own work, the satisfaction of the aesthetic instinct, feeling for form, for harmony and beauty. We have already amply shown how " form " responds to and satisfies the harmoniotropic instinct in man's senses, even in his own physical nature, in that the due proportion of all the organs of his body and their harmonious functioning in health positively produce the joie de vivre, and how, in the outer world of nature and life, it is also impressed upon his senses as a primary need ; and we have finally seen how this expression of the harmoniotropic instinct in form is conducive to perfect and facile perception and understanding as a means, until we now come to regard it as the end in itself, out of which grows his production of art in all its numerous manifestations. The challenge of so many writers on art, and on the theory of art, to produce a system of criticism or aesthetics which will possess scientific validity and can be reduced to fundamental principles, as firmly founded as are those of any other department of science, can be met and must be met by serious students of aesthetics. These sceptics despair of such attempts, until they restrict themselves to the mere dogmatic selection and establishment of canons of taste and good art, recognised as such by the " best judges " (among whom they themselves are included as foremost, or over which tribunal they themselves presume to preside). 126 .ESTHETICS, ART A. Form — Pure Art Now it will have to be admitted by all that the senses of men are satisfied, and that pleasure is pro- duced in them, through pure form, 1 or rather through proportion and harmony — -not to say beauty — which exists in the most rudimentary phases in nature and in all that stimulates man's senses. That there is such an elementary basis for aesthetic pleasure arising out of simple form can be shown with regard to the simple activity of man's senses. To begin with the " lowest " senses : i . The sense of smell ; it must be admitted by all that a stench is disagreeable, and a perfume is agreeable ; 2. That, as regards the sense of taste, bitter is in itself disagreeable, and sweet is agreeable. 8 1 The use of this word form — in contradistinction to matter or content — may be misleading, as it too directly, if not exclusively, implies space, plastic or graphic, volume, and not time and rhythmical qualities of movement, and even, to a certain degree, chemical qualities. It is associated too exclusively with that which is perceived through touch and through the eye — tactile and fictile values, and even as regards the latter it often emphasises line, light and shade, to the exclusion of colour, so that in the graphic arts form and colour are some- times contrasted to one another as, by analogy in music, rhythm and time are contrasted to melody. In thus using " form " we distinctly mean form as opposed to matter — that is, proportion and harmony in the relation between things material as well as spiritual. 3 It might be maintained that these forms of aesthetic sense-pleasures are not primary, but secondary ; that they are dependent for their pleasurable stimuli upon association with other rudimentary forms of sense-pleasure, or to a still more fundamental, though less conscious, form of association through habit and experience with that which is favourable to the preservation of the body in opposition to what is unfavourable and deleterious. But I see no grounds for denying that certain chemical properties act in a direct way pleasantly or un- pleasantly upon the senses. Acid reactions show violent contractions, while more soothing and pleasant chemical combinations give no such signs of reaction and opposition. Moreover, as has already been shown, harmonious tones and their combinations produce symmetrical lines and decorative colour effects. I do not despair of being able to show, PURE FORM 127 3. With regard to touch, it must be admitted that soft and hard, smooth and rough, curves and jagged lines, straight and crooked, warm and cold, all have their specific aesthetic qualities which are pleasant or unpleasant, and that their pleasant quality depends upon this harmony and proportion which responds to the inherent proportion of the senses themselves. 4. When, finally, we come to the highest senses, with which art is chiefly concerned, the eye and ear, seeing and hearing, we have already noted how, in line and form, the regular proportion, straight line and curve, in contrast to the absence of such pro- portion and harmony, in symmetry as contrasted with asymmetry, both in form and colour, as well as in tones contrasted with noises, and in harmonies and rhythmical progression contrasted with absolute irregularity, there is a direct response to aesthetic impressions in these higher senses. 5. No doubt, influenced by the evolution of form in nature, certain proportions and rhythmical responsions (especially in what has been shown by thorough and ingenious work concerning such forms as the spiral) : impinge their pleasant harmony upon by means of psycho-physical experiments, that the scent of a rose can produce graphic forms that are symmetrical and harmonious, while stenches produce asymmetrical and amorphous formula?. Further- more, it must be noted when we proceed beyond the simple and elementary stages, in which what is elementarily and fundamentally pleasing no longer produces a corresponding sensation, but negatively, through habituation and tedious repetition, sinks to the common- place, that positively, through more pleasant associations, in spite of its inherent unpleasantness, asymmetrical or discordant forms may produce the very opposite effect. It is thus that certain discords in music, in the most advanced and highly developed music, occasionally produce pleasure when they are not too frequent or predominant, and that certain irregularities, if not distortions, of pathological and grotesque forms may, when introduced in advanced art, by collocation and association produce the opposite effect to their essentially aesthetic nature. 1 See Part I, Chap. V, p. 55 seq. 128 ESTHETICS, ART man's senses through his absorption of outer nature, though we have had every reason to realise that they respond to the inherent structure and function of the senses themselves. Successful attempts ' have been made to discover 1 See Part I, Ch. V, p. 55. The most recent and striking treat- ment of this subject is that by Mr. Jay Hambridge, who has published a periodical (The Diagonal, printed by the Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.) developing his theories. He distinguishes between what he calls static and dynamic symmetry, maintaining that the latter is distinctively dominant and characteristic in Greek art, and, by means of what he calls the root 5 rectangle and the rectangle of the " whirling squares," he gives definite mathematical formulae underlying the pro- portion in all works of Greek art, and even capable of practical applica- tion by artists and decorators in the production of similar works. I am myself incapable of fully understanding or of following these mathe- matical expositions, though I am prepared to believe that every work of art, however delicate in its varied proportions, as well as every phenomenon of organic life, could in an ideal world be formulated mathematically and in so far reproduced in that ideal world. But, in criticism of some of his generalisations, I am bound to point out that in the various schools and in the various periods of Greek art, Mr. Hambridge's distinction between static and dynamic symmetry forces us to recognise that in some the static, in others the dynamic, pre- dominates. I have myself many years ago (" Pythagoras of Rhegium and the Early Athlete Statues," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1 880-1, reprinted in Essays on the Art of Pheidias, 1885) pointed to the difference between static and what I called organic symmetry, the one predomi- nating in archaic, the other in the higher periods of sculpture, as the one predominates in the inorganic world, petrography, crystallography, the other in the organic world, especially in animal life. In the Archaic Greek sculpture symmetry (static symmetry) predominated in the con- ventional and stiff statues ; while in the periods of complete freedom the flow and movement and variation of life, which the Greeks expressed by the term rhythm, were blended with the symmetry and modified it into a new form of organic symmetry or eurhythmia. Diogenes Laertius ascribes to the sculptor Pythagoras of Rhegium (who, in the first half of the fifth century B.C., marked the transition from Archaism to full freedom, culminating in the art of Pheidias) this fusion of sym- metry (the static element in proportion and harmony) with rhythm (the moving element in life). The real consummation of this great artistic task was reached in Pheidias and his successors during the highest period of Greek art. The whole achievement of Hellenic art in all its forms may, from this point of view, be summarised as the transfusion of the harmonistic principle with the world of nature and of thought ; the principle of symmetry and proportion with naturalism ; the THE GOLDEN SECTION 129 and to formulate certain mathematical and physical properties in the proportion, not only of Greek works of decorative art, such as vases, mirrors, etc., but even in the proportion of the human figure in Greek sculpture, which may show a common system and regular formulae belonging to the whole of that art in contradistinction to that of the art of different, if not opposed, races and periods. There is also con- siderable literature grouping round oneof many striking instances of such pleasing complicated proportions, such as that known as the Golden Section or Cut. 1 establishment of the types of nature in most perfect, most normal, and therefore general, form ; the Naturalistic Ideal, the Ideal arising out of, and based upon, the Natural and the Rational. The formulation of the dynamic proportion has moreover been long since admitted with striking success in the widest spheres by the work of Kepler and other astronomers and physicists, and in the organic world by the remarkable researches of Professor A. H. Church (Phyllotaxis in Relation to Mechani- cal Law), to which I must add in recent times the work of Sir Theodore Cook, in his The Curves of Life, supplemented by more recent articles in the Field. 1 There has been much ingenious mathematical calculation as to the arithmetical proportion in this golden cut, which might roughly be described as the relation between the perpendicular and the horizontal bars in the ordinary cross. Quite recently (at the Philosophical Con- gress at Oxford in 1920) I listened to an elaborate attempt to explain the relation between the horizontal bar to the perpendicular one, out of the structural need of the stone or wood, and the security of the transverse portion to account for the ordinary proportions in our crosses, as I have already shown in Part I. It has always appeared to me that this pleasing effect of proportion upon the eye of man is due chiefly to our constant habit of vision and touch throughout the ordin- ary life of man, so that he naturally demands such proportion in objects and is pleased when he finds them. As we have seen before (Part I, Ch. VI, pp. 57, 58), it is due to the fact that inconversing with our fellow human beings we naturally and continuously look at their face, and in so far visually ascribe the greatest importance to that portion of the human body which is above the shoulder line. This constant habitua- tion prepares the visual sense for that most important subdivision in the human form between the line of the shoulders upward to the neck and head, whether the latter is covered or raised in height, or not, by head-dress. Moreover, in many, if not most, implements the handles of tools and weapons, as with us the walking-stick, have their chief subdivision in a similar proportion, which proportion thus satisfies both our visual and tactile sense. 10 130 /ESTHETICS, ART It must thus be admitted as a fundamental truth that harmony, proportion and symmetry are pleasing to the human senses themselves, and that human beings, as organic and conscious entities, desire and strive for this form of satisfaction and pleasure. Out of this striving, based upon the aesthetic instinct, grows that activity of man which we call Art ; and all those functions and the creation of all those works and the admixture of this aesthetic element into the other works of man, primarily and directly issuing from other needs and desires which constitute the whole of human activity, until it permeates the actual life and the act of living of every human being as a dominant factor in his conscious or subconscious existence. We must now, however, deal with the arts which are the most direct expression of the harmoniotropic and aristotropic instinct of man. Selective Arts As has already been stated in the beginning of the General Part of this book, before we come to the creation of the work of art, we are bound to deal with that most important aspect of the aesthetic instinct which leads to the selection as distinguished from the actual creation of forms which essentially respond to this aesthetic instinct. This selective activity would a priori precede, as historically it can be shown to precede, the creation of works of man's hand. So important is this selective artistic activity that I do not hesitate to formulate what may appear to be a glaring paradox, and to maintain that we can conceive of a most perfect future in this terrestrial world of ours in which the whole function and work of the artist would consist of selection and not of creation — in which " Composition " would entirely INVENTION, COMPOSITION AND CRAFT 131 supersede all artistic execution and technique. To take an instance from the graphic arts. We can conceive of a state in which colour photography would reach such perfection that all forms in nature, shapes and colours, with their slightest modifications and textures, as well as all scenes in nature and in life, could be perfectly reproduced in different media, shadings, and qualities ; so that the technique of the draughtsman and painter would be superfluous, and the whole artistic function would consist of, and be concentrated upon, invention and composition, expressive of the highest inner visions and the loftiest and truest artistic imagination of the perfect artist born and bred. 1 The step from conception to realisa- tion would be reduced to a minimum. Let no one say that nothing would remain for the artist to do ; on the contrary, the artist, unhampered by the craftsman, would reach his loftiest flights ; and his ideas, his emotions, his visions, his ideals, would directly and convincingly be imparted to the spectator. The artist would grow in power and in activity, as the craftsman would waste away into inactivity. Such a state of affairs does not exist, has never existed, and, we may add, will never actually exist. Moreover, as things are, many an artist, and of the greatest among them, would remind us how much of the highest artistic and spiritual qualities, and how deeply the significant and impressive artistic ideas and forms, were born in his imagination in the process of arduous technique and struggle and through them. Nevertheless, my para- dox rightly illustrates and emphasises the truth, that the purely artistic function is to be found in the most direct and complete satisfaction of the aesthetic instinct. 1 See Essays on the Art of Pheidias, passage on " The Spirit of the Art of Pheidias." 132 ESTHETICS, ART Now, to return to these fundamental principles which underlie all art and which justify our con- tention that art can thus be reduced to fundamental principles valid for all normal men, as much as the facts of science are based upon admitted fundamental principles. The earliest artistic function of man is thus selective and not creative. We have already from a wider general point of view, in the First Part, referred to this selective activity to prove the dominance of the aesthetic instinct. We are now dealing with the direct satisfaction of this instinct by means of man's activity and creativeness. It can be proved by the extant remains of primitive life in the earliest periods of man's appearance upon the earth, as well as by the study of savage life and the life of children, that man's first manifestation of such selective activity to satisfy his aesthetic instinct consists in his choosing " regular " and symmetrical objects in nature, in his preference for them, and his preservation and treasuring of them as objects of exceptional value, because they thus respond to and satisfy his longing for form, harmony, and beauty. Like the earliest primitive man, the child will delightedly pick up a perfectly rounded pebble or stone and treasure it, valuing it the higher in the degree in which it manifests this regular harmony or beauty of form. The more varied and complex manifestations of such symmetry, propor- tion, harmony and beauty will lead it to select shells and other objects of nature in which more elaborate geometrical patterns are combined into the unity of composition which satisfy to a still higher degree its sense of symmetrical and " beautiful " form. In the earliest stages of human existence, delight in flowers and plants manifesting the same qualities leads to similar active selection which by natural stages is then applied to adorn the person. Now, we must SYMMETRICAL OBJECTS IN NATURE 133 remember that such purely regular forms in nature, such as the rounded pebble or stone, are not the common objects which generally and continuously stimulate the sense of vision and of touch. But we have already seen that the reason for this aesthetic appeal to the senses is to be found in the constitution of the human senses themselves as organs of per- ception, inducing the further mental activities and, above all, conducing to uniform and harmonious sensations and emotions, ending in " aesthetic ' moods. The very rarity of harmonious objects, as we have seen, confirms the need and desire for har- mony in life and nature, and harmony, at a later stage of observation and reflection, manifests itself in what we call the Laws of Nature, also in the static sym- metry of the inorganic world, and in the dynamic symmetry in movement and growth in the organic world, until, finally, we come to the highest forms of harmony and justice, ever present in the mind and in the longings of social man, which he desires to see realised in human life. The delight of primitive man, of the savage and of the child in finding such regular objects in nature as respond directly to his feeling for harmonious form and to the use of his own life, is due to the fact that he finds the ideal principles of his life, even in its most rudimentary, sensory form, reflected in nature. The " artifact," which is con- trasted to the natural object, differs from the latter in that it was made to respond to his needs, and in the most elementary form to the need of his senses for regularity and symmetry. The artifact manifests his deliberate activity in fashioning the object, and he is pleased when nature gratuitously offers him this finished article. So important is this contrast, that the judicious student of nature and of the remains of primitive man is naturally inclined to doubt whether some primitive implements, which 134 ESTHETICS, ART show shapes of tools or weapons — the so-called " eoliths " — were artifacts (works of man) or of nature. 1 If we were to find a stone or pebble as absolutely perfect in its rondure as is a billiard ball, we should have grave doubts whether it could possibly be what, by a very significant term, we should call " a freak of nature." But we must also remember that in the shapes and forms of flowers, in any snowflake seen under the microscope, and innumerable other objects, the geometrical patterns would be as varied and as perfect as anything the Arab, Persian, and Moorish decorators have designed. However, the more un- common such perfect symmetrical works are in nature, the more are they valued because of their aesthetic qualities and the more positive grows the act of selection in order to satisfy the aesthetic in- stinct by means of what thus becomes a work of art, though purely the product of nature. Now, in the earliest stages man will select his dwelling guided to a very important degree by this regularity and symmetry of the structure which he finds to yield him shelter, such as the cave. No doubt, as is main- tained by some leading anthropologists and pre- historic archaeologists, at a comparatively very early stage he will make the first step to the creative, as opposed to the selective, principle in art in that he will fashion some form of wattle hut for his abode by placing twigs or other material in a regular and symmetrical manner in order to afford shelter. His handiwork will, however, be reduced to a minimum. But even in the cave which he selects, it must be maintained that the impulse which responds to elementary needs below the aesthetic instinct may be of primary importance. We shall again have to treat 1 See Eugenics, Civics, and Ethics, by the Author (Cambridge University Press, 1920, p. 10 seq.). HARMONY IN TOOLS 135 with these subtle distinctions when we come to consider architecture as an art ; but, as has already been suggested, structure and construction are in themselves based upon harmony. Use, as distin- guished from harmony of form, is itself an expression of harmony in the adaptation of means to ends ; and when the object of use is one that directly affects the senses, such as touch and vision, the sensations of perfect satisfaction must be reduced to the principle of proportion and harmony. The same applies to weapons and tools. Though the object of their selection and the impulse which led to it may prim- arily have been that of use and of the direct satis- faction of physical needs, the thing itself and its quality as a tool and the measure in which it performs its appropriate function in the feel of the hands using a perfect implement, or to the eyes of a spectator, are valued in the degree in which it thus, through its shape, appeals to the senses and satisfies the desire for perfect form. Even in the most rudi- mentary and primitive tools of this kind a very dominant attribute is always their harmonious form. At an early stage also we come to the appreciation of the aesthetic qualities in the human body. These no doubt are to a considerable degree determined by other factors, such as strength and agility, sub- ordinated to or associated with the primary need of self-preservation in work and in the struggle against animal and human enemies, and also determined by the sexual instinct and its selection ; but both these determining factors can be and must be reduced ultimately to the principle of harmony, and more directly they show themselves in lines, curves and volume, and in the composition and proportion of the parts of the body to the whole, as they appeal to the eye and touch and directly to the aesthetic instinct. That this aesthetic quality is dominant is proved by 136 ESTHETICS, ART the fact that whatever other motives may be involved, the adornment with feathers and other objects of nature, as well as the tattooing and other decorations of the body, which mark a further stage than pure selection (and might therefore almost belong to the phase of creative art) show the importance in the various aspects of the appreciation of the human body through purely aesthetic stimulation. In all these considerations of the selective activity in art we have naturally dealt with the simplest and most primitive forms, so as to apply a strictly scientific method to the exposition of elementary and univer- sally valid principles of aesthetics. But this selective activity, more or less passive and not directly creative, is present in, and never was absent from, the functioning of the mind in every phase of life. In fact, the more complicated such life becomes in the growth of civilisa- tion the more active is such selective aesthetic function in every aspect of existence. The delight in the con- templation of nature, of definite objects of nature, of flowers and plants and animals, of the finest shadings of human form, the features of the face, and the expression of these features in a world of spiritual gradation — all these grow and are ever present with the growth of civilised man as a source of satisfaction and delight ; until we finally come (as we shall do towards the end of this chapter) to the " Art of Living," and the direct and conscious modification of our lives, individual and collective, to respond to the more complex phases of aesthetic and art- istic principles. Such advance is necessarily only attained when individuals and communities have passed beyond the primitive and rudimentary stages in which all energies and activities are practically absorbed by the need of struggling with untoward conditions and surroundings for mere self-preserva- tion, and there is no transitional period and energy THE WORK OF ART 137 left between work and absolute rest. It presupposes and predemands a surplus of energy and a certain minimum of freedom from work and from interested care in order that " recreation " takes an active form in play, physical and mental, 1 in the physical pleasure of exercises and athletic games, as well as in the spiritual delights of the mind most directly expressed by art. Of all ages of the past it was in the Hellenic world and through the Hellenic world that this development of the common life of civilised man reached its most perfect expression and type, and has, in the deepest sense of the word, ever since become " classical " in the estimation of civilised peoples. The Work of Art The step from the selective to the creative phase of art is made by those aesthetic impulses, present in the earliest conditions of primitive and savage life, which can be said to produce activities and which, moreover, are so spontaneous, as expressions of more or less physiological motives, that, though fully and directly expressing aesthetic instincts, they might still be considered to be selective and not consciously creative. Such are the rudimentary forms of the art of dancing (including gymnastics), music and poetry. They are the spontaneous and momentary expressions of aesthetic emotive impulse, and pass away and vanish when the impulse has spent itself. On the other hand, as soon as these impulsive expressions, whether material or moral, in their repetition have been organised into some formal system, and their leading features and essential characteristics have been tabulated in memory, they must definitely be classed as works of art, and, as a matter of fact, they may develop into the purest, as well as the highest, forms 1 See Part I, pp. 66, seq. 138 AESTHETICS, ART of artistic production. Dancing is thus one of the first, if not the first of arts. In itself it is a pure aesthetic act. It is not the work of the hand, of handi- craft, guided by the eye or the ear to fashion forms ; but it is the work of the whole body in which move- ment is composed and made symmetrical as fully as the work of the decorator traces such forms in various materials. It certainly is one of the earliest arts, as practically all savage people practised it and as all archaeological records give evidence of its existence. The hopping and jumping and evolutions of the child (not to mention the gambolling of young animals) is an activity not directed by any purpose of utility or self-preservation, but is merely an expression of the perfect functioning of the organs of the body, and of their normal or harmonious relation to one another. Symmetry and rhythmical regularity at the earliest stages make themselves felt and in themselves lead to satisfaction — pleasure in the performers and admiration on the part of the observers. At a very early stage dancing is combined with music and poetry — no doubt in their most primitive forms. This is natural, and affords evidence of the inter-relation between the arts of time and the arts of space, the visual, tactile and graphic arts with the arts that are based upon symmetrical movement and rhythmical symmetry, proving the elementary unity of these contrasted forms. At an early stage, however, it loses its purity in that it absorbs other forms and motives of expression belonging to different and not purely aesthetic needs and impulses — a distinction with which we shall have to deal more fully in our treatment of the creative arts. It then becomes an expression (though an aesthetic, artistic expression) of the other phases of primitive life. Thus sexual life, its needs and im- pulses, is at an early phase blended with the purely THE DANCE 139 aesthetic expression of movement in the dance, in that sexual longing and sexual attractiveness are consciously expressed in it. The same can be traced in the movements, if not dances, of animals in the breeding period ; and we can even discern, as I have done, the direct influence of such choroplastic motives from animal life in the national dances of civilised communities, such as among the moun- taineers of the Tyrolese and Bavarian Highlands, in which the movements of certain birds are directly, though not consciously, imitated. The war-dance is common to lost savage tribes, and has thus absorbed a number of other elements and motives to stimulate courage in the dancer and fear in his enemy. Among them elements of actual life can thus be discerned. The evolution of the dance among the Ancient Greeks is most significant and interesting. At a very early stage it became the most important artistic and decorative factor in all their ceremonies, and was naturally and spontaneously associated also with its congenital counterpart in a vigorous and manly people, namely, gymnastic and athletic games and evolutions. It formed an important part in the funeral rites and ceremonies, and, through these and through the general development of their games and art, in the development of their lyric poetry and their drama. Early Minoan and Mycenaean monuments exhibit its prevalence in festivals and " artistic " entertainments along with the representation of gymnastic feats. The skill of the performers of such feats, though manifesting strength and agility (and thus arousing admiration), is chiefly dependent upon the symmetrical and decorative quality of the resulting movements in these performances, as can be seen in the work of any acrobat of our day. On the Homeric Shield of Achilles the symmetrical division of the two semi-choruses accentuates the 140 AESTHETICS, ART symmetrical composition of that elaborate work with its numerous scenes, and shows how, in those days certainly, the rules and figures of the dances were established on complicated symmetrical lines. The position of the Chorus was one of predominant importance in the earlier days of Greek drama, and depended upon the old religious ceremonies, especially in the Dionysian festivals, in which dancing no doubt formed originally the most important part. We can follow here its interesting evolution in tragedy and comedy. But undoubtedly it fulfilled many of the functions of the drama in its later history throughout the world, and is, as regards the origin of the drama and its further development in Greece, an artistic element of central importance. In the history of modern nations dancing has also played, and plays, a most important part as a powerful and direct expression of artistic needs ; and in dramatic art, through the pantomime and the ballet, absorbing in itself lyrical and dramatic elements and especially music, it has taken, and takes now, a very prominent place in the evolution of the complex and higher life of cultured communities. The art of music has gone through similar stages of evolution. From the earliest and crudest emission of rhythmical sounds and the satisfaction and delight which primitive man had in this response to the aesthetic elements in his sense-perception, it has advanced to one of the highest and most complex arts, uniting with its own form those of other arts, as it has also been incorporated to strengthen and develop the artistic qualities of the sister arts of poetry and drama. At an early stage, in addition to the human voice, instruments were fashioned to produce rhyth- mical and melodious harmonies as the direct expression of aesthetic impulse and needs. The tom-tom, which merely renders the rhythmical side of musical MUSIC OF SAVAGES AND CHILDREN 141 harmony, is an early and universal instrument of the most primitive savages. With the addition of sounds developed more and more methodically by the human voice, aided by the clapping of hands and other instruments, it is at an early stage fused with the dance in this most primitive transitional period from selective to creative art. The same applies to poetry in this selective transi- tional stage. The sounds emitted by the shouting or singing savage or child are soon supplemented by the rhythmical enunciation of words, and can be illustrated by the early sing-song babbling of any child. It is important to remember, in the light of this inquiry into elementary aesthetic principles, that the enunciation of language is at first only used as a means and not as an end in itself. That is to say, that it is merely applied to convey certain necessary meanings, and that the conscious efforts of the speaker, the conscious and emotive aim which he has in speaking, is merely to convey the meaning or to attain his object, and not to enunciate sounds and words themselves. But when the child, or when primitive man, babbles his " verses," the sound, and moreover the harmonious sound, of the succession of words is the primary and ultimate end of speech. M. Jourdain, who, in Moliere's comedy, is astonished to find that he speaks habitually in prose, enunciates an important and fundamental truth in the historical evolution of human language, as an object of art. Moreover, it is as well to remember that when man had reached the phase of writing down his thoughts and feelings, and desired to do more than convey his more material expressions and meanings, he generally, if not always, did so in verse, or in some metrical or aesthetic form. Not only did the earliest Greek philosophers write their philosophy in verse, but, in the religious writings of all earlier peoples of the East 142 ESTHETICS, ART and West, including the Bible, some form of metrical or rhythmical responsions, or even of elaborate versi- fication, is dominant. Creative Art Now, leaving the selective phase as well as the transitional steps to the creative sphere of art, we must at first deal with the purest form and expression of art as such, unalloyed with, and undiluted by, elements that belong to other spheres of mental activity. In using this term purest, it is not meant that it is synonymous with the highest development of art to whatever qualitative height in artistic expressiveness some of the arts, notably music, may have attained when remaining strictly within the bounds of their pure £estheticism. The two depart- ments of art which, among all arts and their works, are from their very nature purest in aesthetic expres- sion, are the arts of music and of decoration, though, as we shall see, they may in the earliest, as well as in the latest, periods become associated, or blended with, other departments of art and in so far themselves lose the paramount quality of this aesthetic purity. Music In music all means of expression, vocal and instru- mental, are applied more or less to produce sounds in tones and their combinations which directly satisfy the sense of form, and not for any other purpose. The human voice is used to emit sounds in singing which reach far beyond mere interjection, just as it is also used for the formulation of words in ordinary speaking. Calls or shrieks are emitted to express sensations or emotions for the immediate and sole purpose of expressing pleasure or pain, in laughing or weeping, or in calls to attract attention or ask MUSIC AS A FORMAL ART 143 for help, or utter defiance, etc. In these phases they partake to a considerable degree of the nature of reflex actions, as far as the definite sounds are con- cerned. But when the emitted sounds or tones become what we must call " lyrical," harmonious, symmetrical, and are emitted because of an aesthetic impulse producing the corresponding form and the delight in it, we attain to what we call the " song." They may be expressions of emotions as well, or rather of definite emotional states or moods not induced as a reflex to one definite sensation or experience and ending with this individual expression. But as definite vocal expressions of joy, sadness, longing, love, courage, and as manifesting these emotions and moods in the singer, they convey to and produce in the hearer the same or similar emotions or moods. We thus have joyful and sad songs, those that express longing and love, anger, courage and warlike passions, grief, and the whole scale of human emotions. But we must again remember that they are not the direct and individual expression of an individual feeling of joy, sadness, or love. The object of such a feeling does not fill the consciousness, and the sounds are not an unconscious means of inter- jection or exclamation ; but the expression itself reproduces the emotion and, by this reproduction, awakens satisfaction or pleasure in the producer and in the hearer. Thus at an early stage vocal music develops sub- divisions of joyful and sad character, definite types of song like the love-song, battle-song, dirge, etc. So also at a comparatively early stage vocal music is combined and blended with poetry and dancing, and these combinations again lead to further sub- divisions in which the song is subordinated to more complicated and wider purposes in early ceremonies and rites, religious and secular — in dirges, at funeral 144 ESTHETICS, ART ceremonies, in songs of battle or victory, and in temple rites and cults and other religious perform- ances, as well as in a variety of civic ceremonies. But in all these cases the lyrical element which directly responds to formal aesthetic harmony is the ruling element and principle. Still, in the degree in which such music is blended with other arts, activities, and purposes, music as such loses the artistic purity of its nature and appeals to other emotions and moods which are not essentially aesthetic. There is no doubt that through this admixture of poetry and language, as well as the combination with other arts, musical expression gains in definiteness and indivi- duality of expression, increases to an almost infinite degree the variety of shadings of emotions, experi- ences, and even thoughts, which it becomes capable of expressing ; but it is important to bear in mind that in so far, as a work of art, it loses its aesthetic purity. The same applies to instrumental music in which, in early as well as in later stages, musical purity is to a greater degree maintained intact, owing to the fact that the tones are emitted instru- mentally and not through the human voice, which has also to perform the ordinary function of speech. Instrumental music is thus not aesthetically weakened by the intrusion of definite and accurate meaning in language which appeals to other faculties. Concerted instrumental or orchestral music has in the course of the last few centuries evolved a number of forms in which the composition as a whole, and each of its parts, present the most varied formal harmony. The Symphony is, perhaps, the highest type, subdivided into movements which are all correlated to one another. Freedom and variety from this strict classical form are given by the orchestral suite, intermezzi, symphonic poems, etc. In solo-instru- ments, as well as in duets, trios, quartets, sextets, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC 145 etc., the sonata and the classical trio and quartet, in the so-called Chamber Music, follow the form of the symphony ; but here, again, a large variety of forms have been evolved, and respond to all shadings of modern life and feeling. Church music, which has played so important a part in the development of music, has also established a variety of forms ; but, as is the case with the military marches, dances, etc., its purely musical form is subordinated to or modified by its special purposes, character, and atmosphere, and is bound up with special religious rites and ceremonies. Though instrumental music, perhaps of all arts, has been most highly developed in modern times, maintaining in concerted instrumental music from the solo to the highest orchestral forms of symphonic compositions the purity of its formal aesthetic principles, it too is often blended with vocal music, and both together with scenic effects and dramatic action ; until there has been evolved the whole world of musical form, which constitutes one of the most considerable artistic departments of modern civilised life, and which as far as complexity is concerned culminates in the Wagnerian music-drama, to which we shall have to refer when dealing with the drama. But even in purely instrumental music, when lyrical or descriptive poetry is not introduced, the develop- ment of so-called " programme music " has tended to extend the sphere of musical expression and to fix the defmiteness of individual emotions, and even a great variety of experiences and thoughts. In spite of all this development of musical art, the underlying and dominant fact always remains that music itself and in itself never was, and never is, the vehicle for conveying definite objective perceptions, meanings, and thoughts. Its proper scope is directly to express by the harmony of tones the complete ii 146 AESTHETICS, ART harmony of form which through these conveys corre- sponding aesthetic pleasure to the senses and responds to the emotions and moods, which crave for and are satisfied by such harmony. In itself it thus always remains the purest of arts. The Art of Ornamentation or Decoration If we now leave the art conveyed through the organs of hearing and the harmonious succession of impres- sions in time, and turn to the arts appealing to the sense of sight and touch in space, the purest form of such artistic expression is to be found in what we call ornamentative or decorative art. This arises out of the fundamental principle of symmetry, proportion and harmony of form, which, as we have seen from the beginning of our inquiry into the nature of the human senses, is elementary and fundamental in the human mind. In the creative stage of this ornamen- tative activity of man, in contradistinction to the merely selective phase, we find that in the earliest activities of primitive man, as well as in savage and infantile life, man endeavours by his handiwork to reproduce those simple symmetrical forms by design in modelling, scratching or incising, drawing or painting, and every other method of fashioning the forms which by their symmetry and regularity appeal to his aesthetic instinct. In the purely selective stage man was simply moved by the desire for harmonious form in choosing a symmetrical object. But his creative decorative work generally finds its scope on some article of use which was primarily produced for some other purpose in his life, namely, utility, ritual, or other motives. Still, innumerable objects abound in all times in which the activity is in no way related to any further purpose, and in the earliest work of the modeller of clay, the EARLIEST DECORATIVE ART 147 worker in stone or metal, and the " graphic " artist there is no ulterior purpose than the satisfaction of such design. He merely fashions in these materials objects of decoration because of their regularity, symmetry, and variety of form, and he scratches or incises on any empty spaces geometrical patterns, simple in their rudeness, or complicated in their elaborateness, to satisfy this craving for form. These decorative activities are in no way intended to possess any further " meaning " to be apprehended by the spectator and for such purpose of apprehension and understanding. My own conclusions on the evidence of early prehistoric finds have been confirmed to me by the best specialist authorities among prehistoric archaeologists and anthropologists (such as Abbe Breuil) that purely geometrical ornament precedes naturalistic ornament in the work of prehistoric man. This in no way precludes the fact that the Palaeo- lithic incisions and drawings on bone and other materials, reproducing with such astounding skill and truth to nature animals (reindeers, horses, etc.) and other subjects in advanced freedom and naturalism, are succeeded by designs of later periods in which the freedom and naturalism of reproduction are lost, and the process of " conventionalism " more and more tends towards pure geometrical pattern, marking degeneration of art, as it may also mark degeneration in the life and thought and civilisation of the later peoples. I am myself inclined to believe that these remarkable instances of truthful and free naturalism in some Palaeolithic periods, which stand out in such astonishing superiority of technical skill over the work of subsequent ages, illustrate a high develop- ment in the comparative civilisation of these early prehistoric periods and thus presume a long series of evolutionary periods preceding them, as they may mark the end and not the beginning of an evolutionary 148 ESTHETICS, ART upward wave. It must also be remembered (as I have already anticipated in the First Part) that the purely decorative designs are not only found anterior to the naturalistic drawings and incisions, but that they are always found accompanying those latter designs, and, moreover, that the natural tendency of the excavator and archaeologist is to overlook such simple work, owing to the impressiveness of the less numerous remarkable specimens of advanced art, thus distorting the actual proportion and dominance of the one form over the other. Nevertheless, the fact remains that purely decora- tive work is generally applied to articles of use, implements of peace and war, which are fashioned to serve other purposes, not purely artistic, and to satisfy utility and not beauty. But even so, it must never be forgotten, and cannot be repeated too often, that the quality of " utility " itself in any object created by man must ultimately be reduced to what might be called appropriateness, that is, to the principle of harmony, which can be finally tested in an intelligent being like man only by its response to the aesthetic instincts and emotions. Still we are bound to realise that such objects as a whole were definitely meant and created for their utility, and not for an artistic or decorative purpose. But, in contemplating them, their form may be such in their perfect construction and elaboration that through the sensations of eye and touch they please and appeal to the aesthetic sense. We have already noted how, in the manufacture of the most highly developed modern industries in this practical and commercial age, practically all articles of use and mechanism have a large portion of work put into them to assure their perfect design and elaboration and their attractiveness in the eyes of the purchaser. However, apart from the form of such objects of APPROPRIATE SPACES FOR ORNAMENT 149 use, taken as a whole, the spaces and surface of these objects become the neutral field for " decora- tion " — namely, the groundwork upon which the decorative artist can more fully, and (in the best work) in harmony with the form and purpose of the object as a whole, create those ornamentations which exclusively appeal to the aesthetic sense and satisfy man's artistic, and not his practical or mechanical, desires. These parts and spaces thus become the spheres for pure ornamentation. This applies too, in the first instance, to all objects of ornament for the person of man himself, for his home and surround- ings, to all his articles of daily use. The work of the ceramist, the worker in wood and in metal, the weaver of textiles, the armourer, the builder, the milliner, etc., in some cases, as notably in weaving, in basket- making, etc., the actual production of the article, the process itself, predemands a regular and symmetrical manipulation and construction which itself is one of geometrical design ; so that the very structure and existence of the body is thus based on regularity of design. The same we shall see applied to all forms of architecture. But in most cases the decorative ornamentation is the direct and conscious aim in the work of the artist who uses the spaces as purely neutral grounds ; though, as we shall see, such spaces as a whole and their relation to the surrounding parts of the object decorated may, and ought to have, their influence on the ornament and its composition. Such designs are in the first instance devoid of all meaning, and consist merely of the collocation of forms and lines in harmonious sequence and proportion which please the eye. Straight lines, parallel or regularly inter- secting or intertwining circles or curves lead to such familiar forms as the zigzag, the meander pattern, the succession of circles, the parallel wavy lines, spirals, etc. But soon, subconsciously, and not by 150 ESTHETICS, ART deliberate copying (on the contrary, out of the sub- conscious summary of man's continuous observation), such regular and symmetrical forms in nature, in plants, flowers, and shells, are introduced, until the artist and the spectator are struck by the resemblance to, if not the identity with, the natural forms. In the next stage in the evolution of these generalised forms suggesting nature, but not copied from any individual elaborate instance of the natural form, the suggestion of the natural object, whether shell, plant, or flower, becomes more or less clearly or con- sciously indicated. There is then evolved the " honeysuckle " and " anthemion " pattern, so pre- valent in the art of ancient Greece and throughout all subsequent art in various modifications, and in the decorative forms of Oriental art, since known as Arabesque, all of which, without " meaning " or direct imitation, satisfy man's instinct for harmony and form, though they may suggest various particular forms in the world of nature. These early artist- decorators could rightly, though unconsciously, feel that they must not aim at reproducing accurately, " photographically," the individual plant or flower, but that they must subordinate form entirely to the decorative composition of lines and masses in their inter-relation to the complete satisfaction of the aesthetic, and not of the mimetic or imitative or cognitive or naturalistic interest of man's senses and emotions. In the further development of decorative art, especially in some forms of Oriental art — Persian, Indian, Arab, Hispano - Mauresque, Byzantine — and in some phases of Gothic art, the decorator so far delighted in his dexterity as a draughtsman or as a sculptor that he would reproduce in detail, with most perfect precision, actual and elaborately beautiful forms from the life of plants, flowers, and animals. We need not regret this. But we must ORNAMENT DEVOID OF "MEANING" 151 remember that these ornaments were not fashioned to give us information about plant or animal life ; but to please us by the lines and forms ; and, further- more, that these individual and highly finished reproductions of natural elements formed but a part of the whole scheme of decoration, be it in a capital, or in an elaborate frieze of a harmoniously constructed building, or in the filling of definite spaces with harmonious lines and forms in vases, shields, sword- blades, and other articles of use. In course of time, even the human figure, singly and in groups, reproducing or suggesting definite incidents and scenes, was also introduced into more elaborate forms of ornamentation. But these again were entirely subordinated to the all-predominating object of harmonious decoration rather than to the delineation and convincing reproduction of the human figure or of incidents and scenes. It is here that the ancient Greeks, more than any other people, developed the decorative principle of art in the plastic or graphic reproduction of scenes. On the other hand, in Oriental and Egyptian art the primary motive and origin of sculptured, drawn, or painted bands with animals and human figures, was rather based on the mimetic and cognitive than on the harmonious and aesthetic interest. They all partake of what again must be termed the pidographic or narrative character. They were primarily and, above all, meant to convey and to record incidents and scenes, generally in the history of one of the Pharaohs or other monarchs, and the aesthetic and formative aim was subordinated to this principal object. How- ever highly developed in artistic skill they were, as a form of " picture-writing," no doubt raised far beyond the earliest pictographs or hieroglyphic symbols, they were still of the nature of such picto- graphs. With the early Greek artists a new and most 152 ESTHETICS, ART important principle of art is introduced, and its successive manifestations lead to the highest develop- ment of complex decorative art. Even in some forms of Minoan and Mycenaean art, it will be seen how the endless succession of animal and human figures, which is meant to show the succession of events and human actions in time, following one another like a record in speech or writing in Egyptian and Oriental art, is replaced by the central principle of all art which we call " composition." This means nothing more nor less than the application of the laws of formal sym- metry and harmony in order to appeal directly and completely to the harmonistic or aesthetic instinct, ending in the highest artistic appreciativeness. The main outline of any given scene does not naturally go on indefinitely impressing succession in time, but is rounded off and completed, in one most important central figure or incident, leading, if not forcing, the eye of the spectator to concentrate within the out- lying symmetry and giving organic inter-relation of form to the composition as a whole. This can be fully appreciated by comparing, to take one in- stance, the wild bull-catching scene on the gold cups from Vaphio with any Egyptian, Assyrian, or other Oriental scenes, of which there are innumerable instances. Whereas the latter give a long succession of figures following one another, without a definite composition in space, the scene on the Vaphio cup, in which the wild bull is caught in a large net, by the device of the marked semicircular line of the net in the centre with the figures on either side symmetrically turned towards the centre, forms a complete decorative and harmonious unit. The Hellenic artist has thus carried the earliest linear geometrical decoration one step further in emphasis- ing this principle of pure decorative art by composing each scene within the limited space of the object of "COMPOSITION" IN DECORATION 153 use, and then in giving harmonious unity to the scene. The front and back of the body of a vase, its neck, its handles, its foot, all give distinct though different opportunities for decorative artistry and for the application of purely artistic principles ; and it is by these principles of " composition," produced by the welding of the two spheres of human activity — that of the artist and that of the craftsman, the potter, metal-worker, joiner, stonemason, and builder — that decorative art, without losing its own artistic prin- ciples and aesthetic motives, is carried a considerable step forward in the evolution of its creative powers responding to the growth of varied, complex, and highly advanced life of cultured communities. This influence of the craft of building upon the art of pure decoration, ultimately reaching its culmination, the combination and blending of the two activities in Architecture, cannot be overrated. It is here that Iktinos co-operates with Pheidias, and presents to him, as earlier Greek artists did for earlier Greek sculptors, a new sphere for the sculptor to work in, the sphere of decoration, setting to him most com- plicated and difficult tasks in the adaptation of decorative composition in pediments, metopes, and friezes to the structural unity of a great building, which not only responded to the definite purpose for which the edifice was erected, but also satisfied aesthetic harmony in its perfect lines and proportion as a whole. It is thus in the blending of the crafts- man and builder with the artist that the work of the " decorator " in the full sense of that term is evolved. But let no one conclude from this historical fact that the craftsman and the builder by themselves (merely following the primary impulse to create an object of use) could ever produce a work of art ; and that the principles of such use by themselves did in the 154 ESTHETICS, ART past, and ought in the present and the future, unaided to produce the principles of pure artistic decoration and to guide and inspire the decorative artist. Such a view has led to over-generalisations and fallacies emanating from practising artists and crafts- men, as well as from aesthetic critics and theorists in our own days. An attempt is constantly being made to reduce the principles of decoration to the principles of " structure and use " ; and it is maintained that the fundamental principle of all decoration is nothing more than right construction. You may raise con- struction and use to their highest power, but you will never thereby alone produce a work of art. They may appeal to, and strengthen, artistic perceptions, instincts and feelings, but they cannot by themselves fully satisfy the aesthetic instinct. In many cases the mechanical and utilitarian attitude of mind to which they corre- spond may even be in direct contrast, if not antagon- ism, to the artistic feelings. On the other hand, the history of this natural exaggeration and over-generali- sation does illustrate one essential requisite in perfect decoration. In modern times the theory of aestheti- cism, craftsmen and architects, which I am combating, arose out of a well-founded reaction against the vulgar degeneration of decorative art not very long ago, when inept and grotesque perversion of ordinary meanings and redundancy of blatant ornamentation (frequently in sham materials) filled all our buildings and our ornamented implements, corresponding to vulgar, blatant, and showy manifestations in other departments of our social life, and promoted by the incursion of manufacture by mass, which is inevitably characterised by mechanical sameness and generally works in tawdry, if not sham, materials, instead of honest, beautiful, sincere and painstaking handiwork inspired by truly artistic principles and aims. The reaction against the tendencies of this period of DECORATION AND CONSTRUCTION 155 decorative work has proved very useful and has, in many cases, counteracted some of the besetting sins of that misguided phase. It has drawn the attention of the public as well as of the artistic world to a most important aspect of the general principle of all art as applied to decoration, namely, harmony between the idea and execution, between the form and material, between the purpose of the work decorated and the decoration itself. It has furnished, and furnishes us now, with the most important negative principle of true decoration, namely, that, to produce the supreme harmony between form and matter, there must be no clash or contradiction between the use of the object decorated, or the material in which the decorative forms are to be worked, and the principles of construction out of which the object to be decorated is produced. In spite of the beauty, for instance, of even certain Gobelins or Aubusson tapestries and textiles, it may be doubtful whether it is right that the seat of a chair, or cover of a footstool, should be decorated with a beautiful woman's face or a delicate flower, upon which we sit or place our feet. Nevertheless, in such cases it may be maintained that, when the compositions on the chair and on the footstool are complete in themselves and please the eye by the harmony of their lines, forms, figures, as well as of colour and tone, nobody is reminded or need be reminded of the use which these objects are to serve, and there is no reason why, when they strike the eye, the aesthetic pleasure they would naturally produce should be compromised by the circumstance that the textiles themselves are used to cover chairs and footstools. Nor are all subjects and forms of decoration appropriate to our ordinary articles of use. The handle of an axe for chopping wood, a frying-pan, a pocket-handkerchief, a lady's parasol, are not suited to subjects and scenes from 156 AESTHETICS, ART life. It is also absurd to use costly material out of place, as it is undoubtedly inept to apply a pattern appropriate for lace or the most delicate metal-work to a common wooden chest, a terra-cotta vase, or the panel of a motor-car. There is no doubt that such radical and gross incongruities and absurdities mar the artistic harmony of any form of decoration, as there can also be no doubt that the decorator's success in the realisation of harmony in the design and subject-matter of the decorative forms and scenes represented and the material in which they are expressed and the use and structure of the objects they are to embellish, must be complete. It is also true that the very term " redundancy," or " over- decoration," implies bad taste, that it counteracts the harmony of the whole. But it is gross exaggeration to maintain that a decorative form is inseparably wedded to one definite material, and that out of the intrinsic nature of the materials and the technique in handling them all decorative forms are wholly evolved. That is untrue to the facts of history, as it is to aesthetic theory. All the noted Greek forms of decoration, from the zigzag and wave pattern and meander to the most elaborate anthemia and floral patterns of the ancient world, were used indifferently in the best periods, and by the best artists in vases of terra- cotta, of bronze, silver and gold, and of marble ; in stone-work, metal-work, and woodwork ; in drawing and in painting — irrespective of the nature of the material, or of the technique, or of the purpose of the decorated object. Those patterns were put in the right place and harmonised in line and colour with the objects, and were given the right proportion, so as not to produce a redundant, gaudy appearance in the work as a whole, or too meagrely or thinly to produce a simplicity out of place, which, it must "SIMPLICITY" AND OSTENTATION 157 always be remembered, is a form of meanness and vulgarity as marked as is ostentatious splendour. A drawing-room decorated like even the most beauti- ful cottage kitchen, and a kitchen with precious marbles and gilded ornaments of a ball-room, are as vulgar and as absurd, as insincere and as untrue, as would be the appearance of a cricketer in evening dress with white tie, or a dancer in a ball-room in flannels. The highly ornamented ball-room is a supreme object of beauty and gives the greatest opportunity for the decorator's genuine craft. The object of the decorator will always be to appeal, through the senses, to the artistic emotions of a receptive spectator ; and no amount of use, fitness, appropriateness, constructive efficiency, by themselves, without artistic beauty, will produce this aesthetic effect. We have thus traced the advance of ornamentation as a pure art, appealing to, and satisfying, the aesthetic instinct directly and completely by form, proportion and harmony, to its more complex mani- festations in which it is mixed with objects and elements belonging to other departments of human life and human creativeness, until it can no longer be called pure art in the sense in which we are using that term. Still the fact remains, that, with music in the world of sound and ornamentation in space, through the direct activity of the artist who fashions objects to satisfy aesthetic needs, works are created which are a direct expression of pure art. B. Architecture We must now turn to those numerous and most important forms of creative art which are no longer the pure expression of aesthetic needs and principles, but, through the development and complexity of 158 /ESTHETICS, ART civilised life, have become established departments of art-work and are mixed in character. Architecture, in contradistinction, on the one hand, to building and, on the other hand, to decoration, is the foremost type of such mixed art. In fact, the architect, though historically he may have grown and developed out of the builder, may also have developed out of the ornamenter. He does not belong wholly and only to the one class or the other ; but the distinctive activities and aims of the architect as an artist are to be found in the complete and harmonious blending of the two. The builder, as such, is a pure craftsman, as much as is the stone- mason, the joiner or engineer. The works which in the earliest times he produces aim, in the first instance, at utility and not at beauty ; they partake more of the nature of the mechanical than of the artistic, and the whole of his functions belong more directly to the department of pragmatics than of aesthetics. But so soon as the aesthetic instinct and need which supply the motive-power to the activity and creativeness of the ornamenter become active in the builder, they lead to the blending of these two impulses and found a new activity. Thus is produced the complex art of Architecture — neither wholly the work of the builder nor wholly that of the ornamenter. But, as soon as the builder becomes an architect, he becomes an artist ; and, however necessary it may be for him to satisfy the technical and, in great part, mechanical principles of construction in various materials, and as a practical worker to fulfil the definite purpose of use prescribed by the form of building he constructs, his function as an architectural artist must always be to satisfy directly the need for harmony, the aesthetic instinct of man. He must create a thing of beauty. No amount of mechanical ingenuity or knowledge, no regard for the structural THE ARCHITECT MUST BE ARTIST 159 nature and capabilities of the materials with which he deals, no justness and competence in fulfilling the useful purposes of the building he erects, will of them- selves make of him the true artist whom we call an architect. These are only the qualifications of a craftsman and an engineer. As an artist, he must compose into perfect harmony and unity of design the several iparts of the building, elaborate each portion and member of this constructed unit, so that they fully respond to the aesthetic feeling for form. He must further evolve those elements of ornamenta- tion which belong to the sister graphic or plastic arts and emphasise and intensify his architectural construction, not merely as an object of use, but as a work of art, to satisfy the aesthetic feelings of all who contemplate and use the building. But with the advance of complex civilised life and the innumer- able varieties of its needs, individual and collective, and with the increase of the number of materials that are used, the demands upon the ideal architect, on the intellectual, mechanical and even scientific side (in contradistinction to the more imaginative and emotional qualities of the artist), become more exacting and intrusive in his training and in his activities. In modern architecture the necessity of providing for the housing of all classes, with the need of many urgent considerations, and beyond the domestic sphere, in the world of business — from work- shop to factory, from the shop to the great depart- ment " store " — and in all public buildings, from theatres, cinematograph halls, churches, clubs, work- ing-men's institutes, and Government buildings — all these practical needs and all the physical means of responding to them become still more confusingly complicated by the use of quite new materials, demanding new forms of construction and treatment — through iron and steel to " reinforced concrete " — 160 ESTHETICS, ART which must be added to all the earlier materials which had evolved their own characteristic treatment and style. All these preliminary, though essential, demands urgently clamouring for due consideration and elaboration, require the modern architect to be not only a builder, but even a mechanical and civil engineer. Nevertheless, in order to be an architect — a full and adequate representative of the noble art — he must possess, as a primary force of his artistic creativeness, that all-pervading sense and love of form in harmony which in more direct and pre- dominating strength drives the musician and the decorator, the sculptor, painter and poet, to produce the works of their respective arts. It will thus be seen how in the making of the ideal architect a large number of separate qualities must be combined in the personality of the" artist. Not only the peculiar technical and artistic qualifications, to which reference has been made, are required, including a thorough scientific education in higher mathematics and physics for the construction of the building as a whole and in all its details (the pro- perties of the materials, stress, strain, etc.) ; but also complete mastery of draughtsmanship, and, above all, that imaginative visual capacity to see all the forms with which he deals architecturally, as the sculptor and the painter spontaneously visualise all forms in their distinctively sculpturesque or picturesque nature. This does emphatically not only apply to the outer appearance, the elevation of a building ; but implies that the internal spaces, with which he has to deal, present a harmonious and fully organised plan — the ground-plan — and that his imagination naturally presents all spaces in this form, which the untrained layman is hardly ever able to do either by natural predisposition or by training. Beyond these qualifications his faculties and his ARTS OF MEANING 161 work must not be limited to the single building by itself, but in its relation to its surroundings, whether in town or country. This wider harmony between the buildings to one another in civic architecture and to the street or district as a whole — the subordination of the buildings to a wider artistic organisation — is conveyed by the modern term " town-planning." The nature of this important architectural quality can best be illustrated by the comparative neglect of such principles in the case of New York as an architectural unit compared with Paris,. It becomes more and more urgent that civic authorities should, under competent expert advice, consider these wider artistic needs. In the country the architect must also consider the building in relation to its natural rural setting. The artistic organism must here also harmonise with its environment. The ideal architect must therefore also be a competent " landscape gardener." ' One fact, however, remains paramount within all the technical requisites of the architect as a builder, namely, that he must be essentially an artist possess- ing all the natural powers and the training of the artist, especially in the Pure Art of Ornamentation. C. The Arts of " Meaning " (Sculpture, Painting, the Literary and Dramatic Arts, Music, the Art of Living) General Principles We have already distinguished " Pure " Art from what might, perhaps, be called " Applied " Art — if we were to take the analogy between Pure and 1 I recall a striking phrase of my friend, the late Charles Eliot Norton, when visiting him in his picturesque country house at Ash- field, Massachusetts. I had asked him what he was then occupied in doing. " Oh," he said, " I am landscape-painting with an axe." 12 162 ESTHETICS, ART Applied Mathematics, Physics and Science in general. The further development of the art of ornamentation has already shown us how decorative art loses its " purity " as it progresses ; and how, in architecture, elements alien to the purely aesthetic aims are intro- duced and blended in the development of the art of building. Practically all the more advanced arts evolved by civilised man in the course of ages must surrender their purity of aesthetic function with the advance of intelligence and thought, of man's spiritual and mental activities, which dominate all his conscious life. His senses and perceptions, his feelings and thoughts, his imagination, his creative- ness in every direction, are modified and guided by his intelligence, in accordance with his aspirations and ideals. It is thus, through the channels of intelligent apprehension, that his further artistic desires and creativeness manifest themselves. To use a simple term, the forms which he puts into the material of artistic creativeness must have a meaning ; and it is thus through the channels of apprehension and understanding that his aesthetic faculties are stimu- lated and his desire for the harmony of art satisfied. Clear and accurate meaning must be as near as possible to the thing itself which is to be apprehended. Apprehension or cognition is to be objective and not subjective, independent of all subjective states, recep- tivities, pleasures, or pains, peace of mind, personal admiration and all other " affects." Things are to be apprehended as they are. This is the supreme domain of human cognition, ending in truth and leading to science. But, as we have seen, even in the purest science, the discovery and exposition of truth are ultimately based upon the harmonistic principle, and man's work arising out of this is in truth a kind of art itself. We have even seen that the simplest full sense- " SEEING " 163 perception rests upon the harmonistic principle ; it is never completely and purely objective, but is, from one point of view, a subjective activity of the human mind. For if we consider more searchingly what happens when we use our higher senses in seeing and hearing, we shall be forced to realise that these per- ceptions never consist of the purely passive stimulation through the outer object perceived, a passive repro- duction of the thing itself which stimulates our senses ; but consist in great part of an active, subjective selection, or what we might even venture to call the " composition " of stimuli, in which we actively pro- ject with varying degrees of consciousness (generally purely subconsciously) our memory-images or our associative imagination. In the act of seeing and hearing we only receive a part of the attributes of the outer object perceived, and we " concentrate " upon one or more of these innumerable attributes, we select them, we compose them on the lines of " attention," and on the principle of harmonistic selection. When we " see " a face or a hand, when we hear a longer or shorter sentence, or part of it, or a word, the outer objects which stimulate our perceptive faculties are in each case composed of innumerable attributes. Our sensory organs of sight and sound, by their function, ignore most of these attributes and select those which by attention and the desire of apprehension harmonise into the definite " meaning." The ideal perception of an ideal being would reproduce and grasp all the infinite attributes in every object perceived. My meaning in this seeming paradox would become clearer if we were to assume that the human eye and the human ear resembled the most complete microscope and mega- phone, as well as telescope and telephone, to the w th power — to an infinite degree. To leave for the moment more complicated objects, such as a face or 164 AESTHETICS, ART a hand, let us take a small portion of the human skin, which consists of all the innumerable visual attributes which even any magnifying-glass reveals in the pores, small cavities, among other distant and individual features, all of which when we " see " the human skin we either do not see or ignore. The same with any composition of sounds or single sounds and their component parts and intervals, which we do not hear with the " natural " ear unaided by instruments. In the same way the telescope reveals distant stars and planets that the naked eye does not see, and corresponding macrophonic instruments will produce similar results in sound. The same applies to the perception of succession in time or movement. Thus, for instance, the invention of instantaneous photography has revealed to us a more minute sub- division of the innumerable stages in movement than the naked eye habitually perceived. It was a revelation when we were first shown the several component portions of such continuous movement in the " horse in motion." We were thus led to believe that our previous visual picture of a galloping horse as shown in all graphic illustrations in drawing and painting was wrong. The result has even been that in modern graphic representation of such move- ment a more minute single instant in a gallop or a trot horse is chosen for the typical illustration of the whole movement. This is a mistake. Our natural eye, and the older artists who followed its lead and recorded its impressions, were right. They selected and composed spontaneously and naturally the typical elements that constitute galloping or trotting, and thus truthfully represented the real art of vision, which in itself is one of selection and composition. Our natural vision is not an individual instant of photography, but always partakes of the nature of what we now call a composite photograph. SENSE-PERCEPTIONS 165 This will, in the first instance, show that our sense- perceptions never mean complete and accurate trans- ference of the attributes of the object to the subject perceiving. Consider for a moment what happens when you listen to any speech directed to you in command or in conversation. We are addressed by the words, " Please listen to what I am going to say to you." If a phonograph were to record such a quickly spoken phrase it would amount to a jumble of sounds something like this, " plslsntowimgngt- satu " — or even much less in the majority of cases. But even a few of these individual sounds, stimulating the drum of our ear, are elaborated by our organ of hearing into a complete picture-sound by the pro- jection on our part, according to definite principles of meaning which we convey to our own consciousness. The same occurs with regard to sight. A mere part or hint of a familiar form is converted by our inner image into the consciousness of complete form. Both in sight and in sound we are constantly " com- posing " on very imperfect actual suggestions l into complete form, or we reduce the great variety of visual and audible objects which strike the eye or ear when we are looking in a room or at outside scenes, or listening to sounds, into some unity by definite concentration and isolation of phenomena, into one well-composed and clear image or impression which we apprehend as such. Every visual " scene " is provided by us with a foreground, middle distance and background ; the middle distance being the point of concentration, while the details of fore- ground and background, as well as the side views, are relatively indistinct and of minor importance to the 1 It would be well that those dealing with psychical phenomena, such as ghosts and apparitions, should remain strictly conscious of this " projecting " activity of our senses on insufficient actual stimu- lation from without. 166 AESTHETICS, ART central unity of composition. In seeing and hearing we are selecting and composing as artists do, con- tinuously throughout our life, at nearly every moment of our conscious existence. Thus, as we have already suggested in the previous chapter, science itself is based upon selection, which ultimately follows the principles of harmony. Now, in the " Arts of Meaning," the act of apprehension and cognition — the epistemological activity — is involved, as well as in science ; but the difference between science and these arts lies in the position which Form and Harmony hold in both activities. In art they are the end and object ; in science they are the means of discovery and exposition. In a work of art just one form given to the expression of any meaning in nature and in life and thought is essential to the exposition of the matter or meaning conveyed. No other form can take its place. It is essential to the creation presented ; it is the spirit which gives life to the dead and meaningless matter. Rob the sense-impression or feeling of this and the living thing no longer exists. One form is not essential to the abstract truth itself conveyed in science ; it can be discarded when the truth is apprehended for itself, not tied up with one form. Understanding of truth might be established, confirmed and im- parted by other means, by other departments of science. Mathematical truths by means of numbers, or algebraic symbols in geometry or trigonometry ; physics and chemistry, biology and geology, logic and philosophy, even history and its various aspects and parts — social, political, economical — may inter- changeably establish, prove, or confirm, and in turn impart, one truth ; the form in which this truth is conveyed is a mere means to the establishment of the truth itself. Even one and the same work may at times be used and considered as pure art or as pure FORM ESSENTIAL TO ART 167 science, according to the concentration of attention upon the form side or the meaning side. The facts in a passage of Thucydides, in so far as it aims at recording a battle scene in the spirit of historical science, might be imparted by some other author or conveyed by other departments of historical study — the topography of the site, the archaeology of the monuments referring to the battle, the epigraphy of the inscriptions referring to it, etc. But when this passage is considered as a work of literary art, for the style of the author, for his lexis, the facts, the matter itself, is literally " inspired " by the spirit of form into a new living organism or creation, and the form becomes the essence — no other mode of expression can replace it. We can never consider the form as a mere means in art and discard it when the meaning has been conveyed ; for in the highest degree of purpose and consciousness in such creations the form is the essence. Now, in the Arts of Meaning unquestionably facts and truths must be conveyed in artistic form, which becomes the chief constituent of the work as a whole. But in the actual history of such artistic work and in the theory and criticism of such artistic creativeness, the crucial point has ever been, and will always be, the relation and proportion between these two elements of form and meaning which are to be organically fused into one. The predominance of the one over the other will thus be characterised by what has been called Realism or Idealism. Realism will, above all, aim at truth, as the corresponding forms of Idealism will aim at form. But such one- sided, exaggerated and pronounced Realism, the highest aim in the production of which is truth, can never produce or attain to the highest art, because the work of art then merely becomes a feeble and shadowy substitute, a makeshift, for reality ; and it would 168 ESTHETICS, ART attain its highest perfection when it could deceive the spectator into mistaking such an artifact (for it never is a work of art) for the thing itself — as certain people are delighted when at Mme Tussaud's they find themselves addressing one of the wax figures as a living visitor or attendant and fondly believe that, because they have thus been tricked, the waxwork is the highest realisation of the artist's work. Yet, not only in this vulgar form of wonder, mistaken for artistic admiration, but even with some of the highest representatives of art and aesthetics, can this under- lying fallacy be detected. We have seen before, in dealing with the art of ornamentation, the narrative or " pictographic " stage in which the graphic arts are made subservient to the mere imparting of knowledge, and these arts are reduced to picture-writing, a makeshift for the imparting of information, and not a work of art designed to satisfy the aesthetic instinct and feelings. The same is true of those " arts of meaning " as well in which the facts conveyed ought merely to be means and units to the establishment of a further harmony. In so far as they are only designed to convey accurate information they belong to the domain of science and not of art. It is therefore a complete misunder- standing of the nature of art to maintain that it arises out of the mimetic instinct — the reproduction or imitation of outer things, events, or actions. Thus Plato, 1 who in some of his dialogues (notably in the 1 I must make an exception to my self-imposed rule of not discussing or quoting the various views on the subject I am dealing with or in any way translating the expression of my own convictions into the language of other thinkers, by referring to a very able and suggestive exposition of the Platonic conception of art as well as of that of other philosophers in a book on The Theory of Beauty, by Mr. E. F. Carritt, of Oxford. It must be remembered that Plato and Aristotle at times refer to art from the fixed point of view of Ethics, Pedagogics, and Politics, and that in such cases there is a fixed ethical or paedagogical bias in their conception of /Esthetics, MIMESIS 169 Phcedrus) has gone to the very heart of the nature of art, singularly contradicts his definitions and the true principles there laid down when (chiefly in the ioth book of the Republic and in the Philebus) he ascribes to Mimesis the fundamental principle of artistic creativeness, and consequently assigns a comparatively low position to art and to the artist in the world of spiritual achievement. When Robert Browning, in " The Last Ride Together/' deplores the inadequacy of art : And you, great sculptor — so, you gave A score of years to Art, her slave, And that's your Venus, whence we turn To yonder girl that fords the burn ! he comes dangerously near to ignoring the true essence of art. It is not the aesthetic sense or spirit which leads the man to prefer the village girl who fords the burn to the statue of Venus ; but his sen- suality. A visit to a session of a Criminal or Divorce Court ; a ball at some social gathering ; eavesdropping or keyhole-peeping at a love-scene ; or the verbatim accounts of any scene or incident of life in any news- paper, would all be a more perfect means of appre- hending the truth of life than any work of poetry or prose, conveying the spirit and essence of life in all its manifestations in the most harmonious, thrilling and lofty forms of literary art. On the other hand, pure " Idealism," ignoring all the truthful rendering of objects and scenes from nature and life in the desire to convey form in its purest and absolute harmony (unless it is merely an expression of the pure art of " ornamentation," with which we have dealt before), can never succeed in imparting ideas, which in their harmonious forms are designed to stir us to higher aesthetic appreciativeness and emotions. Moreover, in so far as the meanings which are to be 170 ESTHETICS, ART conveyed produce inaccurate or distorted images of facts, objects, incidents and scenes of life, by their very faulty description or drawing, they lead to distorted perceptions which, as such, are inharmonious and counteract, or detract from, the ultimate har- mony. Such inaccuracy or untruthfulness produces either disturbing or painful struggle in the act of mere apprehension, or an opposition and protest in the mind of the spectator or audience, because of their untruthfulness. In the reproduction, for instance, of the human being, of landscapes, animals, plants, buildings, by means of the plastic or graphic arts, if these forms are out of drawing or out of perspective, or with false keys of colour, then, in so far as they strike us as false, and as this untruthful- ness obtrudes itself upon our attention, thus obscuring or weakening any other visual emotion, harmony of form and colour, or general harmonious aesthetic mood, the result is cacophony and not harmony ; they can convey no idea or ideal, they only disturb or destroy the artistic expression itself. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, for purposes of impressing their visual form in one distinct aesthetic aspect, details in the object may be ignored as others may be emphasised, if not exaggerated. This really is but a continuance and development of the principle inherent in the act of " seeing " to which I have just referred. For instance, the presentation of a gallop- ing horse in one definite composite moment is not true to the momentary action of the horse itself as perceived. If thus El Greco exaggerates in portraits the dimensions of his figures, emphasises the single features to produce the strongest characterisation, chooses pronounced contrasts of light and shade and colour to give one vivid totality to the whole scene, this unusual and, perhaps, untrue rendering of living forms may all be so thoroughly subordinated to his FAULTY DRAWING 171 own individual pictorial sense and imagination and to the forcible realisation in his work of his own conceptions and moods, that many, if not most, of his pictures are distinctive and high forms of pictorial art. But it is important and essential to remember that it is in spite of, and not because of, these con- cessions of ordinary visual truth to a wider aim of formal harmony, that his works are to be appreciated and admired. Such a practice ought, however, never to be put forward as the rule and norm of pictorial art ; and, still less, ought it to form a school, which aims at establishing the normal standards of that art in exaggerated eccentricities of drawing and colour, and without the genius for true artistic harmony possessed by El Greco. The most modern schools of " impressionism " and " futurism " are justified to some degree, as in their protest and. reaction against the commonplace and mechanical conceptions of antiquated technique, as well as against the realistic schools which aim at indifferent rendering of truth to life and nature without harmony or form. But they are wrong — unless they convincingly take their stand in the domain of the art of pure " ornamentation " — when they obtrude obvious faults in drawing, in perspective, and in harmonious colour, while basing their impressionistic pictorial harmony of objects in nature, in human and animal figures, trees and plants, rocks and houses which are unrecognisable or " out of drawing," so that the unprejudiced spectator with normal visual senses is at once, and above all, struck by the discrepancy between the pictorial representa- tion of these objects and his own normal visual images of them in life. However much such artists justify their general aesthetic theory of aiming at harmonious forms and colours, they do not succeed in realising these theories in their works, which directly contradict their own theories. 172 AESTHETICS, ART The true aim of the Arts of Meaning must be to fuse into just proportion and harmony these two extremes of Realism and Idealism — a task which the ancient Greeks were the first to achieve for the world, so that the term " classic " will ever suggest this right balance in the evolution of art throughout all ages. To the conveyance of accurate meaning, which thus complicates, obscures and sometimes diverts into inartistic channels the various arts which present definite things, events, experiences of nature and life, we must, in order to create the harmonious whole of a true work of art, add other elements coming from relatively alien sources and aims which still further inhibit, impede, dilute, and complicate the chief aim of the artist to establish Pure Form and harmony in the sphere of aesthetic creativeness. Such complications are due to the fact that the nature of outer objects in the world and in the life from which the artist chooses his subjects alters with the varia- tion of the human mind, the point of vision which man may adopt, as well as the development of society and civilisation. The change of purpose in the things and beings which man perceives, the change of " Fashion " which the modification of communal life in successive periods establishes, stand in the way, and embarrass the discovery and the appreciation of the pure form which, on the grounds of normal physical and physiological development, the artist endeavours to establish. Take, for instance, the human and normal forms with which the graphic and plastic arts are principally concerned. Let us even simplify this complex problem by limiting our scope to the Homo Enropeus, and not include the other races of man. There can be no doubt that the typical proportions of the human bod} 7 and of the human face, in their relation CHANGES IN STANDARDS OF FORM 173 to one another and in the normal anatomical and physiological development of each one of the visible organs of the body and the features of the face, have been evolved and established by what, roughly speaking, we might call classical art. But, however complex and arduous the task has been in the past, and ever remains, of thus responding to our sense of proportion in appreciating a human form on the ground of physiological normality, it was, and is, a comparatively simple task. When, however, to the existing complexities are added the changes in our standard of admiration and appreciation, forcibly, if not necessarily, produced in us by the development of the fullness of our communal social life, the task of the artist in composing into harmony all these standards due to new appreciations of form becomes still more complicated and difficult, though, no doubt, art itself gains in variety and in the living expansion of its domain and activity. When nature is thus not left to its purely physiological activities, but man, with his needs and desires and purposes in the course of social evolution, steps in to modify into different channels the functioning of the human body, the physical types and ideals of man have become essentially modified. The simpler the conditions of communal life in each period and in each locality, the simpler the establish- ment of the typical, the more will it approach to the type naturally evolved by the interaction of physiological causes. When the chief and all- absorbing task of man was protection against savage animals and human enemies, the highest type from every point of view, including social and ethical needs, was the strong man, whose physical, and especially muscular, development markedly responded to such needs. So also this bodily strength secured his power of asserting his superiority over the 174 AESTHETICS, ART weaker members of his own community. When, in a further stage, he invents and produces mechanical means of defence and offence — that is, arms — the efficiency of his strength is conditioned by his skill in using those arms ; and further modifications have been constantly recurring in consequence of changes in the character of his weapons throughout his whole historical evolution until — to take a striking instance — we come to the most marked change in the history of highly civilised European peoples when the fully armed, mounted knight of the Middle Ages, and all the social qualities which his superiority implied, was pulled down from his high and dominant position, owing to the invention of gunpowder and all that this implied. In our own times, owing to the various inventions in defensive and offensive arms, we have witnessed, and are witnessing, momentous changes, perhaps as great and significant as resulted from the invention of gunpowder. The consequence thus is, that at an early stage different modifications of the physiological type of the perfect body of man assert themselves and effectively modify the ideals of form. In the first place, skill is added to strength, fleetness and agility to the mere muscular development, and, especially in ancient Greece, through the great festivals with their athletic games, subdivisions of types corresponding to the " heavy " and " light " games (as in war there was the heavy " hoplite " and the more lightly armed warrior), supervene, until at last skill leads over to intelligence, and even the out- wardly visible signs of such intelligence become the reason for admiration as regards the physical ap- pearance of man. The more that moral and intellectual qualities become effective means of establishing social dominance, the more do the physical concomitants and outwardly visible attributes of those qualities affect physical appearance and constitute the type MANIFESTATION OF SKILL IN STRENGTH 175 of man most admired — most perfect. When to this strong motive force in developed communal life there is added the powerful factor of sexual selection, there appears a still more complex modification of the simple physiological type. The direct recognition of social superiority itself then becomes a very powerful factor in the modification of the ideal of the human form. The physical qualities which correspond to, and produce, grace and charm, on account of their direct or remote and vague association with intel- lectual and moral qualities bearing upon social life and adding to the direct sexual attractiveness, become more and more potent and modify the representation of the visible attributes and forms which the artist represents in his harmonious composition. Every step and modification in the evolution of social life itself and of its complex factors, produces a direct modification in the establishment of the perfect physical type and the outer appearance of the ideal man. The same fact is to be noted in the historical develop- ment and modification of the female form in art. The purely physiological type, in the harmonious inter-relation and proportion of all the visible organs, is at a very early stage modified by the powerful obtrusion of the sexual element, in that, after all, the chief and central function of woman is to be the mother of children. It is thus that, from the earliest times, those attributes in the form of woman which suggest her capacity of childbearing and, preceding that function, that of her powers of sexual stimulation and attractiveness, become most powerful elements affecting her presentation of perfect form, the purely physiological and anatomical proportion of bodily forms in perfect harmony. These factors, for instance, in various phases of historical evolution, directly act upon the widening 176 ESTHETICS, ART and accentuation of the hips, and this widening, when elaborate and complicated dress is introduced, leads to the relative narrowing of the waist and the corresponding exaggeration of the hips, by all kinds of artificial devices, which appear singular and even grotesque to the people who are not under the influence of such an individual fashion. Here again, and perhaps even to a greater degree than in the case of man, immediately " social " attractivenesses and amenities obtrude their modifying influences, until the woman who manifests the attributes of a higher social class, attractions of wealth and refine- ment, sets the standard of female form and strikes the keynote of physical charm. I have elsewhere l indicated in one single instance the paradoxical fitfulness of such influences when enlarging upon the well-known degeneration of Saxon words with the advent of the Norman Conqueror, who claimed the monopoly of social refinement for the words in Nor- man-French language. Thus the word buxom (from the Saxon beogan, bugan, to bend) originally, no doubt, conveyed the lithe and svelte gracefulness of the female form. But, with the introduction of Norman-French, it was lowered in meaning to the sphere of the healthy and rotund peasant woman when the Norman Conqueror assigned his own terms to the graceful woman of his own class. The word came to convey the very opposite of its original meaning. These modifications, which reflect the endless variety of historical changes in all the fine shadings of our actual social, as well as economic, life, are directly reflected in art, which takes immediate cognisance of the fullness of life and expresses this in the perfection of harmonious form. We can trace 1 Balance of Emotion and Intellect, Appendix, " Language and the Emotions," pp. 209-10. FASHION, HABITUATION, NOVELTY 177 this powerfully active process in our own time in every year and almost every day in what might, by a familiar phrase, be called the influence of fashion. I have elsewhere 1 dealt with this subject, and have specially emphasised two main currents in the pro- duction of fashion in industrial art, as well as in the higher forms of art. These two potent factors are Habituation and the Desire for Novelty. These two influences often clash, and in this struggle the one may temporarily dominate over the other. We then have either a conservative and a moderating, or a radical — if not revolutionary — tone and direction of taste. But it must be noted in the whole history of art in all its numerous manifestations that, whatever new varieties are introduced and dominate for the time, the physiological normality and its type, which, as regards the human figure, was practically established by the Hellenic artist in " classic " form, always reasserts itself in the ever- recurring conflict between the Ideal and the Real, the Classical and the Romantic." I might enlarge this inquiry by dealing with similar elements of change that affect and modify pure formal harmony in every other aspect of life — which from the plan and nature of this inquiry would lead us too far into the discussion of special aesthetics. But I must just suggest in a few words the similar modification of these laws of form as applied to the establishment of perfect types in the animal world. 1 Journal of R. A. of Arts, March 27, 1914. 1 I have, however, endeavoured to show how the successive changes in the character of the various athletic games in the classical world affected the rendering of the human physical type in art. See " The Influence of Athletic Games upon Greek Art," PrcC Roy. Inst. Gt. Brit., 1883 (reprinted in Essays on the Art of Pheidias, 1885). The whole history of art in its successive changes shows actions and re- actions between the classical and romantic, the chief moving force being Habituation and the Desire for Novelty. 13 178 ESTHETICS, ART This is especially the case with regard to domestic animals. I have shown elsewhere ' the influence of domestication in converting the aim and purpose (telos) of the breeder in the cause, the naturally efficient agents of change and evolution which lead to the establishment of such animal types. The perfect type, the ideal form, of all our several domestic animals (horse, dog, cow, etc.) are modified by the aim or purpose (what Aristotle calls entelechy) through which man interferes with purely " natural " selection. Thus the horse has changed from the earliest periods of its history to the time when it had to carry a fully armed knight down to the thoroughbred horse of the present day. But in our own day we have developed subdivisions, such as the heavy cart-horse, the hunter, the hackney, the polo-pony, etc., all of which estab- lish their own type or ideal of form. So too the dog has undergone all the modifications from the dachs- hund at the one end to the greyhound at the other, and, by means of the influence of " fashion," and even economical interests, with every successive dog- show, the perfect type is modified even in the same race and breed. The same thing is clearly illustrated by the development and the type of the cow and bull. All the Arts of Meaning thus deal with the fullness of life in all its varieties and modifications, adopting and applying objects that possess inherent meaning in order to create a harmonious organic whole, in which the form and matter of expression are in- separably blended, fused into individual life by the creative imagination of the artist, directly appealing through the senses to his fellow-men and reproducing in him the perfect harmony of the work of art, culminating in the aesthetic mood pervading the human mind with its harmony. But the several 1 Eugenics, Civics, and Ethics, p. 7 seq. (Cambridge University Press, 1920). SCULPTURE 179 arts appeal to different senses and use different materials and modes of artistic expression. They can thus be, and have thus been, broadly subdivided into the Plastic Arts or Sculpture, the Pictorial Arts or Painting, the Literary Arts (including Poetry and Prose), among which may also be classified Dramatic Art (though it might be grouped as a class by itself), and, finally, Musical Art, with which in the main we have already dealt. (a) Sculpture l The fictile or plastic arts — Sculpture — excepting in their purely ornamentative stage, have as their subject-matter human and animal life. Though they may present other forms and even introduce these as accessory elements, they are practically limited to the human mind and animal figure and the manifesta- tion of life through them. The vehicle for artistic expression is an inorganic material : clay, wood, stone, metal, bone, ivory, etc., and various modifica- tions or combinations of these. Thus the first and most difficult task of the sculptor is to infuse con- vincingly the essential characteristics of organic life into inorganic material— to infuse life into a dead substance, by means of the spirit of artistic harmony which provides the living breath of imagination, feeling and thought to the lifeless stuff. The first and central condition for such artistic expression, inherent in the very principle of harmony, is that those manifestations of life should be selected which, so far from being contradictory to the essential nature of the material itself, should harmonise with it ; that is, that those aspects of life should be avoided 1 Essays on the Art of Pheidias, C.U.P., 1885 ; especially essay en- titled " The Spirit of the Art of Pheidias." Greek Sculpture and Modern Art, C.U.P., 1914. 180 ESTHETICS, ART which, by their very nature, are opposed to the most manifest qualities of the material in which the forms and meanings are conveyed. But the aim of the sculptor being to convey his aesthetic or harmonious conceptions of life into a lasting form, to, as it were, perpetuate the harmony of life and its complete moments, ultimately to produce what Aristotle has called aladrjra alhia (feelings eternalised), he sought for, selected, and used materials which should thus be not only perceptible to the senses but should retain their form unaltered as long as possible. Life and its changes should be " monumentalised," and that means as far as possible " eternalised." The fact remains that such lasting materials are inorganic. And thus the artist had, from the begin- ning, to face a problem of contradiction between this nature of the material and of the subject-matter which he desired to infuse into it, which is organic. We thus find that in the history and evolution of this art we can detect as one principal feature the advance of technique in the sculptor's craft. The earlier stages in the development of sculpture manifest themselves chiefly in the sculptor's struggle with the reluctant material and his final victory over it. Moreover, we recognise in the history of sculpture of every period and country, which we can trace from its beginnings upwards, that the earlier works fail in so manipulating the material as to produce the illusion of life. The archaic works are stiff and life- less. They may be symmetrical and harmonious in outline and in inner composition, and in so far satisfy the principles of ornamentative art ; but they fail to produce the lines and forms of life and movement. 1 1 In the history of some arts it may be found that some works of a distinctly earlier period are " freer " and more naturalistic than others which are of a distinctly later date and manifest more of these archaic characteristics. Such is not only the case when we compare some Palaeolithic with some Neolithic sculpture, as well as ome works of the SYMMETRY IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE 181 They forcibly illustrate the primary impulse to artistic creativeness, which does not arise out of the imitative instinct, but from the purely artistic impulse of harmonious composition. Symmetry dominates over rhythm, lasting proportion over fleeting life. The predominance of the regular, symmetrical, transference of form to the detriment of the pro- duction of the illusion of life is also and in great part due to the technical incompetence of the fictile or plastic artists in early periods. It arises from the difficulty or opposition offered by the inorganic material, as well as from the want of skill in handling the tools to impress the material with the forms the artist endeavours to give them. In his desire to perpetuate fleeting life the sculptor must thus choose lasting material, and, as he pro- gresses, he finds more and more materials which, infused with the lasting form of " aesthetic " life, are not subject to change and annihilation. From the earliest time, consciously or subconsciously, he wishes, in the words of Horace, exigere monumentum aere perennius — to erect a monument more lasting than bronze. Perhaps, among the earliest materials which he thus chooses, when he has risen beyond the " ornamentative " phase to the stage of pure art, to create a statue, however rudimentary in form, is clay. This material, ' moreover, has the specific inherent advantage of " plasticity," readily receiving Palaeolithic period with those of a later date in that period (a pheno- menon with which we have dealt above under " ornamentative " art), but also in the sculpture of Egypt and even of Greece. In the latter we find that some Mycenaean and Minoan works of sculpture are much less archaic, much freer, than subsequent works of the archaic historic Greek period. But (as I maintained in dealing with ornamentative art) these highly naturalistic earlier works marked, not the beginning, but a later period, if not the end, of a wave of social and artistic development. We can always show works antecedent to these remarkable naturalistic specimens which are more primitive and archaic in character. 182 AESTHETICS, ART form (as children making mud-pies have used this material in all ages) ; and thus the fictile sculptor, the coroplast, is closely related to, if not identical with, the earliest potter. Wood is also one of the earliest materials used, especially in countries with climatic conditions which favour the preservation of that material. But the choice of wood, as perhaps the most prevalent material for the Greek statue, even at so late a period as when athlete-statues were erected in Greece to commemorate victories in the great games (see Pausanias, vi, p. 187), may have been in part due to the fact that the tree-stem and board took the place of symbolic images in the earliest cults, which were connected with tree-worship. In the same way stone — hard and reluctant as it is — and, ultimately, marble, were at a very early period chosen for the sculptor's material, not only because their manipulation was introduced in the earliest building structures, but, as in the case of the tree- stem, the pillar was an early forerunner of the temple statue, as stones and rocks were clearly associated with early cults. In due course metal followed and, by natural association with the forms of ornamentative art, the precious metals and precious stones ; until bronze, by its perfect artistic quality for the purposes of monumental sculpture, became more and more predominant. It will be seen that in these materials there is a natural progression relative to the monumental quality of durability. Moreover, it will also readily be perceived how, for instance, the tree-stem was naturally discarded when its place was taken by stone (especially marble) and bronze for large statues, not only because the raw material of wood was limited in amount and width, so that the sculptor was hampered in presenting laterally extended compositions, but also because projecting portions ADVANCE THROUGH INVENTIONS 183 of a statue were subject to injury and destruction. But it is important to remember that the term for the temple statue in early times was a " carved image " of wood (£6avov). In the progression of these materials, moreover, it will be found that, with the invention and improvement of tools to work them (thus the invention of the sawing of marble is noted by Greek writers as marking a distinct phase in the development of archaic sculpture), bronze and marble, as well as the combination of gold and ivory, tended to become the leading materials for the higher development of the sculptor's art. The invention of new tools, as well as the improve- ment of the older ones, for the working of these several materials greatly increased freedom and naturalism, giving to the statues the illusion of life by means of adequate outline composition in attitudes suggesting or indicating a variety of living variations and more definite characteristic incidents and scenes expressive of the full diversity of life, and also by means of the detail-modelling of the surface of the human figure in all its parts. The gradual advance from archaic stiffness to full and naturalistic presentation of life in successive stages is clearly marked in the systema- tised classification of the periods of the history of sculpture (especially Greek sculpture), and thus presents to the student a most interesting and instruc- tive sequence. We are able to trace, step by step, how the ancient sculptors overcame the inherent reluctance of the material, from the earliest extant works onwards to the period of perfection and decline ; and how, before the period of full freedom, the works exhibit this struggle in the obtrusion of technical incapacity on the part of the sculptor in using his tools for this purpose. We can even detect how the surviving and persisting reminiscences of techniques and styles of earlier ages, fixed by the nature of 184 ESTHETICS, ART earlier materials and less perfect tools, obtrude them- selves for a time in the work of artists belonging to later periods who had already selected new materials and were possessed of more perfect tools. The wealth of monuments which has come down to us from ancient Greece amply proves and illustrates this evolutionary process ; while the extant passages in ancient authors definitely provide new confirma- tory evidence with regard to each successive step in this development and progression. I have before noted one illustrative and striking instance relating to the achievement of the sculptor Pythagoras of Rhegion. Innumerable instances of a similar kind are at hand for any student who wishes fully to apprehend this important development in the history of human effort. Undoubtedly thus in the outline composition and attitudes in all their varieties the advance towards freedom and naturalism was achieved, from the rudest, stiff, and symmetrical archaic statue, to the living figure suggestive of movement and life. So also in the modelling of the surface of the human figure, the contractibility and elasticity of the human skin as it covers different muscles and organs are indicated with naturalness and freedom, and all together suggest an organic being and not a lifeless and mechanical collocation of parts. I must here give the actual words of an eminent Roman critic, Quintilian, as forcibly rendering, in the contemporary thought and language, the prin- ciples of sculpture as illustrated by the works and the artists of his own day. " For my part, ' This counsel twice, yea thrice, will I repeat ' (a quotation from Verg. JEn. iii. 436), the orator must on every occasion have regard to two things — to the form and to the meaning. It is often necessary to introduce some variation in the estab- PASSAGE FROM QUINTILIAN 185 lished and conventional arrangement of his theme, and sometimes it is fitting too. For instance, in the case of statues or paintings we see a variety of costume, expression, pose. When the body is bolt upright it has but little charm. Suppose it confronts us full-face, with arms dropped to the sides and feet joined together : why, the work will be rigid — wooden — from top to toe. It is just the turning and the varied rhythm, so to speak, which give in- dividual action true to life. That is why hands are shaped in such diverse ways and faces take on a thousand expressions. Some works show the runner's attitude and impetuous advance, others are seated or lean on a support. Here, again, are undraped figures, there draped ; elsewhere partly draped, partly undraped forms. For sheer twist and com- plexity could anything equal Myron's famous Quoit- thrower ? Yet if a critic were to condemn the work as not upright enough to suit his taste, would he not miss the whole point of the masterpiece ? The very novelty and difficulty that offend him constitute its chief claim to our admiration." * 1 I have here given a very free translation of the Latin. In this passage Quintilian is evidently arguing against some conservative school of art critics who maintain the conservative standards of con- ventional beauty (the " idealists "), as opposed to those who favour the more forcible rendering of individual life (the realists) in upholding the " twist and complexity " of movement and life in the Discobolus of Myron against what we have called the static symmetry of earlier statues. The opposition of the two terms quid deceat and quid expediat I have rendered as conveying the contrast between form and meaning, as in a passage dealing with the art of Polycleitus I maintained (see The Argive Herceum, vol. i, p. pp. 173-6) that the same author's use of the term decor meant " formal beauty." I have thus also translated flexus Me et, ut sic dixerim, motus dat actum quendam et factum with "it is just the turning and the varied rhythm, so to speak, which give individual action true to life." The following is the Latin text : " Equidem id maxime ' praecipiam ac repetcns iterumque iterumque monebo ' : res duas in omni actu spectet orator, quid deceat, quid expediat. expedit autem saepe mutare ex illo constituto traditoque ordine aliqua, et interim decet, ut in statuis atque picturis videmus variari habitus, vultus, status ; nam recti quidem corporis vel minima gratia est. nempe enim adversa sit facies etdemissa bracchia et iuncti 186 ESTHETICS, ART The final step was made in the history of Greek sculpture in what is called the Period of Transition, from about the end of the sixth century B.C. to the middle of the fifth century B.C. But in the interesting and attractive works of that period — as is the case in all similar periods of transition in the arts of other countries and periods — we still notice, to however slight a degree, the obtrusion of the manipulation of tools, suggesting mechanical work, in the rendering of these organic forms, in composition and modelling, and, in so far, counteracting the full illusion of life, which is only obtained when the mechanical work of the artist is entirely removed from the observation of the spectator, who is then absorbed in the full and engrossing illusion of life which the work evokes in him. I may here anticipate and point out a supremely important principle of artistic criticism, namely, that the obtrusion of the technique in the making of any work of art, details of construction and manipulation (whether in sculpture or in painting, in literary art or in music), be it by the want of skill of the artist or by the facility and exuberance of technical skill in redundant virtuosity, always results in the destruction or weakening of the illusion which the work of art primarily aimed at producing. In such sculptors as Pythagoras of Rhegion, Myron, Alcamenes and others, these last traces of archaism were overcome, until in Pheidias and his contemporaries and suc- cessors the full and adequate presentation of the pedes et a summis ad ima rigens opus, flexus ille et, ut sic dixerim, motus dat actum quendam et factum : ideo nee ad unum modum formatae manus et in vultu mille species ; cursum habent quaedam et impetum, sedent alia vel incumbent, nuda haec, ilia velata sunt, quae- dam mixta ex utroque. quid tarn distortum et elaboratum quam est ille discobolos Myronis ? si quis tamen ut parum rectum improbet opus, nonne ab intellectu artis afuerit, in qua vel praecipue laudabilis est ipsa ilia novitas ac difficultas ? " — Inst. Or. 2. 13. 8-10. HARMONY IN CHOICE OF SUBJECT 187 human figure, in what is technically called " natural- ism," was attained. But there remains the other element in this com- plete and organic harmony which marks the perfect work of art — namely, the choice of the suitable subject in life which essentially and fully harmonises with the material. We have already noted or sug- gested that this harmony cannot be attained unless those aspects of life are chosen for presentation by the supreme artistic tact and imagination of the artist, which harmonise with the essential and ever-present qualities and attributes of the sculptor's material or, at least, do not obtrusively contradict these ever manifest attributes. With whatever degree of technical skill a sculptor may put into his material the convincing form of fleeting and momentary move- ment or event, the spectator, consciously or sub- consciously, will feel and resent the contradiction between the subject conveyed and the mode of expression. The essentially momentary motion, especially when it is not typical, but individual and even accidental, in man or animal, fixed in a weighty and lasting material, which specifically and inevitably suggests heavy and durable qualities, must strike the spectator with the " contradiction in terms," the inadequacy or absurdity of the idea suggested or at least the absence of full harmony in the organic unity of the work presented. It was thus the supreme genius of the ancient Greek artists, notably of Pheidias, to have selected those forms of life most completely in harmony with the material of their art. I have elsewhere * endeavoured to show how in the broader aspects this was achieved, in that Pheidias and the other great sculptors of ancient Greece established in art what I called the Type and the Ideal of nature and life. The Type 1 Essays on the Art of Pheidias, Essay II. 188 AESTHETICS, ART refers more especially to the physical, the Ideal more to the spiritual attributes. Both Type and Ideal are the generalised forms of the individual physical and spiritual manifestations (they by distant analogy correspond to " the laws of nature " of the physical world). The individual connotes the finite, changing and fleeting, whereas the general implies that which is lasting. Thus in establishing the type in the physical appearance and life of man, including the generalised varieties, activities and incidents of such life, the artist chooses that which is most lasting — which is monumental in character, worthy of being expressed in the weightiest language of his art and in a form, moreover, more lasting than bronze (aere perennius). The Greek artist found fashioned for his hand the religious and heroic world of his mythology, which had early established in his mind and in that of the whole people, intelligible to all, the more spiritual manifestations of human character and life and of the social and moral world. The great gods Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athene, Ares, Demeter, etc. ; the numerous heroes, Hercules, Theseus, Prometheus, etc., their qualities, lives and fates, raised from fleeting individuality into the heroic sphere of living generali- sation, furnished the imagination with visual types of an ideal world. Religious and secular literature ' was the common and familiar vehicle for giving to these more abstract ideas a physical, if not a tangible, reality in the consciousness of the Greek people. It was thus that Pheidias, above all, could present and fix through the eyes of the spectator these ideals of spiritual types in the qualities of man and of human life. 1 In the sacred writings of the East, and more especially in those of the Hebraistic and Christian world throughout the Middle Ages and modern times, similar types were furnished to the artist, intelligible to the people, though not in that directly naturalistic form. FULL PLASTIC HARMONY 189 It was owing to these conditions (and this point is to be especially noted) that in the monumental quality of his sculpture he could display the complete harmony between the form and material of his art. Among the numerous great sculptors of succeeding generations we may add that the work of Michel- angelo and, in some of his statues, Rodin, attained to this largeness of monumental character. In singling out these great masters in the art of sculpture, and in thus recognising the essential qualities of their works, as illustrating the highest achievement of that art, embodying the essential principles of harmony which underlie it, we must guard against the danger of dogmatic narrowness in limiting our approval and admiration by such absolute standards and thus ignoring further developments in sculpture which do not directly and fully correspond to the standards of greatness set by a Pheidias and a Michelangelo. We must thus not forget or ignore that, in the evolution of life in the various periods of civilisation, the variety and complexity of that life itself, as well as the standards of aesthetic perception and appreciation, created as a whole in the human mind through the advance of painting, poetry, music and kindred arts, as finally the advance in the technique in the treatment of the older, and the intro- duction of newer materials and tools in sculpture and in the sister arts — that all these conditions created in their combined influence newer and more diverse forms of aesthetic appreciation, as well as the need for the satisfaction of these in each single art. Thus, in spite of what has been said above regarding the essential harmony of sculpture directed by the weighty and monumental character of its materials, which leads to the selection of the larger, broader and more lasting aspects of life and character, and to the avoidance of momentary, light, or frivolous 190 ESTHETICS, ART subjects, the growing feeling and appreciation for movement, developed in the aesthetic mind through the confluence of so many artistic influences, led the artists of subsequent periods to a far wider and higher skill in the presentation of movement in sculpture. We may note this development in a whole line of sculptors in ancient Greece, as well as in more modern art, when the sculptor has possessed the supreme artistic tact to choose the most generalised sculp- turesque form to express various movements, to fix the fleeting moment through the very soul of the whole movement into its most significant instinct, by the harmonious fusion of all parts of the moving body to express the one central idea of activity and life. In Italian art ' perhaps the highest point in this one central achievement was reached by Giovanni da Bologna, whose figures and groups impress complex activity and movement by most varied, and still harmonious, lines and composition, of what might be called crossed rhythms ; while Rodin and his followers have successfully struggled with the difficult task of seizing the complex and individualised movements and moods in the pose and modelling of the human figure expressive of such vitality and movement. Needless to add that in the small statuettes, which, because of their size and their more fleeting qualities, do not imperatively suggest the monumental and lasting, such greater diversity and liberty in the choice of subjects have always been admissible. The same applies to the wonderful, fantastic and natura- listic works in bronze and in ivory of Chinese and Japanese sculpture, with its harmonious and decora- 1 Of course, I cannot, and need not, dwell here on the numerous Italian and French sculptors, the great Tuscan sculptors preceding Giovanni da Bologna, with their singular national and religious charm, nor the French sculptors of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, with their distinctive national grace and their courageous vitality. EXTENSION OF SUBJECT-MATTER 191 tive sinuosity of lines and modelling, and its natura- listic variety of characterisation of actual life down to the grotesque. The same applies in the growth of the appreciation and the need of texture in modelling. In Greek art the development on this side was already furnished, as regards the great temple statues, by the combina- tion of gold and ivory with the addition of profuse coloured enamelling and, subsequently, by poly- chrome sculpture in marble. 1 No doubt, both before and after the Pheidiac period the development of the art of painting in its various forms increased the appreciation and the need of varieties of texture in the eyes of the Greek people, as, in the later develop- ment of painting in modern times down to our own days, such a growing need for the satisfaction of an increased sense of texture, light and shade, and colour, reacted upon the art and technique of the sculptor, producing ultimately some of the innovations in the use of material and in modelling of a Rodin and his modern followers. The sculptor thus has presented to him a much wider sphere as regards the choice of subjects and the variety of life and movement beyond the central and supreme expression of his art in monumental sculpture. But even at far earlier dates the possibility of a wider sphere of expression was furnished and copiously used by the sculptors of every age. This occurred especi- ally in relief sculpture, as well as in pedimental sculpture, both of which forms are not pure sculpture in the strictest sense of that term, as they are modified by their fusion with, and subordination to, archi- tectural and decorative art. The supreme harmony of composition which the pure sculptor in the round must concentrate upon is, in " architectural " sculpture, 1 Essays on the Art of Pheidias, Essay VIII, " The Athene, Parthenos, and Gold and Ivory Statues," p. 269 seq. 192 ESTHETICS, ART widened out to a new form of harmony, in which composition, craft and technique must include the harmony inherent in the building as a whole, the function of each part, and the nature of the object decorated. Of themselves these needs urge him on to larger subjects and compositions, including more complicated scenes and movements. Even the pedi- mental groups, which consist of single figures in the round, subject to the inner harmony of form suggested by each figure in itself, still form parts of an organic whole, a larger composition. As they are seen by the spectator standing at some distance from the building, they really appear in the nature of high relief. Now, both high relief and low relief, in some respects, stand halfway between sculpture and paint- ing, or present the fusion of the two arts ; and sculp- ture is thus modified by the laws governing pictorial composition, as well as by some of the laws governing the technique of drawing and even of painting. The result is that sculpture may here borrow from the graphic and pictorial arts some of the subjects conveying far greater complexity of life, incidents, and movement. What we learn from the consideration of all these essential features in the art of sculpture is : that the full achievement of this art depends upon the complete harmony between the subject-matter and the artistic expression of material in which it is conveyed. But we also learn that both the spiritual harmony of meaning and the artistic technique of expression are modified and developed by the application of the fundamental principle of the evolution of that special form of changing life, as well as by the historical evolution of each period and country. There is thus added to the intrinsic sesthetic interest and quality in this art (as in every art) another delicate and varied source of artistic appreciativeness to be found in the MODERN SCULPTURE 193 historical character of eachlanguage, period, nationality, locality and school, and this historical character finds its expression in the evolution of man's life by means of that art. The art of the East and its various periods and schools, as well as that of ancient Greece and Rome, has this additional aesthetic attractiveness and charm added to the specific quality of their re- spective types of sculpture. The Gothic sculpture of the successive periods in the Middle Ages, among which the thirteenth century stands out markedly, conveys a distinctive quality and charm inseparable from the intrinsic value of the sculpture itself. This is also true of the art of Italy and the subtle grace and spirituality in early Tuscan sculpture and its later achievements, even down to the exaggerated, and at times grotesque, movement of the Barocco period, which also produced the supremely excellent portraits by Bernini. The same applies to that rich and full plastic expression in the great art of France, from its primitive sculptures through the Renaissance to the delicate and powerful expression of each characteristic age from Louis XIV onwards to the present day. Yet each period must adequately and sincerely live up to the highest standards of taste which express their full spirit, and thus, as conscious human exponents in their special language and craft, the artists must contribute their normal share to the spiritual evolution of man. {b) Painting The graphic Arts of Meaning are of course closely related in origin and in development in time and space with the graphic arts of " ornamentation " as regards form and the art of " writing," from the rudest signs and picture-writing through hieroglyphics to the pictorial records of historical facts. The earliest 14 194 AESTHETICS, ART symmetrical incisions or scratchings of symmetrical lines and shapes, produced directly to satisfy the har- moniotropic instinct and the feeling for form, would naturally lead, when the need and desire for unspoken but graphic communication and fixing of meanings arose, to such graphic representations to convey the images of things. When the reproduction of colour was added to that of line the ornamentative function received a new and wider variation. On the other hand, the presentation of definite objects grew in accuracy. This same ornamentative impulse was confirmed and developed pari passu with the develop- ment of skill and variety in the production of objects of use, buildings, and implements of peace and war, which themselves called for ornamentation. This again led to the development of decorative graphic art on the walls of caves and more advanced dwellings, as well as in utensils. Especially when ceramic art in its various materials was developed, the decoration of this group of objects finally led, through innumer- able stages, to highest form of vase-painting. But though we can thus trace the origin of such graphic art pictorially free in itself from its earliest technical beginnings to the higher and more complex achieve- ments, it is questionable whether in itself it can be considered amongst the earliest manifestations of artistic creativeness. For, a priori, as well as em- pirically in the evidence of existing remains of anti- quity, the fashioning of works to convey the meaning of actual things in purely graphic art presupposes a power of symbolising and abstracting in the human senses which would not mark the earliest evolution of these senses, their passive and active functioning, and the power of stimulating them by abstractions or symbols of reality. For the essential characteristic of graphic art is that it transfers depth and volume to a flat surface. Now, the realisation of depth and THE PICTURE 195 volume — though the duality of our visual organ of sight may apply the stereoscopic principle — is prim- arily ascertained through touch and not through vision. Thus the coroplastic craft and art which leads children to make mud-pies is the earlier form of image-making ; and earliest prehistoric excavations, as well as the works of savages, will always show some form of rude figures in the round. Though modern children are born with pencils in their hand, if they were allowed to live within reach of any fictile sub- stances, or to make for themselves the rudest form of doll, they would make such attempts at creative imagery before they would " draw " their typical house and man. Thus, on the one hand, the graphic and pictorial ' Arts of Meaning," which lead to the picture in the full sense of that term, were subservient to the art of ornamentation as their technique grew out of these, as well as to the picture-writing symbolism which belongs to the domain of writing and of language- communication. To understand fully and accurately the essential principles of this Art of Meaning, even in its earliest origin and development, we must realise clearly its own highest and complete form, namely, the picture as a work of art, corresponding to the statue which represents the full expression of the plastic arts. The picture is thus not in the decorative and narrative forms, which are subservient to a different essential principle and aim at absorbing the chief attention of the spectator. He has before him a building or implement of use, or the quasi-linguistic communication of facts and thoughts, which are graphically ornamented and to which the pictorial work is subordinated. Not from drawings but from the picture must we discover the principles of pictorial art. The essence — the origin and aim — of the picture lies in the fact that the various meanings of things, 196 ESTHETICS, ART events, thoughts and feelings, which are to be con- veyed on a flat surface by the technical means of graphic and pictorial art, are to be harmonised into an organic whole, so that all the attributes and parts of the work should be inter-related and fused into organic unity, and that the harmony of the parts and of the whole should convincingly convey the new harmony of meaning, strengthened, if not wholly produced, by this unity of spirit, by this harmony of form. In the simplest terms, we may realise this essential and distinctive nature of the picture in the fact that our pictures are surrounded by a " frame " or a" mount." The frame is a neutral border which separates from the surrounding objects, and it limits the space in which the pictorial artist creates his work. The eye of the spectator is, on the one hand, not to be distracted by any other subjects outside the frame or by the associations connected with them, and on the other it is to be concentrated upon the lines and forms and colours through which the artist presents objects related to one another in form and meaning and to the whole in a central unity of presentation — - meaning, thought and feeling, again harmonised into one mood — all together evoking the corresponding harmony of emotion and mood in the spectator, stimulating through these his feelings and thoughts. The picture thus framed is not primarily ornamenta- tive or decorative, not subordinated to the building, room, or article of furniture or use ; on the contrary, one might almost say that the place where it hangs merely exists as a receptacle for it and is either indifferent or subservient to it. Nor is the picture thus framed a part of a succession of objects depicted, the succession itself corresponding to the logical sequence of communications in sounds, symbols, or imagery to things in order to replace the narrative of language in recording a fact merely as a means GREEK PAINTING 197 of such definite communication which has served its purpose and may be discarded entirely when the definite message has been given — the form of expression being in no way essential to the one immediate aim of recalling a definite fact to the apprehension of man and in no way to his emotional feelings or moods. The gradual development and struggle of the painter's skill to achieve this final product of pictorial art through the ages is most varied and complicated. It can be traced in the history of the art of the East and West, of the North and South, wherever human beings have lived and developed a social organisation. We can here in no way attempt to give a resume" of this varied history throughout the ages ; but the main facts of establishing and elucidating the develop- ment of the principles of pictorial art can best be gathered if we consider in its broad outlines the evolution of painting in Greece — especially in its relation to the whole organic body of Hellenic art and its subsequent direct influence upon the whole art of the Western world. For we have already insisted upon the fact that the Greeks were the first people to produce the statue and the picture as pure objects of the Art of Meaning, as in every department of the mind they developed culture, which means the functioning and exertion of the human mind with the direct aim of satisfying the spiritual needs corre- sponding to these functions and with no ulterior and secondary purpose of material advantage or use. They thus developed consciously and systematically art, science, ethics, politics and the Art of Living, as they were also the first people to develop athletic games. Though it be admitted that the ancient Greeks thus established the essential principles of art for sculpture, it is maintained that they did not to the same degree achieve this with regard to pictorial art. Writers 198 ESTHETICS, ART and critics of note have fallen into this misconception concerning the ancient Greeks. There can be no doubt that, as in the case of music, pictorial art from the early Renaissance onward down to our own days did make comparatively greater and more far-reaching advances than is the case with sculpture or certain other forms of art. But there can be no doubt that the essential elements which go to the making of a picture, and a great picture, were already to be found in the works of the great painters of ancient Greece. It must, in the first instance, be remembered that the best tablet-pictures, upon which the fame of their greatest artists rested, from the nature of the materials used are no longer extant. We are thus limited, as regards our appreciation of their works, to their decorative art in vase-paintings and kindred forms, or to the mural paintings in the private bourgeois houses of a comparatively unimportant provincial town like Pompeii and a number of mural paintings and mosaics in Rome and elsewhere. Whoever has read with care the description and appreciation of the great works by the chief painters of ancient Hellas scattered throughout the writings of ancient authors, must realise that these were on the same level of excellence as the great works of sculpture. Nor can it be conceived that the standards of artistic appreciativeness of the Greek people and art critics, measured by their sculpture, could be essentially lower when applied to the sister art. Moreover, we are furnished, through numerous passages in the ancient authors, with a systematic account of the development of painting, achieved step by step, which convincingly shows how that art passed through all the phases of technical advance, as well as in the enlargement of subject-matter in painting, which gradually led to the highest pictorial achievement. It is a most striking and singular coincidence that the GREEK PAINTING AND SCULPTURE 199 history of this development of painting, as recounted in the ancient authors, corresponds in many instances exactly to the definite steps by which in Vasari the achievements of the various artists in the history of Italian painting rose to the highest perfection. Though modern graphic art in its various forms has made most striking advances in technique and in a variety of modes of pictorial expression, as well as in the enlargement of the scope of subjects in life and nature which it has added to its domain, the Greek artists did undoubtedly establish and form the leading principle of that art, as they did for the art of sculpture. No doubt — herein following the natural progression of plastic and pictorial arts — the development of Greek painting in freedom of expressiveness belongs to a period far subsequent to that of sculpture. In fact, for a considerable period of its higher develop- ment the Greek painter is under the influence of the principles and ideals of the great sculptors of his own and preceding ages. To put it roughly, whereas the acme of Greek sculpture must be assigned to about the middle of the fifth century B.C., that of painting is to be found nearer the middle of the fourth century B.C. ; while the great painters of the fifth century b.c, centring round Polygnotos, are still " sculpturesque " in the choice and treatment of subjects and even in the basic principles of their linear design. The great painters of the succeeding generations, such as Zeuxis, Parrhasios and Timan- thes, established the full and specific principles in conception and execution by means of chiaroscuro, colour and its values, a new departure of pictorial art having been introduced by the innovations initiated by Apollodorus. As we have already seen in dealing with the develop- ment of ornamentative or decorative art, as well as of sculpture, the complete introduction of the " picture " 200 ESTHETICS, ART itself, the tablet-picture, was facilitated, if not achieved, by its association with the other arts — building and implements of use, into which it was introduced as an " ornament." This fact is most fully illustrated by the history of Greek vase-painting (especially to be noted later in the black-figured and the four red-figured vases) as well as in the decorations of buildings in " fresco " painting. The decoration of vases in the several structural parts of the vase — neck, belly, foot, handles — especi- ally in the square or oblong space on the body of the vase, or the circular medallion in the middle of the flat cup or kylix, furnished such a definite space, well defined and " framed off " within the vase, and within such a " framed " space was generally drawn or painted some mythical or epical scene, or scenes from athletic life, which space by itself led the painter to a definite form of composition, as it also led his con- structive imagination to select definite scenes from life and to concentrate through all the means of craft his artistic skill in conveying the complete meaning and enforcing it by all the principles of har- mony inherent in and essential to his particular art. Greek vase-painting in all its periods is a perfect mine for the study of development in pictorial design. When further the task was imposed upon the painter to decorate, by means of his art, the large though thoroughly defined wall-spaces in great buildings, such as the Stoa Poikile at Athens, with living scenes containing many figures, it will be readily seen how the development of " composition " was advanced and how the need for representing a great variety of living figures inter-related by definite action urged him on to renewed efforts. The descriptions and appreciations of the works of Polygnotos, son of Aglaophon of Thasos, to be seen at Athens, along POLYGNOTOS AND THE PRIMITIVES 201 with those of Nikon, Panaenos, and Pauson, give evidence of elaborate and vivid scenes drawn in a masterly manner in the grand style, which may have recorded some of the qualities of great sculptors with the epic fullness of situation and character which in- spired the artists in whose mind Homer lived with all the wealth of his broad characterisation and the intimate and vivid familiarity of poetic imagery, such as the Bible stories possess for the mass of the people in modern times, brought up from childhood in the knowledge of the Old and New Testaments. Yet the art of the Polygnotan painters in its variety of graphic presentation and characterisation was pre- ceded by early struggles to enlarge the capacity for graphic presentation step by step from its crudest earliest beginnings onwards. Thus we learn that, only with Eumaros of Athens (little more than a generation before Polygnotos) was the painter able to distinguish in his drawings between men and women ; while his pupil Kimon of Kleonse, according to iElian (V.H. viii. 8), "developed, as is said, painting which at that time was only in its first stages and was exercised without art or experience by his predecessors, was really in its teens, wherefore he also received greater pay than his predecessors." Pliny thus characterises his innovations (xxxv, 56) : Hie catagrapha invenit, hoc est obliquas imagines, et varie formare voltus, respicientes suspicientesve vel despicientes. articulis membra distinxit, venas protulit, praeterque in vestibus rugas et sinus invenit — " He in- vented catagrapha, that is profile views, and further varieties in the movement of the face, especially the eyes, showing the looking backwards, upwards, and downwards ; he also distinguished details in the chief members of the body, indicated the veins, and in- troduced in dress the longitudinal and massed hollow folds." 202 AESTHETICS, ART It will be seen how this last passage corresponds to that ascribing similar advance in the rendering of the human figure to Pythagoras of Rhegion and Myron in sculpture. Even in the case of the great paintings of Polygnotos, which belong to the Pheidian Age, the technical achievements ascribed to him are still essentially more linear drawing, sculpturesque in character. They chiefly concern the modelling of the human figure, as well as drapery, as Pliny says (xxxv. 58): Primus mulierestralucidavestepinxit, capita earum mitris versicoloribus operuit plurimum- que picturae primus contulit, siquidem instituit os adaperire, dentes ostendere, voltum ab antiquo rigore variare — " He was the first to paint women with clinging [not ' transparent '] drapery, dressed their heads with caps of various colours, slightly parted the lips and showed the teeth — in short, he freed the face from its archaic hardness and severity." As regards his use of colour, however, we still find him in the elementary stage. Quintilian (xii. 10) is astonished that his simplex color is still ad- mired in later days. We in our days, who appre- ciate and admire the works of the " primitives," need not be astonished at this. Cicero {Brut. 18) ascribes four colours to him. Some of these colours are specified by Pliny, namely, ochre (sil), tryginon, black tartar. There must have been a greater variety when we hear that he painted female figures with caps of many colours. That these must have been correlated and shaded off is evident, when Lucian (Imag. 7) praises the " blush of the cheeks in the face of Cassandra." Still, the very nature of such praises proves that the colours were applied on a simpler scale without consideration of their values in relation to one another and of their relation to- gether to the picture as a whole. They were used in their variety simply to indicate broad differences, APOLLODORUS 203 to strengthen the graphic presentation of general character and individualisation. The real step to the fuller development of the specific quality of painting as such in the use of colour — the beginning of specific painting (not under the dominance of plastic art) — is marked by the achievements of the painter Apollodorus, whom Pliny calls an Athenian and who belongs to the suc- ceeding generation. For Pliny (xxxv. 61) tells us that " through the gates of art opened by Apollodorus, Zeuxis of Herakleia stepped in the fourth year of the 95th Olympiad." But we learn that, immedi- ately before Apollodorus, Agatharchos of Samos, who resided and worked at Athens, turned the painter's art to a definite use, which no doubt had great in- fluence in freeing it from its more archaic sculptur- esque trammels, and was most effective in leading Apollodorus and his successors to give greater techni- cal as well as spiritual freedom to the whole art of painting. This innovation was Scene Painting. For we learn from Vitruvius (7 Pref. 10) that this artist painted a scene for a tragedy of ^Eschylus and wrote a commentary on it. Analogous to the influence of the athletic games on the development of Greek sculpture at a much earlier date, the influence of the drama on painting and its own scenic presentation has the greatest effect in impressing upon the eyes of the spectator in the theatre complex dramatic scenes and their " composition," giving visible unity to action. But the introduction of the special art of scene-painting had the most far-reaching technical effect in that, perceived from a distance, scenery was bound to tax the ingenuity of the painter in producing illusion by means of bold drawing and, especially, colouring, and thus in giving freedom of technique and of introducing a fuller study and presentation of light and shade and of the values of colour. Apollo- 204 ESTHETICS, ART dorus thus became the first skiagraphos, which is closely related to the schenographos. Hesychius and Plutarch explain this step as " the blending and graduation of light and shade." l Innovations introduced by this artist and his followers were most important and marked a new era in the development of that art. By analogy we may recall the difference between the painting of our " primitives," in the exquisite coloured drawing and modelling of Diirer, Holbein, the Van Eycks, and their successors (a system of painting which is ex- emplified in the treatise of that art by the miniature painter of the Court of Elizabeth, Nicholas Hilliard, who advises the " avoidance of shadows "), con- trasted with the introduction of strong differences of light and shade by Rembrandt and all his followers. At the same time, the scope of subjects from life and nature is infinitely widened as the impressions of vitality are intensified in the presentation of the scenes. Though hardly any works of Apollodorus are mentioned, we can realise how startling must have been his innovations when we consider his picture of Ajax struck by lightning, with the ships tossed against the rocks, the rushing sea, the burning ship, and the avenging figure of Poseidon ; and we can then understand how the ancient critics, in spite of their admiration for the primitives, could say of him (Pliny, xxxv. 60) that he was the first truly to give the living illusion of things as they appear, and had brought glory to the painter's brush, while before his day pictures could not hold the eye of the spectator. 8 1 ^ Civ ovrw Xiyovcri' i\£yero 5e ns ical 'AwoXKodwpos faypafios Cher Monsieur Johannet, Dans la question pleine d'interet et d'importance que vous avez eu le merite de poser avec des anticipations si suggestives, il me semble qu'il y a deux elements essentiels qui excitent les differences, mais, esperons-le, qui confirment aussi les harmonies des manieres de voir : Et d'abord : parmi les peuples civilises, est-ce qu'un accord plus que national — supra-national — entre les litterati est possible et desirable ? Ou, en d'autres termes, est-il possible de produire et d'intensifier un patriotisme international comme il existe deja un patriotisme national ? Ou bien, est-ce que ce patriotisme international est une chimere, un contre-sens, parce que l'element international agit d'une maniere dissol- vante quand il s'infiltre dans le sentiment du patriotisme ? Si la reponse a cette question est affirmative, reste la deuxieme : est-ce qu'une association, une cooperation ou une organisation de l'intelligence — une respublica litteratorum — promet d'etre vraiment effective dans la vie sociale et politique du monde, ou sera-t-elle purement ideale, sans vraie influence ; bref , completement academique ? I. — Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire — car vous les connaissez — que dans mes livres Aristodemocracy, dans Patriotism, National and International, dans The English-speaking Brother- hood and the League of Nations, la these principale repose sur cet internationalisme patriotique. Mais qu'on ne dise pas que nous sommes des internationalistes " pacifistes," Bolche- viks ou Marxistes, qui pendant cette guerre auraient refuse 1 The following is a reply to an Enquete sent by M. Rene Johannet, for the literary magazine Les Lettres, to men of letters of various nationalities and shades of thought on a possible Respublica Litteratorum. It appeared in the April issue of that magazine, 1920. 422 RESPUBLICA LITTERATORUM 423 de se battre pour leur patrie et la Cause ideale de l'Entente. Notre internationalisme n'exclut pas le patriotisme national, au contraire, il se base sur lui et il le confirme. Dans l'echelle des passions nobles qui remontent de l'egoisme individuel, passant par la famille, notre commune, notre pays et notre nation, et reconnaissant tous les devoirs qui s'imposent de ces centres materiels et de sentiment, nous visons a l'unite spiri- tuelle et sociale de l'humanite civilisee dont nous assurons la paix et le progres. Nous devons toujours nous rappeler les derniers mots de miss Cavell : le patriotisme (national) ne suffit pas (Patriotism is not enough) ! Le patriotisme international n'est pas seulement possible et desirable, mais qui plus est necessaire pour la realisation du patriotisme national, c'est la clef de voute des sentiments patriotiques. Pour la litterature, il est bien vrai qu'un inter- nationalisme nebuleux et sans caractere reste sterile. II faut s'alimenter a la vie reelle — in's voile Menschenleben — a l'amour de la famille, du home, de la patrie. La forme aussi nous vient de notre langage, de notre milieu, des coutumes de notre pays. C'est par ce caractere national, distinctif, per- sonnel que nous devenons universels. C'est ainsi que Homere, Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, se sont interesses a l'humanite entiere. C'est la forme qui, d'apres Aristote, se marie avec la substance et cree l'ceuvre d'art. Mais cette substance, c'est la vie entiere et eternelle, la vie des idees, le Bon, le Vrai, la Beaute, la Justice ; elle appartient a tous les pays, a toutes les nations et elle unifie l'humanite. Sans ces idees universelles, pas de pensee, pas d'art, pas de litterature, et surtout, pas de justice ni de paix parmi les hommes. Ce sont les seules realites durables. II. — L'autre jour, un de vos hommes d'Etat les plus eminents, au cours d'une conversation, nous declarait : " En somme, Messieurs, il n'y a que les philosophes qui comptent C'est eux qui ont fait la revolution du xvm e siecle." Et il citait d'autres exemples frappants de l'histoire. J'osai lui repondre : " Monsieur, je prends note de cette remarque. Si, plus tard, dans un de vos discours, je vous surprends a dire : ' Tout cela, c'est de la theorie, ce sont de belles idees de penseurs qui ne connaissent pas la vie pratique, les complications de la politique reelle, la force maitresse des faits materiels et 424 APPENDIX economiques , qui produisent par eux-memes les evenements et les changements. — Vos idees, si vraies et si bonnes qu'elles soient, n'exercent aucnne influence sur le cours de la vie,' je vous enverrai un billet contenant les paroles que vous venez de prononcer. — Eh bien ! ce grand homme avait raison. C'est I'ideologie qui est la force veritable. Non seulement indirecte- ment, par toutes les avenues de l'education pedagogique et publique et par les vagues idees dominantes du Zeitgeist, mais directement par leur force intrinseque. Les grands legis- lateurs de l'humanite, Hammourabi, Moise, Solon, Lycurgue, etaient des philosophes, des litterati ; Alexandre Hamilton est l'auteur direct de la Constitution des Iitats-Unis, et cette Constitution a toujours ete, et est encore, la force la plus de- cisive de la politique interieure ou exterieure de lAmerique — qui meme determine la realisation du Traite de Paix. Je suis las d'entendre perpetuellement la voix — ecceurante, insultante, dedaigneuse des sceptiques et des cyniques, ou encore des " hommes pratiques," qui connaissent " la vie telle qu'elle est " ; de cette arrogance du pessimisme, qui sourit avec une tolerance bienveillante mais pleine de mepris devant les fougues de l'optimisme qui lutte avec une ardeur positive en faveur de l'amelioration des hommes, des societes et du monde ! II y a dans cette attitude une arrogance de critique negative — peut-etre inconsciente, mais enivrante — comparable a celle que les peres et les maitres portent a leurs enfants, qui n'ont pas encore subi les disillusions de l'existence. Eh bien, non, nous ne sommes pas depourvus de "sens commun " parce que nous regardons en face l'ideal et que nous voulons tendre a sa realisation, meme si ce n'est que par un petit pas. Qui leur dit que nous n'avons pas vecu et souffert comme eux ? Si nous insistons sur le bon qu'il y a dans la nature humaine, c'est justement pour y faire appel. Nous connaissons bien aussi le mal et sa force, la force de l'egoisme, de la stupidite, de la convoitise, de l'indolence et de la lachete qui dominent les actions et les pensees des individus et des masses. Mais nous voulons pour le moment l'ignorer, afin que la force positive puisse s'agiter et grandir par des elans positifs. Nous avons en effet cette grande confiance, que les id6es vraies et bonnes sont les seules forces qui persistent dans le RESPUBLICA LITTERATORUM 425 monde — qu'elles sont la force materielle qui persiste et mene a la victoire finale, quels que soient les va-et-vients des batailles d'un jour et les defaites momentanees. Eh bien 1 les champions des Idees, c'est nous, les litterati, les intellectuels. Par litterati, je n'entends pas seulement les poetes, les romanciers, les ecrivains de profession. Souvent ceux d'un meme pays se hai'ssent ou se jalousent, tandis qu'il y a plus de parents entre ceux de differentes nationality, quand ils sont capables d'harmoniser leurs pensees et leurs aspirations, qu'entre ceux d'un meme sang. Ce n'est pas dans l'esprit du Docteur Pangloss ni de M. de la Palisse qu'il faut se rappeler la grande verite: L' Union fait la Force. — Organisons-nous ! Nous n'aurons jamais besoin de Comites secrets. Nous n'aurons rien a cacher. Nous ne craindrons jamais la publicity absolue — au contraire, elle nous est essentielle. Les Bolcheviks connaissent la force de l'union et aussi les internationalistes Marxistes. Ayons de l'Union, nous autres, Chevaliers du Saint-Esprit ! La diffe- rence entre nous et " l'organisation du Proletariat," c'est que nous ne sommes pas une classe ; nous sommes tous des travail- leurs ; mais le travail n'est pas seulement manuel et le but de notre action collective n'est pas la realisation de nos interets de classe, la domination de notre caste — mais la domination des idees directrices de l'humanite : la Justice, la Verite, la Bonte, et la Beaute ! Sous nos pas cadences faisons sonner la terre. Jetons nos gants de fer et donnons-nous la main, C'est nous qui conduirons aux conquetes du Perc, Les colonnes du genre humain ! Agreez, je vous prie, mes sentiments les plus distingues. Ill 1 LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS CONTRE L'ANARCHIE NATIONALE ET INTERNATIONALE Introduction On est ravi lorsque, s'attendant de voir un auteur, on trouve un homme ! Qu'on me pardonne de rappeler ici cette pensee de Pascal, tant de fois citee. Je ne saurais mieux resumer l'impression que me laisse la lecture du present article. Gra- due de Cambridge, de Columbia (New-York), de Heidelberg, ancien professeur de Beaux-Arts, puis d'Archeologie a l'Uni- versite de Cambridge, ancien directeur de l'Ecole americaine des etudes classiques a Athenes, auteur de nombreux ouvrages tant d'archeologie que de politique et de philosophic morale, parmi lesquels son Aristodemocratie, entre autres, a excite le plus vif interet, Sir Walston, d'origine autrichienne, sujet anglais ne et eleve en Amerique, nourri de connaissances variees puisees dans de nombreux voyages, traite aujourd'hui des questions morales et politiques que souleve la guerre avec une competence et une sagacite auxquelles, de toutes parts, les critiques rendent hommage. Quoi de plus interessant que de voir abordes par un homme si exceptionnellement prepare pour les etudier, les problemes relatifs aux causes de la guerre, aux conditions d'une paix durable, a la notion de nationality, a la nature de l'organisa- tion internationale qu'il convient d'elaborer si Ton veut que cette constitution reponde effectivement a son objet. Devoue a. la cause de la paix, M. Walston n'est nullement un pacifiste. Ce fut, selon lui, l'honneur de l'humanite, lors de l'agression allemande, de preferer la liberte dans la lutte et le sacrifice a la paix dans la servitude. Le pacifisme, d'ailleurs, n'a-t-il 1 The following article, with an Introduction by the late M. limile Boutroux, appeared in the Renaissance Politique of Paris on April 24, 1920. 426 LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 427 pas sa lourde responsabilite dans l'explosion de la guerre en 1914 ? " Hatons-nous, ecrivait le general von Bernhardi, d'ecraser l'Angleterre et la France, tandis que ces nations sont enervees par le pacifisme, tandis que nous-memes resistons encore a la contagion." M. Walston demande que, decidement et radicalement, la notion de nationalite morale, fondee sur le libre consente- ment des populations, soit substitute a celle de nationalite ethnique, consistant dans la communaute de race, de langue, de religion, de coutumes. A ce principe, qui est le leur, les Francais adherent naturellement. lis n'omettent pas, d'ailleurs, le lien de ce principe avec celui que Ton appelle le principe ethnique et qui, en fait, n'est autre que celui des ressemblances, soit innees, soit acquises. L'ideal humain, c'est le maximum d'harmonie entre des nations presentant le maximum de variete. Comment obtenir cette harmonie ? Reprenant l'idee de la plus pure democratie, M. Walston conceit un Conseil inter- national dont les membres seraient charges de representee non les idees ou les interets de tel ou tel groupe d'hommes, mais la seule justice, universelle eteternelle. Platon, je crois, eut applaudi a cette theorie de la representation. En lisant l'expose de M. Walston, on sent, avec une vivacite singuliere, que Ton a affaire a un homme qui veut le bien, l'honnete, le solide, le vrai, l'humain par excellence et qui ignore toute consideration egoiiste et partiale. A un tel Conseil, ajoute-t-il, il faut adjoindre une police internationale. Est-ce possible, helas ! est-ce meme con- cevable ? Mais ne doutons pas qu'une cour permanente de justice qui serait composee d'hommes justes et competents et qui, peu a peu, creerait un code de justice internationale, n'acquit, par sa seule autorite morale, une influence reelle de plus en plus puissante. II est impossible de parler des rapports de la France et de TAngleterre d'une maniere plus touchante, plus sympathique, plus cordiale, que ne fait ici M. Walston. Que les nations francaise et anglaise l'ecoutent et s'inspirent de son esprit ; et les nuages que la politique des politiciens risquerait d'amasser demeureront sans consistance, et se dissiperont aisement sous les rayons de l'amitie et de la confiance mutuelle 428 APPENDIX de 1 elite intellectuelle et morale des deux pays. Puissent les nations subordonner, a la vie de l'ame, qui les unit, celle du corps, qui les divise ! Emile Boutroux, de VAcademie Francaise. L'Anarchie Nationale Le danger qui menace l'Europe — et meme toute la civi- lisation occidentale — vient de l'anarchie nationale et de l'anarchie internationale. L'e volution des "classes" — le developpement du travail materiel et intellectuel, comme celui des forces economiques et morales, ont determine l'etat de la societe moderne et chacune de ces forces contribue au bien-etre de l'ensemble des peuples, a la civilisation, a la culture, et au progres. L'irrationalite, l'erreur fondamentale du bolchevisme (et du soi-disant parti du travail dans plusieurs pays) se trouve dans cette these : a savoir, que la majorite des travailleurs manuels (le soi-disant proletariat) doit gouverner, sinon tyranniser, les nations et le monde entier. II est meme douteux qu'il en soit ainsi et qu'une grande proportion de travailleurs manuels partagent cette pretention des extremistes. Le processus evolutionnaire du bolchevisme est a l'inverse du processus de revolution naturelle et morale. Car on veut reduire revolution sociale accomplie dans le passe a. l'etat prehistorique — la la civilisation des troglodytes — ignorant ce que la qualite signifie dans le travail, combien l'intelligence humaine est importante — meme essentielle — pour le perfectionnement du travail materiel et le progres de la Societe. De plus en plus les inventions (qui avec nous prennent la place des esclaves dans la democratic pericleenne) remplacent l'effort manuel, le reduisent a un minimum, jusqu'a ce qu'il devienne une quantite negligeable. Avant tout il faut que les travailleurs reconnaissent et admettent que skilled labour, l'agilite meme dans le travail le plus materiel, implique comme elements differentiels l'intelligence et les valeurs morales et esthetiques. L'anarchie nationale est basee sur cette antith£se fausse, illusoire, et nefaste entre les valeurs materielles et les valeurs intellectuelles, et entre les LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 429 groupes sociaux qui, a. premiere vue, representent l'un ou l'autre de ces elements qui, loin d'etre en antagonisme, se compenetrent organiquement dans la vie normale de la societe civilisee. A ces causes de l'anarchie nationale il faut en ajouter d'autres, que nous trouverons dans la seconde partie de notre sujet a la base de l'anarchie internationale, mais qui, par leur intrusion dans la vie nationale, augmentent toutes les compli- cations et antagonismes nefastes qui menent a l'anarchie. Ce sont les differences de races, de " nationality " et de reli- gions, qui, avec leurs interets, leurs ambitions et meme leurs haines, perpetuent le trouble dans la vie nationale interieure et dans les rapports internationaux. La vie nationale — comprise dans le vrai sens du mot — deja menacee par les inegalites materielles, etait, dans le passe, detournee de sa course normale par les luttes latentes ou violentes entre des majorites et des minorites de citoyens, determinees comme telles par leurs differences de races, de " nationality " et de religions. Enfin nous arrivons — quant aux causes de l'anarchie nationale — a l'opposition et a la lutte des Etats, des vraies nationality. Et nous aboutissons ainsi a l'anarchie internationale — le vrai sujet de cet article — mais qui reagit si puissamment sur la vie interieure des peuples — les deux domaines s'entre-penetrant constamment et avec intensite. L'Anarchie Internationale La guerre mondiale a sans doute eu pour cause fondamentale les interets materiels des differentes nations modernes. Cela a ete demontre par les evenements et par de nombreuses publications litteraires et economiques d'auteurs eminents. D'un cote — plus ou moins purement materiel — ondoitadmettre que le commerce, l'industrie, l'expansion et la domination des marches du monde ont ete un motif puissant dans cette lutte des peuples civilises. D'un autre cote — plus ou moins ideal — la cause generale et fondamentale pour laquelle nos soldats donnaient leur vie etait la lutte de la democratic et de l'antimilitarisme contre l'autocratie et le militarisme. Entre ces deux poles — et de plus la cause immediate de la guerre localisee dans les Balkans — il y avait la defense et la 430 APPENDIX liberie des petites nationality contre la tyrannie et rim- perialisme des grands Pouvoirs expansionnistes et agressifs. Comme nous allons le voir, cette cause, admirablement justi- fiee par le sentiment de justice et de charite, a agi — et se mani- festera peut-etre encore plus dans l'avenir — comme une lame a deux tranchants, en accentuant et en compliquant l'anarchie internationale. Mais cette enumeration des causes fondamentales de la guerre serait incomplete et fausse si nous en restions la. La vraie cause, immediate et ulterieure, se trouve dans notre conception de la nationality et dans le developpement de l'Etat moderne base sur cette conception. Cette conception avec tout ce qu'elle determine : institutions, administration, mentalite, et activite politique des citoyens,|a fatalement mene les Nations a la lutte et au desir de repandre leur pouvoir materiel et moral a l'infini. Elle a cree, comme la vertu sociale par excellence, ce patriotisme national qui produit et qui intensifie les passions de l'ambition, de l'orgueil, de la vanite personnelle ou corporative, de l'envie et de la haine. C'est cette passion — ce sentiment, si vous voulez — qui a ete le ressort essentiel et directeur de la guerre ; c'est lui qui incite les masses a offrir leur vie en combattant l'ennemi. Le poeme de Hoffmann von Fallersleben qui visait, en 1841, a l'unite d'une Allemagne divisee, au temps du poete, en une masse de petits Etats particularistes, d'un idealisme et merae d'un romantisme vague et innocent — s'etait transformed en 1914, en un chant de bataille, non seulement des pan-ger- manistes, mais du peuple entier : le Deutschland ! Deutsch- land iiber Alles in der Welt, la domination du monde de son commerce et de ses richesses par l'Empire allemand. Mais ce phenomene n'etait qu'une consequence logique et fatale de la conception de la nationalite. La conception moderne de la nationalite — conception non pas exactement fixee, mais contenant, au contraire, des com- plications d'idees et des contradictions inherentes a ses diverses significations — date du debut du xix e siecle quand, par Mazzini et les publicistes inspires par le Congres de Vienne, l'idee de la nationalite est devenue directrice dans la conception de l'Etat et des peuples. Ensuite, par la politique arretee de Cavour et de Bismarck, l'Etat nationaliste (Nazionalstat), la LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 431 " nationality " a ete basee sur l'idee de la race ethnologique. Meme avant cette epoque, l'ideal du pan-hellenisme et du pan-slavisme etait ne. Mais, inspire par l'ideal de la " Cite Antique " avec implication du pan-latinisme sinon de pan- gallicisme, et par les historiens d'Angleterre, comme Freeman, le pan-anglosaxonisme germait dans la Grande-Bretagne, jusqu'a ce que, plus tard, le pan-slavisme et le pan-germanisme se soient materialises dans l'histoire moderne comme des idees des plus fecondes dans la vie nationale de ces peuples. Nous osons meme suggerer que, dans l'avenir, il se developpera des mouvements pan-americain et pan-europeen aboutissant a un grand soulevement pan-orientaliste. C'est surtout a ces idees qu'il faut ramener les causes de l'anarchie internationale qui a produit la guerre et qui en produira d'autres dans l'avenir. Au fond, le germe de cette vegetation destructive de la paix consiste dans 1' identification de la nationality et de la race. Cette erreur fondamentale a ete combattue recemment par des ecrivains eminents dans chaque nation et meme par des ethnologistes serieux. La litterature de ce sujet est de venue immense dans tous les pays. Renan, avec son eloquence claire et altiere, avait deja demontre que " l'ame d'une Nation " n'est pas une question de race. Des ecrivains francais * ont aussi expose l'absurdite de la division des nations par races. Proudhon en avait deja anticipe les consequences en montrant qu'il y aurait en France meme douze " nationality " ethnologiques ; et, en 1916, M. Flach (pendant le troisieme Congres des nationalites a Lausanne) a reclame la division de la France en nationalites regionales comprenant : les Bretons, les Corses, les Flamands, les Basques, les Provencaux, les Savoyards, etc. C'est par cette fausse conception des nationalites que l'idee du patriotisme s'est pervertie. Le patriotisme est une des plus hautes vertus de l'espece humaine. II doit rester et il doit etre nourri et developpe dans tous les sens. Mais il faut insister sur ce fait important et essentiel qu'il doit etre mis en harmonie avec les autres qualites et vertus humaines. J'ai tache ailleurs de demontrer la valeur progressive de ces vertus 1 Parmi les ouvrages nombreux sur ce sujet, je dois signaler le livre serieux et remarquable de M. Rene Johannet publie en 1918. 432 APPENDIX sociales sur lesquelles sont fondes la civilisation et le progr&s du genre humain. Le patriotisme occupe une des plus hautes marches sur l'echelle qui va de la base voracity animale a l'egoismede la bete humaine et monte, dans une ascension continue, a l'amour de la famille, au devouement au village, a la ville, au departement, et jusqu'a la passion devouee au patriotisme national. Mais la cime de cette echelle, la clef de voute de l'arc humanitaire, est le patriotisme international. Si tous ces degres ne menent pas vers ce but final, le resultat est le chaos dans l'ordre social, l'anarchie dans les soci£t6s civilisees, anarchie qui mene a la guerre de tous contre tous. La Ligue des Nations La guerre est terminee et nous avons la paix. Mais, meme dans cette paix, les forces destructives qui ont mene a la guerre survivent encore. La tradition de la politique inter- nationale et surtout de la diplomatic de Yancien ordre a sur- vecu. On n'a pas encore reconnu, quant au but et aux methodes mis en honneur par le Congres, le nouvel ordre qui doit regner. Mais c'est surtout par la survivance de la con- ception de la nationalite ethnologique que les germes de disac- cord et de guerre sont restes pour produire une vegetation de mauvaises herbes qui etoufferont, dans leur croissance rapide, les fruits nourriciers et les fleurs qui embellisent la vie des societes civilisees. Le principe de determination par elles-memes des petites nationality etait urgent, et c'est avec justice qu'il a dirige le Conseil des Allies au Congres de la paix. Mais, comme je l'ai deja indique, il en pourrait resulter un grand danger pour la paix actuelle et dans l'avenir. Je ne peux que suggerer a mes lecteurs ce qu'il advient et doit advenir dans la constitu- tion des Etats ethniques du pre-Orient, surtout dans les Balkans, en Russie, en Asie-Mineure ou ces peuples, avec les antagonismes de races et de religions, sont effectivement voisins les uns des autres. Et me tournant vers l'ouest lointain, j'ose indiquer ce qui resulterait quant a la nationalite des Etats-Unis, si le principe de determination par soi-meme des elements de races ou d'origines nationales, combine avec la diversity des LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 433 confessions religieuses, se manifestait dans la vie politique de cette nation. J'ose meme affirmer que le plus grand danger actuel dans la vie politique de ce " melting-pot " national — qui existe essentiellement par l'attachement patriotique de tous les citoyens a l'unite basee sur la Constitution, les lois, la moralite, les coutumes, les ideals — se trouve dans les divisions et les heurts des elements ethniques dont la nation est com- poses ! Meme actuellement (comme peut-etre dans la pre- miere annee de la guerre), la question des votes determines par la race, les religions, etles origines des citoyens, a joue un role considerable. Si cela persiste et s'intensifie, la politique interieure et surtout la politique exterieure de cette grande nation s'en ressentiront dans les conditions les plus nefastes pour l'Amerique et pour le monde entier. Je tiens a affirmer sans reserve aucune que je reconnais pleinement le travail immense et superbe qui a ete fait par ceux qui constituaient la Conference de la Paix. L'Histoire saura leur rendre justice. Quelles que soient les consequences de leur action dans tous les domaines, il en resulte au moins un fait de la plus haute valeur permanente : c'est que les idees dominatrices de l'ordre nouveau ont ete formulees et poussees de la sphere nebuleuse et altiere des theories dans la realite de la vie politique internationale et dans la conscience des peuples. La Conference de la Paix a bien pressenti que le danger central qui menace la paix etait l'anarchie internationale. On a done reconnu que la Ligue des Nations est la clef de voute de la paix. En admettant en toute sincerite ce resultat grandiose, je n'hesite pas a declarer que, dans la forme actuelle et dans l'organisation de cette Ligue des Nations, la survivance des traditions de l'ancien ordre a affaibli — sinon detruit — l'em- cacite pratique de cette base du traite de paix entier. Mais meme dans cette critique negative, j'admets que l'activite mandataire accordee a la Ligue est une idee de genie dont la portee est immense, non seulement pour le present mais pour l'avenir du monde entier. Ce qui est certain aujourd'hui, c'est que deja la Ligue des Nations a perdu sa place dans la conscience des peuples et des classes et a subi l'opposition active d'un des membres les plus 29 434 APPENDIX importants parmi les Allies, du Senat des Etats-Unis. Je trouve partout, dans chaque classe du peuple, non seulement parmi ceux qui, par leur mentalite et par tradition, ont tou- jours ete opposes a des idees pareilles, mais aussi parmi ceux qui ont ete et qui sont convaincus et enthousiasmes pour la fondation d'une organisation intern ation ale capable d'assurer la paix, des personnes qui ont perdu la foi dans l'emcacite reelle et pratique de la Ligue des Nations et qui en parlent avec un scepticisme dans lequel on apercoit un element de mepris bienveillant. Apres avoir ose faire cette critique negative, j'aurai meme la temerite de publier, en esquisse, une proposition positive et constructive qui, necessairement, doit se borner a une exposition des plus sommaires des points essentiels d'une Ligue de Nations ou, pour etre plus exact, d'un accord inter- national qui doit effectuer et sauvegarder la paix. Mais, j'ose aussi amrmer que chacun de ces points pourrait etre developpe de maniere a satisfaire les exigences de la vie internationale actuelle et a rendre leur realisation pratique et efficace. Dans tous les cas, le plan que je propose echappe a toutes les objections promulguees par le Senat des Etats-Unis contre le traite entier, et la Ligue des Nations en particulier. Ces objections n'auraient jamais ete faites contre une ligue telle que je la concois, car les deux objections principales ne tien- nent pas contre elle. L'une porte sur l'incursion dans la Souverainete de l'Etat, dans le cas ou la Ligue fait appel a un de ses membres pour declarer la guerre et mobiliser son armee contre une nation recalcitrante — ce qui est, non seule- ment une contravention a la Constitution des Etats-Unis, quant au droit de declarer la guerre, mais aussi ce qui est peu realisable quant au peuple entier qui constitue chaque armee nationale et dont on attendra l'obeissance a l'ordre, venu du dehors, de donner sa vie pour une cause qui ne concerne pas directement sa propre existence. L'autre objection concerne la representation insuffisante des Etats-Unis, representation qui n'est pas en rapport avec la grandeur et l'importance de cet Etat. Mais, avant tout, il faut insister sur ce fait que tous les LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 435 critiques, les sceptiques, et meme les ennemis directs de la Ligue des Nations telle qu'elle existe, sont d'accord sur un point : la necessite immediate et absolue de trouver un moyen quelconque pour eviter une guerre dans l'avenir. On n'a qu'a demander, non seulement aux gens cultives, aux penseurs et aux philosophes, mais a " l'homme de la rue " completement illettre, ce qu'il adviendrait au monde s'il survenait, dans l'avenir, une seconde guerre comme la derniere, avec tout le progres dans les machines destructives de la vie humaine, que la science et l'experience de cette guerre ont fourni ? De plus, est-il concevable que les nations europeennes — qui, si elles ne sont pas en banqueroute economique actuelle, sont dans un etat voisin de la banqueroute prochaine — puissent supporter les charges de nouvelles batailles ? Si, avant cette guerre, les differentes nations ont deja gemi sous le poids in- supportable des armements de defense nationale qui les menaient a la faillite, comment trouver a present et dans l'avenir les moyens de preservation economique de nos peuples ? Avec le danger devant nos portes, et surtout devant celles de la France, le maintien et meme l'extension de nos forces militaires ne peuvent que s'accroitre. Voila un etat de choses impossible. D'autre part, la tendance de notre economie et de nos industries modernes va diiecte- ment et forcement dans le sens de la cooperation. II faut done que nous trouvions un moyen de creer une force coopera- tive — trusts, pool, syndicats — surtout quant aux depenses de la production pour faire face au danger conimun qui menace toutes les nations et tous les peuples. Mais comment ? Le seul moyen est de transformer la Ligue des Nations en un corps completement organise qui puisse repondre de la protection indispensable a chaque pays. Pour un Jury Supra-National Voici l'esquisse d'une telle organisation. 1 L'element 1 On me ferait tort si Ton croyait que le projet que je donne en ebauche superficielle est le resultat d'une pensee ou d'une imagination trop vive, nee d'aujourd'hui ou d'hier. Je dois a moi-mSme d'informer mes lecteurs que ce projet a ete concu il y a plus de 45 ans ; que la premiere publication des principes essentiels a ete faile en 189S et que, depuis lors, elle a ete repetee sous differentes formes, dans dts publi- cations pendant la guerre. 436 APPENDIX necessaire, absolument essentiel, dans ime organisation nationale qui reponde aux besoins que nous admettons, est que le Conseil ou la Cour ou le Jury International, soit muni d'une force militaire, d'une police qui exige la realisation de ses decisions de justice internationale. Le second point essentiel est que cet accord international ne compromette nullement la souverainete et l'independance interieures des nations qui forment l'organisation internationale. II faut rompre avec l'ordre ancien et reconnaitre le nouvel ordre. Les traditions et les methodes diplomatiques, avec la mentalit6 des diplomates et meme des hommes d'Etat qui ont dirige Taction internationale jusqu'ici, doivent faire place a une nouvelle conduite des affaires et des interets nationaux et internationaux qui ne visent que la justice et, par consequent, la paix entre les Nations. Le Corps directeur ne doit nulle- ment etre constitue par les representants des differentes nations munis de mandats pour garder les interets des diffe- rents Gouvernements ou des differentes Nations. Les membres de ce Corps n'auront point de mandat national, ce ne sera pas un Conseil des Nations, pas meme un Corps legislatif international, le Grand Parlement du Monde ; mais tout simplement une Cour de justice, pas meme une Cour de juristes avec des magistrats judiciaires, mais un grand Jury International qui accorde l'equite la plus parfaite dans ce monde imparfait, dans toutes ses deliberations. II est proba- ble qu'il sera necessaire que ce grand nombre de representants agissent sous la presidence d'un juge et d'un juriste de metier, maitre de la procedure legale. Mais les membres de ce grand jury seront tout simplement des hommes eminents et du caractere le plus eleve, envoyes par chaque nation et dignes de sauvegarder la justice la plus pure. Ce sont les plaideurs des deux parties qui dans un litige peuvent ou doivent etre des juristes de profession. Le seul mandat de ces membres du Jury sera la justice. Apres un serment des plus solennels, chacun devra se vouer, sa designation faite, a la seule realisation de la justice pure, sans partialite individuelle, locale et nationale, comme un juge dans chaque pays, et comme les membres du jury dans nos tribunaux pretent serment de n'etre diriges que par la justice. La nature humaine a produit, dans Tadministration de la LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 437 justice actuelle, des injustices et des infractions au devoir, exceptionnelles. Mais nous pouvons affirmer que ce ne sont la que des exceptions dans nos Cours de Justice, et que dans un Corps de centaines d'hommes d' intelligence et de moralite superieures, il n'y aura que peu de cas de ces delits contre la justice et la verite. Ces representants nationaux seront elus dans chaque nation en proportion du nombre d'habitants avec le minimum d'un representant pour les petites nations. Une des objections capitales du Senat americain est deja annulce par cette methode, et la disproportion dans la repre- sentation des grandes Puissances et des petites Nations qui cause et qui causera le mecontentement continuel, sera effacee. Mais il faut insister avec la plus grande force sur ce point que les difficultes negatives du fonctionnement de cette organisation internationale seront toutes resolues et que son emcacite sera assuree par le fait essentiel que les repre- sentants, dans leur caracteie et leur activite omciels, n'appar- tiendront a aucune nationality et ne seront effectivement que les serviteurs du Corps international dans sa solidarity. De plus, il est essentiel a cette conception d'un Jury Supra- National, qu'il ne s'occupera que de questions, de problemes et de litiges internationaux. II ne s'introduira nullement dans les affaires nationales sauf dans le cas ou les deux parties litigeantes d'une Nation et la Nation elle-meme invoqueront sa juridiction. Cependant, sur deux points exceptionnels son intervention dans la vie nationale est absolument necessaire a la reussite de ses fonctions et a la realisation de la justice : le premier est le controle des armements dans chaque Nation qui a accepte le principe du desarmement afin d eviter, par tous les moyens effectifs, les armements et les mobilisations secrets. L'autre concerne la sauvegarde de la verite, c'est- a-dire la rectification immediate et complete du mensonge, de l'erreur, et de l'ignorance. II faut done fournir a ce Corps le pouvoir pratique et efficace de repandre dans tous les pays, et parmi toutes les populations, la negation ou la rectification de toute publication mensongere ou erronee en ce qui concerne les relations internationales ; et, de plus, il faut insister sur un systeme de publications completes et etendues de tous les jugements et decrets de ce Jury Supra-National. 438 APPENDIX Hormis ces deux limitations, il ne sera permis nulle infraction a la souverainete de chaque Nation. II n'y aura qu'un sou- verain auquel tous les Etats devront se subordonner : la Justice. Mais il faut bien se rappeler que cette limitation a la souve- rainete existe actuellement et a toujours existe. La Cour Supreme des Etats-Unis est reconnue par la Constitution et par la tradition parlementaire comme le tribunal de derniere instance dans 1'interpretation de la Constitution des droits et des devoirs de chacun des Etats de 1' Union ; et, dans le passe, dans le Moyen-Age le plus autocrate, la souverainete absolue a toujours ete concue en tant que limitee par " les Commandements de Dieu et les Lois de la Nature." L'inter- pretation des Commandements de Dieu avec ses dogmes est differente parmi les sectes religieuses ; mais toutes ces sectes reconnaitront comme seule valable la justice qui vient de Dieu. " Les Lois de la Nature " (nous en sommes bien conscients) peuvent mener a la maxime historique de Bethmann Hollweg : "La necessite ne connait pas de loi." Mais l'humanite entiere reconnait dans la politique, comme dans la morale, que la justice doit etre superieure aux cruautes et aux injustices de la nature. L'Arm^e Supra-Nationale Mais les discussions et les decisions de ce Jury Supra- National seront illusoires sans l'appui de la force dirigee par cette justice, comme dans notre vie nationale, la decision des tribunaux n'aurait pas de valeur si elle n'etait appuyee par la force de la police. Le point essentiel d'une Ligue des Nations effective c'est qu'elle associe avec elle une police internationale capable d'assurer la realisation complete et immediate de ses decisions. Dans le sens negatif, cette police ne doit pas etre une agglomeration ou une federation de differentes armees natio- nales. D'une part, la libre disposition d'un armement national par une autorite etrangere a la Nation est une infraction in- supportable a la souverainete des Nations. Mais, de plus, il n'est pas concevable que les armees elles- memes et leurs soldats reprendront la guerre, et tout ce que cela signifie, pour une question qui ne concerne pas directe- LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 439 ment l'existence nationale. II me parait de plus invrai- semblable et illusoire de compter sur une armee internationale composee de differents Corps d'armees et d'unites gardant leur solidarity nationale, mais incapables de s'amalgamer et de former une armee entiere. II est plus qu'improbable, par exemple, qu'une de ces unites puisse faire loyalement la guerre contre ses propres nationaux. Dans le sens positif un instru- ment militaire efficace de police internationale doit resulter d'une force militaire (navale et aerienne), composee de militaires de chaque Nation, militaires de profession et de choix. II est beaucoup d'hommes qui, par temperament et par gout, choisiront cette profession d'armes et qui dans leur ensemble composeront une armee perfectionnee au dernier point, qui se battra loyalement et avec fierte pour la plus grande cause dans la vie humaine : la Justice. II faut se rappeler que les armees mercenaires du Moyen-Age et des temps modernes meme contenaient de ces soldats de pro- fession qui sacrifiaient leur vie pour des causes bien douteuses, comme pour des individus et des autocrates qui ne repre- sentaient pas toujours les ideals de 1'humanite. Comme la justice internationale aura son habitat, son domicile actuel, il y sera necessairement adjoint les camps necessaires pour cette armee avec sa marine et son centre aeronautique — preferablement dans une ile neutre. Mais il y aura aussi des succursales distributes dans chaque partie du monde et reliees par la telegraphie sans fil, de sorte que, de ces centres de police, chaque infraction a l'autorite du jury sera reprimee sans delai. Comme les membres du jury Supra-National, et a plus forte raison, les soldats de cette armee policiere feront abstraction de leur nationality dans leur existence officielle et ne preteront serment de loyaute qu'a ce Corps Supra-National. Le Devouement de l'Angleterre Une condition essentielle pour la realisation d'une telle police effective est le desarmement relatif de toutes les armees nationales, qui devra etre maintenu strictement par tous les moyens materiels. Je n'ai pas besoin de developper plus en detail l'organisation de ce Corps ni son efficacite, mais je voudrais, en passant, appuyer seulement sur un point : c'est 440 APPENDIX que la syndicalisation des armees qui assureront l'integrite de chaque Nation et garderont la paix du monde, reduira a une quantite negligeable les sacrifices economiques pour la defense de chaque nation, et evitera la banqueroute economique qui nous menace et qui est, en fait, imminente. Le probleme le plus difficile est de resoudre toutes les diffi- culty presque insurmontables, au point de vue economique et moral, de la periode intermediate entre notre temps actuel et le desarmement des Nations et l'organisation reelle d'un tel Corps international. Mais les peuples s'en tireront. Un fait important et indiscutable, c'est que jusqu'au moment ou sera etablie une telle force — qui est le seul moyen d'eviter la banqueroute economique et la dissolution sociale de la civilisa- tion entiere — chacun de nous, dans les circonstances actuelles, doit garder et meme developper ses moyens de defense natio- nale. La France, quant a la terre, la Grande-Bretagne, quant a la mer, avec l'appui moral et materiel des Etats-Unis, de l'ltalie et de tous nos Allies, doivent etre pretes a resister a chaque agression de nos ennemis, soit qu'il s'agisse de la guerre ou des points essentiels du Traite de Paix. Devant nous se presentent des problemes presque insolubles au point de vue economique. Pour nous tous il est indiscu- table que la France doit etre assuree des moyens de relever sa vie economique. Elle le doit a elle-meme, nous tous nous le lui devons. J'ai la conviction que tous les Allies et que surtout la Grande-Bretagne y contribueront par des gestes de justice et de generosite, comme j'ai la conviction absolue que, avec ou sans conventions formelles, les peuples de la Grande- Bretagne et des Etats-Unis se mettront cote a cote avec la France pour reprimer toute agression du dehors. Mais il y a aussi le probleme moral. La haine est une force negative et bien douteuse pour mener a des actions raisonnables et a la justice. C'est par des forces positives morales que la justice se realise et que les actions se concentrent pour atteindre ce but immediat et final. Notre entente doit etre affermie de jour en jour par la concorde vraie, l'intimite et la connaissance mutuelle. Nous avons toujours autour de nous et meme chez nous des gens qui ont interet a nous separer, a repandre le mensonge, a insinuer des malentendus, a semer la discorde et a engendrer LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 441 la haine. II n'y a qu'un moyen pour combattre ces forces ennemies : c'est de se connaitre. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner : voila une belle maxime que j'hesite presque a repeter. Mais bien se connaitre, pouvoir penetrer dans la vie des autres, cultiver l'imagination altruistique, de sorte que nous comprenions les qualites, les motifs avec la justification de chacun, ouvrir son cceur pour qu'on puisse s'estimer et meme s'aimer : cela ne rend pas necessaire le pardon, puisque cela permet de devancer chaque mecontentement, chaque indignation, chaque haine. Mais pour que cela se realise, il faut que nous developpions dans notre vie commune les conditions qui menent a cette vraie entente, a cette connaissance mutuelle, et surtout, il faut combattre en chacun de nous l'ignorance, l'erreur et le mensonge. Le peuple francais doit savoir que les habitants de la Grande- Bretagne surtout sont bien conscients des sacrifices qu'a faits la France dans cette guerre. II est inutile de comparer et de peser les sacrifices que chacun de nous a consentis. Henri Heine a bien dit : " Qui peut peser les flammes ? " Mais nous admettons tous que la France est le protagoniste quant aux sacrifices de sang et de biens materiels dans cette guerre. Nous devons etre prets a reconnaitre ce fait dans nos actions. D'autre part, au cours de mon sejour depuis l'automne, dans differentes parties de la France et parmi les differentes classes de ses habitants, je me suis apercu que le peuple entier n'etait vraiment pas conscient de ce qu'a fait l'Angleterre, des sacrifices que nous avons acceptes et que nous acceptons encore, loin de la guerre, surtout dans notre vie economique. Pour donner comme exemples quelques faits simples, qui peuvent paraitre meme mesquins, je n'en veux citer que deux. Le peuple francais tout entier ne sait pas jusqu'a quel point, pendant la guerre et actuellement, le peuple britannique de chaque classe s'est impose loyalement des sacrifices, non seule- ment dans son confort, mais meme dans le necessaire. Je ne veux parler que des faits que je connais absolument. Pendant la guerre, les vivres etaient restreints au minimum, meme pour les gens les plus riches et surtout pour les gens qui autrefois vivaient dans l'opulence. Je peux temoigner avec 442 APPENDIX exactitude que, dans presque toutes les families qui possedaient des maisons dans la ville et des chateaux dans la campagne, on ne mangeait de la viande que trois jours sur quinze, tandis qu'on en donnait davantage aux domestiques et aux ouvriers. J'ose citer un fait personnel : dans l'hiver de 1917 ou 1918, je donnais des conferences a des aveugles et a des vieillards des deux sexes dans le plus pauvre district de Test de Londres. La societe qui m'avait invite m'offrit un the apres ma confe- rence. J'etais surpris et ravi de voir des sandwiches avec du rosbif en quantite telle que je ne m'etais jamais trouve a pareille fete pendant la guerre. Je demandai aux hotes comment ils avaient pu faire de pareils sacrifices pour me plaire et comment ils avaient pu se procurer une telle quantite de viande. Ils me repondirent qu'ils en avaient toujours autant et que la viande qu'ils achetaient actuellement etait meme meilleure qu'avant la guerre et presque aussi bonne que celle qu'on donnait aux soldats. Mais, a l'ouest de Londres, ou sont les maisons elegantes, non seulement la quantite etait restreinte au minimum, mais on n'a jamais pu se procurer une bonne qualite de viande. II en etait ainsi de tous les aliments. Est-ce que le peuple francais sait qu'une grande partie de la population, surtout parmi les riches, n'a pu se procurer le charbon sumsant pour le chauffage et la cuisine ? Je connais bien des maisons, surtout de grandes maisons, ou il etait absolument impossible de vivre a cause du manque de chaleur. Beaucoup d'Anglais ont ete obliges de se refugier dans le Midi de la France. Est-ce qu'on sait que la taxe sur tout revenu qui depassait un minimum etait et est encore d'un tiers pour les revenus modestes et arrive, avec la surtaxe, a la moitie pour les gros capitaux ? II y a meme des cas, exceptionnels, il est vrai, ou la taxe depasse tout le revenu annuel. De plus, il faut bien qu'on sache que ces taxes sont actuellement exigees et payees au Tresor National par tout le monde. Est-ce que le peuple francais tout entier sait qu'une grande partie de nos vivres et de nos matieres premieres provient de l'Amerique ? Que la livre sterling qui, avant la guerre, valait presque 5 dollars, avait baisse recemment jusqu'a 3 dollars et demi environ ? Si ces faits simples etaient connus par tous les Frangais, il n'y aurait nullement danger que notre entente cordiale se LA SOCIETE DES NATIONS 443 refroidisse. II est essentiel que la verite soit connue et qu'elle se repande partout. II faut instituer une organisation qui facilite et qui fortifie notre entente, qui la repande de tous cotes, raeme dans la jeunesse, jusqu'a ce qu'enfin la France et la Grande-Bretagne, avec le concours de toutes les Nations civilisees, aient constitue ce Corps Supra-National qui assurera defmitivement la solidarity de chaque nation dans la paix du monde et jusqu'a ce que la justice siege sur le trone supreme couronnee par la charite. IV AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1 The world-crisis immediately before us is as ominous as the one we faced in 1914. The pregnant, and now classic phrase, " A war to end war " (was it first used by President Hadley of Yale ?), must now be superseded by the watchword of our day, " A peace to end war." The Great War was determined, potentially from its beginning and actually in 1917, by the entrance of the United States into the conflict. Had the United States joined the Allies after the sinking of the Lusitania, the world would have been spared the stupendous destruction of life, property and moral values during years of unprecedented suffering. The battle-cry of the United States in 1917, " War to end war," in no way implied the principles or practice of what has since been technically and specifically called Pacifism, though the aim and end of sacrifice and struggle was Peace. For it was clearly realised by those who thus fought, that to refuse to fight was to provide the militaristic and autocratic enemy with the most effective arm against the unmilitaristic and democratic Allies. In the same spirit the watchword of the present, " Peace to end war," does not mean Pacifism. For it is clearly realised that premature and unguaranteed dis- armament of all the peace-loving and highly civilised demo- cratic nations would give all the more power to the ill-disposed or less-civilised nations who would continually, though secretly, prepare for war. As in 19 15 and in 19 17, the great world-issue now depends upon the action of the United States. If the American people turn their backs upon their brethren and their blood-relations of the Old World and say to themselves : " What concern is their life and prosperity to us ? What have we in common with their civilisation and their ideals ? " the evils in store for 1 Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, March, 192 1. 444 AMERICA AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 445 civilised mankind will perhaps even be greater than they were at any period during the war. The writer of that remarkable article in a recent number of the Metropolitan Magazine of New York (reproduced in the London Times of February 5) has fully realised the issues that lie before us. The world has to choose between two alternatives, and only two : Continued and intensive armament, or an effective League of Nations. The first will mean for the United States, as well as for the British Empire, not only universal military service (preferably on the Swiss plan as advocated by President Roosevelt), but increase of naval armament with all the resultant complica- tions and dangers outlined by the writer referred to above. Furthermore, it will mean the concentration of effort on the part of science to develop the means of mass-destruction, with the widest range in extension and the most concentrated power of intensity in killing and destroying — killing not merely combatants, but (by the precedent established during the last war) non-combatants as well. Even the dullest imagination does not require further stimulation to realise what this will mean. In addition to this, we know that nearly all civilised States are practically bankrupt, and, according to pre-war standards, are completely so. What will it be if billions have to be raised for the armaments which every nation, urged by self-preservation and alive to the call of national honour, will be bound to expend ! The phrase of the diplomat of long ago, On pent toujours trouver de V argent pour faire la guerre, has been proved to be eminently true. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon was urged on by his convictions and ideals to bring the world under the dominance of France, no doubt, as he thought, for the good of the world and the progress of civilisa- tion, racially-national ideals took conscious shape in the minds of enthusiastic patriots in the form of Pan-Hellenism, Pan-Slavism, ending in the most nefarious and powerful formulation of Pan-Germanism. Racial and religious ideals were, and are, infiltrated more or less consciously and avowedly with material, industrial and commercial interests. There was a short period when Anglo-Saxonism formed the ideals of some. During the Spanish-American War I pointed out the dangers, both for the United States and for Great Britain 446 APPENDIX and for the relations between the two, of such a conception ; and, in replacing for the phrase Anglo-Saxon Alliance that of English-speaking Brotherhood, I insisted upon the fact that an understanding and friendship of all the English-speak- ing peoples would be practically the safest means of securing peace and co-operation between all the civilised nations of whatever race, religion and language. But " self-determina- tion ' ' has proved a two-edged sword. The rivalries and clash- ing of interests, acting on the soil so fertile in racial prejudice and animosities in the south-east of Europe among the recon- stituted smaller nationalities, are, and will be, as they have ever been, sources of unrest and conflict. The Powers of Central Europe, lying exhausted and maimed in the sullen and intense resentment of the vanquished, will in the future be ready to use the conflicts of the opposed nationalities, as well as the complications and contentions between the greater and more remote Powers, to widen the circle of dissension and war. Nay, as is foreshadowed by the writer already quoted, and as I pointed out in 1918, the day may come when Pan- Europeanism will stand opposed and armed facing Pan- Americanism. It is more than merely conceivable that these two great continents representing civilisation may be brought into internecine conflict ; while the organised nations of Asia, acquiring the implements of modern destructive warfare, will step into the breach of the fortifications protecting Western life and ideals, and swarm over the cultivated fields fruitful of so much that supported the higher life of civilised man. Quite recently, in a conversation on these wider ultimate aspects of international relationships, a man of great intellect, experience, and eminence in this country, an avowed opponent of anything in the form of a League of Nations, calmly enunciated his belief, with stupendous intellectual detachment, that our civilisation was doomed, and that, as had more than once happened in the world's history, it must go under, to be followed by a cataclysm into much lower strata of human life, until gradually, by long social evolution, the standards of civilisation might again be raised. My answer was, and is : " Are we, who are possessed not only of volition, but of intelli- gence, imagination and moral responsibilities, to sit still with AMERICA AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 447 arms folded and to do nothing in face of such a danger ? Is there not any alternative ? " Quite apart from all our sentiments and ideals, the practical and material facts before the world, immediate and in their ultimate bearings, force us soberly to consider the second alternative to such arming of one nation against the other — i.e. some efficient international, or rather supernational, organisation which will ensure peace. This now means that the League of Nations, the existing Covenant, be so modified as to leave no grounds for refusal on the part of the United States to co-operate in this great work. It means the modifi- cation or emendation in the constitution of the League of Nations to respond to the demands and needs of the civilised States in the present world-crisis. In facing such a problem it is important to bear in mind one general truth in the management of public affairs and the organisations dealing with them : It is frequently found, in deliberative bodies and parties, that differences concerning an amendment to a substantive motion create stronger antagon- isms than differences concerning the substantive motion itself. There is thus a danger that those who are sincerely and com- pletely agreed on the absolute need for the establishment of a League of Nations, but differ on the inner organisation of such a League, may develop stronger and more effectively negative opposition among each other than the fundamental differences which exist between the pronounced supporters and the violent opponents of any international organisation of the kind. This contingency must be borne in mind and jealously guarded against. However strongly we may feel that the present Covenant must be modified and amended, we must always gratefully acknowledge the work that has actually been done and the momentous step forward that has been taken by the convinced and highly qualified initiators of this greatest movement of modern times. The task before us all, and especially before the people of the United States, is to devise and to establish a supernational body which will meet with the essential demands of all the leading civilised States, to ensure complete co-operation. Three main requisites are to be met : Firstly, the modification of the Covenant so as to conform with the constitution, as 448 APPENDIX well as the established principles and traditions of national life, in the United States, as well as of other sovereign States ; secondly, to command the most complete confidence in the impartiality and the positive equity of the judgments of such a supernational body, as far as unerring equity is at all possible in this world of ours ; thirdly, to ensure the greatest possible efficiency in enforcing its decisions. The Senate of the United States has taken exception chiefly to two articles of the Covenant, namely, Articles III (with annex) and XVI. Article III (with annex) placed this nation of about one hundred million people, in the very forefront of modern civilisation and power, in an inferiority as regards the number of its representatives, compared, let us say, to the British Empire, including its Dominions. Article XVI, in certain eventualities, committed all members of the League to intervention with their armed forces to uphold certain decisions of the League, which, the Senate maintained, amounting to a declaration of war, is contrary to their con- stitution, whereby war can only be declared after due parlia- mentary deliberation and decision. Both these objections can be fully met by the emendations here proposed in the organisation of the existing Covenant ; while, at the same time, the two other requisites of confidence in the impartiality of the tribunal and effectiveness in carrying out its decisions will be met. In lieu of the present constitution of the Covenant, with its Council and its Assembly and the complicated arrangement between these two bodies, upon which we need not enter here, there would be a supernational jury with a more equitable representation for all nations, and commanding to a higher degree faith in the impartiality and fairness of its judgment. In lieu of the appeal to the several member-States to make war on a recalcitrant nation or nations by means of quotas of their own military forces, this supernational jury would be provided with a police of its own to enforce its decisions effec- tively. The supernational jury would be composed of representa- tives from every nation within the League, in the ratio of its number of inhabitants counted by the millions. But there would be a minimum and maximum for such representation. AMERICA AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 449 The minimum of one member would be assigned to even the smallest nation admitted to the League ; the maximum would be fixed by the least populous of the existing Great Powers — let us say France. Analogous to the relationship in the case of the Territories and States in the United States, it would have to be decided which States, and when those not yet recognised as fully developed in the political and social organi- sation of all Western nations, should be thus admitted to full membership. In any case, even the most populous of such States would never have anything approaching to preponder- ance of representation in the general body. Now, this super- national jury, following the historical precedent in the long and consistent evolution of English law, from its beginnings in the introduction of the trial by jury under Henry II, which gradually led to the organisation and activity of the Courts, would not be a legislative body, not even to the degree in which the recent Hague Conferences aimed at being. The world has had ample experience that no effective sanction could be given in the present condition of international development to such a legislative function. On the other hand, the enactments and decisions of a supernational jury would, in the course of time and of political and legal evolution, become the material for the acceptance and the codification of such binding laws. Nor would the supernational jury assume the character of a supernational court of judges to administer the law which in reality does not exist as law. It would simply be a tribunal of equity. The representatives of each nation would not necessarily be jurists at all, however much each of the litigants with their cases and pleadings would be in the hands of competent jurists, and however strictly the presiding official of the jury would maintain all the strict and perfect procedure of legal evidence with which he would have to be fully acquainted as a jurist. But these jurors would not be chosen at haphazard from among all citizens possessing in every variety of degree the intellectual and moral qualifications to judge with fairness ; but would have, as their chief and clearly manifest qualification, that intellectual superiority of mind and experience of life, as well as that record of uprightness and of honourableness of moral character, which would, as it were, make them the most 30 450 APPENDIX competent experts in administering equity. They would thus be chosen from within each nation among those citizens of eminence who, on the face of it, represent to the highest degree such intellectual and moral qualities. Above all, they would not be the immediate members of Governmental administra- tion, essentially associated with furthering the separate interests of that nation or the party in power for the time being. In any case, when the representatives in a League of Nations each stand for the conflicting interests of their own State and country, the deliberations of the League would be analogous to those in the conflicting life of national party government. So far from ensuring stability and peace, they would produce constant change and strife, and would certainly not command the absolute faith in the equity of their deliberations, not only in the contestant parties, but among all neutral members of the League. The jurors would therefore not be sent with any mandate to uphold the interests of their own State or country, but would, on the contrary, divest themselves of any approach to such aims and be biased in judgment as little as any judge is now supposed to be influenced by his local origin, residence, or his associations in locality and consanguinity. By the most solemn and impressive formality they would declare, upon accepting this high office, that they will in no way be biased by their national interests, but will only be guided by the one endeavour — to administer absolute justice. As men of the world they would even, in cases that might not be considered strictly justiciable, be the best conceivable authorities to decide, with wisdom and fairness, the most complicated cases in which no clear decision, wholly justiciable, can be expected. Both parties would adduce all abstract and concrete reasons in relation to their national life and prosperity in appealing to the wisdom and fairness of such a select body of men endowed with common sense, as well as intelligence, fairness and tact. These questions might arise in connection with immigration, regulation of finance, industry, commerce, etc. At present there exists no definite body for the appointment of such representatives by each State. But I am convinced that a completely satisfactory method can be easily devised in each country. At all events, such a body would, in this AMERICA AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS 451 imperfect world of ours, approach nearest to guaranteeing impartiality and would command more confidence than any other body which we can conceive. One word about the police force. Following on relative disarmament, an international police force of the most effective order in respect of modern warfare (military, naval and aerial), consisting, not of quotas from separate nationalities, but of one complete force enlisted from those who naturally and by preference choose the profession of arms, would concentrate at the seat of the supernational tribunal, under its immediate sovereignty, administered by sub-committees and chosen officials. There would also be local centres in various parts of the world, brought into immediate touch with headquarters by means of wireless telegraphy, to act with promptness when any necessity of enforcing the decisions of the tribunal arose. From the economical point of view the cost of armament for each nation, following the modern industrial precedent of " pooling," would be reduced to a minimum. With the sanction given by all sovereign States to this super- national body for the settlement of purely international affairs, there would be no incursion into the sovereignty of any state in its internal affairs, with two exceptions. First, that the people of every nation be informed of all decisions and pronounce- ments of the tribunal, and that errors and deliberate misstate- ments published in any State be effectively contradicted and, secondly, that the accredited agents of the tribunal in each State effectively guard against clandestine armament of such a State, so that immediate steps could be taken to suppress any prospective disturbance of the peace. These two con- ditions are essential to the practical working of such a scheme. It will also be realised that in the distant future the invasion of civilised countries by vastly superior hordes of inferior nationalities would be efficiently counteracted. For the claims of such nationalities would be met with fairness, even in the most complicated cases, demanding the highest wisdom and equity. Initial grievances and suspicion would be re- moved from the outset, while the united forces of civilised nations would be concentrated in their moral adhesion to the decisions of a supernational body uniting them all. Mean- while, the adjustment of immediate problems by agreement 452 APPENDIX between a group of leading Powers, such as the understanding on naval armaments, advocated by the writer of the article in the Metropolitan Magazine, on the part of Great Britain, the United States and Japan, might pave the way to further and more thoroughly and universally organised understanding in an efficient League of Nations. National Service with intensive armament or an effective League of Nations — there is no other alternative. The real decision at this moment lies with the United States. The World-Hercules now stands blindfolded in his strength between Irene and Bellona. It rests with America to which of the two goddesses she will turn him for guidance. INDEX Absent-mindedness, 90, 107 Achilles, Homeric Shield of, 139 Actions, directed by an image, 90 ; premeditated, 92 note ; reflex, 25. 50. 89 Acts and Things, Duty to, 313-316 Admiration, the Jerm, 63; influ- ence of, 64 " ^Esthetic Element in the Edu- cation of the Individual and of the Nation," 275 note ^Esthetic instinct, 3 ; a Primacy, 4 ; objective in character, 5 ; origin and development, 6, io, 30, 87 ; selection of works of nature, 8 ; view-point, 9 ; per- ception of symmetry, 12, 17, 19 ; in the lower organisms, 31 ; influence on the perceptive senses, 52 ; dominance in cul- tured life, 75, 80-83, 87, 268 ; forms of sense-pleasures, 126; selective activity of man, 132-6 ^Esthetics, the term, 3 ; objects, 5, 8 ; study of, 6 ; principles, 100 note, 123, 124, 268 ; analogous to ethics, 277 Afferent receptivity of stimuli, 34 Agatharchos, 203 Aglaophon, 200 Alcamenes, 186 America and the League of Nations, 444-452 Amiens Cathedral, 121 Anatomy, 115 Animals, sense-perception, 30 ; nervous system, 37 ; dualistic organs, 44; effect of light on, 45-48 ; movements, 139 ; modi- fication of the type, 178 Anthemion pattern in Greek Art, *5° Anthropology, 115 Anzengrabcr, 241 Apelles, pictures, 205, 206 Aphid, the, 45 Apollodorus, 199 ; scene-painting, 203 ; picture of Ajax, 204 Apple, form and colour, 71-73 ; eating an, 91 Arabesque, 150 Archaeology, 115 Architect, the, 59, 158-161 ; quali- fications, 160 Architectural sculpture, 191 ; ori- gin, 56 Architecture, 153, 157-161 Argive Herceum, The, 185 note Aristodemocracy, viii, 267 note, 275 note, 277 note, 279 note, 291 note, 336 note, 342 note, 343 note, 405 ; extract from, 280-288, 29i-3 3 Aristophanes, The Birds, 230 Aristotle, 3, 121, 180 ; Poetics, 231 Aristotropic principles, 90, 93, 277. 373. 375 Aristotropism, 32, 87, 99 Arnold, Matthew, 122, 313 ; " Self- dependence," 228 Art, the term, 3, 9, 94 ; work of, 5, 137-142; in Nature, 52; pure, 126, 161, 221 ; Dancing, 137-140 ; Creative, 142 ; Music, 142-146 ; Ornamentation or Decoration, 146-157 ; Greek, 150-154, 156 ; Oriental, 150, 151 ; Egyptian, 151 ; of Archi- tecture, 157-161 ; Applied, 161; of Living, 264-270, 294, 396 ; principles of conscious evolu- tion, 268 " Art and Industry," lectures on, 401 Art for Schools Association, 393 Art in the Nineteenth Century, 2 39 vote Artifact, 53, 133 Arts, Literary, 218-221 ; of mean- ing, 161-179, 195, 221, 249, 252 • selective, 130-137 Asceticism, 383 453 454 INDEX Association, 88, 98 Astigmatism, 14, 19 Astronomy, 115 Asymmetrical forms, 13, 375 ; become symmetrical, 17-19; experiments on, 18 Asymmetry, 13, 127, 373, 375 " Athene, Parthenos and Gold and Ivory Statues," 191 note Attic school of painting, 206 Aubusson tapestries, 155 Authority, the term, 107 Bach, J. S., 101 note, 121, 251 Balance of Emotion and Intellect, 24 note, 104 note, 122 note, 176, 219 note, 381 note Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (now Earl of), 404 Ball, Sir Robert, lectures for Gil- christ Educational Trust, 68 note Ballads, 255 Ballet, the, 261 Balzac, H. de, 240, 241, 248 Barbizon school of painting, 217 Barker, Granville, 236 Barrie, Sir James, 241 Bataille, H., 236 Beauty, the term, 10, 11 ; the dominant element in sexual affinity, 63 ; in nature, 262-264 Beethoven, L. van, 121, 251 ; Ninth Symphony, 255 ; " Fi- delio," 256 Behaviour of the Lower Organisms, 32 note, 41 note Belief, 99 Bennett, Arnold, 241 B6ranger, P. J. de, lyrics, 222 Bergson, Henri, 301 note Berlioz, H., 251 Bernini, G. L., portrait, 193 Bernstein, E., 235 Biologists, investigations, 39 Biology, 115 Birmingham, George, 242 Blake, W., lyrics, 222 Bojer, J., The Great Hunger, 242 Bolshevism, 341, 353 Botany, 115 Botticelli, S., 215 Boucher, F., 217 Bourgeois, Leon, 404 Bourget, Paul, 242 Boutreux, Emile, introduction to " La Societe des Nations," xi, 405, 426-428 Brahms, J., 251, 255 Breuil, Abbe\ 147 Brieux, E., 236 British Journal of Psychology, 124 note Bronze, use of, in sculpture, 182 Browning, Robert, " The Last Ride Together," 169 ; " Flight of the Duchess," 225 ; " Para- celsus," 228 ; " Romances and Idylls," 228 Builder, the, 153, 158 Bullough, Edward, Bibliography to General /Esthetics, 124 note ; Recent Work in Experimental /Esthetics, 124 note Bunsen-Roscoe photo-chemical law, 45 Burgess, Rev. W., 282 note Burns, Robert, lyrics, 222 Bury, Mrs., 225 note Bury, Prof. J. B., xi Butler, Sir Geoffrey, A Handbook to the League of Nations, 402 Buxom, meaning of, 176 Byron, Lord, lyrics, 222 Cable, Mr., 242 Cambridge Daily News, 401 note Cambridge and Paul Scientific Instrument Co., 19 Cambridge University, lectures at, ix, xi, 401 Capital, Transportation of, 343 ; increase of, 357 Carducci, G., poem, 227 note Carritt, E. F., The Theory of Beauty, 168 note Castiglione, B., Cortegiano, 297 Catagrapha, 201 Catskill Mountains, 395 Cecil, Lord Robert, 404 ; " The League of Nations and the Problem of Sovereignty," 402, 411 Cell, evolutionary history, 35 Centrobaric organs, 23, 35, 49 Ceramic art, 194 Cezanne, 217 Chamber music, 252 Chartres, Cathedral of, 121 Chemical affinity, 48 Chemistry, 115 Chesterfield, Lord, Letters to his Son, 297 Chiaroscuro, 199, 207 Chinese art, 216 ; sculpture, 190 Chopin, F., 252 Choral music, 252 INDEX 455 Choroplastic, 139 Christ, teaching of, 279, 374 Church music, 145 Church, Prof. A. H., Phyllotaxis in Relation to Mechanical Law, 129 note Cicero, 202, 266 note Ciliates, protoplasm of, 36 Cinematograph performances, 236 Classic, the term, 172 Clay, use of, in sculpture, 181 Clifford, Sir Hugh, 243 Clouet, F., 217 Colour photography, 131 Comedy, 232 Communism, theory, 353-356 Community, Immediate, Duty to the, 291-303 Composition, 100, 118, 130, 152 Concentration, 98 Conductibility, 42, 44 Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim, 241 Conscience, 278, 309 ; growth of, in man, 79 Conscious Evolution, n, 93, 324, 332. 37 2 . 374. 380 ; through Science, 109 ; perception, 20 Consciousness, development of, 25- 2 9. 49. 50. 87 Constable, John, 217 Conventionalism, process of, 147 Conviction, 99, 103, 106-108 Convivium, the term, 266 Cook, Sir Theodore, The Curves of Life, 129 note Copernicus, N., no Corneille, P., tragedies, 230 Coroplast, 182, 195 Corot, J. B. C, 217 Courbet, G., 215 Cranach, L., 217 Cross, the, 57, 129 note Curves, the, 24, 127, 149 Dallinger, Dr. , lectures for the Gil- christ Educational Trust, 68 note Dancing, art of, 137-140 Dante Alighieri, 121, 122, 224 ; " Inferno," 227 note Darwin, Charles, 63, 106, 121, 337 Daubigny, C. F , 217 David, J. L., 215 Day, Elsie, xi Day-dreams, 96 Debussy, C. A., 251 Decorative Art, 146-157 ; funda- mental principle, 154 ; reaction against the degeneration, 154 Democracy, 306, 345 Demonstratio, 104 Diaz, N. V., 217 Dickens, Charles, 240, 243 Dickenson, G. Lowes, The Choice before us, 338 note Differential sensibility, 47 Direct Action, 364 Divinity, conception of, 378-380 note Dogs, modification of the type, 178 Don Quixote, 239 Door, shutting a, 91 Douglas, N., South Wind, 243 Drama, the, 228-233 ; Prose, 233-237 Driesch, Prof., History and Theory of Vitalism, 39, 48, 49 note Dualistic senses, 14, 22, 87 Diirer, Albert, 204, 217 Durham Cathedral, 121 Duty, sense of, 382 Dynamic symmetry, 128 note, 133, 222 Earthworms, the neurones, 37 Echinus, the, 8 Economics, 116 Education, influence of, 109, in ; system of, 346-349 ; main objectives, 381 ; methods, 383- 387, 396 ; aptitudes, 386 ; limitations, 388 ; specialisation, 388-391 ; development of the aesthetic faculty in art, 392 ; in literature, 394 ; in nature, 395 Education Acts, 284 Educational Epilogue, 381-397 ; Institutions, lectures on the progress of science, 112 Egypt, art, 151, 216; sculpture, 181 note Einstein, Prof., theories of, no, in Elective affinity, 63, 90 Electrons, 1 10 Elementary Nervous System, 37 note Elgar, Sir Edward, 251 Eliot, George, Mill on the Floss, 240 ; Daniel Deronda, 240 Emotion, 89, 98, 106 English-speaking Brotherhood and the League of Nations, xi, 367 note, 368 note, 405 Entelechy, 39, 40, 49, 88, 178 Eoliths, 134 456 INDEX Epistemology, 43 note, 44, 50, 94, 95. 96, 115, 123, 268, 340, 373, 397 Equality, 339 Essays on the Art of Pheidias, 128 note, 131 note, 177 note, 179 note, 187 note, 191 note Ethics, 94, 116, 123, 275-330; analogous to aesthetics, 277 ; principles, 277-280 ; codifica- tion of the laws, 280-289 ; Duty to the Family, 289 ; to the Im- mediate Community, 291-303 ; to the State, 303 ; to Humanity, 304-309 ; to our Self, 309-313 ; to Things and Acts, 313-316; to God, 316-323 ; religious ideals, 319 ; new laws of moral conduct, 324-326 Ethnology, 115 Ethography, the term, 326 note Ethologist, work of the, 326-330 Ethology, the term, 326 ; experi- mental inquiry, 328 Eugenics, Civics and Ethics, 134 note, 178 note, 267 note, 275 note, 325 note, 326 note, 333 note Eumaros, 201 Euphranor, 206 Eupompos, 206 Eurythmia, 128 note Evolution, 374 ; Laws of, 330 Examinations, advantages, 347 Expansion of Western Ideals and the World's Peace, 405 Eycks, van, Hubert and Jan, 204, 207, 215, 217 Eyes, accommodation, 14, 20 ; sense of the, 104 Facility, 44 Family, the relations, 359, 361 ; Duty to the, 289 Fashion, influence of, 172, 177 Fatalistic evolution, 278, 332, 372 Fiction, 237 ; form in, 238 Field, the, 129 note Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones, 246 Fischer, Kuno, vii Fishes, images, transmission of, 88 note Flagellates, protoplasm of, 36 Folk-song, 222 Forced Movements, Tropisms and A nimal Conduct, 48 note Form, harmoniotropic instinct in, 125 ; use of the word, 126 note ; in nature, 127 ; in art, 166, 220 ; in science, 166 ; in Fiction, 238 Forth Bridge, construction, 121 Fragonard, J. H., 217 Frame of a picture, 196 France, Anatole, 241 Franck, Cesar, 251 Fransen, novels, 241 Franzos, Emil, 241 Fremiet, statue of Joan of Arc, 212 French art, 217 ; Revolution, 344; sculpture, 190 note, 193 Fresco painting, 200 Freud, Dr., 90 note Froebel, Pastor, sermon, 282 note Futurism, 171 Gainsborough, Thomas, 215, 217 Galileo, no Galsworthy, J., 236 Galton, Sir F., 106 Garrey, experiments, 48 Gautier, Theophile, 223, 256 Gentleman, the term, 294 ; prin- ciples, 295, 299-302 Geography, 115 Geology, 115 Germany, sermons of pastors, 282 note ; system of education, 349 note, 393 ; Politismus, 333 Gibbs, Armstrong, 262 Gilchrist Educational Trust, lec- tures, 68 Giotto, 215 Giovanni da Bologna, 190 Gobelin tapestries, 155 God, duty to, 316-323 Goes, H. van der, 217 Goethe, J. W., 121 ; Faust, 122, 228 note ; lyrics, 222, 227 note ; Werther, 240 Golden Section or Cut, 57, 58, 129 Gothic sculpture, 193 Gower, Sir George Leveson, xi Goya, F., 217 Grammar, 102 Greco, El, 170, 217 Greece, monuments, 184 Greek art, 68, 128 note, 150-154, 156 " Greek Art, The Influence of Athletic Games upon," 177 note Greek, evolution of the dance, 139; drama, 140, 229, 230 ; games, 68, 137, 139, 174, 197 ; painting, 197-206 ; tablet-pictures, 198, 200 ; vase-painting, 200 ; pain- INDEX 457 ters, 199-206 ; sculpture, 128 note, 181 note, 183, 191, 199 ; statue, use of wood, 182 ; period of transition, 186 ; gods and heroes, 188 " Greek Sculpture, History of," lectures on, viii " Greek Sculpture and Modern Art," 179 note Grey, Lord, of Fallodon, 404 Grieg, E., 254 Gunpowder, invention of, 174 Habit, formation of, 49, 50 Habituation, 177 Hague Peace Conference, 407, 410 Hambridge, Jay, The Diagonal, 128 note Hanlan, the sculler, principle of self-coaching, 381 note Harmoniotropic instinct, 32, 40, 5°. 125. 373- 375 Harmoniotropjsm, 43, 87 ; in human life, 52 Harmonism, Philosophy of, viii, 4 ; lectures on, ix-xi ; prin- ciples of, 40 ; three forms, 41- 43 ; in the State, 82 ; in re- ligion, 83 Harmonistic Principle, 32, 34-36 ; influence on the nervous system, 49 Harmony, the term, 10, 11 ; prin- ciple of, 28, 373, 374, 382 Harris, Joel Chandler, 242 Hart, Harold B., xi Harte, Bret, 242, 248 Hauptmann, G., Die Weber, 235 Hawthorne, N., 242 Hearing, the sense of, 13-15 Hebbel, F., " Gebet," 256 Heine, H., lyrics, 222 Henry, O., 243, 248 Hesychius, 204 Hilliard, Nicholas, miniature painter, 204 History, study of, 115, 116 Hobbema, M., 217 Hobby, value of a, 384 Holbein, Hans, 204, 217 Holmes, experiments, 48 Homer, 121, 201, 224 Honeysuckle pattern, in Greek art, 150 Honour, conception of, 295-299 ; definition, 295 note Honours, conferring, 350, 352 Hoppner, J., 217 Horace, 222 Horse, in motion, 164, 170 ; modi- fication of the type, 178 House, unity of structure, 59 ; interior, 59 Howells, W. D., 242 Hozumi, Nobushige, Ancestor- Worship and Japanese Law, 322 Hudson, the, 395 Hughes, Mrs. Watts, 105 note Hugo, Victor, 223 ; Les Djinns, 227 note Human body, single organs of sense, 22 ; system of structure, 36 ; analogy with architectural forms, 56 ; harmonious relation of all the organs, 65 ; influence of physical and mental energy, 66; aesthetic qualities, 135; typical proportions, 172 ; modi- fications of the type, 173-175 Human mind, faculty, 4 ; aristo- tropic evolution, 93 ; skin, 164 ; voice, 142 Humanistic Principle, 11 ; Science, 114 Humanitarian Provincialism, 307, 308 Humanities, sins against, 300 Humanity, Duty to, 304-309 Huxley, Prof., 121 ; lectures for the Gilchrist Educational Trust, 68 note Ibanez, Blasco, A I'ombre de la Cathddrale, 245 Ibsen, H., 235 Idealism, 24, 167, 169 Imagination, influence, 50 note ; form, 89 ; activity, 90 Immotion, 89, 98, 106 Impressionism, 171 Indian painting, 199, 216 Individualism, 305, 341, 342 Inequality, 341 Infant, birth of an, 26 ; somato- centric activities, 26 Ingres, J. D. A., 215 Instinct, formation, 49, 50 ; for self-preservation, 92 Instrumental music, 144, 250-252 Integrative Action of the Nervous System, 41 note Ionic school of painting, 206 Irritability, 42, 44 Italian operas, 257 ; schools of painting, 216; sculpture, 190, 193 458 INDEX Jacobsen, Niels Liene, 242 James, Henry, 242, 248 Japan, ancestor-worship, 322 ; art, 216 ; Samurai, moral stan- dards of the, 297 ; sculpture, 190 Jennings, Prof., Behaviour of the Lower Organisms, 32 note, 41 note Jewish Question, The, 291 note, 295 note Joan of Arc, statues, 212 ; pic- tures, 212-215 Johannet, Rene, letter to, 422- 425 Jokai, 241 Kant, I., 4, 121 ; Categorical Imperative, 293 Keats, John, 223 ; lyrics, 255 Keller, Gotfried, 241 Kepler, J., 129 note Kerr, Richard, 105 note Kimon, 201 Kipling, Rudyard, 242, 248 ; " If — ," 97 note, 228 Knowledge, systematised, 94, 108-113; systems of grouping, 114 Kofoid, Prof., on the protoplasm of single-celled animals, 36 Labour, the term, 353 ; com- munistic conception, 353-356 " Labour and Art in English Life," 69-74 Laertius, Diogenes, 128 note Lagerloef, Selma, Goesta Berling, 242 Lamartine, A., lyrics, 222 Lancret, N., 217 Landscape gardener, 161 ; paint- ing, 206, 211, 217 Language, system, 102 note, 116, 119 ; use of, 141, 220 Lawrence, Dr. T. J., Lectures on the League of Nations, 402 League of Nations, 368, 369 " League of Nations, The Future of the," lecture on, xi, 401-421 Leonardo da Vinci, 215 ; " The Last Supper," 121 Lepage, Bastien, picture of Joan of Arc, 212 Les Lettres, xi, 422 note Lessing, G. E., 230 Lewis, Sinclair, Main Street, 242 Liberty, Isgalite, Fraternit6, 306, 336 Liberty, 337~339 Ligue des Nations, La, 432 Lincoln Cathedral, 121 Liszt, F., 254 Literary Arts, 218-221 Literature, Prose, 237-249 ; fic- tion, 237 ; novel, 239-243 ; portrayal of national character- istics, 241-243 ; " Novel with a Purpose," 243-246; problem story, 246 ; essay-story, 247 ; the short story, 247 ; selection of, in education, 394 Literature, study of, 116 Living, Art of, 264-270, 294, 396 social intercourse, 265—268 housing, 265 ; dress, 266 food, 266 Loeb, Prof., 37, 103 ; Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, 38, 45 note ; The Mechanistic Conception of Life, 43, 45 note ; on the effect of light on animals, 45-48 ; Forced Movements, Tropisms and Ani- mal Conduct, 48 note Logic, 11, 101-108 Longfellow, H. W., *' Snowflake," 227 note Lorrain, Claude, 217 Louis XV, King of France, 269 Love, the term, 63 Lutheran Church, sermons, 282 note Lyrical Poetry, 221-228 ; the folk- song, 222 ; lyrics, 222-224 '• sonnet, 224 Lytton, Lord, 227 note Machiavelli, Principe, 297 Man, origin and development of the aesthetic instinct, 10, 87 ; perceptive senses, 12, 52 ; ex- periences of nature, 54-56 ; observations on human beings, 56 ; influence of aesthetic ap- pearance, 58 ; his home, 58—60, 134; influences of daily life, 61 ; training and education, 76-78 ; codes of laws, morals and manners, 78, 280-289 ; growth of his conscience, 79 ; selective activity, 132-136 ; artistic crea- tiveness, 146, 162 ; modifica- tions in the type, 173-175 ; a INDEX 459 perfect, 267, 277, 333 ; social and political relations, 276 ; duties, 278-280, 301, 307 ; duty to God, 316 Manet, E., 215, 217 Mannheim, Theatre, 393 Mantegna, A., 215 Marble, use of, in sculpture, 182 Maseneld, John, poems, 228 Masters, Edgar Lee, 249 Mathematics, 11, 101-108 Maughan, Somerset, 243 Maupassant, Guy de, 248 Maxwell, S. S., 45 Meaning, Arts of, 161-179, 195, 221, 249, 252 Mechanistic Conception of Life, 45 note Mechanistic Theories of Life and Mind, 38, 40, 43 Melodrama, 261 Memling, 217 Memory, 88, 98 Mendelian principle, 49 Mental energy, 67 Metaphysics, the term, 39 Metropolitan Magazine, 445, 452 Michelangelo, 189 Milton, John, 224 Mimetic instinct, 168 Mind, aristotropic faculty, 90 Minerva, review, 89 note Moliere, 121, 141, 234, 258 Money, influence of, 351 Monism, 24 Monistic principle, 41 Montessori, Dr., theory of educa- tion, 385 Moral duties, codes of, 78, 279-289 Morphology, 115 Moscheles, I., 390 Mose3, teaching of, 279 Mozart, W. A. C, Operas, 256 Mud-pies, 182, 195 Murillo, B. E., 215 Music, art of, 101 note, 120, 137, 140, 142-146, 249-261 ; Cham- ber, 252 ; Choral, 252 ; Church, 145 ; drama, 257 ; instru- mental, 144, 250-252 ; Melo- drama, 261 ; the Opera, 256- 261 ; Orchestral, 250 ; Pro- gramme, 254 ; religious, 252 ; Song or Ballad, 255 ; vocal, M3 Musset, Alfred de, lyrics, 222 ; lines on his tomb, 227 note ; " Nuit de Mai," 389 Myron, the sculptor, 186 ; Quoit- thrower, 185 Nationality, conception of, 366 " Nationality and Hyphenism," 367 note Nations, La Societe des, xi, 405, 426-443 Nations, League of, 368 ; see League Natural Science, 114 Nature, art in, 52 ; beauty in, 8, 262-264, 395 ; evolution of form in, 127 ; freak of, 53, 134 ; laws of, 11, 42, 48, 94, 100, 103, 105, 121, 133; the Phaeno- menology of, 207 ; study of, 395 ; warfare of, 53 Neolithic sculpture, 180 note Nervous system, origin of the harmonistic and aesthetic in- stinct, 11 ; evolution, 33, 38, 49 ; of animals, 37 ; integrative action, 41 New York, architecture, 161 Newton, Sir Isaac, 1 10 ; Principia, 121 Nietzsche, F. W., 296, 336 Night-dreams, 96 Nikon, 201 Norman-French language, 176 Norris, W. E., 242 Norton, Charles Eliot, 161 note Novel, the, 239-243; psy- chological, 240 ; portrayal of national characteristics, 241 ; with a Purpose, 243-246 Novelty, the Desire for, 177 Objective perception, 20 Ochlocracy, 344 Oculos, 104 Oddocracy, 345 Ogden, C. K., History and Theory of Vitalism, translation of, 49 note Opera, the, 256-261 Oppenheim, Prof. L., The League of Nations, 402 Optimist, the, beliefs, 53 Optimum, the term, 32 note Oratorio, 252 Oratory, art of, 219 Orchestral music, 250 Oresteia, 233, 262 Organ-sensations, 65 Organic symmetry, 210, 222, 252, 278 460 INDEX Organisms, higher, 35, 49 ; lower, 31. 49, 88 Oriental Art, 150, 151, 216 Orientation, regular, 35 Ornamentation or Decoration, Art of, 146-157 Pailleron, E., Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie, 235 Painting, Art of, 193-218 ; de- velopment, 194, 197 ; the picture, 195-197, 199 ; tablet-pictures, 198, 200 ; fresco, 200 ; vases, 200 ; use of colour, 202 ; scene, 203 ; schools, 206 ; landscape, 206,211,217; variety of means of expression, 207-210 ; pic- torial harmony, 211 ; various artists, 215-217 Palaeolithic drawings, 147 ; sculp- ture, 180 note Panaenos, 201 Paris, Architecture, 161 ; Confer- ence, 368, 408, 414 Parker, Prof. G. H., The Element- ary Nervous System, 37 ; experi- ments, 48 Parrhasios, 199 ; pictures, 205 Parry, Sir Hubert, 251 Parry, Rev. St. John, Vice-Master of Trinity College, 401 note Passion or Mystery Play, 252 Pathology, study of, 65, 115 Patriotism, 367, 369 Patriotism, National and Inter- national, 291 note, 338 note, 366 note, 369 note, 405 ; extract from, 345-351 Paul, Nancy Margaret, H. Bergson : An Account of Life and Philo- sophy, 301 note Pausias, 201 Pearson, Prof. K., 106 Pedimental sculpture, 191, 192 Perception, development of, 87 Perceptive senses of man, the higher, 12, 16, 21 ; lower, 16, 21 ; influence of aesthetic prin- ciples, 52 Persian paintings, 216 Pessimist, the, 53, 82 Phenomenology of nature, 207 Pheidias, 121, 128 note ; character of his sculpture, 186-189 Philippi, Pastor Fritz, sermon, 282 note Phillimore, Mr. Justice, 404 Philology, 116 Philosophical Congress at Oxford, 129 note Philosophy, 116 Photography, 164 ; colour, 131 Physical, meaning of, 66 Physico-chemical laws, 42, 44-48 Physics, 115 Physiology, 115 Physiology of the Brain and Com- parative Psychology, 38 note, 45 note Pianoforte, 251 Pictographic or narrative, 151, 168 Picture, the, 195, 199 ; the frame, 196 ; outline composition, 210 ; element of harmony, 211 Pindar, 222 Plants, principle of symmetry, 36 Plastic Arts or Sculpture, 179 Plato, 92, 118, 293, 295, 308, 378 note ; dialogue of, 121 ; con- ception of art, 168 ; teaching, 374 Play, spirit of, 67, 383 Pleasure, the term, 3 Pliny, 201, 202, 203 Plutarch, 204 Poetry, art of, 137, 141 ; Lyrical, 221-228 ; subdivisions, 224 ; didactic, 227 ; fusion in songs, 255 Politics, 94, 116, 123, 276, 331- 372 ; task of, 334 Pollard, Prof. A. F., on the system of trial by jury, 415 Pollock, Sir Frederick, The League of Nations, 402 Polycleitus, art of, 185 note Polygnotos, paintings, 199, 200, 202 ; use of colour, 202 Poor, revolt against the rich, 357 Postman, daily round, 69-71 Practical attitude, 93 Pragmatics, 94, 123, 271-274 Pragmatism, 40 note, 271 note Prehistoric discoveries, 7 Prejudice, 107 Premeditated actions, 92 note Problem play, 235 Production, result of communism, 353-356 Programme music, 254 Progress, conception of, 93 Proportion, the term, n Prose Drama, 233-237 ; Litera- ture, 237-249 Protogenes, 206 Protons, no INDEX 461 Psychology, 115 Puccini, G., La Vie de Bohime, 261 Purposefulness, 39, 40, 49, 88 Pythagoras, 10, 24, 128 wore, 184, 186, 319 ; epigram of, 103 Quintilian, 202, 205 ; on the prin- ciples of sculpture, 184 Racine, Jean, tragedies, 230 Raeburn, Sir H., 217 Raff, J., Im Wald, 254 Ranatra, the, experiments on, 48 Raphael, 215 Ravel, 251 Realism, 24, 167 Reasoning, 98 Redundancy, the term, 156 Reflex action, 25, 50, 89 Relativity, problems of, no Relief sculpture, 191, 192 Religion, 94, 116, 123, 277, 373- 380 ; the principle of harmon- ism in, 83 ; influence of, 281-286 Rembrandt, 204, 207, 215 Renaissance Politique, La, 405 Renoir, 217 " Respublica Litteratorum," xi, 422 Reuter, Fritz, 241 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 217 Rhetoric, 120, 219 Rhythm, the term, 128 note, 253 Rich, relations with the poor, 357 Richter, Hans, conducts the orch- estra, 253 Rodin, A., 189, 190 Romanes, George, researches into the nervous system of medusae, 33 Romney, George, 217 Ross, Martin, 242 Rousseau, J. J., 217 Royal Academy Exhibition, 213 Rubens, P. P., 217 Rubinstein, A., 254 Ruckler, 255 Rule, Algot, H. Bergson: An Ac- count of Life and Philosophy, 301 note Ruskin, John, The Work of, 9, 207 note, 219 note Russian ballet, 261 ; novels, 241 Ruysdael, J., pictures, 263 Saint-Saens, C. C, 251 Saxon words, degeneration, 176 Scene-painting, 203 Sceptic, the, 82 Scepticism, history of, viii Schiller, J. C. F., 120; descrip- tion of the Maelstrom, 227 note ; Wallenstein's Lager und Wal- lenstem's Tod, 234 Schubert, F. P., 255 ; Erlkdnig," 256 Schumann, R., 252, 255 ; " Sonn- tag am Rhein," 256 Science, 94, 108 ; Conscious evo- lution through, 109 ; Human- istic, 114; Natural, 114; position of form, 166 Sciences, Classification of, 114 Scientific Investigator, synthetic activity after truth, 117 ; crea- tive work, 118; exposition of his discoveries, 119 Scientific Studies, special, 113; Truth, exposition of, 1 19 Sculptor, the, task of, 179 ; see Sculpture Sculpture, 179-193; development, 180; archaic, 180, 222 note ; materials, 181-183 ; tools, 183 ; principles of, 184 ; Period of Transition, 186 ; choice of subjects, 187, 191 ; the Type, 187 ; Ideal, 188 ; masters in the art, 189 ; movement in, 190 ; statuettes, 190 ; relief and pedimental, 191, 192 ; archi- tectural, 191 Sea-anemones, nervous system of, 37 Selborne, Earl of, 350 Self, Duty to our, 309-313 Self-consciousness, 23, 25-28, 49, 50, 87 Self-determination, principleof, 367 Self-preservation, 29, 92 Selfish character, 92 Sense-perception, 20, 163-165, 375. 397 ; objective, 20 ; in animals, 30 Sentience, phases of, 25 ; phe- nomenon, 40 ; development, 43, 49, 5°. 8 7. 88 Serao, Matilda, 77 Paese di Cuccagna, 244 Sexual affinity, 90 ; instincts, 62 ; beauty, the dominant element, 63 ; love, 63 ; admiration, 63 Shakespeare, W.,121, 122 ; dramas, 234 ; lyrical poems, 227, 230 Shelley, P. B., " Ode to the West Wind," 223 ; lyrics, 255 Shells, variety of. 8 462 INDEX Sheridan, R. B., School for Scan- dal, 234 Sherrington, Prof., The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, 41 Short Story, the, 247 Sight, sense of, 12, 163, 165 Sikyonian school of painting, 206 Skin, human, 164 Smell, sense of, 16, 22, 126 Smuts, General, 404 ; The League of Nations, 402 Snyder, C. D., 45 Socialism, 305, 341, 342 " Societe des Nations contre l'Anarchie Nationale et Inter- nationale," xi, 405, 426-433 Sociology, 115 Socrates, 118 vote, 306, 334 Somatobaric functions, 26 ; based on the harmonistic principle, 28 Somatocentric organs, 22-24, 26, 28, 35, 49 Somerville, Miss, 242 Songs, 143, 255 Sound, sense of, 163, 165 " Specialisation a morbid Ten- dency of our Age," 389 note Spencer, Herbert, 219 Spinoza, B., 106, 118, 121, 378 "Spirit of the Art of Pheidias," 179 note Sponges, rhythmical functions, 38, 54 Stanford, Sir Charles, 251 State, the, 332 ; order the soul of, 82 ; social legislation, 287 ; Duties to the, 303 ; the Best, 333 ; functions, 342-345 ; Hon- ours conferred by, 350, 352 ; organisation in its relation to the citizens, 358-365 ; Inter- national and Supernational Re- lations, 365-372 ; racial distinc- tions, 366 ; principle of self- determination, 367 Static symmetry, 128 note, 133, 210, 222, 252 Straight line, the, 23, 51, 127, 149 Strauss, D. F., 251 ; " Morgen," 256 Suberg, Prof. Reinhold, sermon, 282 note Suffrage, extension, 339 Suggestor, 107 Supernational Jury backed by a Supernational Police, organisa- tion, 370, 415-421 Super-State, creation, 368, 411, 415. 417 " Survival of the fittest," 93, 109, 332, 337. 34°. 374 Swinburne, A. C, 223; dramas, 230 Symmetrical forms, 13, 18, 375 ; deviation, 15 Symmetry, the term, 11, 12, 28, 127, 373. 375 : its bearing upon the memory, 15 ; pleasure from, 17, 19 ; principle of, in organ- isms, 35 ; in plants, 36 ; in sponges, 38 ; dynamic, 128 note, 133, 222 ; organic, 210, 222, 252, 278 ; static, 128 note, 133, 210, 222, 252 Symphony, the, 144 Symposium, the term, 266 note Synapis, 37 Synthetic, reproduction by ex- periment, 104 Tablet-pictures, 198, 200 Taste, sense of, 16, 22, 126 Telescope, 164 Tennyson, Lord, 223 ; " In Me- moriam," 228 Thackeray, W. M., 240 Theology, 116 Theoretic attitude, 94 Theory of Beauty, The, 168 note Things and Acts, Duty to, 313-316 Thought, laws of, 94, 103, 121 Thrift, the practice of, 356, 361, 362 Timanthes, 199 Titian, 215 Tom-tom, 140 Touch, sense of, 22, 104, 127 Town-planning, 161 Tragedy, 232 Transportation of Capital, 342 note, 343 Tree, growth of, 55 Triadic principle, 41, 42, 50, 88 Tropism, 26, 43 Truth, sense of, 105 ; conception, 376, 397 Truth — An Essay in Moral Re- construction, in note Truths, new, research, invention and discovery of, 1 16-122 Tschoke, 248 Turner, J. M. W., 217 Tuscan sculpture, 190 note, 193 Tussaud, Mme., waxworks, 168 Twain, Mark, 242 Tzikos, Pericles, Minerva, edited by, 389 not* INDEX 463 Uexknell, Prof., Leitfaden in das Studium der experimentellen Biologic der Wasserthiere, 41 United States, constitution, 411 ; League of Nations, 413, 444-452 Utilitarianism, 28 Utility, 41 note ; connotation of, 29, 271 ; articles of, 148 Vaphio Cup, scene, 152 Vase-painting, 194, 198, 200 Velazquez, D. de, 215, 217 Verlaine, P., 223 Virgil, 224 Vitalism, History and Theory of, 49 note Vitalistic Theories of Life and Mind, 38, 40, 48 Vitality or la joie de vivre, 65 Vitruvius, 56, 203 Voice, the human, 142 Wagner, Richard, 121, 251 ; at a rehearsal, 253 ; development of the opera, 257 ; Leitmotifs, 257; All-kunst, 257; Meister- singer, 258, 260 ; Tristan and Isolde, 258 ; Parsifal, 258, 260 ; Siegfried, 259 ; Lohengrin, 259 ; Tannhduser, 260 ; Flying Dutch- man, 260 ; Nibelungen Ring, 260 Waldstein, Dr. Louis, The Sub- conscious Self and its Relation to Education and Health, 90 note Walpole, Hugh, The Captives, 241 Walston, Sir Charles, dissertation on the relation between Kant and Hume, vii ; lectures on " The History of Greek Sculp- ture," viii ; Aristodemocracy, viii, 405 ; " Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Harmonism," ix-xi ; " The Future of the League of Nations," xi, 401 ; English - speaking Brotherhood and the League of Nations, xi, 405; The Work of John Raskin, 9 note, 207 note, 219 note ; The Balance of Emotion and Intellect, 24 note; researches on the Harmonistic Principle, 33-36 ; lectures for the Gilchrist Educational Trust, 68 ; mathematical studies, 103 note ; Essays on the Art of Pheidias, 128 note, 131 note ; Eugenics, Civics and Ethics, 134 note, 178 note ; The Rudeness of the Hon. Mr. Leatherhead, 247 note ; The Expansion of Western Ideals and the World's Peace, 405 ; Patriotism, National and International, 405 ; The Next War, 405 War, the Great, viii, 330, 444 ; result, 270 War, The Next : Wilsonism and Anti-Wilsonism, 405 War-dance, 139 Washington Peace Conference, 3 6 9 Watteau, A., 217 Watts, G. F., 215 Wealth, transmission by heredity, 360-364 Weismann, Prof., 106 Weyden, Roger van der, 217 Wharton, Mrs., 242, 248 Whistler, J. A. M., 211, 215, 217 Wilkins, Miss, 242 Will, act of, 99 Wilson, President, policy on the League of Nations, 408 Wireless telegraphy, 48 note, no Woman Suffrage, 339, 345 Women, phases of historical de- velopment, 175 Wood, use of, in sculpture, 182 Woolff, A Village in the Jungle, 243 Wordsworth, William, 122 ; lyrics, 222 ; " Ruth," 225-227 Work, spirit of, 67, 382, 383 Writings, style, 219, 220 Wundt, Prof., vii, 33 Xenophanes, saying of, 318, 373, 380 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 334 note Zeuxis, 199, 203 ; subjects of his pictures, 205 Zola, Emile, 243 ; L'Assommoir, 244 ; Au Bonheur des Dames, 244 Zoology, 115 Printed by Hatell, Watson <£• Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. m l Form L9-30m-ll,'58(8268s4)444 REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 506169 2 [ - k L PLEA*£ DO NOT REMOVE ~ A L " 1 W THIS BOOK CARD I - " I »> o 5 1 ^LIBRARYftr > r r~ 10 c- ^11 r^ ^ •> ° 5 =! L* " i o = t_1 UJ 1 S z £ •» K ^ A^l X ^ ^ <= i— » El on - ( 'A. < i i CD m ,Ch ^OJITVDJO^ 'I s i Kj o j — Kl hi University Research Library i c5 4k j i 5 h* i < o r M Kl OB Cp to o u i O hi i O 3E en g 5 j i > * j C -1 * U1 j o 3J i Jk to s en tn M KM